#611: Liv Boeree, Poker and Life — Core Strategies, Turning $500 into $1.7M, Cage Dancing, Game Theory, and Metaphysical Curiosities

Liv Boeree, Poker and Life — Core Strategies, Turning $500 into $1.7M, Cage Dancing, Game Theory, and Metaphysical Curiosities | Brought to you by Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/tim automated investing, Athletic Greens http://athleticgreens.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement, and Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating. More on all three below. Liv Boeree (@Liv_Boeree http://www.twitter.com/liv_boeree) is one of the UK’s most successful poker players, winning both European Poker Tour and World Series of Poker championship titles during her professional career. Before poker she studied astrophysics and now focuses her time as a TV host and YouTuber specializing in game theory, futurism, and rationality. She also gives seminars on high-stakes decision-making, and recently spoke at the annual TED conference https://www.ted.com/talks/liv_boeree_3_lessons_on_decision_making_from_a_poker_champion about the application of poker thinking to everyday life. In 2014, she co-founded Raising for Effective Giving (REG) https://reg-charity.org/, a nonprofit based upon the philosophies of effective altruism that has raised over $14,000,000 for its carefully selected list of maximally cost-effective charities. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim! Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $28 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite http://wealthfront.com/Tim and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost. Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to Wealthfront.com/Tim http://wealthfront.com/Tim and open a Wealthfront account today, and you’ll get your first $5,000 managed for free, for life http://wealthfront.com/Tim. Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim will automate your investments for the long term. Get started today at Wealthfront.com/Tim http://wealthfront.com/Tim. * This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep http://eightsleep.com/Tim! Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. And now, my dear listeners—that’s you—can get $250 off the Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim. Simply go to EightSleep.com/Tim http://eightsleep.com/Tim or use code TIM at checkout. * This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product. * [06:41] Youthful obsessions. [11:14] How poker entered the picture. [18:55] The qualities that made Liv excel at poker from the start. [27:22] Liv’s advice to a newcomer wanting to learn poker. [34:04] What Liv’s eight-week poker education curriculum might look like. [42:11] Failure points that might discourage someone during this curriculum. [44:07] Red mist, white noise, and fast math. [50:18] Volcano-induced tournament participation and self-regulation. [59:07] A skeptic’s experiences with the unexplainable. [1:14:59] How does Liv rationally coexist with these experiences? [1:18:49] How to become a better skeptic. [1:24:59] Inadequate Equilibria and Moloch. [1:29:49] Parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors http://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. 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• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. I've been asked this for years. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance. So you can cover your bases. If you're traveling, if you're just busy, if you're not sure if your meals are where they should be, it covers your bases. I've recommended it since The Four Hour Body, which was, God, eons ago, 2010, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, you'll be hard pressed to find a more nutrient-dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multimineral, greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health and immunity

• 0:44Tim Ferriss?

  formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens. You get the idea. It is very, very comprehensive. And I do my best, of course, to focus on nutrient-dense, proper meals, but sometimes you're busy, sometimes you're traveling, sometimes you just want to make sure that you're getting what you need. AG1 makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when whole foods aren't readily available. It's also NSF certified for sport, making it safe for competitive athletes, as what's on the label is in the powder. It's the ultimate all-in-one nutritional supplement bundle in one easy scoop. Right now Athletic Greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all-in-one

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I've found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 2:02Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. My God, am I in love with Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep, and I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on, and repeating ad nauseam. But now, I am falling asleep in record time, faster than ever. Why? Because I'm using a simple device called the Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep. It's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced, but most user-friendly solution on the market.

• 2:46Tim Ferriss?

  I polled all of you guys on social media about the best tools for sleep, enhancing sleep, and Eight Sleep was by far and away the crowd favorite. I mean, people were just raving fans of this. So, I used it, and here we are. Add the Pod Pro Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time. She doesn't need cooling. She loves the heat, and we can have our own bespoke temperatures on either side, which is exactly what we're doing. Now, for me, and for many people, the result: Eight Sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster,

• 3:30Tim Ferriss?

  reduce sleep interruptions by up to 40%, and get more restful sleep overall. I can personally attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways. It's the total solution for enhanced recovery so you can take on the next day feeling refreshed. And good news: Eight Sleep has launched the next generation of the Pod. The new Pod 3 enables more accurate sleep and health tracking with twice the number of sensors. It's just a smoother, better experience that delivers you the best sleep on earth. At least, that has been true for me. Simply add this to your existing mattress, and you're all set. It is not magic, but sometimes it does feel like it. It just works. So, go to eightsleep.com/tim and save $250 on the Pod Cover.

• 4:14Tim Ferriss?

  That's eightsleep.com/tim, all spelled out, E-I-G-H-T, eightsleep.com/tim. Eight Sleep currently ships within the US, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. You can also find the link in this episode's description.

• 4:32Speaker 01

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

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 4:38Speaker 03

  No, this isn't an appropriate time.

• 4:42Speaker 02

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

• 4:54Tim Ferriss?

  Ladies and germs, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is a rare in-person interview. I think this is the first time doing a full shebang with video since COVID. The appearance of that little bug, you may have heard of it. And let's jump right to the intro. My guest today is Liv Boree. That's B-O-E-R-E-E on Twitter, at Liv underscore Boree. She is one of the UK's most successful poker players, now a resident of Austin, Texas, winning both European Poker Tour and World Series of Poker Championship titles during her professional career. Before poker, she studied astrophysics and now focuses her time as a TV host and YouTuber

• 5:37Tim Ferriss?

  specializing in game theory, futurism, and rationality. What a world we live in that you can now do that on YouTube. It's fucking amazing. It's incredible. She also gives seminars on high stakes decision making and recently spoke at the annual TED Conference about the application of poker thinking to everyday life. In 2014, she co-founded Raising for Effective Giving, R-E-G, parentheses, R-E-G. Let me try that again. In 2014, she co-founded Raising for Effective Giving, R-E-G. We should keep all of those takes in. This is so bad. I'm trying to cut back on my caffeine and this is the price I pay. A nonprofit based upon the philosophies of effective altruism that raised more than $12 million for its carefully selected list of maximally cost-effective charities.

• 6:18Tim Ferriss?

  You can find her online, livboree.com, livboree.substack.com, and on all of the things, all of the socials, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, you can certainly search and find her, Liv Boree. Liv, welcome to the show. It's nice to see you. Thank you for having me. And...

• 6:46Tim Ferriss?

  We can go so many different directions. I thought we would start actually maybe in an unexpected place. So I asked you before we started, what color would you prefer? Black, blue, orange, I think it was yellow.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  Oh, that's what it was for, it was for mic cable?

• 7:00Tim Ferriss?

  It was for mic cable so that I can tell which line is feeding into which input on this recorder. And it certainly looks a lot better in audio, right? So it does have a certain clown car appearance to it when we do it in person with video. But when you said black, I said, I bet it's gonna be black right beforehand. And it was black. And the reason I said that is I read something about you and Metallica. And to get into the zone coming here on the drive over, I listened to Orion, the remastered.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  Oh, great choice. Nice choice.

• 7:35Tim Ferriss?

  Very, very, yeah. Because my first, now we're really getting off track here, but that's okay. There is no track. My very first album I ever bought was on cassette tape and it was Master of Puppets. And can you guess why I bring up Metallica?

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Well, they were my love that bordered on an unhealthy obsession from the ages of like 16 to 22. So that's probably a, I would guess why you brought it up. I don't know how you would know that, though.

• 8:07Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know, we do research over here. Metalinsider.net. The Iron Maiden of the poker world, they called you. And there's a short discussion of the Unforgiven. And this led you, I guess, in some respects into guitar. Do you still play guitar?

• 8:27Speaker 04

  I don't.

• 8:27Tim Ferriss?

  You don't? But you did for a period of time?

• 8:29Speaker 04

  I did, yeah. From like 16 or 17 till 24, basically until poker took over.

• 8:35Tim Ferriss?

  So do you then have typically one obsession at a time? Do you ever have multiple obsessions simultaneously? Or do you tend to have one obsessive fixation and that is where you put your energy?

• 8:48Speaker 04

  I used to. I used to be very, a shiny new activity would come along and I would, if it ticked enough boxes, I'll be like, I have to become the best at this. I would rarely become the best at it, but I would certainly go down the rabbit hole deep enough to become proficient. And

• 9:07Speaker 04

  I was like that, I would say, until some point in my, probably my early 30s, some point around the age of 30, where I lost that a little bit. And in some ways, that's good because it means I can try greater breadth of things. But it comes a little bit at the cost of men not ever picking. And I'm currently struggling with the fact that I'm being too much of a jack of all trades, master of none, like not knowing what I'm, am I going to be focusing on YouTube? Or maybe I should just do speeches or maybe I should actually just start a company and give up on the silly, like, public facing stuff. It can be a bit of a blessing and a curse, I guess, not fixating on one particular thing. But certainly as a teenager, I was, I don't know, certainly with metal. Because I think, you know, with teenagers, so often you don't, because you haven't formed

• 9:52Speaker 04

  your identity yet.

• 9:53Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  You will form it typically around a genre of music.

• 9:57Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, I was a metalhead, which is.

• 9:58Speaker 04

  You were a metalhead?

• 9:59Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, for sure.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  Oh, sick, right. So, yeah, you get it, like, and metal is so.

• 10:03Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, I say was as if it's past tense. If I'm in the gym, I'm still a metalhead.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  Right, exactly. But you don't look it, you don't live it in your visual.

• 10:12Tim Ferriss?

  No, I mean, I have, like, from the neck up, I definitely have the sort of early era, well, actually, no, like mid-era Pantera look to me.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  I was about to say, Phil Anselmo, like, a little bit, you know, Phil Anselmo after his vulgar display of power era, whatever, yeah. Yeah, so I was kind of uncool until the age of 16. And then metal came along and I was like, oh, this is, this is what I was waiting for. And then I just went all out, you know, I had the piercings, red hair, black hair, blue hair, the guitar, and just would not listen to anything but metal. And not just, like, nu metal, I hated nu metal, no corn or anything like that. No, I wanted the really heavy shit, like Pantera was like a, that was like a nice day on the beach, you know, I'm talking like Dimu Borgir, Berzum, you know, there's some of the Swedish, Swedish black metal, one Norwegian black metal.

• 10:59Tim Ferriss?

  Once you get to the Scandinavian death metal, then you've gone really deep.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  But Metallica were a huge forming part of that. They were the one sort of classic metal band that I still was like, I just loved so deeply.

• 11:14Tim Ferriss?

  All right, let's paint a picture here. What was your, the age range of your competitive poker career? And then we're going to back into that by going to some very early, early chapters. But what was the span? Because I'm trying to overlay that on what you just said.

• 11:28Speaker 04

  So I first learned to play poker aged 21.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was 2005. I'd just graduated uni, didn't really know what I wanted to do. Thought I was going to carry on in physics, but I decided to take a gap year because when I first started taking physics, I was like, oh, I'm definitely doing this. This is so interesting. I love it. But then the more time I got to spend with like PhD students or even people doing their masters, they seemed, I don't know, they just didn't seem very happy. And they weren't very, I don't know, just personality wise, I was wondering if it actually was going to work for me. Because all I really wanted to do was go out partying and clubbing and go, you know, see rock shows, metal shows. And I was also still wanting to be a rock star at the time. And I was like, ah, I just don't know if this is gonna quite work, me sitting in a lab, you know, fiddling

• 12:17Speaker 04

  around with lasers. So decided to take a gap year. And I think I signed up, I was doing like, random like goth modeling sometimes. And I-

• 12:27Tim Ferriss?

