#315: Lessons Learned Traveling The World

This episode explores travel, and I'll take the partial credit or blame in advance, as it might want to make you quit your job and head off to the airport with a backpack. I have interviewed some fascinating people from around the world and in the next hour we will actually travel around the world with them. We'll also explore specific tips and strategies from our conversations related to how they think about travel, how they personally travel, and the role that travel can play in your life. This includes conversations with: Vagabonding author Rolf Potts https://tim.blog/2014/11/04/rolf-potts/ about seeing the world now rather than waiting until some vague "later" that might never happen. My friend Kevin Rose https://tim.blog/2017/02/26/the-random-show-drinking-urine-exploring-japan-and-figuring-out-life/ about hiding tattoos in foreign lands and getting by without knowing the local language. Phil Keoghan https://tim.blog/2017/05/26/phil-keoghan/ from The Amazing Race about a life-changing epiphany earned while shipwreck diving. Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly https://tim.blog/2017/06/20/cool-tools-for-travel/ about favorite travel tools and gadgets on our trip through the mountains of Uzbekistan. I hope you enjoy this episode of The Tim Ferriss Radio Hour! This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn https://LinkedIn.com/Tim and its job recruitment platform, which offers a smarter system for the hiring process. If you've ever hired anyone (or attempted to), you know that finding the right people can be difficult. If you don't have a direct referral from someone you trust, you're left to use job boards that don't offer any real-world networking approach. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first

• 1:03Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:27Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. More specifically, another edition of the Tim Ferriss Radio Hour, where I go back through the 300-plus guests who have been on this show, think about the conversations, and look for patterns or themes that we can explore. And this episode will dig into travel, one of my favorite topics, and I will take partial credit or blame in advance, as it might make you want to quit your job and head off to the airport with a backpack. Coincidentally, exactly what I am doing tomorrow and why I'm recording this intro way, way past midnight. Now, I've interviewed some fascinating people from around the world.

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  It's kind of crazy to think that this is my job. How happy am I? How lucky am I? And in the next hour, we will actually travel around the world with them in a way, because we recorded these episodes all over the planet. We'll also explore specific tips and strategies from our conversations related to how they think about travel, how they personally travel, the tools and gadgets they use, and the role that travel might play in your life. First, I talk to the one and only Rolf Potts, the author of Vagabonding, one of my favorite books of all time. Some of you may know, starting around 2004, I traveled the world for roughly 18 months after this complete implosion and deciding to either shut my business down or completely reinvent it and extricate myself. The lessons learned over

• 2:55Tim Ferriss?

  those 18 months formed the basis for much of my first book, The Four Hour Work Week. On that journey, which ranged from the back alleys of Berlin to lakes in Patagonia, I had next to nothing: one suitcase, one backpack, and only two books. One of those books was Walden by Henry David Thoreau, naturally, and the other was Vagabonding, subtitle, "An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel," written by Rolf Potts, which is about a lot more than just travel.

• 3:25Rolf Potts?

  People, you know, they put off what they really want to do until they're too old to actually do it.

• 3:30Tim Ferriss?

  Next, my friend Kevin Rose and I share our travel experiences while sitting on tatami mats in a traditional inn in the Japanese hillside, in Kanazawa specifically, and we cover everything from how to cope when not speaking the local language to how Kevin has to hide his tattoos, oh, those tattoos, in certain countries, including Japan.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Went in to use a spa, and she goes, "Tattoos?" And I said, "Yes," and she handed me flesh-colored tape.

• 3:58Tim Ferriss?

  Then I talk travel and diving adventures, among other things, with Phil Cogan from The Amazing Race.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  And I just wrote down everything that I felt like I had all the time in the world to do, to get out, to go, "Okay, this is not a jazz rehearsal. You can die, you will die. You don't know how long you've got before you die."

• 4:16Tim Ferriss?

  And, of course, the incredible Kevin Kelly and I get into our favorite travel tools and gadgets.

• 4:22Kevin Kelly?

  What else do you have in your backpack, which is stuffed here in the back of our car right now?

• 4:29Tim Ferriss?

  So, let's jump right in. Rolf Potts, @RolfPotts on Twitter, has reported from more than 60 countries for the likes of National Geographic Traveler, The New Yorker, Slate.com, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, The Believer. It goes on and on and on. Sports Illustrated, National Public Radio, you name it. His adventures have taken him across six continents and include piloting a fishing boat 900 miles down the Laotian, or Laotian, Mekong, hitchhiking across Eastern Europe, traversing Israel on foot, bicycling across Burma, driving a Land Rover across South America. Sounds like a long, long-ass trip. And, traveling around the world for six weeks with no luggage or bags of any kind.

• 5:11Tim Ferriss?

  Rolf is perhaps best known for promoting the ethic of independent travel and his book on the subject, Vagabonding, which I mentioned before, subtitle "An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel," has been through 28 printings and translated into many languages. It is also, by the way, the reason I started the Tim Ferriss Book Club and produced an audiobook of this book, because it could not be found and that bothered me. You can find out all about that at audible.com/timsbooks if you want to see the other books in that selection. But back to Rolf. He won the 2009 Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers and became the first American author to win Italy's prestigious coveted Chatwin Prize for travel writing. Many people fantasize about travel, yet they never follow through.

• 5:56Tim Ferriss?

  They never book their trip and take those first steps. Rolf explains, in what follows, the concept of vagabonding and how it differs from just another vacation.

• 6:11Rolf Potts?

  Well, I like that you bring up the idea of fantasizing about travel, because I think it's something that everybody does. And it's one of those top three, if not top two or one, things that people dream about that. And you see it in the movies all the time. And in fact, I mentioned this in Vagabonding, you know, the heist movie where the whole goal is to have this complicated robbery so they can have enough money to move overseas to a wonderful place. And as I say in the book, is you don't need to rob a bank to do that. In fact, you can do that for a cost that is equal to, and sometimes less than, your cost of living in a major American city. And so I think... An important principle I bring up in vagabonding is saying, don't, don't put this off.

• 6:54Rolf Potts?

