#247: Cool Tools for Travel - Tim Ferriss and Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly http://kk.org/(@kevin2kelly https://twitter.com/kevin2kelly) might be the real-life Most Interesting Man In The World. I've always wanted to travel with him, and we recently headed to Uzbekistan together. This episode covers some of our favorite travel tools. Kevin is Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine http://www.wired.com/, which he co-founded in 1993. He also co-founded the All Species Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Species_Foundation, a non-profit aimed at cataloging and identifying every living species on earth. In his spare time, he writes bestselling books, co-founded The Rosetta Project http://rosettaproject.org/, which is building an archive of all documented human language, and serves on the board of The Long Now Foundation http://longnow.org/. As part of The Long Now Foundation, he's investigating how to revive and restore endangered or extinct species, including the Wooly Mammoth. His newest critically acclaimed book is The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0525428089/offsitoftimfe-20. As journalist David Pogue has said: "Anyone can claim to be a prophet, a fortune teller, or a futurist, and plenty of people do. What makes Kevin Kelly different is that he's right..." This episode touches on a lot of cool stuff, and we had a blast recording it in the back of a car in the mountains. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by WordPress https://WordPress.com/Tim, my go-to platform for 24/7-supported, zero downtime blogging, writing online, creating websites -- everything! I love it to bits, and the lead developer, Matt Mullenweg, has appeared on this podcast many times. Whether for personal use or business, you're in good company with WordPress https://WordPress.com/Tim -- used by The New Yorker, Jay Z, FiveThirtyEight, TechCrunch, TED, CNN, and Time, just to name a few. A source at Google told me that WordPress https://WordPress.com/Tim offers "the best out-of-the-box SEO imaginable," which is probably why it runs nearly 30% of the Internet. Go to WordPress.com/Tim https://WordPress.com/Tim to get 15% off your website today! This podcast is also brought to you by TrunkClub http://trunkclub.com/tim. I hate shopping with a passion. And honestly, I'm not good at it, which means I end up looking like I'm colorblind or homeless. Enter TrunkClub http://trunkclub.com/tim, which provides you with your own personal stylist and makes it easier than ever to shop for clothes that look great on your body. Just go to trunkclub.com/tim http://trunkclub.com/tim and answer a few questions, and then you'll be sent a trunk full of awesome clothes. They base this on your sizes, preferences, etc. The trunk is then delivered free of charge both ways, so you only pay for clothes that you keep. If you keep none, it costs you nothing. To get started, check it out at trunkclub.com/tim http://trunkclub.com/tim.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 00

  Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by WordPress, my go-to platform for blogging, writing online, creating websites, everything. I love WordPress 2 bits. My site, every site just about that I have, is run on WordPress. And the lead developer of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, has appeared on this podcast many times. The very first episode in particular is amazing. The second, I took a ton of notes on, so you should check it out. But WordPress, where do I even begin? I mean, The New Yorker uses it, Jay-Z, Beyonce, they use it, 538, TechCrunch, TED, CNN, Time. Whether you are looking to create a personal blog, a business site, both, neither, something else,

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  you'll make a huge impact when you build your website on wordpress.com. And directly from some friends at Google, I'm not going to quote them by name, but they say that WordPress offers the best out-of-the-box SEO, that's search engine optimization imaginable. So if you're on WordPress, you immediately have a leg up on everybody else on search engines and so forth. In my experience, I'm no medical doctor of search engine optimization, but I will say that I used WordPress for years and fell in love with it to the extent that I became very close friends with Matt and then became an investor slash advisor to Automattic, which

• 1:52Tim Ferriss?

  runs wordpress.com. That is how much I believe in this, and that's how a lot of my most successful products and investments have come about, because I'm in love with X and then I seek out X. Nearly 30% of the internet is run on WordPress. And that includes everything from

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  ...sites that I mentioned to neighborhood sites. And it is super easy to get started. There's no need to worry about security, or upgrades, or hosting. They offer 24/7 support and handle all of that, which allows you to focus on creating the highest-quality content you can with the least amount of friction. I don't have to worry about downtime. I don't have to worry about getting emergency emails if I'm on vacation or something like that. And WordPress is my go-to solution for all of this. I trust all of my most important text on the internet to WordPress. And they can't buy that with a sponsorship. They can't buy that with anything. I want uptime, uptime, uptime, and quality. And that is what I have selected after everything that I've looked at. So, check it out.

• 2:55Tim Ferriss?

  Go to WordPress, that's W-O-R-D-P-R-E-S-S.com. WordPress.com/tim to receive 15% off of your website today. That's WordPress.com/tim.