  As one does, in their gap year.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  Right. Well, I, you know, just any way I could make some money. And I thought, I don't know, I enjoyed dressing up in my heavy metal costumes as often as possible. And I was like, if I can get paid to do that, that'd be great. I also got paid to be a cage dancer in rock clubs in London.

• 12:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, you know, I was admiring the boots on the way in. This is a, this is a shoeless household. So thank you for accommodating.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  This is not my least metal sock ever. I'm so embarrassed.

• 12:56Tim Ferriss?

  These are gray and pink striped socks with hearts all over them. So yes, it's like the hard exterior, the goth death metal exterior, and then like the soft, sweet-

• 13:06Speaker 04

  Inside. You don't understand how much paint I'm in, actually. The fact that this is these, I have so many, like, most of my socks are black. I just, just grabbed whatever I needed to.

• 13:15Tim Ferriss?

  So goth modeling, which I also did during my gap year. Totally lying. I'm kidding, kidding. And I wish I, I wish I could have. So goth modeling, cage dancing.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 13:25Tim Ferriss?

  And then-

• 13:26Speaker 04

  I think I signed up for this like website that would advertise different TV shows or modeling opportunities, that kind of thing. And I remember seeing an ad which said something like, could you use your powers of skill and deception to win a hundred thousand pounds on TV? And seeing as I was rapidly getting pretty damn broke because dancing in a rock club cage doesn't pay you anything really. And, you know, I had some student debt mounted up and really didn't want to get a real job for, you know, my parents were like, you have to, what are you doing? You've moved to London, get a job. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna, this seems reasonable. I've always liked, I wanted to try being on TV. I like game shows. This seems like a game show, I'll apply. Turns out, they wouldn't tell us what it was that we were applying for because they needed

• 14:11Speaker 04

  to keep it a secret. But turns out it was a reality show that was looking for five beginners at poker to teach them how to play. And the sort of loose scientific premise was they were looking for five different personality types to see which, you know, is most suited for the game. So I got selected for that.

• 14:30Tim Ferriss?

  What was your personality type?

• 14:32Speaker 04

  They called me the professor, which I much certainly was not.

• 14:35Tim Ferriss?

  I could see it, I could see it.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  I was, I literally turned up in skin tight tiger print spandex, self-made trousers.

• 14:43Tim Ferriss?

  Now, did you do that because they had put you in the professor category? Was that a rebellion, an act of rebellion? Or did that just come out of your?

• 14:53Speaker 04

  No, I mean, that wasn't genuinely how I dressed.

• 14:54Tim Ferriss?

  Your style emoting.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  No, it was, it was my genuine appearance. As I said, I lived and breathed metal.

• 14:59Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds good for TV.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Right. And I think that's probably why they selected me, honestly, like very overconfident to the point of like cocky 21 year old brat who was.

• 15:10Tim Ferriss?

  Unheard of with 21 year olds.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know. I just, I just thought I was the smartest person in the world. And I think I even said something like that in the interview, like the audition.

• 15:18Tim Ferriss?

  And they're like, oh, we're definitely bringing you in.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is gonna be a good one. And I didn't disappoint because I ended up having a complete meltdown on the show. So glad this is not on the internet. Basically, on the final, I think we played like seven preliminary rounds where we would, the five of us would play. And then like that would accumulate points and those points would translate into chips for the final game where we would play for the hundred thousand. And I was winning, you know, I was leading going into that. And clearly I had a knack for the game. And I remember the, the hosts and the professionals that they bought on the show to teach us were like, oh, you're definitely going to win. You know, you are the most talented at this. So I was so sure I was going to win this thing. And then I ended up making, not to get too technical, but basically I misread my hand. I misread the board. I made a straight

• 16:05Speaker 04

  on the river. The opponent bet. I was so excited. I was like, I raise, which was basically all my chips. And then I looked at the board again and noticed there were four diamonds out there. And I didn't have, I had two black cards. And audibly went, oh.

• 16:22Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I'm not, I'm no professional, but is that what one would call a tell?

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is, that is a tell. Do not do that. And the, my opponent, it was a really nice guy called Lee. It was like, well, I guess she doesn't have a diamond. And he was like, I'm all in. And instead of, again, keeping my, my cool or anything, I just started crying, like melted down.

• 16:46Tim Ferriss?

  The producers are high fiving in the background.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, they were literally, and, and, and they're like, oh, Liv, what's the matter? Tell us more. And I was like, you know, makeup everywhere. I think I, I like run away from the table. They try and follow me with a camera. It was just, you know, classic reality TV meltdown stuff. So that was my intro to poker. But I just completely fell in love with the game. And funny enough, while I was in the, during the filming of that, which took two months, I went to a local card club in London to try and get some practice. And they had this now sort of infamous, this five pound rebuy. So, you know, it was the cheapest tournament they had.

• 17:22Tim Ferriss?

  What is a rebuy?

• 17:23Speaker 04

  A rebuy means that if you, for the first hour or so, if you bust out, you can just buy back in again. So considering it was only five pound entry, you can imagine it's just pandemonium. Everyone's going in every single hand. And people were easily like spent like a hundred pounds in their entry overall, you know, 20 rebuys.

• 17:39Tim Ferriss?

  Good for the house.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I turned up with 10 pounds because I was like, well, it's a five pound tournament. Why would I ever need more than, you know, five pound for the entry and five pound to buy a drink? And that will be my, my day.

• 17:48Tim Ferriss?

  So you're like, you're like a player in a video game with two lives where everybody else has like a hundred lives.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  Right. Yeah. And most people were, were doing that. Yes. Only for the first hour. Then once after that period ends, then if you bust out, you're out. This is the first tournament I ever played. And I entered this thing. Somehow get through this carnage period in the first hour.

• 18:13Tim Ferriss?

  The zombies.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  I think I did.

• 18:14Tim Ferriss?

  Keep standing back up.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  Buy once with my other five pounds, so I didn't buy a drink. And anyway, I ended up winning it. Ended up playing until five in the morning. It was like 120 people in it. And then I came home, I remember just having this, you know, they paid me out in tens and twenties. I think 750 pounds or something like that, which was more money. So I'd never seen that amount of cash before, just so much money. And I remember going home to my boyfriend at the time and waking him up at 5am and just throwing the cash on him. Like this is, this is the best thing ever. This is my game and I must be the best in the world. Like, you know, it's my first ever tournament, basically, and I win it. So even though the TV show did not go well and I didn't win the hundred grand, I'd already got the bug, basically, from that little win.

• 18:55Tim Ferriss?

  So let me weave through this and inspect a bit because I have many questions.

• 19:02Tim Ferriss?

  What do you think helped you during the show itself to make it to the final table? What were some of, whether they're your characteristics, things you learned, things you observed, trained abilities, anything that comes to mind that you think helped in the very early nascent stages?

• 19:24Speaker 04

  Of that tournament?

• 19:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the TV show.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 19:26Tim Ferriss?

  The TV show, and then I have more questions.

• 19:31Speaker 04

  I mean, I think the thing that was most helpful early on for me in poker was I was just so pathologically competitive. I just had to win and like prove that I was the best in this thing.

• 19:45Tim Ferriss?

  Translated to just more study time.

• 19:47Speaker 04

  Just, yeah, just like this like laser focus. And then this like ruthlessness, because the thing about poker is that you actually, you do have to be really ruthless in the game.

• 19:56Tim Ferriss?

  In what sense?

• 19:57Speaker 04

  In terms of what bluffing people, if you're not comfortable with bluffing someone at the poker table, which I don't think, a lot of people say, oh, it's lying. It's like, it's not really lying. No, it's just a form of, it's a strategy within a game as defined by the rules of the game. It's an integral part of it.

• 20:11Tim Ferriss?

  It's sanctioned lying.

• 20:12Speaker 04

  Right. If you're not willing to do that, then you're, it's not the game for you and.

• 20:18Tim Ferriss?

  Play chess.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  Right. And then you have to be just willing to.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  I guess just really laser in and pay deep attention to what is going on because technically at any given moment, even if you're not in hand, there's really valuable information being exchanged about the way people, you know, the types of cards people play, the way that their bodies move when they're uncomfortable versus comfortable, are they a naturally aggressive person or are they naturally scared, what are the things that make them scared, et cetera. And certainly in the beginning, I was just, because I didn't know anything about the actual statistical, the mechanics of the game, all I could rely on was the, you know, the stuff I knew, which was looking, looking for when people are bluffing.

• 21:01Tim Ferriss?

  So, looking for when people are bluffing. Okay, so let me ask you about the statistical side, because you're coming out of physics, you have, it would seem, a huge competitive advantage. Why would you not begin to study the tables and the statistics and so on?

• 21:18Speaker 04

  Well, I did too.

• 21:19Tim Ferriss?

  You did that as well.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  And the thing is that the statistics required in poker to actually, you know, at a high level are, you're not going to learn within the first month.

• 21:28Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, right.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  And also, people didn't even really know, because this is 2005, even the top players in the world back then didn't really understand game theory. Like, even an average player understands it today. So, I read all the books I could get my hands on, you know, so I guess my sort of physics training helped to an extent with, with being willing to just like dive in and research on this like, on a big amorphous topic and, you know, not even clear directions of where to start. That probably gave me a bit of an advantage there. And then presumably I have a higher than average IQ from physics.

• 22:04Tim Ferriss?

  All the cage dancing.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  Exactly, it really helps. And all the drinking and guitar playing and chasing after rock stars, yeah. But it, which I think obviously helps in any kind of strategic game. But honestly, the thing about poker is, the beautiful thing about poker in fact, is that if you're talking about one night, you can have the literal best player in the world, a medium player, complete beginners, and provided everyone knows the basic rules, then technically, anyone can win. It's only over the long run does anything actually meaningful start happening. And so, even in this TV show where we played, I think, eight different games, statistically, it's not that meaningful, the results over that time period.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  There's so much luck going on and I didn't realise that early on in the game. In some ways, you know, like winning that big tournament early on was, was not a big tournament, that the five pound rebuy. It gave me an immense amount of confidence and love for the game, which I think had I not had, I wouldn't have then pursued it as much as I did. But it can also delude you a little bit because I then just assumed, okay, well, I'm going to win this. There isn't that much luck. It's just who's the best player wins. And I think that's partly why it was such a kick in the face when I screwed up and didn't win the hundred thousand.

• 23:23Tim Ferriss?

  When you say you fell in love with the game, aside from things that maybe you've mentioned already. What made you fall in love with it? What was so appealing? There's an inherent excitement to it.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 23:35Tim Ferriss?

  Of course, because there's a blending of skill and chance.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:38Tim Ferriss?

  And money. I mean, there's stakes.

• 23:40Speaker 04

  Right. We're actually just winning the potential of just winning, you know, making a living. Where I don't have to go and sit in an office and I can do that. That was obviously a big carrot.

• 23:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 23:50Speaker 04

  But there's just so many different skills that it draws upon. So there's the statistical side, you know, the scientific side. There's the, the game theory. If you really want to dive deep into math, and I mean, these days you can, you know, work with simulators. You know, you, computer science stuff, basically, and go in that angle. But then you've also got this more, there's like an art to it as well. You know, psychology, trying to mentally model what level someone is thinking at and be one step ahead of. They're going to zig, you're going to zag, that kind of thing. And then also just like, I mean, there's a scientific way to read body language, but sometimes you just get like a vibe that you can't explain. So there's just so many different approaches you can take to it.

