#677: HERESIES — Exploring Animal Communication, Cloning Humans, The Dangers of The American Dream, and More

Brought to you by Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim high-yield savings account, AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement, and Helix Sleep https://helixsleep.com/tim premium mattresses. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast. I'm very excited to publish this episode. This is an experimental format, and we are calling it HERESIES. The objective of this format is to encourage and celebrate independent thinking. Please enjoy! Bios of the co-hosts and guests: Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly https://twitter.com/kevin2kelly) helped launch and edit Wired magazine. He has written for The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. You can find my most recent interview with him at tim.blog/kevinkelly https://tim.blog/2023/04/26/kevin-kelly-excellent-advice-for-living/. He is the author of the new book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier https://www.amazon.com/Excellent-Advice-Living-Wisdom-Earlier/dp/0593654528?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. Other books by Kevin Kelly include Out of Control https://www.amazon.com/Out-Control-Biology-Machines-Economic/dp/0201483408/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, the 1994 classic book on decentralized emergent systems; The Silver Cord https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Cord-Kevin-Kelly/dp/1940689015/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, a graphic novel about robots and angels; What Technology Wants https://www.amazon.com/What-Technology-Wants-Kevin-Kelly/dp/0143120174/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, a robust theory of technology; Vanishing Asia https://www.amazon.com/Vanishing-Asia-Three-West-Central/dp/1940689066/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, his 50-year project to photograph the disappearing cultures of Asia, and The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future https://www.amazon.com/Inevitable-Understanding-Technological-Forces-Future/dp/0143110373/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, a New York Times bestseller. Kevin is currently co-chair of The Long Now Foundation http://www.longnow.org/, which is building a clock in a mountain that will tick for 10,000 years. He also has a daily blog; a weekly podcast about cool tools; and a weekly newsletter, Recomendo http://recomendo.com/, which is a free, one-page list of six very brief recommendations of cool stuff. He is also a Senior Maverick at Wired. He lives in Pacifica, California. **** Noah Feldman (@NoahRFeldman https://twitter.com/NoahRFeldman) is a Harvard professor, ethical philosopher and advisor, public intellectual, religious scholar and historian, and author of 10 books, including his latest, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Constitution-Lincoln-Slavery-Refounding/dp/0374116644/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. You can find my interview with him at tim.blog/noah https://tim.blog/noah. Noah is the founder of Ethical Compass, which helps clients like Facebook and eBay improve ethical decision-making by creating and implementing new governance solutions. Noah conceived and designed the Facebook Oversight Board https://oversightboard.com/ and continues to advise Facebook on ethics and governance issues. Noah is host of the Deep Background https://www.pushkin.fm/show/deep-background/ podcast, a policy and public affairs columnist for Bloomberg Opinion https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/AFZ_b1F72Xw/noah-feldman, and a former contributing writer for The New York Times. He served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and subsequently advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of Iraq’s interim constitution. He earned his A. B. summa cum laude from Harvard, finishing first in his class. Selected as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a DPhil from Oxford University, writing his dissertation on Aristotle’s Ethics. He received his J. D. from Yale Law School and clerked for Justice David Souter of the U. S. Supreme Court. He is the author of 10 books, including Divided by God: America’s Church-State Problem—and What We Should Do About It https://www.amazon.com/Divided-God-Americas-Church-State-Problem/dp/0374530386/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20; What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building https://www.amazon.com/Feldman-Noah-Princeton-University-Hardcover/dp/B00E2RGWOA/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20; Cool War: The United States, China, and the Future of Global Competition https://www.amazon.com/Cool-War-United-States-Competition/dp/081298255X/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20; Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices https://www.amazon.com/Scorpions-Battles-Triumphs-Supreme-Justices/dp/0446699284/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20; and The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President https://www.amazon.com/Three-Lives-James-Madison-President/dp/1250267005/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. His upcoming book is Bad Jew: A Perplexed Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374298340, which is currently available for pre-order. *** Maggie Spivey-Faulkner is an anthropological archaeologist and practitioner of Indigenous archaeology, currently working as an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology https://www.ualberta.ca/anthropology/index.html at the University of Alberta. She also serves as an assistant chief of the Upper Georgia tribal town of the Pee Dee Indian Nation of Beaver Creek, a state-recognized Native American group in South Carolina. Her work focuses on using anthropological data to upend harmful misconceptions of Native American peoples embedded in public policy, science, and the public consciousness. Maggie was raised in a tight-knit extended family in rural Hephzibah, Georgia. She is an international fellow of The Explorers Club, a former junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She received her Ph. D. in anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018 and her A. B. from Harvard College in 2008. *** Joshua L. Steiner is a partner at SSW http://sswpartners.com/about/, a private investment firm, and a senior adviser at Bloomberg, L. P., where he was previously Head of Industry Verticals. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Steiner co-founded and was co-president of Quadrangle Group, LLC, a private equity and asset management firm. Before co-founding Quadrangle, he was a managing director at Lazard. From 1993 to 1995 he served as chief of staff for the U. S. Department of the Treasury. He serves on the boards of Yale University, the International Rescue Committee, and the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Steiner received a B. A. in history from Yale and an M. St. in modern history from Oxford University. *** This episode is brought to you by AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim! I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, you’ll get their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit DrinkAG1.com/Tim https://drinkag1.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product. * This episode is also brought to you by Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/tim! Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 4.55% APY—that’s the Annual Percentage Yield—with the Wealthfront Cash Account http://wealthfront.com/tim. That’s more than eleven times more interest than if you left your money in a savings account at the average bank, according to FDIC.gov. It takes just a few minutes to sign up, and then you’ll immediately start earning 4.55% interest on your savings. And when you open an account today, you’ll get an extra fifty-dollar bonus http://wealthfront.com/tim with a deposit of five hundred dollars or more. Visit Wealthfront.com/Tim http://wealthfront.com/tim to get started. * This episode is also brought to you by Helix Sleep http://helixsleep.com/tim! Helix was selected as the best overall mattress of 2022 by GQ magazine, Wired, and Apartment Therapy. With Helix http://helixsleep.com/tim, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete http://helixsleep.com/tim—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk-free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, Helix is offering 20% off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim http://helixsleep.com/tim. * [11:34] Defining “heresy.” [14:22] Josh’s heresy: We need to teach listening over talking. [32:48] Noah’s heresy: Constitutions are overrated. [55:01] Maggie’s heresy: American middle-class culture is ruining everything. [1:14:54] Tim’s heresy: We’re on the cusp of meaningfully communicating with animals. [1:35:23] Kevin’s heresy: Human cloning is OK. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors https://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts https://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books https://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, Margaret Atwood https://tim.blog/2022/02/22/margaret-atwood/, Mark Zuckerberg https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/, Peter Thiel https://tim.blog/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/, Dr. Gabor Maté https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/, Anne Lamott https://tim.blog/2021/07/09/anne-lamott/, Sarah Silverman https://tim.blog/2022/01/12/sarah-silverman/, Dr. Andrew Huberman https://tim.blog/2021/07/06/andrew-huberman/, and many more. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your sleep preferences. Their lineup includes 14 unique mattresses, including a collection of luxury models, a mattress for big and tall sleepers - that's not me - and even a mattress made specifically for kids. They have models with memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on your side, as I often do and did last night on one of their beds. Models with more responsive foam to cradle your body for essential support in stomach and back sleeping positions, and on and on. They have you covered. So how will you know which Helix mattress works best for you and your body? Take the Helix Sleep quiz at helixsleep.com/tim and find your perfect mattress in less than two minutes.

• 0:42Tim Ferriss?

  Personally, for the last few years, I have been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one of those in the guest bedroom, and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. They frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. Helix mattresses are American-made and come with a 10- or 15-year warranty, depending on the model. Your mattress will be shipped straight to your door, free of charge. And there's no better way to test out a new mattress than by sleeping on it in your own home. That's why they offer a 100-night risk-free trial. If you decide it's not the best fit, you're welcome to return it for a full refund. Helix has been awarded #1 mattress by both GQ and Wired magazines.

• 1:22Tim Ferriss?

  And now, Helix has harnessed years of extensive mattress expertise to bring you a truly elevated sleep experience. Their newest collection of mattresses, called Helix Elite, includes six different mattress models, each tailored for specific sleep positions and firmness preferences, so you can get exactly what your body needs. Each Helix Elite mattress comes with an extra layer of foam for pressure relief and thousands of extra micro coils for best-in-class support and durability. Every Helix Elite mattress also comes with a 15-year manufacturer's warranty and the same 100-night trial as the rest of Helix's mattresses. And you, my dear listeners, can get 20% off of all mattress orders, plus two free pillows.

• 2:04Tim Ferriss?

  So go to helixsleep.com/tim to learn more. That's Helix Sleep, H-E-L-I-X, helixsleep.com/tim. This is their best offer to date, and it will not last long. So take a look. With Helix, better sleep starts now.

• 2:25Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional insurance and that is nothing new. I actually recommended AG1 in my 2010 best seller, more than a decade ago, The 4-Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. I simply loved the product and felt like it was the ultimate nutritionally dense supplement that you could use conveniently while on the run, which is for me, a lot of the time. I have been using it a very, very long time indeed. And I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement? And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases.

• 3:08Tim Ferriss?

  I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? What is this stuff? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. Since 2010, they have improved the formula 52 times in pursuit of making the best foundational nutrition supplement possible, using rigorous standards and high-quality ingredients. How many ingredients? 75. And you would be hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multi-mineral, superfood complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an antioxidant immune support formula,

• 3:51Tim Ferriss?

  digestive enzymes, and adaptogens to help manage stress. Now, I do my best, always, to eat nutrient-dense meals. That is the basic, basic, basic, basic requirement, right? That is why things are called supplements. Of course, that's what I focus on, but it is not always possible. It is not always easy. So, part of my routine is using AG1 daily. If I'm on the road, on the run, it just makes it easy to get a lot of nutrients at once and to sleep easy knowing that I am checking a lot of important boxes. So, each morning, AG1. That's just like brushing my teeth, part of the routine. It's also NSF certified for sports, so professional athletes trust it to be safe. And each pouch of AG1...

• 4:33Tim Ferriss?

  AG1 contains exactly what is on the label, does not contain harmful levels of microbes or heavy metals, and is free of 280 banned substances. It's the ultimate nutritional supplement in one easy scoop. So, take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So, learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drinkag1, the number one. Drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  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?

• 5:19Speaker 02

  No, it would seem inappropriate, Tim.

• 5:21Speaker 01

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

• 5:35Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I'm very excited to publish this episode. This is an experimental format, and we are calling it "Heresies." And the objective of this format, which is a group format, is to encourage and celebrate independent thinking. And I was introduced to this by Kevin Kelly, who hosts many Jeffersonian-style conversations where there's only one conversation per group. And there are many reasons why I wanted to do this podcast. Number one, it's just a lot of fun, and people get fired up quite quickly. So, it starts a little slow in this episode, and then things get moving very, very quickly.

• 6:20Tim Ferriss?