  If you're dreaming about travel, and most people do, and, and you know, and if you don't dream about travel, that's fine, but I really address these travel dreams, which are so common, that don't wait until, until you're too old, because, um, you know, retirement isn't necessarily the best time to, to, to do something like this. And in fact, Henry David Thoreau, I think Walden was the other book you, you took on your travels. That's right. Talks about how people, and I'm not quoting him directly, they, you know, they put off what they really want to do until they're too old to actually do it. You know, that's a paraphrase. Um, and so if you're 18, 28, you know, 38, 48, whenever you're dreaming about travel, put, make your goals soon and, and don't put off those goals because they're very attainable.

• 7:39Rolf Potts?

  And, you know, I think there's a lot of fears that are tied in to confronting vagabonding, which you asked me for the, for the definition. It's, vagabonding is long-term travel. It's not just a vacation. It's not a week or two off, um, that, you know, society gives you as a vacation. It's six months or two years or, you know, six weeks that you make for yourself to travel in earnest, not as a consumer experience, not as a vacation, but as, you know, a more deeply meaningful life experience and as a way to actualize your wealth of time. And I think this is an idea we'll come back to a lot, and it's something that you write about as well as me, is the idea of time wealth, the idea that your experiences are more valuable in life than the, the things that you accumulate, than the, the things

• 8:24Rolf Potts?

  that are always being touted as the most important things in life. So, uh, travel is a great way to cash in on your time wealth. And, and vagabonding, just by definition, is a more meaningful way of travel. It's a way of slowing down and really discovering parts of yourself instead of just buying a lot of experiences, which is, which we've sort of been conditioned to do as American consumers. My first vagabonding trip was 20 years ago this year, oddly enough, and- Happy anniversary. Thank you, thank you. It was just this time that I was, that I was straggling back- Back to Kansas after having this amazing eight-month trip around North America. And it was a trip that I thought would be my last. I thought I would get travel out of my system so I could become a responsible American workaholic

• 9:09Rolf Potts?

  and then maybe return to travel when I was old. But you you mentioned the idea of fear and the fears I had going out were, you know, is this going to be expensive? Is this going to be dangerous? Am I going to come back and be compromised professionally? And all of those sort of turned into the into the opposite, that it was a lot safer than I expected, it was a lot cheaper than I expected. And I came back and for 20 years I've been integrating travel with with a professional life that continues to diversify. I continue to to do other things to make money while at the same time having big swathes of time to travel. And I'm not suggesting that everybody needs to, you know, become a vagabonder for a 20-year

• 9:54Rolf Potts?

  chunk. And in some ways, I travel a lot less than I used to, you know, 10 or 15 years ago. But it's something that you can do. It's an option that you can have and it's it's not an option that you wait for life to give you, you create it. And so I'm a big believer in the active aspect of vagabonding, of saving your money. The lottery is another metaphor I use a lot in vagabonding, that people keep waiting for the lottery to reward them. But as as we all know, the odds that you're going to win the lottery is pretty low, but we've already won the lottery. We're born with time wealth. And so it's just a matter of creating these travel experiences or these time-rich experiences

• 10:35Rolf Potts?

  through things like simplicity and just the decision to make these sort of things happen.

• 10:40Tim Ferriss?

  What type of sites or resources would you recommend to people who are trying to find comparable folks, let's just say, people who will help them alleviate their fear of travel? Or just in general, what type of online resources do you recommend?

• 10:57Rolf Potts?

  Well, Google, for one, I mean, if you just Google, you know, thirty-five years old, two kids, one year of travel, then odds are you'll find twenty blogs of people in that demographic who are doing just that. So, so really, be unabashed and very specific about Googling, you know, your fears or your demographic and just see who, like you, is is out traveling the world. There's a lot of great traveler communities. I've been affiliated with bootsnall.com since the very beginning of VAGA bonding. And part of their MO is just sort of creating community and and and support

• 11:41Rolf Potts?

  for people. And they have they have blogs and resources on their site. And there's other travel communities as well.

• 11:46Tim Ferriss?

  It's boots, the letter N, all.com, right?

• 11:50Rolf Potts?

  Yeah, B O O T S N A L L dot com. And they've been operating out of Portland, Oregon for years and have just quietly been doing very the nice work of reassurance and saying, oh, so you so you're worried about an around the world flight? Well, here's what around how around the world flights look. You know, you're worried about a certain situation, you know, here's here are some resources for that. And and they're not alone. I'm most familiar with them because we've been we've sort of shared a similar mission for a long time. But there are big communities of travelers who who are happy to help and and sort of help newbies feel better about these prospects of of long-term travel.

• 12:31Tim Ferriss?

  For you, and and perhaps there are older examples, but you mentioned that you're you're taking a trip before we started recording. And you're doing a home swap. Is that is, would you mind perhaps elaborating on

• 12:47Tim Ferriss?

  how some of those options work, those that you're familiar with? Because I think that many people who consider travel think in terms of one of their main expenses being staying in a hotel, right? And I'd love for you to to share any of your thoughts on that.

• 13:03Rolf Potts?

  Yeah, well, it's shifted the way the travel world works in in some ways that are delightfully convenient. And in some ways that are a little bit strange. I think that technology is one of these double-edged swords that in some ways has turned us into insufferable micromanagers on the road.

• 13:22Tim Ferriss?

  Can you elaborate on that?

• 13:24Rolf Potts?

  Yeah, well, I'll start with the negative.

• 13:26Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 13:27Rolf Potts?

  You know, I, the travel culture which I started in, which was 20 years ago, but really my more international traveler travels are more like 15 years ago. It's about showing up in town and knowing that when you get there, the unexpected awaits you. That you, that you're going to walk to the hotel district. You may have a guidebook with some hotel recommendations, but you're going to shop for your hotel. You're not going to find a deal online. You're going to walk in there, you're going to see the room, you're going to haggle because in, in, in all throughout Asia, you know, basically any place outside of the industrial world, prices are up for grabs and, and, and haggling in person is so much more, gives you so much more leverage than haggling online because you can go in, look at the room and physically leave

• 14:12Rolf Potts?

  if, if the owner doesn't give you a price that you're, that you're into. And so these days, it has become so convenient, not always a bad thing, but it has become so convenient that people just assume that the best deals to be had are the ones online. And then pretty soon you've locked in, you're traveling for six weeks and you know where you're sleeping every night in advance. And it really compromises the flexibility of travel and, and the serendipity of being inspired by a place and thinking, I'm going to stay here for a few days. Or wow, I just met this traveler who told me about this great place up in the mountains and I'm, I'm not going to go to Varanasi. I'm going to go up into the Himalayas and spend my time there.