• 24:32Speaker 04

  And like today, I'm going to work on my body language reading and today I'm going to work on my pot odds and my combinatorics. And so there's never a dull moment and there's always a new situation as well. Like even after playing for 10, 15 years, I'll still see something crazy with like the cards run out, like. Straight flush against quads, that kind of stuff, like these incredibly rare scenarios will sometimes happen. And, or people will do weird things or some strange ruling will happen that like everyone's scratching their heads like, I don't know what the right call is here. It's, it's, there's such depth and complexity to the game.

• 25:05Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so I'm gonna admit something, it's embarrassing. I've been fascinated and drawn to poker for a very long time and I've never learned how to play properly.

• 25:15Speaker 04

  No way.

• 25:16Tim Ferriss?

  It's true.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 25:17Tim Ferriss?

  There are many excuses I may have for this. One of them is that friends of mine, like a guy named Jason Calcanis, want me to play, but it's mostly because he wants to take all my money. Because he's gonna be far better than I am. And that's a compliment, Jason.

• 25:35Speaker 04

  I'll teach you how to beat Jason.

• 25:37Tim Ferriss?

  And a lot of these investors are very confident. I know some of them certainly, particularly the quants who I've observed from afar, seem to be pretty competent. I had a little bite of the bug probably five years ago when I did an episode of a TV show, Bringing Back TV, where I trained for a week, or five days probably, to play heads up against a whole cohort of folks, including some pros. And I was able, and I was trained by, I want to give him credit, Phil Gordon, for that.

• 26:16Tim Ferriss?

  And for a very short period of time, until the next skill I had to learn for the next episode pushed it right out of my head, had a lot of fun with heads up. But one night, when the filming had finished, and I was like, you know, let me go try just a regular table. And I got slaughtered. It did not translate at all, which I expected would largely be the case, but I just got dismembered. I mean,

• 26:43Speaker 04

  Well, heads up is a very different game to playing against eight people.

• 26:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally. So, yeah, one on one, totally, totally different game. But it's actually brought back, in a way, my love of mathematics and statistics, which I lost. Not to make this like a confessional, but I lost it in 10th grade because I had this one teacher who just had this huge axe to grind with the boys in the class, and almost all the boys ended up quitting math or avoiding it after that class. My brother had the opposite experience and then later became a PhD in statistics. So, it's amazing to look at these divergent.

• 27:19Tim Ferriss?

  Kind of points, right? Where you have a fork in the path, depending on your experience. So my question, after all that word salad, is if you were to suggest a way of learning or to teach me an approach to learning,

• 27:36Tim Ferriss?

  regular poker, whatever that means, the type of poker I would play with my friends who are like, let's play poker. How might you think of approaching that?

• 27:46Speaker 04

  Well, given that you are, I mean, you're pretty well-rounded in your personality and that you like both sort of human, interactive things, but you can also nerd out really hard.

• 27:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  I don't think there's really a wrong way to teach you poker. Like if I was to teach my, my mom or something like that, my mom is the most, it sounds strange to say, but she's the least autistic person.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  In that she is so able to intuit social situations.

• 28:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 28:17Speaker 04

  And unbelievably emotionally intelligent, but phobic of math, phobic of, she's interested in sort of scientific concepts, but if you actually try and get into the technical weeds, she's like, she cannot. And she, you know, her happy, it's like, she would be in arms with Molly right now. Just like, she's just a, she just feels, she's a very feel-based person. And if I was to teach her the game, you know, I would take her to the table with a group of fun people and, you know, we would slowly just like turn the cards over and, you know, talk through, I'll give her the hand rankings. I mean, take it very steady in, in terms of like, this is, look how the way that they're acting. So they seem quite confident that, you

• 28:56Speaker 04

  know, that, take a more, the human approach to it. But I think with you, we would want to jump sort of straight into the game theory to an extent.

• 29:05Tim Ferriss?

  So let me apply some parameters, if I could, just to allow us to conjure an image. So let's just say,

• 29:14Tim Ferriss?

  he's really gonna want to take my money now, which he will probably. So let's say I had a game with Jason and you can pick the sort of minimally viable period of time over which you think I could learn to be competent enough that I might have a chance. Is it four weeks? Is it?

• 29:32Tim Ferriss?

  12 weeks? This is also not knowing how good Jason is. I have no idea because I've always refused to play.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  He's pretty good.

• 29:41Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, great. So, so let's just say, you know, if luck is on my side, having some chance in hell.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  Well, here's the thing. So you have a chance in hell. Anyway, if you sat down and just play-

• 29:52Tim Ferriss?

  Because it's not just gonna be Jason, it's gonna be an entire table.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  Well, no, but even if you were playing one on one against Jason, if you guys sat down, assuming you know the basic rules of like which hand beat what.

• 30:00Tim Ferriss?

  There's always a chance.

• 30:01Speaker 04

  Okay, but let's, you know, assume the very basics, you know what betting chips means and how, you know, whether you, whether you have a straight on the river or not. Assuming that, you and I could sit down and play 10 hands and it's basically 50/50.

• 30:15Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, let's, let's say we have, you can pick the period of time of training, right?

• 30:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:21Tim Ferriss?

  However long it is, and then Jason and I are going to play-

• 30:25Speaker 04

  A thousand hands, let's say.

• 30:26Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, a thousand hands. Your chance of beating Jason over a thousand hands, probably with like just knowing the rules, is 45%? That's how crazy, like, that's the thing. Maybe, maybe it's a bit less than that. Maybe it's, sorry, Jason, maybe it's, let's say 37%, maybe 35. Oh, he's gonna, I'm gonna get a phone call after this.

• 30:51Speaker 04

  But could we get it so that it, so that you are a favorite against him? Eight weeks of intensive?

• 30:59Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. If you sat and studied game, like all the charts? Because that's what it is really these days. So poker is, now that we know the mechanics of the game, basically there's this thing called game theory optimal solutions to different scenarios, which is basically, you know, if you have Jack nine suited on this type of board against a person in this position, you will want to check raise them 30% of the time and check call 70% of the time or something like that. It's basically, there are like answers to what you should do in different scenarios with what frequencies. It's all about frequencies. And so now that we know this and, and you can run simulators to give you the answers of all these fictitious scenarios, now it's changed the game into basically who's willing to

• 31:40Speaker 04

  learn as many different scenarios as possible and like basically emulate them in their head when they go and play. So it's a very different type of game. It's more like kind of almost studying chess moves.

• 31:50Tim Ferriss?

  I was just gonna say, it sounds a lot like studying chess scenarios.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  And it wasn't like that even 10 years ago. It was very, very different. I mean, there were some, it was more about you'd sort of do combination calculations in your head and that kind of thing, but that was kind of the limit of it. And honestly, it's actually one of the reasons why I, in the end, didn't like the game as much anymore. I've been doing it for 12 years anyway, and I was just starting to get itchy feet naturally, but it required more and more time spent to, at the top levels at least.

• 32:20Tim Ferriss?

  Just incremental gains.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Exactly. Diminishing returns in terms of hourly, because also what it means is because it's like these game theory optimal solutions exist, it means that there's technically this perfect style of play. Any one person can play. And the more people study this style, the more people are close to it. And so that means there is a ceiling of how perfectly you can play. Like technically, if you and I are both two computers that are able to play this game theory optimal style, we're just breaking even against each other over infinity. Over the short time, you know, if we play for an hour, whoever gets the best cards will therefore win. But over infinity, we will just break even. And so that meant that you would have to be putting more and more time in to win a sort of shrinking pot of money, essentially, which is why I don't now recommend to people to go out and try

• 33:04Speaker 04

  and be professionals in poker. But I still absolutely recommend that people to go and learn the game because it is probably the best way to, it's the best mini analog for the type of complex decision making that you need to do in life.

• 33:19Tim Ferriss?

  And we're gonna come back to this because I do think with my very little exposure to poker and having watched some on TV, and nonetheless, having had my ass handed to me when I tried it live, that particularly maybe an easy map is investing and poker. There are just so many variables that are similar, which is why I think so many investors are drawn to it. And also give a plug, All In Podcast, check it out. That's Jake L's podcast with his buds. It is a fantastic, fantastic show. I do think it is one of the best new podcasts, newish podcasts that I've put into my rotation. So don't take all my money, Jason.

• 34:04Tim Ferriss?

  Eight weeks. What does the density of practice look like? Is that two hours a day? Is it 10 hours a week?

• 34:11Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 34:12Tim Ferriss?

  What is the, what is the distribution look like?

• 34:14Speaker 04

  To be confident that you'll have like a 60, 40 edge on him, I would want to do 40 hours a week at least.

• 34:21Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:25Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. If you've seen the market lately, you probably didn't like what you saw. I know I certainly didn't and I still don't. It is a mess out there. Just a complete zoo and clown car and house fire combined. It's a mess. Here's the thing, though. The trick to wealth isn't timing the market. It's time in the market. Historically, the market has always rebounded. To build wealth, you need to stay invested for the long haul, not speculate, not try to time the bottoms or the tops, but stick around for the long haul. Wealthfront is an investing app focused on long-term wealth, designed to weather any market condition, even the one we're in now.

• 35:09Tim Ferriss?

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• 35:56Tim Ferriss?

  All right, 40 hours. How does that break down? If we have, you said eight weeks, right?

• 36:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:03Tim Ferriss?

  So hypothetically, let's say week one. What does the schedule and curriculum look like?

• 36:08Speaker 04

  So in the first week, I think we would, I mean, I would sit and just run out lots of different hands. I think in person is better than online. So you actually just get to play with the cards, feel what it's like. You get really familiar with the betting patterns and that kind of thing. And we would talk about the more sort of general things like, why are we betting? What are we seeking to find here? Okay, we want to find information. We'd get into the idea of like ranges, because, kind of a strange word, but basically, we're playing a hand right now. I don't know anything about your cards. All I know is that you've got two cards out of the, you know, 1,000 and whatever the number is, a combination of two cards that you can have.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  So right now, your range is 100% and saying back at you. And then as the hand progresses, basically, I want to narrow down the perceived range that I think you could have, you know, now gain information so I can narrow that down and put you on a hand, while meanwhile, giving away as little information about my own possible range. So keeping it as wide open to you. So it's about maximizing deceptiveness.

• 37:11Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 37:12Speaker 04

  While extracting information out of your opponent. So I'd teach you about concepts like that. And we would talk about ways that you can do that. And then I think we would go and actually play a little bit in person, just so you get used to the, again, the kind of dynamics.

• 37:25Tim Ferriss?

  We need to find a table somewhere.

• 37:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, we'd go to a local, I mean, probably invite friends over and we'd just have some, have some games. I mean, it's so much fun, anyway. Those are the best type of poker games.

• 37:34Tim Ferriss?

  Bring in my card mechanic and take all their money.

• 37:36Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yes.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  And then after that, I think we would start, I don't know at what stage, but you know, once you seem competent and are able to, you're able to do sort of basic math calculations in your head about, okay, well, I have to call $100 into a pot of $400. I'm getting four to one. What does that mean? What, how many cards are there that I need to hit, etc.? So these kind of pot-odd calculations, that kind of stuff.

