#807: In Case You Missed It: March 2025 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

This is a special inbetweenisode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can easily jump around to get a feel for the episode and guest. Based on your feedback, this format has been tweaked and improved since the first recap episode. For instance, listeners suggested that the bios for each guest can slow the momentum, so we moved all the bios to the end. See it as a teaser. Something to whet your appetite. If you like what you hear, you can of course find the full episodes at tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=monthly-recap. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by 5-Bullet Friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=timblog&utm_medium=timblog&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship, my very own email newsletter. Timestamps: Craig Mod: 03:16 Ev Williams: 13:49 Richard Taylor: 23:57 Full episode titles: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits https://tim.blog/2025/03/27/craig-mod/ Ev Williams — The Art of Pivoting (e.g., Odeo to Twitter), Strategic Quitting, The Dangers of Premature Scaling, Must-Read Books, and More https://tim.blog/2025/03/20/ev-williams/ Richard Taylor and Greg Broadmore, Wētā Workshop — Untapping Creativity, Stories from The Lord of the Rings, The Magic of New Zealand, Four Tenets to Live By, and The Only Sentence of Self-Help You Need https://tim.blog/2025/03/13/weta-workshop/ 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 Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers, and it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time, because after all, the podcasts, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week.

• 0:43Tim Ferriss?

  It's free, it's always gonna be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog/friday. That's tim.blog/friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with, and little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So, check it out, tim.blog/friday.

• 1:26Tim Ferriss?

  If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot, and you can, of course, easily subscribe anytime. So, easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog/friday, and thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question?

• 1:50Speaker 02

  No, we're seeing appropriate time.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 2:07Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life. This is a special in-between-isode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month. Features a short clip from each conversation in one place, so you can jump around, get a feel for both the episode and the guest, and then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes. View this episode as a buffet to whet your appetite. It's a lot of fun. We had fun putting it together. And for the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode's description, probably right below wherever you press play in your podcast

• 2:46Tim Ferriss?

  app, or, as usual, you can head to tim.blog/podcast and find all the details there. Please enjoy.

• 2:55Speaker 04

  First up, Craig Maude, a writer, photographer, and walker, living in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan, and the author of Things Become Other Things and Kisa by Kisa. You can find Craig on Instagram and X @CraigMaude. This excerpt comes from Tim's first interview with Craig.

• 3:16Tim Ferriss?

  2009 hike to Nepal. Is that enough of a cue? Can you tell this story?

• 3:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's an inflection point. I just got goosebumps, actually. So I really struggled with alcohol in my twenties. My teenage years, I didn't touch anything. I was militantly straight edge-ish. And basically, looking back now, I realize I had such a strong impulse to make sure I could get to whatever the next place was. Anything I saw that could hold me back, which included falling in love, or doing drugs, or anything like that, that was like a retarding agent, as a teenager, I was like, immediately, I was like, okay, I don't need this. And I got to Japan, and it was like, oh, this is a place to reinvent myself. And I started drinking, because, as you do, because people drink so much here.

• 4:00Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 4:01Speaker 05

  And it turns out that I can drink a lot. I can have 15, 20 drinks, not throw up. I rack out, sure, but like, there's something in my genes that allows me to just drink, and then after two or three drinks, something activates, where it's just, all we live for is more drink. And I think, you know, for most of my twenties, because I had such a low sense of self-worth, because of where I came from, because of, I felt this abundance of people around me that I didn't feel I had, and I didn't know how to ratchet that up. And I had this desire... To produce culture or to produce art, to produce literature at a level that I didn't know how to, and I didn't know how to bridge that gap. And what I ended up doing was because

• 4:43Speaker 05

  I didn't have mentors, because I didn't have archetypes near me, I just drank like a fish. And I played a lot of music because that was one thing I did have mastery over and played a lot of music and I played a lot of that blacked out. And you know, it was just, I'm really lucky I didn't die. I mean, it would be one of these things where many, many mornings of my life I've woken up and it's just been checking, is my face okay? Did I break my skull open or you know, something like that. And I was madly in love. I fell madly, madly in love. I was 26, 27 years old and I just, I had the most incredible love connection I'd ever felt. This like otherworldly sense of being in love with this person. And we connected

• 5:24Speaker 05

  so intensely and immediately went on a 40 day trip, like a week after meeting, a 40 day trip through Tibet. We went to Tibet. I was possessed by a spirit. I like, I spoke in tongues, like this. We hiked up to a glacier.

• 5:41Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, we can't really skip over getting possessed by spirits.