• 14:51Rolf Potts?

  This technologically enhanced micromanaging cuts into that serendipity in a certain way. And, and it also connects us to home. And, and again, it's a two edged thing. Social media and the, and the constant connectivity that comes with smartphones, for example, allows us to really find things that we couldn't find before, but it cuts into the idea of wandering around and finding things by surprise, finding things organically and letting, letting a destination reveal itself to us on its own terms instead of sort of finding that place as a consumer before we get there. And a lot of technologies have eliminated things like loneliness and boredom. Which sounds good and is good to a certain extent, but loneliness and boredom can lead

• 15:36Rolf Potts?

  you to those moments that sort of force you into a new version of yourself. They force you to be more extroverted.

• 15:42Tim Ferriss?

  Totally agreed, totally agreed.

• 15:44Rolf Potts?

  They force you to read the local newspaper instead of, you know, looking through your Facebook feed, right? And so that's, that is what we're up against with this technological, these technological advances. And I don't want to be the grumpy older traveler because I remember being twenty and listening to these, you know, baby boom era hippies sort of lecture me on how travel used to be. You know, back at a time when telephone answering machines and credit cards were seen as this decadent form of technology. And so I know that there are younger travelers who don't know anything but the constant connectivity of travel. But unplugging is important and we can talk more about that if you want. And we can also talk about the pluses and there I have many recent examples about how

• 16:29Rolf Potts?

  technology have helped. This recent home exchange is just a longtime friend who lives in Brooklyn. She's a writer and she wants a quiet place. I have thirty acres in Kansas and so I get an awesome pad in Brooklyn for a week and she gets a quiet farm in Kansas for a time. I think in places, in more expensive places like Europe, you know, the hostel was your go-to. It was where, if you wanted to save money, you would go to the youth hostel and it was a great place to meet people, you get a cheap bed, you would forego a few amenities but you would hang out in the hostel. Well, I went to Amsterdam this summer. I teach a writing course in Paris every summer and my sister and my nephew came and visited me and we wanted to go see Amsterdam.

• 17:13Rolf Potts?

  And using Airbnb, I was able to get a full cottage, a fifteen-minute train ride outside of central Amsterdam for about half the price as a hostel for three people in the center of Amsterdam. So instead of staying at somewhat grungy hostel in the red light district, we were staying in this little town filled with windmills and we had our own house to ourselves and we could just walk down the street and get groceries. And so... Airbnb, that was an Airbnb hookup. Couchsurfing is a similar, has similar benefits. It just allows you to break out of not only that old hotel set of assumptions, but also out of the hostel set of assumptions. The idea that the cheapest option in any place is going to be a hostel.

• 17:58Rolf Potts?

  Especially traveling in groups. For the three of us, if I'd been alone, maybe the cottage wouldn't have been as cheap as the hostel. But with three of us, we were getting hostel one bed at a time. We just got the perfect place to stay through Airbnb. And so, those services and even social media, even going on Facebook or Twitter. And I'm not a big believer of tweeting while you travel. I think that that really puts you into this home mindset and it pulls you out of the place where you are. And the point of travel is experiencing what's before your eyes and not what's coming across your social media feed. But before your travel, before one's travels, I'm a big fan of throwing out a tweet or Facebook post that says, "Hey, look, I'm going to be in this place.

• 18:42Rolf Potts?

  What are some suggestions?" And that is something that didn't exist 10 years ago and is not tied to a business or social networking thing like Airbnb or couchsurfing. But it could just be that your buddy from high school has a friend who's in the military in Germany and they have an ex-girlfriend who lives in Stockholm and suddenly you have a place to stay through very random circumstances. And so, that kind of, it's the old model of sitting in the hostel or sitting in a guesthouse or a bar in an exotic part of the world, talking to the six travelers who are there with you and them giving you advice on points further down the road. That principle has been taken to social media and through networking, that's another way

• 19:25Rolf Potts?

  that technology has allowed that old hostel room. It's actually killed the literal hostel room, where people are now staring at their phones in the hostel room. But it has expanded the virtual hostel room, where instead of talking to the six travelers you're with physically, you can be talking to 600 travelers through your networks who might have some good advice for you.

• 19:50Tim Ferriss?

  This next segment was recorded in rural Japan, late one evening with my friend Kevin Rose. @KevinRose on Twitter, affectionately known as KevKev by those in the know. Serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, and all-around wild and crazy guy. We've been through a lot together. And here, we discuss Japan, how to do it cheaply, and many other things. And the tips in this next segment apply to just about anywhere, not just the land of the rising sun.

• 20:22Tim Ferriss?

  And we are at Adaya, is the name of the place. And if you hear any waterfall-like sounds in the background, that is because we have a natural onsen bringing water into the rooms where there are wooden tubs that are effectively indoor/outdoor. There's an open wall, so you look out into a forest/hillside, and the steam pours out into the great outdoors. It is winter, so there's tons of fog and mist and so on. It's just a magical place.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's absolutely beautiful. And one of the reasons why I chose this place to stay is, one, I had never stayed in a ryokan, like traditional Japanese house, before, and I always wanted to do that. And number two, when you're talking about an onsen, like a natural spring, it's very difficult, because in Japan, if you have any tattoos whatsoever, you are forbidden from doing the onsen.

• 21:14Tim Ferriss?

  Public baths.

• 21:16Speaker 03

  Public baths, because they say that you're a yakuza.

• 21:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's associated with organized crime. So if you have tattoos, as Kevin does.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 21:24Tim Ferriss?

  My Little Pony and both deltoids.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  They're beautiful. I got the long-haired with the tassels. It's quite a breathtaking thing.

• 21:32Tim Ferriss?

  It is breathtaking. And you are not allowed to go to public baths, or most of them. Also true in, say, hotels where they have beachfront. You're not allowed to go on the beach if you have exposed tattoos.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  Also hotels, when you're going to just use their kind of spa. Because I went in there one time, I was staying at, I think it was a peninsula, and went in to use a spa, and she goes, "Tattoos?" And I said, "Yes." And she handed me flesh-colored tape.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Like a little square of tape. And, and I have a few and I was like, I'm gonna need the whole roll. And it ended up not being, it didn't actually happen. I didn't go in, so I would have been kicked out. But this is nice. It's in our room. So every single room here has its own little private bath, hot water being piped in. And it's, it's been very relaxing.