• 38:00Tim Ferriss?

  Could you just take a second and explain what you mean by pot odd calculations?

• 38:04Speaker 04

  So pot odds are basically, you know, like in investing to an extent, if things go well, what do you win versus how much would you lose?

• 38:12Tim Ferriss?

  And then how do you bet size accordingly?

• 38:15Speaker 04

  Right, exactly. Or like, you know, let's say you're, you're trying to hit a flush and there are nine cards left in the deck that could help you, say out of 36. So you have a 25% chance of hitting the card you need. And meanwhile, the pot is offering you five to one. Well, now it's actually a profitable thing, right? Because you're getting, the pot is offering you more than the odds that you need to hit your card. So Matt and I haven't talked about this stuff in ages. It's really interesting. See, my brain's like, oh, find the words. So those kind of rudimentary types of math calculations that you need to do. And then as you get more comfortable in that, then you would start doing more combination calculations. So as you're sort of narrowing down your opponent's range,

• 38:58Speaker 04

  there will be presumably some hands that they will have that are better than your hand. You know, so what we would call value hands that they would be playing. But they would also have some bluffs in there. So you need to try and think about what are the conceivable bluffs they would have, given the sort of story that's been told, you know, like pre-flop, they raised early. So that means they probably have stronger cards than weaker cards. So you can narrow it down to like the top end of the cards, like aces, kings, ace, king, ace, three suited, that kind of stuff. But then on the flop, when an ace came out, they actually slowed down. So that maybe suggests that they don't have an ace. Maybe they have more like nines, tens, eights, you know, to a pocket pair like that. Weaving together bits of evidence to be able to narrow down people's ranges and put them on like conceivable bluffs versus conceivable strong hands. So that kind of stuff.

• 39:44Speaker 04

  And then after that, if you know, you're seeming to grasp all that, then we would actually start looking at the solver charts. So these are these like simulators. There's this one called Pyo Solver that was at least popular in the day when I was playing.

• 39:58Tim Ferriss?

  How do you spell that?

• 39:59Speaker 04

  P I O.

• 40:00Tim Ferriss?

  P I O.

• 40:00Speaker 04

  Pyo Solver. I think it's still the main one. And at least when I was, you know, using it, that was back in 2016 or so. It would take many hours to run a sim. So, you know, you'd be like, I want to know what the optimal play is with Jack nine suited on a 10, 8, 4. Rainbow board or something like that and then let it run.

• 40:20Tim Ferriss?

  Folks listening, I have no idea.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  I know.

• 40:21Tim Ferriss?

  It's okay.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  I don't know how technical to go.

• 40:23Tim Ferriss?

  I love how it sounds though.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's so much jargon in poker.

• 40:27Tim Ferriss?

  I think I need a rainbow board.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  That's actually probably where we could start. We would start with glossary because there's so many, there's so many terms.

• 40:33Tim Ferriss?

  vocab.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  The vocab is, you know, there's just so much going on there. But yeah, so we would start running simulations so you can see and understand like this is what the optimal solutions would be in these certain situations. Because once you know what the optimal solutions are, then now you can, you're sort of equipped with this like really solid baseline of what the perfect play is. Where if you don't have any information about your opponent that you can just follow and know that, you know, at worst you'll be breaking even, but you'll still be beating them. But then because you know what the perfect play is, you can look for ways to exploit their screw ups because in reality, everyone, even the pros are making mistakes. They aren't playing this perfect GTO style. But you can't really know the way that they're screwing up until you know what the GTO is in the first place.

• 41:17Speaker 04

  So it acts as this like baseline benchmark of high quality play. So we would sit and we would study these charts. And if over that course of eight weeks, I got you so that you were able to like emulate these charts to, I don't know how to quantify it, but to a good amount, that would be more than sufficient to be Jason. You know, he's not a full time pro.

• 41:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  He's good. Like he's played a lot and we've only played once. And I was more just like bemused at the amount of words that were coming out of his mouth.

• 41:44Tim Ferriss?

  I was gonna say, if his poker is anything like his basketball, he will, his ability to shit talk.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 41:50Tim Ferriss?

  Is actually incredible.

• 41:51Speaker 04

  That guy is world class.

• 41:53Tim Ferriss?

  He's very good at getting under your skin if he wants to get under your skin.

• 41:55Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's, he's, he's so many, we've had, we've been at a few parties together and he has, he knows how to ruffle feathers, but he's so funny. I love him.

• 42:07Tim Ferriss?

  Excellent interviewer and moderator. I just want to second the recommendation that was made earlier. Let's depart from the training for a bit. We may come back to it, but actually, let me ask a question I haven't asked in a long time. Maybe similar, this is like kicking in the gears, starting the old car, trying to like turn the key, get it to turn over. If you could predict the main reasons, the failure points, the reasons I would quit in those first eight weeks, what do you think they might be?

• 42:41Tim Ferriss?

  Assuming that I had the time.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:42Tim Ferriss?

  Right. And the interest, what are the things that might break me or cause me to walk? Give up?

• 42:48Speaker 04

  If for some reason you couldn't wrap your mind around what these charts mean, I guess that would be a sort of breaking point, but I just don't see that ever happening, to be honest. So it would be more that, I think the reason why you'd walk away is because you're like, ah, actually, this isn't that much fun and I'm not playing for, I don't care enough about beating Jason. You're not playing for Super Bowl stakes. And you're like, this is not worth my time.

• 43:10Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just using Jason as a stand because it's fun. But right, I don't care. I don't care enough about beating anyone.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  Exactly. They're just, the opportunity cost would be too high. That would be the only reason, I think, because I think you would find it fun, otherwise.

• 43:23Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I would have to, I wouldn't have to, but ensure that I have a certain frequency of play after putting in forty hours a week for eight weeks. Otherwise, the decay rate would be brutal.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  And part of that time, by the way, in that forty, it's not just studying the charts. It's also going out and actually practicing and getting real, because assuming you're going to play one on one in the flesh, a big part of poker that we haven't touched on yet as well is emotional control, understanding yourself and your own biases, not only cognitive, but also the way different negative emotions will arise, which they will in the game, particularly with someone like Jason, who is so adept at like saying things to Needle. And that's a big part of the game.

• 44:02Tim Ferriss?

  Getting the verbal bamboo shoots under your fingernails.

• 44:07Speaker 04

  That would be as important, particularly if you're playing for a particular, you know, you're training for a big match, the mental game side of it. Because ultimately you can study all the charts and think you're a GTO machine and like, oh, I'm, I'm fine. But then you get down there and he looks you in the eyes and it's like, well, you screwed up that hand, Tim. Like, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Huh? You know, and just goes full Jason on you. Like, you'll forget everything. The red mist. I call it the white mist.

• 44:31Tim Ferriss?

  Mist. I've never heard that. Okay. I like it.

• 44:34Speaker 04

  The red mist descends. Like if there's two mental blocks.

• 44:38Tim Ferriss?

  And that's when one might go tilt.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  Tilt. Exactly.

• 44:41Tim Ferriss?

  If I'm catching the linger.

• 44:42Speaker 04

  Tilt. Very good. For those who don't know, tilt is, is what people do, basically, when their emotions get the better of them and they start playing badly.

• 44:52Tim Ferriss?

  Now. Is Monkey Tilt just an exaggerated version of that?

• 44:56Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 44:56Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, yeah, because now-

• 44:58Speaker 04

  Monkey Tilt is just like the, you know, you've got sort of-

• 45:00Tim Ferriss?

  I love the image-

• 45:01Speaker 04

  One of the flavors.

• 45:04Tim Ferriss?

  Now, the reason that this is fresh on the mind is not too long ago, I was in a non-sober state and decided that it was the perfect time to start making stock trades. And my friend was watching me and he's like, "I think you may be full tilt right now." And I was like, "Do I look excited? Do I look upset? I'm not, I'm not on tilt." Those didn't work out very well, those trades. But the red mist, when the red mist, but you call it the white what?

• 45:33Speaker 04

  Well, so there's two. There's the white noise. So the white noise is when, so red mist is when you're angry. Someone has wound you up.

• 45:40Tim Ferriss?

  That would probably be my Achilles' heel.

• 45:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:43Tim Ferriss?

  The white noise.

• 45:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, and the white noise is where, for whatever reason, perhaps, you know, you're just really tired or you're really stressed, but you'll go and consult your brain and it comes back with nothing.

• 45:55Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, yeah, you're just beach balling.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  Just beach balling, yes.

• 45:59Speaker 04

  And I've had that a few times, like, I remember having it in the World Series, day four or something, day five, and it was a really big pause and I just needed to think. And then, but then my brain was like, "Well, this is a really important decision." You know, "You just really pay attention to this one." Like, "Are you paying it?" "Well, I'm not sure you're paying attention. Why are you listening to me?" And so there's this little voice, and then I was like, "Okay, pay attention. Let's count the combos of what they've got and just, nothing." So in the end, I was like, "I, you know, my system two, are you familiar with, with a system one, system two?"

• 46:27Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 46:28Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wait a second. System one, system two, is this like Daniel Kahneman?

• 46:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a Danny Kahneman thing.

• 46:32Tim Ferriss?

  If you could just give some context.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  His thesis is that we have two modes of thinking. Well, system one is like your intuitive, like if I ask you, "What's five plus five?" You immediately know the answer is 10. So it kind of your gut instinct.

• 46:45Tim Ferriss?

  I just got a shot of a drilling set that you were gonna make me do multiplication tables.

• 46:48Speaker 04

  Well, wait, well, wait. So that's your system one. It's just the things you immediately know an answer to, or you, you know, it's like an unconscious process. You know, if you, technically, it's system one. If you're driving down the street and someone cuts in front of you, your, your, your body will take over and you'll swerve, because you don't have time to do a sort of cost benefit analysis of going left or right. And then your system two is the like conscious thinking. So if I was to ask you what 471 plus 88 is?

• 47:16Tim Ferriss?

  It would be 560, I even forgot the numbers now, nine?

• 47:23Speaker 04

  471 and 88.

• 47:25Tim Ferriss?

  471, 88, what's that?

• 47:26Speaker 04

  I can't remember.

• 47:27Tim Ferriss?

  471, yeah, nine, five, five, five, five, nine, is that right? 559? I have no idea.

• 47:38Speaker 04

  Five is 500, I can't even remember, anyway.

• 47:41Tim Ferriss?

  Whatever that was, you can't, you can't use your gut feelings for that.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  Right, you have to think it through, you have to do the calculation mentally in your head. So that's your system too. And poker is really interesting because-

• 47:51Tim Ferriss?

  You know I'm on five hours of sleep. I just want to buy myself a little bit of wiggle room on the mental math.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  I didn't even answer my own question and I have no excuse, so.

• 48:01Tim Ferriss?

  May I, may I make a quick aside? One of the coolest things I've ever seen was when I was 15 as an exchange student in Japan and I got to know multiple kids because it's mandatory that every kid learn how to use an abacus. And something like one out of every 30 or 40 kids would get so good that they no longer needed the physical abacus, they could see it in their minds. And so for party tricks, their friends would just lob these like three-digit multiplication problems at them and they could come up with the answer. It would take them a second because they actually had to physically-

• 48:38Speaker 04

  Map it out.

• 48:39Tim Ferriss?

  Map it out and move these beads and so on in their minds, but astonishing.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  My partner Igor can kind of do that.

• 48:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah?