  But, more important, it honors the worth of holding a belief that you did not inherit. So most remarkable people, most amazing people I have met inevitably have some very, very unusual beliefs. And I think that is worth fostering so that you can be the author of your own beliefs, even when they are, maybe especially when they are unpopular. Number two, just because people agree on many things does not mean they have to agree on all things. You can have close friends and disagree intensely on certain things. Learning to work with unconventional beliefs in others is, I think, one of the most important

• 6:59Tim Ferriss?

  skills that individuals need. And even if you just want to, in self-interest, perform better, get more done, I think this is important. And furthermore, I think as a society, this is incredibly, incredibly critical and could not come at a more critical time. Number three, practicing independent thinking is a skill. It can be improved. It is not just inherited. It's not like height or something like that. And as you listen, and we will reiterate this in the conversation, recognize that there is an art not just to having and sharing a heresy, but in hearing one. Okay, so there are two crafts, two arts, two skills that you can develop, hopefully in listening to these conversations. One

• 7:44Tim Ferriss?

  is developing and sharing heresies, unpopular beliefs, but also in hearing one, stress testing one, having a civil disagreement about one. You can become a better listener of heresies by reserving your judgment as long as possible and amplifying your curiosity and effort to understand. As one of the guests today will say, "Try to be curious, not furious." We'll see how that goes. Sometimes the gloves come off in this one. So with all of that said, let me get to the guests. And it'll take a minute, but then we will hop right into the conversation. The first guest is Maggie Spivey Faulkner. She is an anthropological

• 8:27Tim Ferriss?

  archaeologist and practitioner of indigenous archaeology, currently working as an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. She also serves as an assistant chief of the Upper Georgia Tribal Town of the PD Indian Nation of Beaver Creek, a state-recognized Native American group in South Carolina. Her work focuses on using anthropological data to upend harmful misconceptions of Native American peoples embedded in public policy, science, and the public consciousness. Maggie was raised in a tight-knit extended family in rural Hefseba, Georgia. She is an International Fellow of the Explorers Club, a former Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

• 9:10Tim Ferriss?

  She received her PhD in anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018, and her AB from Harvard College in 2008. Joshua L. Steiner is a partner at SSW, a private investment firm, and a senior advisor at Bloomberg LP, where he was previously head of industry verticals. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Steiner co-founded and was co-president of Quadrangle Group LLC, a private equity and asset management firm. And before co-founding Quadrangle, he was a managing director at Lazard. From 1993 to 1995, he served as Chief of Staff for the US Department of the Treasury. He serves on the boards of Yale University, the International Rescue Committee, and the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

• 9:52Tim Ferriss?

  Kevin Kelly, you can find him on Twitter @KevinTheNumber2Kelly, helped launch and edit Wired Magazine. He has written for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. You can find my most recent interview with him at tim.blog/kevinkelly. He's been on the podcast quite a bit, and is arguably the most interesting man in the world, but I'll leave that for another time. He is the author of the new book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. It is a great book. I literally have it in my suitcase right next to me here in my hotel room. Kevin is currently co-chair of the Long Now Foundation, which is building a clock in a mountain that will take for 10,000 years. That is not made up, that is a real thing. He also has a daily blog, a weekly podcast about cool tools, a weekly newsletter, Recomendo,

• 10:37Tim Ferriss?

  which is a free one-page list of six very brief recommendations of cool stuff. Last but not least, Noah Feldman, who will be my ongoing And co-host, at least that is the plan. You can find him on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman is a Harvard professor, ethical philosopher and advisor, public intellectual, rigorous scholar and historian, rigorous religious scholar and historian. He's also a rigorous scholar and historian, and author of 10 books, including his latest, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America. You can find my interview with him at tim.blog/Noah. His upcoming book is Bad Jew, subtitle, A Perplexed Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People, which is currently available for preorder. So with all of that

• 11:21Tim Ferriss?

  said, I'll leave my bio for another time. Please enjoy this very wide-ranging, sometimes very hot, conversation in this new format, heresies.

• 11:34Tim Ferriss?

  We are locked and loaded and ready to go. So this is intended to be fun. It's an experimental format. It will get in front of interesting people. So let's just have a good time with it. And if we need to zig and zag as the format settles, we'll zig and zag. With that, Kevin, do you want to take a deep breath and lead us in?

• 11:54Kevin Kelly?

  There's lots of definitions for heresy, but one that I like to use and ask people about is, what's something that you believe that the people that you most admire don't believe and might even find shocking? And to be a true heresy in this sense, it has to be something that's not just necessarily an unpopular idea, but it's an unpopular idea among the people that you hang out with in your circle, the people that you most respect for. And we're not right now going to try and uncover some heresies, and they should be, in some senses, things that you think that the rest of us here, the other

• 12:33Kevin Kelly?

  four of us, probably don't believe and might also find hard to believe. And then we'll kind of go through and see if we can maybe change some people's minds and see if there's a way in which we can kind of understand it. And the whole purpose, I think, of this exercise is, in some ways, is to cultivate independent thinking, because...

• 12:56Kevin Kelly?

  If you have a heresy in this definition, that means you kind of arrived at it on your own. It wasn't something that you inherited, because you inherit the things around you. It would be things that you absorbed, things that you didn't really think about. So in order to arrive at something that the people around you also find weird, odd, or hard to believe, you've probably had to arrive at it on your own. So we're trying to cultivate that skill and celebrate that skill of trying to have some sense of independent thinking and not necessarily just inheriting or absorbing the ideas. And so, one of the things that we'll first do with it is, I've found in doing this, numbers of times, that it's good

• 13:40Kevin Kelly?

  to kind of try to help collectively refine the actual statement of the heresy, to put it in a form that makes it easy to see its orthogonal relationship with everything else that we believe. So, what I'd like to do is to go around, and each one of us can present a heresy that they believe, and then we'll examine it and see if we can understand it first, and then see where it sits into our own beliefs. We're just an experiment, as Tim says, and we don't know where this is gonna go. We've done this in small groups, like dinners. This is a public version of it. We'll see what happens. So, we don't

• 14:23Kevin Kelly?

  have an order in mind, but Josh, would you like to suggest a heresy that you think the rest of us would have trouble believing?

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Happy to do it, although I have to say, going first is no great gift. Thank you, Kevin. I feel like part of the heresy probably should be disagreeing with part of what the premise.

• 14:44Kevin Kelly?

  Which premise? The premise of the heresies?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  The definition. So, you know, you said that the people you most admire would disagree with you. I'm gonna talk about something where I would say, the person I admire most and with whom I'm closest, my wife, has persuaded me that it's something I now believe that I did not believe, but consistent with your point of view, that many people probably don't think.

• 15:05Kevin Kelly?

  So, do you think that the rest of us would also find this heretical? Only one way to find out.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  I don't know. Only one way to find out. I'm gonna try it out on you.

• 15:13Kevin Kelly?

  But you suspect that.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Well, I suspect it's definitely heretical relative to the teaching and training that most of you got during your educations. Now, whether you've overcome that education in ways that might make you open to this idea, that I don't know, because I don't know you. I'm hopeful that it will be at least stimulating and interesting. I'm eager to get invited back, so if it's a disaster, I will have failed. Okay, that's a great setup. Okay, so what's the theory? Let me start with a little hypothetical. You know, you have a friend who comes back from a date, and how many times have you heard her say, "The date was a disaster. The guy I was out with, he just listened too carefully." Or how many times have you heard about a couple that are breaking up, and you know, say, "Why did those guys break up?"

• 15:57Speaker 02

  And your friend says, "Well, the couple broke up because they just listened to each other too carefully." My hypothesis is you've never heard either of those statements. We've all had friends who come back from a date and said, "That guy just would not stop talking." Or you've heard about couples, and all they did for many, many years was argue with each other. And why is that? Well, at least one reason, I think, is that we spend a disproportionate amount of time during all of our educational lives being taught two things. We get taught how to speak publicly, and we get taught how to debate. And yet, if you think about what forms the core of most meaningful relationships, it's the ability to listen. And we somehow have this notion that listening is an inherited skill, that someone's intuitively

• 16:41Speaker 02

  a good listener or not. So my heretical idea is we need to de-emphasize and stop spending so much time teaching people how to debate, and spend a lot more time teaching people how to listen.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  Well, that's predicated on the idea that talking isn't listening.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Well, I would definitely say talking is not listening, and listening is not waiting to talk. Right. So I think many people think that the premise of listening is just waiting your turn. And I think part of the argument I'd like to make is that there are lots of teachable skills around listening, which make people better able to understand differences, demonstrate empathy, and have the capacity, actually, to learn in ways that just teaching debating does not.

• 17:27Tim Ferriss?

  So let me hop in for a second. I want you to potentially push back. I would say, though, it is on topic in the sense that... In our back and forth about this episode, the point has come up strongly that speaking heresies is one thing, but developing the ability to listen to heresies is also important. So it is sort of compatible in a sense, which maybe means it doesn't fit into the heretical bucket. But how do you feel, Kevin?

• 17:56Kevin Kelly?

  I'm in total agreement. I think listening is a superpower. I just did this book of advice, and that was one of the main topics was that active listening, which is an important, I would say, caveat that it's an active listening rather than just a passive listening. That is the superpower. So others? Noah, did you have any comments about this heresy?

• 18:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's an interesting form of a heresy, and I think it is a heresy because it's a heresy that it's hard to disagree with without sounding like an asshole. Can I say that word on your podcast?

• 18:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you can. Absolutely. I'm from Long Island. You can say whatever you want.

• 18:34Speaker 05

  There you go. So when someone says, yeah, we really need to learn to listen more, and I'm sure every person in my life would agree that what Josh said is exactly what I need to hear. But I do kind of have an instinct to want to say, yeah, no, you can't really teach somebody to listen well. You know, you could teach them passive listening by making them spit back what they've heard, but we all agree that that's not that useful a skill. You can teach them tricks, like I will mirror back to you what you've said so that you have the experience of feeling properly listened to. And we probably all, at least those of us of a certain age, have gotten some training in that, whether we liked it or not, maybe from a romantic partner. But even that's not really listening. I

• 19:15Speaker 05

  mean, really listening requires being genuinely open to the other person's experience. And when you just, at a deep level, don't think their experience matches reality, or you think that their opinion is just so flat out wrong. Sure, you can teach yourself to listen, to get inside their head, to convince them that they're wrong. And sure, you can learn to listen because it's a really useful tool to get ahead in life. I think the heresy, if I hear it right, Josh, is not for those reasons, you know, not instrumental listening to get something, but there's inherent, deep value in listening to other people. And I think that's probably true, but I'm not sure

• 19:56Speaker 05

  you can really train people to do that. It's like training people in being open-minded. I mean, maybe you can do it, but it seems very, very difficult to figure out how.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Just to jump in for a sec, Noah, I think you were making two different points. One is whether, in fact, it's possible to teach something like listening in a way that won't come across as superficial. That was the first point about mirroring. We'll come back to that. The second point I think you were making was that, in fact, just listening actually is an understanding. And understanding is different from listening. Are those the two points that you were making?

• 20:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think so. And the third maybe is that really listening might be something that you can't teach, that you just have to make your way through life and get experience, but that formally teaching it wouldn't do as much good.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Now, ask yourself, Noah, your reaction to what I put back to you, where I was demonstrating that I actually had heard you and that I was paying attention to what you said, as opposed to what might have been my natural inclination to say, Noah, you're a law professor, you're used to lecturing people. The fact that you may have the incapacity to listen probably doesn't mean this is a bad idea. That would be an alternative response and probably somewhat less productive.

• 21:08Speaker 05

  No, I think it's way better. I actually think it's way better.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  If I was debating you, that might have been my response. And so I think what I'm getting at is, first of all, on your two points, I don't think I agree with the first one. The fact that something might seem superficial when you first try it doesn't mean that it can't permeate in a way that will fundamentally change your behavior. So picking up on Kevin's point, one of the skills of active listening certainly is mirroring, but that, as you said, a relatively superficial tool when it's first practiced. Your second point about the difference between listening and understanding, I think is more complicated and harder. But the process of doing that does teach one empathy. You know, the line I like, which I think is very helpful, is curious, not furious.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  If your first reaction to hearing someone, even to your point, someone with whom you disagree quite profoundly, is to be furious, it's very unlikely you're ever going to get to a point of empathy, or the ability to understand what she might think. If you're curious, on the other hand, and if you go through a process of asking questions, I think that is a skill that ultimately will allow you to actually develop some empathy, to develop some understanding, even with people with whom you disagree quite profoundly.

• 22:20Kevin Kelly?