• 3:13Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Trunk Club. There are two types of men out there. You know who you are. Guys who love shopping for clothes but are short on time, category A. And those of you who hate it, category B. I am in the latter category. My fashion sense is also probably somewhere between homeless and confused with a dash of lazy added in. Either way, you can take heart. And I've used Trunk Club now and have found some of my favorite pieces of clothing that make me look a lot better than I would be able to handle on my own. And there are many reasons for that. But you can get clothing that fits perfectly and looks amazing without ever stepping into a store again, thanks to Trunk Club. And they make it very, very easy.

• 3:58Tim Ferriss?

  And the clothing is handpicked by a personal stylist, your own personal stylist. All you have to do is go to trunkclub.com/tim, type in your measurements, share your likes and dislikes. They'll pick your clothes from more than 80 top brands and ship them right to your door. You keep what you like, you send back what you don't. If you don't like any of it, send it all back. Doesn't matter. And Trunk Club is not a subscription service. This is what appealed to me, among many other things. I didn't want to constantly be getting dinged by things or have to deal with the headache of constantly getting boxes. It's not a subscription service. Shipping is always free, and you have five days to try on the clothes. So... A couple of points here. Number one, get started today. Go to trunkclub.com/tim,

• 4:43Tim Ferriss?

  try it out. You get premium clothes, expert advice, no work, no risk. That is a winning combo. And I have found some of my favorite Espadrilles shoes from them, bright green. I do like the color green. And they actually work. I've had so many compliments on these shoes, and more people ask me where I got them than any other pair of shoes I've ever had. And more shirts, I kept, ended up keeping about, I would say, three quarters of my box, which I did not expect to do. So go to trunkclub.com/tim and check it out.

• 5:17Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to typically interview world-class performers from all different domains, whether that be sports, military, business, chess, or otherwise, to tease out routines, habits, etc. that you can apply and test in your own life. This episode is a joint episode with Kevin Kelly, one of my favorite people on the planet. You can say hi to him on Twitter, @KevinTheNumber2Kelly, or go to KK.org to see his writing, among others, 1,000 True Fans, perhaps the essay I have recommended the most in the world to the most audiences. Now Kevin might be the real-life, most interesting man in

• 6:01Tim Ferriss?

  the world. He sports an Amish beard, he built his own house, he spends many months of the year traveling all over, and I've always wanted to travel with him. We recently had the chance to head to Uzbekistan together, and I jumped at the opportunity. This episode covers some of our favorite travel tools. So who is Kevin? He is senior maverick at Wired Magazine, which he co-founded in 1993. He also co-founded the All Species Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at cataloging and identifying every living species on Earth. That's not a joke. In his spare time, he writes bestselling books, co-founded The Rosetta Project, which is building an archive of all documented human languages, and serves on the board

• 6:44Tim Ferriss?

  of the Long Now Foundation. As part of the last, he's investigating how to revive and restore endangered or extinct species, including the woolly mammoth. And I guess that would not be part of the last, would be part of the... All Species Foundation, but you get the idea. He's a busy, busy dude. And his newest critically acclaimed book is The Inevitable. That is the title. Subtitle, Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. As journalist David Pogue has said of Kevin, "Anyone can claim to be a prophet, a fortune teller, or a futurist, and plenty of people do." What makes Kevin Kelly different is that he's right. He has an impeccable track record. So this episode covers quite a bit of cool stuff, all very actionable. I hope you guys enjoy it.

• 7:27Tim Ferriss?

  We had a blast recording it in the back of a car in the mountains. And I will let Kevin get to it. This is also being simultaneously published on his Cool Tools Podcast, which you guys should check out, and you can find it at KK.org. Enjoy.

• 7:46Tim Ferriss?

  Mr. Kelly?

• 7:47Kevin Kelly?

  Hi, this is Kevin Kelly. I'm sitting in the back of a car, crossing a mountain pass about 2,000 meters in the Atenshin Mountains in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan is a Central Asian country that's generally south of Russia, north of Afghanistan, and next to all the other stands like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan. Sitting next to me, as we cross the mountains, is Tim Ferriss, the legendary explorer and explainer of world-class performances. And we're going to do a joint recording. Tim's going to tell us about his favorite four cool tools,

• 8:31Kevin Kelly?

  and we'll find out what he's up to lately. Tim, why don't you tell us about your first cool tool?

• 8:38Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, the first cool tool, sitting in the back here, we have bags around us, bottles of water, a bunch of different gadgets and objects piled in my lap. The first that I can talk about is actually in my other piece of luggage. I don't have any checked luggage. And it is a jacket that I roll up and travel with constantly. It's from a brand called NAU, I believe it's based in Portland. And you can think of it as a blazer or a riding jacket. What makes it unique is...

