Ep 24: Kevin Rose - Gut Bacteria, Meditation, Startups, and More

Yes, Kevin Rose is back. He was my first ever guest on this podcast, and now he's causing more trouble. All shownotes and links at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast Enjoy! Tim

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Many of you have been asking for more informal conversations, like the one that I recorded with Kelly Starrett and Dr. Justin Major over many, many bottles of wine, which you can listen to at your leisure, versus the more formal, I suppose, interviews that I've done with people like co-founder and president of Pixar, Ed Catmull. And you've asked for it, and therefore, here it is. This is a hi-def audio recording of The Random Show. And The Random Show is effectively a catch-up between two friends. And I am half of that conversation, and Kevin Rose, a dear buddy, is the other. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's built many different companies and products. He is a venture capitalist at Google Ventures.

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  He's one of the best product guys in Silicon Valley and a very, very astute investor. But when we hang out and we do The Random Show, which is in video, so you'll hear some references to visual things, and whenever you hear "babe," by the way, that's in reference to Kevin's wife, who is off-camera, Daria, you will hear some references to links and show notes and so on. All of those notes and links can be found at 4hourworkweek.com/podcast, all spelled out, 4hourworkweek.com/podcast. And to support the show, as always, just go to the Tim Ferriss Book Club, and you can find books that have had a tremendous impact on my life, there are four or five of them up right now, at 4hourworkweek.com/books.

• 1:29Tim Ferriss?

  And without further ado, I would like to introduce you, if you've never heard it before, to The Random Show. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for listening. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half-mile before my hands start to shake. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 1:47Speaker 02

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

• 1:59Speaker 03

  Hello friends, welcome to The Random Show. I'm Kevin Rose.

• 2:01Tim Ferriss?

  I'm Tim Ferriss.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  And this is episode number...gramm? We don't know. But you know, because it says it at the top of the YouTube player.

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm, indeed.

• 2:12Speaker 03

  Welcome. It's been awhile.

• 2:13Tim Ferriss?

  It has been what, 2 to 3 months, probably?

• 2:15Speaker 03

  It's been at least 3 months.

• 2:17Tim Ferriss?

  At least, maybe 4 months.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  Something like that. Lots happened in those months.

• 2:19Tim Ferriss?

  Lot has happened.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  My drinking experiment, which we'll get to in a little bit. Don't want to jump right into that one.

• 2:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we can hold off on that.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  There's a good debate there. But I have a list of stuff to go over today. Do you want to start first today?

• 2:31Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, sure. We can start with perhaps a caveat. So it turns out, I found out just a few days ago that I'm 99% sure that I have Lyme disease for the first time. So I grew up on Long Island, I go back every summer, and deer ticks carry the spirochetes or bacteria that cause the symptoms of Lyme disease, which is really intense. I had dodged the bullet up to this point. Everyone in my family has had it, as far as I know. And I started getting extremely swollen joints, to the point where it was painful to walk one morning.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  You just woke up one morning?

• 3:02Tim Ferriss?

  Woke up one morning, knees were extremely swollen.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Had you discovered any ticks at that point, or no?

• 3:06Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I'd pulled off 4 or 5 ticks.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 3:08Tim Ferriss?

  But every time I go home in the summer, that's the case.

• 3:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:10Tim Ferriss?

  And I usually, or I shouldn't say usually, but a lot of people develop bullseye circles, so expanding concentric circles around the bite, and then they go get it checked out, because that's a symptom. I didn't have any of those rashes, and I found out later that in a percentage of the people who get bitten and contract Lyme, they don't show that. If you pull the tick off within the first, say, about, I think it's 16 to 24 hours of attaching to you, then you can typically prevent Lyme. But my joints got so swollen, my elbows, my knees, so painful, my memory started being affecting, being affected, like formulating sentences and whatnot. So I might sound a little punch drunk in this episode, if you're wondering why. Lyme disease. So I'm on doxycycline and exploring a couple of other treatments for addressing it. But yeah, it's gnarly stuff, man. You got to

• 3:55Tim Ferriss?

  catch it earlier. You can basically develop all the appearances of, say, cerebral palsy, things like that.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  That's crazy. But if you catch it early, I mean, you'll be fine and...

• 4:04Tim Ferriss?

  Should be fine, depends on who you ask. There's also...

• 4:06Speaker 03

  I've heard sometimes flare-ups happen later in the future, and things like that?

• 4:09Tim Ferriss?

  That's what some people...there are a lot of diverging opinions about Lyme disease. And so some people talk about chronic Lyme disease, some people think it exists, other people think it doesn't exist. There's a lot of debate. So if any of you out there are experts in Lyme disease... Need recommendations or thoughts? Please let me know in the comments because I'll certainly be on meds by the time you see this.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  Crazy. Well, I hope you're gonna be okay. I mean, it's uh, that's scary stuff.

• 4:32Tim Ferriss?

  It's, it is scary. I mean, and I always thought it was a very minor thing because Eastern Long Island, as far as I know, has the highest density of deer ticks on the face of the planet. And you can't really go walking outside in grass that's more than a few inches long without getting ticks on you. Then I started looking at the symptoms and the effects of Lyme disease if you don't catch it.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:55Tim Ferriss?

  And it's, it's really bad.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it can be a really debilitating disease. So, I'm glad that I'm on doxycycline. And now, so you take these antibiotics. I hate taking antibiotics and I'll make a statement that might surprise some of you. I would rather take the scary anabolic steroids like testosterone or something like that than very strong antibiotics because I feel like it's, it's-

• 5:18Speaker 03

  They're kinda ying and-

• 5:19Tim Ferriss?

  Well, they're very different, but my, my, my point being that people look at, say, misunderstood and over-sensationalized drugs like anabolic, say, which are kind of exaggerated to the point of like these, these, "These are madness!"

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Like back in the 60s with marijuana and stuff like that.

• 5:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. Like the 50s and 60s where like if you smoke a joint, you're gonna run through your house and hack off all of your relatives' heads.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  Right. Well, that was, there was that movie you made me watch, Bigger, Faster, Stronger, Harder, whatever it's called.

• 5:47Tim Ferriss?

  Bigger, Faster, Stronger. Yeah, the other one's a, you can buy the cast right down the street. Uh, but-

• 5:54Speaker 03

  It was about all the myths about antibiotics.

• 5:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Performance-Hitting Drugs. Fantastic documentary you guys should all check out. But antibiotics are prescribed in a very nonchalant way and-

• 6:03Speaker 03

  You get them all the time, no matter what you have.

• 6:04Tim Ferriss?

  And you just, the importance of the microbiome and your, your gut flora is so understated. I really try to avoid antibiotics. So I'll be sort of seeding my gut, and by the way, the answer is not necessarily probiotics. This is, this is something not many people know. But I'll be doing a bunch more on this. So if you wanna post about that, let me know. It takes a lot of time. But if you're interested about how to properly seed your gut for optimal health- I'm doing a bunch of research on that.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Speaking about seeding your gut for optimal health, this is actually a good segue.

• 6:34Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  This is a really random way to start the show, but I guess it works. There is like this gut project. Have you heard of the gut project?

• 6:42Tim Ferriss?

  Is it called the gut project?

• 6:43Speaker 03

  It's something like that. It's gut project gut. You know what I'm talking about babe? I ordered it in the mail. So basically they send you like, my doctor told me about it because like I've had like mild to medium upset stomachs for a really long time.

• 6:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you've had stomach issues forever.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  When we're traveling China, I'm chewing on Bismol non-stop and like depends on what I'm eating. I've linked some of it to sadly beer consumption and I think it might be tied to gluten in some way. But anyway, my doctor turned me on to this project that it's like this completely nonprofit. And they give you all these little test tubes with like little tiny like Q-tips in it. And you send in like, it's pretty disgusting, like little samples of your shit.

• 7:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  And then they will do the full-on breakdown of all the bacteria.

• 7:26Tim Ferriss?

  Is it, is it just fecal samples or you're like swiping your armpit in your mouth?

• 7:30Speaker 03

  You can do anything, armpit, mouth, wherever you want. And they will send you like the full, but they compare it to people that are healthy. People that have like IBS, people that have like all different types of stuff. And they give you the like full-on breakdown. You log in and it gives you all the stats about your bacteria versus other people's stomach bacteria.

• 7:45Tim Ferriss?

  Are you sure it's for profit?

• 7:46Speaker 03

  It might be for profit. I don't know.

• 7:48Tim Ferriss?

  Is it called Ubiome?

• 7:49Speaker 03

  No.

• 7:49Tim Ferriss?

  There's a company called Ubiome also doing something very similar. I actually have a bunch of kids at home.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Anyway, I'll put a link. I'll get a link in the comments, but you should check it out. It's not expensive either. It's like, you know, 300 bucks.

• 7:58Tim Ferriss?

  No, I have a bunch of kids at home from I guess a competitor called Ubiome.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  Okay, cool.

• 8:02Tim Ferriss?

  Just based out here. But the whole point being you are effectively, we don't have to go too deep into this, but you are a collection of bacteria. I mean, there are more bacterial cells in your body than human cells. Kind of hard to believe, right? And people have attempted to eradicate bacteria, viewing them as germs and causes of disease for ages. And approaching it in such a, a broad.

• 8:25Tim Ferriss?

  Fashion is hugely deleterious to your health. And in fact, for those people out there, I don't remember the name of the article. You would like this too, Daria. There was an article in, I think it was the New York Times Magazine about people who had not showered in weeks or even years. And instead of using soap, or I think it's laural sulfate, other very strong detergents, they take ammonia-eating bacteria and spray it onto their skin as a way of sort of cleaning themselves and maintaining optimal bacterial health on the skin, which is your largest organ. So not just in the GI tract, but on the skin. Really good article that I'm in the process of rereading because I'm going to be doing a lot with the microbiome and we'll link to that in the show notes as well.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I want to check that out.