  I wanted to ask Noah the third point, just to clarify, so I understood. When you said that you didn't think, we'll call this maybe sophisticated level of listening as something that isn't teachable, do you mean that a person could not improve their ability to do it, or just that, when you say teaching, or do you mean like, in an educational, formal context? Or are you saying that they can't actually improve it?

• 22:43Speaker 05

  Definitely, people can get better at listening. And they can also get better at understanding over time. You can also train yourself to greater empathy, I suspect. I think Josh is right about that, too. What I'm thinking about is what most education looks like, where we say, okay, now we're going to start training people in listening. Some kind of a formal process, where you try to make people listen. I mean, look, as Josh pointed out, I teach constitutional law for a living. So basically, what I do all day, every day, is I go into a classroom, and I point at kids, and I ask them, well, they're young adults, and ask them to speak, and then I ask everybody else to listen to them, and respond to them. And if I'm doing my job right, I don't have to say anything. When it works well, it's them all listening and having a conversation with each other.

• 23:28Speaker 05

  So, yeah, I do believe that it's possible to train them, and to train ourselves, in that kind of listening. What I'm kind of dreading is the industry that, in Josh's utopia, we have, where we're all subjected to trainings on how to listen. And maybe this is just my allergy to trainings in general, which is, maybe it's not a heresy, it's like the opposite of heresy, most people don't love trainings, is that it would just, I feel, very quickly devolve into one of the things we don't want. You know, the spitting back, or the mirroring, or the, I mean, those are all fine techniques, but they're not genuine listening.

• 24:04Kevin Kelly?

  I want to just get some other people in this, so it's not too... So Maggie or Tim, did you have anything to add to this?

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think that, let's hear, a lot of the times I speak anecdotally, right? I'm not from the same culture y'all are from. And the way that listening is modeled in the cultures that it appears y'all grew up in, it's not what listening looks like in other cultures anywhere else on earth, right? So, for example, how do I say this without getting myself in trouble? When I hang out with my mother-in-law, she listens, she's been trained to listen. It turns into a little bit of an interrogation. You keep asking more and more questions of the same person and you dig down, dig down, dig down. But there's no sharing of yourself there.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  So how do you even know that that information is being consumed and understood and internalized? Or is this like an algorithmic performance? As opposed to in my culture, when you listen to someone, the way that you show that you understand and relate is that you respond back with an anecdote and story from your own life that illustrates the same point. And if you're not used to that structure, it sounds like you're full of yourself. It sounds like you're trying to dominate the conversation with your own bullshit. But in reality, what you're showing is you're relating, you deeply understand the topic at hand because you're like, I have had a similar experience. And a conversation predicated on that concept of listening

• 25:36Speaker 04

  sounds like two people who aren't even having the same conversation to someone from like, middle-class America. So I think that that's the tough thing here, is that the way that we are acculturated to converse and listen isn't uniform, even in the United States, much less, you know, worldwide. So I don't know how applicable this type of, like Noah says, training or whatever intervention would actually be. That's my, my take.

• 26:04Kevin Kelly?

  And Tim, what's your response to this heresy?

• 26:07Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just enjoying how quickly this all got fired up.

• 26:12Tim Ferriss?

  I was eager to see where it would go, so I'm just enjoying the initial fireworks. I would say that I am inclined to ask Josh more questions because I heard Noah, who's Noah's good at sparring too, he said, you know, in Josh's utopia. And I was like, well, wait a second. Is that Josh's utopia? Maybe we should clarify what Josh means. And specifically, since this is my job as the prescriptive podcaster, I suppose.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  Maybe it's Thomas More's utopia.

• 26:43Tim Ferriss?

  My inclination is also just to say, all right, well, let's take the broader statements and maybe refine it down to Josh's personal experience, coming back to this sharing of anecdotes. It doesn't need to be some RCT. In your experience, Josh, since you've changed your mind on this, it seems, what have you found most helpful to help to inform the experience of genuine listening on the part of people you are having conversations with?

• 27:15Speaker 02

  So to your point, Tim, my experience is deeply formed by my wife's experience. And so I recognize that runs a little contrary to Kevin's original point. My wife started out as a nonprofit litigator representing survivors of interpersonal violence. And she would go to court and have horrible case after horrible case. And she did an amazing job representing these women who were facing just unbearable personal situations. And after years and years of that, she found it difficult. And there's a lot of vicarious trauma in that profession. And she ultimately migrated and got retrained as a mediator, where she now helps low income couples avoid court and work through mediation on orders of custody and separation.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  And through that process, she went from being a really Hard edged, although she's a very deeply empathetic person, but a need to have a really tough near because she was a litigator, to being retrained as a mediator. And she would come home after three days of training and I would get really helpful instruction. And I would say that I started someplace like Noah, or maybe even further from Noah on this whole subject. And I think it may have reflected my own personal experience like Noah with some corporate institutional type trainings, which made me skeptical about whether in fact these things could be done. And just listening to Antoinette, week after week, year after year, and watching her and seeing how she demonstrated it was super compelling.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  And it totally changed the nature of our interaction and it totally changed the way I try to work in my professional life as well. It was as profound as anything else I had been taught in my professional life and I learned it at home in our kitchen. So I think I feel it so strongly, partly because I learned from a woman I admire and it changed my life quite directly.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  Y'all are straw man in Noah, okay?

• 29:11Kevin Kelly?

  It's okay, that's my job. Josh, what's an example of a technique that you learned that was really helpful?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  I think a lot of it has to do, Kevin, actually, with what you were talking about in terms of active listening. And for me, the piece that is hardest, and I wish I were a lot better at it, and I'm quite confident over the course of this podcast, I'll demonstrate that I haven't learned it as effectively as I should have. And that's the difficulty, of course, with this topic, because you guys are all looking at me like, doesn't look like he's learned that much on this. Maybe he should go back to school. But I think the piece that's most effective and has helped me the most, and as I said, it's really not just in the context of our relationship, but with our friendships and at work, is trying to come at these conversations from a place of empathy and really asking myself, why? Why is this person reacting in the way that she is? Why is this guy so angry? What is upsetting her?

• 30:06Speaker 02

  What is upsetting him? What is the underlying root? And there's an expression in this area, which is going down the V, which is to say, you have to go down and understand the root of the issue and try to come at it from a place of empathy. And if you can do those things, your capacity to hear, to listen, to adjust, is likely to be increased. To Noah's point, Often, one won't agree, right? This isn't about saying we all need to get along. This isn't about necessarily always cooperating. There are things out there in the world about which I feel very strongly, and I'm totally antithetical to my belief system. This is about having the capacity, at least, of having some empathy. I just also want to pick up on Maggie's point quickly. I totally agree with you, Maggie. There is not a one-size-fits-all to this.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  And, you know, what you described in terms of sharing anecdote, sounds lovely. The version of that that operates in New York is horrible. You go out to lunch with a guy, and you say, "My daughter's not feeling great for X, Y, and reasons," and he immediately responds by saying, "My daughter's got the same problem." It's like, that's not really demonstrating empathy. That's just talking about yourself. So, I think it's gotta be done in a way that is appropriate for the community in which it's being taught.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know nothing about New York, to be fair.

• 31:20Speaker 05

  Maggie, can I ask you a question? When you were talking about you belong to multiple overlapping cultures, I guess we all do. When you talked about your culture where the appropriate response is to say, "I've had a similar experience," which of your cultures were you talking about?

• 31:33Speaker 04

  That's more kind of a location-based. I'm indigenous, but it's not so much that. This is just how people speak where I'm from. Around Hepseba, Georgia, this is like deep, rural, built-in-place, southeastern stuff. To the point that, you know, after how many years I've been gone from home and kind of trained in this other way of being polite, you know, with the air quotes and everything, I remember going back home and having a conversation with my mom, and my pa-pa, and his wife, my step-grandmother, and they just looked at me like I was an alien. We were trying to have a conversation, and I was like asking questions,

• 32:17Speaker 04

  and she was just looking at me like I'd grown a third head. And I was like, "Oh, alright." I've been led astray. This isn't about politeness, it's a cultural thing. And, you know, when you live in a liminal cultural space, like I constantly do, where you've got all these weird overlapping cultures that are hard to disarticulate, sometimes you get slapped in the face with reality like that.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Sure. Is there anything else we want to add to Josh's heresy before maybe move on to another one?

• 32:45Kevin Kelly?

  I think it was a great starting place. Yeah. I'll let you court it back as you see fit. Okay, so Noah, would you like to volunteer a heresy that you have and subject it to the group?

• 32:55Speaker 05

  Sure, it's always hard to narrow down the things you think that the people around you think are terrible because I got a lot of them.

• 33:02Kevin Kelly?

  Not terrible, it's just that we don't believe.

• 33:04Speaker 05

  So I'm going to take one that comes from my professional sphere, but it's a professional sphere that a lot of people care about, which is constitutions broadly speaking.

• 33:13Kevin Kelly?

  Okay.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  Intentional agreements between people to do something a certain way. And my heresy is that written constitutions are seriously overrated. And this is coming from somebody who's devoted most of my life to studying mostly written constitutions. And you know, and one will let me trying to help people write them. So it's like a self harming heresy. And just to articulate why I think it.

• 33:38Speaker 04

  The best ones.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's the best kind, right? Is that we think that if we have an agreement written down between us, and this is not only at the constitutional level, but it could be like an agreement with your partner or with your business partner.

• 33:53Kevin Kelly?

  Like a contract.

• 33:54Speaker 05

  Like a contract. We think, well, we have a contract, it's written down. And because it's written down, we're going to keep it because there's some consequence if we don't keep it. And we also think that we'll both know what the agreement is because we can look at the piece of paper that it's written on. And all of those propositions turn out, when you look at them more closely, to be false. You're keeping the agreement because you each think it's worth keeping the agreement at a given moment. And you might change your minds about that. And you might break the agreement without telling the other person. Or you might jointly decide to change it without bothering to change the writing. If you think someone's breaking their promise to you and you say, hey, look at this piece of paper where you wrote down their promise, that'll basically never get them to do the thing you want them to do.

• 34:38Speaker 05

  And the whole approach forgets that it over emphasizes the idea that language is clear, which it isn't, and it over emphasizes the idea that if we've agreed to something at one moment, we're stuck with that thing forever. We're not. And in the case of a country, if we ran the country the way the Constitution of 1787 was written, we'd still have to be living like it was 1787. And that's not viable. And we actually don't amend our constitution barely ever in the United States. We just change what it means by a whole complicated set of processes, some official and some unofficial. And so now, if you look at the written constitution, it doesn't really bear any relationship to what it was supposed to be originally. And that's fine. What that shows you is, what

• 35:21Speaker 05

  if we hadn't written it down at all? You know, what if we had just agreed to live together as a community and work things out as we went? That would have been closer to what it's like to be married to somebody or to be in a long-term business relationship with somebody where you're constantly modifying and altering and shifting and changing. So the heresy is that we think this is so great. And we think it because we've been patting ourselves on the back and saying that in the US for 200-plus years. And really, here's the kicker. When we wrote down our constitution in the US, basically, no one else had ever had a written constitution. And now, almost every country in the world has a written constitution, which means we've convinced people all over the world, basically with the exception of Great Britain and Saudi Arabia, that this is the greatest thing since

• 36:06Speaker 05

  sliced bread, and you have to have one if you want to be a democracy, you've got to have this. So we've convinced everybody of this idea that it's verging on bullshit. It doesn't map reality. And so I think that's, you know, it's not something that the people around me would agree with at all. And, you know, they've got a million good arguments about why I'm wrong. And I'd love to hear how you guys react to it.

• 36:27Kevin Kelly?

  So the heresy is that written constitutions are overrated. So what's the alternative to it that's underrated?

• 36:37Tim Ferriss?