• 9:11Tim Ferriss?

  A number of different factors. A, you can roll it up and throw it on to say a black t-shirt and you look like you're ready for a business dinner or a formal or semi-formal occasion. So it saves me the trouble of packing a lot of collared shirts, for instance. And there are collared shirts that don't wrinkle, but they do take up more space than say a black t-shirt. So this now, and it could be, I have several different models at home. Weather resistant, of course, if it was designed in the Pacific Northwest, you would expect that, which comes in handy. So that would be my first cool tool. Plenty of pockets, but there are lapels, so you can get away with murder. You could wear it in a light rain, or you could wear it at a nice dinner.

• 9:55Tim Ferriss?

  And it is an incredibly flexible piece of clothing.

• 9:59Kevin Kelly?

  So, one of the hazards for me, anyway, if I try to roll up a jacket, I never quite get the wrinkles out. So, no iron shirts, you can kind of hang in your hot shower and it'll dissipate. How does this work in terms of unwrinkling it? Or do you, does it just magically unwrinkle?

• 10:19Tim Ferriss?

  So this particular jacket has a number of features, I think, that disguise wrinkles. And there's also just the material science aspect. The fabric blends that are used tend not to wrinkle, number one. Number two, it has folds and pockets and lapels that for whatever reason make any wrinkles less noticeable.

• 10:43Kevin Kelly?

  Cool.

• 10:44Tim Ferriss?

  And then there's the color. So if you want to avoid problems with wrinkles, generally, at least in my experience, you want darker clothing, so that under light, you're not casting, you're not having shadows cast across or beneath the wrinkles. So this is a charcoal color jacket.

• 11:00Kevin Kelly?

  It's kind of like your typical suit jacket length? Or is it more like an outdoor jacket at the waist?

• 11:09Tim Ferriss?

  I would say typical dinner jacket length. So it's not getting cut off, doesn't show off any midriff, for those of you who are looking for that.

• 11:17Kevin Kelly?

  Your belt?

• 11:18Tim Ferriss?

  You're out of luck. Yeah. So you'd be able to see your belt if it were unbuttoned in the front.

• 11:23Kevin Kelly?

  Right. Okay. So that's, and it's very lightweight, and about, tell the readers about... How big it compresses into?

• 11:33Tim Ferriss?

  If you were to roll it up well, and if you want to know how to roll up a jacket like that well, you could actually go online and look at how, say, a judo uniform is folded. And if you roll it up well, you are looking at, let's just say, the bottom three quarters, meaning it'll cover the very bottom fabric of a standard-sized school backpack. So we're not talking about a hiker's backpack. So if I had to estimate, I would say we're looking at, I get it down to about a roll

• 12:11Tim Ferriss?

  that is 10 inches in length and about 3 to 4 inches in diameter.

• 12:20Kevin Kelly?

  That's very impressive. I carry a lightweight down jacket that compresses into something very small, but it is certainly not as fancy or, you know, suitable for a dinner jacket like yours is.

• 12:34Tim Ferriss?

  And, I mean, a couple of other tips for folks, and I'm by no means a hyper-minimalist, say, Appalachian Trail hiker or anything like that, but I also have, for instance, a synthetic, because I don't want to lose the insulating ability if it gets wet. I have a synthetic down vest that is also stuffed into this backpack, which I can put on top of that sort of fancy-looking jacket in the case that I need more warmth.

• 13:07Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah, that's brilliant. That's a brilliant hack. So, again, that's called the NAU jacket?

• 13:14Tim Ferriss?

  N-A-U, now.

• 13:15Kevin Kelly?

  Now, okay. And approximately, what's the cost? Just give me a range.

• 13:22Tim Ferriss?

  That's a really good question. I bought it a long time ago. It's not cheap, but then again, if you're comparing it to any type of dinner jacket or outdoor jacket, it's not horribly expensive. I'd say it's in the 150 to 350 range, if I had to guess.

• 13:36Kevin Kelly?

  Okay, good. That's fantastic. So what else do you have in your backpack, which is stuffed here in the back of our car right now?

• 13:44Tim Ferriss?

  In my bag of tricks, I have a...

• 13:49Tim Ferriss?

  A Logitech Bluetooth keyboard. And just to put this in perspective, it is about this. It's slightly larger than, say, a paperback book, like a five by eight inch trim paperback book. It is narrow enough that I will very often stick it into a journal to protect it, meaning it's probably the width of eight to 10 paperback pages. And it holds a charge very, very well. So I use this oftentimes. If I have any issue with my laptop, I can pair it to my iPhone, which is a larger sized iPhone, and balance the iPhone or lean it against a glass of iced tea.