• 48:47Speaker 04

  It was one of the ways he got me, honestly. He just, you just throw numbers at him and he'll, he hasn't done it in a while and he'll hate that I've mentioned this because now everyone's going to do it to him. But he can usually answer within like a second or two.

• 48:58Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, that's fast.

• 48:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's hot. It's hot shit.

• 49:03Tim Ferriss?

  Rock stars to mental mathematics.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, so those are, I can't remember where I was going now.

• 49:08Tim Ferriss?

  So where you were going is we were talking about system one, system two and that white noise moment.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 49:14Tim Ferriss?

  And that is not a time that you can rely on system two, is that what you were going to say?

• 49:17Speaker 04

  Right, exactly, because system two has shut down.

• 49:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, system two's offline.

• 49:21Speaker 04

  Yes, offline, it's not, it does not compute, there's nothing there, hello?

• 49:25Tim Ferriss?

  404, 404.

• 49:26Speaker 04

  404, yeah, blue screen of death. And it's bad when that happens in poker, it's no good at all.

• 49:32Tim Ferriss?

  Fucking terrible.

• 49:32Speaker 04

  Yes. And that is, you know, if you're playing, it can be various reasons. It can be because if you're wound up, someone's gotten under your skin, that will shut it off. But also just pure- Adrenaline and stress, you know, you're excited. Even I've had it when I had a really good hand.

• 49:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 49:50Speaker 04

  And I was really, I was like, oh, man, I'm gonna win a huge pot here. This is so exciting. And I'm like, well, I need to think through what the optimal bet size is. And again,

• 49:58Speaker 04

  because I just, it's so hard because I think you're put into, well, you know, this stuff better, like your sympathetic nervous system is in, is in play. Right. So you're kind of in fight or flight. And that is not conducive to slow cognitive thought. It's conducive to immediate, you know, physical stuff really useful for, but not so good for the mental.

• 50:18Tim Ferriss?

  Let's talk about the regulation, the self-regulation. So I have in front of me some notes. Obviously you can see them. Those who are on audio only will not be able to see them. And that's fine because it makes me sound more professional. If you think I'm doing everything off the top of my head. So at one point,

• 50:35Tim Ferriss?

  you turned 500 euros into 1.25 million euros, which is around 1.7 million. And if I'm getting roughly, I believe that that math, right? That was at the EPT San Remo. And it was 500 euro buy-in or $500.

• 50:53Speaker 04

  It was a 500 euro satellite tournament into the main event buy-in, which was 5,000 euros. So everyone was buying in for 5,000, but I won my way in because I couldn't afford the 5,000.

• 51:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 04

  I won my way in through a feeder, smaller tournament.

• 51:06Tim Ferriss?

  So a few just housekeeping questions about this. How long after that first tournament win after the TV show was this?

• 51:18Speaker 04

  This was 2010, so five years.

• 51:21Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. All right. So five years later, this happens. Presumably in this tournament, there was less huh and then crying and running away from the table.

• 51:32Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 51:32Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So what type of self-regulation?

• 51:38Tim Ferriss?

  Did you learn over that period of time and then subsequent to that?

• 51:42Speaker 04

  Oh, man, that that tournament was nuts because, you know, the TV show is in 2005. I didn't actually really turn fully professional whereby I was living off it until 2000, like late 2008. I was still sort of playing casually, couldn't really get my act together enough to, I wasn't good enough really to be living off poker before then. So I'd been, I'd been playing on the circuit now for like a year and a half and I played some bigger buy-in tournaments, but I'd never made like any like really big final tables or anything. And this Italy one kind of happened by accident. It was a, remember the volcano that went off in Iceland?

• 52:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I do.

• 52:19Speaker 04

  And it shut down all of European airspace. I was in the south of France for something completely different and I couldn't get home. And someone, I heard that there was this tournament going on in northern Italy and it was like a train ride away. So I was like, all right, screw it. I'll go there.

• 52:31Tim Ferriss?

  Thank God for volcanoes.

• 52:32Speaker 04

  Bless that volcano. Oh, yeah. And then I arrived and there was this like this feeder tournament. It's called a satellite that night where, you know, it was 500 euro entry and one in 10 people would win their ticket for the 5,000, the main event. So I won my ticket that night, like four in the morning and then went and played it the next day, starting at noon. And a very strange thing happened to me actually at noon before the tournament started, but that's like another topic I think we can get into later, maybe.

• 52:58Tim Ferriss?

  Wait a minute, you can't leave that. Just give us a teaser and then maybe we'll come back to it.

• 53:03Speaker 04

  I had my first of a handful of completely unexplainable borderline metaphysical experiences. And I won't say what it is now. It'll be better if we talk about it later.

• 53:18Tim Ferriss?

  We'll come back to that later.

• 53:19Speaker 04

  But anyway, so I had a very strange thing happen just before the tournament started at noon. And long story short, six days later, it ended up being the largest tournament ever held in Europe.

• 53:28Tim Ferriss?

  Leaving that undescribed is what I call keeping the audience listening.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, you better keep watching.

• 53:34Tim Ferriss?

  And now for a short commercial break.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  I ended up being attracting the biggest field of players of any tournament in Europe to date, at the time at least, was over like 1,200 people. So huge, huge tournament. And six days later, I was on the final table, down to the final nine.

• 53:51Tim Ferriss?

  How many hours a day are you playing?

• 53:53Speaker 04

  I played like.

• 53:56Speaker 04

  10 hours a day on average. Some days are a bit longer, some days are a bit shorter. So you can imagine how exhausting that is. Also, because the longer you're going, the more intense it gets. Because in the beginning, the stakes are like, okay, I might lose my 5,000 euro buy-in. But as the tournament wears on and, you know, there's less people, your chip stack is worth more and more in terms of equity.

• 54:16Tim Ferriss?

  So your loss aversion starts to

• 54:18Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:19Tim Ferriss?

  Go vertical.

• 54:20Speaker 04

  By the time of the, like, the end of day five, where we play down to the final table, the final nine, for ninth place, I was already guaranteed, I think, 90,000 euros. I only had like, I think I had like 50,000 pounds to my name at this point. So I was already guaranteed double my net worth for whatever happened on that final table. And first prize was the 1.25 million euros, 1.7 dollars. And that morning, I think I got some sleep the night before, because I'm somewhat of an insomniac anyway. So if I have something on the next day that's big, I often will just not sleep very well. And so you can imagine this cranks it up to 10. And I was dreaming, you know, I don't know if you ever have that, where you've been doing a lot of a particular

• 55:03Speaker 04

  thing, like trading or whatever, and you sort of semi-sleep and see the thing?

• 55:07Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, sure.

• 55:08Speaker 04

  I was playing poker. I was like, I was lying there, but I had pocket jacks, I had a king queen, you know, just these fictitious hands. My brain just could not shut off. And that was my night, the night before. And I was just like in a complete tizz, because I'm like, I don't know, we're gonna play tomorrow. Like, I'm a mess. I was so nervous before the final table. I like threw up three times on the way, like, walking down. It was so stressful. But I don't know, once we actually started playing, once I got the cards in my hand, it was just like, and I just switched into this like mode of, I don't know, it was weird.

• 55:38Tim Ferriss?

  Was that the first time that it happened, or did that happen to you before?

• 55:42Speaker 04

  Not to that extent, because I think it was a perfect storm of like, it's such extreme nerves and being such a mess beforehand. And then like actually being able to play well. I don't know, the delta felt more than I'd ever had it before. But I had had that before, where I was like able to like get into the zone very well.

• 55:58Tim Ferriss?

  I wonder if you just spent all of your stress calories?

• 56:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:03Tim Ferriss?

  You know what I mean? Like, that tank was empty.

• 56:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:05Tim Ferriss?

  So you needed to switch to a different tank.

• 56:08Speaker 04

  Honestly, it felt like I had something guiding me that whole time. It was a very strange experience. And anyway, I won and it was great.

• 56:14Tim Ferriss?

  Of course, I'm not going to let go of the metaphysical experience. We are going to come back to that probably quickly. But before we do, for people who are not going to bank on having metaphysical experiences or the feeling of being guided, what else have you learned about regulating, whether it's the white noise, or especially for me, of personal interest, when someone is actively trying to fuck with you and disrupt all of your systems?

• 56:44Speaker 04

  The best thing I found, and it's super simple, is just breathing. Three deep breaths. It's so cookie cutter, but it just works. Just close your eyes and inhale in. You could feel, even if your heart's pounding, my heart's actually pounding a little bit now because I'm retelling the story. It's funny. But just that, you notice that, you feel your body, you breathe in and you breathe it into your belly. And I imagine my favorite color, which is usually a mix of turquoise and purple, something like that. And I just, I'm sucking that in and pulling it down into my stomach. And then it's just like this settling feeling. And it's, half of it is just like bullshitting myself.

• 57:24Tim Ferriss?

  But it's an interrupt.

• 57:25Speaker 04

  It's an interrupt, exactly. And it just is enough to like settle your nervous system a second, just ground you back to here. And then be like, okay, now what's the problem? Another thing that's helped as well is I just like laughing at myself. Oh, you're taking this one awfully seriously. Oh, silly, like playing a silly little in my head, just to like make light of the situation a bit. But that, it requires a lot of ability to sort of step out and observe the situation. Because obviously, once you're in the red mist, particularly the red mist, more than the white noise, by definition, you are like animalistic. You don't have the ability to step outside and observe a situation well. So it's, I think, just practice, really. Practice beginning angry, you know, practice reading. I guess a way you could do it is go like, go read something that you know

• 58:09Speaker 04

  makes you angry. Like really reliably gets your blood pressure up. And then try and like build in some kind of trigger that makes you do the three breaths thing.

• 58:21Tim Ferriss?

  So for 99.9% of the sadomasochistic users of Twitter, myself included, just go on Twitter.

• 58:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, just go on Twitter. Every day, you'll be reliably upset.

• 58:32Tim Ferriss?

  For two minutes.

• 58:32Speaker 04

  Oh, man, Twitter.

• 58:35Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, what a nasty neighborhood that's turned into.

• 58:37Speaker 04

  Oh, so sad.

• 58:40Tim Ferriss?

  As you're saying this, I'm imagining, I'm imagining Jason listening to this and formulating in his mind, that's why I was smirking, for if he sees me taking deep breaths, he'd be like, "Yeah, Timmy, take those deep breaths. Come on, buddy. You can do it. Oh, sorry, I upset you. Oh, yeah."

• 58:55Speaker 04

  I really got you, huh?

• 58:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, you're doing great.

• 58:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, just close your eyes. Don't even look at me.

• 58:58Tim Ferriss?

  No, close your eyes. Don't look at me. Don't worry.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  Just imagine I'm not here. You can't hear me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He'll just end the stream of words.

• 59:02Tim Ferriss?

  It's not like everybody's waiting for you or anything.

• 59:07Tim Ferriss?

  All right, before I lose track, which I wouldn't, but what the hell happened in the morning? And you can contextualize this however you want.

• 59:14Speaker 04

  Sure. No, I mean, what happened was I played a bunch of these tournaments, not of ones quite this size, but I'd still played a lot of tournaments at this point. And I was there before, before it actually started. Usually, people turn up late, but for some reason, I was there in my chair before the first hand was dealt. And I remember they, the company Pokerstars, whose event it was, you know, they dimmed the lights. They're like, "Welcome to EBT San Remo. Huge. We've got incredible field, blah, blah, blah." And then they dimmed the lights and they put on, on the screens around the room, just like a promo, exciting, you know?