• 22:28Tim Ferriss?

  And I should say also, we're not going to talk about Japan the whole time, but I do think Japan is worth highlighting for a few reasons. I mean, I was an exchange student here at age 15, which was really my first time abroad. And that year completely changed my life. I lived with host families. I went to a Japanese school. I was the only American in my class photo, which was very easy. Where's Waldo? All in school uniforms. So like crew cut, white head, and then all Japanese kids, about 5,000. And it has proven to be such a subtle and nuanced culture. Simultaneously, you can come here as someone who doesn't speak Japanese,

• 23:11Tim Ferriss?

  get completely lost, be completely bewildered. The English level is generally pretty low here. So it can be a totally alien environment where you can't read any signs and it's not dangerous.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  Right. And the people will go above and beyond to try and kind of decipher what you're saying with your hands.

• 23:31Tim Ferriss?

  Well, not only that, so why don't you tell the story of Tony and the earphones?

• 23:35Speaker 03

  Well, what are your phones?

• 23:37Tim Ferriss?

  The earphones that he dropped on the sofa.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. So two days ago, well, there was two stories. Okay, so this is classic Tokyo for you. And, and it's part of the reason why I love Japan so much is like the people here are just so friendly and really concerned with your well being. So Tony, one of the, the members that was traveling with us, that is traveling with us, he dropped his, his headphones and just, you know, we're talking standard kind of Apple headphones, you know, white cord, whatever. And we walked into a coffee shop.

• 24:11Tim Ferriss?

  And now, just for context, this is only one of the busiest streets. In a shopping district.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:17Tim Ferriss?

  In Tokyo.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, so there's people just, you know.

• 24:19Tim Ferriss?

  Fifth Avenue in New York City.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, just like all over the place, just, you know, probably stepping on the headphones and whatnot. Somebody on the second floor of a building across the street was looking out the window, saw that these, these, these small white headphones fell out of his pocket, ran down the stairs, grabbed the headphones, figured out which coffee bar we had gone into and then proceeded to enter in and hand back the headphones, which was just nuts. And then on top of that, the exact same coffee bar, I had gotten out of a taxi, left my cell phone in the taxi. And, you know, of course, when you're in the States, you're like, shit, like my, my cell phone's gone. I'm never going to see it again.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  And so I used Find My Phone, you know, the, the Apple built in feature so you can see where the, your, your phone is. I used it off of my wife's cell phone. And, you know, it's 20, 25 minutes away from where we're at in a taxi. And I'm like, ah, damn it. Like, how am I ever going to get this back? And I, I pressed the button to, which sends a signal to the cell phone. So it sends out an audible alert to the, you know, so anyone, whoever is, is nearby can hear that. All of a sudden, I'm watching on GPS. The phone starts getting closer and closer and closer. This driver drives all the way back 20 plus minutes, comes up the stairs to the coffee shop where he dropped, where I had, I'd left him, and then hands me my phone back.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  I tried to tip him, you know, and I'm thinking like, in the States, you know, you give somebody 20, 40, 50 bucks. Like, thank you so much. He wouldn't accept my tip and was just so polite, bowed to me and left. It's just like, yeah, oh, man, it just, it makes you, when you live, when you live in the States, you're just like, what, what happened?

• 26:04Tim Ferriss?

  Well, we have a few friends with us. And it also makes you feel like a. In many, many, many instances, an uncivilized hairy savage.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  That's what I'm saying.

• 26:16Tim Ferriss?

  You wake up feeling, you know, you're gonna be ashamed of at least seventeen things that you do that day.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 26:23Tim Ferriss?

  But it's a wonderful environment. And one thing that I want to underscore before we move on, and I'm sure we'll come back to it, is that you don't have to have a lot of money or spend a lot of money to enjoy Tokyo. This is a common misconception. It can be extremely expensive, but it doesn't have to be extremely expensive. And certainly, Japan as a whole doesn't need to be extremely expensive. When I was here at fifteen, I had no money whatsoever. And you can, for instance, find stores that you would recognize, like 7-Eleven, that are completely different from the equivalent at home. And you can go into a 7-Eleven, for instance, and you can grab one of my favorite on-the-go bites, which is onigiri.

• 27:05Tim Ferriss?

  These are rice balls wrapped in dry seaweed and filled with various meats, vegetables, or fish, say tuna, whatever it might be. And those typically cost about a hundred and ten yen. So let's just call that a dollar. And you can find those at 7-Eleven, a store called Sunkus, S-U-N-K-U-S, or Lawson. It's packaged in such a way that you pull apart the plastic, which keeps the seaweed separate. It automatically wraps this rice triangle, and you have effectively an entire meal right there for somewhere between one and two dollars.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know what's funny? I don't know if I told you this, but I was out here with David Chang. I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with him, but he's one of probably the top five chefs in the United States.

• 27:44Tim Ferriss?

  Very famous Momofuku.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  Momofuku, yeah, just like.

• 27:48Tim Ferriss?

  Milk bar, right?

• 27:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, Milk Bar. And we happened to be here on the same trip with some friends, and he was ranting and raving about the 7-Eleven egg salad sandwich. And this is like, you know, a multi, like, you know, I think he has three Michelin stars at one of his restaurants. I mean, I'm top-of-the-world chef freaking out about a 7-Eleven. Different 7-Eleven in the United States.

• 28:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  I mean, not high-end food by any means. I mean, a couple bucks for this egg salad sandwich, but prepared with, like my beer says, prepared with pride.

• 28:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there's so much, a couple of other go-tos that suggest in Tokyo, if you can get a ticket, go to the Ghibli Museum, G-H-I-B-L-I Museum, which is the museum, it's, think of it as the Disney Museum for the Walt Disney of Japan, and that's Miyazaki Hayao. He did Spirited Away, my favorite movie, My Neighbor Totoro, a whole long list of blockbuster and kind of genre-defining anime films. And it is, it is one of the most incredible museums I've ever been to. It's in the middle of what they call Mitaka Forest, which is right next to or is Inokashira Koen. And then a lot, a lot of things in Japan are also free. You can go to Harajuku, H-A-R-A-J-U-K-U,

• 29:06Tim Ferriss?

  where you can find on the weekends Elvis impersonators doing their dancing. This has been going on for decades now. And you can also go to Takeshita Doori, which is, I guess, Takeshita Street or Alleyway, where you find dozens or hundreds of teenagers and high schoolers doing cosplay. So they wear these crazy outfits and walk up and down the streets, or showing off the weirdest outfits imaginable.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  Some people are into that.

