Episode 5: Jason Silva

Jason Silva (@JasonSilva) is a filmmaker and has been called the "Timothy Leary of the viral video age" by The Atlantic. He is also host of Brain Games on National Geographic Channel. The show set a record as the highest-rated series launch in Nat Geo's history, with an average of 1.5 million viewers for the first two episodes. In this episode, we discuss his career, his skills, TV, what it means to be a "performance philosopher," and much, much more. Enjoy!

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  好久不见，This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by Hip Dial, the easiest way to make conference calls. If you ever need more than two people on the phone, you give them a number, no PIN. You don't have to sit and wait on an empty line with crappy music. You get a text message when anyone joins. It's very easy, relieves just a bit of the headache of life, and you can get a free month by going to hipdial.com, H-I-P-D-I-A-L dot com forward slash Tim. Take a look, check it out. And our guest for this episode is Jason Silva, friend of mine. I first reached out to him for advice related to television because he is very well-known as the host of Brain Games, which I believe is the highest-rated show on National Geographic ever to be broadcast.

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  But he's much more than that. He's very international, born in Venezuela, and you could call him a performance philosopher. What on earth does that mean? You'll find out. He is a filmmaker. He is one of the most spectacular speakers I have ever seen, and he has been called by The Atlantic, a Timothy Leary of the viral video age. And we will learn exactly what that means, exactly who he is, in this episode. I hope you enjoy it.

• 1:13Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 1:20Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it would seem inappropriate to ask.

• 1:23Speaker 01

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

• 1:27Tim Ferriss?

  The Tim Ferriss Show.

• 1:33Tim Ferriss?

  All right, Jason Silva, welcome to the Tim Ferriss Podcast, the nascent fetal Tim Ferriss Podcast. And I'm really excited to have you here to chat. This is obviously going to be a meandering conversation, like all of my conversations are. But I want to introduce those people who may not know you to your work because I find it so fascinating. What type of work you've carved out for yourself? And I mean, The Atlantic has described you as, you know, Timothy Leary of the viral video age. Not sure if that really does credit, full credit to what you do. But you are really, I mean, a modern day working philosopher, for lack of perhaps a better description.

• 2:15Tim Ferriss?

  I'd be curious to know how you explain what you do or answer the question, what do you do?

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's interesting. I was having a conversation recently with a writer that I really like. And she said that I was addicted to cognitive ecstasy. So basically, yeah, yeah, because I often describe myself as an epiphany addict. And what I mean by that is that I feel that I am most alive. And I think most people can relate to this feeling. I feel like I am at my most alive when I have these profound moments of just kind of revelation and understanding. These moments when the gestalt is revealed, when I see something in a new way, when a pattern is revealed. You know, there's that great Isaiah Berlin line that says, "To understand is to perceive patterns."

• 3:05Speaker 02

  And so I guess you could say that I'm an autodidact, and I'm a lifelong learner, and I'm very curious by nature. But it's not just, it's mostly about where I arrive when the moments of curiosity finally deliver, right? So again, that cognitive ecstasy. And so my work, my content, the media that I make, is a direct reflection, I think, of these obsessions and sensibilities. The best incarnation of which now is Shots of Awe, which is my web series, which again, is a kind of stream of consciousness orgy, if you will.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Like, I kind of go and delve and rant and riff on a variety of topics that have to do with maybe futurism, existentialism, metaphysics. Yeah, the technology, the co-evolution of humans and technology. I mean, I guess basically anything that I'm reading about or thinking about that is leading me to these. Headspaces of wow is what I try to capture with shots of awe. And I know that sounds like a mouthful, but that's really what it is. It's my best, my best attempt at, at sort of dealing with my obsessions and meanderings through, through media as the output.

• 4:16Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I, I, for me, there are a few things that really jump out and have jumped out about your work. The first is, a lot of people would consider their, themselves lifelong learners and autodidacts, but you're really good at connecting dots that perhaps have not been connected publicly before. Uh, and drawing connections that leads other people to have these aha moments. And I remember we were chatting a few weeks ago, uh, obviously have, have been very eager to learn from your experience, uh, hosting on television. I mean, you've done Current TV, Brain Games, obviously, which has been a huge hit for National Geographic. You're one of the best presenters, I think, on television. I really believe that.

• 4:59Tim Ferriss?

  And not only that, but you're one of the best presenters I've ever seen on the stage. Uh, and I, I recall seeing, uh, watching your presentation, We Are The Gods Now, uh, from the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. And I just remember thinking to myself the whole time, I could not do that. Like, how does this guy speak so fluidly? Uh, as you sort of slalom through these different, uh, subject areas? How did you, how did you hone the craft of presenting and teaching, really is, I think, how I look at it, but you're so damn good at it. How, how, take us back to, I mean, is this just a, and there are natural gifts.