• 5:46Speaker 05

  I mean, it was, yeah, there was, we stayed at this one little hotel in Lhasa that had not always been a hotel, you know, it was this old structure. And woke up the next morning and my girlfriend was being very strange. She was being very weird. And I was like, what's going on? And she's like, I'll tell you when we get outside. I was like, what? You'll tell me when we get outside? Like, what's this about? And we go outside and she goes, okay, last night, we had to get out of there because last night, I woke up in the middle of the night, you were on your side of the bed, cradling something that

• 6:24Speaker 05

  was not there. You were speaking in Tibetan. I couldn't get you to wake up. And I was trying to speak to you in English, trying to speak to you in Japanese, you wouldn't respond. And I finally crawled over on your side of the bed and I kind of took the air that you were holding. And I turned you on your side and you were able to like calm down and go to sleep. And I was like, oh my God, I had this, because I had had this vision slash dream of this woman in white, standing in the doorway and at the foot of the bed the night before. And I don't know what was, what was happening. And like even now, I'm like full body goosebumps right now.

• 7:02Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God, this is like straight out of paranormal activity or something. I was like, oh, God.

• 7:08Speaker 05

  It was so bizarre. And we had been, you know, and you have to imagine, like, I don't know if you've ever been in love to this degree where it just feels like everything in the world is fated. Like, everything is a sign that you need to be together, that this is magic. Like, only these things can possibly happen because you're connected, you're together. We both bought, I remember, we like pulled out our books on the first day of the trip. We had both brought The Stranger by Camus. You know, it was like, it was like, oh, my God, we're faded. I went back to the hotel and I went to the manager and I was like, hey, uh, I don't think we could stay here tonight. He's like, oh, what's wrong? And I was like, well, you know, I was kind of possessed, saw this. He's like, did you see the woman? And I was like, yeah.

• 7:45Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God.

• 7:45Speaker 05

  He's like, he's like, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. No, I, we know what's going on with that. Here, we'll take you to the dream reader. And so I was like, what? You'll take me to the dream? So I ended up, I'll try to, try to truncate this because it can, it can kind of get a little bit long, but.

• 7:59Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, I'm not sure anybody listening wants you to truncate this particular story. So I mean, go wherever you want.

• 8:05Speaker 05

  One of the workers there is like, you know, the manager's like, okay, take him to the dream reader. So, and I'm thinking, okay, this is a scam. I'm getting scammed. Something weird's going on. And he takes us and we go to like the outskirts of Lhasa. We go to this like really kind of weird apartment block that was just made of concrete. It was maybe like two or three stories tall. And he takes us to this room on the third floor and there's a line of people, line of Tibetans waiting at this door. And they were all waiting to have their dreams read. So I was like, okay, this is bizarre. So we wait, we stand in line, we go inside, we sit down inside. The most beautiful, I don't know how old she was. She was anywhere between 15 and 1,000 years old.

• 8:45Speaker 05

  Like she was just this, this creature of just the most bizarre light walks out. It was like being in the Matrix. You know, the, the scene in the Matrix where they're like with the spoon and the bending and you're in this random apartment, the TV's on, you know, it was like that situation. She comes over, brings some yak buttermilk tea, some cookies. Because someone's in the dream reader room and we're waiting for them to get out. And then our term comes up. I go in there. You go into this room. It's all candles, Dalai Lama photos, like all this stuff. It's like you feel like in this really holy space. And the guy from the hotel interprets for us. I tell her the dream. I tell her what happened. And she gives me this blessing, puts a white wreath around my neck, gives me this little satchel of seeds and tells me to put them under my pillow when I sleep and then writes me a prayer.

• 9:27Speaker 05

  And she says, okay, here's these three pieces of paper. You have to take them to these three temples and they will burn them for you tonight. They'll know what to do. Just tell them the dream reader sent you and you'll be okay. You'll be fine. Everything will be good. And I was like, no one's asking me for money, you know? And the guy, the hotel guy's like, oh, you can like leave a tip if you want or whatever. And like, you know, it was like a $2 or something. I like put $2 in a little thingy. And then we go to the temples and like it ended up becoming this incredible adventure. This connects with a lot of my walking as well. You know, it's like having experiences like this, I think, informed this sense of like, just give yourself up to what the day could potentially give to you. And so I ended up going to all these temples I would have never gone to. I went to the dream reader's apartment,

• 10:08Speaker 05

  which was like the most bizarre, beautiful place I went to in, in all of Tibet in that entire trip. We went to these temples, you know, met these monks, say, hey, can you burn this for me? Oh, yes, of course. Absolutely. You know, give them like a dollar, you know, 50 cents or whatever. You know, the whole thing costs nothing. It was clearly not a scam. It was clearly this thing that a lot of locals were participating in and it was magic. It was just pure magic. So anyway, things like that were happening with this woman and I screwed it up because of my drinking. I ruined the relationship. She punched me in the face at one point, very rightfully so, you know? And she was like, hey, I can't be with someone like you. This happened on that trip? Not on that trip. That happened a couple of months later. We ended up staying together for about three months.