• 29:30Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of people are into it.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  Like, do you, are you kind of like, when you see a cosplay, are you, because it's like a sexual thing?

• 29:36Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, well, for so, you know, I think that for some people, that might be part of it. But I think that it's just a form of, of hyper-expression in a culture where a lot of people feel very repressed or overly polite most of the time.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:53Tim Ferriss?

  And so then they blow it out on the weekends, and they like put in pink contacts and white hair and 12-inch platform shoes and wear the wackiest shit imaginable.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe more of a, in the, in the States, cosplay is like a bigger, because they dress up like video game characters and things like that, when, you know, at Comic-Con and whatnot.

• 30:11Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Well, there are a lot of things that are... That's not really Japanese cosplay, though. There are a lot of things that are regular in other countries that end up being adopted by weird niche groups in the US and take on, in some cases, like creepier, weirder elements, right? Like Tango in Argentina, normal. Tango in some places in the United States, super weird. Yeah. And I'm just saying that as someone who loves Tango and dances, dances in many places, but primarily in Argentina way back in the day. Same thing with Japanese stuff. It's like, oh, manga, cool. And then you find like a little subculture in a given city in the US and you're like, wait a second, it's all 40-year-old guys who are weird, like, reading creepy, half porno, hentai manga. Okay, I don't think I'm gonna hang out here. Right, right. Anymore.

• 30:55Tim Ferriss?

  So, segue. Yes. How do we segue from that? Let's segue, well, from hentai. Hentai, you can look up for those people interested. There are two books that have helped me review and prep for this trip in terms of Japanese that I'd like to suggest people check out if you're interested in Japanese. Very short, and I was able to get through these really quickly. The first is probably for people who speak more intermediate Japanese, so you'd want some basics first, but it is 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese. And this is by, I think it's Giles or Giles, G.I.L.A.S. Let's say Giles. Murray, M-U-R-R-A-Y. So 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese, very, very helpful.

• 31:36Tim Ferriss?

  And then the second is maybe a bit dry for some people, but I like very concise grammar summaries that are a quick reference. This is Japanese verbs and essentials of grammar. And that is by Rita Lampkin, L-A-M-P-K-I-N. Phil Keoghan, K-E-O-G-H-A-N, at Phil Keoghan on Twitter, has worked in television for almost 30 years on more than 1,000 program episodes in more than 100 countries. His work has earned him numerous awards, including 10, that's right, 10 primetime Emmys. He is perhaps best known as the co-executive producer and host of CBS's series The Amazing Race.

• 32:20Tim Ferriss?

  But there's much more to Phil's story, including unbelievable bucket lists, near-death experiences, and all sorts of other adventures and misadventures.

• 32:30Speaker 04

  I was doing a story about a 22,000 ton shipwreck that had sunk in New Zealand. And it was down about 120 feet underwater and it was on its starboard side. 22,000 tons is like, it's as big as, you know, a cruise liner that you see going around at the ports around the world. And big, really big.

• 32:52Tim Ferriss?

  And 120 feet, for people who've never done any scuba diving, unless you have special equipment, I mean, that's not a lot of bottom time.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  Exactly. So, most recreational divers get certified to dive to about 60 feet. The best stuff that you see underwater is generally in the first 30 feet. Because, once you get past 30 feet, the color changes. You lose all the reds and everything becomes very blue. So, I always say to people, "Look, you don't need to go deep. Unless you're going onto a wreck or something, some real reason to go deep. The only reason to go deep is, you know, if it is a wreck, you can get great diving in 10, 15 feet of water with the coral close to the surface, the colors are brighter and so on." But this wreck was deep. And, as you said, the deeper you are, the faster you chew through air and you eat up air and that affects how long you can stay down.

• 33:45Speaker 04

  And the longer you're down, deep, the more nitrogen you get in your blood. And so, there's a real science to diving and you have to be super careful. You're a diver?

• 33:55Tim Ferriss?

  I am.

• 33:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you understand that.

• 33:57Tim Ferriss?

  Seen people get nitrogen narcosis. At exactly 120 feet. I saw a guy start to, he tried to take off all of his gear and just drop it in a small group. And he was stopped by a dive master.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  That was the guy that worked at Chippendales. I know the guy.

• 34:10Tim Ferriss?

  No, this is a different guy.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  No, a different guy. Okay. No, but, yeah, I've seen the same thing. They take the regulator out and they start having conversations with fish. It's not a good idea. It's getting narked.

• 34:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, that's all the more reason to get properly certified. So, I was with some very experienced divers and way more experienced than me and they were, they were doing the salvage and we were going to be the first people to shoot on the ship, get to go inside the ship and explore it. And the cameraman that I was with was also very experienced. But because there was, because there's so much silt inside the boat, and there was a current as well rolling through the boat, we were, and we, in those days, we were shooting on film. It's not like today where you could go down with a great GoPro and some lights and, you know, you could film for a couple of hours. We had a two and a half minute roll of film in a 100 foot daylight spool roll that was in a little housing inside the camp.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  So literally, that's the only amount of footage we had to shoot on film. That's how long I go back. So the plan was that we would go into the ballroom of the, of the ship, and big, big ballroom, and then the crew would come in from another door, and we would meet in the middle so that we didn't stir up all the silt going into the same entrances. And we'd swim towards each other, they'd get us coming towards them. And so we go down, and what I know now is, if you go into a wreck, you tie a line on the outside of the wreck so that you have something to follow out if something goes wrong. These guys were so familiar with the wreck, and so experienced, and knew the place so well, they didn't tie a line on.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  And I just sort of followed them in, not knowing that that was sort of what you should do. And, you know, the other rule with diving is you never leave your dive buddy, so I'm following this guy, and I was too scared to tell him, because I was trying to be a man that before, that I was, I'm really claustrophobic. So I go in this little doorway, and it would have been like, let's imagine a small window, like two by three, we go through this little porthole. And then we start weaving our way through the ship. And I, as we're going deeper and deeper and deeper into the shipwreck, I'm completely disoriented, I have no idea where I am.

• 36:29Tim Ferriss?

  My hands sweat just listening to the description.