  And actually, if I may jump in and maybe know if you'd be able to use a real world example, like you mentioned, the UK, perhaps that's a good counterpoint. Speaking as someone who's really not familiar with the inner workings and the way that you are, the question of what the alternative would be is interesting. And maybe leading into that, you could just say, when you developed this heresy for yourself? Has this been something that you've believed for 15 years? This is the last five years? What led to it? And then what would be an example of an alternative? Because, speaking as an idiot who doesn't know anything about these things, I have all these board games laying around. You open the board game, what's the first thing you do? You figure out the rules. And that keeps everybody on the same page. So to my knuckle dragging Long Island self, I'm like, well, if you don't have a set of

• 37:21Tim Ferriss?

  written down rules, wouldn't it just be complete chaos, especially in the US with a bunch of separate states and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?

• 37:27Speaker 04

  Is it chaos when you play pool?

• 37:30Tim Ferriss?

  Not if you agree on the rules in advance. That's a good question. Yeah, fair enough. As long as you agree in some form in advance, not necessarily. Depends on the number of drinks I've had. But yeah, it's generally okay. Noah?

• 37:43Speaker 05

  It's something I came to very, very slowly, because like you, I always thought, we need the rules. And I cared about it enough to, you know, go into this as my living. So I definitely was not an early life realization. I think I had way too much faith in the idea of stuff being written down. And I think the way I came to it was by actually being in the middle of processes where people were writing down rules from scratch, where they were, as they were making up the rules of the board game in Iraq and in Tunisia, and realizing that actually, nobody necessarily intends to follow the rules the way they're written down. They just see the rules as kind of a vague suggestion that will ultimately come to be distorted, changed, played around with. I used to think that was a bad thing. And I

• 38:24Speaker 05

  came to see that that was a good thing. And then if there was one idea that really made me realize that I was kind of wrong about the rules of the game, and I remember reading this really clearly, I read it in graduate school, but I didn't understand it for years afterwards. It's this idea that conversation, this actually might bring us back to Josh, that conversation, language is also like a game.

• 38:47Tim Ferriss?

  That when we're talking to each other.

• 38:48Speaker 05

  Like a game.

• 38:49Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 38:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. So like we're the five of us are having a conversation and there actually are a bunch of rules of that conversation regarding who can speak and when and how and grammar. And there's also a ton that isn't written down in there. You know, we don't have a paradigm exactly for interruption and we'll all have different interruption styles to Maggie's point. If we're from different parts of the country, we'll have different interruption styles. If we have a different class upbringing or gender upbringing, we'll have different styles. If we speak different languages, we'll have different interruption styles, just to take one example. And in fact, we're just making up the rules of that game as we go. Same when, you know, invent a new word, like who's the first person who thought that the word cool meant what it now has come to mean? Whoever first said that, people probably looked at that person like, what are you talking about that this music is cool?

• 39:35Speaker 05

  Like, cool what? You introduce a new word and then other people use it and you play around with it. So you're playing this game. And so that game doesn't have rules. And from there, I didn't understand when I first learned this at all. I was like, this is interesting, but I don't get it. I came to realize that actually, you know, life is a lot more like a game of catch than like a board game, Tim. So if we're playing catch, you know, there's a whole bunch of unwritten stuff. Like, do we bounce the ball to each other? Sometimes we do. Do we throw it hard when kids do it? Like when you're trying to see how hard the other person can handle it? We do that sometimes, too. Sometimes are we just lobbing it? There's like all this unwritten stuff in a game of catch. It's definitely a game and there's some rule, like throw it to each other and throw it back. But then everything else is kind of being played with along the way.

• 40:20Speaker 05

  And that's why it can change.

• 40:25Tim Ferriss?

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• 41:38Tim Ferriss?

  How can that work on a nationwide basis? If you could just paint an alternative?

• 41:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:45Tim Ferriss?

  Since I don't know what that looks like.

• 41:47Speaker 05

  The most aggressive version would be the British Constitution, which depending on how you count, you could say is 1,000 years old. You could say it's 400-plus years old. You could put the inflection point at different moments. And by the way, there's been civil wars in the middle of it too. So it's not like it's perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But what you had there is that the people who were doing the governing, the people who were criticizing the way the governing was happening, and the people who were being governed collectively experimented with different ways of doing things. And they shifted their collective understanding over time in an evolutionary way. And all of them basically admitted that things were changing over time.

• 42:29Speaker 05

  None of them ever said, "I can point to this piece of paper and tell you this is exactly who can run for office," or "this is exactly what the king or the queen can do." And sure, they had mess-ups along the way, lots of them. But it turns out not really more mess-ups than any other system. And they maintained a high degree of continuity. And again, they had a civil war, they had a revolution. So it's not like it was totally seamless. But they were able to negotiate moments of big change and transition, often more smoothly than other countries. And they've got the best longevity of a governing system of any country. And if you measure it in those terms, that's pretty darn successful.

• 43:11Speaker 05

  And what's more, I would just close that by saying countries like ours that have an old written constitution, we do all that same stuff too. We just lie about it. We just pretend that we're not doing that. Maggie, you had something.

• 43:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, the other long-term example of this is the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. So this is what a lot of people call the Iroquois League, right? These are the Six Nations in upstate New York and crossing over into Canada in the modern day that have had a kind of living, spoken constitution, complete with federalism for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, prior to European invasion of North America. And the physical manifestation of that government, you still have that, right? You still have an item that is the thing to point to, it just doesn't have words per se on it.

• 44:03Speaker 04

  So you have these wampum belts that have figural depictions of agreements woven onto them. And even beyond what happens in the UK, that constitution has survived an apocalypse.

• 44:20Speaker 04

  It still exists and is in working order today, and they're the strongest nation, indigenous nation, in the Eastern Americas because of the strength of that spoken constitution. And I think to what Noah's saying is, you know, we talk about this a lot, it's kind of the difference between the word of the law and the spirit of the law. When you write something down, you can play a different kind of game than what Noah was talking about. You get all these people who are interested in trying to find the seams and the cracks in an agreement to change the meaning, rather than trying to adhere to the original point of what the agreement was. You start having people trying to rip it apart to suit new needs, rather than adhere

• 45:05Speaker 04

  to what the point was. This is why I didn't end up becoming a lawyer, actually.

• 45:11Kevin Kelly?

  So no, I have to clarify something. So it seems to me that there's saying that the written constitution is overrated, that there are several things. One is you have something that's a language-based constitution, and there's issues with, as Maggie was saying, having it based around language. And then there's the additional one of the written language. So you're saying there's additional level of difficulty because it's written down. And that, as far as I can see what you're saying, is that it's because writing is sort of immutable, and then that becomes a problem as time progresses, because you don't want immutable things, you want things to be mutable. And so, writing is the immutable version of the language. And so, are you saying that you don't want to have a language-based

• 45:52Kevin Kelly?

  agreement, or that you just don't want to have a written immutable version of the language agreements?

• 45:58Speaker 05

  What I'm trying to say is closer to the second thing you're saying. I'm not sure I can imagine what it would be like to reach agreement without language at all at scale. You can have symbols, like Maggie was talking about, that are super powerful and maybe can't be reduced solely to language. But on the other hand, if you ask people who have been the bearers of that constitution for 300-plus years, they could tell you what it is. And they could tell you in language what the particular image on their particular wampum belt is signifying. So it's not that I'm trying to imagine a world without language. I'm not saying it's impossible, I just can't do it, I'm not good enough at it. I am talking, though, about our fantasy that if we've written something down, now we know. And now that agreement is genuinely fixed. And you know, you could also think of it just in terms

• 46:43Speaker 05

  of regular contracts. You made a contract with someone that you're going to shovel their snow, and they're going to pay you X dollars every time there's a snowstorm. And you're like, okay, I'm great, I'm good. And then you get like a dusting of snow, and you go run right out, and you shovel up the dusting, and you send them a bill. And they're like, what the hell? That was not a shoveling of snow. And now you immediately find yourself, what matters is not what the words shovel mean or snow mean, what matters is how much they like you, do you intend to shovel their snow next year, what kind of social ties do you have with them, so that it'll be an issue if you stiff them or they stiff you? Those are the relational issues. The relationship issues are really the most important ones that come in, and they will determine what's going to happen. Now you imagine that between two people, and it's definitely the same. Like, you can't really get up and invoke

• 47:28Speaker 05

  your wedding vows. You promised to love and honor me. Now you're not doing it. I mean, you could try that, but it doesn't always work. So maybe it works in Josh's house where everyone listens, but in the rest of the world, it doesn't always work that well.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Okay, now I gotta jump in.

• 47:40Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, Noah poking the bear, poking Josh.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Exactly. Thank you, Tim. So first of all, I totally admire the fact that Noah chose a topic where we would be somewhere between idiotic and foolish to debate it with him. Does anyone really want to get on this show and say, you know what? I think I'm going to take on the Felix Frankfurter, professor of constitutional law at the Harvard Law School over a subject of whether constitutions are valid. All day, every day. I'll set up all day. No, thank you. No, thank you. I will respond though in two ways. One is, I totally take his point about the UK and Maggie's point about the Six Nations. There's a big survivor bias element of that. Yeah, you can always point to the example which has survived and say, yeah, great. Unfortunately, there are a lot of examples of where it doesn't survive and therefore we don't point to those.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  So I'm not sure those examples are entirely valid, notwithstanding the strength of the cultures and the histories. I would say on the subject of contracts, and that's why Noah's a constitutional professor, not a contracts law professor, because if he was a contracts law professor, he wouldn't have made that case. I really disagree. Look, contracts serve important purposes, and here's what they are. One is, they force a discussion upfront. They allow people to align expectations. Without that process, I don't know what you expect. Now, let's leave aside marriages, because I think prenuptials are unlikely to work, and I agree with you, wedding vows are done at a highly romantic moment. But in business, in the real world, what you do is you say, you're buying something, I'm selling something. Let's figure out what that means and make sure that we've agreed on the fundamental

• 49:14Speaker 02

  terms. And that's an important process. And the other thing it does is it forces you to understand consequences if you don't live up to your side of the agreement. And that's a very useful technique as well. So it's possible that this discovery that Noah made at Burning Man last year, that his lifelong work in the Constitution is no longer valid. That's conceivable to me. It seems unlikely, but it's possible. I don't think it's necessarily applicable, however, if you extend it out into the rest of the world. And using wedding vows as the extreme example, generally speaking, I think is a little bit of a false analogy.

• 49:49Speaker 05

  So just to be fair, I'll say Josh likes poking bears too.

• 49:52Kevin Kelly?

  Okay. So, Kevin. Going back to the kind of immutable aspect of it, to me, that actually the true genius was not the first writing down of the Constitution of the US was the fact that it had a self amendment clause. That is real genius. And I think actually it was the Six Nations that influenced the self amendment. So there's something buried in there. There is a facility to do that. So I think I would say in a Constitution without a self amendment clause or facility would be really worrisome. But once you have that in, to me, that could overcome some of the immutability aspect of it. You just want to have it easier to mutate. So right now, we're kind of penalized because it's kind of more difficult to change the Constitution than it was to pass the Constitution.

• 50:34Kevin Kelly?

  And so there you're penalizing the future generations. So wouldn't you just want to make it easier to change things if that was the real hurdle?

• 50:43Tim Ferriss?

  Actually, could I modify that question, Kevin?

• 50:45Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 50:45Tim Ferriss?

  Is he okay with that?

• 50:46Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:47Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just, I'm gonna build off of that. So the question, Noah, is very closely related, what I would ask to Kevin's, which is, let's say, we could wipe some of the polarization in the US, and we're kind of starting from scratch in a culture that at least informed by Western and European influence, by and large, does not have, for the majority of the country, a strong hand down oral tradition. What might you suggest as a better way to put things together?