• 10:50Speaker 05

  And basically, I mean, it was just, it was about 10 years worth of lifetimes. Candle that burns twice as bright.

• 10:59Speaker 05

  But losing her was probably the biggest psychic damage I had ever encountered in my life for the, you know, as an adult. And I remember just lying in my tiny apartment in Tokyo, my six mat tatami room apartment in Tokyo. It was three in the morning. I wanted to die. It was rock, rock, rock bottom. This isn't like a rich roll story. I didn't like get up and run 40 miles or anything like that. But I was like, I'm gonna start running. And I went out and I ran like 5K at three in the morning through the streets of Tokyo. And I was like, that felt good. And I was like, okay, I need to stop drinking. And to stop drinking, I'm gonna run this marathon in November. I think it was like July when this happened. And I just started preparing for that. These were actually the

• 11:41Speaker 05

  first steps for me to deliberately address this lack of self-worth that I've been carrying around for all of my adult life. And that had, I think, driven me to drink the way I drank, that to give into whatever those genetic impulses were. And to start to go, okay, we're gonna run, we're gonna be someone who runs. A lot of this is also like very atomic habits style stuff. It's like, who are you gonna be and how are you gonna set yourself up to be successful? I'm gonna be a person who runs. I'm gonna be a person who doesn't drink. I'm gonna be a person who charges a lot. So I was, at this time, you know, with the publishing company thing, we were producing these books that were winning awards and making absolutely no money. And so I was consulting, doing like web design consulting and stuff like that. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna start charging absurd

• 12:25Speaker 05

  amounts of money for my time. The worst that can happen is people reject. And they started accepting it. And I was like, oh, little by little. All of these stupid little steps from the time I was basically 27 to 30, these were the most important years of tiny little steps. My time is more valuable. I'm gonna be a person who runs. I'm gonna be a person who can take care of themselves. I still drank, even though I tried to not drink, but I started lowering. It took me about four full years to completely get off the sauce in a really dangerous way. And it kind of, part of it culminated in going to Nepal and climbing up to Annapurna base camp.

• 13:05Speaker 05

  And that was after we had broken up and I felt like all the magic of my life was done. I felt like there was no way for me to experience magic again. I felt like she, and again, it's this totally irrational sense of scarcity. The amount of scarcity I felt as an adult in my twenties is just shocking. It was this fathomless sense of scarcity, like the money's not going to be there. The love isn't going to be there. The support isn't going to be there. And then when I lost her, I was like, I'm never going to have anyone who will ever love me like this person loved me. And like, I'm never going to be able to create like I created with this person. And I had to start proving to myself that that wasn't true. And I climbed up. I was like, okay, I'm just going to go to Nepal and I'm going to climb up Annapurna, go to base camp.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  And now Ev Williams, the co-founder of the new social network, Mozy, and the co-founder of Blogger, Medium, and Twitter. You can learn more about Mozy at mozy.app.

• 14:04Tim Ferriss?

  Metaphorically speaking, the billboard question, right? So if you were going to put a message on a billboard, could say anything, could be an image, anything at all that you would want a lot of people to see and understand, what might you put on that?

• 14:20Speaker 06

  I love this question. I might overthink it.

• 14:27Speaker 06

  And understand. So, so we can assume they'll.

• 14:30Tim Ferriss?

  The "and understand" I threw on there with a little creative flourish, it may complicate your thinking.

• 14:35Speaker 06

  I'm going to build on that. And thinking about this, what comes to mind, first of all, is the category is something that will help people heal, you know, just be their whole and true selves, because I think that's where all our problems come from, is the lack of that. And as much as I care about climate, I think the, the key to solving climate is to heal ourselves, to heal culture, to heal the planet. And so I start with the, the self. And then my mind goes to, well, what's a big fundamental truth that we want everyone? Let's pretend if they read it, they'll actually get it and, and know it. Then I think there's a little bit of tension between like the most fundamental truths and how actionable they are.