• 5:41Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, are you, is, is that, did you have a natural gift for this type of thing? How did it come about?

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Wow, man, I, I, uh, thank you so much, first of all, for the incredibly kind words and observations. But it's interesting because hearing you just now, just the way you even formulated the question, you seemed like you were in a flow state. Like, you seemed like you, you started off somewhere and you went on, on these descriptions and then eventually you brought it back and then you asked me the question, which was great. And I often tell people that, that, that what I just noticed in you is pretty much what I tried to create or to deliver, or really to induce in myself when I'm. Talking about ideas, which is to go into a flow state, you know. You're probably familiar with Steven Kotler. Yeah. So he, he just wrote his new book, The Rise of Superman. It's all about how athletes seem to have honed in. They seem to have hacked flow essentially.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  And of course, flow is connected to states of a maximum optimum human performance. So of course, extreme sports athletes are really good at doing it. That's why they're able to push the envelope of what's possible in the sport. And you know, these flow states have to do with, I guess, with the skill set, finding the, the space, the opportunity to fully express itself. After you've achieved your 10,000 hours of practice or whatever, you get to this kind of no mind state, you know, where you're kind of hyper focused, but at the same time, you're not all there, you know, you get out of your own way, so to speak. And I think for me, my sport maybe is this kind of verbal, verbal wordplay, like improvisational wordplay is, is kind of my, my sparring.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  It's my freestyle scheme, you know, and, and in this whole search for the elusive fugue state known as flow. There's been a lot of science recently. They've done FMRI scans on freestyle rappers when they go into these flow states. And of course, freestyle rappers are literally doing stream of consciousness. They're, they're, they start rapping about a topic and the whole thing is an unscripted flow. And they compared those FMRI scans with the brains of a rapper doing like reciting memorized lyrics. And what they found out is that a part of the brain responsible for self-editing, I think it's the lateral prefrontal cortex. I might be wrong, but a specific part of the brain responsible for self-editing seems to go dim.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  So whatever it is that's in there, in their subconscious is being served up to their frontal lobe, like that scene in the movie Limitless, when the guy takes the pill for the first time. And all of a sudden, everything he's ever read, every half read magazine article, every book, every TED talk he ever sat through, everything that he never even thought he had registered to full memory, gets all of a sudden served up by, into, by his subconscious to his frontal lobe, which is creating a cocktail of the necessary useful information that it needs at any given moment. So I think that's a perfect description of a flow state in rappers, in athletes, in, in the guy from the movie Limitless. And I think that. For whatever reason, for me, it's always been words.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Words directly related to what I am thinking. Words that connect to my musings and explorations at any given moment. And, you know, to go back to my childhood, I, I, my mom is a teacher. So that probably had a lot to do with it. She taught high school, English, literature. And she was, you know, an incredibly celebrated teacher that transformed the lives of a lot of students. So I grew up in that environment, right? And I was surrounded by her poetry books and her instruments and her sculptures. And so that was the, the fertile ecology of ideas that I was, that I grew up in, number one. And then in middle school, I used to often, I was, I was actually a timid kid. I mean, I still am. I'm, I'm more of a site-specific extrovert, but by nature, I'm sort of, I'm sort of timid and reserved,

• 9:21Speaker 02

  except when it comes to ideas that engage me. And then I come alive. And then I used to win, you know, the public speaking award or the, the creative writing award. It was always when I was engaged. If I wasn't engaged, I was actually shut down. How, how early was this? This was, uh, grade? Since like, you know, seventh, yeah, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, I was already like winning in like, you know, debate class or, or the public speaking type of stuff was what I was recognized for. But it was usually, it had to be sentences that had fire, ideas that had fire. Like it wasn't that I was lecturing about something that I had no interest in. So it wasn't really about drama class. It wasn't about remembering a monologue that, that didn't tickle my fancy.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  It was more about me digesting something that was compelling and then it coming out in remixed form, using my, my sort of, my, my word place. And you were, uh, where were you born and raised? I grew up in Venezuela and, uh, I lived in Caracas, the capital, until I was 18. And, uh, I grew up bilingual. Like I basically in my house, they spoke English and Spanish at the same time. And, uh, and I went to a Spanish-speaking elementary school. And then first seventh grade and on middle school and high school, I went to an international American school in Venezuela. So.

• 10:39Tim Ferriss?

  And then college.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  And then you went.

• 10:42Tim Ferriss?

  The college in the States. I was in Florida.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, University of Miami. Yeah, film and philosophy. Yeah.