• 51:22Speaker 05

  Now, you guys made it, went a minute really hard. So let me go through them in order. So I'll start with Josh's point. I agree, Josh, that if you're strangers, and you need to sell each other some commodity, you need a written contract with all the details. I'm not imagining that, you know, you could run the futures trading markets by purely conventional terms with nothing written down. Though I will note that there are markets like the diamond markets. Where people's transactions are overwhelmingly still to this day, based on a handshake and a bunch of rules that are not written down in any one place. But that depends on being a close knit community of people who know each other. This already hints at the answer to Tim's point. So I guess what I would say is imagine that you've got two poles of continuum.

• 52:06Speaker 05

  On the one side are pork bellies sold by people who had never seen a pork belly to each other and never will see one. And on the other hand is wedding vows, which are highly conventional, general principles at a high level, designed maybe to inspire you to manage to live well together over the long run. I'm saying my heresy is that constitutions are on that continuum closer to wedding vows, where the goal is to be together for a long time and to adjust and evolve and change and be responsive than they are to pork bellies. And I think that's the heresy. So that raises the question of change. Kevin, you're right that amending a constitution is crucial, but unfortunately, our wonderful

• 52:51Speaker 05

  founders did a terrible job in putting in an amendment provision if they wanted us to actually amend the constitution, which secretly they didn't. Madison was terrified about the possibility of too much amendment. He thought it would end up like the Florida constitution or the California constitution or one of these constitutions with hundreds and hundreds, in some cases, you know, nearly a thousand amendments. So they made it too hard to amend, and that's why we have to do all of these mechanisms that aren't amendment to change it. Tim, I think you're making an incredibly rich and powerful point, which is if we don't have common traditions necessarily, and we're also a country of both of immigrants and of people who change their views, even aside from the polarization, it makes us

• 53:33Speaker 05

  look more like traders trading pork bellies who don't have anything in common with each other. I mean, they actually do in real life, but let's imagine they didn't. For example, they all wear the same Patagonia vest, but it makes us seem more like that than it does like a married couple. And I guess here's what I would say. That's a reason to have a written thing up front. And then to try to use that to build up a culture in which we do share common values. And if we don't have enough of a common values, we're not going to pull it off. And that's why polarization is so scary. I mean, we've had polarizing moments in our history before. This is not our most polarized moment. It's not even the second most polarized, but it's still, it is very polarized. And the reason that in general is scary is that at a certain point, if you don't have enough

• 54:18Speaker 05

  in common with somebody, you know, if the situation's not working, you know, you might break up. And this is not a situation where there's the option of some clean breakup. That's terrifying. And it's why you need to build up some sense of common values and beliefs. And a constitution is a good starting place that way, recognizing that it's not going to run all the way down through history with all the details specified. So talking it over at first is great, like Josh says, but then as hundreds of years pass, if we got together and had a new constitutional convention today and said, oh, let's just talk it over, I don't think we'd reach an agreement. So we sometimes need something that is general and loose enough, like marriage vows, that we can all say, oh, I know what that means. I know what that means. And we think they mean almost opposite things.

• 55:00Kevin Kelly?

  So unless someone has something else to add to this heresy discussion, I'd like to move it on to the next one. Anyone else have anything more to say on Noah's? Really great, wonderful, unexpected. So Maggie, what's a heresy you'd like to share with us?

• 55:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think American middle-class culture is ruining America.

• 55:22Kevin Kelly?

  America middle-class culture is ruining middle America and every, and all.

• 55:29Speaker 04

  It's ruining everything. It's ruining literally everything. Yeah. I mean, we export ourselves, so maybe it's ruining the whole world. Let's just extend it. Let's get out there on a limb. When I say that though, really, what do I mean? I kind of mean American modernism, the type of America that's existed post-World War II, where we instill in people a certain set of values. We've adjusted our culture. You tell your youth that to be a successful and respected member of society, you leave home at 17 or 18, go somewhere where you don't know anybody, go to college. And then if you're successful, you can start up a little nuclear family. Out in a nameless suburb,

• 56:15Speaker 04

  or a town that has the same amenities that every town has, and live a successful, kind of, the-baryan life. A little Protestant ethic in the spirit of capitalism in there. This is a very particular cultural brand. And as we're no longer in the heady glory days economically of what America was able to achieve after the world was destroyed, and we were the only people that had like working machines anymore, as some of those pockets of fat have dissolved in the United States, we've been left in this situation where you get extreme social isolation.

• 57:00Speaker 04

  You get kids that can't get into the Ivy League even though they feel like they're entitled to it. And then they go spend all their time online, become incels, buy AR-15 and shoot up a school. And I think that it's because we've really moved away from the idea of community in terms of being embedded in a place. You know, there are other European countries with economic issues. Look at Italy, look at Greece. But they don't have the same end result. Because those people are still embedded in a community of people who care about them, who interact with them. And you don't have this extreme social isolation. It's just,

• 57:45Speaker 04

  it's all cultural process, in my opinion. A similar thing with, I think that leads a lot of people to these extremely escapist drug addictions. And, you know, to Josh's point, I'm not talking about Burning Man. Right? I'm talking about the kind of drug issues I see in Worcester, Massachusetts. So... I think that this extreme adherence to that particular brand of the American dream has ruined our ability to have a functional, I mean, things have just become quite dysfunctional in the country because of it.

• 58:21Kevin Kelly?

  So I'm trying to, again, refine the heresy with the, it is, so you said it was American dream, then you said it was maybe more modern.

• 58:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, modernism.

• 58:29Kevin Kelly?

  Well, I'm thinking about the hundreds of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people in China who have left their communities, moved into the cities. And so is this what you're talking about? Or is it something different than this? And the same thing is happening in India right now, where there are, where the same kind of migration is happening of people leaving these little villages that are, where they have a certain identity, they know who they are, they're moving into big cities, they're going to college and beyond, they're mixing up, they're isolated. Is that where we're, we're talking about this as a general phenomena? Or you're saying that there's something else different than this?

• 59:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think I do mean it a little bit more pointed than gradual urbanization due to like change economically, globally. I think there is a particular brand of the American version of this. And honestly, the people who are most harmed by it, I think, are young men, young white men in America. They're feeling this sea change under their feet. There are more women going to college than men for a decade now. Why? In America? A lot of it is because men are just not achieving dumb metrics that are kind of meaningless, like SAT scores and GPAs at the same rate as women in the United States. I think that

• 59:55Speaker 04

  it's all American culture bounded, where if you're failing to meet this high kind of, this Billy Crystal standard from movies in the 80s and 90s of being able to strike out on your own with just a baseball bat and an army duffel bag full of stuff, walking into New York City to like, start your life. That you have failed. And I think people are being told that they're literal failures because they're not able to achieve this very time constrained version of American success. And that a lot of the people who are doing some of the worst things in the United States right now are people who have gone through that experience of failure. And it's not necessary.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  I don't know that there's any analog to that type of failure in modern China or India. And I'm pretty sure there isn't a version of that in Italy or Greece. You live with your parents, you go to college, and then you move down the street when you get married.

• 1:00:53Speaker 05

  Can I ask Maggie, how much of this is the stuff part? The part that you might call consumer culture? You know, that we measure ourselves by how much stuff we have and how good that stuff is and the brands that go with it. And then if you want that, you need cash. And to get that cash, you move to the city because that's where the job is that pays more cash. And then you just meet more people who want the same stuff. How much of it is the stuff part of it? And how much of it is the dream of making it big? Like, you know, the fantasy of becoming the next Elon? And how much of it is the leaving where you grew up to go to a new place? Because all those seem to be part of what you're describing.

• 1:01:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the stuff is a major part of it, but I would extend stuff beyond consumer goods and Keeping Up With The Joneses type stuff to meaningless achievements. What's the real difference from getting a degree from the University of Georgia versus Emory? In terms of your life trajectory? Not that huge. But if you don't get into Emory and you have to go to Georgia Southern, suddenly that's like, almost like a narcissistic injury. Where you have this hit to your ego you can never recover from. And it's just constant knocking down of ego that injures people in this way emotionally.

• 1:02:14Speaker 04

  What I'm arguing is that those standards are fucking stupid to begin with. They're not based in anything other than the imagination of what we could achieve on the GI Bill in 1950. At a time where we had far fewer people in the country, we had a far different economic outlook. And I really don't think it's necessarily about leaving home, which, I mean, for me it is, personally. I'm coming from this, again, from an outsider point of view. I didn't grow up in this type of culture, but I'm surrounded by it all the time now. So it's all bound up with it, but I think it's more this absolute, like you said about the constitution, the written constitution, this fiction we've created, this fantasy of what you need to just have

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  a basic respectable life in upper-middle-class America. It doesn't matter how much money you make even. If you're an underwater welder, are you getting the same respect as someone who went to Cornell in upper-middle-class Boston? Like, I don't know that you are, even if you're making double the money.

• 1:03:15Tim Ferriss?

  So, quick question for you, Maggie.

• 1:03:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll just add a little backdrop. So Johann Hari is an author, if I'm getting his name pronounced correctly. He's written books about addiction and also depression, chasing the scream, lost connections. And he returns in a very compelling way over and over again to social isolation. And I suppose what I'm wondering is, as I look at cultures that I understand somewhat, like Japan, for instance, the schooling there and cram schools and test scores are even more determinate, in a way, of your future than, say, the SATs are in the US. However, and there are social isolation issues in Japan, but you have multi-generational households. And you look at a place like Costa Rica,

• 1:04:00Tim Ferriss?

  multi-generational households. And I'm wondering if that is a crux component of all of this, which it seems to be. Is there anything to be done in the US? Are there changes that you think we could make culturally that would remedy some of the symptoms that you're describing?

• 1:04:20Speaker 04

  Maybe celebrate people whose lives are happy as that's the form of success that we should be, like, lionizing above meeting what is frankly, like you said, you just said, oh, there's multi-generational households in Japan, and there's this really toxic testing culture. If you think about it, you know, not to get too theoretical here, in an organismic way, where these different facets of culture work like different organs in a system as a whole, like a body, that forms a culture, very like Durkheimian way of thinking about things, maybe you can pick pieces in and out there, like you're explaining these other cultures that you have experience with.

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  Somehow in America, we've picked a set of organs that lead to a particularly toxic end, toxic individualism, individualism at all costs, really. We don't have maternity leave. It's just like, we don't have universal healthcare. There's stuff that just makes economic, even neoliberal sense that we don't do because of like toxic individualism. And I do think that if we started focusing on, again, lionizing people who live happy lives, that live fulfilled lives, rather than ones who meet this American archetype, Don Draper, that could lead to a lot of good change.

• 1:05:42Kevin Kelly?

  Josh, I think you had your hand up.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  So I react in a couple of different ways to this, Maggie. The first is, you know, if you live in New York City, you have a lot of politicians who come here to ask for your advice, then they quickly pivot to asking for money. But it gives you a chance at least to hear from them. And I try to ask them, what's something true about your constituents that I wouldn't know? And one of them said to me once, you think all my constituents want to move to New York City? They don't. The problem is, they don't have jobs where they want to live. So the first way I react to this, I totally agree. And I think we are failing, to your point, Tim, as a society, when we fail to provide employment opportunities, meaningful work, a sense of purpose, in the communities where people actually want to

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  live. And we should not assume that everyone wants to move to New York City and work for Meta and live in a loft in Soho, although even if you work for Meta, you probably couldn't afford a loft in Soho. So that part I really react to, Maggie, and I agree with you. I probably disagree with you slightly on part of it. If you look at places like Italy and China, just picking two examples, what you cited, probably their biggest problem going forward is a demographic one, where they have some of the lowest birth rates in the world. So you pick two societies and held them up, particularly Italy is a place where things are going well. I would say a society where people are sufficiently pessimistic about the world that they're unwilling to have children. And where they have repeatedly voted into office, someone like Berlusconi, let alone the person they have now.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  Probably aren't society as ours hold up as exemplars of what our aspirations should be. So I'm not sure I agree with you on that point. And then the third thing I'd probably say is the maladies that you're describing, I think, are real. I think that's a confluence of things, though. I think one element absolutely is consumerism. One element certainly is social media dislocation. They're all combined. But if I had to come back to one, I probably would go back to the point you made and where I started, which is we're failing to provide meaningful employment, a sense of purpose, the capacity to support yourself and you support your family in a community that you find meaningful. And we've assumed that's only one type of community, and that's a failing as a society.

• 1:07:48Speaker 04

  I started in this conversation with responding to Josh about how I normally converse in my culture. And I will now show an example of that. My, I have a very large, tight-knit family that lives on a compound. Okay, we all live on the same piece of land. We've had the land for 300 years. We got it for service in the revolution. I'm related to most of the people where I'm from, the exact piece of land. We all went to high school together. We all went to middle school together. And some of us, including myself, are considered in our culture, big weirdos. People who would be targets of bullying, people who don't fit into the norm of the area. But having the social network of cousins in this example

• 1:08:31Speaker 04

  to help guide you through social situations that you don't understand on the ground as a peer who loves you in your, your school, and then threatening to kick someone's ass who tries to come at you, gives you a way to navigate through some of what are the most scarring times for a lot of these kids who are totally disassociated from a community. You hear about all of these maladjustments, and I spend a lot of time online to my physical and emotional detriment. And you just see these communities of young men that are just spiraling. And I have cousins who could have gone down that path, but instead live normal lives now. Because we were there to kick someone's ass who tried to come at them.

• 1:09:17Speaker 05

  Can I just say, the more I hear you say that Maggie, the more I think that the problem might just not be in modern America. It might be everyone in the US who's descended of immigrants to a certain degree, because so few people descended of immigrants in the US formed familial compounds where they stayed. You know, mostly people move a lot. And that's always been true since Europeans first came to the Americas, to North America. So, some of this problem may go back even further. And the other thing is, to my mind, it's associated with this problem of social class that we don't like to talk about in the United States. You know, class is like the C-word of our public conversations. On the one hand, there's something beautiful about that post-World War II moment, where, as we're constantly being told by the economists, there was a

• 1:10:02Speaker 05

  lot of mobility possible in the United States. And in the US, because we never had an aristocracy, mobility was often measured by, did you go to college? And at first, there weren't very many colleges. So going to college was a way to bump up. Then after the GI Bill, there were a lot more colleges, but it was still, we still treated it as a way to bump ourselves up. And now, it's obviously a lot harder, for reasons you were describing, for anyone to bump up. And so we know about this kind of mobility problem. But what you're saying, and this is why I like it, and it's also so radical, and it's really making me think, is that it's actually even before that. It's that even just the idea that you can move up implies that you should want to move up, and that there's something not okay with you if you don't. And in a way, what you're describing is a kind of like

• 1:10:46Speaker 05

  downside of mobility. It's not just a lack of mobility. You're saying, even if we had the mobility, it still sends a wrong message to people who are like, I don't want to be mobile. I like who I am. I like where I live. I like what I do. And that is something which, I think, it's hard to find any period in US history where European-descended or other immigrant-descended Americans were consistently happy with saying, I'm just going to stay where I am and do my thing.

• 1:11:12Speaker 04

  No, I mean, you'd be shocked at how like bizarre people treat me. I went to college at Harvard. I'm a beast of a certain mold like Noah is. You know, we had this, you know, Uncle Harvard there looming in the background for a lot of our lives. And you'd be shocked at how many people acted like I was out of my mind for not wanting to spend my time dragging the American South, for being the place where a lot of the worst sins of America were, was it paroxysmed out, or tried to, we pretended. The whipping boy of the entire United States, that I didn't want to talk about how awful it was and get away from it and, you know,

• 1:11:57Speaker 04

  that I spend my time proselytizing to people from home about the fact that, yeah, I mean, Donald Trump really is the con man, snake oil salesman from New York you told me to be scared of when I moved to New England. It's here. He's here. He showed up, y'all. Maybe pay attention. I get treated like it's crazy, that I don't want to live in New York City, that I don't, I'm not interested in it. I have my people, and I have my culture.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  So Josh, you had something? I think we're maybe conflating a couple of things. One is mobility with a sense of economic security. I think Maggie's completely right, that not everyone wants to move. Noah, you're right, that the history of the United States required movement. And why was that? It was because parts of the country had a stagnant economy and parts of the country almost always had a booming economy. And people who were looking to better themselves from an economic perspective and prioritize that. That was a question of choice. One can argue about whether that's the right choice, but they found mobility is the most compelling way to improve their lot. Interestingly, over the last couple of years, mobility in the United States has declined dramatically. That was partly COVID related. It's partly

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  also people are reprioritizing, right? They're recognizing, I think, a little bit, Maggie, what you're saying, which is That new job, that 20% pay raise is less important to me in some respects than maintaining a sense of community and a sense of place, and I'm going to prioritize those. I think we just have to be willing to acknowledge that if that's going to work, though, we need to be creating jobs around the country. Leaving aside one's views on work, right to work, if you go to Greenville, South Carolina, why is that community vibrant? It's because we have a lot of auto plants. And we've moved auto plants out of one particular place, which was the Midwest, and we've moved them to places where other people want to live. You don't even have to live in the town of Greenville, city of Greenville. You can live outside in quite rural South Carolina and have a job that will pay you a living

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  wage. Boeing's in Charleston, South Carolina, that works for the people who work at Boeing and manufacture and assemble 787 Dreamliners. So I think our conception of where people want to live and work needs to change, and I think we need to recognize that and provide those opportunities. So I completely agree. But it's a different question than upward mobility. And I don't think we should diminish the historical and relatively healthy American desire for our children to have a better lives in quotes than what we had. And part of that realistically is economically. It's not just having more meaningful relationships. For people who have not had means, it's important that they have an opportunity to have more financial security.

• 1:14:28Kevin Kelly?

  So I feel as if maybe we should move on unless, Maggie, do you have anything final to say on your heresy, or is that enough?

• 1:14:38Speaker 04

  My last sentence would be if you can just move from one suburb, a thousand miles to another suburb, and you don't feel culturally uncomfortable, you are doing it wrong.

• 1:14:50Kevin Kelly?

  Okay, all righty, really good. So, Mr. Tim, Tim, what's your heresy? I know you have a heresy deep inside you. So tell us what it is.

• 1:15:00Tim Ferriss?

  I've been racking my brain on this for a little while because I didn't want to start with something so nearly impossible to defend that it would be unproductive.

• 1:15:11Tim Ferriss?

  So I think what I'm going to go with is I have come to a point where I believe there are multiple vehicles through which we will be able to meaningfully communicate with animals within the next five years, I would say. And by meaningful, I've thought about what that actually means. Like, would it be at the level of a small human child? I don't think that the conceptual mapping will work quite that way. But there are a couple of things that have combined for me to believe this. One, on the easier to grasp side, would be work that people like Aza Raskin are presenting

• 1:15:49Tim Ferriss?

  and exploring related to using AI and machine learning and so on to effectively decode and then produce communication with different species. And there's a fair amount of progress that's been made with, say, whales. Yeah, Whale Guy. I've met him. I can't remember his name. Okay, yeah, I haven't met the Whale Guy. I've seen the book, though. So I do think technology, and in this case, literally sort of exponentially developing technology, will put a huge dent in that in a very short period of time. And of course, Kevin, you've spent a lot of time in the sandbox of AI. So you know how absurdly quickly things are developing and surprising the developers themselves.

• 1:16:32Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I'm going to throw a twist on that to make it a little stranger, which is a few other things that I think will help with animal communication are sensory augmentation, so that there could be potentially real time interaction along the lines of, say, what neuroscientist David Eagleman has done, where they put on, say, a suit for someone who is blind or deaf, and it provides a tactile form of feedback where they begin to map their environment and inputs differently and adapt to this very, very quickly. And furthermore, this is the last I'll say, and then I'll stop. I think that certain psychedelic compounds will probably facilitate a number of these, mostly the sensory augmentation used in combination.

• 1:17:15Tim Ferriss?

  And I would point to some research that, these are mostly case studies, I should be clear, and not randomize. Controlled studies or anything that journalist named Rachel Neuer has pointed me to related to MDMA for social anxiety and social cues. There are quite a number of people in the communities, the autism communities, who have experimented with sort of durable effects on social anxiety and social cues. So I'll stop there since there's plenty to pick apart, but compelling, surprising animal communication within five years that will then be propagandized by all the political and special interests. It will become a very contentious area. So I'm not sure that it will have uniformly positive impacts, but that's my prediction.

• 1:17:57Kevin Kelly?

  So one clarification, the psychedelics you were talking about being applied to the humans, not necessarily to the animals?

• 1:18:03Tim Ferriss?

  No, I think that they can be applied to animals as well in terms of reading body language and opening the reducing valve on processing that type of information, particularly as it relates to neuroplasticity and adapting to sensory augmentation. I think that will be ultimately viewed as maybe a very primitive approach to what the AI can produce, but I think they can all work in tandem.

• 1:18:26Kevin Kelly?

  I think you have nesting heresies there because giving animals psychedelics is a self.

• 1:18:31Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no, not animals. Well, I guess animals, human animals, the human animals.

• 1:18:36Kevin Kelly?

  My question was, I was just talking about giving the animals psychedelics.

• 1:18:41Tim Ferriss?

  Although, although I would like to fund research looking at whether or not MDMA can help to reverse the equivalent of PTSD in dogs who have been abused. I think that's underexplored, but that's a whole separate thing.

• 1:18:57Kevin Kelly?

  Is the timeframe of this important for your heresy?

• 1:19:01Tim Ferriss?

  I just wanted to kind of throw something out there that would give people something additional to object to.

• 1:19:08Speaker 04

  You concreted it.

• 1:19:09Kevin Kelly?

  Okay, Noah, you have your hand up, Noah.

• 1:19:12Speaker 05

  I'm not going to object, but I really, I am really curious, Tim, about this. And I should begin by saying I know less than nothing about this. So when you talk about communicating with animals, I mean, first of all, we already do a certain amount of significant amount of communicating with animals, right? And the better you are, say, with a dog at both understanding where the dog is coming from and communicating to it and what a dog will understand. And I've seen you do this, Tim, with your own dog really beautifully. You're having a much better communicative relationship than a lot of other people do with animals, certainly than I do, and maybe even than a lot of people.

• 1:19:45Tim Ferriss?

  It turns out Noah likes listening to animals, doesn't like listening to people.

• 1:19:48Speaker 05

  There you go. But what I wanted to ask about the communication, Tim, is like, what are you picturing? Because, you know, there's this super famous essay by the still going strong, well into his eighties philosopher, Tom Nagel.

• 1:20:00Tim Ferriss?

  Tom Nagel.

• 1:20:01Speaker 05

  Called, What Is It Like to Be a Bat? And, you know, basically what he tries to say, and if you're right, this article will be obsolete, is that we can't really piece together what it would be like to be a bat from within our perspective. And I would think that maybe language is a little bit like that. So what would it mean to hear the animal communicating? I'm not talking about the whale song here, where it is enough like language in that it has repetitive patterns and it's sound and we can sort of begin to picture the way it might be used. But what does it look like to you to say we're understanding what the animal is communicating to us? Is the AI producing like a translation? It's like Woof GPT or something? And it like, you know, it just gives us a running translation?

• 1:20:44Speaker 05

  I mean, just tell me what you're talking about, because I can't really picture it.

• 1:20:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sure. So I think there are multiple possibilities, and I do not understand the technology. If we're talking about the AI side, just the idea of calling that, keeping it simple, is kind of hilarious in and of itself, but let's keep it simple and talk about AI and the sort of computer science side of things. I think that for a communication model to be functional, and I say this as someone who's studied a lot of human languages, first and foremost, with, say, different species, we're talking about, let's just define terms a little bit. When I say communication, it could be human to animal communication, but it could also and probably will first be animal to animal communication.

• 1:21:28Tim Ferriss?