• 59:46Tim Ferriss?

  Promo video.

• 59:46Speaker 04

  Promo video, you know? And I remember distinctly the music. It was Chemical Brothers' "Hey, Boy, Hey, Girl," which I always loved. I always loved that song.

• 59:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, good choice.

• 59:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, you know, I was like, "Oh, this is cool. Yeah, I'm excited." And while I was just like, listening to it, just like out of nowhere, this, like a bolt of lightning felt like. It was like this, like, and this voice in my head said, "You are going to win this tournament." And it sounded like my own voice, but what I can't remember is whether it was, "I am gonna win," or "you are gonna win." But I'm pretty sure it was "you are gonna win," but it literally sounded like my own voice. And it was so-

• 1:00:19Tim Ferriss?

  Sounded like your own voice.

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

  Yes. So it was like, you know, when you speak in your head, like the, the voice you hear, like, most people have that, right?

• 1:00:27Tim Ferriss?

  You know, that Tuesday voice that everyone hears.

• 1:00:31Speaker 04

  Oh, man, I'm letting a lot out here. Um, it sounded like how I would sound in my own head to myself. And it said, you are going to win this tournament. And I got this rush of goosebumps. It's even happening a little bit like the hairs up on my, you know, on my arms. And I remember looking around the room like, did I just say that out loud? Did anyone else hear this? And everyone else was just like in their phones or whatever. And I was like, well, that was freaky. And then the lights came back up and they're like, okay, cool. Shuffle up and deal. And I was still like stunned and I was like, okay, cool. And then like halfway through the day, you know, and then I sort of a little bit forgot about it. But then like halfway through the day, I got in a big pot and I lost half my chips.

• 1:01:12Speaker 04

  You know, it's always a bad feeling when that happens. And I was like, oh, man, I'm nearly out the tournament. I guess that was bullshit, you know, so like, I had like little multiple moments over the next few days where it clearly was a real thing because I like checked in on it. And I even told a friend of mine on the day.

• 1:01:27Tim Ferriss?

  What do you mean checked in on it? Meaning you remembered that it had happened?

• 1:01:30Speaker 04

  That it had happened. Well, because obviously the rational explanation to this is that it was just a false memory, you know, that I have retroactively remembered something that didn't really happen as a way of like making.

• 1:01:40Tim Ferriss?

  You reconstructed it.

• 1:01:41Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:01:42Tim Ferriss?

  But you have multiple points at which you referred to it.

• 1:01:45Speaker 04

  Yes. And I even have a friend, my, my friend Melanie, who was there and I bumped into her in the, in the women's bathroom on like day two. And she's like, oh, you got a lot of chips. It's going well. I was like, yeah, uh, things are going well. Really weird. I feel like I'm going to win this. In fact, I almost had a premonition that I did. And she's like, yeah, you seem really confident. And we actually had this conversation and to the point that she, after I won it, she was like, what the fuck was that? You like predicted this. I'm like, I know, I don't know. So, yeah. I don't know how to explain it.

• 1:02:14Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I think you said string or series of experiences. Is that type of experience in poker isolated to that? And it doesn't have to be constrained to poker.

• 1:02:25Speaker 04

  So what was interesting was after.

• 1:02:26Tim Ferriss?

  Actually, man, I ask a, uh, I apologize for doing this herky jerky questioning style, but did you have any of those types of experiences when you were younger?

• 1:02:35Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:02:35Tim Ferriss?

  That you recall? No?

• 1:02:36Speaker 04

  No, I was not like a weird kid or, you know, that had. Sorry, let me start again.

• 1:02:42Tim Ferriss?

  Weird kid. You weren't like the kid from The Sixth Sense.

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  No, I wasn't the Sixth Sense kid, no.

• 1:02:48Speaker 04

  No, I did not, is to answer that question. I had not really ever had, I think, anything, you know, like I never saw a ghost or anything like that.

• 1:02:55Tim Ferriss?

  Asking about ghosts. Don't lump me in with the ghost hunters, come on.

• 1:03:01Speaker 04

  I want to just paint the picture of that I was a very, in fact, like a deep skeptic.

• 1:03:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Well, you still are a deep skeptic in a lot of ways.

• 1:03:08Speaker 04

  Right, right. But like certainly then, like I'd never had anything weird that I couldn't really explain in any conventional way. I'd certainly not had any time loops or anything like that, or weird voices in my head. But yeah, to answer your question of like, is it a sort of common thing in poker?

• 1:03:22Tim Ferriss?

  No, not so much a common thing in poker, but have you since had more of those types of experiences?

• 1:03:29Speaker 04

  Not of like explicit premonitions, no. I'm not, nothing even close to that. I have had one really notable thing that I am happy to talk about it. It's

• 1:03:40Tim Ferriss?

  If you change your mind, we can cut it later.

• 1:03:41Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:03:44Speaker 04

  For want of a better word, I had an extreme energy healing, an almost accidental one. So it was a few years ago and seemingly out of the blue, I started getting this very unpleasant sensation in my ear where particularly, it was like a sort of low frequency buzzing, humming quite frequently, like so some, some kind of tinnitus.

• 1:04:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:06Speaker 04

  But it was almost like a pressure and voices, particularly men's voices, became distorted to the point that they were unbearable to listen to. And it was really bumming me out. It would come in like clusters. I would have it like for a few hours and it would go away and come later on in the day. And it was stopping me from doing any social events because any loud scenario was unbearable, but particularly men speaking. I just couldn't handle it. And this went on and off for a few months and I went and saw a doctor, multiple doctors, and had hearing tests and they said, oh, you're losing your hearing and the low frequencies of your, of your hearing in that ear. We think you have many ears disease. Many ears is this degenerative thing, which usually people end up completely deaf when they have it.

• 1:04:50Speaker 04

  Basically, the nerve cells in the inner ear start dying and they don't really know why. They think it's something to do with like salts and ion channels. And it's incurable as far as I know. And so I was told that's what I probably have and they're like, it's pretty, really sorry. It's, you know, it was just bad news to find that out. And also because one of the symptoms of it is you start having balance problems as well. You get like these vertigo attacks and people be like vomiting and so on. And so you can imagine, I was like really down in the dumps finding this out. And then cut to three months later or so, go to Burning Man. And I have for the first time, one of these vertigo attacks. One of the days, I mean, I wasn't completely sober, but it was not a good time. As you can imagine, having a vertigo attack while not being sober for the first time. So I was then really down in the dumps.

• 1:05:33Speaker 04

  And then on the last night of the burn, I was talking to some friends and started talking to this girl who I kind of, I don't know that well, but she's a friend of a friend. And I mentioned about my ear and she's like, oh, well, I, I do energy healing. I'm an energy healer. And I was like, I don't know what that is, but sure, do whatever you want to do. Yeah, have a go. She's like, I can try. And after she sort of put her hand over my ear for a few minutes. And then she says, I remember saying something like, there's something there, I need to get it. And she starts sucking over my ear with her mouth, like not touching it, but just like, and it was really unpleasant. Like, you can imagine that sensation of someone like inhaling over your ear.

• 1:06:17Speaker 04

  And I was like, oh, please stop. She's like, no, I need to get this. There's something there. And she does it, I don't know, for a few minutes and then eventually kind of collapses in a heap on the floor, crying and freezing cold going, oh my God, that was, that was bad. I don't know what that was. That was really, really bad. Again, I was not fully sober, so this is slightly, you know, retelling. But I just remember being so shocked. I just didn't expect anything to actually happen. I didn't really feel anything other than this like unpleasant sensation of her sucking. But I was so shocked at the way she was now reacting because she was shocked. She did not seem to expect whatever had just happened to her. And she said afterwards, she, you know, she came around after a little while and she's like, I don't know what it was. It was like bad energy. I don't know.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  It's gone. I'm very pleased to say it's fully gone and it's, it's gone away. And I was like, well, okay, what does that mean for my symptoms? Am I cured? She's like, yeah, yeah, you'll probably have symptoms for a couple more weeks and then you'll be fine. And that's exactly what happened. And I haven't had any problems since. It kind of just like. It just blew my world open because aside of that premonition thing, which I'd kind of forgotten about, I have not ever subscribed to anything like that. I like, I'm a physicist. In fact, like, you know, I'm proud, like, I kind of built a career of being a like, materialist, rationalist physicist. And I don't have any time for any of that stuff. It's all nonsense. It's all confirmation bias. No one's ever actually tested it empirically

• 1:07:44Speaker 04

  or proven it. Show me the study and I'll believe it. But here I am, having that experience with two, what feel like pretty incontrovertible data points, that something that I cannot explain, happened and fortunately would be incredibly beneficial to me. Such a blessing. So yeah.

• 1:08:05Tim Ferriss?

  So these experiences are particularly interesting to me as direct firsthand experiences. Of course, secondhand now that I'm listening, but are particularly interesting to me when I'm speaking with someone who has demonstrated a very well-developed ability to use system two, thinking and rationality and reasoning and mathematics and so on, in not just the world, but in competitive arenas, right? So you have a calibrated and also tested ability

• 1:08:47Tim Ferriss?

  to use those faculties that you've developed. And I'm glad you're mentioning these things just because weird shit happens. And the idea that we have it all figured out is ludicrous. Even though humans at any point in history, whether you go back to the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, you know, I'm sure, you know, 6,000 years ago, or whatever it was with the Egyptians, I'm sure they thought they had most things figured out. And it's just so clear when you begin to really poke and prod and as you gain more years and have more experiences, especially if you start pushing into some strange corners, that there's a lot we simply don't understand. And even if we were to, say, not chalk those up to

• 1:09:32Tim Ferriss?

  false memories, but let's just say we chalked it up to placebo effect.

• 1:09:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:09:36Tim Ferriss?

  Nonetheless, even if it were just placebo effect.

• 1:09:39Speaker 04

  Incredible.

• 1:09:41Tim Ferriss?

  That doesn't diminish the.

• 1:09:45Tim Ferriss?

  Absurd inexplicability of it.

• 1:09:49Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:09:49Tim Ferriss?

  With the current mechanisms that we understand. And that's super exciting to me. It's super exciting to me. And it doesn't mean that you nor I would advocate that people just accept everything at face value. Of course not. There's horse shit everywhere. I mean, we're sitting in Austin, like the world capital of spirituality. There's so much nonsense and so many charlatans. But I do pay attention to people like you, who have demonstrated in other areas that they have the ability to think rationally and have some grasp of, a very good grasp of science and so on. Right? That's kind of one of the first litmus tests for me. If someone's sharing something with me, I'm like, alright.

• 1:10:34Tim Ferriss?

  Can they fight logically out of a paper bag? Right? Like, can they?

• 1:10:40Tim Ferriss?

  Have they demonstrated any ability to use structured reasoning in other places?

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Are they able to cross examine their own beliefs?

• 1:10:47Tim Ferriss?

  Right, exactly. Exactly. And are they skeptical in other areas? Or is it just like, okay, they accept anything as long as it's alternative, but they reject, you know, like Western science for any number of reasons that don't make sense to me. If you've ever had antibiotics, yeah, Western science may have saved your life. And there are many other examples. I certainly wouldn't be here for more for Western medicine, let's just say, not science. And I struggle with where to even take this because there's so many directions it could go that are pretty strange. But, and I don't want to co-opt physics, so please give me a slap here if this is just an amateur butchering the good name of physics.

