#645: The Random Show, Mega-Holiday Edition — 2023 Resolutions and New Tools, Extensive Bullshitting, Booze and Ethanol Alternatives, The “Yearly Delete,” A Million Sidebars, Ayahuasca Revisited, Recapping the COCKPUNCH Saga, and Much More

Brought to you by GiveWell.org http://givewell.org/ charity research and effective giving, Athletic Greens http://athleticgreens.com/tim all-in-one supplement, and Allform http://allform.com/tim premium, modular furniture. Technologist, serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, self-experimenter, and all-around wild and crazy guy Kevin Rose https://www.kevinrose.com/ (@KevinRose https://www.instagram.com/kevinrose/) rejoins me for another episode of The Random Show. * This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product. * This episode is also brought to you by Allform http://allform.com/tim! If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep mattresses, which I’ve been using since 2017. They also launched a company called Allform http://allform.com/tim that makes premium, customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door—at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores. You can pick your fabric (and they’re all spill, stain, and scratch resistant), the sofa color, the color of the legs, and the sofa size and shape to make sure it’s perfect for you and your home. Allform http://allform.com/tim arrives in just 3–7 days, and you can assemble it yourself in a few minutes—no tools needed. To find your perfect sofa and receive 20% off all orders, check out Allform.com/Tim http://allform.com/Tim. * This episode is also brought to you by GiveWell.org https://www.givewell.org/! For over ten years, GiveWell.org https://www.givewell.org/ has helped donors find the charities and projects that save and improve lives most per dollar. GiveWell spends more than 30,000 hours each year researching charitable organizations. Then, they direct funding to a few of the highest-impact, evidence-backed opportunities they’ve found. More than 100,000 donors have used GiveWell to donate more than one billion dollars, which includes $678,000 donated by you, my dear listeners. If you’ve never donated to GiveWell’s recommended charities before, you can have your donation matched up to one hundred dollars before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org http://GiveWell.org, and when you get to checkout, pick “PODCAST” and enter “Tim Ferriss Show.” Make sure they know that you heard about GiveWell http://GiveWell.org on the The Tim Ferriss Show to get your donation matched. * [05:00] Welcome to The Random Show #4,732 (or so)! [05:41] Tasty grapes and hard ketones. [14:28] Exogenous ketones — or diabetic horse urine? [21:29] Banana, ketone, tequila, ayahuasca, TV. [22:52] Kevin’s fear of flying vs. my fear of heights. [29:33] Health tracking devices vs. The Quantified Scientist. [32:47] The Peloton Rower. [41:16] Skiing. [45:24] Making Olympic-level picklesport pals on the internet. [50:55] Archery, armor, and kettlebells. [55:45] Meditation retreats. [1:06:40] I’m canceled! You’re canceled! We’re all canceled! [1:10:44] Kevin’s back in the coding saddle again. [1:11:58] The joy of unstuffing. [1:17:17] Living rich instead of dying rich. [1:31:47] Pondering the ethics and implications of AI-generated art. [1:46:53] A Cockpunch colloquy. [2:22:55] How much have I made from The 4-Hour Workweek? [2:30:10] Building NFT communities for the long haul. [2:34:42] Apple lockdown mode. [2:35:55] Am I done with ayahuasca? [2:54:55] Parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors http://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors 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/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/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/, 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/, Margaret Atwood https://tim.blog/2022/02/22/margaret-atwood/, Mark Zuckerberg https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/, Peter Thiel https://tim.blog/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/, Dr. Gabor Maté https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/, Anne Lamott https://tim.blog/2021/07/09/anne-lamott/, Sarah Silverman https://tim.blog/2022/01/12/sarah-silverman/, Dr. Andrew Huberman https://tim.blog/2021/07/06/andrew-huberman/, 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 GiveWell. Donating money to help other people is a wonderful act. But how can you be confident? How can you know that your donations are actually improving or saving lives effectively? It's hard to do. You could do weeks of research to find the charities that are out there, what programs they run, what their administrative overhead is, how effective those programs are, and on and on and on. It would be a full-time job. It could take forever. I know this from experience because I tried to do it that way manually. It is a ton of work. GiveWell spends more than 30,000 hours each year researching charitable organizations. Then they direct funding to a few of the highest impact, evidence-backed opportunities they've found. They do the work for you.

• 0:44Tim Ferriss?

  More than 100,000 donors have used GiveWell to donate more than $1 billion, which includes 678,000 donated by you, my dear listeners. So it makes a difference. Rigorous evidence indicates that these donations will save more than 150,000 lives and improve the lives of millions more. That's why GiveWell does what they do. And using GiveWell's research is free. GiveWell wants as many donors as possible to make informed decisions about high-impact giving. So they publish all of their research and recommendations on their site for free, no sign up required. They allocate your tax-deductible donation to the charity or fund you choose without taking a cut.

• 1:28Tim Ferriss?

  If you've ever donated to GiveWell's recommended charities before, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year. That's 2022. So one more time, if you've never donated to GiveWell's recommended charities before, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to givewell.org. Give, G-I-V-E-W-E-L-L dot org. GiveWell.org. And when you get to checkout, pick Podcast and enter Tim Ferriss Show. It's that simple. Make sure they know that you heard about GiveWell on the Tim Ferriss Show to get your donation matched. One more time, that's givewell.org. And when you get to checkout, pick Podcast and enter Tim Ferriss Show.

• 2:16Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Allform. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep and their mattresses, which I've been using since 2017. I have two of them upstairs from where I'm sitting at this moment. Helix has gone beyond the bedroom and started making sofas. They've launched a company called Allform, A-L-L-F-O-R-M, and they're making premium customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores. So I'm sitting in my living room right now, and it's entirely Allform furniture. I've got two chairs, I've got an ottoman, and I have an L-sectional couch. And I'll come back to that. You can pick your fabric. They're all spill, stain, and scratch resistant. The sofa color, the color of the legs, the sofa size,

• 3:00Tim Ferriss?

  the shape to make sure it's perfect for you in your home. Also, Allform arrives in just three to seven days, and you can assemble it all yourself in a few minutes. No tools needed. I was quite astonished by how modular and easy these things fit together, kind of like Lego pieces. They've got armchairs, love seats, all the way up to an eight-seat sectional. So there's something for everyone. You can also start small and kind of build on top of it. If you wanted to get a smaller couch and then build out on it, which is actually, in a way, what I did, because I can turn my L-sectional couch into a normal straight couch and then with a separate ottoman in a matter of about 60 seconds. It's pretty rad. So I mentioned I have all of these different things in this room. I use the natural leg finish, which is their lightest color, and I dig it. I mean, I've been using these things hours and hours and hours every single day.

• 3:45Tim Ferriss?

  So I am using what I am sharing with you guys. And if getting a sofa without trying it in-store sounds risky, you don't need to worry. Allform sofas are delivered directly to your home with fast, free shipping, and you get 100 days to decide if you want to keep it. That's more than three months. And if you don't love it, they'll pick it up for free and give you a full refund. Your sofa frame also has a forever warranty. That's literally forever. So check it out. Take a look. They've got all sorts of cool stuff to choose from. I was skeptical, and it actually worked. It worked much better than I could have imagined, and I'm very, very happy. So to find your perfect sofa, check out allform.com/tim. That's A-L-L-F-O-R-M.com/tim. Allform is offering 20% off all orders to you, my dear listeners, at allform.com/tim.

• 4:30Tim Ferriss?

  Make sure to use the code TIM at checkout. That's allform.com/tim and use code TIM at checkout.

• 4:38Tim Ferriss?

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

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 4:49Speaker 01

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

• 5:01Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss, and this is yet another edition of The Random Show, episode number 4,732. Kevin Rose, serial entrepreneur, amazing, good fella, generous soul, kindred spirit.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  We started when we were four, doing these podcasts together.

• 5:21Tim Ferriss?

  He did.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  We've done quite a few episodes.

• 5:23Tim Ferriss?

  Avid wearer of trucker hats and drinker of red wine, as we've already established by the sound effects that preceded this introduction. Kevin, nice to see you.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's good to see you as well. We need to do this in person more often.

• 5:36Tim Ferriss?

  We do. It's so fun. It's so fun to do in person. What nectar of the gods are you suckling over there?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Yes, I'm having a little bit of the mascot from Napa Valley, the Harland family. We know Will, obviously, over there, and they are quality producers of quite fine Cabernet red wine that is just amazing. This is like my favorite. To be fair, I'm conflicted a little bit because I am on their advisory board, but they make great wine.

• 6:08Tim Ferriss?

  They do make great wine. It's fantastic. I've been over yonder back when I was living in NorCal. You and I had quite a bit of that, even before you were on the board. Very, very tasty grapes. Tasty, tasty grapes.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 6:21Tim Ferriss?

  They can put that on the label if they want as a quote.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Tasty grapes from Tim, just on the back. Founder of Cock Punch. Tasty grapes.

• 6:28Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  I'm sure that'll do wonders for their floor price of their wines.

• 6:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for that, for that very high and top shelf.

• 6:39Tim Ferriss?

  Legacy, multi-generational branding that they're going after. I think that would really help. I am drinking- That's what you want is just tasty grapes. Tasty grapes. I am drinking, I don't know if you've ever seen this before, this thing, which I'm drinking. No. It's this little can of R13 Ginger Mule Hard Ketones. So this is ethanol-free alcohol. Hold on, I have other ethanol alcohol. You're drinking hard ketones now? Hold on. That's where we're at? Puzz. Don't knock it until you've tried it. I'm not gonna say that. So, R13 Butadiol, I know you're gonna, I know where you're gonna take that. So, the

• 7:20Tim Ferriss?

  R13 Butadiol, a few things. Number one is, you do get drunk on this stuff. You cannot drive if you drink this stuff. And- Like all alcohol, pretty much. Like all alcohol. But the point being, that it is not ethanol, so you are avoiding some of the metabolites and issues through liver metabolism that you run into with regular alcohol. It is also an appetite suppressant. So if you're used to drinking and then just housing five pizzas, like I did the other night, then this is a counterbalance. And what I've been contemplating, I've already done this one- It speeds you up, though. It's ketones, right? So it's like, it's like- Well, here's the thing. Alcohol.

• 8:01Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's ketones, but it's not beta-hydroxybutyrate or a performance-enhancing ketone. This is a hard ketone intoxicant. So you have to be very careful. They have warnings, no pregnant ladies, et cetera. All this stuff, do not consume more than three per day. You legitimately- Sounds bad. You legitimately get intoxicated when you drink this. So you have to be very careful. But it contains- Does it burn when you pee? No, it does not burn with, when you pee. It does not give you horns or vestigial tail, or eyelid hair, none of those things. And I have been enjoying experimenting with this because what I will sometimes do, and I haven't done this much, but I will have one of these-

• 8:44Speaker 02

  You're an investor.

• 8:45Tim Ferriss?

  I am not an investor.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Placement.

• 8:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this is like the Wayne's World.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  You're like, you're like this. I will have one of these every night.

• 8:54Tim Ferriss?

  It's 7:00 PM. I am not, I'm not an investor. I have no vested interest, unlike that shill Kevin Rose.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  I have no vested.

• 9:02Tim Ferriss?

  I said I was involved.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  I almost said the grape, grape juice that you called it.

• 9:08Tim Ferriss?

  Tasty, tasty grapes.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  These grapes.

• 9:10Tim Ferriss?

  So yeah, I am not, I am not involved. I have no problem hawking the stuff when I am, but this is actually very tasty. So ginger mule tastes like a Moscow mule, but it has no ethanol based alcohol in it. And here's what I'm going to do. So I'm going to have this first, hopefully, and this is, I think, perhaps wishful thinking, but I'm hoping the ketones will have some neuroprotective effects so that when I then shift into fifth gear to have this, which is a tequila I've become very, very fond of, I'm not involved, but I have been drinking it because I had it first at a restaurant

• 9:49Tim Ferriss?

  called Suerte, so Suerte here in Austin, which has excellent Tex-Mex food, very high end, outstanding cuisine. And the first time I had this, that the server recommended, was at that restaurant when I was having dinner with Chase Jarvis and we were both blown away by.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  I love Chase.

• 10:09Tim Ferriss?

  Chase is a great guy. Chase and his wife, both wonderful humans. And we were both really impressed with this and I enjoyed it so much that I ended up buying a bottle, which is quite rare for me because I don't drink that much, but I do really like tequila. I mean, if you're in Texas and you drink alcohol, you owe it to yourself to explore the range of tequila. And this stuff is outstanding. It's just fantastic. So this will be, this will be step two.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  I have two questions for you, actually one question. You can cut this later if you want.

• 10:38Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, boy.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  You said, you said on a private text to me that you had a couple of drinks with a Tia last night. A Tia is not a big drinker.

• 10:45Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  At all.

• 10:47Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Every time I've gone out to dinner with him, he has one tequila.

• 10:51Tim Ferriss?

  I had more than, I had more than Peter.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Okay. Was he into this ketone thing as well?

• 10:57Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Was that what you were drinking or no?

• 10:59Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no. We were drinking red wine from Spain, which was fantastic.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:03Tim Ferriss?

  In the moment, I've just found, I love red wine. I'll continue to have it on occasion. Maybe I'm just becoming the Crypt Keeper. If anybody gets the reference, gotta be pretty old already to get the reference. My body tolerates wine of any type increasingly poorly, with respect to sleep. If I have three glasses, man, I feel like somebody put a pillowcase over my head and just punched me in the face for like an hour in the middle of the night. It's rough.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Do you get the, the, the hot sweats?

• 11:36Tim Ferriss?

  I do. Reli- Yeah. And you can track it. If you have an Oura ring or something else on, you look at it, you're like, good lord, what happened to my body in the middle of the night?

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:46Tim Ferriss?

  And it's just-

• 11:46Speaker 02

  This happens to Daria too. She's like a sweaty linebacker in the middle of the night. Like, it's like, you don't wanna go near it. It's like-

• 11:52Tim Ferriss?

  It's brutal.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a lot.

• 11:52Tim Ferriss?

  And I know that's gonna happen, which is why, if I'm gonna have a drink, a real drink or otherwise, I have not found this stuff to help sleep, by the way. The R13, as much as I am interested, and I have been, I have boxes of this stuff, and I'm not an investor, because I'm interested in how I might use this to moderate ethanol-based alcohol consumption, which I enjoy. But let's just say I can pre-game with one of these, get to a point where I'm kinda loopy. I will say that one of these, compared to one, say,

• 12:30Tim Ferriss?

  tequila soda, the R13 will fuck up my verbal acuity, or my ability to speak, much more than the-

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's all you're really looking for.

• 12:41Tim Ferriss?

  So it's perfect for this podcast.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  And then you just wanna be slurring your words.

• 12:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And this stuff also, per can, I have found to throw off your physical coordination a lot more than an equivalent single alcohol drink. So you do need to be careful with it. It's not something you wanna pound and then- Grab a chainsaw and go out gathering wood.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Well, that's the weird thing is it's it's such a non-obvious. I would never have imagined you were going to say that when you started this podcast because typically I think ketones is like, okay, I'm going to chug a bottle pre-workout.

• 13:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  So, I mean, I guess you could go lifting right now, drunk lifting if you wanted to.

• 13:20Tim Ferriss?

  No, this would be terrible for performance. This is bad for performance. I mean, it's not, well, let's, let's put it a different way. It is not a performance enhancer in the same way that other ketone supplements might be. So I have taken, even earlier today, I took a different exogenous ketone supplement because I was eating pretty low calorie today before recording a podcast this morning and it, within 20 minutes or 25 minutes reliably, kicked up my blood ketone levels as would be measured with say.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  P on a strip or?

• 13:54Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no, you.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Precision extra. Breathe one.

• 13:56Tim Ferriss?

  You can use, you can use a breathalyzer, you can use the finger pricks. I didn't measure it, but reliably I will see a bump of one to two millimolars, which is substantial. And I went from being foggy and tired and slow to being fast with my words, not having to search for turns of phrase. Everything was coming quickly. It was very reliable as a performance enhancer. This, what I'm drinking, will have the opposite effect.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Right. Actually, this is really interesting. One question for you on that front, Tim, because like I know, you know, having traveled with you a ton to countries where you've been so generous as to be our translator. Japan, where Tim will translate for you for about six hours and then he'll just shut down.

• 14:45Tim Ferriss?

  And then I get so grumpy.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  I'm going to get pissed. You're just like, you figured it out. I'm not translating.

• 14:50Tim Ferriss?

  Google Translate is good enough, goddammit. I don't want to do this job anymore.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Exactly. Tim was like our paid translator of one of my birthday parties for like the entire trip.

• 14:59Tim Ferriss?

  Unpaid.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Unpaid. So, so I'm curious, though, you know, you mentioned how quick your words just flow like butter. Like, would it help in a situation like that, do you think? Have you tried it? Ketones when translating?

• 15:13Tim Ferriss?

  For translating, I'm sure it would help if you're using the right class of ketone. Because when we're talking about ketones, you have ketone esters, you have ketone salts.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:21Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm not qualified to talk about the intricate science of it all. Someone like Dr. Dominic D'Agostino, who I've had on the podcast at least twice, is one of the preeminent researchers in the space who also works with, I want to say the Department of Defense, might be DARPA, in synthesizing compounds for special forces and Navy SEALs.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say, the SEALs using it at some point?

• 15:46Tim Ferriss?

  Right. And so they need measurable benefit. And one of the measurable benefits is that it helps you to sustain physical and cognitive performance under conditions of low oxygen, which you might experience if you're doing, say, extended deep diving or submersion, which you might also experience if you're at altitude. So I recently, this would have been early October, I used ketones to help acclimate to altitude and then tapered off of the ketones. So I wouldn't perhaps prevent some of the physiological adaptations that I would want to sustain without using ketones every day.

• 16:30Tim Ferriss?

  So they're fascinating. I will say, if I'm taking the other side of the argument and making a counter case, I am skeptical that taking exogenous ketones constantly, when you are consuming a normal diet, which is relatively rich in carbohydrates. So your blood glucose is not necessarily pathologically elevated. But if your glucose is normally elevated and then you have very elevated blood ketone levels, my understanding is that does not readily occur.

• 17:05Tim Ferriss?

  In nature, at least with humans in an organic capacity, unless you are in a dangerous position as a diabetic where you're experiencing ketoacidosis, which is very, can be fatal. I mean, it's very, very precarious. So my feeling is if this doesn't occur in nature, because normally you'd be producing ketones in a state of starvation, even though, I should be clear, we're producing ketones a lot of the time, but in trivial amounts. By the time we get to the point where we're noticing it and we're breaking down meaningful body fat in order to produce these alternate sources of energy, which the heart and the

• 17:47Tim Ferriss?

  brain really love. The heart and the brain really like ketones. They prefer them over carbohydrate, is that right? Or glucose, is that right? I've heard that said. I don't have that much difficulty believing it from a first person perspective, when I've done extended fasts especially. The ketones provoked, or the, maybe it's just the spectrum of changes provoked by fasting, say on day two or three, where my ketones will naturally be in the 1.5 to 2.5 millimolar range. That condition feels different and I feel sharper than I do when I use exogenous ketones, supplemental

• 18:28Tim Ferriss?

  ketones, to get to the same measurement using a single device. And I'm not sure why that is, but it feels different. You feel much sharper when you get there through fasting, in my experience. And that is to say, not all ketones are created equal. So this right here is going to make you slur your words and shit the bed from a performance perspective, but might be fun as an experimental ethanol replacement. And then there are others. There are many different options out there that are documented for performing, uh, excuse me, documented, there go the words, documented for improving performance.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  So one question for you, Tim, and we can move on to all the whole slew of topics that we have, otherwise this will be a two hour ketone episode, but I'm curious, when, when, when people are listening, it's like, there's no doubt right now, a lot of people are like, okay, this sounds crazy, this sounds kind of fun, maybe I want to try this. You've already mentioned the drink.

• 19:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  What about if you're just doing it for mental performance? Like, is there the one brand that I know had licensed the patents from somewhere in England? Was HVM, HVMN?

• 19:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, HVMN.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  You know what I'm talking about?