  So within a certain species, can you model the language in such a way that there is a predictive value? Does that make sense? So you are able to predict what will happen next based on pattern recognition within a given species, or even, say, it could be a regional iteration of a single species. And we see a lot of variance across, say, Chimpanzees, depending on location, but let me give an example that Aza Raskin has brought up just to give an example of one of the leads that I find interesting that I think will develop over time. So with dolphins, which also have this sonic patterning.

• 1:22:12Tim Ferriss?

  So in that sense, as a human, it's a little easier to compare these funny sounds coming out of my mouth hole that are being molded by all these muscles and so on to a dolphin. But with the dolphins, you can ask a dolphin, and I don't know the exact training that went into this, and we can come back to Nagel too, and the kind of behaviorism Skinner, black box type of stuff if you'd like. And I don't think you need to understand the internal functioning of an animal to make progress with communication in the same way that you don't really understand what's going on in any human's head, but you infer that based on what comes out. So I do think you could base it on observable data. But with the dolphin example that Aza has given, and I'm going to butcher this because I'm calling

• 1:22:55Tim Ferriss?

  from memory, but these marine mammal trainers, which is a very interesting branch of animal training, for anyone who's interested in, say, dog training, it gets more interesting when you get in the water. You can't hit a misbathing dolphin with a rolled up newspaper, not that I would recommend that with a dog. But they will ask a dolphin to do something novel. In other words, do something you have never done before. And they have confidence that this is being sort of semantically communicated well enough that the dolphin understands it. Is that true or not? Who knows? But they are able to produce novel behaviors. The more interesting aspect to me, although I think that's very interesting if you dig into it, is that they can then take two dolphins and say, together, do something

• 1:23:36Tim Ferriss?

  that you have never done before. And they like, like, do whatever they do, and they confer, and then they simultaneously perform a novel movement that they have never demonstrated before. So I think a lot of it will be starting with trying to model some type of predictive value on language inputs using technology. I think that's where it's going to start. Where it leads, I honestly couldn't tell you. But I do think at some point, we will be able to produce, we already can on some very, very primitive level, bird song and so on, that have, say, alarm call values. It's very rough, but I think the fidelity of that

• 1:24:17Tim Ferriss?

  With the type of data that can be captured now with better technology, not just AI, but just simple kind of audio technology, I think we will get to a point, and this could be abused, and Aza would agree with this, where you could actually propagate messages, say, through water to dolphins, to whales. I think it'll be easier to start with mammals versus, say, reptiles, although you can train chickens and other things, which I think is a good idea. If you're planning on having kids, you should have to train a chicken or a dog first, I think. But I'm not sure if that answers the question, but that's where I think things are at least starting at the moment.

• 1:24:57Kevin Kelly?

  There's an example of prototype version of that with dogs, using these little buttons, where you record a word onto it that was used often with kids who were having trouble with with language. And the ultimate was the scout who was teaching her dog to speak by having she had a plywood setup where they had 34, she got up to 34 different words that the dog could press the buttons for and say a sentence. And it was, again, remarkable, like cocoa, it was kind of like a sign language, but it was an audible sign language, where the dog was constructing fairly complicated sentences about what it wanted to do, or

• 1:25:38Kevin Kelly?

  went to go outside and see its friend, and all kinds of remarkable things, just using the recorded sound on one word per button, and up to 34. And they had kind of primitives, so they could actually construct a fairly complicated sentence. And so that would, if you could imagine that, be transferring into some kind of audible language, that would make it another step. Josh?

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  Tim, let me ask you a question. Do you think if you're right, it's going to lead to a quite transformational view on animal rights and people's willingness to consume animal products?

• 1:26:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. So that, I do think that's one possibility, and that's related to my comment on political division and how that's going to fit into things. I do think for millions of people who are maybe towards the midline, let's just say you have a continuum, just to, because I want to sound like a smart guy, so I'm going to use this too. If you have a continuum from, let's just say, pure

• 1:26:40Tim Ferriss?

  Vegetarian to, or like herbivore carnivore. And you have like 100% pure, 100% pure, never going to change. And as you move towards the middle, you get increasingly flexible. I think for people who are close to that midpoint, or maybe even within 20 points, a lot of folks will switch to probably more plant-based food, which I do not, for the record, think is automatically healthier. But for moral reasons, I think more people will switch. At the same time, my experience, because I've been involved with all sorts of things that are kind of at odds, we could talk about it. But the conservation work that I have done, conservation is viewed in very particular way, I think in a very exaggerated way in the US specifically.

• 1:27:25Tim Ferriss?

  You don't run into this as much, say, in South America, in Colombia, when they're producing like TDB Getay Park and so on, or protecting it. But in the US, there's a great piece in The New Yorker. I think it's something along the lines of The Wolf Lady, or the powerful story of The Wolf Lady. And it talks about wolf conservation, which is basically considered the Middle East of conservation, and how politicized it is. So there are people who want to kill wolves just because they view it as a magnet for liberal overreach with conservation, city folks telling rural folks how to live. There's more to that, of course.

• 1:28:09Tim Ferriss?

  And then you have the opposite on the liberal side. And it turns into this battlefield for ideology, where something like a wolf, or a fill-in-the-blank animal, is a symbol. It becomes a symbol. So I do think that it will flip a lot of people towards different behavior. And simultaneously, it will become hyper-polarized. And you'll have competing researchers or computer scientists who are taking completely opposite interpretive stances, based on whatever their political or ideological goals will be. But I do think it'll change behavior, absolutely. I'm not a vegetarian. I hunt and consume elk.

• 1:28:49Tim Ferriss?

  And deer and so on. So my personal choice has been to set parameters around it so that I feel ethically comfortable with consuming nutrient-dense meat. But I do think a lot of people will switch to a more plant-based or synthetic-based diet, which is not automatically healthy, but I do think that we'll see that change.

• 1:29:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was recently at a very strange kind of conference about

• 1:29:19Speaker 04

  the confluence of a lot of the things we're talking about today, about multi-species constitutionalism. And this idea of trying to and being able to communicate with other animals was the majority of the focus of this meeting. I was there because my assertion was that we're not, you know, the dominant, again, I'm an anthropologist, right? So I'm thinking about culture all the time. But the dominant kind of cultural worldview, or as people in my field call it ontology, which is just like an obfuscating word for no reason. It's like, let's make things harder. We'll say praxis instead of practice. It's just like, all right, thanks for making this

• 1:30:03Speaker 04

  less reachable by normal humans. But we don't have it built into our worldview to deal with this eventuality, in my opinion. And there are plenty of cultures that do have it built in to their worldview to deal with this. And I would say that most of those are relational cultures. So I'm native, bringing it back around to that. You know, you have this idea of a relational world where there is a connection and reciprocal responsibility between every entity in the universe, including between an individual squirrel who eats your trash or whatever.

• 1:30:42Speaker 04

  I guess that's a raccoon. And yourself, that raccoon has a responsibility to you and you have a responsibility to that raccoon. And it gives a baseline, having a conception of how to deal with Animals in a way that respects them as what they are, rather than what we need them to be to fit into how the mechanics of our world currently work, is going to be necessary to deal with this eventuality, or else it's going to be a disaster. Like you said at the beginning of this, it's like, you know, who's going to get the Lorax endorsement on their presidential campaign? And, you know, stuff that's just, let's churn it through the meat grinder we currently

• 1:31:24Speaker 04

  have, I think is the danger, you know, not to be too punny.

• 1:31:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, totally. The Lorax, great invocation. I want to say a few more things. So this is also, so far, we've only been talking about what we would consider animals. I actually think it's going to get stranger.

• 1:31:41Speaker 04

  Like funguses? fungi?

• 1:31:44Tim Ferriss?

  Well, plants in general. I don't think that we will find that eating plants is quite as ethically black and white, the opposite of eating animals. And there's a piece that Michael Pollan wrote called "The Intelligent Plant" in The New Yorker in 2013. A lot has happened since then, and you have to be careful, I think, just to point out the obvious with anthropomorphizing all things. I think there are lots of risks there. But there are some very seemingly credible researchers who have observed some very, very strange phenomena, which make plants seem much more sentient, much more sensitive, much

• 1:32:25Tim Ferriss?

  more, let's just call it, alive than I think many people who eat solely plants would like to believe. So I think that's also going to complicate matters. And I'll just point out also, and you can romanticize a lot of older cultures, and I think there's a risk that, you see a lot of that in Austin, it kind of drives me nuts on some level, but where everything new is bad and everything old is great, and I'm like, ah, I don't know if it's that simple. However, there are many, many cultures, and I've had most of the exposure in South America and Central America, although I know it's certainly true in other places, where the idea of communicating in some fashion with animals and plants is completely uncontroversial, which is not to say-

• 1:33:06Tim Ferriss?

  That therefore it is true, but I find it interesting that there over the span of millennia, in some cultures, there is a durable uncontroversial belief. It's kind of like Tuesday comes after Monday. Yes, you can communicate with plants or with fill in the blank species. So.

• 1:33:24Speaker 04

  Don't call them old. Those are still living cultures that exist today.

• 1:33:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, sorry. Well, what's the right? What's the right way to put it? Uh, long.

• 1:33:33Speaker 04

  Non-modernist, traditional.

• 1:33:35Tim Ferriss?

  Non-modernist.

• 1:33:36Kevin Kelly?

  Traditional.

• 1:33:36Tim Ferriss?

  There we go.

• 1:33:36Kevin Kelly?

  Traditional.

• 1:33:37Tim Ferriss?

  There we go.

• 1:33:38Kevin Kelly?

  Traditional. So Noah, Noah, you have something to add here?

• 1:33:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I wanted to ask a heretical question about the heresy. So let's say you're right, Tim. Let's say the heresy is true. Maybe it'll go the other way. Maybe instead of thinking that ethically, we can't eat something that we can talk to. We go the way that most traditional cultures have gone, which is they're not necessarily vegetarian just because they think they can communicate with animals. Nor, I mean, if you can communicate with plants too, you're going to eat the plants. Maybe it would have the opposite effect. Maybe we would no longer think that the capacity to be sentient and communicate is the basis for deserving our ethical consideration. And maybe at the margin, that would even be bad. This is the heretical thought. Maybe that would even be bad for the way we treat each other. I mean, right, drawing the line at humans is problematic in a whole bunch of ways, obviously.

• 1:34:25Speaker 05

  But at least it's had one really big benefit over the last few hundred years, which is it's gradually allowed us to recognize that all humans deserve equal rights, no matter what aspect of those folks' practices or culture or appearance we don't like.

• 1:34:38Speaker 04

  Because the line used to not be at human.

• 1:34:42Speaker 05

  Yeah. So the thing about drawing the line at humans is in a lot of ways, it's obviously naive. But it has done a lot of good drawing the line at humans in terms of our treating other humans, not equally, because we never, we never get there. But treating them as humans and respecting their inherent dignity. So the radical question would be, what if everything you you said happened, Tim? And it made us worse?

• 1:35:02Tim Ferriss?

  I think it's entirely possible is my my short response. I have more thoughts, but Kevin.

• 1:35:06Speaker 04

  Get back into genocide in a big way, you know?

• 1:35:09Kevin Kelly?

  There's a heresy that that I would not bring up here, but I would just have to add, which is, yeah, cannibalism is okay.

• 1:35:16Speaker 04

  Long pork.

• 1:35:19Kevin Kelly?

  Right? You dropped the line. Yeah, we can eat humans. Sure, that's fine. If they're dead. So unless there's something else to add to Tim's, I want to move on to the last one because we have only 15 minutes to talk about. So I picked a heresy that I thought would be, we could have a short discussion rather than a complicated one, so we can finish in time. And mine is that I think that human clones are fine. We should have human clones, that there's nothing wrong with human clones. Right now, there's a kind of a taboo about making human clones, but they're perfectly fine because we already have human clones. They're called twins. They're simultaneous clones, but we get all freaked out with serial clones. And actually, in fact, if we did not have twins,

• 1:36:03Kevin Kelly?

  and we suddenly invented twins, people would call them the devil. They would just say, that's just insanely evil if we had twins and that we didn't have them naturally. So I think that it's perfectly fine just to have serial twins rather than just simultaneous twins.

