#886: The Random Show — AI Super Assistants, Boner Pills, Dream Engineering, Wizards, Supplements, Books, and More

In this edition of The Random Show, Tim http://tim.blog and Kevin https://www.kevinrose.com/ reunite in L. A. to talk AI super assistants that run your life over text message, agentic shopping, beta-alanine for climbing endurance, walnuts and sperm quality, dream engineering and anesthesia dreams, boner pills, man makeup, The Dark Wizard, Tim's upcoming book, a Jean-Claude Van Damme splits bet, and much more. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by: Timeline https://timeline.com/tim Mitopure, a highly pure form of Urolithin A that supports mitochondrial health and cellular renewal: Timeline.com/Tim https://timeline.com/tim (30% off for a limited time)Shopify https://shopify.com/tim global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business: Shopify.com/Tim https://shopify.com/timFin https://fin.ai/tim powerful AI Agent for all your customer service: Fin. Ai/Tim https://fin.ai/timGusto https://gusto.com/tim simple and easy payroll, HR, and benefits platform used by 400,000+ businesses: Gusto.com/Tim https://gusto.com/timTimestamps: 00:00:00 Start 00:00:52 AI super assistants: Instinct, Muse, Grok Bot, and ChatGPT dots 00:09:04 How AI agents could reshape shopping and video editing 00:20:02 Beta-alanine for climbing endurance 00:26:42 Psyllium, contaminants, and creatine without stomach trouble 00:30:53 Walnuts, sperm quality, and micronutrients 00:40:34 A2 protein shakes and practical training nutrition 00:46:39 Dream engineering, lucid dreaming, and brain stimulation 00:53:25 Anesthesia dreams and trauma recovery 00:59:38 DORA sleep medications and Alzheimer’s research 01:01:43 Plum Flower Curing Pills and Airofit breathing training 01:05:54 Brain-stimulating contact lenses and the mysteries of anesthesia 01:10:25 Boner pills, back pain, and the lure of enhancement 01:13:13 AI writing tools and the value of lived experience 01:17:10 “Personal Renewal”: John Gardner and the story of Cervantes 01:19:03 Man makeup, rosacea, and Kevin’s skincare routine 01:22:35 The Dark Wizard and the extraordinary life of Dean Potter 01:25:07 Studs Terkel’s Hard Times, Working, and the art of oral history 01:27:52 Exploring romantasy: Fourth Wing and A Court of Thorns and Roses 01:30:59 What Fifty Shades of Grey teaches about clear positioning 01:35:02 Tim’s next book: saying no in a world of noise 01:37:42 Authors Equity, publishing timelines, and the case for print 01:43:29 “Please Use AI,” Kurt Vonnegut, and preserving human connection 01:45:12 Will AI create more leisure—or just more work? 01:47:53 The $500 Jean-Claude Van Damme splits bet * DISCLAIMER FROM TIM FERRISS: I am not an investment adviser or a medical professional. Nor is Kevin Rose. All opinions are mine alone. Or his. Nothing here is investment or medical advice; it is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Please talk to your doctor before trying any drug, supplement, or protocol we mention. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors https://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts https://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books https://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Optimal minimal.

• 0:01Speaker 01

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

• 0:06Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 03

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 02

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

• 0:24Speaker 04

  Kev Kev, Tim Tim. Good to see you, man. Dude, glad we're doing this. Yeah, so fun to hang. Back in LA. Back in LA for a little bit, and it is a nice corner of the world. It's not bad. You know, until the failed state implodes, it's gonna be lovely. Yeah. It's, uh. We'll enjoy it while we can. Yeah, so you have lots that we can talk about. I've got some things jotted down. Where should we start? Let's start with probably the most talked about thing these days, which is AI. And, you know, I know people are tired of hearing about all this AI stuff, but I think there's been

• 1:03Speaker 04

  an inflection point in the last, I'd call it three weeks, that I am just really blown away by. Like, AI has turned into something, I kinda saw it coming, but I didn't think it would come this rapidly. So when I first thought of AI, I thought, okay, we have this chatbot, we can launch it, we can ask like questions, like of whatever, you know, I gotta repair this light switch, how do I do it? Like, that's typical AI use case over the last, I'll call it, you know, two years. In the last, call it month, there has been a release of a handful of AI assistants that are not your typical, like, ChatGPT, Claude, they're different. So have you played with Instinct at all? I haven't, but I know people, I know people are, yeah. So you should, you should provide some context for folks who don't.

• 1:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, so let's, let's start off, so let me first put the, these are the people in the ring that are entering this new kind of era of personal assistant AI, which is, I would say Instinct, Muse, which is a meta product, and then you have GrokBot, which is essentially Grok, which is Elon's project. So when Instinct dropped, someone sent me a text invite, was like, hey, you just gotta sign up for this. I was like, ah, man, I don't want another AI thing, like, you know, I already do this all day long, I'm using it for coding and all that stuff, like, whatever. So the first thing that you notice is that it's not another app to download. It actually is iMessage. So they have reverse engineered, and they actually give you just a phone number to chat with. It's closer to WeChat in China. Yeah, exactly.

• 2:30Speaker 04

  So I have this phone number, I text it, it was like, hey, auth your Google account, and like, I know this is your nightmare, from a privacy standpoint, but it's like, you know, give us your Gmail, give us your Google Drive. Here's a link dot RU, just click here. Yeah, exactly. It's like Russian site or something, but I, I click through, I auth it, I'm like, whatever, there's some hype, I hear it happening, people are doing this, like, I don't have any, like, nudes, but you probably do, like, I don't know, I don't know how much you keep all that stuff online. Probably done. What was this? Your nudes? You keep it in Google Drive? I just post those to my Tumblr account. Private Tumblr? Yeah. In all seriousness, though, do you lock down, like, do you have a separate offline storage for, like, sensitive shit? Uh, probably should.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, you should, we should talk about this off camera. Okay. Like, there's just certain things that, like, in my mind, I'm always like, okay, what's the blast radius of if something gets hacked? What is out there? Kevin gives me to worry about. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, alright. So, okay, so you auth in everything, and the first thing I notice is that this bot texts me back, and it's like, hey, you missed this doc you signed from a couple days ago. And I was like, oh shit, well, that was like, kinda helpful, you know, so I went in there and like, did it, and then it's proactively just watching everything, and it learns by my responses, everything I've done prior, and it really understands what I care about and what I should pay attention to. And who manufactures Instinct? It's just a startup. It's a self-named Instinct startup.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  It's a startup, it's, it went from like, zero to 10 billion in valuation in like, four months. It's crazy. Sounds, sounds like a sign of the times. Yeah. Now, why would you trust a smaller company from a privacy and access perspective versus like Muse or Meta or something? I trust Muse certainly more because it's just gonna be battle-tested. They're used to regulatory scrutiny, I mean, not that they're always the best actors, but same time, right? Well, they also. More, maybe more checks and balances. Yeah, and they came out and they, they actually did a whole briefing on their security model around their private instance of. Who's they? Meta did, with Muse, yeah. So Muse is a very similar product, it actually has an app, I think they're adding a phone number and whatnot.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  It is just, it's wild, it's wild in that this is something where I never thought it would connect the dots in the way that it does, like, I'll give you an example, I was doing an international flight, and I was like, okay, I wanna have like a prescription for gabapentin so I can get some sleep on the flight, right? Careful, duh. Okay, I knew, you have to be careful with it, like, whatever. So it's, I had a prescription coming in, it got called in to get filled, and Instinct was like, hey, just so you know, your prescription's ready, you should go pick it up, leave by this time because your flight's on time. That's very helpful. And if you wanna grab it, go over here now, grab it then, and then head to your airport. Can I tell you something crazy? Yeah. Just in terms of synchronicity, so three months ago, I drafted a preface to the

• 5:23Speaker 04

  new book, this book on No that I'm writing, because there are many examples in the book around assistants, and some of the very early reader feedback, because I tested it with a hundred plus people, was some of these seem like 1% of problems. And so I wrote a preface, which was a letter from, it was called A Letter From The Future, and it basically talked about how in 2000, let's call it 78, I was using a Gen 1 Dexcom, which was like sticking barbecue tines under your skin. I was with you. So uncomfortable. You got me on, you remember that? The, the plunger, it was a plunger. It was so painful. For people who don't know, this is a continuous glucose monitor, and now you push a button, it's like, woo, tingly, and you get it in, you have to stick a plunger into your body. You basically, yeah, you basically had to stick two very long prongs under your

• 6:08Speaker 04

  abdominal skin. Now it's like a little peck on the cheek. Yeah. It's so much better, but at the time, I was like, nobody's gonna use this, and I was like, well, I don't agree with that because the tech's gonna improve very quickly. Right. And particularly, once it went from this weird beeper device to smartphone, it was pretty clear that the adoption was going to be rapid, and then get outside of type 1 diabetics, certainly type 2, but then get to kinda healthy normies and worried well. Yeah. And on the assistant side, I was also pointing out, like, back in the day, yes, it was a 1% problem, just like inbox overwhelm, and everybody has six inboxes now, but in the case of assistants, it's like, sure, it went from like, full-time in-person to

• 6:49Speaker 04

  virtual assistant, to digitally enhanced virtual assistant, and I was like, by the time you read this, we will have AI assistants. Yes. That can do 99% of what I'm describing, and it's already happened. Yeah, so I've had it change flights for me, I've told it, there's a restaurant that's a hard reservation to get into. This is all Instinct. Yeah, and I've told it, hey, there's a hard reservation to get into, and it's like, hey, I can't log in with your open table, but it drops at this time every two weeks, but I'll, if you give me a link, and it's a secure, like, vault, and I gave it my open table login, and then it snagged the reservation for me perfectly, and like, adds to my calendar, and then the cool thing is, if you have multiple friends with Instinct, you can friend your instincts together.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  So I said to a couple of my friends, there was one person I wanted to take to dinner, and our instincts became friends, and so I said, share the calendar invite and all the details, and the instincts just talk to each other and figure out the schedule, it's magic. This is how Skynet auto-populates for all the Illuminati, by the way, they don't exist, people, but they put them all in the same calendar invite to get them into one spot so the drone swarm can strike them at once. Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. I'm definitely gonna use this, everyone is gonna be using it. Right, I mean, ChatGPT just announced Dots, that's their version of it now, so that's come out. How do you think about your history, memory, context, if you've predominantly used something, let's just say, this may or may not be true, but if you've predominantly

• 8:18Speaker 04

  used ChatGPT, would you be inclined to use Dots, or would you be inclined to use something else? It's. I don't know if they've made it harder or impossible to export your. You can export memories and some of that, but they are, I mean, this is the wedge that they're looking for, they want to have something that is uniquely theirs, that isn't just, like, what's happening right now with the AI enthusiasts is that if there's a new model that comes out, there's no, there's zero loyalty. Right. It's like, oh, Claude's better, I'll go use Claude, oh, ChatGPT's better, and like, people are jumping all over the place. This is a, finally becoming this durable storage of your life and your story and your history and all the things that you're into, and that is gonna be, I think, something where they're gonna kinda lock that down. The agentic AIs, like, once you authorize all that shit, you don't wanna do that every

• 9:02Speaker 04

  time a new model drops somewhere else. Yeah. So question for you, I saw a little news around this, somebody, a friend of mine, who's keen on startups and investing, texted me about contrast in styles and business models between Amazon and Shopify, and this may have developed very, I'm sure it has, developed very rapidly, but I think that Amazon blocked.

• 9:28Tim Ferriss?

  Meta's agent, in part because Amazon's business model, I think it's, I don't want to hazard a number, it was texted to me, but they have sponsored placement, they have advertising. I mean, there's, there are a lot of drivers that get circumvented, revenue drivers that get circumvented by agentic commerce.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:47Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So they blocked it. And then like 24 hours later, Shopify is like, we are open for business.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:52Tim Ferriss?

  Agents welcome.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 9:54Tim Ferriss?

  How do you think that plays out?

• 9:57Speaker 04

  You're hitting on a very fascinating trend, which is this idea where applications, destination websites, all those things go away. So in a world where you say, hey, you know, I just need some new towels for my house, right? Rather than going on Amazon and searching for new towels, or whatever it may be, or Shopify, or whatever independent shop, you just ask ChatGPT. Now, what Amazon is worried about is if they are top of funnel, if ChatGPT is the entry point, they can just be swapped out. So it's like, oh, you know what? Walmart has the same thing for $10 less, and they just push that right into the feed. And so for them, they're like, oh shit, this was our moat, because we were the destination. Everyone comes to amazon.com, they shop there, and now the AI is deciding and buying on

• 10:42Speaker 04

  their behalf. So brilliant by Shopify, but this is happening everywhere. So I'll give an example, another example. I just shot a podcast with Henry Schuckman, our Zen master friend, and I was like, you know, I don't want to send this over to an editor, I'm just gonna like, do it myself. And so Blackmagic is the maker of cameras and editing software. They have a great stuff. They have an editing package called DaVinci Resolve. And it's like Premiere, Final Cut, any of these editing software suites that are out there. Well, what they did is they launched an MCP server, which essentially means that with one click, you can tie it to your AI. So I drop in three camera shots, two pieces of audio, and I said, go make the podcast. I told that to ChatGPT. It connected directly. I'm watching

• 11:26Speaker 04

  on the screen, it's rearranging everything, editing it, doing all that stuff. Same thing happens with Photoshop now, same thing happens with CAD software. You don't need the software anymore. You just tell the AI. And essentially, this can be headless. Like, I would never need it to see Photoshop ever again. I'm like, hey, just go build me this book, or whatever I want to do, or remove this stain, or whatever it is, and it's just done. It's wild, because you don't need these destination sites like an Amazon anymore. You just talk to your clients. So in some sense, all of these apps are up for grabs. Like, all these, it's whoever's gonna play nicely with that point of entry. And that was always Google. But the thing about Google, it was always pushing you to the final destination. They weren't doing

• 12:06Speaker 04

  the commerce themselves. And so now, it's like, gonna be all in the one suite. So you'll never need to leave Claude, or ChatGPT, or whatever. It just does it for you. It's so crazy.

• 12:17Tim Ferriss?

  What do you think Amazon does? Because Amazon, I mean, does have huge advantages in terms of economies of scale, pricing, distribution, like physical distribution of product, speed of delivery, et cetera, right? They still crush, as last I checked, I mean, in most cases, they crush everybody else.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 12:34Tim Ferriss?

  But they don't want to take whatever the hit is for all of these sponsored placements and everything else.

• 12:42Speaker 04

  They're gonna have to.

• 12:43Tim Ferriss?

  They're gonna have to.

• 12:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 12:44Tim Ferriss?

  So do you think they launch their own agent?

• 12:46Speaker 04

  I mean, they already have their own AI.

• 12:48Tim Ferriss?

  Are they able to compete?