• 14:33Tim Ferriss?

  And I can get any type of writing done that I need to get done. Also, if I feel like taking a day trip but not taking this backpack, which is one of my main pieces of luggage and stuffed full of stuff. It's kind of heavy. I can take the keyboard and my iPhone and head off to some coffee shop, say, 10, 15 minutes away, without carrying all of my gear with me.

• 14:55Kevin Kelly?

  So I'm going to try to describe this a little bit further. It's very, very thin and very lightweight. It feels like it's made of aluminum. And it has kind of a matte texture, matte finish on it. It feels very velvety. And it's mostly charcoal color with white letters. So this would serve as a keyboard with a phone. And the keyboard itself is pretty large in terms of your finger spacing, so there'd be no cramping. That is really cool.

• 15:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's a great device. I've had this now for, I would say, two years. And I have never had a technical fail. So as a form of backup, I find it to be very cheap insurance because as you can see in person, this is lightweight enough that I'm not going to get scoliosis for having this as additional piece of gear. I just stick it into a large format journal or even a magazine, and I can travel with it.

• 15:56Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah, that's really cool. And so it pairs up like through Bluetooth, I imagine, right?

• 16:01Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 16:02Kevin Kelly?

  Right, and so you can pair it up to an iPad if you wanted to, as well as a phone if you happen to be carrying one.

• 16:06Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 16:07Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah. So, um, what's that called again?

• 16:10Tim Ferriss?

  This is a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard.

• 16:12Kevin Kelly?

  Okay.

• 16:13Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, we'll put the exact

• 16:15Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 16:15Tim Ferriss?

  model in the show notes.

• 16:17Kevin Kelly?

  Okay.

• 16:17Tim Ferriss?

  For everybody. And, uh, next up, we have...

• 16:22Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, these, these all kinda travel together. I've, I very rarely take these out of my backpack, in this case. Uh, this is Max Earplugs Silicone Earplugs, which, uh, unlike foam earplugs, are not inserted into the ear canal and then left to expand. These are effectively smeared over the ear opening. And you have, in all caps, "Do not insert, just cover ear opening." Uh, these I found through swimmers, in fact. Uh, and they are very waxy, uh, and almost look like candies, some type of caramel, but they're white colored.

• 17:03Tim Ferriss?

  And I find them to block sound much more effectively than, uh, any type of foam earplug, although there are some good ones on the market, to be sure.

• 17:13Kevin Kelly?

  Do you use them just once? Or can they be reused or recycled? Or they last a little bit, then you have to... They get grungy? Or what, what, what's their use?

• 17:23Tim Ferriss?

  I definitely reuse these. I would say, if I had to guesstimate, I would say four to five nights, and then they, they start to lose their adherence, because they get, uh, they get less tacky over time. The most important feature or benefit that I don't wanna overlook is that as someone who tends to rotate from back to side, so I sleep on my back and on my side, foam earplugs will very often hurt. They'll get pushed into your ear when you roll onto your side. That is not the case with these. Uh, so, uh...

• 17:58Kevin Kelly?

  So for sidesleepers, this, these are real, a real cool tool, because...

• 18:04Kevin Kelly?

  That allows you to sleep on your side while you have these earplugs in?

• 18:07Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely, and even as someone who kind of tosses and turns, in my case, I don't tend to wake up on my side, but I'm constantly going onto my side and foam earplugs often will wake me up.

• 18:18Kevin Kelly?

  Okay, cool. And is this mostly just used for sleeping, or can you use these, or do you use these for other sorts of sound abatement?

• 18:27Tim Ferriss?

  These, these earplugs, uh, live in each of my bags that I tend to travel with, so I have, I have redundant caches of earplugs, one in this bag, one in my other bag, and sometimes I'll even have them in jackets.

• 18:39Kevin Kelly?

  But mostly for sleeping?

• 18:41Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, mostly for sleeping, definitely.

• 18:43Kevin Kelly?

  Or if you're sitting on an airplane and you're trying to read and just want to drown out the sound?

• 18:48Tim Ferriss?

  Then you can use them as well, for sure. Or you're swimming and you want to avoid swimmers.

• 18:51Kevin Kelly?

  Swimmers, okay, right, cool. Okay, so, um, what's your fourth, uh, cool tool?

• 18:58Tim Ferriss?

  My fourth cool tool, and I might, I might, might go over slightly here, but my, my fourth cool tool is a neck pillow, and I-

• 19:09Kevin Kelly?

  Oh, I want one of those.

• 19:10Tim Ferriss?

  I've tried many different neck pillows.

• 19:12Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Tim Ferriss?