• 15:20Speaker 06

  So if we said, we are all one, which I believe. It's like, okay, we're all one. The universe is one big thing, we're all connected. What do I do with that? And maybe if you really ponder that and meditate on that a long time, it'll actually, it will do you some good. But then if you move toward the spectrum of usefulness, of what's a fundamental truth that's more useful, you might some, you know, have like some Buddhist or saying like, all of our suffering comes from, you know, our thoughts or inability to accept reality, which is a little bit more useful. But maybe for the masses, not, still not very actionable. And then you could move to like, feel your feelings, which I think would do a tremendous amount of good if people adopt, oh, feel your feelings.

• 16:05Speaker 06

  It's a little bit easier to imagine that. Like so much of our suffering, and I say this as someone who told their first therapist, I don't understand the point of feelings. I was, I was like, they, they are just a nuisance and get in the way. So it took me a long time to appreciate that. And the avoidance that so many of us go through. And then, um, one step further might be, stop drinking alcohol for six months and see how you feel.

• 16:35Speaker 06

  Not tonight, though, it's fine, we're in a bar.

• 16:36Tim Ferriss?

  Not tonight, nice, starting tomorrow, starting tomorrow. So, following up just on the feeling your feelings, you said for a long time, and you said this to your first therapist, right? They're just a nuisance, I'd like to know how to rid myself of these irritations. What changed? How did you end up going on to team feelings?

• 16:55Speaker 06

  So, I mean, it was a long, long process. I mean, the, the therapy helped, the psychedelics helped, uh, meditation, growth, learning, reading books, having friends, stopping drinking, actually, just for six months. And I've gone through a lot, I've done a lot of work, particularly in the last couple of years. That's been, you just, super, super important.

• 17:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, just a note on alcohol, look, I'm gonna have some drinks tonight. I do enjoy drinking, but.

• 17:26Tim Ferriss?

  But, just a PSA for people because ketamine is in the air. Ketamine's probably in a few people's pockets here. They're both dissociative anesthetics. So if you want to feel your feelings, it's a good idea not to engage with those things excessively. And if you have a history of alcohol overuse, I would also stay away from any at-home ketamine. But, in terms of books or types of therapy, did you find, if there are people in the audience who are like, "Yeah, you know what, actually that makes sense to me, but I've never been able to find a handhold to get started." Is there any advice you might give?

• 18:00Speaker 06

  Probably the best thing I've ever done in that realm is Hoffman. Have you done Hoffman?

• 18:08Tim Ferriss?

  Hoffman, I haven't done Hoffman, but quite a few of my friends have.

• 18:11Speaker 06

  So there's a thing called the Hoffman Process. It's 20 years of therapy in a week, in terms of the effect. I mean, I've got much more out of it than I ever got in therapy. It's a week-long retreat. There's a few different places. The main one's in Petaluma, California. You hand over your phone, you go and do some exercises with 36 strangers and yourself for a week, and you come out a new person.

• 18:37Tim Ferriss?

  So, I've spoken, well, not directly, I've more listened, but had a conversation on this podcast where the Hoffman Process came up. And a lot of listeners have gone to the Hoffman Process. And I get letters literally every week from people who are thanking me for not really... the proper credit, because there's someone else who brought it up, for the Hoffman Process. I'm very curious, you mentioned the strangers. Part of the reason I haven't gone is I'm like, I don't want to air all of my dirty laundry in front of 20 strangers. I don't know these people. And I know you're also, I think it's fair to say, pretty introverted. I would say I am, even though I'm on stage, like safely speaking into the darkness.

• 19:23Tim Ferriss?

  Was that an issue at all for you? Or how did you get past that?

• 19:27Speaker 06

  It wasn't easy, but it's just in the context of it, it just feels very safe. One of the fascinating things is it's strangers. You are not allowed to say your last name or what you do in the real world when you get there. So you connect with people. And I realized after a few days, I relied so much on people knowing who I was or what I did, that it was this veil between me and other humans. So you get to know people at such a deep level without really knowing any of the normal things that we would say, you meet someone here. Oh, what do you do? You know, where do you live? And that, it just feels incredibly safe. But the process is, they've been doing it for 50 some years. It's very evolved.

• 20:12Speaker 06

  It's very well done. You take any of it out of context, it sounds weird. Like, I knew nothing going in. And about five people brought it up to me in random conversations over a week. And I'm like, okay, this is a message. I'm gonna go sign up for this thing. Show up, had no idea. And then you just dive in and it's incredible.

• 20:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, from what I can tell, it's somewhat like Fight Club. It's like, first rule of Fight Club is don't talk about Fight Club. You're not gonna find much detail on the Hoffman process. This also ties into a question I was planning on asking anyway, which is, are there any habits or beliefs that have really positively impacted your life in the last handful of years? Could also be 10 years ago. But you've talked about doing a lot of work in the last handful of years. Any new habits, beliefs, tools? Anything come to mind that have been really helpful?