• 12:49Speaker 04

  Hmm, I don't think so. Because you have on-device, so Apple Intelligence, those models will get better. Don't count Apple out. Give them three years, right? And probably not even that, a year and a half. That will be that domain. You have Gemini on Android, which is gonna power all of Android. And then you have ChatGPT, and Anthropic, and probably a couple others, that will probably just be like, oh, I don't prefer Coke to Pepsi. Like, you want your own AI, it's better at certain things. And that will be the entry point for all of the internet, all of applications, all of everything. Sponsor ad revenue on Amazon goes away largely, because it's gonna be sales, most commerce will start to funnel. We saw this back in the 2000s. So in the 2000s, it was like, okay, online versus offline commerce, right? It was like, of course, everyone goes to Sears to buy their tools,

• 13:34Speaker 04

  right? And then all of a sudden, oh, guess what? 10% of tools are being sold on, you know, on Amazon now, or online now. And all of a sudden, you know, a decade goes by, and you're seeing the vast majority of stuff that is just being purchased online, right? And that's why Sears, and JCPenney, and all these big retailers just go out of business, right? So I think what's going to happen is we're gonna see that transition happen once again, but it's gonna be through the front ends of AI interfaces. So you'll just be talking to your AI. Like, hey, you know, I just need a refill of this. Like, can you have it here? Yeah, we got you covered with Walmart, they get to you in two hours. Or do you want to go to Amazon? It's $2 cheaper, but it'll be here tomorrow. You know, it'll be those types of real-life conversations that you'll just be having with your AI agent. It's a wild transition time.

• 14:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. I've been watching this, but I've actually been waiting to have this conversation. I mean, we'll continue, obviously, chatting offline, to figure out where to start. Well, maybe you can just tell everybody. So it's like, if people are using, let's just say they're using, if they're already using Claude and-

• 14:31Speaker 04

  Claude doesn't have those out yet.

• 14:33Tim Ferriss?

  And ChatGPT.

• 14:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:35Tim Ferriss?

  All right. And they're like, well, look, if there's an advantage to using Metas, what is it called again?

• 14:40Speaker 04

  Muse.

• 14:41Tim Ferriss?

  Muse. If there's an advantage to using Muse, let me know. Maybe. If there's an advantage to using Instinct, let me know. Maybe. How would you suggest somebody who is non-technical experiment with these things?

• 14:52Speaker 04

  Well, if you have the ChatGPT app on your phone, and you're paying for it, it's gonna be there right now, I believe, for everyone. Instinct's still invite-only, so they're slowly rolling that out. So you'd have to know somebody, and you can poke around online, on Twitter, or whatever, and you'll find somebody. And then Muse has been number one in the App Store for like, the last couple of weeks. So that one's pretty easy to get, and you can just sign up for it. So I would say probably Muse, and Croc is still behind, their models aren't the best. That one, I would just like, sit on for a bit. It's a little bit more technical. But, um, yeah, you can just start right away, and then just play with it, because you'll, you'll launch your little bot, and then it gives you a phone number, so you can actually call your bot. And so, like, listen to this. This is actually, I'm calling my agent right now, on the phone. This, this is ChatGPT.

• 15:40Tim Ferriss?

  Hi, I'm Sabrina.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Hey there. Good to hear from you.

• 15:44Tim Ferriss?

  I wanted a sexy voice. I wanted a sexy voice. Sorry. Can you, uh, tell me about the podcast that I'm shooting today?

• 15:51Speaker 03

  Sure. Let me pull up what I've got on that. You're recording with Tim Ferriss today. It's 12:30 to 3:30.

• 16:02Tim Ferriss?

  Probably bleep some of that out. Your social security number is-

• 16:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. So, but, I mean, I can just call this anytime. It doesn't cost against your AI credits. So you can be in the car, and just be like, hey, can you move this for me? Or, you know, can you follow up with this email? Or whatever it may be.

• 16:16Tim Ferriss?

  That's amazing. All right. I need to mess with that.

• 16:18Speaker 04

  It's fun.

• 16:18Tim Ferriss?

  It's time for me to actually-

• 16:19Speaker 04

  It is time. It is time.

• 16:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Step into the arena. Amazing. All right. Call to action. I'm in.

• 16:30Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, guys, I'm recording this at an airport. I am on the go. And this ties into Urolithin A. What the hell is that? Some of you have heard me talk about this on a Q and A episode I did this summer. It was in response to a question around what I'm doing for cognitive performance, or at least possibly mitigating cognitive decline. I take on very few new supplements. This is one that I'm taking for a lot of good reasons. And there are some very credible, peer-reviewed publications in humans, not just mice, on this stuff. Let me give you a little bit of background. Your cells have these built-in maintenance crew. Every day, they clear out worn-out mitochondria, the power plants in your cells, to put it

• 17:11Tim Ferriss?

  simply, and replace them with healthier ones. The technical term is mitophagy, and it gets less efficient as we age. Urolithin A supports that renewal process. By the way, it also seems highly plausible that it helps with decreasing neuroinflammation and a number of other things. So it's deeply, deeply interesting. But getting back to the renewal process, your gut bacteria can make Urolithin A from compounds in foods like pomegranates. But many people make very little of this, or none at all. In one study of 100 adults, only 12 had detectable levels of Urolithin A. So I just take 1,000 milligrams per day. That

• 17:50Tim Ferriss?

  is what's supported by some of the research. And the version I take is Mitopure, M-I-T-O-P-U-R-E, from Timeline, a highly pure form of Urolithin A, backed by 15 years, 15-plus years, actually, of research and multiple human clinical trials. And for a limited time, Timeline is offering you 30% off. I've been using it for, God, I don't know, a year now, year and a half? And it's always fun when I come across sponsors related to products I'm already using and have been using for a long time. So check it out. Get 30% off. Go to timeline.com/tim. That's Timeline, as you would spell it, T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E. Timeline.com/tim. Check it out.

• 18:32Tim Ferriss?

  As some of you might recall, I launched my own limited edition coffee a few years back. It was delicious. It was a blast. But that's a story for another time. Here's why I'm bringing it up. I needed and wanted an online store that would be beautiful, fast, and reliable. Plus a checkout that wouldn't scare people off at the finish line. So I used this episode's sponsor, Shopify. I've known the team since 2009, when they had something like 10 employees, and I was using it back then. Many of the most successful startups I advise today also use Shopify. From fast-growing new companies to some massive juggernauts, they all use Shopify. I started my first online business back in 2001. Back then, it

• 19:16Tim Ferriss?

  meant late nights, a lot of broken code, emailing tons of customer support emails, and headaches after headaches after headaches, hoping the payment page wouldn't stop orders, drop orders, the whole nine yards, right? In contrast, my Shopify store got up and running well within a few hours, ran 24/7 without drama, and Shop Pay, the easiest checkout on the market, got customers from add to cart to paid in seconds. Shop Pay lifts conversions by up to 50% relative to guest checkout. So it really smoothes the way. I use it all the time when I'm buying stuff. So if you're ready to make your first sale, check it out. Go to Shopify.com/tim and start your free trial today. One more time, that's Shopify.com/tim.

• 20:03Tim Ferriss?

  Should we talk about some other items?

• 20:05Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 20:05Tim Ferriss?

  On our random non-agenda. I want us to bring back an oldie but goodie. I don't know if you've ever tried this.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  I've not.

• 20:14Tim Ferriss?

  So this is a bottle of tablets. And this is something that I've played with for at least a decade, probably more.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  You tab us erectile dysfunction. This is interesting.

• 20:30Tim Ferriss?

  It's called beta alanine. And the reason I started playing with this again, this is a dietary supplement, is I have, I think you know, been getting back into climbing, rock climbing, and have been training really seriously for about two months. It's not very long, but I have coaches, or I had coaches when I was on the East Coast and in Austin, but now I'm still traveling. So that'll get figured out. But I wanted to see what I could do to improve endurance. Because I think, like many people, when you get on the wall, you're gonna use your arms too much. You're gonna end up in these locked off positions, meaning your arms are bent, and you're gonna flame out your forearms or other parts of your upper body.

• 21:12Tim Ferriss?

  So yes, you need to learn how to use your feet, and I'm doing all of that. But I wanted to see if I could address some of the physical constraints. And I didn't want to use some of my normal standards like creatine, because creatine leads to water retention and weight gain. And the last thing I need at 180 pounds with these tiny little squirrel paws, with another limiter being finger strength, obviously, to add weight. I didn't want to add weight. It really adds an additional hurdle to progress. So beta alanine was something that I surfaced again, and I wanted to see if it had ever been applied to climbing. And it turns out that there have been studies done specifically with elite climbers.

• 21:56Tim Ferriss?

  And there's not a lot, but randomized and double blinded, 15 elite climbers taking four grams a day for four weeks or placebo. And somewhat like creatine, depending on which protocol you use, they are large pills. This will be fun to watch.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  Why?

• 22:14Tim Ferriss?

  Kevin just had two.

• 22:16Speaker 04

  What's wrong with?

• 22:16Tim Ferriss?

  I'll explain.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  Is this not beta alanine?

• 22:18Tim Ferriss?

  No, it is. I'll explain some of the, some of the side effects in a moment. That's hilarious. But let me give you the data first. And.

• 22:31Speaker 04

  You're lying. I just thought it was what you said it was.

• 22:33Tim Ferriss?

  When you're with Tim, rule number one is you should never just swallow a bunch of pills from a bottle that he puts on the table. But here's the upshot of it. So with longer traverse, that means getting on a wall, moving sideways, right? There was, in the intervention group with beta alanine, after they had kind of saturated, it takes about two to three weeks to start seeing results, if you're gonna see results. But 57% longer before falling versus 19% improvement with placebo. And an additional 21 seconds of improvement beyond placebo. That is a ton. It is highly, highly statistically significant. And then looking at longer traverse, and by longer, this means like one to two minutes.

• 23:16Tim Ferriss?

  So the duration's really important, one to two minutes, which on, say, top roping, when you have a rope attached, doing like a 35 foot wall, like maybe that's the duration, right? Which I was doing. I wasn't doing huge walls like 70 or something like that for indoor. But I was also doing top roping and also bouldering, which is a different thing. So it doesn't really help super short bouldering, that's without ropes, but doing, let's just say, five to 10 moves to get to the top. Campus board, like, didn't really help any of that stuff. I won't bother with defining that. But say longer traverse moves completed, there's basically like a four move improvement in the placebo group,

• 23:59Tim Ferriss?

  just from training effect. And then in the beta alanine group, it was 10 moves. And I have noticed a difference. It took a while, and you can't really separate out all of the elements that go into it. Because I am training, I'm doing isometrics, I'm doing collagen plus vitamin C before training. So collagen peptides from Momentus plus vitamin C. You don't need very much, 500 milligrams or 1,000 milligrams. Five, I think it was as low as 50 in the research, boosts collagen production in the fingers.

• 24:34Speaker 04

  What's one scoop from them, by the way? Because I take the same stuff. What's a full scoop, you know?

• 24:39Tim Ferriss?

  I don't recall what's on the label, but it's like a scoop of that.

• 24:42Speaker 04

  It's a few grams, right?

• 24:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Plus, plus some vitamin C. And the type of collagen does matter. You kind of want hide if you can get it as opposed to bone, just to avoid heavy metal and other contaminant issues. But the point being, I think this stuff has really helped. To the extent that my coaches, like, it was almost by the clock, like, when I got to two and a half weeks of taking this, not before, they were like, whoa, what happened? There seemed to be like a phase shift where if I'm working on, and it did, for me, seem to translate to bouldering, which makes me wonder how much of it is the beta alanine. But suffice to say, I've been very impressed, and this is something where I've done testing before and after to try to track some of the improvements. So it is a heavy lift, though.

• 25:28Tim Ferriss?

  Because if I'm taking, in my case, not four grams, but 6.4 grams a day, roughly, right? I'm taking eight of these pills a day. It's a lot.

• 25:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:39Tim Ferriss?

  And I would suggest, and this gets to the side effects, this is thorn, beta alanine SR, that means sustained release, to minimize, and I might be getting the pronunciation wrong on this, one side effect, which is called parasthesia. It just means body tingling, basically. It feels like.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Like niacin flush.

• 25:59Tim Ferriss?

  It feels like a niacin flush, or like many parts of your body fell asleep, like you had crossed your legs for too long and sat down.

• 26:08Speaker 04

  What do they attribute this to? Is this a kind of thing, is it ATP enhancement?

• 26:12Tim Ferriss?

  This is, I'm actually not sure. It's carnecine. I believe it's carnecine saturation, muscular carnecine saturation, but I am getting over my skis. So people can look it up. But beta alanine has quite a bit of published literature on it. I was just very surprised that there was actually a study that got funded for 15 elite climbers. Like, who even pays for that? I have no idea. Probably some supplement manufacturer, probably. That is one of the supplements. And since I brought it up, in terms of, I had mentioned with the collagen and contaminants,

• 26:51Tim Ferriss?

  just a quick public service announcement, if you're taking, say, psyllium husks for fiber, very helpful for a lot of reasons. You don't just need to be boomers like us with aging colons and rectums. It's also very helpful for glycemic control. Like, you can take it before meals and stuff like that. If you take any kind of fiber, you do want to add water. But the point is, there are a lot of heavy metals and contaminants in most common brands of psyllium husks. So Yerba Prima, Y-E-R-B-A, or Organic India are two that I have looked at testing results for, and those are good. But one doctor joked to me, he's like, yeah, you could go to fill in the blank, major pharmacy, Chan, and grab something off the shelf, but it's gonna be 2% fiber and 98% arsenic.

• 27:36Tim Ferriss?

  It was a joke. It's not quite that bad.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:39Tim Ferriss?

  But the contamination actually is worth paying a lot of attention to, particularly if it's something like this that you'd be taking on a daily basis.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I read another study recently that just was like, ah, shitty, like, this killed me. And that is, you know those seaweed chips that you can get at like, like the grocery stores, like the little flat papers? So much microplastics in those, because they're pulling all that seaweed out of the ocean, and they're just like filled with microplastics.

• 28:03Tim Ferriss?

  You just can't win. You can't win. You can't.

• 28:06Speaker 04

  Okay, speaking of supplements.

• 28:07Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, look at this.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  You hate creatine.

• 28:09Tim Ferriss?

  No, I don't hate creatine. I love creatine. I just don't find it to be the most helpful for climbing specifically.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  So, yeah, because it puts a few pounds of muscle on it, or whatever. Muscle water, whatever. Helps me lift more weight, though.

• 28:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, for sure.

• 28:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. So creatine, we've talked about this, I'm sure, at least on, I mean, we've done, what, like a couple hundred random shows? I think we've talked about this at least 10 of them, which is, creatine can be your friend, and sometimes not so much.

• 28:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 04

  If you overdo creatine, it is a problem with the GI. It can be.

• 28:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, also in your airport. Oh, God, yeah. You don't, don't do it, Tim, does, or, well, I don't do it anymore, because I do learn, I'm slow. But yeah, if you're like, let me have a double espresso, some creatine, and MCT oil on your way to the airport, don't do that.