  Most of them are very uninspiring and even less effective for helping me sleep. Uh, this, and I'll do my best here, Cabau, Cabau, I believe is the pronunciation, C-A-B-E-A-U, and it has Evolution Pillow written on the side. And you can see that it, it compresses down very nicely.

• 19:32Kevin Kelly?

  The size of a, uh, what, a grapefruit?

• 19:35Tim Ferriss?

  Cantaloupe, like a small, yeah, like a small cantaloupe or a large grapefruit. And you can certainly compress it more. Uh, and the, the actual bag that it comes in allows you to wrap it up and then compress it down to a smaller size. And it is just a very nice, in essence, memory foam neck pillow that also clips in the front. What I've found is not only does it help me sleep if I'm sitting upright, but it's, it's also very, very helpful for getting to sleep when I'm a lying prone, whether it's on an airplane or even in a hotel room, if, if the pillows are of dubious quality.

• 20:10Kevin Kelly?

  And do you have to inflate this with like pumping air in, blowing air into it? Or is it self-expanding?

• 20:18Tim Ferriss?

  It's self-expanding. So you could think of it almost like a sponge-like material that you can compress down. And then when you release it, it inflates, or I should say rather expands automatically.

• 20:31Kevin Kelly?

  And is it one of those horseshoe-shaped items? Or is it just a little kind of wedge that sits behind your neck?

• 20:39Tim Ferriss?

  It is a horseshoe-shaped. If you imagine a horseshoe being hung around the back of your neck. That is the shape. You can clip in the front. And the design is such that there's a ridge that supports basically the occipital area at the base of the skull.

• 20:57Kevin Kelly?

  So it's very ergonomic in that sense?

• 21:01Tim Ferriss?

  It is. It's the most comfortable neck pillow that I have found. And so I am...

• 21:05Kevin Kelly?

  It's pretty light. It's a little bulky, but it's pretty light.

• 21:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's light. And as far as neck pillows go, not very bulky at all.

• 21:15Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 21:16Tim Ferriss?

  But if you're gonna have a neck pillow, generally speaking, in my experience at least, it's gonna be inflatable and quite uncomfortable. Or you're gonna end up with this type of compromise. And this is the best I've found.

• 21:27Kevin Kelly?

  Right. So it does, I mean, it could pretty easily disappear into a day pack.

• 21:32Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I think it absolutely could. And certainly, if you wanted, you could lash this to the outside of a pack. I happen to have enough space in my bag, so I include it. But you could lash it or hang it on the outside.

• 21:43Kevin Kelly?

  Okay. Yeah, I think I like to... I mean, sometimes you have the privilege of flying first class and you can lay down. But other times, if you're stuck in the economy, then you really need one of these things to sleep in a seat.

• 21:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I do. I do, at least. And the last thing I'll mention, and then I want to ask you about an app that you have, which is very, very different. So another app that I use a lot when I'm traveling... And I use it at home as well. It's called Apnea Trainer. And I don't use it for its intended use. So I have an off-label use. But Apnea Trainer is used by people who are training for freediving and want to improve their breath hold times. And there are different types of tempos that you can use for different types of training. So there's pranayama breathing. There is the apnea breathing, which would say be a ratio of inhale, hold, exhale. Or inhale, hold, exhale, hold.

• 22:42Tim Ferriss?

  So you might have something like five seconds in, 10 second, or 20 second hold, 10 second exhale. So it's a 1, 4, 2 ratio. And what I've found is that if I only have, say, five to 10 minutes and I don't have time for my usual morning meditation, which I like to do, which is generally something like transcendental meditation of 20 minutes, that five to 10 minutes, or five minutes, let's just say, of breathing training with a voice that will count down for you is very much grounding for the rest of the day.

• 23:17Kevin Kelly?

  So it's kind of like a substitute to meditation because you're focused on your breath, but you're focused on kind of holding your breath, not just sort of breathing regularly.

• 23:26Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. Yeah. And I would say it is meditation, but it's a guided breathing meditation that has the side effect of performance enhancement, if that's what you're going for. And obviously, I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on the internet. So people who are listening, especially you crazy haphazard males, do not use this right before you go into the water and don't try to break any personal records holding your breath without very, very qualified supervision because you can die with shallow water blackouts and other issues. I use this just as a kickstart to my day.

• 24:00Kevin Kelly?

  Right. So the worst, you're sitting in maybe a position or something. The worst that could happen is you'd fall over.

• 24:04Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. Yeah. I'm just sitting on a hotel bed or a hotel couch generally.

• 24:09Kevin Kelly?

  Right. That's super. And that's called, again, App.

• 24:13Tim Ferriss?

  AppMea Trainer. What is the app that you have on your phone that you were showing me earlier today?