• 10:48Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that that seems to be one of the rare instances where what you studied in school ported directly to what you're doing now. I was East Asian Studies. I guess one could argue that has some role in in the things that I've done up to this point. But what I I I wrote down something you said to me on the phone a few weeks ago. I was I had gone skiing with a few friends who are much better than myself. And I had had explained how I learned what tomahawking is, which is really violently just getting thrown like a rag doll down a hill effectively. So I was taking the day off and had called you for some advice related to TV stuff. And I remember that one of the lines, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you said, you know, luxury is novelty.

• 11:32Tim Ferriss?

  Or or something along those lines. And so I I I hope I'm not misquoting you, but.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:38Tim Ferriss?

  I could just have you clarify that by asking, you know, what really makes you feel alive? What are the things that really excite you? And what are the things that you find torturous?

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:51Tim Ferriss?

  On the flip side.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Yeah, I remember that conversation. Yeah, luxury is novelty. Yeah, it's definitely connected to, I guess, what I've read about dopamine as a sort of mood regulating neurotransmitter. So we get rewarded with dopamine every time we sort of are partaking in new activities. So it rewards us originally, you know, in terms of evolution, we were rewarded for spreading widely, right? So exploring and overcoming obstacles and mating lots of mates. And today we get that same dopamine hit every time our phone vibrates, every time somebody tweets at us. Every time that, you know, we we get new followers on Twitter or or go on a date with a new hot girl or meet you. Just meet somebody new for the first time, see something we'd never seen before.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  And and when dopamine floods our system, from from what I understand. We we we come alive because it immediately arrests our attention and our senses are heightened. And all of a sudden, that which is of the everyday, which is stale and invisible, is pushed aside and everything becomes as if seen for the first time. And there is a kind of rhapsody to that because, you know, we we all remember what it was like to be a kid and go into a toy store for the first time, seeing a roller coaster for the first time, like seeing an IMAX film for the first time. There's something kind of amazing when we can transcend what Michael Pollan calls the been there's and done that's of the adult mind. In other jaded, like to me, being jaded is almost like being dead.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Like, oh, my God, like, nothing impresses you because you feel you feel like you've seen it all before. And you go through life with basically dark lenses on, you know, the curtains closed, no light gets in, no rhapsody gets in. And to me, that's as death. And so, yeah, when, you know, back to the idea of being like an addict or liking being into cognitive ecstasy, or as Carl Sagan used to say, being a wonder junkie. You know, notice that he combines the words wonder with the word junkie, right? So it's like, it's like he's like hitting his vein with a syringe of wonder. Because that's that's how much he wants to be in awe. And when you look at a presenter like Carl Sagan, I think the reason we enjoy his work is because the guy is like

• 14:00Speaker 02

  in a reverential ecstatic state when he talks about the universe. I mean, when he speaks of it, it's like he's coming. You know, intellectually, he's having a mindgasm. And so, I think it's just, it's that, it's that buzz that he's on when he speaks, that I that I try to hack and deconstruct and sort of create for myself. And it's interesting because.

• 14:24Tim Ferriss?

  How do you go about, sorry to interject, how do you how do you go about doing that? I mean, if if somebody wants to reclaim that sense of awe and discovery, uh, I'm just trying to pinpoint, like, do you have any routines, rituals?

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:40Tim Ferriss?

  Habitual things you say no to? I'd love to hear about it.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that goes back to, to a lot of the techniques, the tools and techniques that the guys that Stephen Koller and all the, and the guys talk about with, with flow and with the Flow of Genome Project. It's like, first of all, I mean, if you're a basketball player, or if you're a philosophy junkie, the whole point is the guy that loves basketball and it's his flow, you know, he treats every game like with the same joy and excitement as the first time you ever played basketball. You know what I mean? Like, he has not lost that love. Or with golf, or with, if you're a pilot with flying, like, you want that child innocence and excitement about, you know, and combined with your expertise that you have acquired over many years and your skill set. So, again, it's that idea of flow, but I think for me, it goes even deeper than that because I think because of the, the spaces in which I like, because, first of all,

• 15:28Speaker 02

  that my flow is when I'm like really in the moment and I'm really in that headspace when I get out of my own way. But I also have this kind of intellectual appreciation of what's going on. So on a meta level, when I'm in flow, I'm kind of excited about the fact that I'm in flow. Right, right. In those conditions. So I was reading this very interesting article by Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzer, written in the 60s, about programming the psychedelic experience. And they were talking specifically about the Harvard studies when they were giving LSD to the students and how to, uh, basically create, uh, discursive environments, create environments that would orient the tripper, the psychedelic tripper during the trip. Like, the, the same way that a pilot has longitude coordinates when he's in the sky to orient him as, as he is in flight.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  So too, the psychedelic tripper needs to have signals set and setting to control the orientation of his trip. And what I thought was fascinating is that, you know, you could take those tools and techniques and apply them to non-tripping minds too. You know, normal consciousness is still affected by set and setting. You know, as Stephen Johnson says, "Our thoughts shape our spaces and our spaces return the favor." So, I think a lot of it has to do with the environments that you put yourself in, the people you surround yourself with, you know, the routines, the songs you listen to, all of these artful aesthetic choices you make about your surroundings, I think, work to induce the subjective spaces that we desire.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  And those that don't incorporate those elements, I think, miss out on the power that they have to basically control their experience.