• 36:31Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, and I started to breathe, like breathe, but every time I sort of like was at the point of tapping him to go, you know, I gotta get out of here, I feel panicky, he just kept disappearing deeper and deeper and deeper, and another corner, another corner, and I thought, and he was moving quickly because he's, he's used to being in this wreck, they're doing the salvage on this thing. So finally, we, we come into an opening, and then he shines a light around, and there's this huge ballroom.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  Now, the ship is on its starboard side, on its right side. So, all the tables on a ship are all bolted to the floor. So, imagine the tables on a right angle to us. And then he gestures to me to hold on to the table. And then, he told me on the surface that we were gonna switch out the lights to save battery power, cuz it's cold. And now, we don't have a lot of... We've got seven mil wetsuits on, it's pretty cold. And you can feel kinda the current pushing through the ship. And that's why we're holding on to the table, so we didn't drift, you know, through the room. And now, we're looking ahead, and he sort of points at me and looks ahead and says, "That's where the crew's gonna come out." And I knew that that's where they were gonna come out. So, I was like, "Okay." So, we're waiting with the lights off in the dark, and I'm processing all of this,

• 37:43Speaker 04

  and starting to try to slow my breathing down, like, "Stay calm, it's okay, you know, you're with an expert, everything is good." And, after what seemed like, like, minutes... I wanted to turn my light on, but I also didn't wanna do it cuz I thought he'll think I'm a wimp, like, "Why am I turning my..." I just wanted to turn my light on to see where I was, like, to have some sense of where I was. He flicks his light on, like, in Halloween when you take your light and you put it at the chin, and you make yourself look scary. Right. That's all I remember. The light went on, he's pointing from his chin, looking up. He looks scary. Then he gestures me with his hand, puts it out in front of me, like, "Wait." Then he points at my hands on the table, like, and gestures for me to hold on to the table.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  And then, boom, he just disappears around a corner. And I don't have my light on, he's got his light on, and the light disappears, and he's gone. Well, in that moment, I'm like, "Why is he leaving? Why did he just leave?" So, in my haste to find my light, I start flailing around, let go of the table, and I feel myself drifting away from where the table is. And moving drifting into the ballroom. And I just went into a mad panic and I couldn't find my light. By the time I found my light, I'd silted up all the water around me. I couldn't see anything. And now I don't know where the table was that I was meant to hold on to. And I'm looking ahead, I can't see any lights, I can't see him. And I started to breathe really, really fast.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  And now you're a diver, you understand this. But when you dive, and for anybody who's never had a regulator in their mouth, if you breathe too quickly, there's a little diaphragm that allows for exhalation and inhalation in the regulator that you put in your mouth to suck in air. If you go too fast, the diaphragm can't keep up with the speed of inhalation and exhalation, and then you start to suck water. So I started like taking little bits of water and I'm beating the valve and just panicking, like mad, mad panic. And I thought, I have to get out of here. And all you want to do is just get out, right? But I don't know how to get out. I don't know where up and down is. I don't, the bubbles don't go up when the ship's on its side like that and you're deep down.

• 39:54Speaker 04

  They hit the walls and then they run up the walls, they follow weird paths. And I thought, I have no idea where I am right now. I can't even see where the table is and panicking, panicking. And I knew that someone had died in there. Someone had gone in there and got disconnected from a group and he had died and drifted off into the ship and died. I also knew that one of the engineers never made it out when the ship sank in the first place.

• 40:20Tim Ferriss?

  And just to set the stage also for people listening, I remember when I did a dive at the Blue Hole in Belize, which is about 120 feet. This is when this guy got narked. It takes so long to get down because you're equalizing.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:34Tim Ferriss?

  By the time you get down, at least we were told at the time with the gear we had, you have eight minutes.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:39Tim Ferriss?

  So all of this is happening.

• 40:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, very quickly.

• 40:42Tim Ferriss?

  Very quickly.

• 40:43Speaker 04

  Very quickly. And we weren't on nitrox. Nitrox, as you know, is a mixed gas that you can get where it has more oxygen and less nitrogen, so it increases your bottom time. So this is pre-nitrox days. And so, yes, you're absolutely right, we had a very limited window, which is why he must have gone off to find the crew because he realized we were eating up a lot of time. And where were they? Where were the crew? Well, I don't remember exactly how I got from there to the boat. But this guy obviously came back to get me. And really, it's all a blur between...

• 41:21Speaker 04

  Panicking, mad panic, eyes like wide, like saucers, to being on the boat, to looking up into the sky and seeing the most amazing blue I'd ever seen in my life, like just looked like totally surreal. And then, and I'm lying on the ground, like breathing, and I look up and all these faces looking down, "Phil, you good? You good?" And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm good, I'm good," like trying to play like nothing happened. But my heart is pounding, like pounding. And I was so, like the feeling, the feeling of euphoria, the relief of being alive, to know that I was alive, was, was like nothing I'd ever experienced.

• 42:04Speaker 04

  And it really was, all this stuff, it was as if my IQ went up 25 points in that moment, you know what I mean? Because I was like, "How dumb were you that you thought you were going to live forever? How dumb were you that you did, you've been doing all these dumb things in your life and you have real, really have no purpose in life?" And I started to think about, this is all happening while I'm having these conversations with them, but I'm like, I'm thinking, "Man, I, I love girls and I haven't even like really explored that whole world and..."

• 42:42Tim Ferriss?

  That's like the second or third thing that comes up?

• 42:44Speaker 04

  It was actually right up there. I mean, I was in my sexual prime. I mean, come on. It was right up there. I don't want to say it was the first thing because I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me, but it was up there. And I was like, "Damn, you know, you've got a lot to do with your life." So, no, but there were all these things that came to me and a lot of them were very selfish. I was 19 years old, so I got myself together and I, I wanted to find a piece of paper and a pen.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  And I just wrote down just everything that I felt like I had all the time in the world to do and that I had to get down on a piece of paper to get out to go, okay, this is not a dress rehearsal. You can die, you will die. You don't know how long you've got before you die. You better figure out what you're doing with your life and you better get on with it straight away. And one of the first things on my list was go back in the shipwreck. Seriously, because I thought I cannot walk away from this fear. I was so petrified of what had happened and I decided I would explain to the diver, you know, that I found it challenging. He knew that.

• 43:52Tim Ferriss?

  Challenging.