• 24:17Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah, so I have a little tiny app on my iPhone. I think it's on Android as well. It's called, actually, I know it is. It's called MyTrax. And what it does is it makes a GPS log for our travel, wherever you're going. And the important thing is it does it without having to have cellular service somewhere, because in these foreign countries, I don't normally turn my cellphone service off, but it's still getting GPS signals. And just with that information, it's enough to create a GPS log of a journey. And the advantage to that is, one, you have a record of your journey that you can import into Google Earth, just with a KML format.

• 25:02Kevin Kelly?

  But more importantly, if you have a camera that has a clock in, as they all do these days, you can synchronize your clock to the local time, and you'll have a way to timestamp and geotag your photographs. So the software will look at the timestamp for a particular photograph, and then it'll show you the exact coordinates where that photograph was taken. So I don't have to remember, where was I when I took that photograph? I can just import that into Lightroom or something, and it's going to show me the geographical locations for every one of my photographs.

• 25:42Tim Ferriss?

  And so I found this fascinating, and it also begged the question for me. Let's just say you're going on an excursion through the Grand Canyon or going on an extended trip overseas. Is there a potential safety element where that data could be then pinged back to some type of service that can monitor your last known whereabouts? If you go MIA, which, if you are a developer of this app or know the developer, would love to know the answer, or if there's something similar that's available. But I thought that was a very, very cool app.

• 26:18Kevin Kelly?

  That would be really cool if you could livestream, basically, your location to permitted.

• 26:24Kevin Kelly?

  Interested parties. So that you every and I would just have to imagine that there would be an app that did that somewhere.

• 26:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you would think you'd think there must be one available somewhere. And one one other cool tool that you have, which is more common here than I would have expected. But in retrospect, I shouldn't be surprised. It is very, very hot here. It can get very, very hot and the sun is extremely powerful to the extent that we visited a solar furnace not long ago that can be used to melt various objects at absurdly high temperatures.

• 27:00Kevin Kelly?

  Three thousand degrees centigrade.

• 27:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. Uh, and you have, well, our guide has our esteemed guide has an umbrella. Smart move to create shade wherever he wants it. And you have an umbrella, but you made a modification to your umbrella.

• 27:16Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah, so I just had an ordinary cheap, you know, Chinese black, really compact umbrella that I carry in my little camera bag all the time. And I spray painted the top of it silver so that it reflects the light. And it makes it a little bit cooler on the inside because just with the black umbrella, it tends to absorb that infrared and re-radiate it back down on your head. Um, I having a silver reflective layer bounces at least, you know, sixty percent of that back into the sky. It's a lot cooler. And um, there are versions of the silver umbrella. They're extremely lightweight.

• 28:00Kevin Kelly?

  They're not as collapsible as the ones I have, but they're made for hiking. They're they're they're, I think it's called like the silver dome, if I'm not mistaken. And they weigh only a few ounces. Um, and people out west, if you're climbing even at the high altitudes, um, a lot of the long distance hikers now carry an umbrella, portable shade and they walk along under the shade. Shade follows them. Um, and it really makes a huge difference when you're backpacking. Uh, because you can really work up a sweat and a hat doesn't. Allow your head to cool off, but the umbrella does.

• 28:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, I've had umbrella envy since I landed on this trip. And Kevin, I've had so much fun. I've wanted to travel with you for ages overseas and here we are. So I'm really glad that it came together.

• 28:49Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah, and Tim, thanks for your great, cool tool reviews. And where can people who've never heard of Tim Ferriss find out what you're up to? And by the way, what are you up to next?

• 29:00Tim Ferriss?

  Up to next, well, I have a new TED Talk that should be coming out shortly. Very personal and talks about fighting off the dark moments, overcoming self doubt and so on. So it's a very personal journey through how to overcome some of those darker and even dangerous moments. And I will-

• 29:22Kevin Kelly?

  So just search "Tim Ferriss TED Talk."

• 29:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if people search "Tim Ferriss TED Talk", they will be able to find at least one, potentially two if including the new one. And I'll be giving away several hundred pages of my favorite Stoic writing, along with modern essays that I've added in and new artwork and original commissioned illustrations and calligraphy. All sorts of fun stuff. I'll be giving all that away for free in three volumes called "The Tao of Seneca." So people can just search "The Tao of Seneca free book." They should be able to also find it on Amazon and that should be available, I would say, in early to mid-June.

• 30:01Kevin Kelly?

  And that's going to be orderable on Amazon and on your website?

• 30:06Tim Ferriss?