• 19:37Tim Ferriss?

  I do. I believe that they are very focused on this particular type of ketone, the R13. I don't want to say that with great conviction, but I would say to everyone, you owe it to yourself because you're putting something in your body that is going to have, one way or the other, could have a significant impact on your blood chemistry and your entire biological system. Read a few studies, find out what the exact ketone is, and go on Pubbed or somewhere else and just read at least a few abstracts.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, but we just want to know what you're taking, dude. Just tell us the brand. What are you, what are you, what are you juicing up with in the morning?

• 20:20Tim Ferriss?

  What am I juicing up with? Here, hold on.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  Like, what did you take before the podcast?

• 20:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'll grab it. I'll grab it. Hold on a second. I'll grab it.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Okay, okay. I'll entertain you all. Why Tim is gone. So what Tim doesn't know is we've secretly replaced his ketones.

• 20:34Tim Ferriss?

  Diabetic horse urine. Love it.

• 20:38Tim Ferriss?

  So this right here, ah, you know what? The details are not, the specifics are not on the back of this. It's on the back of a larger box, but the label, the label does not scream scientific credibility, but it's a fun label. So this right here, it's going to be a little hard to see. The label reads Ketone Aid. So that is the brand Snake Water, Ketone, Ester and Electrolytes. So it's Ketone, Ester plus electrolytes. The brand name is Ketone Aid, one word, Snake Water. I want to be super clear, though, because I think people can fuck themselves up with these things. I am not a doctor. I do not play one on the random show or on the internet.

• 21:20Tim Ferriss?

  Do your reading and talk to your doctor because there are people for which something like this would be contraindicated. So pay attention, folks.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, never, never take a supplement from the man that created cock punch. That's just fairness, eh?

• 21:35Tim Ferriss?

  I think, I think those are very wise words.

• 21:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah. Furthermore, you know, just as a side note, I want to say I, I love when I'm talking to someone. And maybe especially in Austin, like you can't throw a rock without hitting someone who wants to, tell you about their latest like ayahuasca experience. It's just like, you can't escape it. And if you're at a group dinner, sometimes that something will come up related to psychedelics. You just, you cannot avoid it in Austin, which rubs me the wrong way sometimes, but I'm kind of, I guess I contributed to it probably in some way. So there you go. Just desserts. But the point I want to make is if you're having a group dinner and somebody will say, I don't really don't do drugs. I just drink. And I'm like, oh, you mean the civilization destroyer? That's the only one that you use?

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:24Tim Ferriss?

  It's like, it's a drug.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, to pretend like alcohol is, it's just, yeah.

• 22:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Come on. I was just gonna say, anything you put in your body that provokes a change, that's a drug. Banana, ketone, tequila, you know, prescription medication, they're all, they're all drugs.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Every time I talk to Atiya about alcohol or anyone on his team, they're just like, don't do it. It's just so bad.

• 22:48Tim Ferriss?

  It's the worst. It's so bad for you.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  And yet, sometimes you just want to have a drink. Sometimes you just want to have a drink. All right.

• 22:56Tim Ferriss?

  Speaking of which, let's move into the show. Let's move into the show. So New Year's resolutions. What do you have, Kevin? And is there anything that's been on there for like five years straight? And you're bringing it up?

• 23:06Speaker 02

  We could go back. We have at least five years of random shows that we could, we could probably do a flashback to every single failed one.

• 23:14Tim Ferriss?

  All the failed resolutions. That'd be amazing montage.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Oh my God, there'd be so many.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  So I would say, I want to hear yours as well. I'll do a rapid fire on, on mine. And, and if you feel like digging in deeper on any of them, you're welcome to. So, I mean, the no brainer is just not drinking in January. That's, that's a no brainer. It's just a good reset.

• 23:36Tim Ferriss?

  Have you done that before?

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Kind of like, uh.

• 23:42Tim Ferriss?

  That was a little so so hand signal we got.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  No, I mean, it's like, uh, you know, it, it, it depends on how many months or how many.

• 23:50Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, boy.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  It depends on how you define January.

• 23:54Tim Ferriss?

  The witness is getting uncomfortable. He's sweating, starting to shift around.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  I know. Listen, I just got back from a seven day silent meditation retreat. I did not do any alcohol and, um.

• 24:06Tim Ferriss?

  Paragon of self-control. You didn't get hammered on your meditation retreat.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:11Tim Ferriss?

  So a question for you, if you're not going to drink, I know that people may not know this. Flying makes you super, super nervous. As far as I remember. He really doesn't like.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, we shouldn't be in the sky.

• 24:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  So.

• 24:24Tim Ferriss?

  No, we shouldn't do it.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:25Tim Ferriss?

  It doesn't make sense. So when Kevin flies, Kev Kev tends to have a drink or two or three.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  I mean, I like a glass of champagne on, you know, it's like, you know, there's nothing wrong with.

• 24:36Tim Ferriss?

  We can pretend that's what we're looking at.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  No, you're right. So here's the deal.

• 24:39Tim Ferriss?

  So would you have to cut back on your travel for a booze free January?

• 24:44Speaker 02

  No, no, no. Like, I'm not that bad anymore. Like, when I flew back from the meditation retreat, I didn't drink.

• 24:49Tim Ferriss?

  Which is great. Did you take a handful of Xanax, though? Tell me the truth.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. No, I didn't. I was, I was fine. I was totally fine.

• 24:56Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. Look at that. Go meditation.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  It's one of those things where I don't know why it is. You know what it is about flying? It's, this is gonna sound ridiculous. It's a, I'm not flying the plane. Like, I want to be in control. And I kind of want to fly it, but I don't know how. So that doesn't make sense either. So it's just, it's a very confusing thing and it's something that is just, you know, we all got our things.

• 25:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  I'm sure you have.

• 25:20Tim Ferriss?

  I've got plenty of things.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Actually, this is a good one.

• 25:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  I haven't unpacked this with you ever.

• 25:24Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, boy.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  You're, you're Tim Tim, the, the fearless. Like, you, you do all kinds of crazy shit. Like, what's the one thing that people wouldn't know?

• 25:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  That scares you?

• 25:33Tim Ferriss?

  Terrified of heights.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  They'll say spiders.

• 25:34Tim Ferriss?

  Terrified of heights.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Are you serious?

• 25:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And so when I go rock climbing, I do this as a way to try to inoculate myself against some of the fear. To the extent that if, if I get to a height, that many people, even up in a tree, like 15 feet, something like that, my legs will start to shake. I have, I'm very afraid of heights. And when I rock climb. I'll be belaying somebody, let's just say, and it's my turn to go. Before I am even on the wall, I have sweat pouring off my hands. So, so I end up using, I can't just use chalk because it turns into this sticky mud on my hands.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:13Tim Ferriss?

  And if I go up a wall, even if it's a small wall, it's a 50 foot wall. I'll have to reapply chalk like five times. So what I will do, it's actually, people might find this useful. There's a product called Rhino, it probably has another word there, but Rhino, basically anti-perpirant for your hands, used by some competitive rock climbers. And that is the only thing, it was recommended to me by a professional level climber that has helped. And I am fairly sure, sorry, company, it's a great product. If you're constantly inhibiting perspiration through the hands, I have to imagine there may be side effects, I would think.

• 26:57Tim Ferriss?

  So I, I haven't used it all the time, but if I'm training, let's just say, as I would like to, this will come back to the resolutions, I guess, but train at least twice a week, three times a week. It's like for a period of time, why not, right? If I did that three, four weeks on, one week off and did that for a quarter, I don't, it'd be hard for me to imagine that would do a lot of damage. But I am very afraid of heights, to answer your question.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Have you ever done the VR thing where you walk out on the plank and it's like you're up at a like 15 story building or a 20 story building?

• 27:28Tim Ferriss?

  I'm actually, for whatever reason, fine with that. I have, maybe it's because it's not convincing enough yet, or the kinesthetic feedback isn't quite there yet, or the depth perception is quite not there yet, from an adaptive eye tracking perspective.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Would you ever bungee jump?

• 27:50Tim Ferriss?

  I have bungee jumped before and it scared the shit out of me. And I wanted to do it in part because it was going to scare the shit out of me. And I did it off a bridge in Taiwan, this is forever ago, and everyone was going backwards.

• 28:05Tim Ferriss?

  And they were kind of falling butt first. And I was like, all right, I wanna, I wanna get tied up and I wanna jump off head first, looking straight down as I'm going. And I did it and it scared the shit out of me. But I will say, despite all of this exposure, right? So if this were, I guess it's what prolonged exposure PE therapy, it does not seem to have reduced my fear of heights at all whatsoever. And

• 28:37Speaker 02

  That's crazy. I had no idea. That's new for me.

• 28:40Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, that's a real thing.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  It's interesting. The more I fly, the less I care.

• 28:44Tim Ferriss?

  Just talking about it, I kid you not, the more I'm just talking about heights right now and my hands are sweating.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  So I've done a lot of, you know, this like I've, I've, I've done a lot of rock climbing and, and did it a bunch in my youth. And, and I, I think that the sweating thing would happen to me as well. But that's just natural. Like you just like, you're going up a wall, especially if you're lead climbing and you're clipping in as you're going.

• 29:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  It's much scarier. I didn't know they made antiperspirant for your hands, though.

• 29:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they do. And I'll, I'll look it up and keep, keep going on your.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:16Tim Ferriss?

  On your, so, so January booze free booze free means no booze.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  That's right. No drinks.

• 29:22Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. All right.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Wine is fine, but everything else is out.

• 29:25Tim Ferriss?

  What? Wine is fine?

• 29:26Speaker 02

  No, I'm just kidding. Just kidding. I'm just kidding.

• 29:31Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God. Amazing.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Moving, moving on. So the sad thing is I've been wearing, so I have a whoop on and an Apple Watch on and I've tested all these devices and I, and I really do enjoy playing with them and trying all the latest software out. And one of the things that is really disappointing to me is in the last year, actually a couple of years now since COVID, and watching Apple Watch will have a cardio fitness level built inside of it. And mine's like been slowly going down. And I'm like, ah, shit, you know, like this sucks. I gotta, I gotta get back into shape. So, you know, my dad died of a heart attack. My grandpa died of a heart attack, like cardiovascular issues. Or not new to my family. So for me, this is a kind of a big deal, you know?

• 30:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  So I'm really focused on cardiovascular fitness for this new year. And I essentially, a couple of things, just to let people know where I'm at. I've tried out all the different latest versions of software for fitness tracking. I would like to link this up in your, in your show notes. There's a scientist on YouTube called the Quantified Scientist that I really like. He's awesome. He does, basically uses a lot of the kind of gold standard ways to track sleep and he'll hook himself up to all the real professional devices and then also use the consumer devices and say, how good are these devices? Like, how accurate they are, they really predicting the levels of sleep? How good are they at heart rate detection while jogging?

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Like, is the ore any good because it's moving around on your finger all the time? And there's all these open questions and all he does, I think it's his full-time job now, is just put out new videos with all the latest fitness trackers and tell you if they're any good. And a lot of them are crap.

• 31:11Tim Ferriss?

  That's a cool niche, though, that he's, he's basically saying.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a really cool niche.

• 31:15Tim Ferriss?

  He's like, alright, we're gonna look at, you know, hydrostatic underwater weighing for body composition and compare it to whatever this thing is you're wearing. If we take it as, I think I'm getting that description right. But if we take this underwater approach as the, say, Olympic gold standard, how do these things stack up? That's cool.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's really cool. And so his, the TLDR is that the Apple Watch is actually pretty damn good now. It didn't always used to be, but it's really good for heart rate and it's really good for sleep. The whoop I like because it's not as good as the Apple Watch, but what it does is it does activity-specific tracking. So for example, and yes, you can do that on the Apple Watch too. You can say, I'm doing elliptical or I'm doing all this stuff, right? But the whoop is cool because you can say, okay, I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna do a meditation. It'll detect that you're doing that and then it'll give you your heart rate in real time. Or it'll show you the graph after you're done over that, like, that activity. And it's much harder to try and find that data. Apple's

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Their device is amazing. Their software kind of sucks, like HealthKit and the whole health interface. It's not a consumer app. It's very clinical feeling.

• 32:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  So the data is there, but it's not represented in the right way, if that makes sense.

• 32:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  So anyway, long story short, Aura has a brand new sleep algorithm. The Quantified scientists have yet to test that out against all of these other things. Their sleep algorithm, I think, was pretty screwed up before, but they're testing a new one now. You can enable it in beta, so I'm going to wait and see how that goes for sleep tracking. But anyway, my methods for cardio, Peloton Rower. I'm not involved in Peloton in any way. I don't have any stock, but I saw their new Rower and it looks pretty interesting. So they give you a 30 day money back guarantee. I just bought it. It'll show up in the next couple of days. I think it's good. They say rowing is 80% of your muscles, which is amazing, all at the same time. So if you're looking for a quick hit, like 15, 20 minute

• 33:13Speaker 02

  workout, I don't know. I'm excited about it. I'm going to give it a shot.

• 33:17Tim Ferriss?

  I can hop in for a second. So I had a chance

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, please.

• 33:20Tim Ferriss?

  to test the Peloton Rower for the first time. And this is part of due diligence because I have been having conversations with Peloton, and you didn't know this before putting together the prep for this conversation.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  This is the first I'm hearing of it.

• 33:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so Peloton and I have been talking about possibly doing something in terms of sponsorship on the podcast related to the Rower. And as is my first step with all of these things, I asked to use a unit. I said, I have to test it. And I had the chance to test a unit. This would have been, I don't know, two or three weeks ago. And I was very impressed with it. And I can give you a couple of tips that might help other people who are also getting the unit. So the first is, the form correction is very helpful. And almost everyone will use their arms too much, lean back too far, and use their legs incorrectly.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  So I don't know what the form correction is. Is this like in the software or something?

• 34:24Tim Ferriss?

  It is in the software. So it will show a profile of you on the Rower, and it will flash red in areas where you need to correct form.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  How does it know that?

• 34:36Tim Ferriss?

  The front camera? Sensors in the seat and sensors on the pulling mechanism. And there are probably other sensors on top of that. And the feedback is actually quite helpful. There is a competitive or former competitive, I think he's still current competitive rower, very large white guy who has excellent form. And there are other instructors who have excellent form. But he is the instructor who I know, and I'm blanking on his name, people could figure it out, who has a competitive background. And the reason that's attractive to me is if you are going to be a competitive rower in the long term and succeed,

• 35:15Tim Ferriss?

  if your technique, if your, if your technique is not efficient, you are going to suffer from repetitive use injuries. Yes. And they will Hundred percent. debilitate you. So I like the idea of modeling, at least in the beginning stages, the technique on someone who has competitive experience. So that would be a recommendation, I apologize, I'm blanking on his name. The last thing I would say, and I've provided feedback, product feedback. So we'll see, since I think they could make modifications quite easily with firmware instead of changing the hardware. And if my experience with the Peloton bike is any indication, they will make constant firmware improvements.

• 35:56Tim Ferriss?

  So I expect by the time I'm even saying this, that once you get your shipped unit, I'm hoping there may be some modifications made. The sensors at the very back of the seat are very sensitive. So my experience was you may get a bit too much feedback in terms of a red alert indicating you're leaning back, when you may not in fact be leaning back that far. So two suggestions, and these are my experiential suggestions, not any type of, I don't think, official suggestion. Scoot your butt forward just a little bit so that it's not all the way at the back of the seat.

• 36:38Tim Ferriss?

  Second is absolutely focus on not leaning back excessively. And so I do think as a practice, especially for engaging your legs, it's good to almost lean forward slightly as you do the exercise. And what blew my mind is once I had the technique feedback, once I had

• 37:01Tim Ferriss?

  The guidance in terms of exertion and some metrics to watch, I found that I could do longer rowing workouts. I could actually do a long rowing workouts. And I have a Concept 2 rower and I like the Concept 2 rower. But what I found is without any of those feedback mechanisms, I would crank up the resistance because there's a resistance dial on the Concept 2, crank up the resistance and I would go balls to the wall for 500 meters. And I would effectively be done. My heart rate would be through the roof. My arms would be sore, but my legs would not be sore.

• 37:41Tim Ferriss?

  And I was roasted. I could go longer if I were trying to do something, let's just say as a short morning workout, 500 to 750 meters. And I was like, okay, I think that at this point, my biceps are the weak link in the chain. Using the Peloton rower and following the feedback, easily could do a 30 to 45 minute workout, which better engaged all of the musculature that you were aiming to engage. So I had a very positive experience, very positive experience. I'm sure that they will, of course. And they already, I'm sure have many plans to iterate on the firmware. So I think you'll enjoy it. I'll be curious to hear your thoughts. Now, I will say, since you gave a peek behind the scenes earlier, I'll do you the same favor.

• 38:27Tim Ferriss?

  When you send me those naked mirror selfie shots post-workout, every once in a while I'll get one of these.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  I always do.

• 38:34Tim Ferriss?

  I'll get one of these from Kevin.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  You send me Apple Cash right after.

• 38:37Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's great. It's great. Yeah, I do. I did upgrade to premium on your OnlyFans. And it's, I always get the tricep shot. And you have good triceps. I always get the tricep shot. I do not, it's not, it's not, it's not, still got it. It's not frequent. It's not frequent that I get the quad or the calf flex.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  I don't get those.

• 39:01Tim Ferriss?

  I have quads now.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  What?

• 39:03Tim Ferriss?

  Come on.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  I, well, they're getting better. I've been doing a lot of squats. I'll send you, I'll send you some updated pics.

• 39:09Tim Ferriss?

  Great, great. Good, good, good. Fantastic. Yeah, I was, I was just going to ensure that you understand that using a rower involves your legs. I just wanted to make sure that those.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  No, you know what's funny is note, all jokes aside, Tim, like seriously, in the last like four weeks, I've really focused on my legs and I'm enjoying it a lot.

• 39:27Tim Ferriss?

  No shit?

• 39:27Speaker 02

  It's like, I don't know about, so I've always, I still hate abs. Like there's no, there's nothing about abs that I'm ever gonna love, but like, once you actually start to build up your legs, there's like this, I mean, it's like with anything fitness related, like there's this painful first few weeks. And if you can cross that chasm and kind of get on the other side of it. I don't know. Things are looking up on the legs.

• 39:48Tim Ferriss?

  And also you just feel, you feel a lot better. You feel a lot stronger. You feel much more stable when you're doing that kind of work.

• 39:57Tim 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 Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. If you're traveling, if you're just busy, if you're not sure if your meals are where they should be, it covers your bases. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals and whole food sourced ingredients, you'll be hard pressed to find a more nutrient dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multi mineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health and immunity formula, digestive enzymes and adaptogens. You get the idea. Right now Athletic Greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all in one formula,

• 40:41Tim Ferriss?

  which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I've found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 41:17Tim Ferriss?

  I don't want to interrupt your flow on the new year's stuff, but I am, I have some physical resolutions as well.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Jump in, why not? We can, we can jump back to mine. Let's just keep it going. Popcorn it around as they call it.

• 41:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So I am going to be spending most of January and February focusing on skiing. I find skiing to be a perfect blend of some of my favorite things. And I have done snowboarding. I just tend to injure myself immediately because snowboarding comes very naturally. I still think I'm a 15 year old skateboarder and I start doing stuff at the park and getting fancy and then I injure myself inevitably. So rather than try to rely on restraint, which is not my strong suit, I just don't allow myself to snowboard anymore. Skiing is a wonderful combination of time in nature, being outside,

• 42:15Tim Ferriss?

  moving with speed under control where you get an adrenaline hit, but ideally without excessive danger. It is subtle and you can refine technique for a long time and not run out of room to improve. You can make quantum leaps in your performance with proper instruction and

• 42:41Speaker 02

  And you can do it like when you're 70 too.

• 42:42Tim Ferriss?