• 1:36:20Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. But according to you, Kevin, we can eat them, right?

• 1:36:23Kevin Kelly?

  Exactly. And we can eat them too.

• 1:36:26Speaker 04

  Well, I mean.

• 1:36:28Kevin Kelly?

  Twin farming.

• 1:36:29Speaker 04

  Am I wrong? Am I wrong?

• 1:36:31Tim Ferriss?

  EatYourself.com.

• 1:36:33Speaker 04

  In saying that the reason people are like weirded out by serial twins is because of the insight it gives into the psychology of the person who wants to serialize themselves more so than the actual cloning.

• 1:36:48Kevin Kelly?

  Well, you're assuming that you don't have to actually serialize yourself. You can make twins of anything. You don't have to make a twin of yourself. You don't have to clone yourself. You can clone, you can clone anything. You can clone, you could clone your neighbors if you wanted to. Right, exactly. So it's not just cloning of yourself that you have to do.

• 1:37:09Tim Ferriss?

  So you clone your kids, so you have an heir and a spare, and you just keep one in the closet? So Kevin, what would you like to see happen then? You're making an ethical statement that this is okay instead of not okay.

• 1:37:22Speaker 05

  What would some use cases be?

• 1:37:23Kevin Kelly?

  Well, there's obviously many people who lose a child or something who would like to restore that, to have a, bring them back, so to speak. And so I don't think that we should prohibit that just basis on the fact that they're clones.

• 1:37:38Speaker 05

  At a deep level, I understand that people have that instinct. But what's the advantage of that relative to a, like a non-cloned? Because the new clone, like identical twins, won't actually be the same person.

• 1:37:48Kevin Kelly?

  Exactly.

• 1:37:48Speaker 05

  They'll, they'll, they might look alike for some period, but they're, they won't be the same person. And so if you had, let's say you lost a child and chose to have another child. I think if someone said, "We lost our child, we decided to have another child," we would, none of us would think, "What a terrible ethical reaction." We would think, "Oh, that's very understandable." We wouldn't condemn it. But that's because they would be acknowledging that it wasn't going to be the same person all over again. And even if they named, if they named the child the same thing, we might raise our eyebrows quietly amongst ourselves, saying, "Gosh, don't they want this child to have its own identity?" But we probably would let that go too. After all, we don't get too upset when people name their kids after themselves.

• 1:38:21Kevin Kelly?

  Sure.

• 1:38:22Speaker 05

  You know, we know that they don't really mean that that's going to be their kid's going to be a mini me.

• 1:38:25Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:25Speaker 05

  So, I don't know, I guess what I'm wondering is, what's the, what's the added value there? I understand people have the instinct. Why is it any better than just saying, "Just have another child if you feel that way?"

• 1:38:37Kevin Kelly?

  I think you're right. I think there's going to be a lot, would be a lot of self-correction that, in a sense that people would understand that clones are very rarely possible to have an identical thing. And so there would be less, maybe, demand for it, but it would be another choice, another option. And there might be times when it worked out. I just don't think it should be a prohibition. The reason why there's a prohibition is, is there's a fear that they're going to be taking over, that, that our lives would be full of clones and that there'd be nothing but clones. And so where does the prohibition come from?

• 1:39:06Speaker 04

  What if it turns into one of these, like, weird Gattaca elite things, where you start cloning people you think are really smart, or, you know, Usain Bolt or something, and you create this, like... Weird elite class.

• 1:39:21Kevin Kelly?

  I think what they discovered is, which is to Noah's point, is that cloning is, there's no guarantee that you're going to get necessarily what you think you're going to get because of, we know twins themselves, they vary between each other, and triplets likewise.

• 1:39:36Speaker 02

  I think you see often how something which is super well-intentioned can run afoul of what actually is best for society. So you take the example of sperm donors who are trying to help families get pregnant or single mothers conceive, and then you end up having these cases where there are other doctors or individuals who ultimately have 500 children out in the world, which is a deep, deep disservice, obviously, to those children, because now you need to get genetically tested when you start dating someone to make sure that you're not dating your half sibling. And that's like a pretty unappealing thought. So the idea that we would have a massive number of clones out there, all of whom have to figure out

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  whether in fact there are huge genetic, let alone psychological, issues associated with it, because as they get older, they're not going to be able to self-identify as clones.

• 1:40:26Kevin Kelly?

  Wait, wait, wait, why?

• 1:40:27Speaker 02

  Doesn't that worry you?

• 1:40:27Kevin Kelly?

  What do you mean?

• 1:40:29Speaker 02

  Well, because even identical twins relatively rapidly don't always look alike. And so you're not immediately going to be able to know who's your sibling, who's not, whether you're intermarrying and doing all sorts of things. So from a genetic perspective, it doesn't seem like a particularly wise thing for the species to have thousands and thousands of people who have their identical genetic code.

• 1:40:47Kevin Kelly?

  Right. So, so, so, so you're saying if, as soon as you have clones, you have thousands of millions of them?

• 1:40:52Speaker 02

  No, you don't necessarily, but just the way no one assumed when you had the opportunity to have sperm donors, that you were going to have some idiot who decided that he wanted to have 500 children.

• 1:41:01Kevin Kelly?

  So I would say, you might want to regulate clones, but that's very different than prohibiting them.

• 1:41:06Speaker 04

  Are they prohibited right now?

• 1:41:08Kevin Kelly?

  Yes, there's an agreement among, I don't know if it's a treaty, but there's a, there's an agreement among biologists that they're not going to do human cloning.

• 1:41:15Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:41:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, I think one of the reasons for that worry is the, the kind of worry that, well, both of the worries, both Josh's worry and Maggie's worry, that we're worried about people trying to make tweaks to the clone, and then tweak the clone so that we, they develop the germ line in new ways, and that has both risks and ethical side. But I wanted to ask, just taking on your core case. I think the best thing you could say on the opposite side, you almost have to say this, is there's something about human reproduction that should include recombination and the randomness that comes out of that recombination. Because we're not saying it's completely random, because we let people choose who they're going to have kids with. If we're able, we want to let people choose. And so we're letting people decide within some boundary who they're going to mix their genetic material with.

• 1:41:56Speaker 05

  But there is some unavoidable, inescapable, and I think most people think, good randomness, about what happens when you combine two genomes. And I guess that question would be, what do we lose if we give that up? And I think what we lose at some basic level is the beauty of human variation. And the thing about twins is that that's also a product of the randomness of human variation, especially identical twins.

• 1:42:21Kevin Kelly?

  Well, not really. IF, VS, there's a huge preponderance.

• 1:42:25Speaker 02

  But those aren't identical twins.

• 1:42:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. And I'm talking about identical twins.

• 1:42:29Speaker 02

  Always fraternal.

• 1:42:30Speaker 05

  Exactly. Identical twins are themselves. That's a rare, outlying, random experience. So my argument would be that we shouldn't, as a society, want to encourage human reproduction that doesn't have that element of randomness, because it encourages us to believe that we can plan out in advance what someone's going to look like, and from there, what their life is going to be like in some way. And it's already bad enough. I'm a parent of teenagers. Yeah, I already, sorry, I'll just close, I'll shut up. I already have two, I'm too invested already in what my kids turn out like. I need to be, every day I wake up and try to be less invested in that. And here, it just feels like an invitation to be able to be more invested.

• 1:43:06Speaker 02

  Well, no, and just to your point, the societies that have tried this most closely, which are the royal families of Europe, has inevitably ended badly. The enormous jaws, huge health issues, because they were convinced, yeah, they were convinced that the way to ensure exactly what Noah described was to intermarry. And the result was insanity and deep, deep, physical deformity. So any experiments that we've seen in real life have not ended well.

• 1:43:34Kevin Kelly?

  To the extent that there are problems and it wouldn't work, I think those are going to be self-correcting. You would say, okay, we don't want to do this, or trying to engineer this has, always has trade-offs. And whatever, going to try to eliminate this disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, there is inevitably going to be some trade-off if you eliminate that kind of a gene from your clone. So eugenics, we're drifting into eugenics, and that's... The concern is that this turns into a form of eugenics, but it doesn't have to. Again, I think we want to have the option of it. We don't want to close off the option. We want to be able to manage it and do it just like, you know, we don't prohibit twins.

• 1:44:09Speaker 02

  Would you allow people to sell their genetic material? So you see some person who's super successful and she decides, you know what? If you want to have someone like me, I've been super successful, you can, I'll sell you a clone of me. And so couples are deciding that they go off and want to have Maggie as their daughter.

• 1:44:26Kevin Kelly?

  Do people, I don't know.

• 1:44:27Speaker 04

  That's a decision.

• 1:44:29Kevin Kelly?

  People do buy and sell eggs, right? I mean, for surrogate babies and, and I don't know if sperm is actually sold or not. That's interesting.

• 1:44:36Speaker 02

  You can sell it. I'm not sure you have to buy it.

• 1:44:38Kevin Kelly?

  I don't know.

• 1:44:41Speaker 04

  I want to say as like a kind of related sidebar, as someone who is currently gestating and pretty far along, I would like to say it all sucks and we shouldn't do any of it.

• 1:44:55Speaker 04

  Just a personal.

• 1:44:57Speaker 05

  If you could do it in the lab, you would, is what you're saying?

• 1:45:00Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:00Speaker 04

  Oh, man, like in The Matrix where there's like some other like spider thing. Yeah, this sucks.

• 1:45:10Tim Ferriss?

  So Kevin, I just want to say, since I'm your friend and I care for you, that it for your, for your next, for your next cannibal buffet, you should also pay attention to genetic diversity. So you don't get koodoo, which is the laughing death. I really would, it would, it would, it would, it would hurt my soul to see you die of the shape.

• 1:45:30Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:32Kevin Kelly?

  Don't eat your brains. Well, this has been.

• 1:45:34Speaker 04

  Avoid the preons.

• 1:45:36Tim Ferriss?

  So, um, this has really been great, everybody here. I hope, Tim, that you found it successful and we do it another version someday. And, um, I appreciate everybody being willing to, to play along with the game of, um, sharing your.

• 1:45:52Speaker 02

  The unwritten rules.

• 1:45:53Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly.

• 1:45:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so fun. And I'll just say to people listening, yeah, we will, we will put links to whatever we mentioned that can be linked to. We will include links and also to everyone who's been on the show in the show notes as always at tim.blog/podcast. But this was a great experiment. It really was. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. Really great. So, thank you, guys. Thank you, Kevin, for coming in with the sage experience Yeah. for our maiden voyage. And I think fondly back to the night when I first experienced this in our small group doing our walkabout. A lot of fun. And thanks for making the time, everybody. Thank you. Really, really appreciate it. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing

• 1:46:36Tim Ferriss?

  before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot

• 1:47:15Tim Ferriss?

  of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional insurance, and that is nothing new. I actually recommended AG1 in my 2010 bestseller, more than a decade

• 1:48:00Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:48:44Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:49:26Tim Ferriss?

  It is not always easy. So, part of my routine is using AG1 daily. If I'm on the road, on the run, it just makes it easy to get a lot of nutrients at once and to sleep easy knowing that I am checking a lot of important boxes. So, each morning, AG1. That's just like brushing my teeth, part of the routine. It's also NSF certified for sports, so professional athletes trust it to be safe. And each pouch of AG1 contains exactly what is on the label, does not contain harmful levels of microbes or heavy metals, and is free of 280 banned substances. It's the ultimate nutritional supplement in one easy scoop. So, take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free

• 1:50:10Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:50:31Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:51:54Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:52:39Tim Ferriss?

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