  Should be available on Amazon, should be available via PDF. I'm just going to unleash it into the wild. And they can certainly go to tim.blog to find everything related to the projects I know too, as well as those eBooks and PDFs and everything else.

• 30:22Kevin Kelly?

  Tim.blog?

• 30:23Tim Ferriss?

  Tim.blog.

• 30:24Kevin Kelly?

  Oh, blog.

• 30:28Kevin Kelly?

  Okay, tim.blog.

• 30:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, tim.blog. It's a lot easier to spell than the previous URLs. And Kevin, for people who don't know how to find you and want to learn more, where can they find you?

• 30:37Kevin Kelly?

  I'm KK.org. KK.org, O-R-G.

• 30:42Tim Ferriss?

  Did you say KK.pork?

• 30:43Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Kevin Kelly?

  It's the air pressure. Our ears are not working after the descent.

• 30:52Tim Ferriss?

  And anything that you're working on that you'd like people to check out?

• 30:55Kevin Kelly?

  Well, I have the paperback version of my book, The Inevitable, which is being launched in June. So it's pre-order for 12 bucks. It's cheaper than printing it out yourself. So go there at Amazon and in June I'll be talking a little bit more about the updated version, which is not updated. So I haven't changed my mind about anything in the last 12 months about the coming 20 years. So I stand by everything I said. Now it's in paperback.

• 31:27Tim Ferriss?

  Well, thank you, Kevin.

• 31:28Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah, thank you, Tim.

• 31:29Tim Ferriss?

  And we have many adventures ahead.

• 31:31Kevin Kelly?

  Yep, thanks.

• 31:35Kevin Kelly?

  So you have another cool tool to talk back. In fact, it's kind of like just about in my mouth. It's up against my face. Tell me, what is this thing?

• 31:45Tim Ferriss?

  I get that response a lot. So this is the YellowTech iXM microphone. And I travel with this almost always. It is, let's see, what would you compare this to? I would say if you took 6D batteries and laid them end to end.

• 32:04Kevin Kelly?

  It's kind of an old-fashioned flashlight.

• 32:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or an old-fashioned flashlight. This is a microphone that can capture just tremendous quality of audio. It automatically equalizes. And it has playback buttons on the side. It all records to an SD card that's inserted in the bottom. And it's battery-powered, so that you can take it on the road. Everything is contained in this and housed in this one unit that then goes in a tiny zip-up bag. So this just lives really inside my backpack. So if I don't have a chance or don't want to bring more gear or don't want to bring more gear, I can use this at any time, anywhere. And shazam.

• 32:47Kevin Kelly?

  Record an introduction to one of your podcasts from the back of a car going over the mountain pass in Uzbekistan, right? And so you'd be able to just pull it out and record it and it would have as good a quality as any real digital studio, Mike?

• 33:03Tim Ferriss?

  It very often does. I've recorded podcast intros in airplane bathrooms before, which is certainly not ideal. But you can really get away with murder with this device and it makes up for a lot of environmental factors that could otherwise really screw things up. And also, if you're on the move and you happen to say bump into someone who is fascinating, in my case, and I say, "Would you mind if I ask you just a few questions?" And they're up for it, you can really, on the drop of a dime, capture these moments that would otherwise be lost.

• 33:38Kevin Kelly?

  Right. And so just to emphasize, this is a microphone that has a built-in recording device into the handle of it. So it's all in one. It's more than a microphone. It's a recording device, a digital recording device, built into a microphone.

• 33:53Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. And then when I'm done recording, I would pop out this SD card. I would slap it into a laptop when I have access to one and drop the file then into a Dropbox folder, which would sync at the first opportunity to connect to Wi-Fi. And then that is available to my team. So I could send a link to that Dropbox through Slack to my team and off to the races. They have the interview files, they have the intro files, whatever it might be, and then it can all be polished for publication.

• 34:24Kevin Kelly?

  So it's in some kind of a ways, except for the ambient sound, it's a portable recording studio?

• 34:30Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it absolutely is a portable recording studio. And I think that some of my best audio that has appeared, say, on the podcast has come from this mic. And people find it hard to believe because they'll ask which studio I use in San Francisco and I'll say, "My bedroom and a handheld mic, that's my studio."

• 34:49Kevin Kelly?

  That's really great. It's a really cool tool. Again, can you give me a kind of a range of the price, just so we have some idea? We'll have show notes about the actual particular model, but just... Just give it a little bit of a range.

• 34:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if I had to guess on this, it's been a long time since I looked at the pricing, but I would say it's somewhere between $400 and $700. It's not cheap, but when I consider the alternatives, let's just say the H6 Zoom, which is the general recorder that I use, with the XLR cables and the stage mics and everything else involved, you're getting into a similar price range or above. This just offers a lot more convenience in terms of its form factor.