  And you can do it when you're older and that has become so much more important for me. And to this end though, I am or both in process and leading up to it. So let's just say I have actually not that much time. I have like 10 days. So I'm not going to do a whole lot of conditioning in the next 10 days, but I have done some leading up to it, focusing on lower body, lower leg. I've torn, as you know, I've had so many injuries. So I've torn most of the connective tissue, the meaningful connective tissue in my ankles over the years, just from outrageous decisions and, and bad commitments with combat

• 43:22Tim Ferriss?

  sports and getting heel hooked and things like this. So I, as a result, need to compensate by strengthening. The lower legs on the lateral portion, the rear of my calf, everything to try to compensate for weak ankles and terrible dorsiflexion. And

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Is that your weak point if someone wanted to take you out? Just go for the ankles?

• 43:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you gotta, gotta go for the ankles. It is a weak spot. So yeah, you can go for the ankles. If someone wants to come at me, go for the ankles and I'll just pull out my concealed carry and shoot you in the face. Anyway.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  If you're pissed at that cock punch floor price, just go for his ankles.

• 44:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if you go for the ankles, just be prepared, I may be packing. So there's that. And the reason I bring all of this up, though, is that it's one thing for me to make commitment in, say, an urban environment to improve lower body strength and to work on stability and to do so in a way that is sort of clinical in a workout without real world engagement. But if I really want to stack the deck in my favor to accomplish that, I want to set the environment and I want to set my social interactions in such a way that that goal is served.

• 44:43Tim Ferriss?

  And I recognize this is a very fortunate position that I'm in, but I do think people can borrow this maybe framework or way of looking at goals to think about, all right, I say I want to do X. How can I optimize spending time with people who will help me achieve X or who are already achieving X or are trying to achieve X? How can I put myself in locations where I am more likely to interact with those people and absorb some of these maybe ancillary habits related to my primary goal through sheer exposure?

• 45:23Speaker 02

  So Tim, tell us, tell us that that is, I think that is such a very, very important thing, this idea that the sum of your closest friends largely makes up, you know, what you're into, your hobbies, like the things you get excited about. Like when you find there's something new you want to go after, let's call it skiing or something like. You're lucky because you can pick up the phone and like world-class skiers will answer and say, let me take you out for the day, you know, it's your Tim Ferriss. But like, how do you recommend that people going into the new year, if there's something new they want to get into, like, or they they look around at their friend group and they're just like, this isn't helping me get to the next level. Like, what do you do if you're stuck like that?

• 46:03Tim Ferriss?

  Go make some new friends. And I would say furthermore, let's

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Friendster.

• 46:07Tim Ferriss?

  Friendster. So aside from Friendster, I will say, and I'll, I'll mention this, I don't mention it that much, The Four Hour Chef, confusingly, is actually a book about accelerated learning and skill acquisition. I talk a lot about this in The Four Hour Chef. So even if you buy it, you don't give a shit about cooking, and you just want to learn about meta-learning and acquiring physical skills, there is a section called meta-learning in The Four Hour Chef. And I highly recommend that people dig into it because the recommendations work. And I've used them dozens of times now. One of the points that I make is if you go on Google and search whatever your target sport is,

• 46:51Tim Ferriss?

  let's just for the time being, assume you're trying to learn

• 46:54Speaker 02

  I want to play that pickle sport.

• 46:55Tim Ferriss?

  Pickleball?

• 46:56Speaker 02

  I haven't tried. Yeah, I haven't tried that yet.

• 46:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, pickleball is fun. Pickleball is fun. It's not the, it's more ankle-friendly than tennis, but you can still roll an ankle or two if you're not careful. So it is exciting. Austin is also, not only the third coast capital of ayahuasca and unending ayahuasca conversations, but also pickleball. There's a lot of pickleball here. And in sort of Central Valley, California, it's become very popular. But putting pickleball aside for a second, because that is not yet an Olympic sport, let's say you want to get better at a sport that is a professional sport, or I should say amateur or professional sport

• 47:38Tim Ferriss?

  represented in the Olympics. Could be swimming, could be skiing, could be just about anything. Snowboarding, et cetera. If you search for

• 47:51Tim Ferriss?

  Snowboard, silver medalist, bronze medalist, or even maybe gold medalist from two Olympics ago. There's a very good chance, and this is not to minimize their achievement, but the fact of the matter is there are many sports that are financially rewarded in the US, basketball, baseball, and there are many that are not. And I don't think that's fair in a sense. It's not reflective of the dedication or skill necessary to be good at certain things. Gymnastics would be another one. However, that does mean an opportunity for a lot of people. And you could find a silver medalist or a bronze medalist, who by the way, in many cases, is just a gold medalist who had a bad day.

• 48:36Tim Ferriss?

  That's it. And you could get one-on-one, remote or in-person training with them, in many cases, for a hundred bucks an hour. And I realize-

• 48:49Speaker 02

  That's amazing. I hadn't even thought about that. Yeah, it doesn't even medal, any medal is fine, like bronze-

• 48:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, no, and here's the thing-

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Copper?

• 48:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you don't need, you don't need- Also, if you are, I mean, I am not the best skier, but I do ski black diamond. I've done some hell of skiing and I've done a lot of off-piece, kind of off-terrain. I'm not a great skier, but I have a basic foundation of ability. I do not need a gold medalist. I need someone who is substantially better than I am, and, this is very key, and who can teach.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:29Tim Ferriss?

  Because in many cases, you will find, say, a college coach, maybe they're retired, doesn't really matter, in a given sport, who will be a far better instructor and get you further ahead than a gold medalist. If that gold medalist has never really taught, everything they've done since age five has become second nature, so they can't explicitly name or describe what they're doing. So you have a broad menu of people you can choose from if you're trying to learn a new skill and it is so mind bendingly affordable in so many cases. There are so many fields. Let's take an example.

• 50:15Tim Ferriss?

  I am very excited about archery. So some of my goals relate to archery for the new year and I've been taking it seriously for a while. I feel very comfortable with compound. I'm focusing now on recurve and bare bow. Are you better than Atiya or is Atiya better than you? I don't know. I don't know. We've, I've no idea. I mean, Atiya has gone so full with archery. He's, you know, making his own materials, putting on his own fledging. Well, then he might be. I'm just kidding. Then he might be. I am, I feel very confident in my ability to do what I have tasked myself with doing with. Well, you got into bareback riding a long time ago, that archery. Remember that?

• 50:59Tim Ferriss?

  You were doing bareback archery in Japan. I was, it's not bareback, but I was doing yabu-same horseback archery in Japan with traditional bows that are long bows, about six feet long. Where you. Was there a saddle on that horse or no? There's a saddle, but the saddle is very, very thin wood. The only purpose of the saddle is to hold the stirrups on the horse. So you can ride the horse without sitting on the horse. So you're effectively doing a wide squat in the stirrups. The only purpose of the saddle is to hold you on the horse. And the saddle is not intended to be sat upon. I have two antique saddles at home that I, that were my reward. Those were my first real reward I gave myself

• 51:44Tim Ferriss?

  in any meaningful way for anything I did. And it was for the four hour body hitting number one New York Times. That's why I have the saddles. Yeah. So gosh, Tim, it's, we've known each other a long time, man. I remember, I remember walking in.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  What was that downstairs place that you had where you had like walk in? You went down this hallway to Tim's house and it was like, there was a big, huge Japanese, like you had the full armor, right?

• 52:13Tim Ferriss?

  I had the armor.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Off to the left.

• 52:15Tim Ferriss?

  It was on.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  What was that? It was a little condo you had or something?

• 52:18Tim Ferriss?

  That was, the armor had traveled with me for quite a while. This was Kendo armor that I used in Japan.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  A condo you had in San Francisco, right? With that little?

• 52:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it was on the, it was on the right-hand side. So as you walked in, it was in two different places. One place I rented and then another place that I bought. And the place that I bought, which was in Glen Park, I guess both of them were in Glen Park. The first one had this hallway leading in, pretty long hallway, and it was all kettlebells. It was all kettlebells. It was just like 20 kettlebells. And then you walk up and the armor was to the right. It was directly to the right across

• 52:54Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 52:54Tim Ferriss?

  this walkway that went from the living room into the kitchen. And the armor was directly on the right. When you came in to the place that I bought later, you'd walk in and on the left-hand side was an entire chalkboard wall that had artwork on it. So it was like 12 feet of chalk art, which was incredible. So good. I was so impressed with this artist. And then on the right-hand side had the Japanese armor. And that was the Kendo armor I used when I was in Japan.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Tim's house back then was exactly, because I met you and you just launched For Our Work Week. It wasn't, it was just the launch party was when I met you for that. And I remember I came to your house and I remember just walking at some point to hang out. I didn't know you that well. And it was just like, you walked down this aisle of kettlebells. It was like a hall of kettlebells.

• 53:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  And then there's like Japanese armor and like weird saddles and shit. Maybe the saddles were later, I think.

• 53:53Tim Ferriss?

  Saddles were a few years later, yeah.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then there was like books all over the place with all these little note things in them. And I'm just like, this guy is crazy.

• 54:04Tim Ferriss?

  The honeymoon phase of our friendship.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 54:07Tim Ferriss?

  Kettlebell date. So I am, I suppose, taking a long, roundabout way of saying, do not assume that you do not have access to really good.

• 54:21Tim Ferriss?

  Teachers, it's right there, but people don't look for it because they assume that it's not. And this type of outreach and finding instructors, I did well before I ever had the first book. And you can do it. There are very direct ways to do it. Yes, particularly if you know the right questions to ask, you need to know the right questions to ask. It is your job to use the instructor like the niche expert Google you want them to be to provide feedback. You have to know how to be proactive as a student. And if you learn how to do that, you also remove one of the requirements I gave. And that is

• 55:05Tim Ferriss?

  you can take someone who is not experienced in teaching and make them a good teacher by virtue of feeding in the right questions. And I don't want to sound like I'm hitting it too hard, because frankly, I make next to nothing on these books. But the Four Hour Chef meta learning section has all of this. It's very in-depth. So I encourage people to check it out. Awesome. Very cool. Yeah. What else you got?

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Should we get into a couple more resolutions?

• 55:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let's do it. I've shifted into fifth gear and I'm making the transition to the Lalo Tequila.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Just FYI. I'm on my second and a half class, so it's gonna get interesting real quick here. All right. So a few more things on my list, and then we can move on to, I want to talk to you about your NFT ventures and figure out how that's going. But I finished my seven day, very first ever Zen meditation retreat. It was fantastic in so many ways. And I would say that the one thing that it gave me is when you sit for eight hours of meditation per day, you realize very quickly that 25 minutes is actually nothing. It's just nothing. And it has really, really helped me create, since returning from that trip,

• 56:18Speaker 02

  I had, just haven't missed a day and it's just been solid because it feels like it's so trivial. It's like, of course I can find 25 minutes to go and sit or do a double sit in a day and get to 50 or 55 if you're doing walking along with it, but it just reframed that entire thing for me, which I think is fantastic. And it also gave me this sense of just knowing I want to go deeper in this realm and it, the experience of the community and at the zendo and everyone getting together. You've been on one of these and I know yours was a little bit rocky. I'd be curious to see if you'd go, if you'd go back to one, but I had a fantastic time.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  And so I know meditation is going to be top priority out of all the things that I do in, going into next year.

• 57:06Tim Ferriss?

  Well, okay. So let me ask some follow ups. I will say that I would be open to doing something like that again. I would probably try a different format. So at the time I had done a Vipassana silent retreat and the sitting was similarly intensive and the vast majority of your day is sitting or walking meditation, mostly sitting. And I've told that story before, so I won't tell it here. If people want to hear that and effectively it gets into some very heavy stuff. So I won't rehash it here, but if you want to hear the story, I told it on 10% happier, the podcast with Dan Harris, and we got into it quite a bit. I had effectively

• 57:47Tim Ferriss?

  a full psychotic unraveling at my extended meditation retreat, which relates to a bunch of childhood trauma and abuse and so on. So it's not what I would consider family listening, but if people want background, they can listen to that. It ended up being a very important experience for me, but it also scared the shit out of me. And I was very worried about being in a psychological free fall. And thank God, Jack Cornfield, who has been on this podcast a number of times, who is a extremely masterful and skilled.

• 58:24Tim Ferriss?

  Teacher, meditator, who is clinical psychologist, has worked with veterans, adolescents who cut. He has an extremely hybridized toolkit, which makes him very, very, very effective. And he walks the walk. That guy is as legit as it comes. So people may also want to listen to the podcasts I've done with him. I would be open to testing another format, though. And I've been extremely impressed with Henry Shookman, who is your Jedi master, as I understand it. And

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Henry's amazing. He's been on your podcast twice now.

• 59:05Tim Ferriss?

  He has. He has. And I wanted to thank you for that introduction. You had recommended it. And he's outstanding. He is a very, very good teacher. He's a compelling speaker. And I could see delving into a different format to see what that provides. And I'm not in a rush to do it. I am, however, feeling some urgency to begin meditating again. I've completely fallen off the horse. And so that has been at the very top of my list. And I continue to find excuses to put it off. And it's funny, because this happens to me once every year or two, where I'll be meditating, meditating, meditating, and then suddenly,

• 59:50Tim Ferriss?

  it's like the excuse factory took a vacation for a year. And then it's like, I'm back. And all of a sudden, I fall off the horse and I stop. And it does not take a lot for me to feel tremendous benefits. I would say, if I do, and my default for kickstarting this tends to be a concentration practice like transcendental meditation. I just find it to be the easiest way to get back on the horse. That or

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, mantra based is easy. Like that, it's good.

• 1:00:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, using something like that. Or if I want to make it an even easier on-ramp, using, say, the introduction or the introductory course with the Waking Up app and Sam Harris. I find that to be extremely well done. It provides you with very discreet and

• 1:00:41Tim Ferriss?

  Cumulative tools as you go through it. Really, anything to get you into the habit. And I'll actually bring up something from a conversation I just had this week with James Clear. So James Clear wrote a book called Atomic Habits. It sold 10 million plus copies. Habits are his thing. And he shared something with me, a phrasing that I found very powerful and very memorable. And I'm going to paraphrase here. I don't want to speak for him, but he effectively said something along the lines of, when in doubt, keep the schedule, reduce the scope.

• 1:01:18Tim Ferriss?

  Which means, let's say you've made a commitment to work out one hour every Monday in the gym. You're going to do leg day every Monday. And maybe it's not a 60-minute commitment. It's just, I will do my leg workout every Monday. And your leg workout, as it's currently outlined, takes 45 minutes. But then life happens. Shit happens. Who knows? The kid's got a bloody nose. The work call runs over and you look at your watch and you realize, uh-oh, I'm only going to have 15 minutes to do leg day. You have a few options at that point.

• 1:02:00Tim Ferriss?

  And the option that I have taken with meditation is, I don't have enough time, I'm not going to meditate. His point is, even if leg day is a warm-up on the rower and some body weight split squats, that's better than nothing. And the momentum and the consistency matters. So for, let's just say, meditation. If I were to take that advice, which I have not been, although I just had this conversation with him yesterday or the day before, even if you sit down to meditate for 30 seconds, just check the box. Like, sit down and do it so that you can build the confidence. To maintain some degree of momentum and this applies to diet too, right?

• 1:02:44Tim Ferriss?

  I think we've all had the experience of being on some type of diet and maybe you had a little bit too much to drink or maybe you ate a little too many edibles and you're like, I just want a cookie and you eat one cookie and you're like, well, since I had one cookie, ah, well, I already screwed myself. So let me eat a whole box of cookies. And the, the reverse of that is, well, I already have too little time to get a proper meditation session and let me do no meditation. And his point is stick to the schedule, reduce the scope. And I think that's very powerful. And I'm going to try to, I'm going to commit, let me make a different statement. I'm going to commit to applying that to meditation in the new year.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  That's awesome. I'd love to hear that. Cause that can snowball into some bigger, bigger things down the road.

• 1:03:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally, totally.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  Let's just, we can move on from meditation because it's a pretty boring topic, but it's literally just sitting there doing nothing. But I would say, I would say the one thing that I was very fortunate and then I, you know, you've been to my Page Street apartment back in the day on, on in SF, like I lived right next to the San Francisco Zen Center, like right next to it.

• 1:03:51Tim Ferriss?

  Literally.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  Samvar was there, right across the street. And so, well, I took my first Zen course at that Zen Center back, you know, 15 years ago. And I would say that forever I was doing the calm slash, well, Headspace was my first app experience on meditation, you know, and I was doing the, the 10 or 15 minute meditations and I did that, you know, consistently pretty, pretty well, like not seven days a week, but you know, four to five days a week. And it gave me just some nice moments to just kind of, ah, you know, just kind of rest a little bit. But I gotta say, there's something even more special if you can just push into

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  the next zone of that, you know, 25, 55 minutes, like they call this, uh, this word samadhi. I'm sure you've probably heard of that before, but it's like this, this deep level that I've only slipped into probably a dozen times. And it's, it's, I'm like, oh shit, like there's, that was a deep well.

• 1:04:50Tim Ferriss?

  That was a little bit of a flex there.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:04:53Tim Ferriss?

  Only, only 200 times or 300 times.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  No, no, no. I mean, it's not, that's not even near what they, what's, it's just a.

• 1:05:00Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, I'm just fucking with you.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  It's a deep state of meditation. It's not, it's not enlightenment or any crazy thing. I'm not flexing that hard. But it's like, it's, it's a very hard thing to, to find. And it turns out that the more you chase it, the more it, it flees, which is because you're trying for something versus just relaxing into the moment.

• 1:05:18Tim Ferriss?

  That's true for happiness, happiness in general, I would say.

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, isn't it? Isn't it? There's, I'll say the one thing that I really loved about Henry. By the way, a couple of things to mention about Henry as well, just to give him a little plug. He is my teacher. You mentioned the waking up app. I agree with you wholeheartedly. That was a turning point for me. I started listening to the waking up app. I paid for it. Love Sam's content. Think it's well researched. It's probably the most, it's the best meditation app for people that aren't looking to necessarily just check a box, but actually want to go a little bit deeper because it has the supporting content.

• 1:05:52Tim Ferriss?

  The conversations and the essays are excellent. And he, and he has, I think, Henry on the app also.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  That's how I discovered Henry was Henry was, Sam somehow found him as a Zen teacher. And Henry has several courses on the waking up app. So if you're curious about who we're talking to or talking about, you can go and check out Henry's content on the waking up app and also enjoy the app as well. Cause it's a great, well-made product that Sam has put together. So.

• 1:06:19Tim Ferriss?

  And, and Henry's voice, he has this mellifluous, dulcet tones. It's fantastic. He's the kind of guy, if he read you the, as Neil Gaiman did once, the Cheesecake Factory menu, you'd be like, oh, I could listen to this all day. He's got a great voice.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:06:37Tim Ferriss?

  Got a great voice.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Anyway, so a couple of other things on my list of New Year's resolutions. And then Tim, I'd love to hear your, your final list as well. So two boring things, but you know, I think we can all relate. One, organizing my photos on the photos app inside of photos. Like Jesus, it's a mess. I gotta go do that.

• 1:06:59Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, how are you gonna do that? Because I look at my photos and I don't even take that many photos, right? I mean, it's like the, the youngsters out there take whatever it is, 20 selfies a day.

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  You send me a lot of bad stuff.

• 1:07:13Tim Ferriss?

  Those are usually the most

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Those two dudes with the one dude in the center.

• 1:07:17Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, what? No, those weren't dudes.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  With the whipped cream?

• 1:07:20Tim Ferriss?

  Those were not dudes. You gotta watch.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  All those weren't dudes?

• 1:07:22Tim Ferriss?

  No, they were not dudes. Anyway, so

• 1:07:27Tim Ferriss?

  those are the most hideous things that my friends send me in these various group texts. And by the way, side note, anyone out there who as their personal theater chooses mock outrage, like, oh, my God, I can't believe da, da, da, da. Every one of you, if you had your group texts shared, would go down in flames like the rest of the world. So please.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  My God, dude, if I had my friends' group texts shared, Tim, you and I would both, it would be game.

• 1:07:59Tim Ferriss?

  Everyone. No, here's what would happen is the entire world would be canceled. There's not, I can't. And I mean, if you wouldn't be canceled, I'm like, I'm so sorry. Your life is so boring and your friends have no sense of humor.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  Well, that's the whole thing is like, one, one of the things I love about my friends is that we can all give each other shit. We take it. And we also share things that are just so ridiculous. They make us laugh, but we're having fun with life. Like, we're, we're just, it's, it's, it's humor.

• 1:08:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  And we realize that, but you know, if that thread got on the internet, people would be like, oh, my God, they made a joke about this. And it's like, I'm not making any jokes that I wouldn't, I have no problem with. My jokes wouldn't be considered to be, they'd be considered to be crude, but not.

• 1:08:48Tim Ferriss?

  The apologies start already.

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  Classified. No, I'm trying to classify them. Like, they're not jokes that would, people would be like, oh, he's a woman hater or a racist or something like that. Those aren't the jokes.

• 1:08:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  They're more just like a little bit crude and a little bit rough around the edges.

• 1:09:03Tim Ferriss?

  Just a little crude. Just a little crude.

• 1:09:06Speaker 02

  Like, dude, your shit is, I can't even show Daria some of the stuff you sent me.

• 1:09:10Tim Ferriss?

  Of course you can. Of course you can.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  The, the, the thing with the two people bumping and she was like, Jesus.

• 1:09:17Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no, that was terrible. That was one, you know, something.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  One of the worst ones you've ever.

• 1:09:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it was so bad. You know something? Well, that's, I mean, kind of relates to my NFT project in a way. But it's like, you know, it's, you know, there's something horrible and special. When you're in a group thread, and I'm not a woman, I don't want to speak for women. Men, I think, just in general, are much cruder, much rougher. I could be wrong, please prove me wrong, but there's some just terrible shit that floats around. And again, it's not anything that would be illegal, but it's, it's just in its own way jaw dropping.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  Here comes the backpedal.

• 1:09:56Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, I'm not backpedaling. I'm not backpedaling. Now that you got me started on this whole like apologizing to the woke supremacists thing. Now I've been drafted into this thankless task, but the, the point I was gonna make is, I don't know if you've had this experience, but you're in a group thread with a bunch of guys and it's just constant nonsense, right? It's just nonsense, dick joke, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. And then one person will throw something in and everyone's like, ooh, God, Jesus, God, it's terrible.

• 1:10:27Speaker 02

  And then you immediately send it to five of your friends.

• 1:10:30Tim Ferriss?

  I immediately send it to you. That's what, when I get one of those gems, I immediately send it to you.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Well, me and Sokka, like you do a thread with them.

• 1:10:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we do, yeah, we do have some good ones. We do have some good ones. So how the hell did we get all this?

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Okay, so we were talking, okay, I was talking about organizing my photos.

• 1:10:46Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, photos. So wait, how would you even do that, though? Because it seems like such an overwhelming task.

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  It's not even probably worth talking about. We can, I would just fire up the photos app, but I'm gonna go back in time and start like going to town and just deleting a bunch of crap.

• 1:11:00Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely not gonna do that. Okay, continue.

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  So here's a more important one, though. This actually is, is something that I, two things. Well, we don't want to talk about the one, but the, the one thing that I do want to do is I'm really trying to figure out.

• 1:11:13Tim Ferriss?

  What was the one you don't want to talk about?

• 1:11:16Tim Ferriss?

  I've started coding again.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  And so I'm.

• 1:11:18Tim Ferriss?

  Tell me.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  No, not the, not the, not the plugs that you love. By the way, I know when I'm going to get in that. So this is just going off the rails quickly. So I, I am starting to code again.

• 1:11:29Tim Ferriss?

  So when I moved from keto to tequila, that's when all the trouble starts.

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  Exactly. That's, that's how you know, this is going to be a good episode. I'm actually really proud of us. We finally had another holiday drinking one, which is great.

• 1:11:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Next time in person.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  So the, the one thing I, that, that I was going to mention is that just for fun, I, I am starting coding again. I want to do something generative on the NFT side, which.

• 1:11:52Tim Ferriss?

  Cool.

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  And hopefully have something ready for our conference in May. Just for fun. And then the last thing I would say, and it's something that's really important to me is I want to do this yearly delete of things and I have this rule and tell me, Tim, if you have a better.

• 1:12:11Tim Ferriss?

  Physical, physical things.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Physical things. Yeah. And so what I'm thinking is that if I haven't used something in six months, or maybe I should even shorten to three months. Let's call it clothing, devices, et cetera, like any, something that's sitting around in your house, like just donate it. Donate it, give it away to goodwill, let it find the home it belongs in and reduce your stuff to like. I'd love to cut in half, to be honest, like I don't need all the, the crap.

• 1:12:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  How do you feel about that?

• 1:12:44Tim Ferriss?

  I have some policies for myself that have been very helpful, I think. And sometimes I over correct and I'll explain why over correcting makes sense, at least for me. The first is, and I'm sure you get this, but I, I think I get it to a much greater degree. Maybe when you were at the helm of DIG, this was an issue. I get sent so much shit. It is unbelievable. I mean, I just get mountains of stuff sent and We're in the same boat, dude. Yeah. It's a lot. I was just that. That's part of why I was thinking about it. It's like you get a lot of books. You get a lot of swag. You get a lot of things. You get a lot of stuff.

• 1:13:25Tim Ferriss?

  And so one of my rules, and I don't follow it perfectly, but some rules followed imperfectly. Still add a lot of benefit. And in my case, if I'm going to keep something new, I try to get rid of something. So if I'm going to accept one thing in, one thing's gonna go. If somebody sends me, maybe it's a really comfortable shirt that has some clever thing on it. And there's some really minimal branding for their company and it's a friend's thing. And I'm like, okay, this is a comfortable shirt. Maybe I'll keep this. I will try to find a shirt that I get rid of because I have simply too much stuff.

• 1:14:07Tim Ferriss?

  I will also go through periods of purging and I try to do it leading into the winter. Because frankly, if you're out there and you have warm clothing, meaning clothing for cold weather. Right? If you have layers or thicker clothing or long sleeve shirts that you are not using and you will not use this winter, holy shit, there are people who need that. There are people who are homeless. There are people who are without means to buy clothing for themselves or their children, donate that stuff. And here's what I would say, if you're on the fence, give it away.

• 1:14:49Tim Ferriss?

  Right? And I don't want to do too much of the Marie Kondo stuff, but it's like, if it doesn't spark joy, here's what I would say. This is another. I love your accents, by the way. They're so good every time. Thank you. Yeah. If anybody didn't know, it's not, it's not Marie Kondo, even though it's very convenient for the English speaking market. It's Marie, Marie, Marie Kondo. Marie Kondo. Yeah. She has the most perfect skin of all time, by the way. People can find a photograph of me with her. I interviewed her in Japan. Have you figured out what, what, what her secret is? Genetics, maybe. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's like an AI created the perfect human porcelain doll. Her, it's, it's unbelievable. I don't know.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  Are you attracted to her?

• 1:15:32Tim Ferriss?

  She's cute. Oh, absolutely. I mean, she's also married and like has a family and that's not something I'm going for, but she's, she's, she's a good looking woman.

• 1:15:42Tim Ferriss?

  Jesus Christ. All right. Anyway, so, all right. No, but let me, let me come back to the thought exercise.

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  And I have a question for you, but go ahead. I'm about buying stuff.

• 1:15:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for sure. So the, what I try to do when I look in, whether it's my closet or at things I own, is ask on, on a scale of say, one to 10, how much joy am I getting out of this? Or how much use am I getting out of this?

• 1:16:10Tim Ferriss?

  And then the follow up question is, no matter what the answer is, if it's a 10, I keep it, right? If it's a nine, I probably keep it. If it's an eight, I probably still keep it. But if it's less than that, could I give this to someone? Could I donate this to someone who would absolutely get an eight, nine, or 10 use or joy out of this? If so, get rid of it. And if you have some means, right? And that's, doesn't mean millions of dollars, but getting rid of a T-shirt or two is probably not going to break the bank for a lot of people. In which case, when in doubt, donate it, give it to someone who can't afford to buy the shirt. And if you decide later, you know what? Oh, I really liked that T-shirt. I really liked that V-neck. I really liked that fill in the blank. You can buy it again.

• 1:16:56Tim Ferriss?

  And I rarely end up doing that, but every once in a while, like I'll do a full purge where I'll, I'll just take garbage bags and garbage bags of stuff and donate it to Goodwill or somewhere else. And then I'll realize, ah, okay, I kind of got overzealous. I got rid of that one thing that I wore all the time.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Tim Ferriss?

  And then I'll just buy it again on Amazon. It's there two days later. It's fine.

• 1:17:18Speaker 02

  Let me ask you, I have a very personal question and something that I haven't shared before that I'd like to ask you about buying things. Oh, boy. And wow. No, I just, I just think that this is something that, that nobody talks about. And I always like to like, you're so good at finding stuff that, you know, you can pick up in, you're a very open person, which I've always appreciated about your podcast and like, just like how you are transparent about feelings and emotions and a lot of things that I think a lot of men could use to look up to, you know? Oh, God, is this question gonna be a fucking hydrogen bomb? This is a tough one. No, no, no. So here, here's, here's a problem that I've had, just being completely honest. Yeah.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  There was back when I was in my, you know, twenties and early thirties, Dig was doing quite well, which was my startup, for those of you don't know, was early social news website that was, it was killing it. It was, we had 38 million people a month that were visiting the site. Huge. It was, back then, it was one of the top sites on the internet. It was crazy. It started to go sideways and it started to go down and like not, you know, like we were losing to Reddit, right? It was starting to kick our ass in some certain ways and, you know, we had dominated them for many years and then all of a sudden that was not the case and we were kind of reeling a little bit. I had sold a tiny bit of my stock enough to be able to afford an apartment in, actually buy and put a down payment on apartment and that's how I got my Page Street place in,

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  in SF. And I remember thinking to myself, like, I need to buy myself something to like, it was a search to feel better, right? And so I went out and I actually bought, and this is gonna sound super douchey, but I'm okay to say this today, like I bought, actually I bought a Porsche, I bought a Porsche 911 back in the day. And looking back on that, I realized I was just in a really difficult, sad state. It was, it was hard for me, you know, to, to watch this baby of mine and I didn't know how to course correct it, right? I was just so immature in a bunch of different ways, but I was buying for the sake of trying to fill a gap, right? Don't get me wrong. Like I still think vintage Porsches and old Porsches and Porsches in

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  general, they're just beautiful cars. Like I, I think they're great. Um, I don't, I don't have a nine 11 today, but I will say that I've noticed the same thing.

• 1:19:38Tim Ferriss?

  Kevin is not anti Porsche in his group text messaging.

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  I'm not anti Porsche. Please don't cancel me Porsche. I would love to be sponsored. If you want to sponsor me, I'm happy to drive nine 11. Um, so that said, you know, here's the crazy thing. I went and ran Hodinkee, the luxury watch brand company. I was CEO there for a few years and, um, loved my experience there because we were covering mechanical, like a dying art, like it was like mechanical timepieces and it was very beautiful in its purest form. In its purest form, you talk to an artisan that is a single independent watchmaker that takes a year and a half to build something from scratch and sells 10 a year. That's beautiful. Those days are going away. In its douchey form, you're talking to Lambo drivers that would just want to have a flex that they can hold a watch on

• 1:20:26Speaker 02

  their wrist that says, I have $5 million on my wrist, right? Like that's a real thing. And so I met with a lot, as CEO of this company, this is like the, you know, the, it still is the, the largest watch brand editorial site in the world. And you would meet all these collectors and they would come up to you and they come in all different shapes and sizes. And it was clear to me that some of these dudes, like bless them, they were trying to fill that same thing that I was trying to fill, where you, you go out and you spend money on something to make yourself feel in a group, feel connected, to feel connection. Cause you'd come out and you'd say, these are other collectors like me, like I, you know, and it's tough. And, and I'm not anti-watch. I still, I remember wearing

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  an Apple watch today, but I, I still have a few timepieces that were really meaningful to me, including one that my dad left me when he passed away. And I still love that, that whole thing. But how do you approach this as somebody? Have you ever? Spent your money on things and then how do you approach it with like, have you ever done that? And then also, how do you approach it with with significant others? Like, you know, I've had this conversation with my wife about like, hey, we don't have to wear the flashy stuff. It's okay to wear, you know, I told her the other night, like, one of my my favorite times to hang out with you is when it's jeans and t-shirts, like, version of you at a bar. Like, I love that. Like, having a beer, like, we don't have to be fancy LA. Like, I don't

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  want that. Where do you stand on on all this stuff?

• 1:21:57Tim Ferriss?

  So I think, and you've probably observed this in me.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  You're so good at this. This is why I'm trying to pick your brain. You don't do any flashy shit.

• 1:22:07Tim Ferriss?

  I'm good, but there is a downside. There is a trade off. And I have not figured out how to contend with this. And I'll actually mention also a book that has come up several times in the last week from multiple people I respect. And remember, Rick Rubin, the music producer said to me, when that happens to him, he feels like it's a signal from the universe that he needs to take a look at something. And so I kind of feel like that right now with this book,

• 1:22:42Tim Ferriss?

  which I'll come to in a second. I have had very few instances of buying expensive things for myself. And you've seen this.

• 1:22:56Speaker 02

  Oh, I know.

• 1:22:57Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think I'm stingy in all things. For instance, I will go to, if I think the experience is going to leave an indelible mark in my mind, I will go to a place like Alenia in Chicago and have a meal. And I did that. And I'm really glad I did. And it's very expensive, right? I mean, I would consider it very expensive. It's like 1500, 2000 bucks for a meal. And that on some level would make the

• 1:23:29Tim Ferriss?

  15 year old version of me going to a seizure, right? Did not grow up with a lot of money and grew up in a household where scarcity of money was an issue.

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. My dad would yell at my mom for spending too much money and stuff. Cause she would literally bounce checks. Yeah. Like, I remember that being a conversation, like, the account is overdrawn.

• 1:23:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. It was a source of stress. It was a source of stress. And so I decided pretty early on as a kid, okay, I do not want this type of stress in my life. That means I need to figure out how to make money. And that, in a way, was the spark behind my entrepreneurial experiments. It's like, okay, it's great point. This type of stress that I have been immersed in and exposed to, and I don't think it traumatized me. I wouldn't put it that way. I wouldn't want to remove the power of that word trauma by applying it to something like this. And I think it kind of disgusts me how overused the word trauma is.

• 1:24:35Tim Ferriss?

  That's a separate thing, but it affected me, definitely imprinted something on me. And as a result,

• 1:24:46Tim Ferriss?

  I have spent relatively little money celebrating anything. The fact that I spent, like, these Japanese saddles, right? I bought them at auction from, I can't remember, it was Christie's or Sotheby's. And I think it was $5,000 apiece, right? And to allow myself to do that, the hurdle was not only do I have to finish and publish a book that is 500 plus pages, I think it was maybe 700 pages, which was cut down from probably 1,500 pages.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  Was this in your head or did it's something you wrote down? Like, this is the hurdle that you had to, like, you're like, I'm like...

• 1:25:29Tim Ferriss?

  But I said, if I publish this book and it is number one New York Times, I will allow myself, as a reward, to buy these saddles that cost $5,000 each. And if I don't, I'm not allowed to do this. So on some level, I respect that and it's very strict, high standards. And on some level, all of those things are good, but...

• 1:25:58Tim Ferriss?

  What I will say is when I meet or spend time with friends of mine who have achieved some degree of success, and it's not always millions of dollars, right? They've just figured out a job and a seal where they've developed a career and they're stable and they fix a lot of problems for themselves and they add a lot of joy for themselves and their families by spending money. The dark side of what I'm describing is that I don't think I've developed that very well. I have more money than I know what to do with and I think I put it, I don't want to

• 1:26:40Tim Ferriss?

  sound like a prick, that doesn't mean that I'm just like doing backstroke through a pool full of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. That's not what I'm saying. I think I am a very, very, hopefully this doesn't sound pompous, I think I am a very, very good capital allocator and steward of money. I think I use what I have to very high leverage means and objectives through funding the science and the journalism fellowship with Michael Pollan and so on. But here's what I'll say, Kevin, is there's a dark side to it in that I don't use money to fix problems that I should fix.

• 1:27:20Speaker 02

  Like what? Give me an example.

• 1:27:23Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I'll give an example, which would be there are little things, I'll give you a perfect example. So there is an article, it's not really an article, it's more an adaptation of John Stuart Mill's Ideas on Free Speech, which is an illustrated edition. It's called All Minus One. You can find it on Amazon, you can also get it for free, I think it's at heterodoxacademy.org/mill. And this came about through a conversation with Jonathan Haidt, who is a fascinating thinker and professor and researcher who wrote The Coddling of the American Mind and many other books.

• 1:28:06Tim Ferriss?

  So this is, let's see, on Kindle, it's, I think, 78 pages. And I agonized over when I was gonna find time to print this and put it together in a hard copy so that I could mark it up. So I didn't want to wait for the paperback. This is stupid. I have employees. I could send this to someone and just be like, hey, figured this out. Whatever makes it readable, go. Right? It would take it 30 seconds. But there's part of me, for whatever reason, that gets stuck on doing it myself and doesn't even consider that. It doesn't enter my head as an option. And there are many other examples

• 1:28:49Tim Ferriss?

  of this, right? I've been to friends' houses where they love, let's not name names, but well, because you'll probably get it. But like, I have a friend who really loves Topo Chico. And you go to his house, and he always has a refrigerated drawer full of Topo Chico. It's never empty.

• 1:29:06Speaker 02

  Love that.

• 1:29:07Tim Ferriss?

  He never runs out.

• 1:29:08Speaker 02

  It's so, it's extra sparkly. It's good.

• 1:29:10Tim Ferriss?

  It is. Yeah, it'll definitely take all the enamel off your teeth. It's delicious. And, and even though all the hipster Austinites have boycotted it because it's owned by the evil empire of Coca-Cola now, so they're, you know, they're drinking Richard's rainwater and, and others, which are fine, fine, fine, fine sparkling water. But I just, I just find the outrage pretty hilarious. But the point is, like, he has a team. He pays people to help him and his family with their lives in various ways so that he can focus on things he's really good at, which does not include figuring out at the last minute, oh shit, I'm out of Topo Chico. How am I gonna make it in time to the grocery store to buy this

• 1:29:52Tim Ferriss?

  and chew up 45 minutes of my time? I don't have many of those systems in place. And it's not because I am consciously deciding I need to save money. It's like, the option doesn't even appear on my mental UI to choose. So this is something I'm trying to figure out, which leads to the book. Which has been recommended number of times now, which is called Die With Zero. Have you, I've not read it. So I've heard about this. So full disclosure, I've not read it. Chris Hutchins sent this to me. Oh, no shit. Okay. So Bill Perkins is the author and I should know better than to recommend

• 1:30:33Tim Ferriss?

  something before I've read it. So I just want to make it super clear. I have not read this, but the book is Die With Zero, Getting All You Can From Your Money And Your Life. And it's written by Bill Perkins, who's a famous energy trader slash investor and the Wall Street Journal bestseller. I'll just read a little bit of the description, which is very seductive to me because it's written by someone who has also been an operator. If this book were written by just someone who's waxing poetic without any real bona fides, bona fides, I would be skeptical, but this is someone who's actually been a real operator

• 1:31:16Tim Ferriss?

  in the trenches. So the description is a common sense guide to living rich instead of dying rich. Imagine if by the time you died, you did everything you were told to, you worked hard, saved your money and looked forward to financial freedom when you retired. The only thing you wasted along the way was dot, dot, dot, your life. Die With Zero presents a startling new and provocative philosophy as well as practical guidance, how to get the most out of your money and the most out of your life. It's intended for those who place lifelong memorable experiences far ahead of simply making and accumulating money for one so-called golden years. And it goes on. This is interesting to me and Yes. I'm hoping that it provides me with some counter programming that will maybe help

• 1:31:55Tim Ferriss?

  me to do more. And I have, I will say, been finding some outlets where I don't have hangups and one is spending money on art or supporting artists. I will be doing, moving forward, quite a few experiments with artists and artwork. I did one that is actually running right now as we record. It's going to end in a few hours, but it's a competition for AI-generated or enhanced artwork. Cock punch related or no? Cock punch related. So they have to work. Are you serious? Yeah, yeah. Cock punch related. And the stuff that has come out is

• 1:32:38Tim Ferriss?

  Beyond belief. I mean, it is hard to wrap my head around, and I say this as someone who has quite a bit of art background and worked as an illustrator, paid a lot of bills as an illustrator for magazines and books in college. It is hard to wrap my head around what this technology will do for creative expression. And it's controversial. I have seen blowback, right? Because AI,

• 1:33:07Tim Ferriss?

  whether it's chat GPT for text or other tools, requires training data. So where do you get that training data? If it's graphical expression, if it's, if it's what we would consider visual art, they might be pulling from, say, artists on Art Station.

• 1:33:26Speaker 02

  Right. But it's blending it so well together that you could never pick out individually which artist is pulling from. So in some sense-

• 1:33:34Tim Ferriss?

  In less than your prompt, you say, instead of in the style of Van Gogh, which most people would consider fair game. If it's in the style of fill in the blank contemporary artists who makes their living selling prints in part or doing commissioned artwork, is that a net positive or a net negative for them? I don't know. I'm not someone-

• 1:33:55Speaker 02

  You know who you should talk to?

• 1:33:55Tim Ferriss?

  Who's that?

• 1:33:56Speaker 02

  You know who's fun to chat with this is I was talking to Mike Shinoda about this, our mutual friend-

• 1:34:00Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:34:00Speaker 02

  From Lincoln Park.

• 1:34:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Speaker 02

  And he was talking about how there's this list you could sign up for that apparently will exclude you from the training data.

• 1:34:09Tim Ferriss?

  It's like the do not call list.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He was saying that like, because in music, you could imagine this is going to be a big deal, right? You're going to say, hey-

• 1:34:18Tim Ferriss?

  I'm already seeing stable diffusion applied to music in ways that make your head spin. And it's so early. It's not even the first inning. Yeah.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I was asking him about like, hey, what do you think of AI when it says, hey, play me a song like it was written by Mike Shinoda? And what does that sound like? You know, and he's, it's, it's a, it's a big topic to go into.

• 1:34:39Tim Ferriss?

  How does he feel?

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  I don't want to speak for him, but he was, at that time, it seemed like-

• 1:34:48Speaker 02

  You know, I, I, I got the sense and I'm just, I'm paraphrasing here. I'm actually not even gonna paraphrase. I would say that I got the sense that it's early days and if anything I know about Mike is like he's, he's definitely, he embraces the future. There's no doubt about it. Like he's all web three. He's doing NFT drops. He's doing generous stuff like with music. It's, it's, he's awesome on that front. But at the same time, I can imagine if you're an artist in his position, which is, you know, just the top tier, top one percent of all musical artists out there, you kind of also want to protect who you are as an individual in your IP.

• 1:35:23Tim Ferriss?

  For sure.

• 1:35:24Speaker 02

  And that was the kind of sense I got from him is like figuring out how to, how this is gonna weave in, in, in what you're gonna do in the future. So,

• 1:35:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:31Speaker 02

  He'd be a fun one to have on and eventually talk about this stuff.

• 1:35:33Tim Ferriss?

  I should have him back on. Yeah. I had him on the podcast like a hundred years ago. I should have him back on.

• 1:35:37Speaker 02

  He's such a good dude.

• 1:35:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Great guy. And on the AI front, I will say I have artists in my family. I see how hard it is. I've been there myself and I should point out also that I am not necessarily immune to the influence of these technologies in the sense that I have seen blog posts generated using predominantly AI with very few prompts.

• 1:36:07Tim Ferriss?

  And things are gonna change for writers in a big, in a big way. And that will particularly apply to nonfiction writers and I am principally a nonfiction writer. So now.

• 1:36:18Speaker 02

  And the fiction writers, dude. Like a lot of these tools are being done around fiction.

• 1:36:22Tim Ferriss?

  And fiction. Fiction is gonna be harder. I think fiction will be a lot harder to thread, but both will be affected. And so there are many questions that this, this prompts, pun intended. One is,

• 1:36:39Tim Ferriss?

  What are the factors that will drive, say, reading in my case? How much of it will be being certain that you are reading something generated by a human before you're willing to commit to having an emotional response? Even if the output is identical, right? Will there be some authenticity of human production that becomes important? I could see that becoming important.

• 1:37:04Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:37:04Tim Ferriss?

  Like, do you really want to cry watching a movie that was 100% produced by robots? Maybe not. Maybe that is a hard line that people draw where they're like, I don't actually want to have my emotions manipulated by machines.

• 1:37:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you already do today with, with the graphics, right? Those are created by machines.

• 1:37:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. So, no, it's a question of degree, right? We're already being effective.

• 1:37:26Speaker 02

  Let me ask you a question. Yeah. What you're saying, Tim, is let's just jump forward 20, 20 years from now. You're saying there is a world where you could imagine a novel that would have some type of designation on it, you know, digitally, that would say this was human written, like just to ensure.

• 1:37:43Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely.

• 1:37:44Speaker 02

  Oh, that's fucking crazy. That's awesome.

• 1:37:46Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. I mean, imagine you have these timepieces that are one of a kind, produced by the labor of one or a handful of people over a year and a half. The origin and the story matter. You could produce something, maybe even superior, with advanced robotics and software and so on, but you want, you want the physical and psychic imprint of these human hands.

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  The human connection, yeah, exactly.

• 1:38:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So I think absolutely, like, just like you have a stamp for organic or, you know, humane certified or free trade, it'd be like, human generated stamp. I would be surprised if that's not a thing. I think it'll be a thing.

• 1:38:38Speaker 02

  You should go and file your trademarks and patents. That's what you need to do.

• 1:38:43Tim Ferriss?

  So that'll be, that'll be a thing. Let me, let me add a few more though. So another one will be, well, actually this is more philosophical. So I thought about the counter arguments and the blowback related to AI before I launched this competition. And I understood the counter arguments and I don't disagree with them. This is going to affect the competitive landscape for artists, period, full stop. Especially, especially for things like logo design, things of this type.

• 1:39:16Speaker 02

  Of course. Fiverr is fucked.

• 1:39:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, like website layout and so on. The way I'm looking at it is if I, Tim, wanted to help as many artists as possible, what would my chess move be? And where I landed was we are going from the horse and the horse drawn carriage to the car. That transition is happening whether we want it to or not. And if we own a bunch of horses, if we own a bunch of carriages, if we own the equivalent of a taxi service back in the day, that's fine, but the technology is going to change. So if you want to be in a competitive

• 1:40:01Tim Ferriss?

  position, if you want to have advantages, you need to be on the front end of learning about these technologies, which is part of the reason why I wanted to do this competition, to say, hey, guys, you can make this work for you in a lot of ways, but you gotta be on the early end. You just have to.

• 1:40:23Speaker 02

  There's a couple of things that I think are important to point out here in that to me, this just represents another leap forward in technology. Almost the way, I would say the, the closest parallel I have to this is probably the graphical user interface that was done by, you know, the Mac and, and

• 1:40:45Tim Ferriss?

  Netscape for web browser.

• 1:40:48Speaker 02

  Well, imagine you were an artist back in the day and to draw a circle meant you had to sit down and try and draw a circle, right?

• 1:40:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:56Speaker 02

  And now in Photoshop.

• 1:40:57Tim Ferriss?

  Compass.

• 1:40:58Speaker 02

  You can, yeah, you can, exactly. You needed a compass and then now in Photoshop you can literally say.

• 1:41:03Tim Ferriss?

  So fucking old.

• 1:41:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:41:04Tim Ferriss?

  Incredible.

• 1:41:04Speaker 02

  I love that you pulled the compass references. That's great. But, but now you can, you can literally.

• 1:41:09Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, pencil's too short. I'm getting a wobbly circle. Let me sharpen that thing.

• 1:41:13Speaker 02

  Right. Right. So those days are gone and, and that's okay. And, and no, I'm sure there was some artists that were like, you know, fuck Photoshop for making that perfect circle. Like I used to have to hand draw those, you know? And like, that's kind of what we're going through today with this next jump. It's like, there's going to be, it's going to be tough for a few years. It's going to feel weird. It's going to feel not right. And, and then finally we'll, we'll understand what the tool actually is, you know?

• 1:41:40Tim Ferriss?

  And also I will just say, if you're early, you can learn how to use the tools rather than be abused by the adoption of the tools. It's super important.

• 1:41:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:41:51Tim Ferriss?

  If you learn early, holy shit, you have tremendous advantage. So learn early, start experimenting now. I'll give you another prediction. I was thinking about this. Imagine if you will, I feel like Dan Carlin with Hardcore History. Imagine if you will, General Subadi. No, let me come back. So imagine, imagine that you have a book. You have a nonfiction book. It's a biography of a contemporary figure, Teddy Roosevelt, whatever. Like Theodore, I think it's Theodore Rex, I think is this multi-volume biography that I've been meaning to read forever. And I just keep putting it off because it's, it's so long and I've heard it's amazing.

• 1:42:37Tim Ferriss?

  But I haven't been willing to commit. It's just too long. I think there will be a time, probably in the next year, wouldn't surprise me.

• 1:42:48Tim Ferriss?

  Within the next year, I would imagine for books that are well reviewed, have a lot of coverage and are contemporary, meaning within the last hundred years, I will be able to say something along the lines of with a prompt interface to stable diffusion or any number of other tools. And I think a lot of these tools will get combined into user interfaces where the mechanics, the underlying mechanics are invisible.

• 1:43:22Speaker 02

  Oh my God, dude, wait, pause for one second.

• 1:43:24Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:43:25Speaker 02

  Can I get this real quick?

• 1:43:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 1:43:27Speaker 02

  I think it's, there is a service you have to try. I don't know if you remember our buddy, Addison Kowalski, he created prompthunt.com.

• 1:43:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh.

• 1:43:37Speaker 02

  And it actually is, it's, it's, it's taking exactly what you said where right now it's, it's 50 words to create this prompt, this perfect like AI.

• 1:43:46Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:43:47Speaker 02

  And he's making themes around it and it's really, it's really, really cool.

• 1:43:50Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:43:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:51Tim Ferriss?

  So this is what you're talking about. This will do well. Yeah. If it's executed well, prompthunt.com will do well. Because the magic is in the prompt. It's kind of like being a magician with a spell. I mean, you have to.

• 1:44:03Speaker 02

  That's what they realized.

• 1:44:03Tim Ferriss?

  You have to get the incantation right. And if you don't, zero, you come up empty handed or you get some fucking mongrel.

• 1:44:10Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:44:11Tim Ferriss?

  Monstrosity. Side note, really quickly, rhinoskinsolutions.com is what I was referring to earlier, the dry spray and the Mikey's tip juice, sounds porno, is what I have. So there you go. But.

• 1:44:26Speaker 02

  Wait, what are you talking about? You're talking about the hand stuff?

• 1:44:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the, the antiperspirant for the hands that helped.

• 1:44:33Speaker 02

  That was a big callback. That was, that was going deep back. Okay, so let me do one more than, one more quick callback. Side note, this is the last one, I promise. For all those that were, we talked about, Tim, you mentioned the book, Die With Zero. Our friend, Chris Hutchins, the reason I said that he had mentioned it to me, he actually did a podcast with them.

• 1:44:55Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no shit.

• 1:44:56Speaker 02

  So I know you, I know you love Chris. He has a podcast called All The Hacks. So All The Hacks, Die With Zero is the one to, to check out.

• 1:45:03Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, cool. I'll check it out. Yeah, Chris is, Chris is very diligent. He is, I will say.

• 1:45:09Speaker 02

  He's like a mini you.

• 1:45:11Tim Ferriss?

  Honestly? I want to give him more credit. He's, he's the first Chris Hutchins. He is, I thought I was OCD about prep. He's giving me a run for my money. He really does a lot of preparation and is meticulous in how he approaches the details of these things. So I will check out that podcast and we'll link to it in the show notes. AI prediction. Big book, three volumes biography. Fuck, I'm never going to listen to that. I'm never going to read that. I could put in a prompt, which is something like, create a Ken Burns like documentary

• 1:45:49Tim Ferriss?

  that allows me to cover the most important parts of fill in the blank book or book series with say archival photographs or footage with a voice overlay that provides narration, which is pulling from the highlights of that book using sources like quotes from Goodreads. Uh, this is gonna fuck you, by the way. It's totally gonna fuck me. It's totally gonna fuck me. I mean, I am absolutely going to be simultaneously the beneficiary and the cock punch recipient of artificial intelligence. 100%. Oh, it's gonna rock the boat in such a significant way.

• 1:46:29Tim Ferriss?

  But what I'm committed to doing is being a student of the craft because it is the, it is the Model T and the car coming after horse drawn carriages. And this is inevitable. It is not reversible. Sadly, you know, there is no lobby, there's no lobby I can think of. No, it's out of the bottle. It's out of the bottle. It's out of the bottle. So there's that. Should we talk about Cock-Saddle Maniacs? Yeah, let's talk about your cock punch. Let's, let's have anybody name, name that movie reference Cock-Saddle Maniac. Do you get that reference? I don't, no, I don't. It's, it's a bar, oh shit, I'm older than you are. Give me a break. Look at those white whiskers you got over there, Mr. Sea Otter.

• 1:47:14Tim Ferriss?

  So fuck you. At least I have hair, bitch. Yeah, yeah, that's true. You do. You do have a nice Los Angeles slick going with that black hair.

• 1:47:28Tim Ferriss?

  What the fuck was I just talking about? Oh, yeah. Cockstall maniac. Very important film reference. This is a reference. It takes place in a bar scene in the Winchester in Shaun of the Dead. S H A U N.

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  Oh, I know Shaun of the Dead.

• 1:47:41Tim Ferriss?

  One of the greatest of all time. I watched it several hundred times as background when I was writing The Four Hour Workweek. Little known fact.

• 1:47:50Speaker 02

  That's awesome. Okay. You have gray hairs yet or no?

• 1:47:53Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God, I'm covered in gray hairs, man. Yeah, I was fortunate slash unfortunate to lose my hair before my hair went gray on my head, but oh, chest hair, beard hair, salt and pepper mania. Absolutely.

• 1:48:08Speaker 02

  Do you get the the grays?

• 1:48:12Tim Ferriss?

  I give you the good, the good, the gray's.

• 1:48:13Speaker 02

  That's depressing.

• 1:48:14Tim Ferriss?

  The grays down under?

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  Of course. I've had a couple down there.

• 1:48:17Tim Ferriss?

  Of course I do. How would you have? Anybody who's like, yeah, I have gray in my beard and gray in my chest, but my my pubes are like the mane of Black Stallion. Give me a fucking break. That's bullshit.

• 1:48:27Speaker 02

  No, I swear. I only have had like two and it's it's depressing. It's depressing because you trim them real quick because you're going to get them out of there, but like.

• 1:48:35Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I gave up on that.

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  Did you? You're just full gray. You're Santa down there.

• 1:48:40Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just like, I'm like, I'm like Adam Gazzali's beard on my balls.

• 1:48:46Tim Ferriss?

  You're welcome, Adam.

• 1:48:47Speaker 02

  Please, please, yes, leave that in.

• 1:48:53Tim Ferriss?

  One of the greatest.

• 1:48:54Speaker 02

  It's a scientist friend of ours.

• 1:48:55Tim Ferriss?

  One of the greatest neuroscientists of the modern age.

• 1:48:57Speaker 02

  Of our age. You basically just call me the ball psych. I love it. All right. So cock punch. How's how's NFC land been?

• 1:49:04Tim Ferriss?

  So, so, well, let me ask you this first.

• 1:49:06Speaker 02

  Blowback.

• 1:49:07Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I'm happy to talk about all of it. I will say just to just to preface the whole thing. I am still having so much fun. There was.

• 1:49:15Speaker 02

  Good.

• 1:49:15Tim Ferriss?

  There was like a death valley of anger and like the trough of sorrow for sure.

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, the taint of sorrow. It's like you have to travel through.

• 1:49:26Tim Ferriss?

  The taint of sorrow was sorrowful. So I'm not going to downplay that. We can talk about it, but what did you expect was going to happen? Let me let me start there because you've you've been through this rodeo multiple times.

• 1:49:39Speaker 02

  Honestly, Tim, I kind of knew you were fucked. I would have said something if I thought it was career career ending for you.

• 1:49:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:45Speaker 02

  And I didn't think that. What I thought was that. I told Daria this, actually, my wife this, I said, you know, I'm glad that Tim has enough money to not give a fuck because it is, he's having fun. And all you can ask for anyone, yeah, I think about this with my kids a lot at the end of the day, because like Daria is an academic and she, you know, got her PhD in neuroscience and I clearly am not, I'm a college dropout. And at the end of the day, what I want for my children is them for to find their life's work and their fun and life.

• 1:50:18Tim Ferriss?

  Did you think them for to find?

• 1:50:21Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:50:22Tim Ferriss?

  Do you say them for to find? That was an amazing sentence.

• 1:50:26Speaker 02

  For them to find.

• 1:50:27Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, okay. All right. All right. I think you threw in an extra word or two. Go again.

• 1:50:29Speaker 02

  Okay. I probably did. I'm sure. I'm like deep into this bottle of fantastic wine, which I will say is the mascot. So all jokes aside, I love when I see Tim having a good time because Tim, I've known you for a long time, man. And I know that you're, you're a very interesting cat and that you're like both insanely playful, but insanely serious at the same time. And you have these two sides of your life that you just like, you know, sometimes are at odds with each other. And anytime I can see playful Tim come out, I'm just like, I'm happy. I'm a happy person because I love to see you happy. And if this is that for you, it's, it makes me happy. So that's great.

• 1:51:11Tim Ferriss?

  Well, what's, what's also a timing hilarity in all of this is that as I'm about to go into this huge experiment that I've been working on forever, and Kevin's my Sherpa, right? Kevin's like, no, hold on.

• 1:51:28Speaker 02

  Put Brendan in there too.

• 1:51:29Tim Ferriss?

  Well, no, no, okay. I'm going to give Brendan credit where credit is due. But, but you got me interested in, along with Naval and other people interested in Web 3, you led me to my first, actually rewind the clock, you led me to my first crypto purchases in late 2012, early 2013, somewhere in that range. You have introduced me to a lot of very important technological innovations. You also walked me through as my MetaMask tech support.

• 1:52:05Tim Ferriss?

  My first NFT purchase.

• 1:52:07Speaker 02

  I believe I have a shirt that says that.

• 1:52:10Tim Ferriss?

  My mass tech support.

• 1:52:13Tim Ferriss?

  VIP white glove tech support.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:52:16Tim Ferriss?

  And then I'm getting ready, the launch is coming. Holy shit, I'm nervous. People on your team are helping me. And then Kevin's like, I'm going on a silent meditation retreat for seven days. And I'm like, what?

• 1:52:32Tim Ferriss?

  So Kevin disappears, but let me catch you up. So pre mint Brendan Mulligan, I have to give him a lot of credit. We've both known him for a long time. He.

• 1:52:41Speaker 02

  Good human.

• 1:52:42Tim Ferriss?

  Execu- he's a great human. He gives a shit. He cares about quality. He is very thoughtful. He and his team, I want to give his team credit too. He and his team executed flawlessly. They were so detail oriented, which of course I appreciate.

• 1:53:00Speaker 02

  Don't forget about my team.

• 1:53:02Tim Ferriss?

  No, your team was amazing. Hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm just, you mentioned Brendan, so I'm mentioning Brendan first. So Brendan executed so well and his team. Prototyping the mint pages as a potential offering through pre mint. Incredible. So I just want to give a thanks there. I'll also give a thanks, of course, to your entire team. The sort of divergence super squad that was, that was absorbed, was eaten, brought on to the island of proof by KK, Ro Ro, Kev Kev, Rose Rose. And.

• 1:53:43Speaker 02

  Is that a new one?

• 1:53:44Tim Ferriss?

  That's a new one. You sounded like the South Park guys doing some of their voiceovers.

• 1:53:50Tim Ferriss?

  Anyway, some people will get that. And the, the divergence team also world class. I mean, good job, by the way.

• 1:53:58Speaker 02

  I'm just glad you had a great mint, man. Everything went fine. You sold out.

• 1:54:02Tim Ferriss?

  Everything went great. It sold out. We, I think managed it very well. People get pissed no matter what, but I think we managed it as well and planned it as well as we possibly could have. You know how much I agonized over this. I mean, I went, I held on to multiple variables as undefined until the 11th hour, because I really wanted to.

• 1:54:26Tim Ferriss?

  Try to satisfy as many people as possible with that. It is not possible to make everyone happy, especially in Web 3, especially in NFTs. But the mint went off without a hitch. And then the reveal drops a few days later. Oh, let me back up and just say, thank you to everyone who participated in the primary sale, because it raised 1.8 or so million dollars for the Saisei Foundation. All of those funds have already been wired to the Saisei Foundation. That happened within, I want to say 48 hours, 72 hours. And money is already being distributed to projects. So this is not a foundation that sits on funds. Those funds are going to immediate use.

• 1:55:11Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll be, I'll be sharing more about that. And the use is, for people who don't know, they can find Saisei Foundation at S.A.I.S.E.I. Foundation.org. Saisei means rebirth in Japanese. Has funded and continues to fund critical, early-stage research related to treating conditions like treatment-resistant depression, complex PTSD, so-called intractable conditions that effectively fail with our first-line treatments currently. And a lot of that is psychedelic-assisted therapy-related, but not all of it. I personally and Saisei Foundation have been involved in funding Mr. White Pubes himself. God, he's gonna love that.

• 1:55:54Tim Ferriss?

  Dr. Adam Gazali and his amazing work at Neuroscape. I'm sorry, Adam, we had to do it. It's okay. But, but he is, I mean, he's such a superstar, he can get away with it, right? Like, that guy is a, that guy is an absolute, top-tier, world-class scientist who knows how to navigate all of the complexities. And...

• 1:56:17Tim Ferriss?

  Therefore, thanks. Huge sincere thanks to everybody who participated. It's all going to very, very high leverage, high impact stuff. And then the reveal comes, right? And the reveal comes, the art comes out. Some people love it, some people hate it. I still stand by the art. I stand by it. One thing that happened that I did not anticipate at all is that a few things I will point out that I'm paying attention to feedback. I don't pay attention to like, "You suck balls, man. Fuck you." I don't pay attention to that. And I'll block you if you do that. But I do pay attention to valid feedback. And there's a lot of valid feedback. For instance, because this project is not a PFP project.

• 1:57:01Tim Ferriss?

  It is not a profile pic project, even though PFP stands for proof for picture, I think, or picture for proof.

• 1:57:07Speaker 02

  No, profile photo.

• 1:57:08Tim Ferriss?

  No, it does not. It does not. It stands for, it stands for picture for proof. Look it up. Ended up being co-opted into profile pic. There's no F in profile pic project.

• 1:57:21Speaker 02

  Proof and profile pic, Jesus, of course you would know the technical shit. It just means like, show me your face on the fucking Twitter.

• 1:57:27Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that's what it means now. I'm just, I just wanted to throw a monkey wrench into things for a second because I know you're deep in the wine, so I wanted to stumble things. The point being, because it wasn't a profile pic,

• 1:57:39Tim Ferriss?

  and I tried to explain, this is an elf, right? It's an emergent long fiction project. And to explain that, it didn't fit neatly into any category that people could absorb in a millisecond. For that reason, when the art was displayed full body, it was actually, I think, confusing to some people, even though I'd explained they would be full body. And furthermore, the resolution was ratcheted really far down to be a unique file type that allows, OpenSea in this case, the ability to monitor for counterfeits. So the function is really important. The function is super important.

• 1:58:19Tim Ferriss?

  They can flag and remove counterfeits and invitations and scams by utilizing this unique file type. But what it did is it ratcheted down, and I should give a huge thanks to the OpenSea team. They were outstanding in helping with this project.

• 1:58:37Tim Ferriss?

  A million different ways. So I want to give them full credit where credit is due. And also the fact that this file type, which is incredibly high utility and important for the platform and for projects, because immediately had dozens of scams, just as Moonbirds did. There are a lot, there are a lot of fly by night grifters in this space. And anywhere there's anonymity, you're going to run into this, but once you add money to the mix, shit gets crazy very quickly. So that was a good thing, right? In the sense that that file type allowed us to contend with and prevent, or I shouldn't say prevent, but minimize confusion in the marketplace.

• 1:59:19Tim Ferriss?

  The side effect of that, though, is that the resolution was quite low. And as a result, people were not able to see a lot of the detail of the artwork, especially because it was full body. And we addressed that later by providing a token ID lookup where people could say, hey, I own Legend of Cock Punch number 234. Let me go to cockpunch.com/pfp, put in my number, I get a high resolution image. I also get a PFP camera angle from within Blender for this character.

• 1:59:50Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 1:59:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, which has been super fun. And

• 1:59:53Speaker 02

  So will that, wait, one question there. So if I put in my number, will that give me a cropped version of the head so I can use it?

• 2:00:00Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. It'll give the best cropped version of that and also the best camera angle from within Blender, which is 3D modeling software. And then what I did, because I had created these AI blended oil paintings of some of these characters for each of the houses. So there are eight primary houses in this world, much like Game of Thrones. And I created what you might consider even like a portrait painting equivalent of each of these iconic houses. And I did that by using Night Cafe. I think it's also called Night Studio, which largely uses stable diffusion, but also Dolly 2 and a few others.

• 2:00:45Speaker 02

  To blend the original artwork with Van Gogh's self-portrait.

• 2:00:51Tim Ferriss?

  And

• 2:00:52Speaker 02

  Oh, it's amazing.

• 2:00:52Tim Ferriss?

  And

• 2:00:53Speaker 02

  I didn't see this. Where did that's probably when I was on my meditation retreat.

• 2:00:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it was.

• 2:00:56Speaker 02

  Where do I see this at?

• 2:00:57Tim Ferriss?

  So if you go to, if you go to, and we can talk about Twitter, because I know that's might be on the docket. We should talk about it, actually. If you go to Twitter and then say, if you go to

• 2:01:07Speaker 02

  Slash cock punch?

• 2:01:08Tim Ferriss?

  Not, not slash cock punch. If you go to, I'm just waiting on my browser to respond. Wow, is my browser slow or is Twitter really slow right now? Might be Twitter. Or it could be that my account is suspended for the 12th time. That's been happening a lot.

• 2:01:26Speaker 02

  Elon. Elon's blocking you.

• 2:01:32Tim Ferriss?

  Elon's, Elon hates cock punches. Okay, I'm having trouble getting Twitter to display. But if you go to twitter.com slash, slouch.

• 2:01:46Tim Ferriss?

  Slouch.

• 2:01:47Speaker 02

  Happy New Year.

• 2:01:48Tim Ferriss?

  Happy New Year. If you go to twitter.com slash house.

• 2:01:54Speaker 02

  We need T-shirts for just for the random show that say slouch.

• 2:01:58Tim Ferriss?

  Slouch. Hashtag slouch. Slash house halux, like H A L L U X. If it, maybe it'll pop up for you.

• 2:02:08Speaker 02

  Okay, I went to slash H A L L U X.

• 2:02:13Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 2:02:13Speaker 02

  On Twitter?

• 2:02:14Tim Ferriss?

  Twitter.com slash house halux. So house, H A L L U X.

• 2:02:20Speaker 02

  Because if you just do halux, it's like a guy's toes on there.

• 2:02:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yep, that makes sense.

• 2:02:24Speaker 02

  Okay, there we go. Okay.

• 2:02:26Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So do you see what I'm talking about? You see sort of?

• 2:02:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:02:29Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so that

• 2:02:30Speaker 02

  Beautiful. That's amazing.

• 2:02:31Tim Ferriss?

  Isn't that gorgeous?

• 2:02:33Speaker 02

  Oh, it's so good.

• 2:02:34Tim Ferriss?

  It's so good. So if people go to twitter.com slash house halux, house halux is one of the eight greater houses. And each of these houses has its background coming out on the Cock Punch Podcast, which by the way, you were gone for this. But debuted at number one in fiction across all of Apple Podcasts, ended up at

• 2:02:56Tim Ferriss?

  Top 50 or top 60 across all of Apple Podcasts. And people are now listening to these and getting really into it. People are enjoying it. And particularly, once I made the, and my team, I should give them credit, the higher res, full body images and PFPs available. I put out a video on YouTube, which showed people how to convert their PFP into this Van Gogh self-portrait styled oil painting. And people have been having a blast. They've been having so much fun. And things have gone pretty bananas. There is a lot of creativity. More cock punches. There's, there's a lot of creativity being unleashed.

• 2:03:41Tim Ferriss?

  And this was the hope. And hence, the description of the project as emergent long fiction. Emergent, not just emergent from me, but emergent from the audience. So for instance, there is this unofficial Discord. I said from the outset, I wasn't going to make a Discord, because everybody told me Discord is where all the evil comes out. And I have, however, ended up chancing upon this unofficial Discord where they had, I might have sent this to you and Brendan via text. They had AI-driven cockfights with different cock punch characters on this Discord. And I have never seen anything like this. It was so funny that I was sweating through my clothing.

• 2:04:26Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, it was beyond hilarious. And rock climbing. Yeah, it was like rock climbing, but, but a lot more hilarious. And what they did, it was genius. So they had people opt in to competing. So let's say they have brackets, like an NCAA tournament. And each character would feed in their name and their traits. So the traits and attributes that you would find on, say, OpenSea. And then the moderator, who was also the commentator, kind of like a sports commentator, would feed this into ChatGPT. And he would add a prompt like, describe an epic battle between.

• 2:05:08Tim Ferriss?

  Or among and list all these characters with their traits and then chat GPT would spit out this fight scene and he then on discord in a voice channel would read this for everybody as it's happening as it's being generated so there's a live sports element to it there was somebody else in the channel who because a bunch of these characters especially from the amekawa have an instrument which is called a shamisen which is a traditional Japanese instrument somehow he managed to pull up this super aggressive traditional shamisen music so you have this commentator who's reading the live fights like the play by

• 2:05:48Tim Ferriss?

  play like a boxing match from the 1950s while this crazy Japanese music is playing and simultaneously the text thread is going crazy with all these people commenting and throwing in memes it was beyond hilarious Dude, so crazy. And so exciting and fucking fun it was so fun and I had nothing to do with it I mean look I provided a few of the raw materials perhaps in the form of a funny name some artwork the attributes and the naming of the attributes by the way not accidental if people look at the attributes they have not paid most people have not paid enough attention

• 2:06:32Tim Ferriss?

  to the naming of the weapons and the attributes I spent at least 10 hours just on naming so that will become more relevant later but the way that this is unfolding has been super fun it's been super fun there was a period of time where I was just like fuck all these NFT traders fuck these people I was so annoyed because there was so much unnecessary spinning of conspiracy theories like Tim's gonna send all the money to his own charity and buy a Lamborghini and run off to Bermuda this whole thing's a scam it's a rug pull and I'm like what are you talking about I put everything in the FAQ

• 2:07:11Tim Ferriss?

  I told you all of the conditions all of the objectives stop it just fucking stop it but there is I think I would imagine you tell me but inevitably this cycle of like over exuberance as soon as the floor price drops by point 001 ETH like 10% of the people lose their fucking minds and become children

• 2:07:35Speaker 02

  Here's the thing. Here's the thing. This is the best advice I can give you, Tim, is that having been here in my wise old age of six months longer than you have.

• 2:07:45Tim Ferriss?

  Which is like 10 years in NFT.

• 2:07:47Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. I can tell you that what happens is there are a lot of flippers that come in, obviously, that are looking like, how can I two or three X this in two minutes, right?

• 2:07:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:58Speaker 02

  And then eventually you'll realize, and it's really cool that we're starting to see this happen in Moonbirds, where a lot of that is kind of like that chatter has gone away. And it's more about the long-term holders that understand that like, you know, great projects, great visions, great businesses, they're not built over six months.

• 2:08:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it takes time.

• 2:08:18Speaker 02

  Next decade, right? And so if we're going to do that, like they, they, they're signing up and believing in us as builders over the long term. And I think that's, that's where you'll get to is you'll get to people that are like, oh, I love the podcast. I love the lore. I love the backstory. I love what Tim's doing here. I'm a holder for the long term. And what you'll see is your percent listed will drop over time, right? And that will be because you're getting in just more of the long-term holders that believe in the, the project of the long, over, over the next decade, which is very exciting. And I already see that happening with your collection today, which is great.

• 2:08:54Speaker 02

  The one thing I will say that was, is amazing is you had one of your golden cocks, which is your kind of signature cock, go for 55 ETH. Which is just insane. 55.550 ETH is one of what your, your cocks went for. And it has the, the gold balls attribute.

• 2:09:17Tim Ferriss?

  It's full gold. That is full gold.

• 2:09:21Speaker 02

  Well, copper too, right?

• 2:09:22Tim Ferriss?

  It might be copper. It might be copper. Yeah, there's, there are a couple of different options. There's, let's see here, there's gold. Pewter, I believe, which is the silver equivalent, but I thought pewter was much cooler. And then copper, because I love copper. That's a long story, but I really have an affinity for copper. There are a bunch of metals I have affinities for. Copper is one.

• 2:09:44Speaker 02

  One question I have for you is you have an attribute called the circle of eight.

• 2:09:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:09:51Speaker 02

  My Zen hat on says that's an enso. So is it an enso or no?

• 2:09:57Tim Ferriss?

  An enso. Describe for the audience what an enso is.

• 2:10:00Speaker 02

  It's just like the Japanese symbol for, like, you can look up, go and type in E N S O, enso, into Google Images and you'll see it's like the, you know, it's the standard Zen circle.

• 2:10:13Tim Ferriss?

  So look at, can you pull up one of those characters as you're looking at them?

• 2:10:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have them up right now.

• 2:10:21Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, look at the shirt. What's on the shirt? Can you see what's on it?

• 2:10:25Speaker 02

  It's green. Hold on, let me get back to it. Yeah, it's a green shirt and it's got the single, oh, there's a dragon.

• 2:10:33Tim Ferriss?

  So it's a, it's a, it's a circle.

• 2:10:35Speaker 02

  It's a dragon eating its own tail. Okay, my bad. I thought it was more of the single stroke like Zen symbol. You know what I'm talking about, right?

• 2:10:42Tim Ferriss?

  It may not be unrelated to that.

• 2:10:46Speaker 02

  It's not too far off. Oh, interesting.

• 2:10:48Tim Ferriss?

  It may not be unrelated. That is a dragon eating its own tail. In what is called an orboros. And there are a lot of kind of hyper proud liberal arts folks who use this word or mythological reference in snarky magazine articles, but they don't actually have full understanding of the mythological significance and variation on this, this concept of the orboros. So people can look into it. But you were going to ask about them. I will say that I think the circle of eight are overlooked.

• 2:11:30Speaker 02

  There's only seven of them, though. Why aren't there eight of them?

• 2:11:33Tim Ferriss?

  There is an eighth. He's in there. He's in there somewhere.

• 2:11:37Speaker 02

  He's not tagged as circles of eight, though.

• 2:11:39Tim Ferriss?

  He is not.

• 2:11:39Speaker 02

  And it could be a she.

• 2:11:40Tim Ferriss?

  He is not, he is not, no, it can't be a she because they're all cocks. But yes.

• 2:11:48Speaker 02

  So there's not a single ballist one out of all of them? They're all?

• 2:11:51Tim Ferriss?

  There's not a single what? Ball-less one?

• 2:11:54Speaker 02

  You said they're all, yeah, yeah, they're all cocks. Like, they're all, they're all male.

• 2:11:58Tim Ferriss?

  It's cock punch. Yes. They're all, they're all, they're all, they're all cock.

• 2:12:03Speaker 02

  You're like, Kevin, the, uh, maybe the title may have tipped you off. It's actually cock punch?

• 2:12:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, it's very much, but that is one of the outstanding mysteries in the realm of Varlata, which, as described by the seventh scribe in the first episode of the podcast, is there are several very significant outstanding questions. And one is, where are the women? We assume we got here by birth.

• 2:12:32Speaker 02

  Is this season two for you?

• 2:12:34Tim Ferriss?

  Question mark, question mark, question mark.

• 2:12:36Speaker 02

  Ooh, interesting. Lady bunch. I could go way worse, but I'm not gonna say.

• 2:12:42Tim Ferriss?

  Cuntslap.com.

• 2:12:47Speaker 02

  You're definitely gonna bleep that one out.

• 2:12:50Tim Ferriss?

  No, I just love saying that because I know that some aspirational squatter is gonna go out and buy cunt slap.

• 2:12:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:12:56Tim Ferriss?

  Everything. He'd be like, you didn't get cuntslap. Eith. Now you can buy it from me for $20,000. And I'll be like, enjoy that one. I'm never gonna use it.

• 2:13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:03Tim Ferriss?

  I have a lot of ideas. I'm not committing to a decade of building X, Y, or Z. I've made this clear from the outset. I'm gonna do this as long as it's energy feeding, which I think is part of the reason why a lot of traders have ditched, which I'm thrilled about. And I'm not saying that traders are trivial. They provide liquidity and a really important function, and I understand why they do what they do. But as somebody pointed out on Twitter, who is a holder of one of these cock punch NFTs, they said, with every secondary transaction, you are getting closer to the community that you want. And I thought about that. I was like, fuck, that's true. And I've seen that, even though it's only been-

• 2:13:45Speaker 02

  Did you tweet that out? Cause that's some sage shit I need to tweet out.

• 2:13:48Tim Ferriss?

  It wasn't mine, it was somebody else. I apologize that I can't remember the proper attribution, but it was like with every secondary sale, you are getting closer to the community that you want. And it's so true when you think about it. Even if I look at the last, when did this even happen? God, it seems like six months since I launched, but it's only been two weeks.

• 2:14:08Speaker 02

  Three weeks.

• 2:14:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. You know, I will say, oh man, when I talk to people who have been deep in the trenches with NFTs for like six months, a year, two years, it is like looking at a before and after photo of Obama when he got elected and four years later.

• 2:14:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:31Tim Ferriss?

  People are worn down. They've got the thousand yard stare. Like their black hair is all gone gray. I'm like, holy shit, you really gotta pace yourself.

• 2:14:42Speaker 02

  Why do you think all this shit's gray?

• 2:14:42Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my God, it's so intense.

• 2:14:45Speaker 02

  Well, I'm excited for you, man. I think this is a fun, creative chapter for you. And I love that you're not saying, this is my next great book. This is my next, it's just a fun outlet, right?

• 2:14:56Tim Ferriss?

  It's a fun outlet, but I want to rewind and say something, echo something that you said, and we hadn't had that much booze. This was in Santa Monica and I don't know if we were recording, but I was showing you some of the artwork and I was getting excited. I was explaining some of the stuff I was thinking about. And you said, and maybe you were joking, you can tell me, but you're like, this might be the biggest thing that you've done. And-

• 2:15:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:22Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think that's a 0% likelihood. I know that sounds fucking crazy, but I don't think it's 0%. I really don't.

• 2:15:32Speaker 02

  No, the reason I say that is because, and I truly did mean that when I said it, is because of one simple thing. And this is like, it's funny. You know, just in full transparency, a handful of friends are like, what's Tim doing? What's this cock punch thing? You know, and they come up to me because they know I know you.

• 2:15:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:51Speaker 02

  And they're like wanting to know, like, is this crazy? Like, what is he gone off the deep end? I'm like, I'm like, my answer is always very succinct and it's on point. And then I say, you don't understand, like, Tim is a creativity factory. And if you point that in the right direction.

• 2:16:12Tim Ferriss?

  Look at those triceps, by the way.

• 2:16:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, look at those triceps.

• 2:16:15Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God, look at that forearm of those triceps.

• 2:16:17Speaker 02

  If you point that in the right direction, you're going to have just something that could turn into a franchise and something that is much bigger than you're even imagining. Oftentimes, we see this in technology all the time, whether it be Twitter or Instagram, or you name it. I can probably point to 15 companies that everyone thought when they launched, that it was a fun little fad.

• 2:16:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 2:16:41Speaker 02

  And then it snowballs into something bigger and bigger and bigger. And all of a sudden, it would not shock me if five years from now, and I know you're not saying this is me saying this, but you're in some major motion picture crazy shit, multi like print book like world where this blows up to something much bigger. And so when I looked at that, I said, wow, this is, this is, if you take your nonfiction world and move it to fiction, this is your creativity shifting to that fiction world, which I want to watch. I want to watch every chapter of that, you know?

• 2:17:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:18Speaker 02

  So I'm excited for you.

• 2:17:19Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks, man. Yeah, it's, I'm having a lot of fun.

• 2:17:23Speaker 02

  Or it can be nothing.

• 2:17:24Tim Ferriss?

  Or it can be nothing, right? Like.

• 2:17:25Speaker 02

  But that's, that's the best part.

• 2:17:27Tim Ferriss?

  It is.

• 2:17:28Speaker 02

  Is you haven't promised that this is the future. You're saying, I'm going to have a great time.

• 2:17:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:33Speaker 02

  And let's see what happens.

• 2:17:34Tim Ferriss?

  I have the emergency exit. If I get sick of it.

• 2:17:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:17:37Tim Ferriss?

  I'm out. And what you described.

• 2:17:40Speaker 02

  The floor goes to zero.

• 2:17:42Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe. I don't think that's inevitable. I do not think that's inevitable because my goal is to create something that can perpetuate without me. That's always the objective, right? When's the last time I gave an interview for the Four Hour Work Week? 10 years ago?

• 2:17:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:17:59Tim Ferriss?

  Still one of the top books on Amazon and

• 2:18:03Speaker 02

  That's a great point.

• 2:18:04Tim Ferriss?

  So my intention, and here's the thing, there's a cohesion and a shared incentive and an alignment with NFTs that does not quite exist with books. And that's very interesting to me. So

• 2:18:20Tim Ferriss?

  I'm studying this very deeply, having a lot of conversations. I could ditch in a month if I deal with like a thousand consecutive dick faces on the internet, maybe. But so far, it's been pretty easy relative to all the things that I've had to contend with over the last, let's say, decade. It's been pretty easy to discard that just because the nonsense is clearly nonsense. And the people spouting nonsense are generally spouting that nonsense to other people who are spouting nonsense. And even in two weeks, just being able to withstand the heat in the kitchen and staying in the kitchen.

• 2:19:05Speaker 02

  Oh, then you know you're good.

• 2:19:06Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of that has resolved itself already.

• 2:19:08Speaker 02

  It's gonna calm down. Exactly.

• 2:19:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, in 10 days. It's already calmed down. And so for me, this is when the interesting stuff starts, right? This is when things start to get interesting, when I have a critical mass of people, as evidenced by this unofficial Discord and these competitions, which were unbelievably entertaining. I mean, I think this could get to a point where people pay just to be a spectator at these competitions. I know that's a strong statement, but

• 2:19:40Speaker 02

  I mean, look at esports, man. It's freaking huge.

• 2:19:42Tim Ferriss?

  It blew my mind. So I give everyone who did that a lot of credit. I was flabbergasted. It was Truly one of the greater holy shit moments I've had in the last several years. So if that is what's happening within two weeks.

• 2:20:00Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 2:20:01Tim Ferriss?

  Holy shit. And I'm excited. I'm having fun. And also you think about nonfiction and all of the, if you're a responsible nonfiction writer, who is engaging in creative nonfiction. But within the broad category of creative, you need to adhere to a certain factual basis that is verifiable. When you remove those limiters and you enter the world of fiction, which requires, if you're going to do it well, I think some degree of consistency. And you need to ensure that storylines mesh to some degree. But when you remove some of the common constraints of nonfiction, holy moly.

• 2:20:43Tim Ferriss?

  What I have experienced is that you tap a wellspring of creativity that is enormous, that just does not exist when you're writing fact based. I don't want to call it literature, but when you were, when you were trying to produce fact based writing. And I'm having fun, man. I'm having so much fun and it opens the door to so many things, right? I was talking to somebody on my team today and I was saying, you know, I've never ever wanted to sell Tim Ferriss branded shit. Like the idea of somebody walking around with like a Tim Ferriss show t-shirt with my fucking face on it, like that makes me want to puke.

• 2:21:28Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I have your thong, the limited edition one you did.

• 2:21:30Tim Ferriss?

  The limited edition thong with my face right on the balls. That's true. You did get the one of one. That is, that is the first one of one I produced.

• 2:21:38Speaker 02

  So nice of you.

• 2:21:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're welcome. Happy anniversary. The idea of having my face on, say, a t-shirt just always made me puke a little in my mouth.

• 2:21:48Speaker 02

  That isn't.

• 2:21:49Tim Ferriss?

  Not, never, just never want, just never wanted to do it. But people do that stuff, right? And I don't.

• 2:21:53Speaker 02

  Who does their face on a t-shirt?

• 2:21:55Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not going to name names.

• 2:21:56Speaker 02

  I can see your logo.

• 2:21:57Tim Ferriss?

  Well, even just Tim Ferriss on a shirt feels weird to me. So it's just too, I like, I'm sure I'm a narcissist, but I'm not that narcissistic. I just couldn't get there. But the idea of having a small subculture of people who at some point might walk around with a cock punch logo on their shirt. Probably without cock punch on it, right? That would be two in your face, but like a logo on it where anyone who sees it knows and that can be like the Fight Club wink. That's fun.

• 2:22:31Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:22:31Tim Ferriss?

  That's super fun. And I'm not saying I'm going to do that, but it's fun for me to imagine that being a possibility. So suddenly, all of these handcuffs that I placed on myself for good reasons around what I could or couldn't do are gone. They're completely gone. It's called cock punch for fuck's sake. Like I can do whatever I want. You know, it's fun. It's fun. I'm really excited about it.

• 2:22:56Speaker 02

  I have one awkward question for you and it just popped in my mind as a consumer of your podcast, but something you may not agree to divulge and which we can cut it out.

• 2:23:07Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 2:23:08Speaker 02

  But there was a point here a few minutes ago where you said the four hour work week is still on the New York Times bestselling list.

• 2:23:16Tim Ferriss?

  No, I didn't say that. I said it's still one of the top selling books on Amazon.

• 2:23:19Speaker 02

  Top selling books. Okay. Top selling books on Amazon. Yeah, you're right. These are different things. I'm sure there's a lot of people and Tim, don't, don't take this as like, I'm being, oh, if you're willing to divulge, a lot of people would be curious. What did you receive for the signing bonus to do that book? Cause this is your first big book.

• 2:23:39Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, four hour work week?

• 2:23:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then what does it look like over time? And then like, what do you make now on that book? Like per year? Like, can you talk about that? Like,

• 2:23:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I can talk about it.

• 2:23:50Speaker 02

  Forget the ego stuff. And I think it's really interesting, right?

• 2:23:52Tim Ferriss?

  I'll talk about it. I'm happy to, I'm happy to talk about it. Uh, and these are not going to be, well, in the case of the ongoing annual stuff, I'm not going to have an exact number, but I can give you an idea. So,

• 2:24:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, just rough estimates.

• 2:24:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, rough estimates. So a few things on the book publishing side. And I may have to take a pee break because after the ketones and tequila and soda water.

• 2:24:12Speaker 02

  Stop here in a minute. We're like two hours.

• 2:24:14Tim Ferriss?

  I'm having fun. I'm happy to go. This is, we're two hours 24 minutes in, but this is, this, uh, this is a good episode. We're, we're covering a lot.

• 2:24:23Tim Ferriss?

  My advance for the four hour work week, which was paid out in four to six installments, I want to say, I don't recall exactly, over probably a year and a half, was $75,000, if I remember correctly.

• 2:24:38Speaker 02

  Okay. Your first book, you approached them or they approached you? Or how did this?

• 2:24:43Tim Ferriss?

  Well, the way it happened is a long story. I ended up finding a very good editor named Stephen Hanselman, who had just become an agent. He was untested largely as an agent, but I trusted his taste and we hit it off. He then took the book and pitched it to a bunch of editors, 27 or 29 of which rejected it, in some cases rudely, really rudely. Ultimately sold it on one of our last meetings in person in New York City with editors and publishers. And Crown took a risk at the time. Crown was in Random House. Now I think it's Harmony Books.

• 2:25:26Tim Ferriss?

  The publishing world has a lot of shuffling constantly, so it's hard to keep track. But I believe, and the person who gave the go ahead was Steve Ross at the time. I think it was Steve Ross. I think I'm getting his first name right. At then at Crown, so thank you, Steve. And it was 75K paid out over probably a year or a year and a half.

• 2:25:52Speaker 02

  Now that's an advance, right? So they're saying if you sell that many books, you have to break that first, right?

• 2:25:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. So we're prepaying you for a certain number of books. And if you exceed it, then you get the royalty. And the royalty per copy for hardcover is going to be anywhere between 10% and 15% of cover price. Well.

• 2:26:17Speaker 02

  Couple bucks?

• 2:26:18Tim Ferriss?

  A couple bucks, right? So if it's, if it's, let's just say it's 20 bucks. And let's make it, it's not going to be 10%. So it'll be, it'd be, let's just call 15%. That'd be $3 a book. From that $3 though, keep in mind, you gotta pay taxes and you also have to beforehand pay your agent, which is generally going to be 15%. And then anything else that comes out of it. Okay. Right, so I was You sold millions of copies. I sold millions of copies. It took time. It did not flash boil as quickly as, say, Atomic Habits, or as quickly as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. It did not flash boil

• 2:27:02Tim Ferriss?

  as quickly as either of those books. It took some time. It took some time. It came out in April of 2007. It did not hit number one New York Times, which it did first on the monthly business list, until I want to say August. It took some time. The initial print run was 10,000 copies, and it sold out, and then nobody could buy the book anywhere. Wow. Which is a, which is a quality problem, and it's actually a significant problem. And that is the advanced story, or at least the numbers on the advance. So what's your yearly look like at this point? Like, is it like 50 grand, or? Well, let me, let me, you know, I asked this recently, let me try to pull up my text thread. I was trying to come up with this number recently. So, uh, give me just a second.

• 2:27:46Tim Ferriss?

  Just like a rough estimate's fine, too. It doesn't have to be... Yeah, I just don't want to, I don't, I'm very, you know how particular I am. I don't want to misrepresent anything. So... But it's sub 100K. Is that right? Or more? You're probably selling over 100,000 copies a year. Maybe 100 to 150K. Okay. I mean, I've written and published now five books that were number one New York Times and/or Wall Street Journal. And many of them stuck for a very long time. You know, I'm looking at a text thread with my agent, and he sent a photo, which is pretty fun,

• 2:28:26Tim Ferriss?

  with Four Hour Work Week on the trending rack at Barnes and Noble after 15 years, after 15 years. Now, on this rack, you have Thinking Grow Rich, which has been around for decades. You have The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Grant, been around for decades. Four Hour Work Week, The Millionaire Next Door, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Rich Dad, yeah, exactly. I was gonna say, that one's always up there. Power Positive Thinking. I'm just gonna name a few, because why not? Trust and Inspire, I'm not familiar. Tribe of Mentors, I've got two on this rack. Atomic Habits, Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, The 10x Rule, and a number of others. So on the trending rack...

• 2:29:06Tim Ferriss?

  I'm actually in good longevity company with a number of these, but 15 years afterwards, it's still.

• 2:29:14Speaker 02

  You're like a musical artist at this point. Like it's basically like, you know, if you're insert any like Queen or Michael Jackson, whatever, like there's just ongoing royalties that just trickle in over time because you're.

• 2:29:26Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 2:29:27Speaker 02

  You've hit that point. It's evergreen content.

• 2:29:30Tim Ferriss?

  It's evergreen by design and I'm looking at this here.

• 2:29:37Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:29:37Tim Ferriss?

  It's amazing. I would say all of my books on an annual basis. I mean, these are not the most successful books of all time. This is not Harry Potter, but this is probably top 1% in terms of earnings and track record for nonfiction books.

• 2:29:55Tim Ferriss?

  And my total royalties pre-tax would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. And I don't know.

• 2:30:06Speaker 02

  That buys a lot of Campbell's soup and Denny Moore beef stew.

• 2:30:09Tim Ferriss?

  It buys a lot of Campbell's soup, but, but let's just take it as an example. I mean, I have put many hundreds of thousands of dollars into the development of Cock Punch. And I won't bore people with all the specifics, but there's, there's a lot of money that has gone.

• 2:30:24Speaker 02

  I love that you went with that. That's amazing.

• 2:30:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So, no, this is just to say.

• 2:30:28Speaker 02

  You're like, I'm taking all of your money from Four Hour Work Week and put it right back into Cock Punch, you motherfuckers.

• 2:30:34Tim Ferriss?

  No, well, it's not so much a guilt trip. It's just to say, I think it's, it's crazy to think about the fact that I could take almost all or all of my royalties for all of my books.

• 2:30:48Speaker 02

  For a couple of years.

• 2:30:49Tim Ferriss?

  Decades of work.

• 2:30:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:52Tim Ferriss?

  All of the proceeds that I get from that, I put into an NFT project, which doesn't highlight that an NFT project done well costs a lot of money, although I do think it requires some. It's to highlight the fact that part of my reason for engaging with Web three and NFTs was the promise that artists could resurrect, in a sense, their creative powers through an ongoing royalty, which turns out. This is a shocker and was a shocker to a lot of people is not automatically baked in and guaranteed by your smart contract across all platforms. It's platform dependent.

• 2:31:32Speaker 02

  Let's be real. Let me give you some real talk now, Tim.

• 2:31:35Tim Ferriss?

  Real talk.

• 2:31:36Speaker 02

  It's like, okay, real talk is that you've had 5,396 ETH in total volume.

• 2:31:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:42Speaker 02

  Your creator fee is 6.9%.

• 2:31:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:45Speaker 02

  So you did, and, and I'm not, please, please, like, let everyone know on this podcast, what you did, it, no one does, which is the primary sale, you give all the money to charity.

• 2:31:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 2:31:57Speaker 02

  Secondary sale, you're saying this is what's going to maintain the project, which I think is awesome.

• 2:32:01Tim Ferriss?

  That's to be clear, I actually said Tim might use it on whiskey and horrors. I said this, like, I didn't even address.

• 2:32:07Speaker 02

  So, given the Tim a single again, uh, the, the, the, the second, second piece of that may, may kick in.

• 2:32:13Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, boy.

• 2:32:14Speaker 02

  We can cut that out. Uh, so, Jesus, I'm sorry, Tim.

• 2:32:19Tim Ferriss?

  That's all right.

• 2:32:20Speaker 02

  Those are good. So 5,396 total ETH times point 069, your creator fee is 372 ETH. So 372, obviously times like, let's just say ETH is a 1,200. That's, means you've, you've already broken even. You've, you're at $446,000 in secondary sales.

• 2:32:38Tim Ferriss?

  Have not even recoup my costs for Cock Punch yet, but yes.

• 2:32:41Speaker 02

  Your cost for more than a half million?

• 2:32:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 2:32:44Speaker 02

  Wow, that's crazy. Well, and you have to pay taxes on this because this is, this is revenue, right?

• 2:32:48Tim Ferriss?

  And, and that is not counting my time. I'm working at

• 2:32:52Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:32:52Tim Ferriss?

  Below minimum wage, given the number of hours I put into this. But if we discount that, if we're just considering hours for contractors, the costs, which I view as, as an investment for artists, for my team members who are allocating a significant portion of, let's just say their annual salary to these things. I do not think I have yet broken even and I'm totally

• 2:33:17Speaker 02

  I think you're gonna be okay.

• 2:33:17Tim Ferriss?

  Fine with it. I'm totally fine with it. I am totally fine.

• 2:33:21Speaker 02

  You're gonna break even, dude.

• 2:33:23Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not worried.

• 2:33:23Speaker 02

  There's no doubt.

• 2:33:24Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not worried. Yeah, I'm not worried. I'm not worried.

• 2:33:26Speaker 02

  As the storyline matures, the lore matures, your commitment matures, like, there's no doubt that, dude. Well, I won't even say what other projects they can compare these against, but like, you are.

• 2:33:38Tim Ferriss?

  The projects doing well. Yeah, the projects.

• 2:33:40Speaker 02

  The project's doing well.

• 2:33:41Tim Ferriss?

  The project's doing well. And, and what's most exciting to me is the trend that I am seeing and the coalescing of a community of people who are actually excited about it and thoughtfully excited about it. They're not just drunk on cock punch fumes. They're actually thinking about the lore. They're tracking the lore. They're tracking some of the details that a lot of folks have missed. And they're paying attention and they're excited about it. They're having fun with it, which is the whole fucking point.

• 2:34:11Speaker 02

  This is exactly what I'm most excited about, the Moonbirds community and what we're doing over there is that we're finally getting to the point where I feel like the community is tipped over and said, we're in this for the long term. They're excited about what we're building. They excited about some of the novel mechanics that we're doing on the technical side that haven't been done before or being done in different ways. And once you get there, you're in a great place as a project because you feel good. You feel energized to go into work and like really put in more energy into this, you know, which is

• 2:34:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:40Speaker 02

  what we can all kind of hope for. So I will say a couple of little things to hit before we wrap things up. One thing certainly worth checking out for everyone out there, especially high risk folks. And Tim, I purposely put this in the rundown so that we could chat about it, but there is a mode new to iOS called Apple Lockdown Mode. And if you go into settings on your iPhone, you'll probably do this because I know you're paranoid like this shit, but like if you enable Lockdown Mode, it actually disables like five very common things that you would typically allow on the iPhone, but it prevents.

• 2:35:17Tim Ferriss?

  That's a good idea.

• 2:35:18Speaker 02

  Most of the compromises that happen from like state actors, like, like other governments and like sophisticated attackers.

• 2:35:25Tim Ferriss?

  Protect devices against extremely rare and highly sophisticated cyber attacks.

• 2:35:30Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's things like if you get a, like a lot of payloads, meaning like the vulnerabilities will come over SMS, right? Or text message. And if you get something from, say, someone that you don't know, it by default blocks them. Like, things like just obvious things you should have enabled. It does cripple a few things in terms of the functionality of the iPhone. Anything else before we wrap things up?

• 2:35:58Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I'm kind of curious. You have a couple of bullets. Love your spelling. Am I done with ayahuasca? I'm assuming that is the question. And then, and then about investing? Let's talk about those two.

• 2:36:15Speaker 02

  So real quick on the ayahuasca front, let me just preface this a bit in that I would consider you to be the first person I ever heard about ayahuasca. I'm like, let's call it like eight years ago, or whatever the fuck it was, like a long time ago, it was from you. And nobody was doing that shit. It was like, you had to get a proper shaman, blah, blah. Now, like, Los Angeles, like, you know, CVS is doing ayahuasca things at night. Like, it's like everywhere. What, what, what say you? You fucked everyone and that you created this crazy trend. And, and, and have you found durable lasting effects from it? Like, would you still recommend it for most people? Or what's your take on that?

• 2:36:55Tim Ferriss?

  I wouldn't recommend it for most people. I have found durable benefits, and I've also found unpredictable risks. So I will say that about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, I had an extended deep depressive episode for several months precipitated by two nights of consuming ayahuasca. And there are reasons for that. It's not unexplainable. It was related to a lot of the content of that experience and a certain sense of meaninglessness and nihilism that was, I think, a predictable result of the

• 2:37:43Tim Ferriss?

  Content and experience that I went through. And I think in some way, the conclusion landing in this void of meaninglessness and nihilism is justified, but that doesn't make it productive. And it was certainly not psychologically beneficial. So after that experience, I decided to take a hiatus from partaking. And there are significant, not just psychological, but in some cases, physiological risks associated with ayahuasca. You can, you can experience, especially if you're on concurrent medications, like certain SSRIs, serotonin syndrome, you can have severe, severe side effects.

• 2:38:26Tim Ferriss?