• 9:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's really, really, and also a very well-written piece. It's pretty hilarious.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 9:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's super, super fascinating stuff. And by the way, like there are companies out there, big cosmetics companies that are patenting applications of say lactobacillus, which you find very commonly in probiotic supplements for topical applications. Doesn't really work. I mean, as far as I know, that's for ingestion and application in the GI tract. So where you apply a probiotic or prebiotic or anything like this makes a big, big difference. So don't believe the hype. Anyway, enough on that.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Well, one more quick point. Speaking about my stupid stomach issues, I've been reading a book called Grain Brain. Have you read it yet or have you heard about it?

• 9:55Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't. I'm guessing there's Grain Brain, there's Wheat Belly.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're all in the same vein.

• 10:00Tim Ferriss?

  I'd imagine they're pretty similar.

• 10:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I mean, that's what got me to like, actually, I didn't tell you this yet, but it's been about two weeks now I've been gluten-free.

• 10:08Tim Ferriss?

  You just sent me a photograph today of your dog with a beer can balanced on its head.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  That wasn't my dog.

• 10:13Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it was the toaster doppelganger.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  It was a toaster doppelganger, yeah. It was a Japanese dog I found on my Instagram.

• 10:19Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, okay.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  But I actually just got some gluten-free beer, some IPA. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to do it after this wine. But anyway, what's interesting... Is that I think that I had some gluten like a couple of days ago.

• 10:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  And I woke up the next morning being like mentally foggy a little bit. And it describes some of that that's happening here. Anyway, it was just one particular, I'm gonna go and try to do it for at least like 60 days. They say until you really feel it is like a couple of months. So we'll see what happens.

• 10:43Tim Ferriss?

  We're gonna come back to this in a second. So if you're interested in this kind of stuff, there is an article written on, on my blog. I'll link to it by Rob Wolf, which I headlined, "How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream." But it relates to grain consumption, leaky gut syndrome, and a host of other associated issues or factors.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 11:00Tim Ferriss?

  It's a very interesting read. If you're like, you know gluten-free gluten this, what the fuck is gluten actually? And nine, nine out of 10 people who are gluten-free can't answer that. Check out the blog post. So you're gonna go gluten-free for 60 days?

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's, it's not that hard. It really isn't.

• 11:14Tim Ferriss?

  So now, speaking of things that are hard, I hate to bring this up so early. Curious to see what kind of debate you think this is gonna become. So you committed, last time we spoke, to go 30 days without alcohol.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 11:27Tim Ferriss?

  And you failed to complete that 30 days. And the wager was a thousand dollars to one's charity of choice.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  Now, we spoke on the phone before I actually turned through in the towel. You remember that conversation?

• 11:38Tim Ferriss?

  I remember texting and I still have the text thread.

• 11:43Tim Ferriss?

  You're gonna try to pull some Kevin?

• 11:45Speaker 03

  No, I'm not trying to.

• 11:45Tim Ferriss?

  Dude, you're channeling your spirit animal. You remember what you said your spirit animal was?

• 11:49Speaker 03

  A little worm?

• 11:50Tim Ferriss?

  The weasel.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  No, you said that.

• 11:52Tim Ferriss?

  I think you were drunk when you brought it up.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  You said that, you said that. Listen, here's the deal. I went through some really tough times. It had been three weeks of no drinking. And I'm not saying I didn't break the rules. I did. I had a glass of wine and it was wonderful. But, a couple glasses of wine. But I'm saying, what I'm saying is that I went through some tough times. We got protested in Portland. We got protested, if people don't know.

• 12:19Tim Ferriss?

  That's because you're raising historic landmarks.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  So here's, okay, I'm gonna take 30 seconds and explain this to the people that are watching this.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Basically, what happened is my wife and I, we went up to Portland, Oregon. We fell in love with the town. It's a great city. It is a great city. Love the food scene, love the kind of like, they have awesome cocktails out there. They've got hiking trails, they got fishing, they got everything that like, I would like to eventually one day have a place as a little retreat. Notice the second thing you mentioned is excellent cocktails. Continue. So, we went up there, we found a place, and we found a place that we thought we were gonna remodel. It was an older place, older meaning over a hundred years old. And ultimately, it turned out that the cost to remodel it was more or less on par with building something from scratch. Yeah. So, we proceeded to move forward and have the house taken down and build something new. We went through that process, the neighbors found out about it, they freaked out.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  They had had the Easter egg hunt in the yard of the house for the last 20 years. It was a very beloved house to the neighborhood, but it was not historically significant. We took several contractors through, walked through. And the thing about historical homes is you have to be able to point to something in the house. Yeah. Like, oh, that's the crown molding, or this banister is like, historic in some way. The only thing they ever came up with, nothing with the house, except we found out the house had asbestos. The only thing that they came up with was that there was a prominent attorney, Portland attorney that had lived there at one point. Okay. Many, many years ago. This guy's not, he doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. He was big in Portland at some point, an attorney. We wanted to move forward and take the house down because it's old, and the neighborhood loved it, but it wasn't historic.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  You had a tough couple of weeks. They protested us, they put banners out there, there were people crying in the streets. It got like... Wait, what? There's like, old people crying in the streets, like neighbors and stuff. Why are you so mean to old people? At the end of the day, I'm not an asshole, my wife's not an asshole. We sat there and we had said, we threw our hands up and we said, you know what? It's time to abandon ship. And we sold the house back to one of the neighbors. Yeah. And we went on and now, you know, eventually at some point, we'd like to find another place, but I don't know when. But, anyway, that was the story around that. So, all this shit is going down. Like, there's a freaking like, change.org protest, I'm getting emails from it, and like, people are calling the reporters, and like, I'm like, not drinking during this time. And I'm calling Tim up and I'm like, Tim, please, like, just one drink, it's been a long day.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  And you're like, no, a deal's a deal, fucker, like, in the text. I think that's fair. And I'm just like, and you're like, you can break it, we can talk about it on the show. And so, my ask... That's what we're doing right now. Is that you... Give me pro rata for the time served of that month and let me pay the remainder to you.

• 15:10Tim Ferriss?

  I'll give you a 10x or nothing if you go the next 30 days without booze.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  No way.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Now, what charity do you want it to go to? I'm not giving it to you, I'm donating to charity.

• 15:21Tim Ferriss?

  Why would I give it to me?

• 15:23Speaker 03

  I'll give it to you.

• 15:24Tim Ferriss?

  No, I don't want you to give it to me because then I'm gonna have to like pay taxes on it and then give it to the charity anyway.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  I was saying we should give it to charity.

• 15:29Tim Ferriss?

  I think you should give it to, don't say, the Portland Historic Society.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Kevin Rose, ladies and gentlemen.

• 15:38Tim Ferriss?

  He said that to me. He said that on the phone.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  I didn't say it on the phone, you keep on bringing up these.

• 15:42Tim Ferriss?

  Over text or something.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  That Portland Historic Preservation Society.

• 15:47Tim Ferriss?

  You said you were gonna do something like that. Email or text or something.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  I think that's the proper thing to do.

• 15:51Tim Ferriss?

  But in this case, just to prevent you from binge drinking for the next 30 days, since I know that's how you respond to stress, so we don't want that to happen. DonorsChoose.org. 1,000 Gs to DonorsChoose.org.

• 16:03Speaker 03

  Whose name should I put it in?

• 16:05Tim Ferriss?

  You don't make it out to an individual, it's made out to DonorsChoose.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  You can't say like in memory of?

• 16:10Tim Ferriss?

  In memory of, in memory of my lovely Portland house. That's what you could put in the memo. So, DonorsChoose is, just real quick, first pro tip, so for those of you who have any stock that is appreciated, if you're going to make charitable donations, in some cases, and I'm no tax attorney, but it makes sense to donate, I didn't realize this until very recently, appreciated stock, why? Because if you take a thousand dollars that you've earned, you're gonna have to pay income tax on that money. And then you give, say, that thousand dollars to charity, well, it'll cost you then.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  30% plus the whatever.

• 16:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, 30% and all that. Now, on the other hand, if you have stock that's appreciated and you have a thousand dollars worth of that, you give the stock instead of cash to the nonprofit.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  And then they can take the gains.

• 16:57Tim Ferriss?

  And they take the full thousand dollars in value.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  And you can write off that full amount?

• 17:01Tim Ferriss?

  As opposed to the 700 that you would give them otherwise if you sold the stock and gave it, gave the cash to them.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  So if you're sitting on some Tesla stock or some crazy stock, whatever it is.

• 17:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  And you're like, hey, I'm gonna make my annual thousand dollar.

• 17:13Tim Ferriss?

  Gift to this company, then boom. Yeah, and you can go on almost. And they'll take it. And the embarrassing thing for me, I'm kind of flabbergasted, it took me so long to figure this out, but I would go to donation pages on donorschoose.org, or Charity Water, or any of these places, and they would have it very clearly indicated, if you want to donate stock, click here. And I almost thought to myself, why would I ever want to donate stock? Right. I never understood the rationale, and that's it. You get like 30% more to the charity, as opposed to paying it in tax dollars. So, next lesson. Cool. Anyway, yeah, donorschoose.org, check it out. I've been an advisor for a long time. They're endorsed by people like Michelle Obama, Stephen Colbert, Oprah, it's a long list. What do they do? So, yeah, donorschoose, it basically provides funding.

• 17:57Tim Ferriss?

  It allows you to fund projects in public schools in very high need areas. So if they need, say, a new blackboard, or they've never been able to take the kids on a field trip to the aquarium, and some of the kids want a marine biologist, whatever it is, you can then allocate funds specifically to classrooms of your choice. And you can search by zip code. So I've donated money to, say, STEM, like science, technology, engineering, math, projects in places that I've gone to school, places, or like areas that I've gone to school, where I grew up. And you get, I think you still get handwritten letters from the kids, like thank you letters. It's amazing. It's the first nonprofit to be on the cover of Fast Company for their 50 most creative companies in the world issue. Hmm, awesome. It's awesome, check it out. Sweet.