• 28:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:53Tim Ferriss?

  Because disaster pass potential is high. I would say also, because of some of the research, you know, Rhonda Patrick has highlighted on the cognitive benefits.

• 29:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, 10 grams a day.

• 29:02Tim Ferriss?

  I was taking 10 grams a day, but I started getting really wicked muscle cramps in my hands, my feet. And then I dialed it back to five. No cramps.

• 29:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:12Tim Ferriss?

  So.

• 29:12Speaker 04

  I'm at five right now.

• 29:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think that for my system at least, and I think Rhonda's also observed this, I might. Not be getting that right, but I think she just talked about publicly also experienced cramping at 10 grams plus per day.

• 29:25Speaker 04

  So I've had all kinds of, my stomach is horrible with creatine. Like I have just historically.

• 29:31Tim Ferriss?

  You're a delicate flower with the stomach anyway.

• 29:34Speaker 04

  Sometimes, yeah, it depends on the thing, but like sometimes I'm actually really good. It's very confusing. But anyway, long story short, I was doing some research and I don't know this brand at all, so take this with a grain of salt, but the technology is legit. I looked up the study, the technology that they're using to create a delayed release creatine. And this is the only one on the market. So if you look at these pills, they look wild. They have all these little tiny beads inside of them. And they.

• 29:59Tim Ferriss?

  Looks like, I think it was Dexitrim back in the day.

• 30:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally. Yeah, but I will tell you, like, this is the first one I've been able to take because of the delayed release and does not mess up my stomach at all. It's amazing.

• 30:09Tim Ferriss?

  Well, yeah, you're burying the lead here. Body Tech Elite Creatine Beadlet. Okay, here's the, I think, critical piece with Nova Spheres, registered trademark.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I did the research on what Nova Spheres are.

• 30:22Tim Ferriss?

  Nova Spheres technology.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:25Tim Ferriss?

  All right, look at that.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I mean, if, it's just one of those things where like, listen, I have also, when I travel, I'll use flip brands all over the place, but lately I like the stuff from Momentus because of the quality checks they do. And I have their little travel satchels that I take with me and just mix them with some stuff. As long as I slow drink it over like three hours, I'm fine, you know? But this is the first time I've been like, okay, on the go, I can just like chug five pills at once and no issues. So anyway, that one's fun.

• 30:53Tim Ferriss?

  Should we talk about sperm quality?

• 30:54Speaker 04

  Let's do it. Oh, that's where I wanted to go next. How did you know? God.

• 30:58Tim Ferriss?

  I got the request.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:59Tim Ferriss?

  Kevin tried to anonymize it.

• 31:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:02Tim Ferriss?

  It's through the YouTube livestream and I was like, please talk about sperm quality. I was like, all right, I know it's you, Kev.

• 31:08Speaker 04

  Kev.

• 31:09Tim Ferriss?

  Was this a question somebody wrote in?

• 31:10Speaker 04

  No.

• 31:11Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, kidding.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  For yourself?

• 31:13Tim Ferriss?

  So I have long been fascinated with nuts, not in the testicle sense, although that's probably true also, just the, some of the benefits of consuming different types of nuts, like Brazil nuts.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  Jesus. I really thought you were talking about a ballsack the entire time you were saying that.

• 31:30Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there, there is a double entendre here. So I talked about, for instance, Brazil nuts and selenium way back in the day. And of course you have to look at the funding sources and so on, but there's a brand of nut butters, I'm sure they do other things, called Artisana. And I don't know why their raw almond butter is just better than every other brand in terms of consistency. They somehow homogenize, that might not be the right word, the oil so that you're not dealing with like the oil slick on the top and like getting it all over your countertops and stuff. But I ended up, just for shits and giggles, buying their walnut butter, because I had never had walnut butter and it has some cashews in it.

• 32:12Tim Ferriss?

  And, you know, I'd like to have a family, ideally a couple of kids, so it's good as I age into my soon 50s, I'm like, you know, I should keep the twins.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:23Tim Ferriss?

  As healthy as possible. And I tend to think that if you optimize for fertility, you get a lot of other things right as downstream effects. And the two ingredients are raw walnuts and raw cashews. I'm bringing this up because there are actually walnut specific studies. There was a 2012 randomized controlled trial in 117 healthy men aged 21 to 35, and they were randomized to either continue their normal diet or add 75 grams a day of walnuts. And it's not impossible, like 75 grams, just to turn that into something people might recognize, it's like 0.6 cups of chopped walnuts, like two and a half handfuls, it's not that crazy.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:02Tim Ferriss?

  And the improvements in sperm vitality, motility and morphology all were statistically significant.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 33:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Just, so just walnuts, I mean, could it be, are there other healthy nuts?

• 33:13Tim Ferriss?

  That's the question, that's the question. So generally speaking, nuts seem to be supportive of fertility. So in 2024, there was a meta-analysis that showed that at least 60 grams per day, so that's less than the 75 we talked about, so let's call that two handfuls of nuts as an estimate, improved sperm motility, vitality and morphology, although it did not significantly improve sperm concentration. So of course be aware of the caloric density, right? If you're just housing nuts all day, you'll have like 6,000 calories of nuts, it's going to have other side effects, but I thought this was super fascinating and it only came about because I ended up loving this walnut butter and I was like, huh.

• 33:54Tim Ferriss?

  I have read, or actually not read, I had been told that consuming walnuts could improve testosterone and free testosterone. And I was like, let me fact check that. And I did not get back confirmation on that, but I got back these research results related to sperm quality. I was like, fantastic.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  Okay, with Brazil nuts and the selenium side of things, there was, it was a reduction in prostate cancer, right? There was some study that was done.

• 34:18Tim Ferriss?

  I don't, I don't recall. For me, the reason that I was looking at that with For Our Body and man, it's crazy to think about how fucking hard fact checking and research was back then compared to now.

• 34:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:27Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my God, it's like you kids have it good now. Just chat GPT and Claude and so on, it's so much easier. You need to know how to interrogate the system. But the reason I was looking at that, and this is still relevant today, that looking at your micronutrient consumption and absorption matters, right? So if you have a copper deficiency or a selenium deficiency, that can be reflected in all sorts of issues with say sex hormones, right? And I have friends, there's one, actually multiple friends who had testosterone issues. They ended up, and I don't know who the latest and greatest, I think it was Spectracell back

• 35:08Tim Ferriss?

  in the day, but I don't know who the latest and greatest would be for options for testing, but they ended up just having like three Brazil nuts a day and they're like, I feel like I'm on cocaine.

• 35:21Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 35:21Tim Ferriss?

  Like their lived experience changed so dramatically. And sure, this isn't randomized controlled, I don't know if that was placebo or not, but I saw it enough times where I'm like, look, this seems to be low hanging fruit.

• 35:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:34Tim Ferriss?

  Topsoil is depleted everywhere. You can be sure as shit that most vegetable matter you're consuming is not as nutrient dense as you would like, probably. So it's just something to keep an eye on.

• 35:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, and so people should also know that Brazil nuts, like that nut, it receives its selenium from the soil itself. So it's the uptake from the soil. I've seen this now at grocery stores, there's Brazil nuts that aren't even made in Brazil. So you have to make sure, like it has, say, product of Brazil on the back of the nuts. Is there a certain brand that you like when it comes to that or are you just checking for that on the label?

• 36:09Tim Ferriss?

  I'm looking at, not really, I mean, I haven't done the due diligence there. I've just been looking for organic because man, oh man, you're like, I really want to minimize pesticide consumption. I understand there are issues with the designation of organic to begin with, but I mean, this is a, just a general kind of meta principle that, or it underscores a meta principle that I think about a lot, which is like you're, there's the expression, you are what you eat, but that's not sufficient. Like you are what you eat ate, right? So if you're eating salmon, like not all salmon is created equal, like what is the salmon consuming, right? Similarly, this applies to vegetables and applies to salad greens. Like where was this grown?

• 36:53Tim Ferriss?

  How was it grown? What were the nutrients that were absorbed or not absorbed that were present or absent? And with tools that you have now, I mean, it's a lot easier to try to do this type of due diligence.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  Most people don't know that non-wild salmon, like they add dyes to like make them, it look more pink, which is just insane.

• 37:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there's a lot of this kind of stuff. And look, I mean, you don't have to get every detail right, but there are little things here and there to pay attention to. And there are also like lots of weasel words out there when people say all natural, right? I mean, there are many terms that are just not defined in any meaningful way. So they can be used to confuse consumers, but look, point of the story is walnuts, perhaps good for your nuts.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  I'm gonna do it.

• 37:41Tim Ferriss?

  So, and Artisana products are delicious, so why not try them out?

• 37:49Tim Ferriss?

  I've easily worked with 100 plus founders and entrepreneurs over the last 20 years and I've seen some massive wins, some huge companies built and some failures and zombies. Among other things, repeatedly I've seen how customer service can make or break a company. This is where FIN comes in, F I N. FIN is an AI agent and people throw it around a lot. In this context, think of it as a digital employee. And FIN, your digital employee, delivers high quality answers and helps resolve complex questions that your customers may have. And a lot of name brand companies use FIN. Rapidly growing companies like Asana and Anthropic, the company behind Claude, and past podcast sponsors like Gamma and Vanta rely on FIN to deliver accurate and thoughtful

• 38:34Tim Ferriss?

  customer support to millions of customers and users. FIN is also built using custom models trained on thousands of actual customer interactions and it understands the complexity and nuance of customer service like no other agent. This is what it does. You feed FIN your internal knowledge and policies, it learns your rules and it can start supporting your overstretched support team. It's an extension, it's in a way infinitely extensible of your support team. And because every business runs things differently, FIN is fully self-managable. So check it out, see the difference FIN can make in your business. Check it out and learn more at fin.ai/tim. That's F I N dot A I slash Tim.

• 39:14Tim Ferriss?

  I literally speak with founders and entrepreneurs every single week and they're so excited about a lot of things. The product, team, the latest fundraise, their next big bet, payroll, not so much, but you really have to get it right. You really, really have to get it right. And today's sponsor, Gusto, makes that part easy. And boy, oh boy, I polled millions of you guys, you love Gusto. Gusto is online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses. It's all in one, remote friendly and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire, onboard and support your team from anywhere, starting with offer letters going to everything. Gusto automatically files federal, state and local payroll taxes, handles W2s and

• 39:54Tim Ferriss?

  1099s and offers straightforward health benefits and 401k options for nearly any budget. And switching to Gusto is quick, straightforward and painless. And don't pay a cent until you run your first payroll. If you need help, their certified HR experts are standing by. They are ranked number one on G2's highest satisfaction products list for 2026 and trusted by more than 500,000 small businesses. So check them out, try Gusto today at gusto.com/tim. That's G U S T O dot com slash Tim and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/tim.

• 40:34Tim Ferriss?

  Should we just keep going on the food?

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I have so many supplements and shit today. This is a supplement day. So this actually, I've been, I've been doing more gym time, which is great. Been trying to like, you know, get a little lean, try to lift a little bit more weight. I've been trying to find like a good source. I brought you this one.

• 40:50Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, thanks.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  A good source of protein.

• 40:52Tim Ferriss?

  Can I try it?

• 40:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. By the way, none of the stuff we've talked about today.

• 40:55Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, we have no affiliation with any of this stuff.

• 40:58Speaker 04

  So this was one that I found largely because A2 protein. Are you familiar with A2 at all?

• 41:03Tim Ferriss?

  I am. I have not done my own homework on this, but I can tell you how I came across this. Just so people understand what we're talking about. You want to read the label here because you sent me a hilarious video of your refrigerator where you're like, I got a little bit of this, a little bit of this. And then it's like, oh, protein. Then we have some protein and there were like 40 of these in your refrigerator.

• 41:22Speaker 04

  Well, I mean.

• 41:23Tim Ferriss?

  Pioneer Pasture.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, so this is Pioneer Pastures. You can, I mean, they literally sell it at Target and whatnot. A2 protein though, was the only protein that cows would produce about a thousand or so years ago. They said 500, 1,000 years ago, somewhere around there, until this variant took over and it was, became non-A2 and it became a combination of A1 and A2. And it's, it's a type of protein that comes from the casein, which is the slower digesting version of protein. Bodybuilders used to take casein at night before they would go to bed because.

• 41:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's like cottage cheese.

• 41:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. So, but the thing about A2 and what's so cool about it is that way less stomach discomfort. Like it is the natural, clean form of protein and it's really hard to find. So I found this one drink, 160 calories, 30 grams of protein. It doesn't need to be refrigerated until you open it. Lactose free. Lactose free. And it tastes really good.

• 42:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's pretty good.

• 42:17Speaker 04

  It was two grams of sugar. I mean, I enjoy it. So for me, this is like a great, I just want something first thing in the morning to kind of like, especially if I trained hard the day before, like to just get some protein in the body, take this with some coffee. It's fantastic.

• 42:30Tim Ferriss?

  You know, the first time I saw this, this is the first time I've tried it actually. But first time I saw this was in the offices of Chris Williamson, the podcaster.

• 42:39Speaker 04

  Oh, no way.

• 42:39Tim Ferriss?

  He was jacked AF. I mean, the guy is basically a bodybuilder. I mean, he's very strong, very lean. And much like your refrigerator, there were like 30 of these sitting in a fridge at the offices. And that was the first time that I had someone describe to me the difference, I suppose, the differentiator with A2 protein.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  It doesn't taste bad, right?

• 43:00Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's totally fine.

• 43:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. There's a lot of shitty tasting protein out there, so I was pleasantly pleased.

• 43:06Tim Ferriss?

  There's also a lot of, there are a lot of protein products that are basically candy bars or junk food masquerading as health food. So looking for kind of the minimum effective dose of ingredients.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, this has monk fruit in it, but it doesn't have any of the other like fake sweeteners or anything and it's.

• 43:24Tim Ferriss?

  Very, very few ingredients relative to, like if you were to compare, not to throw them under the bus, because I will occasionally have them when I'm caught in a pinch, but like if you were to compare the number of ingredients on this Pioneer Pastures with say Muscle Milk.

• 43:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:36Tim Ferriss?

  It's like, it's like seven ingredients versus 40.

• 43:39Speaker 04

  Dude, Muscle Milk was like the, like gym shake during like the nineties, right? Like everybody wanted Muscle Milk.

• 43:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, hey, desperate times. What was that pre-workout that everyone took that just got you cranked to shit? Ino Explode?

• 43:52Tim Ferriss?

  Oh God, that stuff. Yeah, I mean, basically just bodybuilder crack. It was so strong, you know? On the Muscle Milk, yeah, I mean, you might find this interesting. Like when I was training to compete, this is probably two years ago in archery. So I had my period of intense training. And the reason I'm not doing as much of it anymore is because it's just very isolating. It is a solo practice and you're repeating the same thing over and over and over and over again. I do still love it, but I wanted to do something more social and just a little more physically engaging, like rock climbing.

• 44:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:30Tim Ferriss?