• 17:05Tim Ferriss?

  No, I agree with you completely. I think the the wear of happiness is very underestimated. The the wear of psychology and I mean, that's why, you know, I'm in San Francisco for very specific reasons in the Bay Area. And just moved into a new place and I've been designing it with the help of a few folks from the ground up. I mean, just stripped down to the studs and really thinking about what type of intention, what type of emotional charge do I want in my surroundings? It's a really fascinating Petri dish to work with. And on the musical side, what what type of music do you listen to?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, to be honest, I

• 17:43Tim Ferriss?

  Or most most recently, let's just say.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  I'm not much of a concert goer, so usually I discover music watching films. I I'm a I'm a film junkie and I think cinema is the last altar left, you know, like that's where I go to completely lose myself, to have a divine experience. And usually because I'm so immersed when I watch films, I'm so completely surrendered and immersed and and in almost a trance state that I'm very open to suggestion. So not only do I believe the the sort of simulation of the film and it becomes reality for at least two hours, but whatever music is accompanying the film is usually something that's going to resonate and going to get in there in a very deep way. So I happen to be a big junkie for instrumental film scores.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Like, my God, dude, especially film trailers. You can really find a lot of epic, heart-thumping music in film trailers. But I would say the most recent score that I listen to almost daily is the Inception soundtrack, Hans Zimmer.

• 18:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I probably listen to the the the main track. It's called Time. I listen to that every day, multiple times a day, um, which I adore. But usually, yeah, it's it's music that that seems to find a way of always being able to elicit an emotion. And then that emotion will sort of place everything else into context. It frames everything else that's going on in my life. It sound escapes my reality. And that's, uh, I love that. Again, it's about wanting to to be the author of the screenplay that is your life at any given moment, right? And then wanting to take control of the pen instead of just being a passenger, you know?

• 19:27Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, this is, uh, no, these are things that I've been, uh, I've been struggling, might not be the right word, but reexamining, uh, a lot in the last few months. I've had, uh, quite a few life changes come about that have led to some introspection, which I would like to think is a good thing. Um, and that's part of the reason this podcast has been so fun for me is I get to sort of dig in with people I consider friends for whom it would be weird to sit down and give them like 60 questions otherwise, uh, in a unidirectional way. But, uh, do you have any, uh, what is, what is the first hour of your day look like? When do you wake up? What is, what happens in the first hour to two hours of your day? Do you have, uh,

• 20:09Tim Ferriss?

  is that, what does that look like? And you could just, you know, it could be an example from today or this week, or it could just be in general?

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, the mornings for me are usually the, uh, the non-daydreaming, non-flow, kind of more mechanical part of my day. It's just like, you know, breakfast, coffee. I do enjoy my triple espresso in the morning, always over ice, always with a little bit of milk and some stevia. Uh, I do like my caffeine in the morning, uh, you know, caffeine, shower, exercise. Um, I'm not much into like running or that kind of stuff, but I, I used to do a lot of rock climbing, particularly like bouldering. So, uh, low altitude, high impact. And so part of the training for bouldering has persisted even when I have moved to New York.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  But so I do, I have one of those like pull-up bars in my house and I do, you know, a bunch of pull-ups every morning, a bunch of push-ups, you know, kind of with my own body weight. Get that out of the way, you know, I'm really into healthy eating if I can. So like there's the brown rice, there's the sort of lean organic protein, the, the legumes, the lentils, the beans, they get that out of the way. And then usually when that's done, then it's like, what am I going to do today to get flow? You know, I've taken, I've taken care of biology. Now let's take care of my mind needs. And, uh, and so then if it's, if it's, you know, if I have to do meetings or whatever, I try to probably do them all at like one or two in the afternoon. It's the time of day when I'm at my sort of ready to. Focused energy.

• 21:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  If I have to shoot brain games, you know, then then I have to sort of work around that. Longer shoot schedule, which can be sometimes difficult and intense. Um, if I'm doing shots of awe, then you know, the morning is like that. And then the afternoon will be like, you know, we'll do like a. A three hour shoot where we'll do like ten or twelve episodes sometimes. Find some gems in there and uh, and if none of those things are happening, then it's the same morning followed by an afternoon film. Followed by, you know, usually dinner with friends.

• 22:11Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. And you, what, what time are you waking up and going to bed?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Uh, if I'm not shooting early morning stuff for Nat Geo, then I actually like to usually sleep at least until. Eight thirty, nine, sometimes nine thirty. I kinda, I don't, I don't like to just like wake up at six AM if I, cause for whatever reason, I don't get. Sleepy usually till like eleven or twelve or even like one. And I need my seven hours at least of sleep, so. It makes it so that I, if I have to get up really early, it's uh, usually annoying because it means I have to fall asleep early. So that I can get enough sleep and that's gonna be difficult. Cause I usually like to watch films in bed at night before I go to sleep. So that's kinda how it works.

• 22:55Tim Ferriss?

  It's, this is really fascinating to me because I, uh, most of the writers I know. Are most productive when other people are asleep. So that either means they stay up really late and and write, which is usually my. My want and my curse, uh, or they wake up really early, five or six. But I've also met a handful of people who get their most productive work done in the middle of the afternoon when I consider myself pretty restless. So it sounds like that's your sweet spot is, uh, uh, sort of the, the early to mid afternoon.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, u- usually it's that and then occasionally.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  One of those will be so good and in such flow that it will keep going until six P M. Today was one of those days. Like today, I've been pretty much on and like just kind of in this kind of flow and you're working on the computer since since eleven thirty and I haven't really taken a break except for a little walk. So it just depends. Sometimes you find this resilience and this energy. Um, other times I'm like, you know, done, have to put the stuff away and go see a movie or something.

• 24:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let me uh just to shift topics a little bit. Alex, I'm so curious about the sort of the the making of, you know, how the different factors that have contributed to you being you. What is the, what's the shittiest job that you've ever had? The crappiest job?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  The crappiest job? Um, I had an internship. Uh, I guess it was after my first year of college or maybe actually the summer after I graduated high school, maybe before I went to college, it might have been. Um, anyway, I I was staying at the dorms at N Y U and I was interning for a film production company. Cause of course I was studying film and I wanted to do movies and make documentaries and and so my cousin got me an internship. And I remember it was like, yeah, you know, get us coffee and I kind of freaked freaked out and quit after a week. Yeah, yeah, I know. I in retrospect, not too proud of of like being so

• 25:00Speaker 02

  so quick to exit, but it was just, uh, I don't know. I don't know. I just kind of felt like I I wanted right away to to be doing something vital that I felt was vital. And um, other than that, my circumstances are a little bit different because growing up in Venezuela, it's not like in the U S where, you know, it's difficult for kids to get like summer jobs and stuff. That just doesn't really happen in Venezuela. Cause you know, we mostly lived behind like armed compounds because it's so South America, it can be so dangerous, you know?

• 25:28Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  So uh, I went to an international school and it was it was really the focus. Thankfully, my family was like, you know, just study what you love, study what you love, study what you love. And I was lucky enough to that they helped me uh with college and they allowed me to kind of indulge my intellectual and aesthetic um. Sort of interest and then from there, my first actual paid gig ever was current, believe it or not.

• 25:54Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no kidding. Wow.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, submitted that documentary that I did uh my senior year of college and uh that was like they offered me the gig to come like make content and host the series and that was like the first time I was ever on salary. Crazy.

• 26:08Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, that's amazing. I didn't know that.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:12Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, what's, do you have any, I'm just gonna throw a couple of kind of rapid fire questions at you.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  Please.

• 26:17Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, do you have any, uh, I'm sure you do. Let me rephrase that. What odd things do you collect or odd hobbies or obsessions do you have? I mean, for me, it's like Japanese saddles or this weird thing that I'm into.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Uh, cool.

• 26:32Tim Ferriss?

  And I have a couple of, I have a couple of those kind of weird obsessions and I'm just curious if, if you have any um that people might not know about.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Um, let's see. Well, I used to be like a manic collector of uh DVDs and uh now obviously I don't do that anymore, but I'm like kind of neurotic about my list of movies and like if I love a movie, I probably watch it like ten times in a row. Um, and I wanna kind of relive it and understand it and get under its skin. Um, I also

• 27:05Speaker 02

  hmm, let me think. What's another obsession? Uh,

• 27:10Speaker 02

  trying to think. Okay, I'm kind of weird about traveling because I'm such a control freak because every time I have to get on a plane, I usually do a lot of research beforehand to make sure that I'm flying on like the newest possible jet that that airline has. So if it's like, you know, it has to be like on an A three eighty or like some brand new addition to the fleet because I can't stand flying on old airplanes because I feel like they probably have stress fractures on it or something. I just, I'm really neurotic about that. Um, I'm really sensitive to jet lag. I'm almost like a little girl. Like if I have to go somewhere, I just, I need three days to recover before I could be, do anything even remotely productive because I don't get enough sleep. I'm just off. It's like such a pet peeve for me. Like even a little bit of being not enough sleep, I'm like, forget it. I can't handle consciousness. I just like.