• 35:28Kevin Kelly?

  And I have to tell you, Tim travels light. He's not an ultralight traveler, but a very lightweight traveler with very minimal bags. And this is one of the things that you pack. So it's very impressive that it's light enough, small enough, that even when you're not packing much else, you can fit this into it, even if you are a very weight-conscious traveler.

• 35:52Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely, and I mean, there are other alternatives. I mean, I had enough space to pack also a Rode IXY microphone, which is intended to be connected via Lightning port to, say, an iPhone. So I am testing different alternatives to compare sound quality, but thus far, the YellowTech IXM has not let me down. So I'll continue using it until I find a superior solution.

• 36:19Kevin Kelly?

  Definitely a cool tool. Thanks.

• 36:23Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 37:05Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Trunk Club. There are two types of men out there, you know who you are. Guys who love shopping for clothes but are short on time, category A. And those of you who hate it, category B. I am in the latter category. My fashion sense is also probably somewhere between homeless and confused with a dash of lazy added in. Either way, you can take heart.

• 37:47Tim Ferriss?

  And I've used Trunk Club now and have found some of my favorite pieces of clothing that make me look a lot better than I would be able to handle on my own. And there are many reasons for that. But you can get clothing that fits perfectly and looks amazing without ever stepping into a store again, thanks to Trunk Club. And they make it very, very easy. And the clothing is handpicked by a personal stylist, your own personal stylist. All you have to do is go to trunkclub.com/tim, type in your measurements, share your likes and dislikes, they'll pick your clothes from more than 80 top brands and ship them right to your door. You keep what you like, you send back what you don't. If you don't like any of it, send it all back. Doesn't matter.

• 38:31Tim Ferriss?

  And Trunk Club is not a subscription service. This is what appealed to me, among many other things. I didn't want to constantly be getting dinged by things or have to deal with the headache of constantly getting boxes. It's not a subscription service. Shipping is always free and you have five days to try on the clothes. So, a couple of points here. Number one, get started today. Go to trunkclub.com/tim, try it out. You get premium clothes, expert advice, no work, no risk. That is a winning combo. And I have found some of my favorite Espadrilles shoes from them, bright green. I do like the color green. And they actually work. I've had so many compliments on these shoes and more people ask me where I got them than any other pair of shoes I've ever had.

• 39:15Tim Ferriss?

  And more shirts, I ended up keeping about, I would say, three quarters of my box, which I did not expect to do. So go to trunkclub.com/tim and check it out. This episode is brought to you by WordPress. My go-to platform for blogging, writing online, creating websites. Everything. I love WordPress to bits. My site, every site just about that I have, is run on WordPress. And the lead developer of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, has appeared on this podcast many times. The very first episode in particular is amazing. The second, I took a ton of notes on, so you should check it out. But WordPress, where do I even begin?

• 39:57Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, The New Yorker uses it, Jay-Z, Beyonce, they use it, 538, TechCrunch, TED, CNN, Time. Whether you are looking to create a personal blog, a business site, both, neither, something else, you'll make a huge impact when you build your website on wordpress.com. And directly from some friends at Google, I'm not going to quote them by name, but they say that WordPress offers the best out-of-the-box SEO that's search engine optimization imaginable. So if you're on WordPress, you immediately have a leg up on everybody else on search engines and so forth. In my experience, I'm no medical doctor of search engine optimization,

• 40:39Tim Ferriss?

  but I will say that I used WordPress for years and fell in love with it to the extent that I became very close friends with Matt and then became an investor slash advisor to Automattic, which runs wordpress.com. That is how much I believe in this. And that's how a lot of my most successful products and investments have come about. Because I'm in love with X and then I seek out X. Nearly 30% of the internet is run on WordPress. And that includes everything from the huge sites that I mentioned to neighborhood sites. And it is super easy to get started. There's no need to worry about security or upgrades or hosting. They offer 24/7 support and handle all of that,

• 41:23Tim Ferriss?

  which allows you to focus on creating the highest quality content that you can with the least amount of friction. I don't have to worry about downtime. I don't have to worry about getting emergency emails if I'm on vacation. ...or something like that. And WordPress is my go-to solution for all of this. I trust all of my most important text on the internet to WordPress. And they can't buy that with a sponsorship. They can't buy that with anything. I want uptime, uptime, uptime and quality. And that is what I have selected after everything that I've looked at. So check it out. Go to WordPress. That's W-O-R-D-P-R-E-S-S dot com. WordPress dot com forward slash Tim to receive 15% off of your website today.

• 42:08Tim Ferriss?

  That's WordPress dot com forward slash Tim.