  Which I just love to no end, every aspect of it.

• 44:32Speaker 04

  So fun.

• 44:33Tim Ferriss?

  The reason that Muscle Milk is relevant to this story is that I wanted training nutrition that could not be broken by inconvenience on the road. So basically when I was doing my training sessions, which would be like three to four hours, and this is going to sound gross, but basically I would only consume stuff that I knew I could get at almost any gas station. Because I knew my competition was going to be in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And Lancaster is actually a beautiful town, but I didn't know where the competition would be and I suspected it would be in the middle of nowhere and I would only have access to gas stations or some type of quick convenience store, like a 7-Eleven.

• 45:14Tim Ferriss?

  And that turned out to be the case, but I was comfortable with Muscle Milk, almonds, like roasted almonds of some type.

• 45:21Speaker 04

  Every gas station.

• 45:21Tim Ferriss?

  And. And then zero calorie Monster Energy. I know, I know, with some taurine, right? But I got comfortable using the most commonly available stuff so that I felt like I had, and even if it's only psychological, like a competitive advantage. Oh, and unsweetened iced tea. That's it. And in any case, that was my sidebar note on Muscle Milk.

• 45:52Speaker 04

  You look at the ingredients now, I don't know if it's changed, but back in the day, it was not healthy stuff.

• 45:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and it's like, look, I mean.

• 45:59Speaker 04

  Great name though.

• 45:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, great name. Also, as I continue to do intermittent fasting a few times a week, I don't do it a ton because I'm actually trying to, I want to add some like muscle mass and connective tissue, strength, and you just need nutrition for that.

• 46:14Speaker 04

  Did you get that gripper by the way?

• 46:16Tim Ferriss?

  Look, I have grippers.

• 46:17Speaker 04

  Did you get the one that our buddy sent us?

• 46:19Tim Ferriss?

  No, I got a different adjustable gripper because my right arm is still recovering from the elbow surgery I had a year ago.

• 46:26Speaker 04

  We should link that up in the show notes, that gripper, that, that's a really good one.

• 46:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll, we'll link to a couple of different grippers if people are interested. I'm going pretty light, so I'm still strengthening the extensors in the right elbow that was repaired. But you want to hear about something crazy?

• 46:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:41Tim Ferriss?

  That I've been getting really into? This is going to get into crazy town, but you know, we like getting into crazy town a little bit. So, dream engineering and anesthesia dreams. So I've been going down this rabbit hole related to dream engineering. So can you modify dream content? Can you, for instance, facilitate two-way communication between scientists and dreamers while they are dreaming? This is a longstanding interest of mine. I first read Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by someone named Stephen LeBerge at the very, very beginning of high school and became very interested in lucid dreaming,

• 47:23Tim Ferriss?

  which is just to define terms, where you train yourself, and there is a process for this, to induce lucidity while you're dreaming. That just means you become conscious of the fact that you're dreaming and with exercises, you can get to the point where you're able to modify your own dream content. And I used to, for instance, in high school, when I was competing in wrestling, I would do additional training sessions at night in my dreams. I'm not making this up. And I felt like there was a direct translation to improve performance. Okay. But flash forward, I connected, I ended up getting introduced to Dr. Adam Har Horowitz,

• 48:04Tim Ferriss?

  who took research out of MIT and Harvard to make dream engineering a reality. So he has a startup called Dust, D U S T. And in full disclosure, I am an investor in that, but.

• 48:17Speaker 04

  What does it do?

• 48:19Tim Ferriss?

  They're going to be helping people to modify dream content to address things like PTSD. Now, that's where the conversation started. And he knows that I have longstanding interest in psychedelic related therapies. But psychedelics have taken a backseat for me in the last handful of years because most people, I shouldn't say most, many people will not be able to take psychedelics for whether it's health reasons, contraindications, they have psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia in their family that mean it would be ill-advised to take them. So I've been really focused, as you know, on neuromodulation, brain stimulation. And I still am, super, super bullish.

• 49:02Speaker 04

  How often are you doing that now?

• 49:03Tim Ferriss?

  I'm going to be doing it again, probably in the next month. I would say every three to four months. The update there, I did get involved with one company and I thought very heavily about it called AMPA Health, A M P A Health. They have the smallest, most modular.

• 49:19Tim Ferriss?

  Option on the market, very easy to use. And I think they are the company, if I had to bet on one, that's going to get to the point where you can actually power something off of an iPhone. They're doing some really, really interesting work. Just to touch on that, they're doing one day protocols now. So instead of five days off of work.

• 49:36Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 49:36Tim Ferriss?

  Costs 30 grand or something. You're doing one day of treatment accelerated with this very small dose of antibiotic called D-cycloserian, which induces plasticity in the brain, much like certain psychedelics. So you basically let that dissolve in your mouth beforehand. And from, let's say a one to 10 in severity, let's say my OCD generalized anxiety, it's at like an eight or nine, it has taken it to like a zero or a one, one day. Now it gets crazier though, because you can also use it. People can check out AMPa Health. They need to.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  Do they do it in LA as well or no?

• 50:15Tim Ferriss?

  They're all over the country. I mean, I mean, what I'm hoping is that people who are already administering things like ketamine, or who are offering CBT or whatever, will just offer this as an add-on. Because most of the devices that are available now are like the size of a refrigerator. You have to sign like a quarter million dollar lease. The AMPa Health product for providers is like three grand a month. You can cancel anytime. I think that's still accurate. And it can fit in like the trunk of a car. It's much easier to use. But what's also amazing, and I did this recently when I was traveling, met a technician and did like two hours of, I think it

• 50:56Tim Ferriss?

  was stims every 30 minutes, just for a handful of minutes each stimulation.

• 51:01Speaker 04

  Stims, oh, good simulations. Okay.

• 51:03Tim Ferriss?

  Just for sleep. And.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  Different target area of the brain then?

• 51:09Tim Ferriss?

  Same. In this case, it was the same target. It's a target that they're not talking about super publicly yet. But very easy for a therapist, like technicians to find. And.

• 51:19Speaker 04

  How do they find it? Are they just like measuring your head and shit and looking like?

• 51:23Tim Ferriss?

  It's all based on really, really good science. They're looking at overlapping networks that are identified by looking at data from deep brain stimulation, data from lesion research.

• 51:36Speaker 04

  No, but I mean, when they sit down with you, like if you're gonna go into this place.

• 51:39Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's.

• 51:39Speaker 04

  And they're like, hey, I gotta find this region of your brain.

• 51:41Tim Ferriss?

  So part of what makes how they do it interesting is they're finding targets that are more uniform person to person. So certain places, like the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, certain areas on the front of the skull, or front of the brain, front of the head, right, are a little more variable. You have to be very precise. So they're finding ways to make it very effective, very fast, and less likely to suffer from like clinch and error, right? Because if you really have to thread the needle, sometimes you get no effect. That happened to me when I was using like earlier targets with other hardware. If they were off by like a half a centimeter.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 52:25Tim Ferriss?

  Nothing. And you just wasted a week, right? And like 30 grand.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  And no downside? Like, are you not getting headaches afterwards or anything weird?

• 52:31Tim Ferriss?

  Mild headache. Mild headache for like a day.

• 52:33Speaker 04

  Does that not freak you out though? I mean, that's the only reason I haven't tried any of this stuff. I'm like, I don't know. Like, it's like, they're just putting magnets in your brain.

• 52:41Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, I mean, just to bust your balls, before we started recording, you were talking about some drugs you were experimenting with.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's like, this is a good old time. It's like.

• 52:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 52:54Speaker 04

  Let's try it true.

• 52:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  You've done it too.

• 52:57Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I've, I mean, look, yeah, I'm no stranger to.

• 52:59Speaker 04

  I love that if you're gonna say online, I'm gonna say it.

• 53:01Tim Ferriss?

  No stranger to pharmacology. I'm just saying, in this particular case, I personally found the, I think the risk benefit ratio is much more attractive for the general population than psychedelics, which is why I'm spending so much.

• 53:17Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 53:18Tim Ferriss?

  Time looking at it. I think it is much, much, much more attractive. It's faster. And frankly,

• 53:27Tim Ferriss?

  let me come back to these crazy stories of dream engineering and anesthesia dreams.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:32Tim Ferriss?

  So from, you know, the startup Dust, people can check out the AMPa Health, I encourage them to check it out. But they're all over the country now. And.

• 53:39Speaker 04

  Is that the publicly traded company one or no?

• 53:41Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's private.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  Okay, private.

• 53:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So Dust does the dream engineering. And then he introduced me to some research out of Stanford. Here are some of the headlines of pieces published by Stanford Medicine. Could anesthesia induced dreams wipe away trauma? Another one, could anesthesia dreams be a more palatable psychedelic therapy? All right. So what does this actually mean? Let me read some of this stuff. All right. Here's the dream protocol.

• 54:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what I wanted to know. What's the protocol?

• 54:08Tim Ferriss?

  I tried to convince, I was getting an endoscopy recently, just to look at my throat, you know, you gotta do that stuff. The endoscopy is a colonoscopy and so on. And I was trying to convince this doctor I'd never met to do this for me. And he was like, yeah, I don't think so. But the dreaming protocol is five steps. Number one, tell the patient they might dream under anesthesia. Number two, use propofol, right?

• 54:26Speaker 04

  Oh, this is great.

• 54:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, very common.

• 54:28Speaker 04

  Right. It's what Michael Jackson died on.

• 54:29Tim Ferriss?

  Michael Jackson used that plus like six other things.

• 54:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. I have a great story about that.

• 54:34Tim Ferriss?

  You should not DIY propofol, but using propofol as an anesthetic as the patient is emerging from anesthesia. So here's the thing. If someone has surgery, they're not changing the anesthesia delivered for the surgery. They're basically using propofol to taper them out and tune them to a very particular dose and let's call it radio station. So they have pleasant dreams. Okay. But step number three is monitor brain activity, et cetera, with EEG. Ensure at least 10 minutes of quiet, undisturbed emergence. This is really important. If you don't do that, then dream recall is shot. And then you have to ask them about dream recall. But the point of this is that what they're seeing, and this is not really super speculative, I mean, it is at

• 55:17Tim Ferriss?

  the edges now. But they are seeing people with longstanding complex PTSD. They have one of these dreams where they taper out on propofol, and they rehearse beforehand to basically imagine their traumatic event ending in a better way with some kind of resolution. And some of these people, 10 months later, still zero symptoms of complex PTSD.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 55:40Tim Ferriss?

  They go from severe to zero. The reason I find this so interesting, and other people find it interesting, is that it underscores the possibility that, and I've thought this for a very long time, but like the trip matters. Because in the world of psychedelic medicine and business right now, the name of the game, if you want to ramp up your market cap and have an exit for $2 billion or whatever, or launch something with an IPO and make tons of money, is you say, okay, psychedelics, broadly speaking, a whole lot of them hit these serotonin type 2A receptors. Let's create a drug that hits the same receptors, but that doesn't cause the trip.

• 56:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:25Tim Ferriss?

  Because the trip doesn't matter. The trip is a side effect, right?

• 56:28Speaker 04

  That's bullshit, but yeah.

• 56:29Tim Ferriss?

  Well, what's interesting is that I think it's both. But just to be clear, like, you can hit the serotonin type 2A receptor with no trip, like an LSD variant, and it can be very effective for things like cluster headaches. So it does something.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I'm talking about the emotional release that comes from that.

• 56:47Tim Ferriss?

  Sure. But, but, but, so I would say like, also, some of these psychedelics, and not all of them are primarily hitting the type 2A receptor, but have potent anti-inflammatory effects, right? At subperceptual doses. So also, I think that could lead to anti-depression and stuff.

• 57:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:05Tim Ferriss?

  However, if dream engineering, like à la Dust, right, if they can dream engineer people to have fewer nightmares, which they can, and that has psychedelic like outcomes, like, is it possible that even though there are millions of people for whom psychedelics will never be appropriate, like tripping balls for four to six hours, and they're a shorter acting psychedelics and so on, methadone and so on, I get it. But there are plenty of people who will never be able to take psychedelics. Is it possible that every night you have an opportunity to harness something similar? And if so, like, who are the scientists who are gonna figure out how to mold that and shape it and.

• 57:50Speaker 04

  So what is.

• 57:50Tim Ferriss?

  Do the prep work. I think it's all touching the same stuff.

• 57:53Speaker 04

  Let me ask you a question. What does Dust do? Is it a coaching service? Like, because I have this app that, by the way, I have no affiliation with this, but I, you should check this out too, Tim. I think you'd really like it. Before I go to bed, there's an app I use called Claria, C-L-A-R-I-A. And it is the best hypnosis app that I've found out there for a variety. It's,

• 58:14Tim Ferriss?

  Who makes Claria? I may have tried this.

• 58:16Speaker 04

  You recognize the scientists in the team behind it, that.

• 58:19Tim Ferriss?

  It's amazing.

• 58:19Speaker 04

  It's expensive. It's 150 a year.

• 58:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 04

  So it's not cheap. But it is, I found it to be a beautiful way to drift off to sleep. And I swear, I feel better the next day. And there's a variety of different topics. It can be anxiety, it can be whatever. But anyway, my point is, my question about Dust is, okay, what is the thing? Is it, is it, could you sit there in this propofol kind of state coming out?

• 58:41Tim Ferriss?

  So just to be clear, Dust isn't doing anything with propofol?

• 58:44Speaker 04

  That's totally separate.

• 58:45Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So could you do this with hypnotherapy?

• 58:48Speaker 04

  That's a great question. I don't know the answer. I also, just to be on the safe side, I don't know what they're disclosing publicly. So people can check out the website.

• 58:56Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 58:56Speaker 04

  And whatever it says, it says. But it's something I'm keeping an eye on. But broadly speaking, that ended up being the wedge in the door for me to get back into doing a deep dive on.

• 59:07Tim Ferriss?

  Basically dream shaping, which is 100% possible. And it's already been demonstrated that you can have dreamers who achieve lucidity communicate with researchers while they are provably in an REM state by memorizing eye movement patterns in advance, like Morse code, basically, like right, right, left, left, right, left, something like that to indicate like, I know that I'm dreaming and I'm telling you I'm dreaming.

• 59:35Speaker 04

  It's fucking crazy.

• 59:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 59:38Speaker 04

  Have you talked to Matt Walker about this?

• 59:40Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't. I haven't had a chance to talk to Matt about this stuff yet.

• 59:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. So Matt used to run the, for people that don't know, he's run the, he wrote the Why We Sleep book and also used to run the Berkeley Sleep Lab for a long time.

• 59:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:51Speaker 04

  He's still very active.

• 59:52Tim Ferriss?

  He's in Dallas now, has a huge lab.

• 59:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:53Tim Ferriss?

  Is doing lots of good work. He and I on the sleep front have mostly talked about the DORA class of drugs.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:00:01Tim Ferriss?

  And just with the.

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  I still have a ton of that, by the way.

• 1:00:04Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. I'm using something called Qvivic instead of Belsomra now.