• 21:06Speaker 06

  Yes, but I feel like they're the ones that everybody knows.

• 21:11Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I mean, sometimes the fundamentals are worth a review.

• 21:13Speaker 06

  I mean, it is exercise. Exercise and meditation, I dabbled in for a long time. And then I got much more serious a couple of years ago about both and really, really dramatic life improvement.

• 21:27Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you get more serious about them? You just wake up one day and you're like, today's a new day? Or was there a breaking point?

• 21:35Speaker 06

  It was early COVID, I was like, what the fuck am I doing? I'm gonna turn 50 and I need to work a hell of a lot harder to be in shape than I was. So I just started doing that. I was at home, I had the time, so I did that. Although that's increased and, you know, because you get the positive reward cycle and it feels great. And meditation, I've always found super valuable and I just, last year, on January 2nd, 2024, I had meditated the day before and I was like, I could meditate every single day this year. And it was just that, that sort of psychological hook that you find motivating, even though it's arbitrary.

• 22:18Speaker 06

  And I was like, yes, I'm gonna meditate every single day in 2024, that's a goal. And I don't normally set goals like that, but I was like, okay, let's see what happens. And my teacher says, you can't boil water if you keep turning off the flame. And so the consistency of meditation, I underestimated what dramatic difference that makes and how fast you can drop in if you do it every single day.

• 22:41Tim Ferriss?

  What type of meditation did you decide on?

• 22:44Speaker 06

  Mindfulness, meditation, breath and awareness, not TM, just...

• 22:50Tim Ferriss?

  Just like an open monitoring, feel what you feel, see what you see?

• 22:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 22:55Tim Ferriss?

  Are you noting things or are you just observing?

• 22:57Speaker 06

  Sometimes noting, sometimes noting. And I know you like to know about products, you know about this product, but I was using The Way.

• 23:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 23:05Speaker 06

  You've probably talked about that before. The Way is a meditation app. I hadn't used a meditation app for years. The Way, I started using The Way, Kevin sent it to me actually, when it was still in beta. And I started doing that around that time, yeah. The Way is fantastic.

• 23:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Henry Shuckman, just an incredible guy. I mean, we'll

• 23:26Tim Ferriss?

  hope to meet him in person someday.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  Last but not least, Richard Taylor, the co-founder and creative lead at Academy Award-winning design studio and manufacturing facility, Weta Workshop, and Greg Broadmore, an artist and writer who has been part of the Weta Workshop team for more than 20 years and is the creator of the retro sci-fi world of Dr. Grodport's and the graphic novel series, One Path.

• 23:57Tim Ferriss?

  But first, I do want to talk about, because this certainly is so iconic, and it's in the minds of probably most people listening, which is Lord of the Rings. And I'd like to understand what some of the most, first of all, kind of how that came to be, Richard, and then what some of the most crucial decisions were with respect to taking on a project of that scope. Because for a lot of companies, I could see that being the hug of death, where you suddenly go from reasonably moderately contained and small to sprawling, taking on so much responsibility. And many companies would implode. I've seen it happen

• 24:41Tim Ferriss?

  many, many times. So how did that come to be? And what were some of the most important decisions made that allowed you to grow the company and take that on?

• 24:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's a really big question. I'll try and answer it in a very condensed way.

• 24:58Tim Ferriss?

  We have time.

• 25:00Speaker 07

  I just pulled this out, right? This is a sting from the movie. This is one of my favorite things that we've made in the company. And I keep it next to me and I pick it up and it gives you strength and it gives you a sense of wonder and it connects you back to a very happy time. And it glows if there are challenging clients in the corridor.

• 25:24Tim Ferriss?

  For people who can't see that, that is a sword.

• 25:26Speaker 07

  Yeah. Oh, sorry. Those that can't see it. Here I'm showing all these visual aids because that's how I think.

• 25:33Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's okay. I'll drive, I'll drive people to the video.

• 25:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, I just held up, I just held up the 1.48 times larger than life size sting that's carried by Elijah Wood at his scale. I likened it to teetering towards the edge of a precipice. There's probably a much better visual metaphor than this, but, and you do this, you know, frequently in one's life, the decision to start a family, the decision to buy your first home or the home that you'll spend the rest of your life in, like the home that my wife and I bought way back on Meet the Feebles, right? The decision to X, Y, and Z. But Peter Jackson offers this opportunity.

• 26:18Speaker 07

  And when he offered it, my wife and I, Tanya and I, discussed with Peter and we ultimately settled on doing the design for and the manufacturing of the armor weapons, creatures, miniatures, special makeup effects and prosthetics, like five divisions, a very, very large body of work. And you teeter to the edge of the precipice and as a human, uh, just as the human animal that we are, you've got a decision. You either step back from the edge and let others take up the slack and do it for you and you follow,

• 26:57Speaker 07

  or you choose to leap and you either will then slam into the bottom of the cliff and make a mess with your guts and your brains everywhere, or you will actually arrest your fall through a number of different mechanisms, self-belief being the most important one. I have four very simple tenants that I operate by and four tenants that I try and operate our company by. And the first one is love of oneself. That doesn't mean that you're egotistical or believe that you're better than you are. But if you can't see in yourself your virtues, how the hell are you going to expect anyone else following you to see your virtues, right?

• 27:41Speaker 07

  So, love of oneself is the first of those four tenets. And there is, mixed with that, as corny as it sounds, ignorance being your greatest ally. I think all of us operate to some degree where we are blinded by the love of what we do. Like Bertram Russell, if I've got the right person, has a lovely quote, "Work is more fun than fun." And people that don't understand that struggle. Even if you're in a low-level position that you're not really enjoying, you can still make the people that you work with really fun, right? I used to clean toilets on international aeroplanes.

• 28:26Speaker 07

  But man, the people I worked with, I put a cricket ball through the window of the international terminal because we were playing cricket out on the tarmac under the planes. You can turn anything into fun. So, I had, once again, a very corny, and I couldn't think of something better at the time. But we needed a hundred and fifty-eight crew working for seven and a half years on forty-eight thousand separate things to deliver those five divisions to the trilogy of movies. Our work's in ninety-eight to ninety-nine percent of the films

• 29:05Speaker 07

  because our work's in almost every image shot, other than mountains with no one in it, or etc. And you've got an inexperienced crew, you're highly inexperienced yourself, right? We'd done Hercules and Xena at the time, and we'd had a career of about eight to ten years doing Peter's films. Peter, of course, is an inspiration in his own right and highly knowledgeable, so he's helping as well. I used to say, no matter how fine and how pale the thread that I give you, if you don't weave it with care into the tapestry, the tapestry will be in some way threadbare.

• 29:47Speaker 07

  What I'm talking about, that's, that's sort of more of a silly poetic way to say you're only as good as your weakest link. And in our case, we literally were linking, right? Handmade chainmail, twelve and a half million links over three and a half years. And chainmail is only as good as how well you glue the top link on your shoulder and whether the, the chainmail is going to fall off you. So trying to get us collectively, myself and my wife and our team to believe that we could do it, didn't require, cause there is a, I'm sure it exists in other countries, but it is a fundamental part of New Zealand.

• 30:29Speaker 07

  I think it's because we're a young nation, we're at the back quarters of the world, a long way from marketplaces where you can buy components to fix your tractor. So there is this intense can do attitude that still exists today. Thankfully, we hire people that come with that beautiful can do attitude. And we were able to benefit and bottle that so significantly on those three films. And the overjoyed nature of knowing that you're trying to prove something, prove that New Zealand could do it, that we could stamp our mark on the world stage. That was really important to us.

• 31:11Speaker 07

  To do justice to Tolkien's writing was really important to us. To meet Peter Jackson's vision was really important. And to make sure that we had really good fun. That didn't mean that it wasn't brutally challenging. It was, but at no point in the seven and a half years did I ever think that I didn't want to be doing it. That was really a special part of that experience. Work is more fun than fun.

• 31:42Tim Ferriss?

  What are the other tenets you mentioned for?

• 31:45Speaker 07

  Love of oneself, love of what you do, love of who you do it with and love of who you do it for. That is, as a father of a family, well, as a husband or partner to a loved one, a father or mother to a family, a president of a country, a CEO of a business. If you can't find those four tenants, obviously, the first one, love of yourself, love of what you do. You've got to love being a parent, you've got to love being a lover, a husband, a wife, a partner. You have to love the people that you do it for.

• 32:23Speaker 07

  It is so easy to become cynical about your audience or your fans or your family or the person working above you, right? But that's who you're trying to catch it up in your passion for what you do. And, you know, the other one's very obvious. So that's how I think of things very simply. And that's after thirty plus years of working, it started to congeal that that's thinking about all these things that you might think about, that's the things that drive you forward. I think I've settled on those four simple, and try not to be a dickhead is the, is maybe the fifth. Right, you read, there are thousands of self-help books.

• 33:07Speaker 07

  I've actually only read one of them. I can't remember the title even. But someone said to me once, you only need one page, a one-page book on self-help. And it's simply, and there's only one line and it just says, just don't be a dickhead. Right? And if you put that against almost anything in life, it's actually correct. If we understand collectively what being a dickhead means. And no doubt I fall foul of that and invariably am sometimes, you know, we all are. We can't, it's very hard to not be, but you try really hard not to be. Eh, Greg?

• 33:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, trying, always.

• 33:52Speaker 07

  Have I answered your question well enough? I've sort of been a bit fringed around the outsides of it.

• 33:57Tim Ferriss?

  No, you did. I'll have probably just one or two follow ups related to that. But before I get to that, you mentioned the can do attitude of a fairly remote country, right? And the resourcefulness that that engenders. And I'm wondering if there are any other advantages that you can think of, of doing this, whether it's the workshop or Lord of the Rings, or the combination of the two in New Zealand. Are there advantages that you can think of?

• 34:25Speaker 07

  Tim, when I'm talking, I'm talking about where the workshop, we were a small component of the overarching endeavor of making Lord of the Rings, right? We're very proud of the piece we played and we did a lot on it. But the art department, the costuming department, the props department, the camera department, the grips department, the directing department, et cetera, et cetera. The miniatures, there was phenomenal number of people, all focused on the same mission. And I've actually said in the past, Lord of the Rings wasn't made by a director, it wasn't made by a film studio and wasn't made by a film crew. It was made by a nation of people coming together in that moment to try and make Lord

• 35:10Speaker 07

  of the Rings in New Zealand for the world. That speaks to the phenomenal number of people that Peter and his producer drew into the collaboration of making Lord of the Rings.

• 35:22Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, the government, the military, I mean, the whole country was behind it.

• 35:25Speaker 07

  The government, military, our tourism department. I think everyone felt, you would have to have been pretty cynical at the time to have not felt a certain level of pride in what Peter was trying to do in our country and get behind it. And a lot of people benefited because of it. The driving desire to that term punch above your weight, I don't specifically like that term, but that's a well-used one that speaks to it. New Zealanders do have a burning desire to try and achieve great things regardless of where we are, where we may come from and the scale of our country.

• 36:06Speaker 07

  That should not restrict you at all and you only need to look at our sports teams to see that, whether it's our national ballet orchestra, contemporary dance, poets, writers, painters, artists in general, never mind the film industry or the creative industries. We have technology companies in New Zealand that are competing with the best in the world. Rocket Lab comes to mind, that are doing astounding things on a fraction of the budget. You know, the robots that we're building in our workshop right now, probably at a 500th to a thousandth of the investment cost of some of the robots that we're seeing online, but we're pulling it off.

• 36:49Speaker 07

  We're getting there slowly but getting there with five people and, you know, the money that we can save from projects we're doing. It's that attitude, I think, that plays a big part of it. Peter Jackson mustn't be missed in this equation too. His self-belief and his just sheer drive. I've never, ever seen Peter quiver in uncertainty, to fluctuate in a sense of uncertainty that he isn't sure of what he's doing. That is an amazing thing to work around because if your leader's confident, then, you know, and there's a lovely quote, "The emperor will not remember you for your medals

• 37:34Speaker 07

  or your diplomas, he will only remember you for your scars." And I think there is a mentality of that very much in our country. You've just got to knuckle down and do it, right? Grit is an important component in the journey, not the accolades at the end. It's the task of getting there that is seen as equal in accomplishment as winning baubles.

• 38:05Tim Ferriss?

  And now here are the bios for all the guests. My guest today is a dear friend. I've wanted to have him on the podcast for a very long time, Craig MOD. Craig MOD, M-O-D. He is a writer, photographer, and walker, we'll talk about that a lot, living in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan. He is the author of Things Become Other Things and KISSA by KISSA, K-I-S-S-A. Don't worry about it, we'll get to it. He also writes the newsletters Rodent and Ridgeline and has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, and more. He has walked thousands of miles across Japan in every conceivable place, and since 2016, he has been co-running walk-in talks with Kevin Kelly, perhaps the

• 38:48Tim Ferriss?

  most interesting man in the world, in various places around the world: the Cotswolds, northern Thailand, Bali, southern China, Japan, Spain, which includes the Portuguese and French communes, and much more. Today's episode is wide-ranging, and I had so much fun with this. We ended up discussing Craig's early life, his path to Japan, his struggles with self-worth and alcoholism, and how he overcame both of them, creative development, his writing experiments, his initial experiences with walking and writing, and so much more. I really think you will get a lot out of this conversation, as I did. I took copious notes, and I also decided to keep some of the behind-the-scenes banter before the interview in the recording

• 39:33Tim Ferriss?

  that you're gonna hear, which I thought might be fun for shits and giggles, just for the fun of it. Why not? You can find Craig MOD at craigmod.com. That's the HQ for everything Craig MOD, C-R-A-I-G-M-O-D dot com. You can find him on Instagram, at Craig MOD, and on Blue Sky as well, craigmod.com.

• 39:56Tim Ferriss?

  Today, my guest is Ev Williams, and what a story he has. Ev is the co-founder and chairman of Mozy, a new social network that helps you connect in-person with the people you care about most. Over the past 25 years, Ev has co-founded several companies that have helped shape the modern internet, including Blogger, Medium, and Twitter. Ev is also the co-founder of Obvious Ventures, an investment firm that focuses on world-positive companies addressing major systemic problems. Ev grew up on a farm in Clarksville, Nebraska, has two sons, and lives mostly in the Bay Area. This particular episode, this conversation, was recorded live in Austin, Texas, at the Digg Nation relaunch.

• 40:37Tim Ferriss?

  That's DiggNation.show for the show itself, and that is where Digg.com was relaunched. It was recently acquired by its original founder, my good friend Kevin Rose, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, formerly Arch Nemeses, but they have joined forces and invited me along for all the fun and surprises as they celebrated the relaunch. Go to Digg.com and sign up to get early access when the invites go out. One more time, Digg.com, that's D-I-G-G dot com. You can find Mozy, that is Ev's newest creation, at mozy.app. That's available on iOS right now. You can find Obvious Ventures at obvious.com, and you can find him on Twitter, that is also

• 41:19Tim Ferriss?

  known as X, at Ev, at E-V. Today, I am interviewing two people I would consider decathletes of creativity. The first is Richard Taylor. He is co-founder and creative lead at Weda Workshop, which he runs with his wife and co-founder Tanya Roger. Weda Workshop is a concept design studio and manufacturing facility that services the world's creative and entertainment industries. And what you'll see is just how much they do. Believe it or not, it started by them assembling things and making things on top of their bed. We'll get to that. They've been recognized with five Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, three Theo Awards, and more than 30 other national and international accolades.

• 42:04Tim Ferriss?

  Their practical and special effects have helped define the visual identities of some of the most recognizable franchises in film and television. You will know some of them, including The Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes, Superman, Mad Max, Thor, Megan, and Love, Death, and Robots. If you haven't seen Love, Death, and Robots, check it out. There are some amazing, amazing shorts. In addition to that, they do a few other things. Get ready for this. Weta Workshop offers tourism and retail experiences, consumer products, an interactive studio, public sculptures, and private commissions. They've also done augmented reality and video games and all sorts of things. Richard now focuses much of his time on their immersive experiences, which I've had the chance to experience firsthand.

• 42:45Tim Ferriss?

  I recommend them very highly, such as the Thea Award-winning Gallipoli, The Scale of Our War, Weta Workshop Unleashed, and the Giant Atrium Installation: Aura, Forest at Edge of the Sky. Next, we have Greg Broadmore. Greg is an artist and writer who has been part of the team at Weta Workshop for more than 20 years. His design and special effects credits include District 9, King Kong, Godzilla, The Adventures of Tintin, and Avatar, and he is the creator of the satirical retro sci-fi world of Dr. Grodwards, featuring a myriad of collectibles, a world touring art exhibition, four books, and a game for Weta's pioneering spatial computing platform. Most recently, Greg built Weta's video game division and directed multiple Dr. G video games for Magic Leap.

• 43:30Tim Ferriss?

  He's currently working on the graphic novel series One Path, set in a brutal prehistoric world where dinosaurs and cave women are locked in a grim battle for supremacy. So, these two guys have their hands in a lot. They apply creativity to more things than I can count, and they do it with incredible endurance. How do they do it? That's what we're going to explore. And as you listen to this, or as you watch it, you're going to hear a lot of moving around as they pull things from their offices, from their workshops, from around where they're sitting. So, it will sound quite hyperactive, and I suppose that is totally appropriate, given...

• 44:13Tim Ferriss?

  The nature of what we're discussing. So I'll leave it at that. You can find Weta Workshop at wetanz.com/US. That's wetanz.com, of course. And on Instagram, at Weta Workshop. You can find Greg at Greg Broadmore. That's B-R-O-A-D-M-O-R-E. GregBroadmore.com. And on Instagram, at Greg underscore Broadmore. 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.

• 44:57Tim Ferriss?

  Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half-page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange, esoteric things end up in my field. And then I test them. And then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday.

• 45:40Tim Ferriss?

  Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.