• 1:11:31Tim Ferriss?

  But I've had a number of cognitive scientists on the podcast, like Donald Hoffman. I've had physicists on the podcast, although some would consider Michio Kaku more of a science communicator, but still, as some fundamentals. I've had private conversations certainly with a number of physicists. And I lack the foundation of mathematics necessary to fully appreciate it. But when you even start to look at the conversations that were being had between Einstein and Bohr way back in the day, relative to quantum mechanics.

• 1:12:06Tim Ferriss?

  Putting aside even the experimental design and evidence for quantum entanglement that have been done, I think in the Canary Islands and in other places, stuff is really strange. Just even spacetime itself as an objective reality. I mean, there are pieces people can find online by qualified scientists on the depth of spacetime, right? And thinking about that as almost a UI that we have evolved to utilize, but not as the one and only user interface to whatever we might be contending with.

• 1:12:44Speaker 04

  And like Donald Hoffman even thinks that, well, not just Donald Hoffman, he thinks that consciousness essentially gives rise to space.

• 1:12:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 1:12:53Speaker 04

  And while a lot of theoretical physicists poo-poo his ideas, and I think by and large they are correct too, even they would agree that it seems like space itself is an emergent property. It's not a fundamental thing. You know, we're not objects rattling around in a big empty box. It is a thing that emerges from basically interactions of mathematical functions on some, whether it's on a substrate or whether it, I don't know if it even needs a substrate, I'm too rusty on that stuff. But it's super weird if you dig into the fundamental structure of this reality.

• 1:13:28Tim Ferriss?

  And this is not like, this is not a, you know, Wiccan witchcraft shop with like tarot cards in the display case, not to knock that, right? But like, we're talking about some of the most esteemed scientists in a hard science with peer-reviewed publications and so on. And if you just look at that stuff closely enough, shit's really weird.

• 1:13:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. There's a paper I was recently reading that's like digging into the, that it seems like spacetime is, well, space itself is essentially coming out of observers interacting with each other.

• 1:14:05Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I love to see it.

• 1:14:06Speaker 04

  Consciousnesses interacting with each other. But it's really... From what I can tell, really granular, legit physics. I mean, it's a math paper, basically.

• 1:14:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:14Speaker 04

  It's beyond my pay grade. So I don't know.

• 1:14:16Tim Ferriss?

  I may need your.

• 1:14:17Speaker 04

  I want to, I want to send it to like Sean Carroll. I don't know if you've ever had him on.

• 1:14:20Tim Ferriss?

  Sean Carroll, I haven't had on, but my brother introduced me to his podcast Mindscape. Is it Mindscape? Excellent podcast.

• 1:14:27Speaker 04

  So good.

• 1:14:27Tim Ferriss?

  So if Sean Carroll is out there listening, or if anyone knows him, let him know I'm a, he may not want to hear this. I don't know what his opinion will be of me. But big fan of his podcast. He's a damn fine thinker and a damn fine communicator.

• 1:14:42Speaker 04

  He really is, yeah.

• 1:14:43Tim Ferriss?

  And he had an excellent episode on sort of archaeological exploration of Stonehenge and other artifacts as external mnemonic devices. Super cool. So Liv, Olivia, question for you. How do you, as someone who is a trained rationalist materialist, although you may not identify as solely those things, I don't want to imply that, how do you integrate some of these experiences into your life, your framework, your worldview? What do you do with that?

• 1:15:24Speaker 04

  It's tricky. I mean, you know, I think with all these things, it's walking this fine line between gullibility, open mindedness, whatever you want to call it, and skepticism and cynicism. And I think where my poker training comes in handy is that poker trains you to think in probabilities. You're never certain about anything. You could be bluffing me with, you know, you could have aces, or you could be bluffing me with six, four suited that missed the card it needed. So you become very comfortable in terms of holding concurrent belief states in your mind with different weighted probabilities of those things being true.

• 1:16:03Speaker 04

  So with these like, you know, these two weird, unexplainable experiences that I had, you know, whether it was the ear thing was just pure placebo, which would still be crazy because it would mean that like, basically I have the ability to. Heal my mind by thinking I was going through some kind of like thing being sucked out my ear.

• 1:16:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and potentially here heal your inner ear.

• 1:16:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, like I was literally told I had a degenerative thing and I was gonna go deaf and like, no one's been cured of it. And this has miraculously gone away. So whatever the hell happened, the point is, I didn't go and change my life. I didn't suddenly go and be like, that's it, I'm gonna go and practice energy healing and become a witch and so on. I continued still like I've still am an adherent to the scientific method. It's just that I've now broadened my, as you mentioned, you know, it's almost like people become, they believe in the scientism as opposed to being a scientist. A true scientist is that you are maximally curious, you do your best to devise experiments in order to get reliable, robust results that you can use to predict the world. And you try and minimize all the biases and things that could mess up your experiment and give you a faulty result.

• 1:17:03Speaker 04

  And so there's no reason why I can't incorporate these two data points in terms of, I mean, I haven't gone out and done any science, I really should, I guess, go and do some tests and see if I can try and recreate that experience. But it's very difficult because it was set and setting were very important in what happened there, I would assume. Anyway, I don't know that.

• 1:17:23Tim Ferriss?

  Well, when they make the Netflix series about it and they recreate the entire environment, then you can sit down and try to recreate.

• 1:17:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. So what I guess I've done is I have upweighted, you know, whereas before I would have given the probability that energy healing is a real thing, I would have given it like a, probably if you'd asked my old like skeptical self, I would have literally said it's zero. But, you know, I wasn't such a bad Bayesian that I would give it actual zero, maybe like one in a million.

• 1:17:49Tim Ferriss?

  Bayesian. Oh, that's good. We can't, we don't have time to unpack that.

• 1:17:53Speaker 04

  No, no, but yeah. It would be like, you know, I would have given it a one in a million. And now I have updated it, you know, with this evidence to, how many orders of magnitude do I want to go? I mean, I will give it, I at least give it a one in 100. But I think it's more likely that there is a

• 1:18:12Speaker 04

  An explanation through what we know conventionally, that is still more probable than that it is something completely like some completely novel thing that is untapped. But that said, you know, I've actually had a few other little ones I won't go into, but like other little data points of just like weird energy things that have happened in certain scenarios. It's helped me, but it's still important to keep the skeptical hat on and extraordinary beliefs require extraordinary evidence. And in order for me to like, give up everything that I know about our current understanding of the world, I would need significantly more data points. And I think that would, it's just not the practical way to go forward.

• 1:18:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I would also add to that, that if folks want to be proper skeptics, you owe it to yourself and to the people you interact with to be an informed skeptic. So if you are going to invoke the name of science and not invoke it like the name of Odin in some like, you know, God works in mysterious ways kind of way, you need to actually, my opinion, have the ability to read a study and understand a study and study design. It's not good enough to get the journalistic interpretation from the Wall Street Journal or fill in the blank online publication. That's not good enough.

• 1:19:29Tim Ferriss?

  It's also not good enough for you to just get the gist of a few sentences in an abstract.

• 1:19:34Speaker 04

  Confidence intervals.

• 1:19:36Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So confidence intervals, understanding, powering, because you'll also find folks who, I always, I've been saying scientism, but I guess scientism, the sort of like capital S. In either case, it has a capital S and it's not good. So if you come to that, one of the telltale characteristics that I've come across is they'll ask if something was a controlled study or a placebo-controlled randomized study, randomized control, you know, RCT. And they'll say, well, how many, how many subjects were there? Or what was the N if they get fancy? And I might say 20, 25 and they're like, oh yeah, small study.

• 1:20:11Speaker 04

  Nonsense.

• 1:20:12Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm like, it's not that.

• 1:20:16Tim Ferriss?

  Simplistic. There are quite a few variables you have to take into account. So recommendations for folks who are interested. Number one, studying the studies by Peter Attia, M.D. Excellent series of blog posts that take you into the fundamentals of understanding how to dissect and understand a study, which includes meta-analyses and gets into the the risks of taking meta-analyses as gospel also, because garbage in, garbage out, and there's, there's a lot to it. Another recommendation, actually a podcast that I did six years ago, I realized when I pulled this up. This is podcast number 194, The Magic and Power of Placebo.

• 1:20:57Tim Ferriss?

  This is with Eric Vance, who wrote a book called Suggestible You, subtitle, The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal. And he's written very widely on placebo, it's an excellent book. Many of his feature pieces are exceptional. There was a great piece in Wired Magazine, probably 10 years ago, on the evolution of the placebo effect and how it has changed depending on the culture and other influences. So in certain places, say, a placebo pill in a blue capsule or a red capsule perform better than other colors. It's really-

• 1:21:32Speaker 04

  You need to do, don't do a blue or red one in this day and age.

• 1:21:35Tim Ferriss?

  That's true. That's true. Yeah, we could pick other colors. But the context that surrounds that is really, really interesting. And then the last thing I would recommend people check out is cognitive biases and looking at both frameworks intended to avoid them and just getting a better understanding. So you can go to Wikipedia and just look up cognitive biases and get a pretty basic list. You can look at something like Poor Charlie's Almanac with Charlie Munger, although it's a bit dense and-

• 1:22:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's intense.

• 1:22:01Tim Ferriss?

  It's a little user unfriendly in a lot of respects. But what were you gonna say?

• 1:22:06Speaker 04

  The thing I would recommend is some of Julia Galif's work-

• 1:22:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:22:11Speaker 04

  On the scout mindset and motivated reasoning.

• 1:22:14Tim Ferriss?

  What was the first one?

• 1:22:15Speaker 04

  The scout mindset.

• 1:22:16Tim Ferriss?

  Scout mindset.

• 1:22:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, she did a TED Talk on it, but she's just written a book on it as well. And I think she actually goes in, if I remember rightly-

• 1:22:22Tim Ferriss?

  Her last name is G-A-L-E-F?

• 1:22:24Speaker 04

  Yes. She goes into that sort of, again, that- When I first learnt about rationality, like I read everything on Less Wrong, if people know that, which is incredible resource for it, and it really breaks down how you get this, you know, your brain, which is like the map to match the actual territory, which is the universe, as accurately as possible. But where I think it's maybe lacking a little bit now, because I've had some of these weirder experiences, which actually where I wasn't, you know, in the classical sense, rational, I, you know, clearly went off the beaten path into some like weird land, but it was actually very beneficial to me, even if it was like some completely useful fiction, it was still useful.

• 1:23:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:05Speaker 04

  And this idea of like useful fictions, I think, needs to be explored further.

• 1:23:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'd also add that much like poker, science, I don't think a lot of folks realize is largely a game of probabilities.

• 1:23:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:18Tim Ferriss?

  You don't prove something 100% most of the time. It's like, well.

• 1:23:23Speaker 04

  Literally never, actually.

• 1:23:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can have overwhelmingly compelling data, even with, say, an observational study, say with the sort of quintessential example would be cigarette smoking causing lung cancer, right? But most of the times, like this suggests with this degree of certainty that this is the case. But when you start to look at the replication crisis, which is not just in social sciences, it's all over the place. And especially if you start to actually roll up your sleeves and get involved in science, whether that's as a subject, I've been a subject in studies at all sorts of places. I started doing it as an undergrad. I was a subject in one of Daniel Kahneman's studies.

• 1:24:07Tim Ferriss?