• 27:54Tim Ferriss?

  You've picked a hell of a job.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  I know. I know. I know. I know. Uh. Um, so those are a couple.

• 28:03Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, cool. Uh, what are the last movies that come to mind that you've watched ten times, ten plus times? What are, what are, what are some, what are some examples of those movies you've obsessed upon?

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Um, Inception was definitely one of them, and pretty much everything that falls into the false reality genre. So these are the kind of films that make you question your perceptions of reality. So of course it includes films like The Matrix. Of course, I would say that The Truman Show is there. I would say that films like Existence. I would say films like Vanilla Sky, which was an underappreciated film that I really, really loved. Um, I would say Memento, absolutely. Uh, most recently, uh, I saw a film called Enemy, uh, inspired by, uh, the Dostoevsky, The Double. That story about the sort of second self and the doppelganger and, uh, J- Jalen Hall is in it, I believe.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Amazing, like, false reality, what is real. I kind of love films that have that unsettling quality to them because they make you feel a little schizo. They're kind of like, they make you question everything you thought you knew. And that unsettling feeling makes this film even more immersive. So it becomes more like a journey that you're taking with that character as he sort of takes that, has that mystic psychotic collapse almost, you know, like, and, and, and, and then passage through madness. And then he kind of makes the return hopefully at the end. So it's like films that take you on a very, very much Joseph Campbell hero's journey. Those are big for me.

• 29:32Tim Ferriss?

  Cool. No, that makes perfect sense. Uh, do you consider yourself more of a, a risk taker or a cautious planner? I mean, even though you brought up the airplane research, and, uh,

• 29:45Tim Ferriss?

  uh, I, I still, I, I wonder how you consider yourself. Uh, where, I mean, where would you put yourself on that spectrum?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  I would put myself as a, uh, Recovering planner. No, I definitely, I'm a bit envious, but in the best possible way of people that are really, really, really free spirits.

• 30:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Only because I aim to, I'm attracted to the vitality and the freedom of the free spirit. All the girls I've ever been in love with have been bohemian manic pixie dream girls, you know. They've been, they've been free spirits and I think the reason I'm attracted to that is because I have that battle between what's very much a sort of control freak and somebody who's really serious and, you know, didn't really like going to parties until, you know, late in high school and didn't really like socializing and doing small talk and just having fun because I was such a serious guy, wanted to be with my books and talking about serious things. And then again, then I sort of felt like sometimes I would

• 30:51Speaker 02

  miss out on the joy that free spirits were privy to. They were just like, they just let go, they just have a good time everywhere, no matter what they do. And I was like, no, no, no, I want to control when I have a good time, you know. So it's been a, it's been an interesting dichotomy. Like, so I don't know, I plan a lot. I even plan the moments of letting go, in a way. It's weird. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I haven't decided.

• 31:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm the same way. I'm the same way. So I have this identical internal conflict and it's, it's been fascinating. I mean, it doesn't, it obviously doesn't clearly split down gender lines, but I do, I think it's particularly, and maybe this is just a bias because most of my close friends in SF are male, but it seems to be a common male challenge is the sort of the relinquishing of control versus the exerting of control. So on that, I mean, as you've gotten older, how old are you now?

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Thirty-two.

• 31:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're a young guy.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  How old are you?

• 31:58Tim Ferriss?

  Thirty-six, man. I'm just ordered my walker.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Thirty-six years, you're a baby too dude.

• 32:07Tim Ferriss?

  I know, and the, but you've, you've seen a lot of worlds and been exposed to a lot of things, particularly in the last few years, I, I think you've been, uh, and you've also had the experience, of course, coming from Venezuela to the US.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:22Tim Ferriss?

  What has be, what has become more important to you in the last few years? And what has become less important to you?

• 32:29Speaker 02

  I wanna build my life around FlowStates. And I think what I've acquired over the last few years, I guess, perhaps you could say the experience, maybe the confidence, maybe the evidence that, uh, that I can trust my own intuition when it comes to being successful and the content that I wanna make and the content that will get me where I wanna get to, um, because, you know, the documentary that I was, that I made when I got the gig at Current was very similar to what I do now with Shots of Awe. So that documentary got me the gig at Current, so there we go. My intuition, my willingness to think outside the box and do something that was in my own voice, got me the gig at Current. Once I got to Current, they tried to tame me a little bit, they were like, don't move your hands so much.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Let's make you do a more polished presenter. And, uh, you know, I was able to ride that thankfully, cause I had a co-host who was my college buddy and we were able to kinda keep each other company through the difficulties of being like, tamed and trained, um, but nonetheless, after four years there, it was flatlining. The network was flatlining and I was flatlining. And it was only when I left and decided again to go back to the content that I wanted to make and follow my own gut, was all of a sudden where the videos that I was doing on the internet came out of, and those are the ones that have led to traveling the world and keynotes and partnering with Discovery Digital for Shots of Awe and National Geographic for Brain Games. And everything has come when I.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Completely dove in fearlessly and made the content that I needed to make as a kind of as an artist like you know I was just like I got out of my own way. I stopped doubting myself, I guess. And it was really what I learned even and so if the world, the universe winked at me when I did that, so to speak. And those winks were my way of, you know, realizing, okay. It's like, that's my barometer, that's my compass. More of that, less of the other stuff. And so you'll probably see me working towards finessing how that plays out over the next several months, you know?

• 34:33Tim Ferriss?

  Cool. Can't wait to see it. Well, speaking of, speaking of which, uh, well, I'll tell you what, let me do a couple of rapid fire questions, um, and then I want to hear what you're currently working on and most excited about, but um, just, just for the, uh, the sake of, of novelty, uh, if you, if you were to lose either your sight or your ability to hear, which do you think you would miss the most and why?

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Wow, man. Now you are amputating my vitality.

• 35:06Tim Ferriss?

  That's the name of this podcast, actually.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  I, I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to augment my senses. How to give myself additional modes to perceive reality, to enhance my perception of reality. So to actually consider cutting one off, um, I, I don't know if I can answer that. I don't know if I could pick one to get rid of, um, to be honest. It's a difficult question for me to answer, yeah.

• 35:34Tim Ferriss?

  No problem. Uh, do you, now you've, you've kept track of a lot of music, a lot of movies. If you had to pick for the time being a theme song for yourself, what would it be?

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Wow, theme song for myself.

• 35:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, what's your like ring entrance music?

• 35:53Speaker 02

  Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn. Yeah, I'll go with time from inception. It's really, it's really like part of my, uh, part of my sort of, yeah, it's part of my day.

• 36:06Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Uh, to be able to,

• 36:19Speaker 02

  I guess dilute or lessen, uh, the anxiety that I often have to deal with just with day-to-day things. Like I, I become unnecessarily anxious about stupid logistical type things, you know, that just like annoy me and make me anxious and just occupy my head. Yeah.

• 36:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, here, here. I, I second that notion. Uh, when you hear the word successful, who's the first person that comes to mind and why?

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Wow, um, Chris Anderson, curator of TED.

• 36:54Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, okay.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  He, uh, he, he, I'm look, I'm kind of, I mean, I'm a convert. I've drank the Kool-Aid. I love TED. It's particularly like the main event, like what that, that gathering, that spot for the mind. And it's funny because I feel like Chris Anderson is somebody who's infinitely curious. He still has that childlike awe and curiosity. And I think the whole TED enterprise is ultimately about his desire to bring in all these beautiful, brilliant people together and curate and basically experience design five days of intellectual bliss. You know, and, uh, and so the, he, the fact that he gets to like do that and help build that is such a, uh, to me, it's like such success.

• 37:40Tim Ferriss?

  It's a hell of a job.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:42Tim Ferriss?

  So, so aside, aside, putting, uh, aside from Chris, um, if you could study with any expert in the world, who would you study with and what would, what would you be studying?

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Wow, I'd love to spend some time with.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Danny Boyle, the director. Um, the guy has done such diverse films, but they all share a searing intensity, a quality of engagement of the body mind that I think is just his signature, whether it's Hundred and Twenty Seven Hours, or Slumdog Millionaire, or even that classic The Beach, that was a DiCaprio film that he did ten years ago that people didn't seem to love, but I thought it was awesome. Um, Danny Boyle, man, I just, I wanna sit and sit with him while he makes music for his movies. I wanna know how he edits and how he puts the songs to the moments and what he's trying to create.

• 38:37Tim Ferriss?

  Cool, that is a good answer. Uh, I, I, you and I need to have some wine sometime to talk about, uh,

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 38:45Tim Ferriss?

  Talk about movies, cuz I'm, I'm just getting back into film and it's one of the few things that can sort of take me away from the internal dialogue.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 38:54Tim Ferriss?

  Port me somewhere else, so we'll, we'll come back to that another time.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Sure, let's do it.

• 38:59Tim Ferriss?

  If, if you could offer your younger self, let's just say your twenty year old self or twenty-five year old self, uh, you know, eh, eh, one piece of advice, uh, what would it be?

• 39:09Speaker 02

  My younger self?

• 39:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Um, oof.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess I would, um,

• 39:21Speaker 02

  I would encourage my longer self, my younger self, to, to just not be afraid, right? To, to realize that a lot of the things that were, I don't wanna say crippling anxieties, but definitely ever pervasive fears in my life growing up, a lot of them were unnecessary. A lot of time was wasted, a lot of energy was wasted being worried.

• 39:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  And I wish I could just like let go of that and have, uh, encourage myself to just let go a little more.

• 39:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, who was it, Twain, who said, uh, "I have suffered a great many hardships, most of which never happened"?

• 39:56Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 39:57Tim Ferriss?

  Something along those lines.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  There you go, there you go.

• 39:59Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome, man. Well, why don't you tell everyone where they can, number one, what you're up to and most excited about at the moment, and where they can learn more about you and see your videos, which I encourage everyone to do.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Great, man. Thank you. Yeah, so at the moment, we just finished another season of Brain Games, and there'll be new episodes coming out in July, and then probably shooting another season at that point as well, hopefully with a few creative upgrades as we evolve the show and continue to make it relevant to people. But particularly, in the meantime, please check out my Shots of Awe videos, youtube.com/shotsofawe, A W E, or you can Google them. I'm uploading videos every week or every other week lately, and my most recent one is called "To Be Human Is To Be Transhuman," and it's about our use of technology to literally overcome our obstacles. And that's my philosophical soapbox, and so I think if people want to have like a head

• 40:57Speaker 02

  trip and like a mind jam with me, like go check out those videos. And then follow me on Twitter @JasonSilva, S I L V A, and that way they can keep up with all the new video releases, et cetera, et cetera.

• 41:11Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think I would certainly be respectful of your time. You're over on the East Coast. You're in New York City at the moment?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

• 41:19Tim Ferriss?

  Now, did you choose, why did you choose New York City? Or did New York City choose you? Tell me.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I haven't chosen it yet. I just, I was in L.A. I was in L.A. for five years, and I had my apartment in L.A., and I would come to New York a lot when I was at Current. And when I quit Current, I was dating a girl who had a place in New York, so I would come to New York a lot and crash at her place, and we were a little bit bi-coastal for a while. After that ended, I gave up my L.A. house, and I was like, I kind of want to like be like a nomad for a while. And I put some of my stuff in storage and sent some stuff down to Miami with where my brother is at. And then I did a little bit of traveling, and then I started doing all this speaking, and then I got Brain Games. Now, Brain Games was in New York, so I kind of planned to eventually get a place here, but in the meantime,

• 42:10Speaker 02

  I've been... Kind of, you know, leveraging my friendships around the city and one of my friends has an extra bedroom that I've been crashing out when I'm here, but because I travel so much, it doesn't matter.

• 42:20Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  And, uh, and I've yet to actually commit to a place, believe it or not. So I'm, I'm, I'm temporarily without a perma-home.

• 42:30Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you're, you can let the wind take you where it may, I guess that's, uh, wherever flow may require you to be.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Dude, I saw a documentary last night called Maiden Trip about a 14-year-old Dutch girl who sailed around the world by herself.

• 42:46Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  It was like absolute, like I couldn't, I was like completely blown away. She's 14. She had to fight the Dutch government to let her go. To, you know, and it was like, but it was, it's like insane. She took a camera with her and then this filmmaker like turned it into this dock and it was just, and I was just like, maybe I want to move to the sailboat one day, do something like that.

• 43:08Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I have a buddy who does it, uh, right, uh, right off of San Francisco Bay, lives in a boat. So we could, we can make it happen. Uh, Jason, I really appreciate the time, man. I find you inspiring and, uh,

• 43:21Speaker 02

  So I find you inspiring, dude. You know, I used to, I read Four Hour Work Week years ago in Point Doom in Malibu. And I remember reading it and feeling like you have hacked it. You have figured it out. You rented an apartment in Argentina and you were like, or making it happen. And that, that, that, that template, stay with me, dude. I remember I was very affected by your book. I was like, this guy's got it figured out.

• 43:46Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks, brother. Uh, well, well, we need to definitely have a, a proper long dinner with some vino. Uh, but, uh, we'll make, we'll make that happen. And

• 43:55Speaker 02

  I look forward to it, man.

• 43:57Tim Ferriss?

  In the meantime, I'll let you get back to your evening and thanks for, thanks for being on the podcast. I'll talk to you soon.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me, man. It's an honor.

• 44:11Speaker 03

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

• 44:16Speaker 04

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

• 44:20Speaker 03

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

• 44:32Speaker 04

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

• 44:35Speaker 03

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