• 1:00:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Tim Ferriss?

  And talk to your doctor, guys. This is not stuff to.

• 1:00:10Speaker 04

  They can't get it without the doctor, anyway.

• 1:00:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, who knows, though, if they're buying stuff online from Mexico or whatever. Just don't screw around with any of this stuff without talking to your doctor. But the, the point of that, for people who maybe haven't heard anything about this, Matt Walker has a good podcast episode on this. It's probably six to nine months old at this point, about the DORA, like DORA the Explorer, D O R A, class of drugs. That's dualorexin receptor antagonist drugs. There's some evidence to suggest it might be helpful for people with family histories of Alzheimer's and things like that.

• 1:00:45Speaker 04

  Didn't they do a spinal tap and.

• 1:00:47Tim Ferriss?

  For beta, beta amyloid clearance.

• 1:00:49Speaker 04

  Clearance or health amyloid clearance.

• 1:00:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, they've, not just in animals, but they've looked at human data. So for me, honestly, even though it might be speculative at this point, because no one's proven that it prevents Alzheimer's, I'm like, you know what? That shit is so scary. And I've seen relatives just disintegrate. I'm like, eh, since I'm APOE three, four, I'm genetically predisposed. Let me just be on the safe side.

• 1:01:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I bring it with me. I'm actually going to Japan soon and that's when I use it. I'm like, I'd rather do that than some type of like, these other class of sleep drugs that have been shown to do all kinds of horrible things, including cancers and you name it. So these are the, they seem, they, they look like on paper so far to be the safer class of.

• 1:01:28Tim Ferriss?

  They're pretty interesting.

• 1:01:29Speaker 04

  Drugs, yeah.

• 1:01:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, there's some other drugs that seem not to affect sleep architecture horribly, like, you know, the ambience of the world, like trazodone might be a decent choice, but for a host of reasons, I wanted to, it just seemed to make sense to me to look at the Doras. All right, what else you got?

• 1:01:45Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm gonna do rapid fire. I gotta do two things. First of all, have you ever seen these before?

• 1:01:49Tim Ferriss?

  Plum flower curing pills?

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  Yes. Plum flower curing pills, my friends.

• 1:01:54Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 1:01:55Speaker 04

  Economy size.

• 1:01:57Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. Oh, this gets better and better.

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  I had a buddy that was like, he was like, Kevin, you don't understand. I was actually in Paris and I had like a little bit of like a stomach, like, oh man, my stomach's a little bit off, like blah, blah. And he goes, I was about to get food poisoning. I felt it coming on. I had had, I think it was oyster or something he had. He goes, like, I took two of these. It's from a Chinese practitioner and he goes, I dodged a bullet every time. And let's just call it like, once every eight weeks, where you're like, ooh, my stomach's a little sideways, you know? I take one of these little packets and it freaking works. And I, dude, I'm telling you, I know it sounds crazy. And so before the podcast.

• 1:02:36Tim Ferriss?

  Laced with tons of antibiotics?

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. No, I, before the podcast, I was like, I wanted to look it up because it's a traditional Chinese medicine and I can't pronounce any of the shit in it. It's a bunch of wild, it's like 15 different Chinese herbs.

• 1:02:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this is unlike the A2 protein. This has like 27 different ingredients in the size two font.

• 1:02:55Speaker 04

  I'm telling you, these little packets are like 50 cents a piece on Amazon. You can buy them in a smaller thing.

• 1:03:01Tim Ferriss?

  I just love that they're called curing pills.

• 1:03:03Speaker 04

  They work, dude. If you at all, like, you know what they work with really? It's like if you had too much to eat.

• 1:03:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  And you're like, oh, I'm bloated, like I just feel bloated. Like just take one little packet, just take a couple with you to go. I'm 10% owning the company.

• 1:03:19Tim Ferriss?

  I'm like, what? Executive chairman, Kevin Rose? What is this?

• 1:03:22Speaker 04

  I have pictures on the outside.

• 1:03:23Tim Ferriss?

  How'd he get to Shanghai?

• 1:03:25Speaker 04

  This thing, a rapid fire, Aerofit.

• 1:03:27Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I've got one of those in my bag.

• 1:03:29Speaker 04

  But you use it in your pack? What the fuck? Like on you right now?

• 1:03:32Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, I don't have it right now, but it's in my backpack.

• 1:03:34Speaker 04

  So tell me about it.

• 1:03:35Tim Ferriss?

  But the, I was not able to get the app to work very well.

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  Working.

• 1:03:38Tim Ferriss?

  You did. Was it a pain in the balls?

• 1:03:39Speaker 04

  It was a little bit of pain. So you can get the one without the smart technology in it.

• 1:03:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  But this will also work if you just don't even use the app.

• 1:03:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:03:45Speaker 04

  So for people that don't know, this device right here.

• 1:03:47Tim Ferriss?

  I should just use it without the app because it's been, basically I downloaded the app and then they're like, oh, you want any utility out of this app at all? Pay $79 a month or whatever. And I was like, ah.

• 1:03:56Speaker 04

  You can just ask ChatGPT for a training protocol.

• 1:03:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:59Speaker 04

  So there's two knobs on here on each side of this thing that adjusts the resistance on inhale and exhale. So you put this thing in your mouth like this.

• 1:04:05Tim Ferriss?

  This is to train your respiratory muscles.

• 1:04:12Speaker 04

  So that's difficult for me to do. They showed after eight weeks, a 30% increase in lung capacity when you train with this thing.

• 1:04:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Speaker 04

  Which is just insane.

• 1:04:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, those, those, the respiratory muscle training devices are really cool. I had Boss Rutten, this UFC, but also prior to that, like in Japan, MMA legend on, and he's done this stuff basically daily for multiple years. There's good data to suggest reductions in lower back pain, all of these different issues.

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:04:41Tim Ferriss?

  If you improve the strengthening of the muscles that aid in respiration.

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  That's wild. You got the same model, like the same type?

• 1:04:48Tim Ferriss?

  I have a white one.

• 1:04:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:04:49Tim Ferriss?

  That's got like Bluetooth and all this fancy technology that I think I do not need.

• 1:04:54Speaker 04

  When did you buy it?

• 1:04:55Tim Ferriss?

  I bought it probably a year ago.

• 1:04:56Speaker 04

  Okay. I, I don't know why this had the latest firmware on it and it works fine. I haven't had any issues with the connectivity, but I did have one before my house burned down and it was always having issues connecting. So I don't know.

• 1:05:07Tim Ferriss?

  All right, maybe, maybe I needed a new one. But Airfit, please improve your app if you haven't in the last year, because I found it to be incredibly difficult. Plus, your baseline of programming for somebody who's bought a device should be decent.

• 1:05:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Tim Ferriss?

  But I do have, I do have one in my bag at home, so I will, I will just use ChatGPT or Claude to help me figure out a Bluetooth free option for training.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  You can also, what I've been doing with it is Ruck backpack, 6% incline on the treadmill.

• 1:05:34Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds comfortable.

• 1:05:35Speaker 04

  With this in my mouth and it's really helped.

• 1:05:38Tim Ferriss?

  I'm guessing the people on the treadmills next to you just clear out, huh?

• 1:05:43Speaker 04

  No, I'm my, it's at my house.

• 1:05:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Speaker 04

  I'm not doing this in public. It's ridiculous.

• 1:05:49Speaker 04

  Okay, I, last one I have is about man makeup, but we can get to that.

• 1:05:54Tim Ferriss?

  Come back to man makeup. I'll give another bit of science that I think is pretty fascinating to watch. This was sent to me by an oncologist who specializes in, on one level, cancers around the eye. So I had a scare, I might've told you about this, I'm not sure. Still a little bit of a scare, but there was a nevis found at the back of my eye, which is like a large freckle. And that can develop into cancer. Good news is they can get rid of it. The bad news is you lose your eye. So this is something I've tracked first every three months, then every six months. It hasn't changed in size, but really came to admire.

• 1:06:32Speaker 04

  How'd you find this, by the way?

• 1:06:34Tim Ferriss?

  Eye exam? Eye exam, but with retinal scanning, with like, with advanced imaging. And certainly I was happy to find it, but I mean, very scary to find.

• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  I hate those moments.

• 1:06:44Tim Ferriss?

  Because you don't know if it's been there for 20 years or if it's been there for a month and it's growing.

• 1:06:49Speaker 04

  My brain aneurysm. I had a little tiny brain aneurysm that was like, you know, one millimeter or whatever.

• 1:06:53Tim Ferriss?

  So you found out like a biograph or prenova or something?

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, prenova, I did. And they're like, okay, well, we have to watch this and it could explode if it gets too big. And then after two years, they're like, oh, you probably just had this since you were born.

• 1:07:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Speaker 04

  Shit, okay.

• 1:07:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So she is, occasionally will send me science that she finds interesting. And this one, I mean, this is probably not the description of the study itself. I think I went to the layperson's interpretation of it, but the headline here, which I put in my newsletter, Five Bullet Friday, check it out, tunedupblog slash Friday, but, "Brain Stimulating Contact Lenses Match Prozac in Depression Study." All right, so this is in an animal model, but let me read the synopsis. "Material scientists have developed a wearable drug-free contact lens capable of treating depression by delivering mild electrical signals through the retina. The study demonstrates that these specialized lenses are as effective as phloxetine, that's the active ingredient Prozac, at reducing behavioral, neural, and physiological signs of depression in mice."

• 1:07:50Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so mice are not just little furry humans, so just keep that in mind. "This technology leverages the eye's anatomical connection to the brain to stimulate mood-regulating circuits non-invasively." So that is pretty fascinating.

• 1:08:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:04Tim Ferriss?

  Right? Imagine if, now I don't know mechanistically what it's actually doing with the stimulation. Is it affecting vagal tone? Is it affecting something else? Who knows? I haven't done the deep dive on it yet. But imagine, this is where bioelectric medicine, whether it's different types of stimulation for increasing vagal tone, there are a lot of bullshit devices out there, folks, so just beware. I'm not aware of any one commercially available that is not prescription, that is credible. But you talked to like Michael Levin of Tufts, like, will we more and more be able to use electricity instead of pills to treat conditions? And I think that that will be the case.

• 1:08:47Tim Ferriss?

  And in fact, you know, you look at, say, anesthesia, anesthesia is one of those things where we're like, yeah, it's just anesthesia. Anesthesia, when you start scratching the surface, is so incredibly strange.

• 1:08:59Speaker 04

  And they really don't know how it works, right?

• 1:09:00Tim Ferriss?

  There are many anesthetics, people have no idea how they work. And I mean, a few things, right? If you look at like Michael Pollan's new book, he talks about how anesthesia is effective on plants, even though they have obviously completely different nervous systems slash, I should say more anatomy. But it would seem, how should I get into this without making a mess of things? There are some hints of quantum effects of anesthesia, but putting that aside, because I'm not credible enough to talk about that at length, some of these anesthetics are inert, like they shouldn't do anything. So what is happening? And it would seem that it might be physics and not chemistry.

• 1:09:42Tim Ferriss?

  So it's not within the realm of chemists say, oh, it's binding to this receptor and doing A, B, or C, even though they might observe effects that mimic those things, that it's somehow affecting bioelectrical fields. And that's the limit of the extent of my cursory understanding, but it's just fascinating. There's so many things like this that we take for granted that we think are understood by the quote, unquote, experts, and we have no idea what the mechanism of action is. There are many examples like that.

• 1:10:12Speaker 04

  Isn't that crazy? Like it's something we just take for granted. We're like, yeah, let's pop two of those. Like, we have no idea how it works.

• 1:10:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there are, there are a lot of those, right? Like, I think for a while that was true of midafinil. There are many, many, many, many drugs.

• 1:10:25Speaker 04

  Do you take tadafutifil?

• 1:10:28Tim Ferriss?

  Tadalifil? Tadaf, whatever that is.

• 1:10:30Speaker 04

  Cialis?

• 1:10:31Tim Ferriss?

  Cialis, yeah.

• 1:10:31Speaker 04

  Boner pills. Do you take it?

• 1:10:33Tim Ferriss?

  No, I don't.

• 1:10:34Speaker 04

  You don't?

• 1:10:34Tim Ferriss?

  I don't because I know there's supposed to be maybe plausible cognitive benefits and so on. I get-

• 1:10:41Speaker 04

  Low dose. I just do a little halfer.

• 1:10:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I get, and this is not actually that uncommon. I get horrible-

• 1:10:48Speaker 04

  Blushing.

• 1:10:49Tim Ferriss?

  Back pain.

• 1:10:49Speaker 04

  Oh, back pain. Weird.

• 1:10:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's not super common, but in like a percentage of people, it's reported in the literature.

• 1:10:56Speaker 04

  And that works, how about-

• 1:10:57Tim Ferriss?

  Horrible back pain.

• 1:10:58Speaker 04

  What about the other ones? Like Viagra?

• 1:11:01Tim Ferriss?

  Like what?

• 1:11:02Speaker 04

  Viagra.

• 1:11:02Tim Ferriss?

  Viagra is similar, back pain.

• 1:11:04Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:11:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  What's the deal? Do people know why the back pain? They don't know.

• 1:11:08Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, they, they do. Yeah. I mean, they're like-

• 1:11:12Speaker 04

  Does it work?

• 1:11:12Tim Ferriss?

  There are different types of phosphodiesterase, PDE inhibitors. I think I'm getting this right. I'm gonna have to fact check this before this goes, gets published. But basically, I want to say it's like PDE5 or something like that.

• 1:11:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. So Huberman was talking about there is a potential benefit both on the cognitive side and also obviously the blood pressure side as well. So it brings down your blood pressure a little bit. And you don't have to take much of this stuff. You can just take a little halfer.

• 1:11:40Tim Ferriss?

  A little nibs.

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:41Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just on so many things. I'm trying to-

• 1:11:44Speaker 04

  But they work for you, like even though it hurts your lower back, like you're like a Superman.

• 1:11:48Tim Ferriss?

  Sure. I mean, I'll have a huge boner and I'll look like a UFC fighter, round, roundhouse kick me in the kidney. Yeah.

• 1:11:55Speaker 04

  Oh, because they, your kidneys, like it pops out, like your back?

• 1:11:58Tim Ferriss?

  No, it doesn't pop out, but like the, my low back hurts so much that I'm like, I can't, like, I can't sit. I can't stand.

• 1:12:03Speaker 04

  I thought your like back muscles got hard or something and you have like bulges on your-

• 1:12:07Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, I'm just saying it's like, it's hard to enjoy the boner if, if you're like crippled with low back pain.

• 1:12:13Speaker 04

  That's fair. That's fair. It is, I gotta tell you, for people that have never tried these, like, I don't, I don't need these. But no, but hold on, this is the random show. We're supposed to be talking about this stuff.

• 1:12:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  When you try them for the first time, it is the weirdest shit.

• 1:12:29Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I mean, look-

• 1:12:29Speaker 04

  Because you reach down and it's not you.

• 1:12:31Tim Ferriss?

  Well, this, this-

• 1:12:32Speaker 04

  Because it's like, you're like, whoa.

• 1:12:34Tim Ferriss?

  This is, this is where you have to be careful of augmentation, right? Because it's like, for instance, if your eyes are like going a little bit and then you wear glasses and you're just like, holy shit, this is a different world.

• 1:12:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:44Tim Ferriss?

  How do you go back to black and white?

• 1:12:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:12:46Tim Ferriss?

  You know what I mean? It's like, this is another reason why, sure, like technically people might be able to use all of these peptides and testosterone and GH and all these things, then just get off because you have post cycle therapy or whatever, but psychologically-

• 1:13:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:03Tim Ferriss?

  People can get so addicted-

• 1:13:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Tim Ferriss?

  -to the results because they are obvious if these things are used correctly. And so it's kind of like, similarly with, this extends back to the AI conversation. It's like, man, the siren song, the temptation to use AI for almost everything is so strong. But I'm working on this new book right now and it's like, I am not using it to write for me. Because if I do that, I'm done.

• 1:13:31Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:32Tim Ferriss?

  It's good. It's too good.

• 1:13:33Speaker 04

  Well, there's even-

• 1:13:34Tim Ferriss?

  I'm using it for version control. If somebody provides edits, I'm like, compare this to this. And give me a graphic overview so I can print it out and look at it in color. Like, it can do some tremendous things, but if you want to retain a function, a cognitive ability, and be very careful about what you outsource, because-

• 1:13:52Speaker 04

  Well, let me throw this out there for people that, that aren't aware of it, because most people won't be. In the world of AI, what they do sometimes is they put these elegant pieces of code that kind of sit on top of the AI that makes it turbocharge just kind of the AI to do special things, right? And they're called harnesses. And there is a new harness that came out recently just for writers.

• 1:14:12Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God.

• 1:14:12Speaker 04

  And so if you thought Claude or ChatGPT was really good at helping you write, wait till you throw this harness on top of it. So there's a company called Every out there and they had released a, a package for coders called Compound Engineering. They now have one, you can just type in every Compound Engineering writer harness and it'll show you the right one. You just install it into your ChatGPT or Claude and it will write the book for you. Like, it's, it's gonna be insane.

• 1:14:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're done.

• 1:14:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Well, I don't know if I'm done. I mean, I don't think so, because, I mean, you've talked about this online and I think we've texted a little bit about it, but it's like, what's the moat? Reputation.

• 1:14:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is reputation.

• 1:14:51Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So I don't think I'm dead.

• 1:14:53Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 1:14:53Tim Ferriss?

  I think books are harder and harder to sell as a viable format of media.

• 1:15:00Speaker 04

  Well, it's funny, like back in the day, so with, when I knew, when Tim was writing these books back in the early days, because I first met you when the, maybe the day your first book came out, the work week came out at the party. And then, you know, you would tell me, hey, I'm working on this book and you would like, you would want to keep everything hush, hush. You wouldn't want to tell anybody because you were like, okay, someone can front run me with this idea, with the ideas that I have in here, if any of this leaks out, right?

• 1:15:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 1:15:24Speaker 04

  And you were super guarded. That is more of the reality these days. I mean, if someone were to find out the next book you're writing on it, like I got a leaked copy of it, they can rewrite the entire thing and have it out in like 48 hours, published and printed.

• 1:15:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, the defense is-

• 1:15:38Speaker 04

  No, I know, I know there's the moat of you.

• 1:15:40Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I'm just saying, like, that is why if you are writing about the realm of ideas, that is gonna be a hard game to play. If you are writing about lived experience, like I did X, Y, and Z.

• 1:15:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:15:53Tim Ferriss?

  Then I think you have more defensibility. But, you know, I, I think, I'm not sure we talked about this, but I've, I've just kind of come down to deciding that I'd, I'd rather, right now, I'm also half pregnant with this book is, is like 80% of the way there.

• 1:16:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. You've been working on this one for a long time.

• 1:16:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I have. I mean, it's taken, in a way, honestly, I've been waiting for the technology to catch up.

• 1:16:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:14Tim Ferriss?

  So that I could make the point that I wanted to make, which is, look, guys, this is not a 1% problem. This is a 99% problem. And the tools are also available to 99%. So I was like, if I published this five years ago, people would be like, oh, Crimea River, Tim Ferriss has too much inbound. Right? But now I'm like, how many, I'm like, okay, you've got what? iMessage, WhatsApp, two email addresses, DMs.

• 1:16:37Speaker 04

  Slack channels.

• 1:16:38Tim Ferriss?

  Everybody's fucking drowning, right? Everybody's drowning. But I couldn't have made that argument as well six years ago. And it's, as you know, like with, robots are so good at imitating humans.

• 1:16:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:52Tim Ferriss?

  Although I do, I do test, my team will test things if I'm like, if this is 100% AI written, like it's automatic X. It's automatic archive. But coming back to, I, I would just rather write a book for 10,000 people than do short form videos for 10 million who forget it 10 seconds later, you know? But I want to share one piece of long form for people who can still digest it, which is hopefully many of you. There is, this is a speech and I read the transcript. It is exceptional. It's called Personal Renewal. It's by John Gardner, G A R D N E R. I don't, I have no idea how I found this thing. It's delivered to McKinsey and Company in November 1990.

• 1:17:35Tim Ferriss?

  How did I find this? I have no idea. But it is full of gems. You can find an audio version. Just search Personal Renewal, John Gardner. That's G A R D N E R. It's really about personal renewal, continual learning throughout life. It's really, really good. But it does require a little bit of foreplay to get to the gems, but here's a really good one. And I'll quoting from the piece here. Remember I mentioned earlier, the myth that learning is for young people? I want to give you some examples. In a piece I wrote for Reader's Digest not long ago, I gave what seemed to me particularly interesting true example of renewal. The man in question was 53 years old. Most of his adult life had been a losing struggle against debt and misfortune. In military service, he received a battlefield injury that denied him the use of his left arm.

• 1:18:19Tim Ferriss?

  And he was seized and held in captivity for five years. Later, he held two government jobs, succeeding at neither. At 53, he was in prison and not for the first time. There in prison, he decided to write a book, driven by a heaven knows what motive, boredom, the hope of gain, emotional release, creative impulse, who can say? And the book turned out to be one of the greatest ever written, a book that has enthralled the world for over 350 years. The prisoner was Cervantes, the book Don Quixote. What a fucking crazy story.

• 1:18:46Speaker 04

  Holy shit.

• 1:18:47Tim Ferriss?

  And there are many examples like this. So Personal Renewal by John Gardner, like just- Maybe print it out, single task, get away from notifications. I've read this one a few times now and I just get something from it every time.

• 1:19:02Speaker 04

  That's amazing. Man, makeup.

• 1:19:04Tim Ferriss?

  Man, makeup.

• 1:19:05Speaker 04

  Do you wear makeup?

• 1:19:06Tim Ferriss?

  I don't wear makeup.

• 1:19:06Speaker 04

  Never.

• 1:19:07Tim Ferriss?

  Never.

• 1:19:08Speaker 04

  On your TV show?

• 1:19:09Tim Ferriss?

  My TV show? You mean like when I was on actual TV?

• 1:19:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, look, they've got makeup people who want to like degloss my head.

• 1:19:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they'll use like the oil patches and stuff.

• 1:19:19Speaker 04

  Do you do any like little touch ups?

• 1:19:20Tim Ferriss?

  I don't, I probably should, but I don't.

• 1:19:22Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:19:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, no touch ups.

• 1:19:23Speaker 04

  So I was on a podcast, I was on a podcast like, like a month ago and I, I looked like hell. Like I had just flown into the city.

• 1:19:32Tim Ferriss?

  Like Al Pacino after a bender.

• 1:19:33Speaker 04

  No, it was sick. Seriously, I just flew into the city and I, I slept like shit for some reason. Cause I was at altitude where I was at and I went on the screen and I was like, I get like rosacea sometimes in my cheeks and stuff. And I just looked like shit. I was like, fuck, I need to do something like in case, I thought you can bleep that. I need to do something in case like I, I just like go on camera.

• 1:19:50Tim Ferriss?

  What do we just bleep?

• 1:19:51Speaker 04

  The F word.

• 1:19:53Tim Ferriss?

  Come on.

• 1:19:54Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:19:54Tim Ferriss?

  You had 30 of those last episode.

• 1:19:56Speaker 04

  So I went in to this store. Okay. I'm going to say I went to Sephora, I went to fucking Sephora. I'd never been in that shit before ever in my life. And it was all ladies. And I was just like, I went in there and I didn't want makeup. I was just like, hey, do you have something? For like when your cheeks get extra red, like rosacea and stuff like that, like is there anything you can get?

• 1:20:14Tim Ferriss?

  And you're like, when I'm putting on my little black dress and my high heels.

• 1:20:17Speaker 04

  Exactly. I was, I was decked out to the nines.

• 1:20:20Tim Ferriss?

  Gus it up.

• 1:20:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay, Gus it up. This is a horrible name for a product, but it's Dr. Jart. It has something called Cica Pair, which is, so get this, it's green. Okay. And I'm like, why is it green? It's color when mixed with red.

• 1:20:37Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:20:37Speaker 04

  Will even out the tone.

• 1:20:39Tim Ferriss?

  It's a complementary color.

• 1:20:40Speaker 04

  And it's SPF.

• 1:20:41Tim Ferriss?

  Christmas neutralizer.

• 1:20:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. So watch this, like I can do, I don't know, we can't get a zoom here, but like, so there's little dots right here. Now hold on, watch the difference now. Hold on. I don't.

• 1:20:49Tim Ferriss?

  It's a lot.

• 1:20:51Speaker 04

  Is it a lot?

• 1:20:52Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, you.

• 1:20:53Speaker 04

  Okay, watch, I'm going to just rub it in.

• 1:20:54Tim Ferriss?

  All right, oh, you're doing, you're doing the crazy thing.

• 1:20:56Speaker 04

  This is like an infomercial, you're doing the, the one side. I love it. Okay. So now if you look now, do you notice how much like less red it is in the other side? And it's SPF too.

• 1:21:05Tim Ferriss?

  I don't, but it, but it looks very well moisturized.

• 1:21:07Speaker 04

  It is very well moisturized. It's got SPF. Anyway, my only point is that.

• 1:21:12Tim Ferriss?

  Cica Pair, C I C A P A I R.

• 1:21:15Speaker 04

  The soothing color, connecting treatment. The reason why I bring this up is because I know a lot of people have rosacea and it's a shitty thing. Like it's like, for me, it's like spicy foods or something. And like, you get like extra red cheeks and all that. So to tell the truth, I wanted something, this is like matte. So like if you're on camera or whatever, it'll let you down.

• 1:21:32Tim Ferriss?

  Like you took a bath in olive oil.

• 1:21:34Speaker 04

  Right. I just, I just, I feel for people that have problems that they don't know how to fix. And I was like, okay, rosacea, a lot of people have, I might as well talk about on the show.

• 1:21:41Tim Ferriss?

  You look like you have fewer crow's feet than I recall.

• 1:21:44Speaker 04

  Oh, well.

• 1:21:44Tim Ferriss?

  Have you been doing vampire?

• 1:21:46Speaker 04

  I, yeah, I do vampire facials and I do one skin.

• 1:21:48Tim Ferriss?

  Vampire facials is PRP.

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, PRP where they draw your blood.

• 1:21:51Tim Ferriss?

  Still haven't tried it. How often do you do that?

• 1:21:53Speaker 04

  I do it like twice a year. Yeah. So they draw your blood. It's the only reason, I, I mean, I still have wrinkles. If I scrunch up, you can still see them on the side, but it's way better.

• 1:22:01Tim Ferriss?

  Huh.

• 1:22:02Speaker 04

  So they draw your blood, they spin it, they take out the platelet-rich plasma. First they, they microneedle your face. And this is gonna sound like a lot, but like it was like, there was a discount package. They microneedle your face and then they rub it in. And then I swear after like two weeks, like the wrinkles just go away.

• 1:22:17Tim Ferriss?

  Do you look like you got in a street fight for a couple of days?

• 1:22:19Speaker 04

  Uh, you're a little red. Yeah.

• 1:22:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:22:21Speaker 04

  You get this stuff. But you're a little red and it works wonders. And then one skin with the peptides is awesome. And I, and again, I did, I did put a small angel check into, into one skin because it worked so well for me, but that's it.

• 1:22:34Tim Ferriss?

  Man, makeup. I want to mention two other things that I have really been enjoying, finding thought provoking at, at least. One is a mini series. I'm curious if you've seen it. It's a four part mini series called The Dark Wizard. Have you seen this?

• 1:22:49Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:22:49Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So The Dark Wizard, which was first recommended to me by Andrew Huberman, and then a couple of other folks recommended it. It's about this wild, brilliant, but totally tormented artist and athlete named Dean Potter. So Dean Potter, way back in the day, I'm going to get the timing wrong, but I want to say like early nineties, sometime in the nineties. He was on the cover of Outside Magazine and this guy's story was so captivating to me that I kept that issue of Outside Magazine with this black and white photo of him, like very handsome looking guy, super athletic. And he pioneered all these new approaches to climbing, rock climbing. He also was one of the main, I would say proselytizers of slack lining and then high lining,

• 1:23:34Tim Ferriss?

  which is doing like a slack line over a canyon, just the scariest stuff imaginable.

• 1:23:38Speaker 04

  Long poles and shit, right?

• 1:23:39Tim Ferriss?

  No poles.

• 1:23:40Speaker 04

  No poles.

• 1:23:40Tim Ferriss?

  Just hands. And, and then he ended up wanting to push the boundaries of free soloing. But the problem is, as he roughly stated it was, well, when you're free soloing, you always have to climb well within your limits. And he's like, I want to push my limits. So he started doing something called freebasing, where he was combining free soloing with base jumping.

• 1:24:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've heard people do this.

• 1:24:03Tim Ferriss?

  And this four part series is insane and it's incredibly well produced. All of this archival footage, drawings and notes from Dean's personal journals, all woven together. And there's a lot of darkness, like he struggled with a lot, many inner demons and depression. And on the flip side, he was just this absolute genius on so many different levels. So I found it to be a really, really thought provoking watch. I actually binged, I, I started one at like, I think each is an hour long, roughly an hour long. And I started one at like 11:00 PM. And my lady fell asleep in like 20 minutes. It wasn't really her jam and it was bedtime anyway.

• 1:24:46Tim Ferriss?

  And I stayed up, I binged the entire series. I stayed up until like three in the morning, watching this stuff. I just couldn't stop watching it.

• 1:24:52Speaker 04

  Oh shit, that's a strong recommendation. I'm going to check that out.

• 1:24:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, it ties into a lot of current interests and also old demons of my own. So it was, you know, brought up, it brought up a lot for me and many people have enjoyed it. So The Dark Wizard, that was his nickname. And then there's a book that people might not expect I would bring up. This is not a new book. This is a book by Studs Terkel. Talk about a good name. T E R K E L, Studs Terkel. He won the Pulitzer Prize at one point, I think for working. Might be getting the title wrong, but the book that I was introduced to is called Hard Times, an illustrated oral history of the Great Depression. And it was introduced to me by a Brit of all things, a great guy named Ed Cook, who I'm not sure if you know Ed Cook.

• 1:25:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:38Tim Ferriss?

  Total, total lunatic.

• 1:25:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:39Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome guy. One of the best and most famous memory competitors, formerly like world champion of memory has.

• 1:25:46Speaker 04

  Super good person.

• 1:25:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And he's very good at coaching people to get incredibly good at memory competition. There was an entire book written about this called Moonwalking with Einstein. He has a startup called Mindmax, which is a learning app if people want to check it out. But this book, Hard Times, an illustrated oral history of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel, contains many dozens of vignettes and profiles of people who went through the depression. From the most destitute to the rich who lost everything, to the jingle writers, who actually had the most incredible explosion of creativity during that period. And they're very bite sized profiles. The stories are told both in their own words and in the words of Studs,

• 1:26:32Tim Ferriss?

  who's trying to convey different perspectives on everything from these different vantage points. And it is a page turner. It's so well written. And it fleshes out the depression into something very real and complex, right? It's not just like one mom with her hungry kids sitting on a doorstep looking forlorn, right? There's so many different angles to it. And I just feel like it's one of the better and most unique depictions of history that I've ever come across.

• 1:27:11Speaker 04

  Hmm. That's awesome. Is there audible on that or no?

• 1:27:14Tim Ferriss?

  I wouldn't be surprised if there is. Hard Times, it's very, very well written. And Ed told me, he's like, Hard Times is good, but if you like that, working is incredible. And working, as I understand it, is kind of like Dirty Jobs before Dirty Jobs with micro, but looking at all of these different professions across the United States. But Hard Times is the one that, that I've been cracking. So if I have 15 minutes and I'm just killing time waiting for something, I'll pull it up on my Kindle and I'll read that. Because you'll get through like one or two profiles.

• 1:27:46Speaker 04

  So I've been doing this in the sauna where I put on an audiobook and it's like my way to kind of like just crank through something. And I did something very similar, speaking of new books, and I've been trying to push myself in new directions of things I would normally never listen to. Like what is something that would never be on my radar? And just give me a whole new perspective on how, what people are consuming media wise. And so my friend Britt, she was like, hey, like I've got a recommendation for you. There's this whole genre of books that are like big and like the, apparently women like in their mid 30s into their 40s like love this genre. Have you heard of fairy porn?

• 1:28:24Tim Ferriss?

  No, I don't know what fairy porn is. Is this like the, uh, what it's called, the fourth wing?

• 1:28:29Speaker 04

  This is called A Court of Thorn and Roses. Have you heard of that, that book?

• 1:28:33Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 1:28:34Speaker 04

  Okay. So I'm like, okay, I'll, I'll buy it, right? And I download it on Audible. It's damn good.

• 1:28:42Tim Ferriss?

  Is it like dime store romance novels with like Fabio?

• 1:28:45Speaker 04

  Sophisticated than that, but, but like, I mean.

• 1:28:47Tim Ferriss?

  That's what they all say.

• 1:28:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:51Speaker 04

  I'd never thought I would be listening to this shit and I'm.

• 1:28:53Tim Ferriss?

  How many times does the word throbbing come up?

• 1:28:55Speaker 04

  So far, like maybe twice.

• 1:28:59Tim Ferriss?

  Manhood.

• 1:29:00Speaker 04

  But it's

• 1:29:00Tim Ferriss?

  Times four.

• 1:29:01Speaker 04

  It's actually, no, but what's different than like the old, like, you know, when you go to the grocery store, you see like the dudes with the chiseled abs and everything is they actually are taking these very sophisticated kind of like, it's fantasy. It's like well-written fantasy. And then there's a little bit of like, like thrown in there that like, everyone's like, woo, like he like, did that, like, you know, it's, I would never listen to this shit ever. But I will say it's interesting because they had like, it was something like 30,000 five-star reviews. I'm like, how is this a genre I've just never heard of? So I'm trying to force myself to say, okay, you know, once or twice a year, pick a genre that's just

• 1:29:41Tim Ferriss?

  That's great.

• 1:29:42Speaker 04

  completely different than you would ever expose yourself to and go deep. I don't know if you've ever done that with any.

• 1:29:47Tim Ferriss?

  I do this all the time, just to find things that I would never read, like Hard Times is a good example, where I was just like, Ed, give me a book that I would never find.

• 1:29:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:29:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And he was like, I got one for you. I did bring up The Fourth Wing because this is one that was everywhere. I'm sure it has like a hundred thousand.

• 1:30:03Speaker 04

  Picture of it?

• 1:30:04Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sure it has a hundred thousand reviews. It's like that.

• 1:30:08Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:30:09Tim Ferriss?

  And basically I saw, again, like, early to mid, maybe like 30 to 40-year-old women all over the place reading this book. And they seem to be like business women. And I was like, what is going on?

• 1:30:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, the person that recommends

• 1:30:23Tim Ferriss?

  Why are they, why are they, why are they reading fantasy?

• 1:30:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:30:26Tim Ferriss?

  Something doesn't add up.

• 1:30:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:30:28Tim Ferriss?

  And then, not to diminish it, I'm sure they're great books, but it there, it's kind of like dragon porn. It's like, there is a porn aspect to the whole thing.

• 1:30:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, there has to be.

• 1:30:38Tim Ferriss?

  And what some people may not know, and I think I'm getting this right.

• 1:30:42Speaker 04

  It's not like porn. Well, it's not porn. It's a romance. Yeah, there's sex, but porn is very different. Like, that's not, I mean, look.

• 1:30:49Tim Ferriss?

  But yeah, it depends on what we're talking about, but yeah. It's not like, right, gangbangs every five pages, but there's still some pretty explicit stuff.

• 1:30:58Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:30:59Tim Ferriss?

  The, what people may not realize, I am almost a hundred percent sure I'm getting this right, but I'm not going to fact-check it now on my phone. Do you know how Fifty Shades of Grey started?

• 1:31:08Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:31:08Tim Ferriss?

  It was fanfiction. It was Twilight series fanfiction. So somebody was writing, like, an extension of, like, within the Twilight world, her own fiction, super sexualized. And that turned into Fifty Shades of Grey.

• 1:31:25Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 1:31:26Tim Ferriss?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 1:31:27Speaker 04

  That is insane.

• 1:31:27Tim Ferriss?

  It is something like that. It may not be Twilight specifically, but it was fanfiction.

• 1:31:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:32Tim Ferriss?

  Fantasy that then got converted into its own franchise.

• 1:31:37Speaker 04

  Have you ever read that book?

• 1:31:40Tim Ferriss?

  I couldn't do it. I couldn't do the writing. I tried. And I just, all due respect to the author, it just was not, I could not digest the prose. But what it demonstrated to me was like, the power of a simple premise. Right? It's just like, you have, people can, are probably familiar with the series, but it's like, you have this, whatever it is, like, his name, Christian Grey, like, this, like, billionaire rich guy with a sex dungeon, and then, like,

• 1:32:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:07Tim Ferriss?

  And super explicit. And, you know, I remember a number of different pieces of coverage described it as mommy porn, for what that's worth. But it impressed me. I tried to get through the prose. I couldn't do it. But the power of a simple premise. How visceral and simple is your premise? And can see it. And honestly, that's where, for instance, my third book, Four Hour Chef, that's where it failed. It tried to do too much. It was like three books in one. It was not a simple premise. It was very complicated.

• 1:32:37Speaker 04

  I felt like it was well-received.

• 1:32:39Tim Ferriss?

  It was well-received. I mean, it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It sold like 120,000 copies the first week. But that was a function of my diehard audience, who would take me at my word that it's worth reading. But if you went blind, unfamiliar with me at all, to the, say, Amazon page, it tried to do too much. And I think, this is true with presentations, like, if I'm talking to someone who's going, for instance, I was just coaching someone who's going on 60 Minutes, and they wanted to talk about messaging. Or if I'm talking to somebody who's got a TED Talk coming up, and they're, they're asking for advice, you know, my advice is, is always the same. I didn't come up with this. Somebody else gave it to me, which is like,

• 1:33:23Tim Ferriss?

  presentations fail from too much information, not too little information. And I think that's true with books, too. It's like, does this conjure a simple image in someone's head, like, immediately?

• 1:33:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:33:34Tim Ferriss?

  And that is not easy to do while being differentiated, right? So Fifty Shades of Grey nailed it. Completely nailed it. And that has turned this thing into a global phenomenon.

• 1:33:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:46Tim Ferriss?

  Right? Whereas this third book, which I'm still very proud of, I think it's a great book, but it's really three or four books combined into one. And to try to convey that to anyone in a paragraph is next to impossible.

• 1:33:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, the same applies to so much in life, though. I mean, even on the product side of all the products that I've built over the years, it is, you know, and I watch entrepreneurs going to launch new consumer products or whatever it may be, the ones that boil the ocean and throw in every single feature. And they're like, oh, but wouldn't it be great if it had this? And I'm like, yeah, maybe, someday.

• 1:34:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:18Speaker 04

  But can you really distill down this idea to that one concept so that when you're in that, I used to call it the crowded bar conversation, not the elevator pitch, but the crowded bar. Like, if you want to say in two sentences what your thing does, can you get it out to there to where they say, oh, yeah, I'll go check that out? Oftentimes, you can't do it. So the battle is cutting features out. This is what Steve Jobs was so good at. It's like, he could have added App Store on day one for the iPhone, but it was like, he didn't. He was like, it's going to do these 10 things really well. And then slowly build on, on that base, you know?

• 1:34:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, if the V1 iPhone could get away with no copy paste, remember that?

• 1:34:55Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. That's right.

• 1:34:57Tim Ferriss?

  It sucks, bro. Talk about minimalist.

• 1:35:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, so true.

• 1:35:02Tim Ferriss?

  And this is also part of the reason why, frankly, the book that I'm working on right now is, has taken so long. Because I'm like, it's not ready just yet. Because the way that I try to explain it in like, the crowded bar test, and there are ways I could probably do market analysis to get more comfortable or to confirm or disconfirm this concern, maybe. But if I talk to, say, some of our friends who are super busy, and I tell them it's a book on saying no, and focusing in a world of noise, right? How do you create systems for that? They're like, fuck, I need that right now. Please send, send me the draft today. I don't care if it's rough. But for nine out of 10 people who are not like, one of our friends, or one of the podcast guests who have been on,

• 1:35:47Tim Ferriss?

  when I tell them that, I do not see like, the slight eye-opening and lean in. I don't see it. They're like, oh, interesting. And I'm like, hmm.

• 1:35:56Speaker 04

  Is it because most people are looking for more things to say yes to, because they don't have the opportunity?

• 1:36:01Tim Ferriss?

  This is what I'm working on to do, saying like, is it the title? Maybe it's the title, right? So I was just playing around with that yesterday. Is it the description where the promise is unclear? Is it the fact that it sounds perhaps negative instead of affirming? Saying no versus something else? Because a third of the book actually is like, how to pick the one or two things that change everything to say yes to. So it's like, hmm, maybe the book positioning should be more focused on that. It would require a very heavy lift on like, revamping a bunch of the positioning in the book, or explanatory stuff in the book.

• 1:36:42Tim Ferriss?

  But I am trying to learn from past mistakes. I don't think this book tries to do too much. I don't think that's a problem. And everybody who actually reads it, a test reader, that are like, I was never bored. Like, I would gift this book to my friends more than any of your other books. So it's like, it's working. But if people go to the Amazon page and the title and the description don't work, it doesn't matter. You're dead. Right? So that, like Fifty Shades of Grey genius, I want to get that right, which is part of the reason why I'm like, I don't need to publish a book. I didn't take it in advance, which, I mean, has its own drawbacks. I don't have a gun to the head. I don't have accountability to a publisher, which is actually can be a bad thing. Because like, we have 20 different things we're doing at any given time. It's very easy to be like, eh,

• 1:37:27Tim Ferriss?

  I'll just push it off another six months. It's fine. And that's actually not a great thing when it comes to writing books. So TBD, but that'll get figured out. I feel pretty confident in that. You know, that my aim is to have the book done in the next eight weeks.

• 1:37:40Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 1:37:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:41Speaker 04

  And so when you go from that to no publisher, like, how do you think about printing? How do you think about distribution? Are you going to do like, author's equity, or?

• 1:37:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm leaning, I'm leaning towards author's equity. I'm a small investor in that company. I mean, not enough to.

• 1:37:55Speaker 04

  People should know that's James Clear's, like,

• 1:37:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, James Clear is one of the largest investors. I mean, talk about a phenomenon, man. Holy shit. What is it, 25, 30 million copies sold? Nobody does that. In prescriptive nonfiction, nobody does that. I mean, James is a non-recurring phenomenon. Very nice guy, very smart guy. He's one of the largest investors in author's equity. Great team at author's equity. So I'm leaning towards doing something with them. I don't know what the exact form will take, right? Do I do all formats? Do I do some formats? I'm not overly worried about that. I was just chatting with them the other day, just to figure out, like, what are the actual lead times? If we're going to do the Dead Tree format, in addition to other things?

• 1:38:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:38:38Tim Ferriss?

  I've thought about only doing Kindle and Audible, but I feel like this book. Here's a hot take.

• 1:38:45Speaker 04

  It's like a giftable book.

• 1:38:46Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's a giftable book, but here's the other hot take is like, the more this become, I'm holding up my iPhone, the more these become a digital leash that is feeding you 24/7 distraction, the more I want to have a format that forces people to single task. And the only option for that right now, I suppose you could do it on a Kindle if people are using an actual Kindle device that is not internet connected for distraction. But print is a great way to single task.

• 1:39:17Speaker 04

  I know.

• 1:39:17Tim Ferriss?

  And this is also, this is a workbook. This is not a passive spectator book. If you put in the work, if you put four hours of work into this book, it should save you.

• 1:39:29Speaker 04

  Four.

• 1:39:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. If you put four, let's call it five, if you put five hours of work, inflation, if you put five hours of work into this book, it's like, it should save you a hundred hours in the next year, if you're a busy person, like without question. And it just goes up from there. So, so we'll see, but the goal is to be done in the next eight weeks.

• 1:39:49Speaker 04

  What is the lead time to set a curiosity for someone looking to make an actual physical book? Like, is it three months, five months?

• 1:39:55Tim Ferriss?

  It depends a lot on who you're talking to.

• 1:39:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:57Tim Ferriss?

  Some publishers.

• 1:39:58Speaker 04

  How big the first run is, right?

• 1:39:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And what, yeah, the, the size doesn't matter as much as you might think. If it's a simple page layout, black and white, or two color, I would say it's still pretty slow, but there's a lot that goes into it, right? Like, if you're gonna get a polished book and you're not just self-pubbing whatever comes off of your laptop, if you're gonna have copy editors and professional layout and so on, like, there are things that make that easier. I'm sure AI could do a lot of page layout. At this point, I'm sure people are developing harnesses that'll help with that specifically. But if you're looking to have, and, and I'm not sure how relevant this is to me at this point, honestly, in terms of like retail distribution, I don't know how much it matters in terms of market share at this point.

• 1:40:44Tim Ferriss?

  Things are changing so quickly and have been changing so quickly. But if you really want like the full traditional experience, I would say from what you consider a finished book, but there's still people who are gonna do copy editing and everything else, probably a year.

• 1:41:01Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:41:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, maybe more.

• 1:41:03Speaker 04

  That's slow.

• 1:41:03Tim Ferriss?

  Now, there are cases where you can do a crash book, where it's like, okay, let's just say, I mean, this is maybe not a lovely example, but it's like Princess Diana dies, publisher wants to be first out of the gate, can they get a book printed and out the door in three months? Yeah, they can. If they make it the top priority and everything else goes to the back of the line.

• 1:41:22Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:41:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. If their primary distribution is in the US and they have printers in the US, a lot of publishers should print overseas.

• 1:41:30Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:41:31Tim Ferriss?

  Those are all factors that go into it. And like, part of me is like, ah, man, once I'm done with this, I want to out ASAP. I don't wanna like wait for a year. It's like, what does that mean? Do I not do print?

• 1:41:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:41:40Tim Ferriss?

  Right? Do I do some small print run?

• 1:41:44Speaker 04

  It might be interesting to just do one print run ever.

• 1:41:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Do I do, do I do publish on demand, right? Like that, you can, you can get out the door quickly with POD and the quality has gone up a lot.

• 1:41:54Speaker 04

  But the collectability of a single run of like 10,000 could be really interesting.

• 1:41:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I could do that. Who knows? Maybe I do that and then I'm like, hey, if you want the book, like you can either get a hard copy now and there are 10,000 copies.

• 1:42:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:42:06Tim Ferriss?

  Or you can get it in a year. Or you can get a different format.

• 1:42:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:10Tim Ferriss?

  Right? I mean.

• 1:42:11Speaker 04

  That's cool.

• 1:42:11Tim Ferriss?

  I get excited about it. It's a strong book. Like, I, I feel very, very good about it. I wouldn't put it out otherwise. I cut it from, I think it was 870 pages down to like 350. That is a lot of cutting.

• 1:42:25Speaker 04

  Holy shit.

• 1:42:25Tim Ferriss?

  That's a lot of cutting.

• 1:42:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:26Tim Ferriss?

  So, everything that is in the book right now has been rated by test readers and proof readers, multiple test readers, as an eight, nine, or 10 out of 10 in quality. Everything that remains is kinda cream of the crop.

• 1:42:41Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 1:42:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, should be strong.

• 1:42:43Speaker 04

  Excited to check it out.

• 1:42:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we'll see. Anything else we should talk about?

• 1:42:46Speaker 04

  No, I think I'm good. I think I covered everything I wanted to cover. You know what? I'll send out some of those invites. I can get more of those instinct invites. Kevinrose.com newsletter over there, sign up and I will send a bunch out when this goes live.

• 1:42:59Tim Ferriss?

  Sweet. And then, uh, just to add to the dueling email newsletters.

• 1:43:03Speaker 04

  You already mentioned yours earlier, bitch.

• 1:43:06Tim Ferriss?

  I know, I'm gonna do it. Tim dot blog. Slash Friday, I don't even know if I'm pointing at the right camera.

• 1:43:09Speaker 04

  No, it's a great, your newsletter is great.

• 1:43:11Tim Ferriss?

  Five bullet Friday.

• 1:43:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's five bullets. The Kevinrose.com newsletter is slightly longer, a little bit more information dense, probably more takeaways there. So, just Kevinrose.com.

• 1:43:20Tim Ferriss?

  Also includes a, a free nude.

• 1:43:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. I include one foot picture with every new subscriber.

• 1:43:27Tim Ferriss?

  Please join my OnlyFans. I'm gonna make one more recommendation, which is, I'm not gonna say anti-AI, but it's nice counterbalance. I don't know if he wants credits, I'm not gonna mention our friend who sent this to us, but there is a short article called Please Use AI by someone called Sean Smucker, S-M-U-C-K-E-R. Please Use AI. And it's a beautiful piece about preserving the beauty and integrity of human interaction and why you should not always strive for optimizing efficiency with LLMs and computers. So, check it out.

• 1:44:08Tim Ferriss?

  Please Use AI by Sean, it's S-H-A-W-N, Smucker. It's really, really good. I've been sending that to different friends of mine. And when I put that, because I put it in the newsletter not too long ago, maybe two months ago, and I mentioned that the Please Use AI piece reminds me of a Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers, passage that is about telling his wife he's going out to buy an envelope. So, this is, this is Kurt Vonnegut, wrote Breakfast of Champions and tons of other classics. So, this is Kurt. She says, "Well, you're not a poor man, you know? Why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?" And so, I pretend not to hear her and go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I'm gonna meet a lot of people and see some great looking babes.

• 1:44:53Tim Ferriss?

  And a fire engine goes by and I give them the thumbs up and ask a woman what kind of dog that is, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, we're here on earth to fart around and don't let anybody tell you different. And of course, the computers will do us out of that. What the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. So, check out Please Use AI by Sean Smucker. It's a good one.

• 1:45:12Speaker 04

  I'm actually very, very, very bullish on this idea that AI will make almost everything that we need to do in terms of the tactical day-to-day stuff, kind of just almost handled to the extent to where we can get together in person, in real life, hang out, hopefully have more leisure time, like with everything. I mean, we've seen, we've seen there was alcohol in the last decade, like alcohol consumption's like at all time low right now, right? There's a, there's always a pendulum that swings back the other way.

• 1:45:40Tim Ferriss?

  You got the ketamine going the other direction.

• 1:45:42Speaker 04

  No, no doubt. But like, my, we see this, like, social media, like, oh, now it's bad for us, less, people are wanting less of that.

• 1:45:50Tim Ferriss?

  Here's something I didn't think of. Could the decline in alcohol consumption actually be reflective of people sitting at home and not socializing outside?

• 1:45:59Speaker 04

  Then I love alcohol.

• 1:46:00Tim Ferriss?

  Do you know what I mean, though?

• 1:46:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. I have no idea.

• 1:46:03Tim Ferriss?

  But, but you know what I'm talking about, right? Like, it could actually correlate to people spending more time at home on their computers and their phones.

• 1:46:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:10Tim Ferriss?

  What I would say is, with the AI stuff, I hope it results in people having more in-person interactions. I do think that people are gonna feel the poison, right? Like, the dose makes the poison. I think they'll feel that it's not good for them in a, in a very visceral, deep way that has not perhaps been as obvious in the last five years minus AI. But, and I'm not the first person to observe this, it's like, if interacting with a digital companion is easier than interacting with your actual partner, if they're always supportive and saying the right things and they're not getting dysregulated and freaking out like all humans do, right?

• 1:46:47Tim Ferriss?

  If kids find their customized LLM a better parent, easier to deal with because it eliminates some of the messiness.

• 1:46:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:47:00Tim Ferriss?

  Of unpredictable human interactions, you know, what are the consequences of that? The leisure time, I hope that's true. There have been so many technologies with that promise, industrial revolution, we can go through a long list, and I have not yet seen it. I don't know anyone who's like, I used AI to free up a bunch of free time that I'm now using for kiteboarding and knitting.

• 1:47:23Speaker 04

  Well.

• 1:47:23Tim Ferriss?

  They're like, I was doing two projects, but now I can do 10 projects.

• 1:47:26Speaker 04

  Something always fills the gap, right? It's something's always gonna fill the gap and you have to be very selective about what's gonna fill that gap. But I will say, for me, the daily grind of email and a lot of those other things, now that I have these, it's gonna be like, hey, Kevin, you need to pay attention to this. I don't have to check all the other spam and all the other crap that's coming in there. It has freed up time. Now, am I using it to AI code then? Yes, I am. I'm going right back in. But in theory, I could be doing woodworking or some other thing.

• 1:47:53Tim Ferriss?

  The woodworking.

• 1:47:55Speaker 04

  The woodworking comes up every, every nine months. You know Japanese joinery is amazing.

• 1:48:02Tim Ferriss?

  I know. Your Japanese woodworking is like my Jean-Claude Van Damme splits. It's like, I'm like, you know, someday.

• 1:48:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna get there.

• 1:48:09Speaker 04

  Oh, no doubt.

• 1:48:10Tim Ferriss?

  Someday, between two chairs, I'm gonna be doing splits. It's like, yeah, we'll see with those hips.

• 1:48:14Speaker 04

  Do you?

• 1:48:14Tim Ferriss?

  Not getting any younger.

• 1:48:15Speaker 04

  Should we have a competition?

• 1:48:16Tim Ferriss?

  For which one?

• 1:48:17Speaker 04

  You can do the splits first.

• 1:48:20Tim Ferriss?

  I thought it was gonna be if you can get to Japanese woodworking before I get to the splits.

• 1:48:24Speaker 04

  I wanna, I've been going to Stretch Lab, been having people stretch me out. I'm gonna get, I'll be able to do the splits and the Van Damme split within six months.

• 1:48:30Tim Ferriss?

  Within six months?

• 1:48:31Speaker 04

  Oh, 100%.

• 1:48:32Tim Ferriss?

  How much you wanna bet?

• 1:48:34Speaker 04

  You wanna do $500 to charity?

• 1:48:36Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so if.

• 1:48:37Speaker 04

  Charity my choice.

• 1:48:38Tim Ferriss?

  Well, hold on. First of all, this is just a bet about whether Kevin does something in six months.

• 1:48:42Speaker 04

  The splits?

• 1:48:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. So, I'm, I'm out of the picture.

• 1:48:45Speaker 04

  Why are you out of the picture?

• 1:48:46Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I'm just saying, you're.

• 1:48:50Speaker 04

  Oh, you don't wanna do the splits?

• 1:48:53Tim Ferriss?

  I don't care that much about it, frankly. But if you're saying you're gonna get to Jean-Claude Van Damme splits in six months, I'm like, I will take the other side of that bet.

• 1:49:01Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:49:01Tim Ferriss?

  500 bucks to charity?

• 1:49:02Speaker 04

  To charity. Charity of your choice or mine. So, either brain stem or Zen meditation is where it's going.

• 1:49:07Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, yeah. Something apolitical, not bullshit.

• 1:49:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:10Tim Ferriss?

  So, you're, just for clarity, you're saying you're going to be able to do Jean-Claude Van Damme splits between two chairs in six months?

• 1:49:15Speaker 04

  Okay, so just as a reminder, just so I have this correct, one leg on one chair, the other on the other chair hovering in the air.

• 1:49:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:24Speaker 04

  Do I have to be like, straight? Full straight line, like?

• 1:49:28Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, you can have like.

• 1:49:31Speaker 04

  Like an inch and a half.

• 1:49:32Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, inch and a half.

• 1:49:33Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:49:33Tim Ferriss?

  You're gonna do that in six months.

• 1:49:34Speaker 04

  Do I have to hold myself up? Like, is that hard to do? I don't know.

• 1:49:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you have to be stupidly strong and you're like adductors, otherwise it just tears your legs out like, like chicken legs.

• 1:49:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. We're gonna do this live on the podcast, I'm gonna rip my groin and I'll be in a wheelchair for six months for $500.

• 1:49:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:49:53Tim Ferriss?

  On that note, folks, another random show. Kev, Kev, great to see you. Yeah. And we'll put stuff in the show notes. God knows. Sorry to my post-production team. Lots of supplements. For all the things that you're gonna need to put in, but tim.blog/podcast for people who want to check it out. And timroose.com. Great newsletter. There you go. All right. Thanks for tuning in, guys. See ya. See ya.

• 1:50:15Tim 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 one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half-page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

• 1:50:58Tim 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. As some of you might recall, I launched my own limited edition coffee a few years back. It was delicious. It was a blast, but that's a story for another time. Here's why I'm bringing it up. I needed and wanted an online store that would be beautiful, fast and reliable.

• 1:51:40Tim Ferriss?

  Plus a checkout that wouldn't scare people off at the finish line. So I used this episode's sponsor, Shopify. I've known the team since 2009 when they had something like 10 employees and I was using it back then. Many of the most successful startups I advise today also use Shopify. From fast-growing new companies to some massive juggernauts, they all use Shopify. I started my first online business back in 2001. Back then, it meant late nights, a lot of broken code, emailing tons of customer support emails and headaches after headaches after headaches, hoping the payment page wouldn't stop orders, drop orders, the whole nine yards, right?

• 1:52:20Tim Ferriss?

  In contrast, my Shopify store got up and running well within a few hours, ran 24/7 without drama. And Shop Pay, the easiest checkout on the market, got customers from add to cart to paid in seconds. Shop Pay lifts conversions by up to 50% relative to guest checkout. So it really smoothes the way. I use it all the time when I'm buying stuff. So if you're ready to make your first sale, check it out. Go to Shopify.com/Tim and start your free trial today. One more time, that's Shopify.com/Tim. Okay, guys, I'm recording this at an airport. I am on the go. And this ties into Urolithin A. What the hell is that? Some of you have heard me talk about this on a Q&A episode I did this summer.

• 1:53:04Tim Ferriss?

  It was in response to a question around what I'm doing for cognitive performance, or at least possibly mitigating cognitive decline. I take on very few new supplements. This is one that I'm taking for a lot of good reasons. And there are some very credible, peer-reviewed publications in humans, not just mice, on this stuff. Let me give you a little bit of background. Your cells have these built-in maintenance crew. Every day, they clear out worn-out mitochondria, the power plants in your cells, to put it simply, and replace them with healthier ones. The technical term is mitophagy, and it gets less efficient as we age. Urolithin A supports that renewal process. By the way, it also seems highly plausible that it helps with decreasing neuroinflammation

• 1:53:49Tim Ferriss?

  and a number of other things. So it's deeply, deeply interesting. But getting back to the renewal process, your gut bacteria can make Urolithin A from compounds in foods like pomegranates. But many people make very little of this or none at all. In one study of 100 adults, only 12 had detectable levels of Urolithin A. So I just take 1,000 milligrams per day. That is what's supported by some of the research. And the version I take is Mitopure, M-I-T-O-P-U-R-E from Timeline, a highly pure form of Urolithin A backed by 15 years, 15-plus years actually, of research and multiple human clinical trials.

• 1:54:28Tim Ferriss?

  And for a limited time, Timeline is offering you 30% off. I've been using it for, God, I don't know, a year now, year and a half. And it's always fun when I come across sponsors related to products I'm already using and have been using for a long time. So check it out. Get 30% off. Go to timeline.com/Tim. That's Timeline, as you would spell it, T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E. Timeline.com/Tim. Check it out.