• 18:42Tim Ferriss?

  So now, speaking of challenges, so I'm 10 days into my latest. This is ridiculous. Now, it seems ridiculous, but I want to provide some context for the seemingly absurd. So, the challenge is called Nob Num, and it's called that very deliberately.

• 19:03Tim Ferriss?

  Wouldn't it be, it was just a random name you came up with? Yeah, no, I thought long and hard about this name. So you post, let's back up, you did a blog post about this, and you challenged your readers. Yep. And what was the challenge? So the challenge, so what I said, and I've said that, I said this other thing in the last episode, is that going 30 days without alcohol and masturbating, and porn is a close cousin, so no X name in the porn as well, had a dramatic impact on everything from blood values, like free testosterone, to sleep quality.

• 19:33Tim Ferriss?

  On and on and on.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  What good is the testosterone if you can't use it?

• 19:36Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I didn't say sex wasn't allowed. I said that masturbating wasn't allowed.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  See, that's stupid.

• 19:40Tim Ferriss?

  It's not stupid, though.

• 19:42Speaker 03

  It's the same thing. It's just your hand.

• 19:44Tim Ferriss?

  No, you're married, so you've, no offense. You've got kind of sex on demand, I assume. Now, as for single guys with broadband, they've got porn on demand, and it turns into a compulsive behavior.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Why screw them over? They're having a hard time.

• 19:58Tim Ferriss?

  It's not a judgment call. What it is, is I'm thinking of compulsive behaviors that over time can be very detrimental. And I think excessive porn viewing, check out your brain on porn. Check it out.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Okay, why not just say this? Why not just say, "No porn, masturbate all you want"?

• 20:16Tim Ferriss?

  Because I think you need, like, you have you have like cash, just like a web browser, of all these ridiculous porn scenes in your head, and I think you need like a good two to four weeks to clear that stuff out. So that you're like actually attracted to normal women and not like crazy cyborg like silicone craziness.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  So what if I go, what if one went and like

• 20:42Tim Ferriss?

  Normal, by the way, is not as

• 20:43Speaker 03

  hired a masseuse that gave lotion snap?

• 20:47Tim Ferriss?

  Fine, you can have the

• 20:49Speaker 03

  That's fine?

• 20:49Tim Ferriss?

  You can have the dragon roll. I mean, legality aside, if you want to have the

• 20:54Speaker 03

  So why is that fine?

• 20:55Tim Ferriss?

  The rub and tug, then it's fine.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  It's still like porn in a way.

• 20:59Tim Ferriss?

  There's more involved in doing that. Like, that's an edge case. I don't think a lot of people are gonna do it. But look, if, what I'm trying to provide people with, and so just to give you guys an idea, so it's 30 days without no booze, no masturbating. It's not the same. It's not the same. I think sex is a healthy behavior. I don't think excessive masturbating is a healthy behavior. So

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Do people really excessively masturbate? I think you kind of just masturbate and you're kind of done. Like, you don't really like, you're not hitting it three times a day.

• 21:26Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I think some people are.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Really?

• 21:28Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely.

• 21:30Tim Ferriss?

  No, I don't have, I'm too lazy to do that. But we talked about porn, we talked about porn a lot in the last episode. So if you want more porn, including some of my recommendations, check out the last episode. That was weird that you put your recommendations in the blog post. Oh, people loved it. No. No, be, well, check this out. Favorite porn. So, I mean, it's kind of weird, like, ah, he was watching it, now I'm watching it. But it's a little creepy, but here's the thing, so one of, one of the people who's following. I typed it in and I pulled it up and I was like, I'm watching Tim's porn. This is like bullshit. Did you see, so somebody put a Google Trends screenshot. All right, I'll just tell you, it's Momoko and Angelica with a J. And the Google Trends, it's like, it's just like. When you hit play, think about Tim sitting there and being like. If that was a startup growth chart, they'd be, they'd be like 50 million.

• 22:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they're making like version two. Where the fuck were we going with this? Okay, so the challenge was to help people overcome obsessive behaviors and improve the quality of their lives. And also their ability to, to develop new habits by creating a, a community on Lyft, which is a behavioral change app. And I was actually introduced to that by Ed Williams, co-founder of Twitter, who incubated effectively this company. And if you go on Lyft, so lyft.de. I use it all the time. Almost 5,000 people are live doing this Nob Nob Challenge. Oh, boy. Women also. That's a sad thread. It's not a sad thread, it's fucking fascinating. Are they flirting with each other and shit? There's a little bit, but I mean, I think probably half the people with female avatars are like sweaty palms, fat guys with.

• 22:57Tim Ferriss?

  So, whatever, you know, when you're on the internet, nobody knows. But I think there are also quite, there are quite a few women on there, but you know, this is, I mean. You never know. Masturbating is, I think, more of a guy dilemma in a lot of ways. The point being, about 5,000 people, and there are already these really fascinating patterns emerging. So, very, very common in multiple different threads, extremely vivid dreams. Yeah. Well.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  There's no release, dude. You're dreaming it.

• 23:25Tim Ferriss?

  There's like, nothing impresses Kevin Ross. There are, there's a whole long list. Anyway, you can check it out. But I highly recommend, even if you're not gonna use Lyft for a knob-nob, check it out. And there are all sorts of things. Flossing is the only, it's the only thing that got me to floss regularly. And it's very, very simple. So, so that's that. But the challenge is ongoing. If you want to join me. That's why I'm having tea instead of wine. But.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  How's it going for you?

• 23:50Tim Ferriss?

  You know, it's, it's going well. I would say that I had a pretty tough day today. I'm dressed up because I went to a memorial service for a close friend, Seth Roberts. You will be sorely missed. And really one of the grandfathers of self-experimentation and certainly quantified self-movement of the last, let's say, 20 years. But, uh, so, you know, people started drinking at about 1pm today. And, yeah, I really wanted to drink. I was like, God, you know, what I wouldn't give for just like a nice glass of wine. And I think that's when the challenge is most important. It's like, if, if I'm defaulting to alcohol to treat my stress, that's a pattern that I want to be able to interrupt. So I think that it's only in those moments that the challenge is a challenge.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean.

• 24:32Tim Ferriss?

  That's the whole point.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  I went, when I went those three weeks, like, there was certainly a lot of times where I was like, wow, it's been a long day. And I'm like, gosh, I'd love a, just a beer or something, a glass of something.

• 24:41Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I just noticed, especially around here with, with social outings and whatnot. I remember, just one day, I was like, God, I feel kinda slow and my head hurts a little. And I looked back at my calendar and I was like, wow, I'm not drinking by myself, but I've been out to dinners.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  Dude, this is our life.

• 24:56Tim Ferriss?

  Five nights a week for like two months. And every single outing, I'm having two, three, four glasses of something.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  This is me, I had a work meeting last night on a Saturday and I went out without Dory. And I went out and had a couple glasses of wine and they were heavy pours.

• 25:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  And then we met up for dinner and it was at a sushi place and it was like sake, had some of that. And then I just get home and I'm like. Not hammered, but enough to where the next morning I woke up and I'm just like, God, that sucks.

• 25:22Tim Ferriss?

  Not a hundred percent, yeah. So I would just say this, guys. This isn't a pure tentacle thing. It's not to make you Amish or Mennonites. I love drinking and also pretty fond of jerking off. So this is a 30 day experiment. And so I would just say for-

• 25:35Speaker 03

  Can they join in now, by the way? Is it too late?

• 25:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, join in now. No, it's not too late. And I expect this thing will survive for much longer than 30 days.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  What do you give people a, uh, what's the reward?

• 25:43Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I think it's, uh-

• 25:44Speaker 03

  Kind of like gift?

• 25:45Tim Ferriss?

  No, there, there is. If you join right now, it's just going to be to join the community, which is very strong and extremely interesting on Lyft. For people who started at the beginning, which was August 1st, then we're offering, I think it's 1,500 to 2,000 bucks to the three most helpful people who complete the challenge. So they have to complete the 30 days. Then they have to help other people in the community do the same.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  That's cool.

• 26:09Tim Ferriss?

  The community support thing is huge. Oh, you need that. It's amazing.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  I could have used that when I was going through my 30 days. If someone was like, she started drinking after two weeks. She made it two weeks. And like props, because she didn't have to do that at all.

• 26:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  And then after she caved and she's like having a little wine or something, or she'd go out with her girlfriends, come back a little saucy. I'm like, hmm, I kinda wanna drink right now. But anyway, let's move on.

• 26:29Tim Ferriss?

  Move on.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  Um, so congratulations. Good luck to you, sir.

• 26:32Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  Blue balls. All right. Um, let's talk about, uh, meditation.

• 26:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  So meditation is something that I have always wanted to get into. And if you've been a follower of my blog or have seen when I did have a blog back in the day, you know that every single year for my like to-do list for the next year was to learn how to meditate or to get better at meditating. Headspace, the app, I think we've mentioned it on here before. We mentioned Headspace on here before?

• 26:56Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I like that.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  Okay, so there's an app called Headspace that is a guided meditation app that essentially, you've used Headspace or no?

• 27:04Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't. I'm smirking because I feel a moral obligation to mention Calm as well as a competitor.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  Did you invest in Calm?

• 27:10Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't invest in Calm, but a bunch of my close friends have.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  I know the founder of Calm, man, as well.

• 27:14Tim Ferriss?

  Who's a smart guy. So, but Headspace is the, Headspace is the, Headspace is the leader.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  So I haven't invested in either one of these companies, but I will say that, that those are the two leaders, right? There's a, Headspace is like number one. They have a big, huge community. They've been around for a lot longer.