• 43:54Speaker 04

  But I said, it was like, kind of like falling off a horse. I really felt like...

• 43:57Tim Ferriss?

  Gotta get back on.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Gotta get back on. I have to go back because if I let this fear get on top of me...

• 44:02Tim Ferriss?

  This time with some string or some rope.

• 44:04Speaker 04

  Well, I didn't actually go back with string because I didn't even, I didn't, I didn't have time to do the lesson about the string.

• 44:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Speaker 04

  But I, but I went back with, by disclosing a little more of my fear to the other diver and who was more honest. And, and then he, when he knew that and we had to get this thing shot, he was obviously more aware of, you know, he thought I was so, because I was so gung ho, like, he didn't have any indication that there was any fear in me at all. But then I kind of said, you know, listen, man, I really freaked out. He goes, oh, no kidding. And I, and I said, but I need to go back. We've got to go back and do this. And we went back and we did it and we shot it. And that was the start. That was the first thing I ticked off my, my list.

• 44:44Tim Ferriss?

  Question for you. So when you decided to go back down.

• 44:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:48Tim Ferriss?

  As you're descending.

• 44:49Speaker 04

  Still petrified.

• 44:50Tim Ferriss?

  And getting ready to go through that tiny opening.

• 44:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:53Tim Ferriss?

  What was the self-talk? I mean, it's a long time ago, but what, what is your self-talk like in a moment like that?

• 45:00Speaker 04

  Well, it's something that I've used a lot since then, which was, instead of internalizing everything, I looked out. And what I realized was that this guy was super experienced and had been down on that shipwreck many times and come out of there successfully many times. And if I followed his procedure and if I observed him being an expert doing something. And looked out at that, rather than turning it back into my own head about what I didn't know and what I couldn't do, that I was in good hands. So, ever since that moment, and all the crazy things that I've done, I've taken a tremendous

• 45:44Speaker 04

  amount of comfort in being surrounded by people who I know are better at me at doing something, who have tremendous expertise at whatever they're doing, and to really observe them in that moment, when they are in their... when they are using expertise that is taken possibly at least 10,000 hours to get to, and to look at it in a way like, wow, how cool is that? I'm with this person, man or woman, whoever it is, that is allowing me, giving me the privilege to be with them, to do what they do so well, and they're a specialist, and they're so good.

• 46:23Tim Ferriss?

  And so you would be explicitly reminding yourself of all these things if you're going into a situation that is provoking nerves and fear? Is that the voice inside the head?

• 46:34Speaker 04

  It is. I made up a quote, which I really... that I share with a lot of people, which is, "Focus on what you do have and what you can do, instead of what you don't have and what you can't do."

• 46:49Tim Ferriss?

  Up next, Kevin Kelly, @kev2kelly, the number 2, @kev2kelly on Twitter, might just be the real-life, most interesting man in the world. He would be my vote, I think, maybe tied with another gent who's gonna come up in a second. Kevin is senior maverick at Wired Magazine, which he co-founded in 1993. He also co-founded the All Species Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at cataloging and identifying every living species on Earth. In his spare time, he writes bestselling books, many of them, like "The Inevitable," subtitle, "Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future." And by the way, he's considered an incredibly accurate futurist. His predictions have panned out over and over again, even though he spends part of

• 47:32Tim Ferriss?

  the year with the Amish, but that's another story. He co-founded the Rosetta Project, which is building an archive of all... All documented human language and serves on the board of the Long Now Foundation. He alongside Stuart Brand and others, Stuart Brand might be the person tied with Kevin for the Most Interesting Man in the World nomination. He alongside Stuart Brand and others is also investigating how to revive and restore endangered or extinct species, including the woolly mammoth. Yep, Jurassic Park stuff, but in real life. I'd always wanted to travel with Kevin. For 10-plus years, I would say, I wanted, even before I knew him, to travel with Kevin. And I finally got my chance. And it is represented in this segment. We traveled through Uzbekistan together. Long story.

• 48:17Tim Ferriss?

  Kevin touches on a lot of cool stuff and we had a blast recording it in the back of a car as it sped through the mountains. So I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

• 48:29Kevin Kelly?

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

• 49:10Kevin Kelly?

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

• 49:20Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. The first cool tool, sitting in the back here, we have bags around us, bottles of water, a bunch of different gadgets and objects piled in my lap. The first that I can talk about is actually in my other piece of luggage. I don't have any checked luggage. And it is a jacket that I roll up and travel with constantly. It's from a brand called NAU, I believe it's based in Portland. And you can think of it as a blazer or a riding jacket. What makes it unique is... A number of different factors. A, you can roll it up and throw it on to say a black tee shirt and you look like you're ready for a business dinner or a formal or semi-formal occasion.

• 50:05Tim Ferriss?

  So it saves me the trouble of packing a lot of collared shirts, for instance. And there are collared shirts that don't wrinkle, but they do take up more space than say a black tee shirt. So this now, and it could be, I have several different models at home. Weather resistant, of course, if it was designed in the Pacific Northwest, you would expect that, which comes in handy. So that would be my first cool tool. Plenty of pockets, but there are lapels, so you can get away with murder. You could wear it in a light rain, or you could wear it at a nice dinner. And it is an incredibly flexible piece of clothing.

• 50:41Kevin Kelly?

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

• 51:01Tim Ferriss?

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

• 51:26Kevin Kelly?

  Cool.

• 51:26Tim Ferriss?

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

• 51:42Kevin Kelly?

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

• 51:51Tim Ferriss?

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

• 51:59Kevin Kelly?

  Or your belt.

• 52:00Tim Ferriss?

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

• 52:06Kevin Kelly?

  Right. Okay. So that's, and it's very lightweight, and about, tell the readers about...

• 52:13Kevin Kelly?

  How big it compresses into?

• 52:15Tim Ferriss?

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

• 52:50Tim Ferriss?

  at, I get it down to about a roll that is 10 inches in length and about 3 to 4 inches in diameter.

• 53:02Kevin Kelly?

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

• 53:16Tim Ferriss?

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

• 53:50Kevin Kelly?

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

• 53:57Tim Ferriss?

  N-A-U, now.

• 53:58Kevin Kelly?

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

• 54:04Tim Ferriss?

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

• 54:19Kevin Kelly?

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

• 54:26Tim Ferriss?

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

• 54:31Tim Ferriss?

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

• 55:15Tim Ferriss?