  So this is not a trivial undertaking. And I have largely, in the last year, year and a half, paced down significantly any consumption of psychedelics. It's, I think that they will be an ongoing component of my life until it's game over, or at least this game over. And I transition from this physical form, should we say? I do think that they will be in-

• 2:39:00Speaker 02

  To the cock punch that you truly are.

• 2:39:02Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. Until we all ascend to the Valhalla of cock punch. But I do anticipate it'll be an ongoing aspect and important ritual component in my life. But I have dialed back the frequency substantially and-

• 2:39:24Speaker 02

  Let me ask you a question.

• 2:39:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:26Speaker 02

  Do you see the benefits degrade over time? In meaning that like, if you had to go back and talk to your first ayahuasca self, like let's call it like eight years ago, whatever it was.

• 2:39:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, 10 plus years ago now, yeah.

• 2:39:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's say 10 plus years ago. Would you say, hey, Tim, do it 10 times or do it five times or do it whatever? Like, is there, is there a kind of beneficial return the more that you do it? Or?

• 2:39:51Tim Ferriss?

  Tough question to answer. I think it depends a lot on the individual. It also depends on the reasons for which you are using it. I would say, I wouldn't have said that to myself.

• 2:40:05Tim Ferriss?

  I wouldn't have said do it 10 times and call it quits. I wouldn't have said that. I would have said, here's what I probably would have said. I would have said, number one, if you take this seriously, the deeper you go, the more interesting it becomes. If you pursue very qualified training

• 2:40:28Tim Ferriss?

  through people who have a proven lineage of focusing on this for hundreds of years, you can go very, very deep and it will get more interesting. I would have simultaneously said,

• 2:40:42Tim Ferriss?

  be very cautious about how deep you go because you can get lost. If this is not your tradition, if this is not your culture, if you've not been steeped in this, if you didn't start drinking ayahuasca when you were five years old, which is when a lot of these, let's just call them professionals will start drinking is when they're five, six or seven years old.

• 2:41:03Speaker 02

  Like a full dose or like just little tasters?

• 2:41:06Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know how it's introduced. Probably it's smaller doses, but very quickly getting to full doses. Very, very quickly getting to full doses.

• 2:41:15Speaker 02

  Is it fun when you do a little, little cough syrup, like on the side or do you have to do a full dose to get the?

• 2:41:23Speaker 02

  I've never, I've never done it. You know that.

• 2:41:25Tim Ferriss?

  I do. I will say.

• 2:41:27Speaker 02

  Can I say one thing, Tim?

• 2:41:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 2:41:28Speaker 02

  Can I say one thing?

• 2:41:29Tim Ferriss?

  You can say two things.

• 2:41:30Speaker 02

  One, one, one thing.

• 2:41:31Tim Ferriss?

  You can say three things.

• 2:41:33Speaker 02

  If you decide to do it again this year.

• 2:41:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 2:41:36Speaker 02

  If you would have me.

• 2:41:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:37Speaker 02

  I would do it with you finally after like 10 years.

• 2:41:40Tim Ferriss?

  All right. That's interesting. That's interesting. All right. I will not hold you to that, but that's good to know.

• 2:41:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd love to, man. I know that you would be a good guy. I know you'd be a good friend. I know you'd be a good shoulder and, you know, I know there's, having done high, high dose mushrooms. I cried and wept over my dad's passing over a lot of shit that would obviously comes up and you need, you need a support structure and I know you would be a fantastic friend at that.

• 2:42:08Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, thanks.

• 2:42:09Speaker 02

  I would love that if you, if you, if you'd have me at some point.

• 2:42:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, thanks, Kevin. And also the meditation training you've been doing will be instrumental. It will be incredibly, incredibly helpful. So that's good to know. And, and I will say that, you know, I'll, I'll just wrap up quickly, the, the advice I would have given to my younger selves. Number one is the deeper you go, the more interesting it will become, assuming that you have proper guidance from people who have a proven track record before this was fashionable of over generations cultivating an awareness and toolkit for interacting with these spaces.

• 2:42:50Speaker 02

  I was just gonna say one little, little tidbit to that, you know, even just being out here a couple of months, I hear, hey, come to our ayahuasca little thing in the LA hills, blah, blah. And it seems very commercial at this point.

• 2:43:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:03Speaker 02

  And I'm like, in my head, I was always like, I'm only gonna trust him on this shit because he's got that OG, that original shit, the, the, the good stuff, the good, you know? But you, you know what I mean? You must feel this.

• 2:43:14Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I'm strict.

• 2:43:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:15Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm very-

• 2:43:16Speaker 02

  I know you only seek out the best.

• 2:43:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. And I'm very, very, very, very particular and meticulous about how I assess expertise. I think that is one of my, one of my core forms of expertise is assessing expertise. I think I'm very good at it. And I, I think the vast majority of people who consume these things are children playing with loaded handguns. They don't realize the risks they're taking and the horrifying episodes generally don't get a lot of airtime. So there's a survivorship bias where people end up hearing the, the positive life altering

• 2:44:00Tim Ferriss?

  experiences and then the incorrect conclusion is made that the vast majority of experiences are like that. And I have not seen any evidence to suggest that's true. There are many positive life altering experiences, but-

• 2:44:16Tim Ferriss?

  Ayahuasca specifically is a big gun. It is very powerful. And the other warning I would give, in addition to, if you go deep, given that you are not native to this environment, there is a risk that you will become lost. And being lost could be an indescribably terrifying experience, where the line between reality and what you might perceive as a hyperreality in this other dimension, or fabricated reality as a UI as we perceive it versus any type of objective truth. Things can get very, very unclear, very quickly.

• 2:45:01Tim Ferriss?

  And I don't expect anyone to understand this, or even take it as reasonable that you could have that experience if you haven't been there. But take my word for it, you can get to some very, very slippery terrain. Furthermore, I would say, no matter how many times you have done this, doesn't matter if it's 10, or 100, or 200, you always stand the chance of pulling a Joker card from the deck and getting your fucking ass handed to you in a very serious way that has lasting- No, I don't want to do it anymore. That has lasting consequences. Now, I will say, just for you, Kevin, the group matters. I don't want to fly either.

• 2:45:46Tim Ferriss?

  The group matters. And I will say, more so than perhaps, at least from a format, a traditional format perspective, the people in the group matter. So you are going to have, this is another reason, or another example of where I think many people don't- Are you sane though, when you're doing this? Like, if I look over at you- Yeah. While we're doing this, you're not gonna be like-

• 2:46:11Tim Ferriss?

  Doing something crazy.

• 2:46:12Speaker 02

  I'm like, Tim's freaking out. Fuck, I'm freaking out.

• 2:46:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, generally, generally not. No, generally, I'm okay. Generally, I'm not like.

• 2:46:20Speaker 02

  I'm willing to be solid ground.

• 2:46:22Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I'm not like the Exorcist, right? My head's not like spinning around while vomiting in all directions and speaking in tongues. Things can get very strange and they almost certainly will get very strange, but I have never had the experience. Actually, I take that back. My in my first few experiences, there were one or two times where I felt out of control, fully out of control and was completely dislocated from anything resembling this reality. But the generally speaking now, or in recent history, I can go through very,

• 2:47:00Tim Ferriss?

  very, very challenging experiences. But if someone near me says, Tim, are you okay? Or Tim, how are you doing? I can reply to that in perfectly coherent English. Even if I even if.

• 2:47:15Speaker 02

  That's you out of it.

• 2:47:16Tim Ferriss?

  Even if I am, by all subjective interpretations, completely removed from time, space, identity. I can I can still respond to that, which is a developed. I think that's a cultivated skill, at least for me. But the fact of the matter remains that I could not have foreseen how violently I would be destabilized from that experience a year and a half, two years ago. And I think that was in part due to a degree of overconfidence after many rounds for a non-clinician, for a non-professional. I mean, the professionals drink four or five

• 2:47:59Tim Ferriss?

  nights a week and do so for years and years and years on end. So anyone who's like, I've done ayahuasca 10 times. I understand ayahuasca. You are setting yourself up for like spiritual head kick.

• 2:48:14Speaker 02

  The reason I'm excited about this, and tell me if if this is foolish, and I'm fine with you saying that. The one thing that I really appreciate about this practice of meditation is that there's two things. One, it's Henry slaps his legs and he says, "Just this, just this. This is, this is the moment, just this." And like, that really snaps me back into like, "This is the moment." And the second piece is that this idea of surrender, where you have something that's facing you, and you're like, "That's just a thought, let's surrender back to the moment," has been a big piece of this practice. And do you think that either of those things would be helpful?

• 2:48:57Tim Ferriss?

  Hundred percent. I'll tell you how they'll be helpful in my experience and how they'll be a hindrance, or how they can be a hindrance. So, on the helpful side, in these very, let's call them unusual and alternate experiences of reality, in say, an ayahuasca experience. And you can have nothing nights also, by the way. You get a brew that's super weak, or you just simply, for whatever reason, have your body veto the experience. You can have null experiences. It's pretty wild. I have had those. They're rare, but I've had experiences where I've had three cups, which I never do, three drinks, and have been more

• 2:49:41Tim Ferriss?

  sober than I am right now. Because I had one real drink, or two real drinks. And I don't have a good explanation for how that happens. But let's just assume we're talking about the full ride, and you're in. There's an expression, and this is used in therapy, but it's especially applicable, I think, to some of these stronger psychedelic experiences, which is, "What you resist persists." So, if you're having an emotion, it's not, it's not that the emotion is the problem, it's your response to the emotion that's the problem, right? So that is very much, I think, compatible.

• 2:50:23Tim Ferriss?

  Spanning the gap between what we might consider meditation and a psychedelic experience. It's the same. It's just magnified. If you resist something in meditation, there's a certain consequence. If you resist something in psychedelics, it's that consequence times 100. So if you're able to rehearse and practice and cultivate the ability to observe without resisting, it is very helpful. The risk, and I have seen this with experienced meditators, is that they effectively, in the psychedelic experience, are able to almost dissociate from a first-person experience and sit on the sidelines.

• 2:51:06Tim Ferriss?

  They don't allow themselves to be taken.

• 2:51:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love that. That's what I want to do.

• 2:51:16Tim Ferriss?

  And there's a certain wisdom in that. There's a safety in that. But you do not, in my opinion, you don't get the full experience.

• 2:51:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're the coach. You're watching the players on the field. You're like, yeah, good job. Keep it up.

• 2:51:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. Yeah, exactly. Clap, clap, clap. But you're not having the in-the-zone experience

• 2:51:37Speaker 02

  I get it.

• 2:51:37Tim Ferriss?

  of being on the playing field in a way that allows you to ride the lightning.

• 2:51:41Speaker 02

  Well, that's not true surrender then, right? Because if you're really, truly surrendering, you would let it take you.

• 2:51:48Tim Ferriss?

  If you allow it, for meditators, it's a conscious decision in many cases. Unless they just get...

• 2:51:54Speaker 02

  Interesting. Most people don't.

• 2:51:57Tim Ferriss?

  Most people don't. They just... For most people, it's not surrendering. It's being taken without thought of there being an alternative.

• 2:52:05Speaker 02

  Right. Right.

• 2:52:07Tim Ferriss?

  For meditators, I will say, I mean, there is a dose that will render

• 2:52:13Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 2:52:14Tim Ferriss?

  you just a piece of fucking... It could just be one cup, depending on the brew. It could just make you a piece of driftwood in a 100-foot wave, right? I mean, there is... There are circumstances in which I don't really care how good you are at meditating.

• 2:52:30Speaker 02

  You scare me. Stop talking about it. Let's just do it next week.

• 2:52:34Tim Ferriss?

  But, uh, but the room composition matters. And this is where I'm gonna get out there. So, welcome to crazy town, everybody. But when you have proper guidance in the form of someone who is quarterbacking the experience, and you have a room of, let's just say, four to eight people, I think around six is really the sweet spot for me. That is the right sized team for something like this. You are going to effectively have unprotected spiritual sex with everybody in that room, which is part of the reason why I typically do not drink with any strangers. I want to know what is under the hood for people on some level,

• 2:53:17Tim Ferriss?

  because it all gets put on the same shared table in that experience.

• 2:53:23Tim Ferriss?

  And I don't have any scientific proof for this. I only have my own direct experience and I try to trust in the fidelity of my direct experience. Stuff gets shared in that room. So it's good to have some basic familiarity of what you're, what you're contending with. And, well, what's interesting, you don't, it doesn't necessarily manifest in a negative way. So for instance, I have a friend who I have sat with many dozens of times now. And we will often have the exact same experience. We will see the same things. We will hear the same things.

• 2:54:07Tim Ferriss?

  We will experience nausea at exactly the same times. Or, more interestingly, one of us will get super nauseous and then the nausea will disappear and then the other person will vomit. As if that has been handed off to the other person. They assume that burden or responsibility or feeling and they process it for the other person. It's very odd. It's very odd and it is very, very common. So.

• 2:54:36Speaker 02

  You should get a good crew together. Who are we gonna get? It's you, me, David Blaine. Who else are we gonna get? So fucking Mike, Mike Shinoda, uh, lead singer, a kiss.

• 2:54:48Speaker 02

  Exactly. I gotta run. I gotta get back to my girls. This has been awesome, Tim.

• 2:54:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, good to hang, man. And

• 2:54:56Speaker 02

  It is.

• 2:54:57Tim Ferriss?

  Great to see you, man.

• 2:54:58Speaker 02

  I want to say a couple of things real quick before we wrap up. One, Happy New Year. I love you. I miss you.

• 2:55:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I love you too, brother.

• 2:55:05Speaker 02

  It is always great to do these. It's been so many fun years of us doing these, these ridiculous.

• 2:55:11Tim Ferriss?

  Makes me so happy.

• 2:55:12Speaker 02

  Ridiculous podcasts, you know, like speaking of cock punch, like this is the cock punch of podcasts.

• 2:55:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it really is.

• 2:55:19Speaker 02

  Because of us being ridiculous, like.

• 2:55:22Tim Ferriss?

  Hashtag forward slouch.

• 2:55:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, the thing I love about, like, just to say this because this goes on your main feed is like, you know, you have a very successful podcast that makes a lot of money doing what you do so well. And the fact that you would say, hey, I'm gonna dumb it down from time to time and just have a good time and do these types of shows. It means a lot, man. It's like, it's, it's, it's kind of, um, I think it's core of who we are, though. Like, we both like to be professionals on some level and then also just fuck it, we're gonna die soon. Let's have a good time, right?

• 2:55:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, 100% man. I, I love these conversations. I miss you, miss the family. And I, I hope to spend more time in person, so.

• 2:56:07Speaker 02

  I'm hoping you come to LA more often. You're thinking about that, right?

• 2:56:11Tim Ferriss?

  I would like to spend some more time out there. It's perfect weather. There's a lot to be said for it. Easy access to nature. I get to hang.

• 2:56:21Speaker 02

  I just, it was the dating life. Have a good time out here.

• 2:56:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, that's true. It's a large playing field out there and I am.

• 2:56:29Speaker 02

  A lot of pickleball out here.

• 2:56:30Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of pickleball. Lot of pickleball.

• 2:56:33Speaker 02

  I don't even know what that means.

• 2:56:35Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, you don't know what it means. Oh, what a, what a, what a class act. And I also have a lot of friends out there. I also have a lot of friends and it'd be fun to do these in person, man. We used to do in person all the time. We used to always do in person.

• 2:56:49Speaker 02

  In SF, yeah.

• 2:56:51Tim Ferriss?

  It was so fun. So.

• 2:56:52Speaker 02

  We looked a lot, lot younger, less gray ball sacks.

• 2:56:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the ball sacks were, were really resplendent in their youthful vigor.

• 2:57:02Speaker 02

  I had like a ponytail on mine. I had the whole thing.

• 2:57:05Tim Ferriss?

  Little, little ponytails. That was good luck.

• 2:57:10Tim Ferriss?

  On that note.

• 2:57:12Speaker 02

  I'm sorry if we offended anyone today. Obviously, we've had a few drinks.

• 2:57:15Tim Ferriss?

  I'm so not. I'm so not sorry. If you're offended, please, Jesus, relax. You're gonna, yeah, unsubscribe. You're gonna die soon. Have some fun. Exactly. All right, man. All right, brother. Good to see you, man. And to everybody listening, I don't even know if we're gonna have show notes, but maybe.

• 2:57:37Tim Ferriss?

  tim.blog/podcast, that's where you can find the more serious stuff. And happy holidays and happy new years, everybody. Happy new year to you too, man. 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? 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.

• 2:58:18Tim Ferriss?

  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 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 Allform. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep

• 2:59:03Tim Ferriss?

  and their mattresses, which I've been using since 2017. I have two of them upstairs from where I'm sitting at this moment. Helix has gone beyond the bedroom and started making sofas. They've launched a company called Allform, A-L-L-F-O-R-M, and they're making premium customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores. So I'm sitting in my living room right now and it's entirely Allform furniture. I've got two chairs. I've got an ottoman and I have an L sectional couch. And I'll come back to that. You can pick your fabric. They're all spill stain and scratch resistant. The sofa color, the color of the legs, the sofa size, the shape to make sure it's perfect for you in your home. Also, Allform arrives in just three to seven days and you can assemble it all yourself in a few minutes. No tools needed.

• 2:59:48Tim Ferriss?

  I was quite astonished by how modular and easy these things fit together, kind of like Lego pieces. They've got armchairs, love seats, all the way up to an eight seat sectional. So there's something for everyone. You can also start small and kind of build on top of it. If you wanted to get a smaller couch and then build out on it, which is actually in a way what I did, because I can turn my L sectional couch into a normal straight couch and then with a separate ottoman in a matter of about 60 seconds. It's pretty rad. So I mentioned I have all of these different things in this room. I use the natural leg finish, which is their lightest color and I dig it. I mean, I've been using these things hours and hours and hours every single day. So I am using what I am sharing with you guys. And if getting a sofa without trying it in store sounds risky, you don't need to worry.

• 3:00:33Tim Ferriss?

  Allform sofas are delivered directly to your home with fast, free shipping and you get 100 days to decide if you want to keep it. That's more than three months. And if you don't love it, they'll pick it up for free and give you a full refund. Your sofa frame also has a forever warranty. That's literally forever. So check it out. Take a look. They've got all sorts of cool stuff to choose from. I was skeptical and it actually worked. It worked much better than I could have imagined and I'm very, very happy. So to find your perfect sofa, check out allform.com/tim. That's A-L-L-F-O-R-M dot com slash tim. Allform is offering 20% off all orders to you, my dear listeners, at allform.com/tim. Make sure to use the code TIM at checkout. That's allform.com/tim and use code TIM at checkout.

• 3:01:17Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by GiveWell. Donating money to help other people is a wonderful act. But how can you be confident? How can you know that your donations are actually improving or saving lives effectively? It's hard to do. You could do weeks of research to find the charities that are out there, what programs they run, what their administrative overhead is, how effective those programs are and on and on and on. It would be a full-time job. It could take forever. I know this from experience because I tried to do it that way manually. It is a ton of work. GiveWell spends more than 30,000 hours each year researching charitable organizations. Then they direct funding to a few of the highest impact, evidence-backed opportunities

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  they've found. They do the work for you. More than 100,000 donors have used GiveWell to donate more than $1 billion, which includes 678,000 donated by you, my dear listeners. So it makes a difference. Rigorous evidence indicates that these donations will save more than 150,000 lives and improve the lives of millions more. That's why GiveWell does what they do. And using GiveWell's research is free. GiveWell wants as many donors as possible to make informed decisions about high-impact giving. So they publish all of their research and recommendations on their site for free, no sign up required. They

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  allocate your tax-deductible donation to the charity or fund you choose without taking a cut. If you've ever donated to GiveWell's recommended charities before, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year. That's 2022. So one more time. If you've never donated to GiveWell's recommended charities before, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to givewell.org. Give, G-I-V-E-W-E-L-L dot org, givewell.org. And when you get to checkout, pick Podcast and enter Tim Ferriss Show. It's that simple. Make sure they know that you heard about GiveWell on the Tim Ferriss Show to get

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  your donation matched. One more time, that's givewell.org. And when you get to checkout, pick Podcast and enter Tim Ferriss Show.