• 27:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  Calm also has a great app. They're both awesome. So Headspace is the one I kind of like started getting into because Lamir, who we all know, he's a big meditator and he told me that he got hooked on Headspace. So they have this thing called the Take Ten, which is ten days of ten minutes of meditation per day. And it's completely guided. It was really easy to do because ten minutes isn't a big commitment. I just sat down in my office and I shut the door and I put my headphones on and I hit play and I went through ten minutes and I did that for ten days. And I started doing more and more and more and I got, they graduate you to take fifteen, which is fifteen minutes, then take twenty. I did all of those for twenty days. And so flash forward, like you don't even know this, but I've done ninety-two sessions and twenty-five hours of meditation so far.

• 28:09Tim Ferriss?

  That's great.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  Which is awesome. And I will say that it is certainly helping me in some really interesting ways. Like, there are moments in the day now where normally I would get stressed out or a little agitated and I can finally like use some of those principles and just kind of step back for a second and realize that the anger doesn't exist out here. It's all in here. And I can just like, kind of just come to terms with that and like let it go a little bit and sit with it a little bit and let it go, which is really interesting. The other thing is, when I, I'm now up to like twenty minutes a day of meditation and this only happens every once in a while, like every like third one or something, but like, I'll get this moment where I forget that I'm meditating, but I'm still doing the practice

• 28:55Speaker 03

  and I'm following my breath in and out. And I have this perfect presence where my mind just does not think about anything. I'm not really thinking about anything at all. My mind is just completely free. It's the coolest internal feeling that you can feel without taking some type of substance that I have ever come across. And it only, mine only lasted, I've only gotten these little windows of like twenty to thirty seconds and then my mind comes back online. But I can see for the first time, and it's been ninety-two sessions to get here, I can see for the first time a little glimpse of like, whoa, that's what the pro meditators get like hours of. And that's cool, you know? It's pretty awesome. So-

• 29:34Tim Ferriss?

  It's a big deal. I'm a huge proponent of meditation and I wish there were a different label for it, quite frankly, because I think there's a lot of negative association or connotation with meditation. There's just too much- Historical use as it relates to hippies or

• 29:49Speaker 03

  Religion.

• 29:49Tim Ferriss?

  Particular methodology.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  That's the beautiful thing about this edge phase. It's not tied to any religion at all.

• 29:54Tim Ferriss?

  You can find a, there are secular ways, if that's important to you, to practice this. And you could view it as mindfulness practice, or even just observational practice. And what I mean by that is, I've been meditating for, I don't know, a year and a half or two consistently.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  How often?

• 30:10Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, today was twice a day. Most days it's just once in the morning.

• 30:14Speaker 03

  How many minutes?

• 30:15Tim Ferriss?

  I usually do it for fifteen to twenty.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  Awesome dude, that's great. You must have seen some of the very similar results then.

• 30:20Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly the same. And the, what you become is, imagine if you're, you are watching a movie of your thoughts, projected onto a wall. And when you first start meditating, at some point you're like, my god, is that really my brain? Like, all the time?

• 30:38Speaker 03

  Oh yeah.

• 30:38Tim Ferriss?

  It's just like, it's like a caged monkey on meth, just like bouncing off the wall. It's insane. It's like, totally nuts. You remember I sent, I sent this, I sent this animated gif to Daria of this cat trying to fight an iguana? You remember those spastic, like kitten?

• 30:57Speaker 03

  He's the weirdest guy to text with. You send him animated gifs all the time.

• 31:01Tim Ferriss?

  And I was like, this is my, this is how I feel when I meditate. And the, but what you, you start to observe, you start to be able to observe those thoughts, and not just feel the thoughts. And then when you get angry, you're like, oh, that's interesting. Like, Kevin is getting angry.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Right, that's not me.

• 31:18Tim Ferriss?

  For such, just such a reason. And that separation of the actor and the observer is really fascinating.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  It's really cool. Cause you can realize that that's really not you.

• 31:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  That's just like, this emotional little things firing that like, like hormones and all the other kinds of shit, like causing this outburst. That's really not your core. That's not who you are.

• 31:38Tim Ferriss?

  There's also, there's some great guided meditations on the website of Sam Harris, samharris.org. I also did two podcasts with Sam. Sam's a PhD in neuroscience, is a very

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Well, that's another thing, Adam's getting to work with him, right?

• 31:52Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I hope so.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  Oh, is that, okay.

• 31:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Sam is brilliant. So Sam and I did two podcasts. One is called Drugs in the Meaning of Life, which is an essay read by Sam. I highly recommend it. And the other was a larger exploration and discussion of meditation, imaging in neuroscience, religion, all sorts of things.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  I love these-

• 32:14Tim Ferriss?

  Samharris.org has a bunch of guided meditations as well.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  I love that we do these things. Honestly, I have notes here of like, things that I'm gonna go check it out for. We both always pick up a little tidbit.

• 32:22Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's great. Any good books you've read recently?

• 32:26Speaker 03

  I mean, other than Grain Brain, and then I'm starting to get into Antifragile, which I-

• 32:32Tim Ferriss?

  Antifragile's a great book. I am biased because I know Nassim pretty well, spent a decent amount of time with him. And I fell in love with The Black Swan. I thought that was a spectacular book. Fooled by Randomness, also very good.

• 32:45Speaker 03

  Fooled by Randomness, I just like, ah, man, I listened to it.

• 32:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  And I got it. The problem I have with his books is like, I listen to him, and the first 10 minutes, I'm sold. Not the first 10 minutes, but the first hour of the audiobook, I'm sold. And I'm like, great, I'm sold. And then he just keeps going on and on and on. I'm like, where does this end?

• 33:02Tim Ferriss?

  Well, where I find, I'll just, I'll play devil's advocate, because I definitely know that type of book, but I didn't get that feeling from, from The Black Swan, nor Antifragile. Antifragile's a bigger book-

• 33:13Speaker 03

  I'm talking about Fooled by Randomness.

• 33:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Okay, all right. So, yeah, so maybe that's the case. But The Black Swan was introduced to me by Matt Mullenweg, so the lead developer of WordPress, now, I guess, CEO of Automattic. And really, really had a huge impact. Antifragile's a big book, and the gems are spread throughout. So you have to kind of pick and choose, absorb what is useful. But I thought the concept of, say, fragile, robust- And then anti-fragile being the real opposite of fragile is being very, very interesting. So you have, say, you know, fragile, people who care about the minority who dislike their work, like politicians, right? Then you have, say, anti-fragile, who would be artists who care more about the minority who like their work, right?

• 33:55Tim Ferriss?

  So it's sort of how you can, you can actually become stronger in the face of chaos or adversity. Not just be resilient, but, but benefit from it and grow stronger. It's, that's a fascinating book. I have that one at home, marked up really significantly. The, I read a book that was recommended to me by James Altucher called Jesus's Son. And this book, Jesus's Son, is not religious. It is a collection of short stories, I'm blanking on the author's name, but it is some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read. It's fiction.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  Does it have anything to do with Jesus?

• 34:31Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  How do you know it's not? Jesus's son?

• 34:34Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe it's Jesus's son.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Could be.

• 34:36Tim Ferriss?

  Could be. Good point. But the, the stories are so brutal, I mean, they're just, they're, they're really, really brutal stories, but the prose is so beautiful that it makes it absorbable. And it was recommended to me by a number of people I really respect as readers and writers, and I just flew through this book. I didn't expect it.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 34:57Tim Ferriss?

  But that, that's one, if you're looking for something to read that is fiction, that you can probably digest in a day or two, that's a great read as well.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  Sweet. So let's hop on to some other stuff, yeah?

• 35:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  All right, so I want to show you an app called Sup.

• 35:09Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 35:10Speaker 03

  It's a new app that's, you know, I don't have any affiliation with this app, I just saw it for the first time yesterday. I just want to show it to you because I think it's pretty funny that it's just a random, random app. So I just sent a request to Daria for Sup, and she's gonna receive it here in a second.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  I like apps that are just pushing the boundaries. So, look, it says, "Connecting to Daria right now," and we can shoot B-roll of this afterwards, yeah? We'll shoot some stuff. And then, what happens is, you get a live connection with your friend. Good. Watch this, it's about to begin. And then now, she's shooting us live. Yeah. And then I can tell her which way to turn the camera. Oh, that's cool. And then I'm extending the time by hitting the little heart here. I'm like, "Turn it this way, turn it this way, turn it this way." And actually, you know what? I wanna see, I wanna see what's up on the, up on the ceiling there. And then she'll like note it. And it says on her screen, like, "Turn." Isn't that awesome? That's really cool. Turn over here.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  My buddy Danny was at a concert the other day, and so he was like, I could say like, "Give me a selfie." I hit that button. Yeah. And then she can like, do a little selfie here. Isn't that pretty sweet? That's cool. I like that. So this is just a fun little thing that, uh, there she is. Isn't that amazing? Uh, that's great. That's cool. I like that. So it's just like, you know, I, I, we don't talk about, well, I guess we do talk about apps every once in a while. Sup is just like, a fun way that if you have a friend out doing something cool. My buddy Danny was at Outside Lands the other day, and he was watching a concert. And I knew he had Backstreet Passes, and so I was, I hit him up, and then like, he was live streaming it to me, and I could just get a little window into his life. And so it, it just, um, there's no audio associated with this, so you don't have to worry about any of that stuff. That's fun.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  I like it when I, I meet an entrepreneur, or I see a startup that is not, I mean, in, in my line of work, and on the investing side, you just see a lot of the same old stuff. Yeah. Or a slight little variation or something different. You see a lot of crap. You see a lot of crap. I mean, you're in the same world. Yeah. And so this was like, it was, it was new and unique and fun, and I just thought like, I don't know that this is gonna be a big business, I don't know that it's really gonna take off, but you know what? Hats off to them for trying something different, you know? And it's, it's kind of a fun little thing, so, just wanted to give them a plug. Cool. Do you think we're in a tech bubble? I need to chime in on this. There's certainly more capital available now for startups in the Bay Area, the Silicon Valley area, than I've ever seen. Yeah. Um, it's easier to get funded than ever before. You know, what do you consider to be a bubble? Like, I mean-

• 37:40Speaker 03

  What would you consider a bubble? So, what I think is that every time another tech company IPOs, whether it's a Twitter, or GoPro, or you name it- You have to imagine that these companies are, you know, 500 to 1,000 people or more. And you instantly create, you know, several hundred millionaires or 100 millionaires, or whatever it may be. And those are like, an angel gets their wings. They instantly become like angel investors, right? Like, a lot of people in tech are like, hey, I get tech. I worked at an awesome startup, I made some money. Now I want to go invest in other things.

• 38:12Tim Ferriss?

  There are thousands of new angel investors in the last two years.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  You jump back to 2006, when I first started really seriously angel investing. And there was just like, you know, not a handful of us, but 100 of us, you know? And now there's like, thousands.

• 38:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  So, those people have to go through the process of losing their money.

• 38:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  Not completely, but like, you know, they'll play some bad bets. Or some people realize that like, you know, investing is not just, it's not for them. They're not going to pick in companies, or whatever it may be. And then, those investors will fade away and say, screw it, I'm sticking with my S and P 500 and my wealth front, and I'm happy, you know? At the same time, new companies are IPO-ing and new investors are being born. And so, there's this like, reinforcing bubble that's continuing on. But it's not hurting anyone.

• 38:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  It's not like back in 2000, when companies would IPO and you have, you know, my mom and dad putting their life savings into a tech company and they lose all their money, right? That's not happening. So, it's really, who cares if there's a bubble? Like, it doesn't, it's not hurting the average consumer. So, you know, it's some wealthy tech people losing their money. The stats right now are about 2 out of every 10 companies actually make it. And so, my advice for would-be new angel investors, because I see a lot of people that have made some money and they, they're like, hey, how do I get started in this world? Is that, don't just invest in one or two companies. But if you're really going to be serious about this, go on and do those 10 to 15 to 20 companies so that you have an entire portfolio. So you're spreading your risk out across several companies, rather than just concentrating on just two or three.

• 39:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  So, I think that certainly, valuations are higher than I've seen them in a long time. And there's more investors than I've seen in a long time. So you, you could consider that a bubble, but one that when it bursts, no one really gets hurt.

• 39:56Tim Ferriss?

  Depends on if it's constrained to the private markets.

• 39:58Speaker 03

  That's true, and the Jobs Act is changing some of that stuff, so that could bleed into like the average investor, but I don't know.

• 40:05Tim Ferriss?

  What sort of personal improvement projects are you working on these days besides the meditation?

• 40:10Speaker 03

  Uh, I've been doing Lumosity a lot, which I actually like. I think it's making me a little bit sharper. You know, as you get into your later 30s like I am now, like certain things, like I'm sure you've noticed it as well.

• 40:20Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I'm like, I feel like I'm 80 because I have Lyme disease right now.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  I know that, which is horrible, but like, you know what I'm talking about in general before all that.

• 40:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I got it.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  There's just little things that, other than that, personal improvement projects, the gym. I've been, you know, that actually gluten free thing's done wonders for my beer gut, which has gone down considerably.

• 40:37Tim Ferriss?

  Are you doing more than benching? Are you doing back exercises?

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Why?

• 40:40Tim Ferriss?

  I was kidding.

• 40:41Speaker 03

  Why do you think back exercises? You think I just go to the gym and just bench?

• 40:45Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know. It seems like you bench press a lot.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  So here's-

• 40:47Tim Ferriss?

  You have very, very manly, uh, chesticles.

• 40:50Speaker 03

  Dude, I've got some good arms too. I, um, you're just jealous because my arms are bigger than yours now.

• 40:56Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, here we go. Here we go.

• 40:58Speaker 03

  You said, you said testicles. You said testicles?

• 41:01Tim Ferriss?

  No, I said chesticles.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  Oh, chesticles. I thought you meant testicles.

• 41:04Tim Ferriss?

  You might have very nice testicles as well. I haven't had a chance to, you know.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  One of the things I, one of the things I do do that, that actually I would recommend to anyone out there that has really trimmed me up. I've tried a bunch of stuff.

• 41:16Tim Ferriss?

  Corsets?

• 41:16Speaker 03

  No.

• 41:17Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  Kind of, actually. Kind of. Here, I'll explain. I'll explain. How are you not drunk? You're actually drunk. So here's-

• 41:29Tim Ferriss?

  Get Lyme disease. You're high all day. It's amazing.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  So here's, here's, here's the thing. I've been searching for a long time to find a way to like get some cardio in and make it fun, you know? Like cardio is like, it takes a lot of time. It's kind of a pain in the ass, blah, blah. You can do high intensity interval training. That's fine. But here's the deal. I got a treadmill at home. I invested in a treadmill, got one, and I- Have my iPad with me, so I can do miscellaneous iPad stuff. The problem is, you go too fast on the treadmill and you're bouncing all over the place. You get seasick and like, you're like, I'm done, right?

• 41:59Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  So, what I did is, I bought a weight vest. And I found an article on the internet that shows that all of the new, um, you know the new Avengers movie coming out? Like the new X-Men and all that stuff? They all, all the trainers there made them wear 20-pound weight vests when they were around everywhere they went. Like prior, like three months prior to the movie or whatever, right?

• 42:19Tim Ferriss?

  This is a lot more tiring than you might think.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, it drains real quick.

• 42:24Tim Ferriss?

  It's ridiculous.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  So, what I do is I set my incline to 10% on the treadmill. The speed to 2 miles an hour, so it's a nice slow walk. Put the 20-pound weight vest on, and then flip open my iPad mini. And I play like Kingdom Rush, which is a great like game, and a few other games. And I'll be sitting there like totally like in my game. I look up and it's 45 minutes in, I go 60 minutes. I'm drenched. I mean, absolutely like I'm having to like move my iPad away because sweat is falling off my face. And then I come in the house and I shower and it wasn't like I even worked out. It was like I just played games for an hour. And it's awesome and the fat just falls off.

• 43:02Tim Ferriss?

  Dude, you know what you should do is get an Oculus Rift? And like play some karate game, so you can like do it on the treadmill while you're walking.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  That's a fad, Oculus Rift's dead.

• 43:11Tim Ferriss?

  What?

• 43:12Speaker 03

  It's a...

• 43:12Tim Ferriss?

  Really? Do you believe that?

• 43:14Speaker 03

  I think VR is just...

• 43:14Tim Ferriss?

  Dude, a lot of the big gaming producers are, are building out games that are dependent on VR.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they were on the Wii with the freaking thing that you moved around.

• 43:23Tim Ferriss?

  Really? See, I think, I think once...

• 43:26Speaker 03

  I'm sure the hardcore gamers are gonna love it. Somebody was telling me the other day, or like, like a few weeks ago, they're like, "You don't understand, football, man, you're gonna be like putting the thing on, you'll be like in the helmet, it'll be crazy." I'm like, "Yeah, I'm gonna go to a Super Bowl party and I'm gonna walk in and there's gonna be 30 people with Oculus's on their heads."

• 43:43Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think that's, I think that the, the football use case and all of that is minor compared to the potential for a Second Life-like utopia.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Well, I'm really excited about Second Life. I told you about Hi-Fi, right? Hi-Fidelity?

• 43:57Tim Ferriss?

  Nah, well, I've heard about it, you didn't tell me about it though.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 44:00Tim Ferriss?

  Tell me more.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Oh, it's the same guy that, um, created...

• 44:03Tim Ferriss?

  Philip?

• 44:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, Philip Rosedale, the guy that created Second Life is creating a new virtual world.

• 44:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  It's gonna be freaking awesome.

• 44:07Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's a big deal. I mean, I think that's getting...

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 44:10Tim Ferriss?

  Have you read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson? So... I think it's gonna be like that. I mean, I think that you'll have people in less than ideal circumstances, all the way up to the top of the food chain, who are going to treat this, potentially, you know, this secondary world with highly-developed technology like Oculus Rift. It'll become the time-intensive equivalent of what people are doing with, say, World of Warcraft. You know, there are people who just spend like 20 to 50 hours a week.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I get it.

• 44:40Tim Ferriss?

  You look at, say, you know, the, uh, what the fuck is it? The Kardashian app that is pulling in, you know, it's 100 to 200 million dollars in revenue, which is just like a fantasy world. I think it's just called Famous, right? Where you, you, you, you pay money to try to become famous, like get signed with an agent, do different commercials, advertise, what's it like? But imagine if you could do that, uh, as, from like POV. I don't know, man.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  You should do that for your, like, make it, call it like Tim Tim, like an app. And you have to like go work out at the gym and like eat, eat beans and protein.

• 45:14Tim Ferriss?

  That sounds really, that sounds like a-

• 45:17Speaker 03

  That would be amazing, though.

• 45:18Tim Ferriss?

  That sounds like a- That sounds like a gripping game. Be like, hey, two more dollars for another spoonful of lentils.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  It's like, it's like, it's like, do you want antibiotics or anabolic steroids? Or, hmm, what would Tim choose? Steroids.

• 45:33Tim Ferriss?

  Contracted Lyme disease. Time out for five hours. Or you can buy doxycycline for five Tim, Tim dollars.

• 45:39Speaker 03

  For Tim Tim points. You're like, I don't think the Tim Tim bucks.

• 45:44Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  Dude, I will be a whale on your game and spend a ton of money if you make that game. That would be amazing. I'm like, I just bought Tim, Tim Tim bucks.

• 45:54Tim Ferriss?

  Tim Tim bucks, 10 bucks?

• 45:56Speaker 03

  10 bucks.

• 45:57Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  All right, so let's, uh, move on.

• 45:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Um, so I showed you, uh, your turn.

• 46:02Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, you know, this is not something I want to spend a lot of time on, but I was more nervous than I've been in ages about a week ago when I did my first email to this list that I've been accumulating since 2007, so.

• 46:20Tim Ferriss?

  When I'd made my first homepage and kind of sketched it out, included an email capture because that's what everybody told me I should do. And then I promptly forgot about the whole thing and didn't want to email people because I didn't want to get emailed myself. Yada, yada, yada. And then went back and looked at it not too long ago and saw that I had between 200 and 300,000 email addresses. Somewhere thereabouts. And so really got in touch with all the experts, sort of re-engaged with Aweber. And did my first mailing out to folks because I feel like with blogs, right? Blogs are considered very old fashioned in a lot of ways, right? In the world of new social media apps and so on. Blogs are considered kind of old fashioned. But I find that I do my best thinking in longer form on the blog.

• 47:05Tim Ferriss?

  And I've struggled with how to get that out because it's so noisy. And let's say I put out a post on Facebook. Because Facebook wants you to, they'll throttle you back because they want you to like boost it and pay to promote it to your audience. So you only hit like 10 to 15% of your audience. And then Twitter, Twitter's amazing, but it's become so popular. And I think actually advertising, and I'm testing some advertising on Twitter right now, can be very effective. But if you're just using your follower base, if you put out a tweet and most people are following a few hundred people, it's like throwing an orange golf ball into a roaring rapid. I mean, it's like that stuff gets pushed down so quickly. You're probably also only hitting a very small percentage. White, orange. Probably a white one. Well, if it's white, you wouldn't see it at all. Right. Why, but orange, you would see a little bit?

• 47:47Tim Ferriss?

  That's, yeah, that's my sort of metaphorical assumption.

• 47:53Tim Ferriss?

  It could be, if you prefer bright blue, we could use blue. It's funny that sort of I've gone full circle and it looks like I'll be focusing a lot on email on the blog. Where I can actually get now, instead of say 10% of my audience or 5% of my audience seeing a blog post, get 50% of my audience potentially seeing a blog post. And I've already seen such a massive uptick in comments, in sharing, in everything. It's been really eye opening. So what is the next?

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Three years look like for you. Cause you've done so much. Well, hold on, you've done so much crazy stuff over the years. You've got this great audience of people that obviously wanna learn how to work their, create a better lifestyle for themselves, how to get in shape, how to cook better. Like, you've done all these awesome things. Like, what's next? Like, what's the, are you doing another big thing? Are you gonna just focus on the core that you already have? Or?

• 48:46Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't decided. You know, there are a few things that I'd really like to do. I had been working on my first screenplay. And that's been really fun for me to do.

• 48:58Tim Ferriss?

  People have approached me over the years about doing something with an adaptation of The Four Hour Work Week. And a lot of the backstory is not in there. I mean, the wild adventures and misadventures and craziness from that year and a half of traveling the world is not really out there, published. And so I've been playing around. It would be a comedy. It'd be kinda like Fight Club meets Dodgeball. Something like that. It'd be like.

• 49:20Speaker 03

  So Brad Pitt throwing balls around.

• 49:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sure. Yeah, we could, we could go there. Or like Ben Stiller as, as my arch-nemesis in the world of Tango. Ben, if you're listening. We just talk.

• 49:35Tim Ferriss?

  But I've been having a lot of fun with screenplays. And I've been reading a lot of screenplays, which are like novels that take an hour and a half to read. It's awesome. Like, reading screenplays is super fun. I recommend King's Speech. I recommend Casablanca if you wanna go super classic. My favorite of all time, probably The Princess Bride. That is so good. William Goldman is just a genius. Fight Club's great. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is pretty good. But that, that's, if I'm gonna do a next big project, I think it would look something like a feature film.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  Do you think your audiobook stuff will be, continue to be a big thing?

• 50:09Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I'm really enjoying the, the Tim Ferriss Book Club stuff and been acquiring audiobooks. The next book that's coming out.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  I'm really excited. Well, I've told you this on multiple episodes, but I think that's the coolest thing you're working on right now.

• 50:19Tim Ferriss?

  Really?

• 50:20Speaker 03

  I mean, it's cool. It's awesome. Like, you're revitalizing all these old books and.

• 50:24Tim Ferriss?

  I'm super excited. I can't name the next book yet, but this is gonna be the first book.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  What is the first letter?

• 50:31Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, W. Are you serious? Yep.

• 50:38Tim Ferriss?

  But this is the first book. People are gonna slowly, when they look back at the book club, if it works out, as I'm hoping, when they look at, say, there are about four or five books right now. I love all of them. And you can just go to fourhourworkweek, all spelled out, dot com slash books. So, fourhourworkweek.com forward slash books to see all of them. But so far, it's just been audiobooks. The next book, I actually have the audio and the ebook rights. I've been figuring out so much with these various launches that I think there will be a point where I'm basically, I would like to take the digital and the audio, blow that out of the water. I mean, just like load it into this cannon and shoot it into outer space as far as like

• 51:22Tim Ferriss?

  Amazon sales and so on, and awareness and PR are concerned. What I'd like to do is potentially partner with traditional publishers to have them handle the print edition and retail distribution. Astonishingly to me.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  Are you a complete publisher at that point?

• 51:37Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I would be a publisher, but I wouldn't be a, I wouldn't be a complete publisher because I don't want to deal with the prints, not my area of expertise.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Right. You're outsourcing that to them, but why do you need to outsource that? Why don't you just have it printed on the side? Well, I guess they have all the distribution stuff.

• 51:50Tim Ferriss?

  I'd like them to, yeah, save sales departments and relationships that they can capitalize on for the retail distribution. I think that's valuable. Especially if, for instance, imagine this, I become a talent scout and I find people who have never published books, but who have amazing writing capabilities. And I kind of coach them through the process. And this wouldn't be like, it's not my main financial thing. It's actually a huge time investment for not very much financial return, but I'm like, I'm so passionate about the idea that, you know, and this is, might seem like a ridiculous comparison, but you know, the way that, say, Eminem discovered, and I believe it was Eminem, maybe, and Dr. Dre, who discovered 50 Cent?

• 52:27Speaker 03

  I think it was just Dre.

• 52:28Tim Ferriss?

  Well, Dre discovered Eminem.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  It was two of them, yeah.

• 52:30Tim Ferriss?

  And then Eminem discovered 50 Cent. And I think, who discovered Rihanna? Was that also Eminem? I have no idea. Anyway, somebody will correct me. But the idea that you could be like, that's talent, but they're gonna get chewed up by the system and they're gonna make too many mistakes that could be fatal, great, like, here are the people you need, here's the toolkit you need, and then like shoot them off into outer space. The idea of being able to do that.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 52:51Tim Ferriss?

  Is really exciting. I want you to do a romance novel. You want me to write a romance novel? I'm just, I think, I think you got it in you. How about a bromance novel? I could just write about us. That's right. Whatever. Just, just think of a fake name for me and I'll be all good. What about, you know, let me tell you one thing, because, you know, I know we've talked a lot about sort of next chapters and what are we gonna do and things like that. I'll talk about my next chapter. Yeah, I want, I want to. So, one, one thing that I realized, I had a really profound sort of retreat into the wilderness recently. That sounds so weird. But I spent a lot of time in nature with a couple of very close friends. What were you doing out there? That sounds completely weird. I was experimenting with What was it?

• 53:36Tim Ferriss?

  Medicinal plants. Let's call it that. And I wasn't there for the record. He was not there. I wanted to go, but I was scared. It was a good decision. You didn't go. Yeah, you know how weak I am. Not, not, not weak. You're not yet anti-fragile in that department. Can you grab me a beer, babe? Babe, can you please grab me water? Thank you. My wife, babe. She's hot. She is hot.

• 54:02Tim Ferriss?

  What I was gonna say is So is your girlfriend, so that's fine. Yes, that's true. So, the, I was really having this kind of existential crisis trying to decide what my next project was gonna be. And I love the tech investing, but honestly, there's so much happening right now. I find it kind of overwhelming. Sure. I mean, just so many emails, so many meetings. We've talked about that so many times. It's so over, it's extremely overwhelming and it's an enviable problem to have, of course, but it's still a very significant source of anxiety, I think. Because you want to be responsive, you want to be helpful, but there are so many, the barriers to entry with tech startups are so low. You just get, you can, you can be in the, in the middle of a tsunami really quickly. So, I was Thanks, love. I was debating all this stuff and one of my friends, no, thank you. Okay, sure.

• 54:44Tim Ferriss?

  So, what, what my friend said to me, he said, you know, he's also actually involved with tech. And he said, I really owe you a debt of gratitude. I won't name you by name in case you don't want to be named in that context. But he said, there are a lot of venture capitalists out there. There are a lot of investors. And if, if you don't invest in a company that's really promising, somebody else will just take your place. There's no shortage of capital. And he's like, these, like, the good companies will get funded no matter what. Sure. And he said, but, and he, he was at, he saw me at an event where I had multiple people in line come up to me sort of crying because they'd lost, you know, a hundred plus pounds and had these dramatic changes. He's like, you're never gonna have that impact. Investing in companies, like you're replaceable as a VC.

• 55:28Tim Ferriss?

  And he's like, you should stick with your writing, keep writing. And like that had really a huge impact on me. And that's part of the reason why I've like reshifted and I'm focusing a lot on, you know, the last few blog posts I've put a ton of time into and I'm really happy with the response.

• 55:43Speaker 03

  That's awesome, dude. I'm glad to see that because like I, I love your content too. And I think that you're awesome at doing that stuff and like more of that is, is better for the earth, so.

• 55:52Tim Ferriss?

  I'm enjoying it, you know, but I'm sure you, we don't have to dig too deep with this, but it's, it's very seductive to focus on the things that are not bad, you don't dislike them, that provide the highest financial return.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 56:10Tim Ferriss?

  And that's generally not creating content, but that's not the only return. That's not the only ROI you can have for investing your time, certainly. So that's been a big one. Well, so enough about me. Tell me, your next chapter, what's going on?

• 56:24Speaker 03

  I mean, there's, there's nothing new to talk about today, other than the fact that I've been really enjoying the whole creative process side again. Like I've gotten involved in creating some new applications. And so I've got a buddy of mine, Mark Himmann, who I worked with briefly at DIG. Daniel Burka was my main designer there for many, many years. And then Mark was hired to work with us a little bit later. And he's a really good product guy and really good, just awesome designer, both mobile and web and all over the place. And also actually a pretty good artist.

• 56:55Tim Ferriss?

  That's a cool combo.

• 56:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like just really talented up and down. So been prototyping some stuff on the weekends, just like sitting out and like building some new apps, both on the desktop and on mobile. I have like three or four ideas right now that I've just kind of been sitting on and starting to flesh out a little bit. And it's, it's weird because I just feel really, I mean, Derry, I'll tell you, like I've just been like working, like, like not working like vetting companies and going and having coffee, working, because that's like what I do every week. But like, this is like me in my office, just like, you know, on a whiteboard and having Mark come over and we're like brainstorming ideas and going through mockups and like trying out different flows and talking about how things come together and working with developers. And it's just like been fun.

• 57:40Speaker 03

  To get those creative juices going again and starting something new.

• 57:43Tim Ferriss?

  It's just like me with my writing. You're creating something. You're creating something from nothing.

• 57:47Speaker 03

  And, and it feels really good.

• 57:49Tim Ferriss?

  As opposed to just filtering.

• 57:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:51Tim Ferriss?

  You know what I mean? And it's not that you can't be helpful, but there's something viscerally rewarding about taking something in here that doesn't exist and creating something tangible, whether that's digital or physical that people can interact with. I mean, it's so gratifying. And I remember talking to you on the phone not too long ago, and I was like, you sound a lot more excited than you've sounded in a while.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  Dude, well, it's crazy because there's two independent moments that like got me pretty excited to get back into this. One was I was at Blue Bottle Coffee, having some coffee, meeting with a founder. And this kid just grabbed me randomly, like I'm sure fans do with you every once in a while. And I'm just like, awesome. Like, what are you working on? He's like, oh, I got this startup, blah, blah. I used to love Dignation. I used to love Dig, blah. And I was like, oh, thanks, appreciate it. And he's like, when's your next startup? And I'm like, oh, dude, I'm a full-time VC. And it's like I had just shot the kid's dog. Like, his face, his face just like dropped down. He's like, and he looked at me and he's like, you're not, like, you're gonna start something new? Like, he was like expecting me to create the next thing. And I was like, you know, it didn't hit me right away. I was like, oh, I'm sorry. And I like had to run, so I took off.

• 58:58Speaker 03

  And then later, I was like, wow, that guy, it was clear to me that like he really enjoyed something that I had created in the past, as I'm sure you get with your readers and stuff. It was like, wow, I should keep doing that. Like, why not? Like, that's what I love the most. And the other, the other piece, that was one story. The other one was I gotten to know luckily Tony Fidell quite well. He created the, he was the original guy that created the iPod, created Nest later on. You probably saw my Foundation interview with him. Foundation.KR, if you haven't seen those videos yet, go to that website. A lot of great entrepreneurs there. I sat down with him and, and he created Nest. He sold it to Google. And so I see him a lot more because he's always around at Google. And we were out and like having a drink. And, and I was like, you know, gosh, like, what, what keeps you going?

• 59:43Speaker 03

  Because, you know, I don't, I won't say what his net worth is, but like it's a lot. I would imagine he's, no, I don't know. But I mean, the sale was public about what he sold to Google for and stuff like this. Well, I imagine the dude's got a billion dollars, right? And, and I'm like, what, what keeps you going? What drives you to like do all the stuff that you do? And he's just like, It was about the passion around creativity and wanting to just like invent and create and be mixed in with the people that are doing amazing things. And like, I was listening to his story and you know, he has kids and a wife and he's traveling a lot. And it was just like, the dude is juggling 10x what I am.

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  And he's just doing it with ease, you know, and he's just like a badass. Like just like can execute like none other.

• 1:00:31Tim Ferriss?

  What's his secret sauce?

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  His secret sauce is just like having, understanding that, and this is my take on it. This isn't what he said to me, but like in kind of distilling down everything that we talked about. It's just that like, he understands that, I feel that more or less that, you know, you only have so, you never know what's gonna happen to you, right? We talked about this. He went to your friend's memorial today.

• 1:00:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, he was just, as a side note. Yeah, well, we talked about this. I mean, he was, he displayed no aberrant, unusual symptoms of any type. Was going out hiking with a close friend, met up with friends and family in the days preceding it. Totally fine. And just, they're still doing a full sort of coroner's investigation and whatnot. But just dropped dead. And similarly, like one of my, my brother's best friend's girlfriends, I mean, this is a woman in her twenties, perfectly healthy from all outward indications, in an office, has an aneurysm, drops dead.

• 1:01:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, the guy, so the lead engineer for boosted boards, the skateboards, those automatic skateboards that you may have saw on Kickstarter, that you can like control with your hand, which I got a prototype of and was using, a couple of weeks ago, two weeks ago, was in San Francisco on a boosted board going like this, like just controlling it, drops dead, brain aneurysm.

• 1:01:51Tim Ferriss?

  So you never know, guys.

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  Here's the whole thing. At the end of the day, I, I was like sitting there listening to that and I'm like, you know, you and I have both been very blessed and we've done some awesome stuff and gotten rewarded for it. And so like, I can kind of fade off in the future and be this like little investor and like, live my little life and go down, drink my coffee with my founders and come back home and drink my like glass of wine and go to bed and call that a day. Or I can step back up to the plate and try some crazy shit again and like to see where it takes me. And I was like, you know what, why don't I just go do some crazy stuff, you know? So I'm still a full-time investor at Google Ventures and doing all that stuff. But like, you know, there's nothing preventing me from hacking on stuff on the side and doing little things. So I'm having fun doing it. I'm all for it, man. I think you should keep it up.

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  So anyway, that is that. Oh, last thing I want to talk about. Do you have any more or are you good? No, I'm good, man. The last thing, we always talk about little hobbies and stuff like that. One of the things that, I don't know if we talk about hobbies ever.

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  We always talk about. Little hobbies. One of the things in the last like two or three months is a friend of mine, a couple of friends of mine, have gotten me excited about wristwatches. And at first you think wristwatches, you think like, oh boy, like why? Like we have time on our phones, like what do we need? Why would you ever want a watch on your wrist? It's my question. Precisely my question. My buddy, I mean, you know, you know Kevin Systrom. And I don't know if he would kill me for calling him out, but whatever. Well, I mean, he could watch this, Kevin. You know, I've had a couple of drinks. So basically, Kev's a good guy and he was saying that like, the only jewelry we have as men, like women have earrings, they have necklaces, stuff like that. The only thing we have, I have t-shirts, is a watch. It's like a nice, nice timepiece, right? You could get some earrings.

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  I could get some earrings. And so, I wasn't into watches at all. My dad passed away a few years ago and he left me two watches. My dad was by no means a wealthy man. He was like, I would consider him, we were very poor for many years and then eventually he broke into the middle class, like standard middle class. And he bought a Rolex watch, two of them actually. One a little bit older and one new. And those were like his prized possessions. In fact, the second one that he bought, he never wore, ever. He was like, I'm saving this. He never put it on. Like he put it on like twice, but it's like flawless. So anyway, I inherited that stuff and you know, I was like, wow, this is kind of cool. It's like my dad's stuff. And so that was kind of attractive.

• 1:04:16Speaker 03

  And then I started learning more about the fact that there's still innovation happening in these timepieces. And like there's like these artisan like craftsmen that still work in this field, this dying field, making these amazing new innovations of mechanical, like not, not digital, but like straight up traditional, hand-wound watches. And so, I started getting into it. I actually traveled out to Germany with Daria. We went out to this, this place called Lange and Sons, which is like this like awesome like little boutique. They only make 5,000 or so watches per year. And we got to meet them and I hadn't bought a really crazy watch. And I met these, this team and walked through this like whole compound in Germany.

• 1:04:58Speaker 03

  And it was a few hundred people and they hand polish every little part. They care so much about how these watches go together. A little tiny town in the middle of nowhere. You fly into Dresden, they drive about an hour and a half away. And they assemble them, check the time, make sure, use all these fancy gauges, disassemble them and then clean them again and then reassemble them. And they only make about a hundred per year per type of watch. And so I was like, wow, this is really cool. And on top of that, you realize when you invest in something like this, especially like something that's like, not so much a Rolex where they make a million a year. They make a million Rolexes a year. But something really small and boutiquey, they actually go up in value.

• 1:05:40Speaker 03

  So it's like, you know, in your head, you say, okay, well, I'd normally put this much into my 401k per year. I'm gonna carve out a little bit. Just this, hold on. I know it's creep. Don't put your 401k money into time pieces, please. Listen, that's true. But what I'm saying is like, you know, I started following some of the blogs. One in particular, Hodinkee, which you should check out if you're at all curious about this. It's probably the best watch blog. Hodinkee? Yeah. How do you spell it? H O D I N K E E dot com. I knew it was gonna be some twist, I got two E's. But, but anyway, check it out, it's a really great blog. And, and you start to learn a lot about what goes into all these things. And some of them can track the moon phases and do really crazy stuff. So, anyway, this is one that I picked up here about three weeks ago. It just came out.

• 1:06:24Speaker 03

  It's actually made by Swatch of all brands. This here, this watch here is called the System 51. And it's because it has 51 parts, which is like, it's an automatic watch, meaning it's self-winding when you wear it. But 51 parts, it's all machine assembled. It's the first fully automatic, meaning self-winding, machine assembled watch. It has like 17 new patents. It's very collectible, it's 150 bucks. You can buy it now, 150 bucks. I mean, that's pretty awesome, it's not crazy. And it's just like a pretty cool watch. And it winds itself anywhere and it has a lot of horological significance. And that is like, that's what they call people that are into timekeeping.

• 1:07:10Tim Ferriss?

  Horologist.

• 1:07:11Speaker 03

  I laugh all you want, but anyway.

• 1:07:13Tim Ferriss?

  You were waiting for me to laugh. I'm just waiting for you to continue.

• 1:07:16Speaker 03

  Anyway, it's um, so I started kind of getting into like the whole like the scene of like learning more about it and just like, you know, starting to appreciate this stuff. And it's funny, you meet other people and they'll tell you something very unique about their little timepiece. And if you're into engineering and you like that side of things, which like I think all geeks do, you can understand what goes into the manufacturing and why it's pretty awesome. So anyway.

• 1:07:39Tim Ferriss?

  So I might, I might actually, I haven't had a watch in years. I might actually get a watch, not because I'm gonna collect, but because I like to take sort of a technology Sabbath on Saturdays. I go, I try to go screenless on Saturdays. So no, no phones.

• 1:07:52Speaker 03

  Pick up one of these guys.

• 1:07:53Tim Ferriss?

  So it'd be, but it's kind of a pain in the ass to keep track of time. So it'd be nice to have just some lightweight watch.

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  I mean, this is, this is one of those things where I think that in the next, not five or 10, but maybe 20 years, like this thing will probably be five, 10 times the value of what it is today.

• 1:08:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  But I mean, it's a hundred and fifty dollars, but it's, it's a freaking cool watch. And this is a very significant watch. Like in the whole scene was blowing up about how crazy this watch is for the engineering that's gone into it.

• 1:08:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, cool.

• 1:08:22Speaker 03

  But what's crazy about Swatch that you don't know, and this is like a little geeky and I promise we can stop the show. But like Swatch owns like almost all of the shit out there. Like they do all the internals for like almost all the major brands. And like they own, they're a huge company. Forget the retail stores and the little plastic cheap watches. They have all the engineering. Like consider them like the intel inside of like all of their watches.

• 1:08:46Tim Ferriss?

  That's kind of cool.

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. So like you go like.

• 1:08:49Tim Ferriss?

  Are they Swiss or where are they based?

• 1:08:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. So you go and like buy like I'm, Cartier is like, like, or like a high-end designer watch, like a Harry Winston or Cartier or something like that. Like some of those are like this brand called like Edda, like the.

• 1:09:01Tim Ferriss?

  Patek, where do you put Patek Philippe there?

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  So Patek Philippe and, and um, and Lange are tied in my mind for neck and neck for the number one brand in the world. Like they're, they're both amazing.

• 1:09:12Tim Ferriss?

  Do they use the intel inside? Do they use any, they don't use any technology?

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  So those are all considered original movements where they have their own in-house manufacturing and their own in-house. Engineers that actually make all the the internal movements. We actually met the head guy, head engineer. And Long Day and he he like he was had dinner with us. It was amazing. This guy. All he does is build like these little tiny. I mean, they're so small, like the number of components that go in here. It's just fascinating. It's a super old school thing. But for me, like, you know, you gotta understand, like, I'm in, I'm doing tech all twenty four seven. Like, that's all I do. To break away from that and actually have a conversation with someone that's brilliant in like a non-internet way. Is like so nice. Yeah.

• 1:09:53Tim Ferriss?

  That's part of what was so fun about being out on the east coast for a bit is you just have more diversity of. Interests, quite frankly, and also industry.

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  Like an old, old wooden chip. Diversity. Do you know diversity?

• 1:10:08Tim Ferriss?

  I have no idea.

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

  Have you never seen Anchorman?

• 1:10:11Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 1:10:11Speaker 03

  What the fuck? You have never seen Anchorman?

• 1:10:14Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't seen it.

• 1:10:15Speaker 03

  Are you kidding me? What readers follow me? Don't follow him? Yeah. What the hell?

• 1:10:21Tim Ferriss?

  All right, wait, I'm gonna trade. No, I haven't seen Anchorman. Have you seen Step Brothers?

• 1:10:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:10:25Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Have you seen, have you seen King of Kong?

• 1:10:28Speaker 03

  Is that one of your pornos?

• 1:10:29Tim Ferriss?

  No. You've seen it, right? King of Kong.

• 1:10:33Speaker 03

  Oh, I have, I have. The arcade guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's about the rivalry for the Donkey Kong. Uh, world record. And if you're gonna see, just do that in the documentary.

• 1:10:45Tim Ferriss?

  Actually, you know what? I'm I'm curious. Graham, any top documentary picks?

• 1:10:48Speaker 03

  Graham, let's get your.

• 1:10:49Tim Ferriss?

  King of Kong is amazing. Uh, Men on Wire is also incredible.

• 1:10:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I I'm a big fan of uh, of King of Kong, but like I actually just watched one today about people that live in tiny houses.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  Oh, I like that. Tiny houses.

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  Tiny house.

• 1:11:04Tim Ferriss?

  Tiny house.

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  About people who live in tiny houses. That are that are living in like two hundred square foot.

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  That sounds awesome. I've seen those. They're amazing. We've had a bunch of conversations about this.

• 1:11:14Speaker 04

  So that they don't have to build it to building house.

• 1:11:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:11:18Speaker 03

  Tiny house.

• 1:11:19Speaker 04

  Pay, you know, mortgages probably to tax like all that kind of stuff.

• 1:11:21Speaker 03

  Sweet.

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  They can be really well designed. Some of those tiny houses in, did they show any of the ones in China? Like, the ones that are like folding?

• 1:11:33Speaker 04

  Cults, like these small communities of people that follow each other on blogs and things like that. And pass around plans on how to build tiny houses.

• 1:11:41Speaker 03

  Oh, I want a tiny house.

• 1:11:42Speaker 04

  They're building it in their backyard and then they move it on to a plot of land in Colorado and live there.

• 1:11:47Speaker 03

  I just asked my wife if I could have a tiny house and she goes, "Have one with Tim." That's what she just said.

• 1:11:52Tim Ferriss?

  Good, that would help me write my bromance novel.

• 1:11:53Speaker 03

  Should we have a tiny house together?

• 1:11:55Speaker 04

  It's on Netflix.

• 1:11:56Tim Ferriss?

  Brooke Beck, Brooke Beck Rose?

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  Netflix, tiny house. Any, like, one, before we end up the show, any one last thing that, like, product, book, anything that Graham is, Graham grabs a cameraman, you guys all know that.

• 1:12:09Speaker 04

  Not really. I mean, I'm with you, I'm getting into watches as well.

• 1:12:13Speaker 03

  Oh, you are? You're getting into watches?

• 1:12:14Speaker 04

  Like, I've been wearing Timex Weekenders for a long time and I really, I really like those and now I'm kind of like, what should I get next?

• 1:12:22Speaker 03

  Oh shit, we gotta talk.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 1:12:25Tim Ferriss?

  Dangerous habit.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  Are you masturbating? I mean, are you doing his thing?

• 1:12:31Tim Ferriss?

  No, I mean, I didn't mean it that way. Are you doing? He's not on camera, he can do whatever he wants.

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  Are you doing Tim's, Tim's thing?

• 1:12:41Tim Ferriss?

  He's gonna be all masturbating all the time.

• 1:12:43Speaker 03

  That's what I meant, I'm cut off, I'm done.

• 1:12:45Speaker 04

  I couldn't give up alcohol for a minute.

• 1:12:50Speaker 03

  That's what I ask all my friends when they walk in the door. Are you masturbating right now? Alright, let's, uh, anything else?

• 1:12:58Tim Ferriss?

  No, you know, I haven't been getting into watches, but I have been getting back into fiction and reading a lot of Kurt Vonnegut. So if you fashion yourself a nonfiction reader and you're like, "Ah, I'm not gonna read fiction, it's a waste of time. If I want to make stuff up, I could just do it myself." Do yourself a favor, just read Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and see if you still have that opinion. I think you will change your mind. It's very short and very fast.

• 1:13:20Speaker 03

  Awesome, well that is it, that's all I got, that's all you got?

• 1:13:24Tim Ferriss?

  That's all I got.

• 1:13:24Speaker 03

  Good luck with your 30 days, I will donate my $1,000 to donorschoose.org. Thank you for watching, everyone, uh, I will see you back here and you'll be drinking next time.

• 1:13:34Tim Ferriss?

  I will be drinking in the next episode. Not that I need it, but it'll give me some extra personalities.

• 1:13:40Speaker 03

  Well, seriously, I hope everything goes well with the Lyme disease stuff.

• 1:13:43Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks, yeah, I'll be okay. If you have any tips, let me know in the comments.

• 1:13:46Speaker 03

  Cool, see you guys.

• 1:13:48Tim Ferriss?

  Alright.

• 1:13:48Speaker 03

  Peace.

• 1:13:54Speaker 05

  If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or go to fourhourblog.com.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G dot com.

• 1:14:03Speaker 05

  Where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter. It's twitter.com/TFerriss.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  That's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S.

• 1:14:18Speaker 05

  Or on Facebook at facebook.com/TimFerriss. Until next time, thanks for listening.