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

• 55:37Kevin Kelly?

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

• 56:13Tim Ferriss?

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

• 56:38Kevin Kelly?

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

• 56:43Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 56:44Kevin Kelly?

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

• 56:49Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 56:49Kevin Kelly?

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

• 56:52Tim Ferriss?

  This is a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard.

• 56:55Kevin Kelly?

  Okay.

• 56:55Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, we'll put the exact

• 56:57Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 56:58Tim Ferriss?

  model in the show notes.

• 56:59Kevin Kelly?

  Okay.

• 57:00Tim Ferriss?

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

• 57:04Tim Ferriss?

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

• 57:46Tim Ferriss?

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

• 57:56Kevin Kelly?

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

• 58:05Tim Ferriss?

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

• 58:40Kevin Kelly?

  So for side sleepers, this, these are a real, a real cool tool, because it allows you to sleep on your side while you have these earplugs in.

• 58:49Tim Ferriss?

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

• 59:00Kevin Kelly?

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

• 59:09Tim Ferriss?

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

• 59:22Kevin Kelly?

  But mostly for sleeping?

• 59:24Tim Ferriss?

  Mostly for sleeping, definitely.

• 59:25Kevin Kelly?

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

• 59:30Tim Ferriss?

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

• 59:33Kevin Kelly?

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

• 59:41Tim Ferriss?

  My fourth cool tool, and I might go over slightly here.

• 59:45Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah, no problem.

• 59:45Tim Ferriss?

  My fourth cool tool is a neck pillow.

• 59:50Kevin Kelly?

  Oh, I want one of those.

• 59:52Tim Ferriss?

  I've tried many different neck pillows.

• 59:54Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 59:54Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:00:14Kevin Kelly?

  The size of a grapefruit?

• 1:00:17Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:00:52Kevin Kelly?

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

• 1:01:00Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:01:13Kevin Kelly?

  And is it one of those horseshoe?

• 1:01:17Kevin Kelly?

  Shape items, or is it just a little kind of wedge that sits behind your neck?

• 1:01:21Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:01:39Kevin Kelly?

  So it's very ergonomic in that sense?

• 1:01:43Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:01:47Kevin Kelly?

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

• 1:01:51Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:01:57Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:02:09Kevin Kelly?

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

• 1:02:14Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:02:25Kevin Kelly?

  Okay.

• 1:02:26Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:02:50Kevin Kelly?

  3000 degrees centigrade.

• 1:02:52Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:03:07Kevin Kelly?

  Yeah, so, I just had an ordinary, cheap, you know, Chinese black, really compact umbrella that I carry in my little camera bag all the time, and I spray painted the top of it silver so that it reflects the light, and it makes it a little bit cooler on the inside, because just with the black umbrella, it tends to absorb that infrared and re-radiate it back down on your head.

• 1:03:35Kevin Kelly?

  Having a silver reflective layer bounces at least, you know, 60% of that back into the sky, it's a lot cooler, and...

• 1:03:45Kevin Kelly?

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

• 1:04:32Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there you have it, folks. The Tim Ferriss Radio Hour with just a handful of the guests and experts I've spoken with across more than 300 podcast episodes. And I myself am jonesing to throw in the backpack some sandals and hit the road, which is exactly what I'm doing tomorrow. So the timing could not be better. And the Tim Ferriss Radio Hour continues to be an experiment. So please let me know what you liked, what you didn't like, how it can be improved, how my voice grates you, haunts your dreams, what topics or themes you'd most like me to explore. In other words, I'd love any and all feedback, so let me know on Twitter. That's usually the best place to get my attention, @Tferris, T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S, and let me know.

• 1:05:15Tim Ferriss?

  And until next time, as always, thank you so much for listening.

• 1:05:24Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:06:07Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Ray Dalio's new book, Principles. If you're a frequent listener of this podcast, you might recall that Ray was a guest on this show. His episode was extremely popular. And in that episode, he shared his thoughts on everything from how he makes investment decisions to cryptocurrency and beyond. His story, Ray Dalio, you should look him up for sure, is fascinating. He started his investment company.

• 1:06:51Tim Ferriss?

  Some people would call it a hedge fund. There are different names. Bridgewater Associates out of a two-bedroom apartment at age 26. Now it has roughly $160 billion in assets under management. Over 42 years, he's built Bridgewater into what Fortune considers the fifth most important private company in the US. Along the way, Dalio took tons and tons of notes on what worked, what didn't work. And it was refined over time for training purposes with his employees, managers, and so on. Dalio became one of the 100 most influential people in the world, according to Time, and one of the 100 wealthiest people in the world, according to Forbes.

• 1:07:32Tim Ferriss?

  In this book, Principles, which has a permanent spot on my bookshelf, also has blurbs and testimonials from people like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and many, many more. Ray shares in those pages the unconventional principles that he's developed, refined, and used over the past 40 years to create unique results in both life, business, certainly in investing, and which any person, organization can adopt to help further their goals. These principles are what he believes is the reason behind his many, many successes. And Principles, the book, also offers a clear, very straightforward approach to decision-making that Dolly believes anyone can apply both in life and work. I highly, highly recommend

• 1:08:15Tim Ferriss?

  it. It will help you to become, in almost any context, a clearer thinker. So, visit principles.com for more details. Amazing that he actually has that URL. So, visit principles.com for more details and to pick up a copy. Check it out.

• 1:08:36Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn and their job recruitment platform, which offers a smarter system for the hiring process. If you've ever hired anyone or attempted to do it, you know that finding the right people can be extremely difficult. And if you don't have a direct referral from someone you trust, you're left to use job boards that don't really offer any real-world networking approach. And what I mean by that is, in contrast, LinkedIn, which is the world's largest professional network, has a built-in ecosystem that allows you to not only search for employees, but also interact with them and their connections and their former employers or colleagues in a way that closely mimics real-life communication.

• 1:09:16Tim Ferriss?

  More than 70% of the workforce in the US uses LinkedIn, and more than 22 million professionals view and apply to LinkedIn every single week. Unlike generic job boards, LinkedIn considers skills, experience, and location to match you with candidates, making it easier to find quality candidates. And maybe above all, you can directly contact a candidate's connections to get a good sense of if they are a good fit for your business. So, visit LinkedIn.com/Tim and receive a $50 credit towards your first job post. That's LinkedIn.com/Tim, T-I-M, for $50 off.