  And it was not very intellectually engaging. It was like spacebar every time, like a green square popped up or something, but I needed the $7 an hour, whatever it was. And I've been a subject at Stanford with heat exhaustion experiments. That was also not terribly fun, marching to exhaustion with like an esophageal probe and an anal probe, kind of meeting in the middle, in fatigues with weights on a treadmill and a sauna to like complete.

• 1:24:33Speaker 04

  Collapse.

• 1:24:33Tim Ferriss?

  Mental collapse. Yeah, so why do I do these things? Because I'm interested in seeing the process. And even some of the best science you could point to in the most prestigious journals, when you actually get in there, it's a lot messier than people think. But people want to have confidence in something, then religion has become so out of fashion that they look to the high priests of science and they're like, at least I have the confidence in this being true.

• 1:24:58Speaker 04

  So I actually want to, one of my next videos I want to make on this, which is about basically these signaling prestige, bad incentives that get society stuck in these kind of, these, these traps essentially. So we're stuck in one of those with the current status quo of, of the way science is done. And this is not at all to knock any scientists, you know, they're doing, they're doing their absolute best, but this, the way the system has been designed, we give all the rewards to the people who first make the new fancy discovery and don't give any credit to the people who then actually replicate it and verify it.

• 1:25:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally true.

• 1:25:33Speaker 04

  So there's this incredible incentive to be always looking for some new novel thing in order to get that, you know, get your, your thing published in nature and get those research dollars for the next time, but it doesn't actually really advance human knowledge because so many of these things don't replicate. And it's, we're sort of stuck in this spiral of just like, everyone's trying to please do whatever they can to get in the journal. And it's, there, there's a name for it. So there's this really incredible short online book called Inadequate Equilibria by the guy who wrote most of the stuff on Less Wrong, Eliezer Yudkowsky. And I recommend-

• 1:26:06Tim Ferriss?

  Inadequate Equilibria?

• 1:26:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:26:09Tim Ferriss?

  It's a heavy name.

• 1:26:10Speaker 04

  Oh, man. I know it sounds, it's so good. It has one of the best things. It has a discussion, a fictitious discussion with an alien from a perfect society, like a, a basic person who thinks everything's explained, you know, everything that's wrong in our society is because of like, there's bad people being greedy. And then with a cynical, smart economist. And they have this three-way discussion talking about like, reason why the US healthcare system is so expensive. And it sort of goes into this meandering thing about-

• 1:26:34Tim Ferriss?

  That's a cool premise.

• 1:26:35Speaker 04

  It's so good. Like, like you must include this in the show notes.

• 1:26:39Tim Ferriss?

  How long would you say it is?

• 1:26:40Speaker 04

  I mean, ideally they read, they could just read chapter three, honestly. It's, it's, I don't know, it's like a 45 minute read. Yeah. It's just, it's like a book chapter and you can kind of read it standalone.

• 1:26:49Tim Ferriss?

  We'll put this, we'll put it in the show notes.

• 1:26:50Speaker 04

  But basically it's, it's talking about these like, these traps that we can get into where it gets people now speaking game theory, it gets society stuck in like shitty Nash Equilibria. So a Nash equilibrium is when two people or multiple people are playing in a strategy where it would be bad for anyone to deviate from that strategy. It's like everyone's stuck doing that. But not all Nash equilibrium are actually created equal. There are some where if everyone was doing X instead of Y, everyone would be happier. They'd also be like, you know, now stuck in a new thing. So like a good example of this would be, so I just made a video called the beauty wars about this like fictitious thing called Moloch, which I call like the demon of negative sum games, basically. It's like the god of

• 1:27:33Speaker 04

  negative sum games. It's the, it's a force of bad, usually economic incentives that make people sort of sacrifice things that they want in order to optimize for a short term goal. And the example I talk about is these beauty filters on Instagram. I don't know if you've spent any time-

• 1:27:49Tim Ferriss?

  They are horrifying. I mean, in how dramatic they are. I'd never seen these things before until my girlfriend showed them to me and I was-

• 1:27:57Speaker 04

  They're mad.

• 1:27:58Tim Ferriss?

  -dumbfounded.

• 1:27:59Speaker 04

  They're horrifying, not only in how impressively good they are at doing stuff, but also how now the really insidious ones are the subtle ones. Because there are some where you would never, you'd go online and you would not be able to tell if you don't know the person, or even if you know the person, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell. You just think it's a good picture of them. They're so subtle, but they're so effective. It seems like there is clearly just some kind of optimal face structure that, you know, our eyes find pleasing. And it just tweaks people, makes the eyes a little bit wider apart, or a little bit bigger, or the lips, you know, just, just changes the proportions just right, that it sets the, you know, the dopamine spike off in your brain. And-

• 1:28:36Tim Ferriss?

  It's gonna make online dating really hard.

• 1:28:38Speaker 04

  Oh, man. Well, so as a girl on Instagram-

• 1:28:40Tim Ferriss?

  Not that I'm on the field. I'm not on the playing field, but-

• 1:28:42Speaker 04

  But right.

• 1:28:43Tim Ferriss?

  If I were, that sounds like a headache.

• 1:28:44Speaker 04

  Well, and but also for people who use them, like, so I'm a girl on Instagram, you know, I, for a while, certainly like made a lot of my career off the way I looked. There's such an incentive pressure, you know, if I want to keep playing the game of trying to grow my Instagram, like sexy pic, yeah, it's the arms race, exactly. And that's what Moloch is. Moloch is this like the god of arms races and it's like these, these bad incentives where we could, the cheap thing for me to do is just to use one of these AI filters on, on, on all my pictures and I know I'm going to look good and I'm going to get a ton of likes and it'll grow my thing, but it will make me miserable in the process. And if you poll probably most particularly women on, on Instagram, they are not having a good time with these things either on themselves. Cause if you then like compare your face side to side, you're just like, man, I, you, you just, it just makes

• 1:29:29Speaker 04

  you feel ugly. And so we're in this weird situation where no one wants to do stuff that makes them hate their face, but they're doing it anyway. It's like a lower Nash equilibrium. You know, we could all be in a higher Nash equilibrium where we're not doing it, but instead we're all stuck down there because of these bad game theoretic incentives. So this is my current obsession, this thing called Moloch and I think about it all the time.

• 1:29:49Tim Ferriss?

  M O L O C H for people wondering and we'll, we'll link to that in the show notes. So just to underscore this for folks, because I do suggest that everybody check out your YouTube channel. What's the best way for them to find your channel?

• 1:30:01Speaker 04

  Probably the best thing is if they search for my name and then the beauty wars. That'll link to the video I just talked about.

• 1:30:08Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 1:30:09Speaker 04

  And then you can find my channel from.

• 1:30:11Tim Ferriss?

  And just for the spelling, everybody, it's Liv, L I V, last name, B O E R E E, which means I learned just beforehand.

• 1:30:22Speaker 04

  Drunk farmer. So they say.

• 1:30:25Tim Ferriss?

  So they say.

• 1:30:26Speaker 04

  And I did grow up on a farm. And I did drink a lot.

• 1:30:31Tim Ferriss?

  So good. So good. Yeah. Ferris, you know, the best I can tell.

• 1:30:36Speaker 04

  You're a big wheel.

• 1:30:38Tim Ferriss?

  Could be that. It also refers to Ferris, like Ferris oxide, F E R O U S.

• 1:30:44Speaker 04

  Rusty.

• 1:30:45Tim Ferriss?

  Because apparently some of my progenitors were silversmiths. I don't know how it all fits together. Seems like a very dubious story. I'm not sure, but I want, I want some story to go along with the last name, but I don't have drunken farmer. That's an amazing one.

• 1:31:03Tim Ferriss?

  Liv, we should do a round two sometime. We're practically neighbors. We have so much we could talk about. We've got a million other things, even in the notes in front of me that we could cover and should cover. I'm thinking about this training and.

• 1:31:17Speaker 04

  Are you gonna do it?

• 1:31:19Tim Ferriss?

  We'll see. Requires more mezcal to make that decision.

• 1:31:22Speaker 04

  I think we could, we could condense it down. We don't have to do the full eight weeks. I think commit to even three weeks. Honestly, I think you would, J. K. will still be better than you at that stage. I have to say that. Not he would be.

• 1:31:37Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Three weeks, three weeks. I'm going to, I'm going to sleep on that. I do my, I do my best thinking when I'm asleep. Let me sleep on that. Is there anything else that you would like to say? Any closing comments? Places you'd like to point people, anything at all you'd like to say before we, before we wind this down?

• 1:31:53Speaker 04

  No, I mean, I guess do check out my, my YouTube. I'd love people to go and I'm, I'm now I've moved to Austin and I'm like building a studio and everything. I'm going to be ramping up production again. So I would love people to go and just sub to my channel so that they catch my stuff because of, you know, playing the rat race, the attention wars. That's the name of the next video is the attention wars, which is about why Twitter and everything is making us so angry and hate each other.

• 1:32:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:19Speaker 04

  That's a big one.

• 1:32:19Tim Ferriss?

  Talk about a nasty game.

• 1:32:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. And Moloch, Moloch's in that.

• 1:32:23Tim Ferriss?

  Moloch, Moloch's all over that.

• 1:32:24Speaker 04

  Fucking Moloch.

• 1:32:27Tim Ferriss?

  So Liv, we're going to link to everything in the show notes. People can find you at livbury.com also, which I would imagine has links to many things. And we will put links to everything we've discussed, all the resources, inadequate equilibrium, and all other good things in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. And so nice to see you. Thanks for taking the time.

• 1:32:52Speaker 04

  This was awesome.

• 1:32:53Tim Ferriss?

  Super fun, super fun. And for everybody listening, as per usual, thanks for tuning in. And until next time, just be a little kinder to yourselves and to others than you think is necessary. And take care.

• 1:33:09Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1.5 and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half-page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

• 1:33:51Tim Ferriss?

  And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday. Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. My god, am I in love with Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep, and I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat has always been my nemesis.

• 1:34:35Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:35:18Tim Ferriss?

  Recover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time. She doesn't need cooling. She loves the heat and we can have our own bespoke temperatures on either side, which is exactly what we're doing. Now, for me, and for many people, the result, Eight Sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster, reduce sleep interruptions by up to 40%, and get more restful sleep overall. I can personally attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways. It's the total solution for enhanced recovery, so you can take on the next day feeling refreshed. And good news, Eight Sleep has launched the next generation of the Pod.

• 1:36:03Tim Ferriss?

  The new Pod 3 enables more accurate sleep and health tracking with twice the number of sensors. It's just a smoother, better experience that delivers you the best sleep on earth. At least, that has been true for me. Simply add this to your existing mattress and you're all set. It is not magic, but sometimes it does feel like it. It just works. So, go to eightsleep.com/tim and save $250 on the Pod cover. That's eightsleep.com/tim, all spelled out, E-I-G-H-T, eightsleep.com/tim. Eight Sleep currently ships within the US, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. You can also find the link in this episode's description.

• 1:36:47Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. I've been asked this for years. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance, so you can cover your bases. If you're traveling, if you're busy, if you're not sure if your meals are where they should be, it covers your bases. I've recommended it since The 4-Hour Body, which was god eons ago, 2010, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, you'll be hard pressed to find a more nutrient-dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multimineral greens complex.

• 1:37:28Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:38:11Tim Ferriss?

  formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D, I've found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So, adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim.