#333: Random Show — Fasting, Biohacking, and Tony Robbins

Serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, eagle scout, and all around wild and crazy guy Kevin Rose (@KevinRose http://www.twitter.com/kevinrose), rejoins me for another episode of The Random Show. We discuss Kevin’s new diet obsession that may just save his life for many decades to come, fatherhood, minimalism, lifetime learning, ways to dial back alcohol consumption, lessons learned from Tony Robbins, most recommended books, and much more. Enjoy! This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn https://linkedin.com/Tim and its job recruitment platform, which offers a smarter system for the hiring process. If you’ve ever hired anyone (or attempted to), you know finding the right people can be difficult. If you don’t have a direct referral from someone you trust, you’re left to use job boards that don’t offer any real-world networking approach. LinkedIn https://linkedin.com/Tim, as the world’s largest professional network — used by more than 70 percent of the US workforce — has a built-in ecosystem that allows you to not only search for employees, but also interact with them, their connections, and their former employers and colleagues in a way that closely mimics real-life communication. Visit LinkedIn.com/Tim https://linkedin.com/Tim and receive a $50 credit toward your first job post! This podcast is also brought to you by Peloton https://www.onepeloton.com/, which has become a staple of my daily routine. I picked up this bike after seeing the success of my friend Kevin Rose, and I’ve been enjoying it more than I ever imagined. Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right to your home. No worrying about fitting classes into your busy schedule or making it to a studio with a crazy commute. New classes are added every day, and this includes options led by elite NYC instructors in your own living room. You can even live stream studio classes taught by the world’s best instructors, or find your favorite class on demand. Peloton https://www.onepeloton.com/ is offering listeners to this show a special offer. Visit onepeloton.com https://www.onepeloton.com/ and enter the code TIM at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. This is a great way to get in your workouts, or an incredible gift. Again, that’s onepeloton.com https://www.onepeloton.com/ and enter the code TIM. *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor http://tim.blog/sponsor. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. 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.

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, we're just seeing an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink AG1, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, mogwai and gremlins. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. If you're looking for perhaps some type of highbrow, intellectual, long form conversation, you might want to go to tim.blog/podcast for one of my other long form interviews. Don't sell us short, dude. Come on. Hold on, Kevin, I haven't introduced you yet. But for those of you who enjoy the the random helter skelter, is that a right word? Yeah, I think it is. Nature. Well, I'm gonna run with it. Of the random show, which we haven't had an episode of for a very, very long time. And it's a conversation between yours truly and my good friend, Kevin Rose. Guest number one on the Tim Ferriss Show.

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  That's true. You were guest number one, the very first episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. And Actually, that's in my LinkedIn bio now. It's my claim to fame. It's in your Google+ bio. That's right.

• 2:24Tim Ferriss?

  We have not done a random show for a long time, but I'll let you do if you want to do an introduction of the random show.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  I don't think we even need to anymore.

• 2:30Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think we need to.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  We don't even know what episode we're on. Like, for those that have heard the Random Show before, I think we've done probably, if I had to guess, I'd say maybe 25 episodes?

• 2:40Tim Ferriss?

  Something like that, 25, 25 episodes.

• 2:42Speaker 03

  So we're, episode 27, let's call it.

• 2:44Tim Ferriss?

  Episode 27. And Kevin, for people who don't know you, what's your story? What would you like people to know about you? What's the?

• 2:51Speaker 03

  That's a good question.

• 2:52Tim Ferriss?

  The speaker bio version of Kevin Rose?

• 2:53Speaker 03

  I don't even know these days. Uh, no, seriously, um, I would say that I've been a long time internet entrepreneur. Um, I probably am best known for creating the social news website, Dig, back in 2004. Um, that grew to become a pretty big entity, um, for a number of years. And then I was at Google as an investor, and now I'm at True Ventures as an investor. Tim, you and I probably co-invested in maybe a dozen or so angel deals?

• 3:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, at least.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  Um, Facebook together, I think Twitter together?

• 3:27Tim Ferriss?

  Twitter together, Blue Bottle Coffee together.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, a bunch of them.

• 3:31Tim Ferriss?

  Side note, you remember how ridiculed we all were when the consortium of techies and non-techies invested in Blue Bottle Coffee? Do you remember how much shit we got on the internet for that?

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Absolutely. They're like, "Why would Blue Bottle need to raise money?" And, but it's done okay. It had a great exit here just about a month ago.

• 3:49Tim Ferriss?

  It has done alright. It was a, what was it, a majority stake acquisition by Nestle for 700 million or so. So it worked out.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, it worked out.

• 3:57Tim Ferriss?

  So you've done very well as an investor. You are obsessed with many things Japanese. You, you have a new obsession, it seems, every few weeks. And, uh, do you have anything new to add? Actually, you know what? I want to, I want to hear about the fast mimicking diet, because this is something I thought, I, I would have put money on you never sticking with. The fast moving diet and maybe you can explain for people what that means. But you've actually now done a number of scheduled five day.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. That's five day FMD. So I'll start back by saying that probably the reason why, Tim, you and I are friends. I met you when you were launching your first book on your boat party that you did. You rented out a warship in the San Francisco Bay and.

• 4:43Tim Ferriss?

  The SS Jeremiah where they recorded a lot of the boiler room audio for the James Cameron movie Titanic.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  Oh, crazy.

• 4:52Tim Ferriss?

  In fact.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  That's awesome. But yeah, we hit it off because we both love all kinds of this idea of lifelong learning. I think it's been a theme that you and I both enjoy and you know, I've certainly got really into biohacking in the last couple of years. I've watched from afar you poke and prod yourself and squirt all kinds of different juices out of your elbow.

• 5:18Tim Ferriss?

  You know, this requires a little bit of explanation. So just, this is so gross. All right. But now I have to explain it. So I had a botched PRP injection, which is platelet rich plasma injection in my right elbow. And people can look up PRP. It actually has some fantastic applications, but there was a botched injection which pushed effectively subcutaneous bacteria into the elbow capsule itself. And it turned into this horrible infection that required abridement and surgery and so on. But Kevin, being the good friend that he is, came to visit me in the ER when I was having the, I'm not sure if you'd call it synovial fluid, the infection fluid.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  It was the pus drained out of your elbow.

• 6:02Tim Ferriss?

  Pus drained out of my elbow with this gigantic syringe. And being the mature adult that I am, I thought it'd be funny to take this turkey baster worth of elbow fluid out of the Sharps container and squirt it at Kevin, who was in the room. I'm not proud of it, but I don't regret it either. So yes, you see me do a lot and make a lot of short term decisions that haven't turned out very well in the world of biohacking.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  It's always entertaining though, gotta say. Had a lot of fun doing stupid shit together. But yeah, speaking of, well, probably not that dumb these days, but fasting. So I got into fasting here probably about three years ago, two or three years ago. I started the fasting app Zero, which is a free fasting tracker. And so that has really kind of blown up and taken off. But then I started hearing about the research from Dr. Walter Longo. And so it actually was from a friend of mine, you know, Mike Mazer, a mutual friend of ours.

• 7:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  And Mike was diagnosed with stage four cancer. He went into chemotherapy treatment and he was one of the guys that said, I'm just not gonna, you know, just take what they give me, but I'm gonna go out and do my own research and see what else I can be doing to help fight this and beat this down. And one of the things that came up was this idea of doing these five day FMDs. And the FMD stands for fasting mimetic diet. And the idea is that compliance of doing a standard five day fast is relatively low because it's an extremely difficult thing to do. Tim, have you ever done a five day water only fast?

• 7:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I've done five, seven and 10 day.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  Okay, so I've done a five day water only and I will tell you, it is absolutely brutal. I don't know what your experience was, but like, I had a really difficult time sleeping.

• 8:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, there's a, I believe it's a cholinergic effect that leads you to have rapid heartbeat quite often.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:08Tim Ferriss?

  When you're trying to sleep, it's not pleasant. So you'll be exhausted and you'll lay down in bed and you're, you'll feel like you just ran a hundred meter sprint in terms of heartbeat. It's very, very unpleasant.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  It's kind of scary, like, and I get those, I'm also one of those people that get those, I get those little early heartbeats, you know, where you like, feel like your, your heart like kind of skip a beat a little bit. They're completely benign and I've had it looked at and everything's fine, but I get those every once in a while and those are, those come more frequently when I'm in a fasted state. So, long story short. Mike does this five day fast. He beats back cancer. He's in full remission, which is awesome. But the idea with the the five day fast is that-

• 8:50Tim Ferriss?

  Can I interrupt you one more time? The, and I think this, I don't think Mike would mind this, but I remember you and I when we were talking about this and he, did he do five or three? I can't recall.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, you're right. He did three.

• 9:01Tim Ferriss?

  He did three, but just, just for those who are curious, so I've had conversations with Dominic D'Agostino before on this podcast, very well published researcher. And I was first introduced to the possibility that fasting prior to chemotherapy, I believe, and radiation could be either. Has the potential to increase the resilience of normal cells while increasing the susceptibility or weakness of cancer cells. To facilitate this type of treatment, but also to decrease the side effects that are commonly experienced. And so Mike, to my understanding, would do say a three day fast before a session.

• 9:45Tim Ferriss?

  And while the other people in his cohort were laid out on the, on the couch or in bed the next day, he'd be running a 10 mile training run.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Right, which is just insane.

• 9:54Tim Ferriss?

  Which is nuts.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and so he originally, when he got turned on to this research by Dr. Longo is, he showed me this YouTube video where they were giving rats chemotherapy. And the one, the rats that were fasted were just like running around the cage. It looked like normal, healthy rats. And the ones that didn't fast were just, like you said, like on their side, all beat up and in a horrible state. And that's exactly what Mike experienced. And yeah, the idea is that on the, making the chemotherapy more effective is that, you know, you're depriving your cells of, the cancer cells of some nutrients, certainly sugar, less glucose. And it makes them more susceptible to the chemotherapy treatment. So the chemotherapy is that much more effective.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  So, you know, obviously we can't say for certain whether that's what put him into remission, but he's really happy that it did work and he is in remission. And the evidence looks pretty compelling in humans. And so they're also extending this whole protocol to healthy individuals as a, a way to potentially prevent cancer from even forming in the first place. So I was turned on to Dr. Walter Longo's new book, The Longevity Diet, and I had him on my podcast. Have you seen this book yet?

• 11:02Tim Ferriss?

  I have seen that. Yeah, I haven't read it, but I have seen it.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So there's a whole chapter on his FMD protocol and what you need to do to do these five day fasts. And so I guess getting into what it actually is, so how it differs from a water only fast is that you do have calories. So you have around 700 or so calories per day. Some people say that sounds like a lot. Some people say it sounds like a little. It's actually not that much food. It's like a handful of small soups and some crackers. And you know, the first day it's not so bad. You're like, oh, I can do this, like some crackers and a little bit of soup. And then day two and day three, and you're like, oh, my God, I'm dying, right? But it's not nearly as bad as water only. But the idea is that you eat just enough food to still get into this fasted state.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  So all of your inflammation markers, all the things that the different markers are looking at in your blood, they look just like you're doing a water only fast, but with a minimal amount of food. So you have a little bit of not as much hunger and a little bit more energy. And so the compliance is much higher.

• 12:06Tim Ferriss?

  Were you tracking, when you do these FMDs, have you tracked your ketone levels at all? Do you get into ketosis or does the small amount of carbohydrate and so on that you're consuming keep you out of ketosis?

• 12:16Speaker 03

  I get a mild, I would say I get around 0.5 or so millimolars. So it's like a very mild.

• 12:25Tim Ferriss?

  Right on the edge.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  Right, which is kind of brutal because you're kind of in the keto flu symptom area. And so you're not fully into ketosis. Well, this is really interesting because so Atiya, Peter Atiya, who you've had on the show a few times, he's my doctor and I know you work with him as well. And we've kind of like played around with this, this protocol in that Atiya has put together an FMD diet that is a lot more ketogenic friendly, so a lot heavier on the fats and a lot less on the refined carbohydrates. So for example, when you're doing Longo's version of this diet, and he actually has a nonprofit called ProLon. So you'd actually just order this kit. So I get a kit in the mail that has all the prepackaged food. If you're watching the video version of this, this is what it looks like here.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  It's happened to have one of this is like day five or yeah, day five.

• 13:12Tim Ferriss?

  What do they do? What does the nonprofit do with the money that they get? Because it looks very.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  It goes back into research.

• 13:17Tim Ferriss?

  It goes back into research.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  That's right. And Longo doesn't receive any of the, any of the money at all. He doesn't take a salary. And so, you know, this is meant for people that want to create a little autophagy, a little cell death, generate new stem cells, which he has proven actually happens via this five-day method. And so, the thing that hooked me, though, is I have had elevated cholesterol on my whole father's side of the family, and that's turned into heart disease with my dad and him passing away from a heart attack. My grandpa passed away from a heart attack. My grandma on my dad's side passed away from a heart attack. So like, it's running deep. And it's a little bit scary, you know, now that I'm 40, I've got these pretty bad numbers,

• 14:02Speaker 03

  so much so that Atiya has put me on Crestor, which is, you know, knocking back the bad cholesterol with a statin, but obviously, I'd prefer not to be on a statin. Anyway, long story short, I decided to, because of his book, The Longevity Diet, I was reading through it, and he said that he was seeing people that did the five-day fast, they were improving their cholesterol numbers, and they were getting more good cholesterol and less bad cholesterol. So I was like, oh, that sounds interesting, I might as well give this a shot, but to give it a proper shot, you're supposed to do, and I talked a long ago about this, but three back-to-back five-day fasts over three months, and then once a quarter.

• 14:40Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so you do, there's like a loading phase of fasting?

• 14:43Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 14:44Tim Ferriss?

  Where you do whatever, the first week of each month for three months?

• 14:47Speaker 03

  That's right. And then... It's the creation of fasting.

• 14:49Tim Ferriss?

  Right, and then you do maintenance, once a quarter thereafter?

• 14:54Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 14:55Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I did the first five-day fast three months ago, had my blood work drawn pre and post, you know, small, minor improvements. Second fast, same thing, and then by the third, we actually saw a dramatic drop on a few different fronts, cholesterol-wise, and Atiya was like, when he called me up, because we do these like little, you know, calls to go over my blood work, and he was like, Kevin, you're gonna, you're gonna live to 90 if you keep this up, this is amazing. So he was shocked, and he was blown away, and so, we're pretty happy with the results. We'll see how long they stick, and this is no dietary changes, this is just, I mean, granted, there's a dietary change during those five days, but no like long-term, I'm

• 15:39Speaker 03

  still kind of sticking to the same diet that I've always been, been sticking to.

• 15:44Tim Ferriss?

  I like that he was so specific with 90. That's lower than I would have expected. So it must be all the, must be all the meth that you're doing that's gonna kill you.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I still do a dose of meth every now and then, but no, actually, speaking of meth, dude, I just did some L-theanine for the first time today.

• 15:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Have you tried this with coffee?

• 16:01Tim Ferriss?

  I, it is very interesting stuff, to be sure.

• 16:03Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, dude, I'd never tried it before. I took a pill of it. I took, uh, 200 milligrams this morning and I was out with, with a mutual friend, Tony Conrad. We met for coffee and I gave him a pill too.

• 16:14Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God.

• 16:14Speaker 03

  And we were like cracked out for like three hours, man.

• 16:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so this observing of the biohacking is a mutual arrangement that Kevin and I have. It's not just him watching me squirting fluid out of my elbow. I also observe things that you do. Now, on the, on the FMD though, just to return to that for a second, you mentioned in passing that Atiya had looked at the possibility of doing a lower carbohydrate, higher fat.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  He actually has a protocol for that. Yeah, I'm sure he'd, he'd give you the PDF if you, if you asked for, for the podcast notes.

• 16:52Tim Ferriss?

  Have you tried it?

• 16:53Speaker 03

  I did. Yeah, I did that for the second one and it was, I, I liked it. Um, actually, I just happened to buy a three pack of the ProLon kit. So I wanted to go through them and use them because they're not cheap. And so I just used that for the last one. But I like Atiya's in that it's a little bit more work, obviously, because you're preparing your own food. But it's largely like his is different in that with ProLon, you get these little tiny snacks throughout the entire day. With his, it's one meal a day and it's a, it's just a salad. It's like a greens and like, you know, three tablespoons or four tablespoons of olive oil and like six olives and, you know, like some sunflower seeds. It's not, it's not a whole lot, but it certainly is, is, um, gives you, it's not as refined. And so you, uh,

• 17:36Speaker 03

  I saw my ketone levels go up on his versus, and I, I think I had certainly more energy on his versus the ProLon.

• 17:42Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Well, I'll ping Peter about that. Uh, it makes sense that you would, on multiple levels, that you would have higher ketone levels. And for people who are wondering. How one would measure ketone levels, I think you and I still use the same device, which is the Precision Extra, XTRA by Abbott Labs, which does a sufficient job in measuring something called BHB, beta hydroxybutyrate, in the blood for a number of different reasons. This is a much more precise and accurate, well, let's just call it precise, but consistently precise, maybe it's accurate, maybe it isn't, method of measuring ketones, or whether the

• 18:23Tim Ferriss?

  degree to which you're in ketosis than pee sticks. Because as your body becomes, or if you are already very efficient at using ketone bodies, you could show a false negative. Where you pee on this, on the stick, it tells you you're not in ketosis when in fact you are. So the blood, the blood is just more accurate. Well, I'm glad you're gonna live to 90. That makes me happy.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it was a, it was a pretty cool experiment, and certainly for someone that has heart disease running their family, I'm gonna keep it up. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do another blood draw here next week to see where my levels are at, and then try and do this quarterly. That's, and hopefully, if we can get it down to where I won't be using statins any longer, that'd be great.

• 19:04Tim Ferriss?

  The last time we did a random show, it was a very, very long time ago, I believe. It was at least before you had a little monkey in your house.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 19:17Tim Ferriss?

  A reason, many reasons, of course, to stick around, but now a very compelling new reason. So what is it, how would you describe, since certainly I have no kids that I'm aware of at this point?

• 19:30Speaker 03

  That's a good disclaimer there.

• 19:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, just, you know, that I don't have kids, asterisks, that I know of. What have been the biggest changes that you've felt or observed in yourself or otherwise, how you view the world, anything like that, now that you have a kid? And what is your kid's name? I know you-

• 19:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, Zelda. She's four months old. And she's named after the video game because one of the first things that my wife and I bonded on very early on in our relationship was our love for the game Zelda. And actually, the new Zelda game allows you to track your hours played. It actually shows it in like the little settings menu. And so Daria has over 200 hours played of the latest Zelda. So she's hardcore. She played it a lot during her pregnancy.

• 20:17Tim Ferriss?

  She's a true believer. And when we were in Japan a long time ago, Daria was using some type of emulator. I don't know what device it was on exactly, but she was playing Zelda on all the trains when we were sitting down and chilling. That's one-

• 20:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, like the original. Yeah, Josh Cook was too.

• 20:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's fun to play the original ones with those old-school emulators. But yeah, so in terms of her, I mean, it's hard for, I think, a guy in that when you first have your first child, it's like, there's not a whole lot to do. There's just like a lot of crying. And so, you know, I tried to help out where I can, but it's really like, you know, on the hip of mom, she was for the first, you know, several weeks and just there's a lot of getting used to new things. And then now, it's just amazing. You walk into a room and she lights up when she sees me for the first time. She smiles and giggles and, you know, it kind of changes the way that I want to approach life in terms of what things are important and trying to make more time to be a good father.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  And so, for someone like myself that has so many varying interests and certainly can get sucked into new things pretty easily, I've been trying to be a little bit more thoughtful about where and when I spend my energy so that I can kind of dial back. You know, so I've spent a good portion of this year trying to live a little bit more minimalist lifestyle.

• 21:45Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the steps that you've taken to do that?

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Well, um, one of the things-

• 21:50Tim Ferriss?

  I feel like you and I have had this conversation every year since we first met. But now you actually have a gigantic incentive to follow through.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  It's funny, every time I get together, it's just like, oh, man, I've got too many investments, I'm doing this, there's too many things going on, and I gotta spend my time here, and we're always like more or less complaining to each other. They're just like, just taking on too many things. Um, even, it's so ridiculous.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  So, I, I've just been trying to, um, implement a few rules. So, one of the things I did starting January 1st was to throw away or donate something every single day. And so I have forced myself to go in, and so for example, um, a few days ago, I went in and I just like picked out all the clothes that I haven't touched in, um, a year, and I took them down the street, like I had a half a block away is a donation place, and I donated anything that I hadn't worn in a year. And it really thins out your closet. And I've been doing that-

• 22:54Tim Ferriss?

  Was that easy for you to do, or did you have any-

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely.

• 22:56Tim Ferriss?

  It was. There was no resistance. You were like, but that's the sweater that my Auntie Janie gave me, and-

• 23:02Speaker 03

  No, I mean, who's that little lady you had in your podcast that wrote that book on-

• 23:07Tim Ferriss?

  Marie Kondo.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 23:09Tim Ferriss?

  Technically, Mari Kondo is how they would say in Japanese, but Marie Kondo.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  Marie Kondo, yeah, she's awesome. So I listened to her audiobook, and one of the things that she says in her audiobook is that the way that you can depart with something is to realize that it has already taught you its lesson. And that lesson may be that it wasn't for you, right? So like, if, if you have it hanging in your closet and you look at it, and you're like, oh, but someday I might, no, the lesson is that it spent its time with you, it wasn't for you, and it should go to a good home, or can be appreciated by someone else. And so my lesson is not to buy it again. And, and, and so I took that, and I've applied that to thinning out pretty much everything in my life. And so every single day, and I think that a lot of people, there's like this analysis paralysis thing where-

• 23:56Speaker 03

  You think about cleaning out the garage, or you think about doing this massive overhaul in your life, and you're like, oh, you know, it's the weekend, I gotta do this. And there's always something that jumps in front of it in terms of priorities. For me, it's like, I find that if I just say, okay, one thing a day, like, at the end of the year, I'm gonna, I may not be to my goal, but after five years, I certainly will.

• 24:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  You know, it's not like I have that much stuff, but just really saying, do I need this in my life? And is it bringing joy to my life? I think is such a good forcing function to like, get rid of a lot of stuff. And everything that you get rid of is actually less of a mental load on you. There was this old tea master that I met one time, and Tim and I have done some crazy travels all throughout China in tea lands. But there was this, there was this one guy I met.

• 24:44Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, the stories we could tell.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, seriously. We've done some crazy stuff in the middle of the Yunnan province. Nothing sexual. That was our friend.

• 24:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  We had a friend that did something. So, long story short, the one thing that this tea master showed me is he pulled out of his pocket, one key, and he showed me the one key, and he goes, Kevin, do you know what this is? And I was like, it's a key, you know, and he's like, yeah, it's the key to my house. Like, this is, this is my one key. He's like, I've worked my entire life to have one key. Because we can all have multiple keys, you know, meaning like, the things that you purchase, whether you have a key to your boat, or your spare garage, or another, you know, motorcycle, or whatever it may be. There's things in your life that you accumulate, and the least amount of burden

• 25:39Speaker 03

  and the most happiness you can get is like, having less stuff to worry about. And so, I find that to be really true. And so, that's what I've been trying to focus on is, is just having less and being happy with a very handful of high quality things.

• 25:52Tim Ferriss?

  I also want to mention that it's possible to read a book like Marie Kondo's book, which I can never remember the title of, because I want to say it's like, The Magic Art of Japanese Tidying Up. Then it's like, no, it's something close. It's like, The Art of, The Joy of Magic Cleaning Up. I can never remember the exact phrasing, I don't know why. But, in any case, that cold following with her book, leads some readers to think it's an all or nothing, take it or leave it, approach. So you, on the other hand... Have philosophically found bits and pieces of that book that are very useful to you, but are tactically actually doing the opposite of what she recommends, but it works for you. So she recommends doing this like once in a lifetime tidying, Super Bowl, basically,

• 26:36Tim Ferriss?

  where you block out two or three days of your life and that's what you do and then the rest is maintenance. It's kind of like the fastmibeking diet of Japanese tidying, right? You have this loading phase and I've had this book, I actually am looking at it on my bookshelf right now for like two years and I'm just like, man, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. And then I'm like, two to three days, I look at my calendar, I'm like, no, I'm not gonna do it. I'm just not gonna do it. So I like the idea tactically of one at a time, uh, one per day. And also what's helped me, because I do, I have actually been, since I moved to Austin not too long ago, it's been a great opportunity after

• 27:19Tim Ferriss?

  boxing everything up. It's like, okay, do I really want to unbox all this stuff or do I just want to donate?

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:24Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of this because it might be from a one to 10 scale of value, a two to me, or maybe a one, maybe a three, but I could donate this very easily to Goodwill or somewhere else to say a high school gym that needs equipment, which is something I've done in the past. And it's an immediate eight, nine, or 10. It's just a better, it's a, it's a nice karmic chess move to donate. And you think of not what you're losing, but also what you're giving to someone else in that respect, uh, which I find really helpful. So you're giving away one item per day.

• 28:02Speaker 03

  The other thing too, I will tell you, um, along those lines is that if there is a purchase that I want to make, um, that is not just what I would consider to be, you know, a necessity, like toilet paper or whatever it may be. Um, and it's something that is, is, is luxury or not luxury, but in the sense of like, you know, it's going to cost you over a hundred dollars and I don't necessarily need it, but I kind of want to try it. Um, you can, what I do is I save for later on Amazon. So you can add and say, save for later and, you know, set a reminder in your, um, calendar app for a week or two weeks later and almost 90% of the time I end up not buying that thing. I still have one thing in there actually from you. It's um, uh, that NAC, NOC?

• 28:48Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  Should I buy that?

• 28:50Tim Ferriss?

  Anacytosistine. Well, NAC, uh, so this is, I, I should say with all of this stuff that we're discussing, because it bears repeating, we are not doctors. We don't play them on the internet. So everybody, everybody should assume that at least 50% of what we're saying is complete fucking nonsense. And we are just not sure which 50% it is. So work with a qualified professional, uh, before you start taking or stopping any type of medication or supplement. The NAC came to me initially because I was looking at, at it as a means to accelerate recovery between workouts. And, uh, my understanding, I might be getting this wrong, but is that it is

• 29:34Tim Ferriss?

  a precursor to glutathione, which some people think of as this master antioxidant or upstream antioxidant that has a host of beneficial effects. And what I noticed in taking the NAC is that I was, over the period of a week to 10 days, perhaps seven, eight days into it, that I was more even keeled than, than was typical. I felt very, like the week had been very smooth and I hadn't changed anything else that I could identify. I'd been either meditating or not meditating for a series of weeks. There were a lot of constants. And when I went onto PubMed and began to look at anacytosistine and search for other terms

• 30:19Tim Ferriss?

  like depression or bipolar and so on, there were a number of search results that popped up that seemed to indicate to me that there was some promise in using NAC to mitigate the amplitude of the ups and downs that could be associated with, say bipolar. And that, that's the primary reason that for, for periods of time, and I cycle off of all of these things, I've become very fascinated by NAC, which quite nicely does have potentially recovery benefits from an athletic standpoint, although most of my athletic prowess has been focused on eating oatmeal cookies recently. So I can't really claim that I'm doing a

• 30:59Tim Ferriss?

  lot of, uh, killer workouts. I got rabdo from eating oatmeal cookies. For you CrossFitters out there, that's for you. But, uh, The other would be something you and I are both familiar with, which is low dose lithium orotate. Very, very low dose lithium orotate, five milligrams, which you can find on Amazon and elsewhere. And there's a great New York Times article, which people can find very easily, that is titled along the lines of, "Maybe We All Just Need A Little Bit Of Lithium." And it talks about the inverse correlation of groundwater concentrations of lithium with, I want to say, at least reported suicide, homicide, manic depression, and so on.

• 31:44Tim Ferriss?

  So, those two, for me, function in tandem, or at least appeal to me for very similar reasons. So, the NAC, should you use it or not, I think is a question of whether you feel you need it. And for me, at least currently, I get asked all the time, like, "What are your top 10 supplements that you're using right now?" Because people have this impression after reading the Farah Body and so on, that I'm just, like, I walk around with a drip IV bag in my arm and have a thousand pills I'm taking four times a day. Well, I've certainly seen you in that mode. You've seen that. No, you have seen me in that mode, but my mode right now is to really ensure that I am using supplements as supplements. Right.

• 32:28Tim Ferriss?

  And that I'm not using them to absolve me of the responsibility to eat proper food, for instance. And it's like, look, if you're drinking a lot, and you're like compulsively watching porn, and not exercising, and like mainlining pixie sticks for your diet, and you're like, "Wow, I'm depressed, maybe I should take 15 different supplements." It's like, no, you need to fucking fix it the rest of your life. Right, right, right. And then see what your baseline is, because you're creating so much static and noise and garbage inputs that you don't even know what your baseline is. It's so disguised with sort of the, the trauma and confusion of your inputs, that you need to... Do you track your baseline? Like, do you log what you, what you consume and what you take?

• 33:11Tim Ferriss?

  I log, you know, my baseline, this is gonna sound so primitive, and it is, but my baseline is really... How do I feel when I wake up? You know, do I want to stay in bed because I don't want to face the day? Am I anxious? Are those my first thoughts coming out of bed? Assuming that I'm not checking my phone, right? Because I'm, it's really my starting state out of the gate of wake, sleep to wakefulness. And then at night, how much trouble do I have sleeping? If any? Or do I fall asleep easily? How deep is my sleep? And so for deepness of sleep, you could certainly use something like an Oura ring or an accelerometer. I mean, there are different means by which you could try to assess the quality of your sleep.

• 33:52Tim Ferriss?

  But for me, really looking at how consistently I feel good waking up and how long it takes me to get up to, say, first or second gear. Because it historically has taken me a long time to go from park to like second or third gear. Some people wake up, you might be one of these people, and they're like, "Fuck it, world! Here I am, I'm ready to party!" That's not me. It's like I have a real slow build and...

• 34:16Speaker 03

  I think I'm in between you and that. I am definitely not ready to party the second I wake up. I am after coffee. I have a cup of coffee, I'm ready to party.

• 34:23Tim Ferriss?

  So I feel that way if, for instance, I'm in ketosis, past about two millimolars. I need less sleep, so let's call it six versus eight hours, and when I wake up, I am awake versus feeling groggy for an hour to hour and a half, which can be remedied somewhat by the psychological advantage of exercising in the morning, which is one thing I've been scheduling to do more of, per Jocko Willink, retired Navy SEAL commander and all-around intense, intense, accomplished guy. People can find him, tim.blog/jaco, first ever public interview. So I'm thrilled to have unleashed the giant white gorilla on the internet. And...

• 35:08Tim Ferriss?

  Baseline, though, to return to your question, is really something I try to keep as simple as possible. Do I and have I measured all those other things? Yes. But I think that whether it's with your body, or with a business, or any number of other things, it's really easy to become addicted to measuring things that don't matter very much. Or, we're still measuring things that will distract you from the things that do matter. Does that make sense?

• 35:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense.

• 35:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  I've tried to kind of pare it down to just the stuff I really care about. I just sent you a link in our video chat to my dashboard for the things I measure every day.

• 35:49Tim Ferriss?

  Cool.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  So for me, you know, I'm really concerned about my glucose levels because they are a tiny bit elevated. So I do waking glucose, bedtime glucose, I do whether I meditated that day or not, I do how many hours I fasted the night prior, I do how many drinks I've had, and then I do what type of workout, whether I had tea or coffee that day, and then my food. But food, not in terms of kind of a by the calorie, you know, super anal kind of breakdown, but really just typing out what I ate for that day as a way to hold myself accountable and just like look over the last few days at a glance and see if I've been behaving or not. So I find that just the act of writing it down makes me behave a little bit better.

• 36:32Tim Ferriss?

  It does. Okay, that was gonna be my question, is how does that actually impact your behavior?

• 36:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, this is a fascinating question. I did an experiment here about three weeks ago with a group of five friends, and I asked them all, I created this spreadsheet that we all logged into every single day, and what you do is you record the number of drinks you had the night before. And I was thinking about turning this into an app, although I'm not gonna do it, but I was interested in trying to create social pressure to drink less. Not to drink more, but to drink less. And the thing that I found that was really interesting is that If you drink over two drinks in a night, people have some shame in reporting that. And so they will misreport.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  And so, you know, if you went out and you had like four or five drinks, it's like, oh, I don't want to be the guy that had.

• 37:27Tim Ferriss?

  The one asshole on the spreadsheet.

• 37:28Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 37:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  So I changed it then, so the spreadsheet would only say two plus. And so that's the max you could go. And then people were a lot more like open to being like, yeah, I had two plus last night. You know, they were a lot more at ease.

• 37:42Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  But it still created a little bit of social pressure and personal pressure. If you looked at your list and you're like, ooh, there's been four nights of two plus there. I should probably do a night without drinking, right? So my idea was to create an app that would allow you just to say up to two plus and see all of your friends in the same arena. And then kind of hopefully encourage you to be able to drink socially, but not take it too far.

• 38:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this brings up all sorts of really fascinating and frustrating methodological questions in terms of designing this type of reporting. Right? Because I was thinking to myself as you were saying this, well, if you had a larger group, say a group of 200 people, you would have, one would expect you would have more people in that group reporting drinking two, three, four drinks on any given night.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:29Tim Ferriss?

  So the shame factor would be decreased. But if you decrease the shame factor, that also decrease the incentive to actually behave, right? Because you can blend into this.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:42Tim Ferriss?

  Perceived acceptability of being like, well, there were the 10 other people out of 200 who had four drinks last night. That's totally fine.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  Well, the question is like, how well do you know the people? One. So how tight are they in your like kind of social connections and your peer group? And then also, I think that there is, when I, like Brendan Mulligan, I'll call him out because he's a friend of ours. Uh, he works at Google. He like never drinks. Like he's like one drink, one drink, you know, like one drink every four days or whatever. And seeing him hit those streaks of like zero drinks, zero drinks, that was also a pretty powerful thing. And I'm saying, I need to be more like Brendan. I need to dial it back. So it goes both ways.

• 39:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's true. I suppose if you're seeing friends of yours.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Doing well.

• 39:22Tim Ferriss?

  Who doing well, who have demanding jobs, demanding relationships. You can't use that as your excuse when you have the data right in front of you showing that they're actually behaving. So you, you, uh, you historically have been a non-trivial drinker, let's call it, uh, a, it's like a minor league all-star of booze consumption.

• 39:46Speaker 03

  I used to drink a lot more, to be honest. You can see my spreadsheet here.

• 39:49Tim Ferriss?

  So what has helped you most to decrease the amount that you drink?

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Well, I think there is fear. Um, you know, I've seen a bunch of studies. There was one that was just published here a couple of weeks ago that said the number one, um, the largest study ever around dementia and alcohol abuse, and, um, they're very closely linked, which is really frightening. Um, and I think just, you know, wanting to live longer for my daughter has been another one. Back to the point that you had, um, earlier about what, what has changed. Um, and just getting older, you know, hangovers get, it happened at two and a half drinks these days.

• 40:24Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  And so it's like, why, why roll the dice? And so for me, it's, um, it's finding, uh, to, to, to get to your question around what have I done differently? There's a couple of things. Um, one, I've, I kind of set aside time to learn at night, which I think is really important. And you really can't drink and learn at the same time. So, um,

• 40:47Tim Ferriss?

  Or remember what you attempt to learn.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  Right, exactly. And the second thing that has been huge for me though, has been the sauna. The sauna has been massive because it is like four drinks or three drinks just by going and doing a 30-minute high-intense heat sauna session. Um, and you come home and you sleep like a baby. And, you know, if you don't have a sauna, that can also be substituted with a really hot bath. And just finding ways to, it, it's like, it's always been about, I'm with my wife, I'm sitting down and we're going to crack open a bottle of wine and I'll have a couple of glasses of wine. It's never been like, hey, let's go party. Those days are long gone. Like, you know, a decade plus gone. Um, I've, no, don't look at it like that.

• 41:28Tim Ferriss?

  A decade plus?

• 41:29Speaker 03

  No, listen, if we're out traveling together, Tim, I'm gonna, we're gonna have fun, right? So the only times you and I hang is like when we're traveling together. So you can't like, you can't put that on me.

• 41:39Tim Ferriss?

  That's true. All right. All right. Fair enough. We're in different cities now. I will say for those people who are like, wait, they can see each other. We are doing a very intimate video chat on Skype that you will be able to see on my YouTube channel, just youtube.com/timferriss, two R's, two S's. And Kevin is dressed for success, I will note. He is-

• 41:58Speaker 03

  I just had a party meeting this morning, so we dress up a little bit.

• 42:02Tim Ferriss?

  No, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. So, uh, so I gave you that look. Traveling's a bit of an exception. Now, how do you prevent yourself, you like, you have traveled a lot in some cases historically. Now, that may change with your daughter, but how do you prevent that from becoming the excuse to drink that happens frequently? Does that make sense? Because this happens in all sorts of capacities, right? Where people will say, "Oh, you're traveling. You should eat pizza every night." Right? I hear that. And I'm like, if I, if I followed that rule, I'd be Jabba the Hutt because I'm, I, I end up traveling so much. If I allowed myself that out, it would become a real problem.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Traveling is, is difficult and especially when it's in kind of a, a social setting. You know, if you combine traveling with social, like, you know, I'll be going to, um, to, to Ted in a couple of weeks and I know that there's just going to be a lot of parties and a lot of events and a lot of drinking. So, um, I, I think that's one of the things that I need to work on is that I have a hard time dealing with like large groups of people that I don't know. And as a social lubricant, alcohol is amazing, right? So it's like, what else can we do? And I think that, that someone was telling me this, that, um, you know, you never really strengthen that muscle, like if you're leaning on the crutch of alcohol. So you're never going to become more comfortable

• 43:24Speaker 03

  with new humans and new interactions and new ways of like, kind of breaking the ice if you always just go to the booze, right? So I think of it as like, okay, this is my workout I'm going into. And the other thing I do is I, so I've got a couple of little hacks. One is to show up a little bit late. So then you skip a drink, right? And it's funny how if you skip a drink or two and you get there and people are already a little hammered, how unattractive and unappealing drinking then becomes. Because you're looking at it and it's like, hey, it's good to see you, you know, and it's like a little bit sloppy and it's a little, and you look at that and you're like, okay, they're relaxed, they're not gonna like, you know, remember what I said anyway. Not, not that, that hammered, but you know what I mean, they're, they're in a relaxed state. So I can be a little bit more jokey and be myself and not have to worry about being hammered.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  And so I think that, that's a big piece of it. Um, you know, when I'm at home, you're gonna laugh at this, but on Amazon, I went in, I bought these, um, speaking of buying more things, and probably I'm gonna throw away any here. Um, I bought these measuring cups that measure out exactly one glass of wine. And so what I do there is like, you know, a, a bottle of wine, we all know is like, kind of like a half bottle of wine is like, kind of two and a half, maybe, you know, it's, it's, it's up there. And it's very easy, like, like Daria will just like have a little bit less than me and I'll say, okay, well, I'll just wait till it gets halfway and then I'll stop, you know? Uh, to try and, but you're actually drinking more than you think, so. Yeah, plus with a wine glass, I mean, if you have a large wine glass, you can drink like a third of a bottle or close to a half a bottle, very easily.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  Right, exactly. So what I do now is I bought this measuring, um, glass off of Amazon. I fill that perfectly, pour it in, get my second glass, fill it perfectly and pour it in. And so that's all of my alcohol for the night. It stops me at two drinks. And I, I, I really take my time with it then, you know, I have dinner, I slowly sip it, I look at it. You know, I go sit down, might watch, uh, Little John Oliver or something and then just like continue to sip on it. And so that's my, my way of locking and I know no more past that. It prevents any hangovers, you know, my doctor says it's, it's pretty good for you to have a glass or two a night, so. Um, and then also, dude, don't laugh at me. It is good for you. Okay, Ish, yeah, I'll go with Ish.

• 45:38Tim Ferriss?

  No, but then it's also just taking nights off altogether. I think that's the other big piece of it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Good for you, man. I love it. Now, you you mentioned one other thing. Actually, a couple of other points, because I've been also cutting back on alcohol quite a bit. I still enjoy alcohol, not gonna lie. Like, I do have booze on occasion. I love your drunk, like, uh... Oh, the drunk dials? Yeah. Yeah, you know, I, those are, those are fun. So for those who don't know, occasionally, I do these drunk dial episodes where I will... It's the laziest podcast format thought up, I think, to date, perhaps, which is... I have listeners fill out a Google form with their contact info.

• 46:22Tim Ferriss?

  And I set a time, like a two-hour window, where I will call people via Skype. And drink, start drinking at call one and drink all the way through to, say, call 10. And get progressively more inebriated as I answer questions. So that is fun. I did one about a week ago. It was a good time, and then I thought, you know, I should do another episode today. And I was like, I just don't want to do two nights of sipping tequila on Skype. And a few things that have also helped me, number one is, and this is not an excuse everyone's gonna be comfortable using, but if I go to a party and they're like, "Hey, man, you're not drinking? What the fuck?" Like, "Ah, shut up." I'll be like, "Yeah, I'm on a bunch of weird drugs." Like, I just actually, I'm not really supposed to take, I'm not supposed to drink alcohol right now, which...

• 47:08Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that stops the conversation right there. That's brilliant. Yeah, well, it stops the push, right? Right. And then it also starts another conversation, which is, well, what kind of weird shit are you on? And if you, at any given point, I think it's fair to say that I could answer in the affirmative to, "Are you on any weird shit?" Like, I'm almost always doing something odd. Uh, it might not be a lot of stuff, but I'm probably trying something new. And that stops people cold. If they're like, "Oh, wow." I mean, it could be Tylenol. Like, if you're taking a acetaminophen in any capacity, people may not realize this, but some absurd percentage of emergency room visits and, uh, liver failures are associated with high-dose...

• 47:48Tim Ferriss?

  Acetaminophen, which is not that much. It's something like two or three times the label allowable amount over 24 hours. It's really a potent and potentially dangerous drug. So that's one. It is like, hey, I'm actually on this. I'm on A, B, and C, or I'm on a bunch of weird stuff at the moment, and I'm just not supposed to drink. Works really well. And second, this is actually advice that Richard Branson gave on this podcast, is having club soda with a dash of cranberry juice, or something like that. And just using that as your default go-to. And, you know, one thing that I do, which is

• 48:27Tim Ferriss?

  going to sound really odd, and it is odd, but I have a superstition about, say, cheersing, right, clinking glasses when I don't have any alcohol in my glass.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting. This is your tell.

• 48:41Tim Ferriss?

  This is, this is something, well, it's kind of a tell, but what I'll do is I will sometimes also go up to the bar and I'll say, "Just give me a tiny splash," like a, like the equivalent amount that would be in a thimble, or something like that. And then I'll, then I'll cut myself off at that. And that's the amount that I allow myself. That's another approach that I take to cut back on, on the, on the booze. You mentioned, though, that you've been trying to learn at night, and that the booze is not conducive to learning at night. What are you trying to learn at night? What types of things? And what's the format? Are you reading 100 pages a night, or what does it look like?

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Honestly, have you heard of this Coursera course called Learning How to Learn?

• 49:22Tim Ferriss?

  I have not. Who teaches it?

• 49:24Speaker 03

  Oh, so it's done by a couple professors, and I'm actually in the middle of that right now. It was another kind of biohacker recommended it to me. Apparently, it's the number one watched course on Coursera right now. And it's just been fascinating how they dig into the science of learning, and like how you go in this kind of like focused or diffuse mode, and how to really go in and concentrate on something, and when the optimal time is to learn. And it's all the science around learning.

• 49:50Tim Ferriss?

  What did you...

• 49:51Speaker 03

  So that...

• 49:51Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm just getting, I'm just getting started with it. So that's, that's what I've been diving into and kind of spending my nights watching those videos. Um, but it, it talks about the importance of actually getting away from your material. So like getting really focused and setting a timer for 25 minutes maximum. Going really in-depth on the, the, the course material and then backing away and kind of going into this more relaxed mode. Um, they were talking about how, uh, was it, um, Benjamin Franklin? I can't remember who it was that used to hold a pair of keys in their hand. And then it kind of, and Salvador Dali did this as well, actually. Hold a pair of keys in your hand, you kind of just go into this relaxed state. Thinking about, um, what you want to learn and to where you almost fall asleep. And when you drop the keys out of your hand and it wakes you up.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  That's when you kind of go back and then you realize you were successful at getting that, that relaxed. And you'll retain and become more creative and, I don't know, it's just fascinating stuff. And so I'm, I'm just getting started with the course. It's free.

• 50:45Tim Ferriss?

  Very cool. Yeah, the, uh, the intervals and the duration of intervals for learning along with break periods is, is something that I've experimented a lot with as it relates to language learning because it's so measurable. You can look at, say, your recall of foreign vocabulary, assuming you're controlling for a few different variables, right? So, uh, adjectives are generally going to be harder than nouns, for instance. But if you are controlling for that, you can look at what your retention is, say, 48 hours later for a hundred words you attempted to learn in one session versus two sessions versus three sessions with different types of breaks. And I did that when I was looking at, uh, a few different languages, specifically over 2004, 2005. Actually, I've never shown you these notes.

• 51:30Tim Ferriss?

  I have text to edit documents with all of my notes on language learning for about a year, year-long period. Looking at all of this type of stuff.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 51:40Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, there were some very clear patterns such as...

• 51:45Tim Ferriss?

  Focusing on the material right before bed, right? With no interruption. So much like how it's recommended by many names, both you and I know, that you meditate first thing in the morning, before you brush your teeth, before you check your phone, before anything else. When you have this tabula rasa, blank state of sorts. Focusing on material that you want to consolidate in memory and recall later, right before bed, at least in my experience, dramatically improves recall. And then, this is actually very important, not just doing that, but when you wake up, before doing anything else, which for me would override meditation, doing a recall exercise of some type, I tend to use flashcards,

• 52:30Tim Ferriss?

  to determine which have stuck and which have not. So those that have not, since I'm looking at language, I would usually, I would give myself like a quarter of a second. It couldn't be delayed, because in speech, you're not going to have the luxury of sitting there, pause for long periods of time. It would go back into the rotation for review again, throughout that day and later that night. But that is proven really, really helpful.

• 52:55Speaker 03

  How about exercise? One of the things they mention in this course is this idea of doing cardiovascular exercise. I believe it's post-learning something new. And apparently, the science was saying that it just sticks that much more. I don't have any numbers in front of me, but it was something along... Have you heard anything about that?

• 53:13Tim Ferriss?

  So I have, in terms of spacing, or I'm sorry, the timing of exercise, I have less clarity. But there's an entire book called Spark that talks about the, among other things, the role of exercise in education and learning. And would point to things like BDNF, the release of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which can be elicited through different types of exercise. And part of me thinks that when one says, because these are the easiest to study, or very often the easiest to study, cardiovascular exercise, this is where it comes down to...

• 53:55Tim Ferriss?

  Try to become literate with reading scientific studies or understanding how things typically work. So as a couple of baselines, scientific studies usually use volunteer populations known as students, and those students have 45-minute class blocks or 60-minute class blocks. So to keep those students busy, people are very often disincentivized from using shorter duration, say, high-intensity training, or something like that, weightlifting, for instance, resistance training. And if you want to, as an experimenter, design something that requires as little monitoring as possible, it's like, alright, stick them on a stationary bike, right? If

• 54:39Tim Ferriss?

  you have people doing burpees or deadlifts, like, you actually need to-

• 54:41Speaker 03

  I hate burpees.

• 54:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, but you need to pay attention, right? You need to pay attention if people are lifting weights and so on. There are more safety concerns. So I think that, and just to point out perhaps the obvious, that weightlifting is actually one of the most cardiovascular activities you could possibly engage in, but I won't digress into that. You can look at a book called Body by Science for all the details on why that is the case. But it would make sense to me that exercise could certainly play a role in increasing cognitive function. But one of the questions that I ask myself all the time, when, and this is a good question for people to ask themselves when they see a headline that makes a scientific claim, is what else could explain this? Like, what else might explain this? So if you're

• 55:26Tim Ferriss?

  looking at cardiovascular exercise right after some type of cramming with material, you could make the argument that perhaps it's not the exercise at all, it's the fact that they're going into a semi-mindless or meditative repetitive period where they're able to, their subconscious somehow work on the material, right?

• 55:49Speaker 03

  Right. Well, that's exactly what this course teaches, is how to get into those periods. Yeah, 100%.

• 55:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So the, I have certainly seemed to observe that exercise in some capacity, for me, it's generally some type of resistance training, does have a positive effect on learning. So yet another reason to get off your ass, which is something I need to do more of. I've digressed. I've fallen off the train a little bit, Kevin Rose, I'll be honest. But I shall get back on the train. Yeah, so fortunately, you know, once you have a recipe that works, you have the confidence that you can get back on. That's the good news, right? With, say, the fast moving diet, not that you should use that for body composition, but fast moving diet or intermittent fasting,

• 56:36Tim Ferriss?

  which a lot of people use your app Zero for, or slow carb diet, plus a handful of things like kettlebell swings. I just know, this is why I'm not stressed out about being off the rails. I kind of make make fun of myself about it. Because it's like, look, if if I just follow the prescription, like follow the algorithm for three to four weeks, there's no magic involved. It will work and I will have less like muffin top to grab when I'm in the sauna, which will make me happy.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  Muffin top in the sauna is the worst. You just look down, you just see that little layer, this little boop.

• 57:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, you also have like the the glistening Cinnabon effect because you're sweating. It's a really unattractive look. It's not a good look.

• 57:19Speaker 03

  Oh, one thing I did want to talk about, which I think would be fun to chat about because we've both done it, real quick is the Tony Robbins.

• 57:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it for sure. So you recently had, I've done two different Tony Robbins events, UPW, Unleash Your Power Within, which was my first event, and then more recently in December of this last year, Date with Destiny, which is a longer event.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  Oh, you did that. I didn't know you did Date with Destiny as well.

• 57:43Tim Ferriss?

  I did. So I've done two events, and some people have had a bit of exposure to Date with Destiny through the I Am Not Your Guru documentary, which was was co-produced, in fact, by someone who's been on this podcast, Brian Koppelman, really accomplished filmmaker. But what was your experience like? First Tony Robbins event?

• 58:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it was kind of crazy. I've, thanks to you, got, you know, hooked up with him and and went down and and got a chance to meet him and hang out with him. I, you know, I think that Tony is this this kind of, he's proven himself now that he's been doing this for so long, and he's doing it for 40 plus years. But I think that in the back of my mind, I kind of remember when I was a little kid, the kind of like Audio tape version, infomercial version of Tony. You know, so there's always this stigma in my mind that was like, oh, is he trying to sell me something? What's going on here, you know? And I also watched his documentary and I was like, wow, this guy is clearly brilliant.

• 58:44Speaker 03

  He takes the stuff very seriously and he's truly breaking through to people and helping people change their lives. And so he was like, hey, I want to be in the Bay Area, you know, you should come down. I was like, okay, that sounds awesome. Took a buddy of mine, um, that, uh, has a lot of anxiety and he showed, go unnamed buddy. He wanted to go and he was like, Kevin, let's do this. And I was like, okay, let's do it. Um, so went down for the three day event and I thought it was great. I gotta tell you, it's, you walk into it and I was in an arena where there was, you know, 12,000 people. And so there is a lot of people there and, um, everybody is coming there for a different reason, right? So I was sitting across from a guy that had lost his legs, um, and was, uh, previously a drug addict.

• 59:27Speaker 03

  And I think he had some infection in his legs or something, had to have them both amputated. Um, I was sitting next to someone that, uh, she was running her own social media business and just wanted to like, uh, you know, get better with her business and improve, um, her, her finances. And, um, she was getting through a relationship that she had just ended and, you know, so everyone had something to kind of come in and bring to the table. Of course we all do, if we're honest with ourselves, everyone has someone there, something they're trying to work on. And so, you know, I went in there and day one was awesome. I mean, Tony got out there and he, he spoke for like, uh, I don't know, 12 hours we were there.

• 59:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, he's, he's, he's complete mutant. Yeah, it's, it's unbelievable.

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  I don't even know when he pees.

• 1:00:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  I have no idea when he uses the bathroom.

• 1:00:06Tim Ferriss?

  Or drinks water. Yeah, just.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's just a machine. The guy's a machine.

• 1:00:10Speaker 03

  Machine, um, but, uh, you know, I walked over the coals, um, with him and he, he was like, bring out some fresh coals for Kevin. And of course they put like fresh, you walk, you actually walk over coals at the end of the night. You know, you've done this, right?

• 1:00:24Tim Ferriss?

  I have, yeah.

• 1:00:25Speaker 03

  Did he bring out fresh coals for you?

• 1:00:26Tim Ferriss?

  I can't recall if he brought out fresh coals for me. I think that might've been the, the VIP treatment that you received.

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  It was a lot of fun and I think that the biggest takeaway for me was really, um, um, a couple of things. Uh, one was definitely this thing called the Wheel of Life. Did you have to do that? Where you fill out your wheel?

• 1:00:47Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sure I did. I'm sure I did. And I should also point out that for. The attendees at these events, and I have a little bit more to say about this, but the exercises that really, and they, there are very tactical, prescriptive exercises, but that the exercises that change someone else's trajectory and give them extremely concrete next steps that have an impact are very often completely different exercises from those that affect the person right next to you. It's really something to behold, but tell us about the Wheel of Life.

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the Wheel of Life was interesting in that basically he gives you these areas of your life and you're to rank them from zero to 10 on how far along and how kind of just happy you are with those, with those areas. So for example, a physical body, right? So for me, I was like, I gotta give myself a four in this arena, I could be doing a lot better. And then there's emotions and meaning. Another one is relationships. Another one is time. Another one is your career and your mission in life. And then there's finances, and then the last one is how you contribute, like how you give back, how you celebrate and contribute. And so you go from, from kind of zero to 10 and you rank these out and you'll see my

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  wheel doesn't actually look like a wheel. It's like, uh, kind of lopsided, but that's by, that's by design. By the time you, you look at this, it gives you a clear view of like, okay, I really need to step out how I contribute and give back. And so that allowed me to go really deep in my own personal life and, and say, what does it mean to contribute and give back for me? And like, you know, you and I have both done, um, things in, in terms of like going out and, uh, you know, charity water, the Tony Hawk Foundation and giving away money, but like just supporting a cause and, and writing a check. Um, I don't know how you feel about this, but for me... It doesn't really mean that I'm giving back. I don't really feel like I'm contributing.

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm giving like cash, but I'm not actually taking part in that process. I'm not actually really helping out. Like, anyone can write a check. So what does it mean for me to contribute? And the thing, the realization that I came to, and actually, there's some really powerful moments in this conference, where they turn out the lights and they like make you revisit like certain times in your childhood and all these things. And, you know, I felt myself kind of tearing up because one of the things I realized is that I was not giving back and contributing in a meaningful way. And the thing that I came to and that I realized is that my mother was verbally abused by my father for many, many, many years and, you know, definitely abusive behavior.

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  Never physically harmed her, but, you know, I would say that the mental harm was, is bad or if not worse than, than some of the physical harm. And, and I realized that I want to actually lean in and help out women that have been abused and that are currently in abusive relationships. And so a goal of mine over the next couple of years is finding the best possible way to contribute back to that, not just in forms of another check, but actually how I can get involved. And whether it means helping them build their products and build a better website or mobile apps or any way that I can enable and use my technology skills to help with their business, I think would be something that would mean a lot to me. So that was, that was a great experience to have and I wouldn't have that if it wasn't for Tony. And, and that was just one of many things I got out of the weekend.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  So I would say that, you know, he's, he's a badass. It was, it was pretty awesome.

• 1:04:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, he's a real master of his craft. And what I would say to folks who have a certain image of Tony is that when you go to an event like this,

• 1:04:37Tim Ferriss?

  I think the right way to approach it is to be skeptical but not cynical. And open to trying all of the exercises he suggests. And that there are going to be components that may not agree with you in the sense that there's a lot of jumping around. There's a lot of music. There's a lot of noise, for lack of a better word. And a lot of those elements made me uncomfortable. They're not things that I would seek out.

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, I could not see you dancing and jumping around.

• 1:05:11Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right. It's just not my thing. But the filter that I used going into it, or the lens through which I was looking at it was, it was made easier because one of my, one of my very close friends I've known since college, who's had multiple company exits, is extremely, extremely accomplished. And he goes to unleash the power within every year as a reset. He's been 11 times, maybe 12 now. He's been to Date with Destiny six times. And this, and this guy is not a seminar junkie. He's not someone who avoids the work and goes to listen to a motivational speech so that he can feel better on a sugar high for two days and not take any next steps. Like, this is not that guy. He is an operator. So the fact that he had been so many times

• 1:05:56Tim Ferriss?

  really led me to want to stick with the entire event. And I'm not gonna lie, I had hard points. And then I mentioned this to you, and it may not be the exercise that had a large impact on you, but the Dickens process that I ended up along with Tony, including in Tools of Titans, one of my more recent books, because it had such a big impact, made the entire event an easy, like, 10 to 100x return for me.

• 1:06:24Speaker 03

  That was the last day, too.

• 1:06:26Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. So just that 30 to 60 minute exercise led me to dramatically improve my relationship with my father, to take responsibility for certain things that I had been telling myself were unchangeable, to really buckle down and step into discomfort to make some meaningful changes. And it, and those are changes.

• 1:06:50Tim Ferriss?

  At least the power within, I want to say I went to, now it's gotta be three to five years ago. Those changes, the ripple effects of those changes that I made then are still very tangible now. And then Date with Destiny, very similar, but to go into it expecting that if you step into it and accept some level of discomfort and commit to trying everything, this is just my view, that at least 50%, you're going to end up discarding. Probably 20% you're gonna find really uncomfortable and you're gonna dislike actively. And then like 10 to 25%, you're gonna go, "Holy shit, I can't believe how powerful that just was."

• 1:07:33Tim Ferriss?

  And it's not a lot of handwavy woo-woo ambiguity. These exercises are really, really, really specific. So you don't have to accept Tony as your one and only savior. You don't have to believe that he is flawless because he is not. He's just like everyone else. He's an imperfect creature trying to do the best with the gifts and talents he's developed. But the guy knows his shit and he actually, he actually really cares. And as I've gotten to know him over the last few years, more and more so, I've become more impressed with him, not less impressed. And that is at least if one were thinking of, let's say, attending one of these events, and I have no, I have zero vested interest in sending anyone to these events

• 1:08:15Tim Ferriss?

  other than they've had a material impact on my life. And that's why I was, I was happy to see that you were going to attend.

• 1:08:24Tim Ferriss?

  That they go in with an open mind expecting that, much like if you read any type of book, you're not expecting every line to be a life-changing piece of gold. You're hoping that net-net, it's going to be worth the time that you invested.

• 1:08:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:41Tim Ferriss?

  Right? And, yeah, that's been my takeaway, that it's absolutely been worth the time invested.

• 1:08:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, 100% agree. And I think that, um... Like you, going into this was a certainly a really uncomfortable thing for me in terms of when they first start the music and people come out on stage and they start dancing and like you can tell the people that have been there before because they immediately like jump out of their seats and like start like kind of rocking out and throwing their hands in the air and I'm thinking to myself, I hate dancing. I hate dancing. I've never liked dancing with anyone, my wife or anyone. I always feel so awkward when I'm doing it, you know, like I'm like a geek that likes to like sit in front of my computer at night. And so it's like, then I thought something another friend had told me that had gone and

• 1:09:27Speaker 03

  said, hey, Kevin, like you just have to go with it. Like if you want to get anything out of it, you have to realize that he's doing this by design to put you into a certain state, right? He wants to get to get you into an optimal state and optimal, that can mean like, like one example of one thing that we did is we took something that was very serious to us, like something like a limiting belief that you had held so seriously. And you say it out loud in a very joking and like laughing way and everybody like 12,000 people are all doing it at the same time and you're like laughing and saying it and it's kind of like breaking it down in your, in your mind and letting you know that you don't have to take it so seriously and you can joke about it and have fun with it because

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  it's been forever since, since, you know, you've probably ever done that in your life. Like when was the last time you were able to take something that you held so seriously and so guarded and, and have a good time with it. And so he knows how to set up these little traps for you that, that trick you into reframing things in your mind and it really does change your long-term perspective on things. And yeah, I, I'm, dude, I'm a fan. I would definitely go back again. I did the three day event, the unleash the power within, the same one as you. But yeah, had, had fun with it. So, so thanks for helping out with that.

• 1:10:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, man. My pleasure. I would suggest also that as a point of social proof, and of course, Tony is fully aware of the sort of gravitas this would bring, but there are people, for instance, Marc Benioff of Salesforce, which I think has more than 10 billion in annual revenue now, who will point blank say that Salesforce would probably not exist were it not for Tony Robbins, and still attends some of these events. He was right behind me at Date with Destiny. Crazy. He's a big guy. He and Tony are very similar in size. And then you have Paul Tudor

• 1:11:19Tim Ferriss?

  Jones. You have some of the most sophisticated traders and financial minds who have worked with Tony for 10 to 20 years. And that's on an ongoing coaching basis because he does have very discreet, very tactical exercises and tools that help you to find blind spots and fully leverage the things that you're good at and so on. So it's not easy, it's not comfortable, but certainly I've been, I've been very benefited by the time that I've spent considering these things. And I'm biased because in high school, I read Unlimited

• 1:12:01Tim Ferriss?

  Power by Tony, which had an impact. I then, when I got out of college and had my first job, and I was commuting in my piece of shit minivan, the Green Machine, which was just a complete disaster of a car, but I was trapped on 101 in the Bay Area, for people who know, just bumper to bumper in rush hour, to and from Mountain View to San Jose to work. And I would listen to this used set, I couldn't afford the full set, a new copy, so I had personal power two and cassette tape, and listened to that, which helped get me to the point where I started my first company. And so Tony's made these appearances at very opportune moments in my life.

• 1:12:45Tim Ferriss?

  And you know, he's, he's not, he, like I said, I don't go to him for all things. I don't think that Tony has the answer to everything. But with particular types of self-imposed narratives and handicaps that you have built yourself, or walls around certain types of thinking, or certain types of emotions, that perhaps served you very well in the past, but no longer serve you, he is exceptionally good at helping you work through all of that.

• 1:13:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. I just love that this whole genre, like the self-help genre is becoming like, it's not as frowned upon as it used to be. Like, I don't know if you remember, but probably, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, like if you went to that area of like the bookstore, you were like, oh, oh, look at like who's in the self-help section. Like they must, there must be something wrong with them. And now, now, no, seriously, that used to be the case. And now it's like, it's gone and he's probably at the center of it, but it's become this idea of not self-help, it's really just like this idea that we're all on a journey of lifelong learning and we all are done BSing ourselves and there's not a single person that has all of life figured out. So why don't we all actively, openly work on this together? And

• 1:13:56Speaker 03

  I think it's awesome.

• 1:13:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And I should also say that at one point, as an example, I was interviewed on the BBC and they wanted to talk about the self-help genre. And I knew it was going to be a setup, right? I knew that they wanted me to defend self-help and they wanted to attack self-help, right? So, and I knew this going in, that this is what it was going to be. I figured it out about an hour beforehand when I got some notes and I was like, oh, I see where this is going. So they, they bring me out, this is a, this is a television show, and they say, good evening, Mr. Ferris, we just wanted to talk about da-da-da-da, bio, bio, blah, blah, blah. What is your general opinion of the self-help genre? Something

• 1:14:38Tim Ferriss?

  along those lines. And in effect, I said, I think 99.9% of it is just horse shit. And I said, it's, it pains me sometimes to be associated with the label self-help. For X, Y, and Z reasons, and then they didn't have a leg to stand on, right? Because I'd taken their side of the argument, which was kind of hilarious. That's funny. And then I said, but at the same time, I think the label self-help has, in many cases, an unfairly negative connotation. Because, A, if you look at almost any type of reading, whether it's a novel where people want to escape, or it's nonfiction where they're hoping to learn more about, let's just call

• 1:15:18Tim Ferriss?

  it Andrew Carnegie, or you name the figure, there is some motive behind that, that they hope to help them, whether it's a shift of emotion, the gathering of knowledge they can impress people at a dinner party, or otherwise. And that if I were to look at who I would say potentially emulate in the world of self-help, it would probably be someone like, this is the name you brought up earlier, Ben Franklin, right? Who most certainly wrote extensively about what we would consider today self-help, but he's not lumped into the category of, say, potential, and these people do exist, certainly charlatans who are just selling a bill of goods that doesn't deliver, right?

• 1:16:03Tim Ferriss?

  There are plenty of people who have not walked the walk and talk extensively about their expertise and make recommendations and prescriptions. There are people all over the world, in every possible discipline, who do this, and a lot of them tend to concentrate in this section of the bookstore called self-help, unfortunately. But it's that alone isn't enough to disqualify something. And certainly, if we look at the popularity of tutorials on YouTube, for instance, in any possible subject matter, if you look at the popularity of the Creative Lives and the Courseras and so on. Sure.

• 1:16:42Tim Ferriss?

  Everyone now has access to expertise that even 10 years ago would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to access if they had the ability at all. You look at, say, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, many of these schools that are putting their courses online, in some cases for free access. And I know people who have taught themselves to code in this way. All of that is self-help, right?

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:07Tim Ferriss?

  So it's, it's important, I think, that people not, uh, disqualify exploring certain realms because of a label that really represents a concept which may or may not apply to what it is you're examining.

• 1:17:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, there's gonna be scammers in every genre, too.

• 1:17:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:25Speaker 03

  I love, I love how Joe Rogan, I don't know if you've seen these posts that he's done recently, but he does videos of these martial artists.

• 1:17:30Tim Ferriss?

  Legit as fuck, yeah.

• 1:17:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, where they can, they can throw people with their mind.

• 1:17:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Joe Rogan puts up these fake martial arts videos. I mean, they're not fake, they're videos of people who actually believe that what's happening is happening.

• 1:17:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:17:42Tim Ferriss?

  But yeah, these, these like martial arts masters, self-described, throwing people across the room with their chi explosions and so on, and his caption is usually legit as fuck, or hashtag legit as fuck.

• 1:17:54Speaker 03

  So good, so good.

• 1:17:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there's a lot of nonsense out there, but, uh, it doesn't mean that everything within a certain category is nonsense.

• 1:18:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Tim Ferriss?

  And it doesn't mean you should spend your entire life filtering for the 1%, but also, there are ways that you can assess the validity of different paths, and quite frankly, I would recommend, for those people who haven't, well, I'll give you two recommendations. So one is, you can look at the back of The Four Hour Body, if you already have it, there's an appendix, which is effectively how to spot bad science, and it will help you to not trick yourself, and also to get better at, uh, avoiding being tricked. Uh, so that's, that's one recommendation, and, and not to seem like I'm selling my own book, the excerpts for that appendix are from a book called Bad Science by a doctor named Ben Goldacre, which is absolutely fantastic.

• 1:18:45Tim Ferriss?

  So if you just want to be literate, uh, and better able, scientifically literate, or better able to separate the signal from the noise with the deluge of information that we are assaulted by every day, I would highly recommend that, uh, you check out one or, uh, both of those resources.

• 1:19:02Speaker 03

  You know, I was gonna ask you, um, Tools of Titans, I mean, obviously, in your books, there have been tons of book recommendations.

• 1:19:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:10Speaker 03

  And there was that one kid, do you remember the kid that, that like, took all, and he, he'd created, he took out all the books out of your recommendations, then ranked them?

• 1:19:19Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, yeah, ranked them or just organized them as thumbnails, yeah, I do remember that.

• 1:19:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the, the idea was that... What is the most recommended book inside Tools of Titans across the board?

• 1:19:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:30Speaker 03

  By all the people that were in that book? And kind of stack ranking them based on the votes? Do you have that list anywhere? Do you have a list of like the most recommended books by all of your guests?

• 1:19:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I do actually. And I'll pull it up right now because I put it on the blog for everybody.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  That's a great way.

• 1:19:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I put it up.

• 1:19:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a great way to cut through all the crap, you know?

• 1:19:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I put it up on the blog. And if you give me a second, I will find where it is. This might take a second. So I'm looking at Tribe of Mentors, the most recent. But the... Where would I find this? If you go onto tim.blog and search like Tools of Titans books.

• 1:20:11Speaker 03

  We can put a link in the show notes, right?

• 1:20:12Tim Ferriss?

  We'll put a link in the show notes. So if you want a link, this will be the smarter way to do it. If you want to see a page where the most commonly recommended books from Tools of Titans and from Tribe of Mentors, combined, you're looking at about 500 different world-class performers of all different disciplines, ranging from top professional athletes to chess prodigies to former generals, certainly 12-plus billionaires. Then you will get to see, rank ordered in terms of frequency, which books are most recommended. So I will put those in the show notes and you guys can find that at tim.blog/podcast if you want to see, you know, of these people who are the best at what they do, which books across disciplines do they recommend most often?

• 1:20:57Tim Ferriss?

  A few of them, just off the bat for people who are curious. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Poor Charlie's Almanac by Charlie Munger. Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevillen.

• 1:21:11Tim Ferriss?

  And certainly Atlas Shrugged, even though it's a controversial book, but Ayn Rand comes up a lot in terms of developing a sense of personal agency. I think that has popped up quite a lot. And many more. But I'll give you the full list because there are some that pop up quite frequently that you won't recognize at all. And those are, to me, oftentimes the really fun ones to explore.

• 1:21:36Speaker 03

  Awesome. Yeah, I've got a bunch of Audible credits waiting to be spent, so I'll do that.

• 1:21:41Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome, man. Well, I think that this is a solid catch-up.

• 1:21:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks for having me on, and it was fun to chat.

• 1:21:49Tim Ferriss?

  And where can people learn more about Kevin Rose, find you on the interwebs?

• 1:21:55Speaker 03

  Certainly, my podcast is available at kevinrose.com. And then also, if you want to check out my free meditation app, it's 100% free. A little bit more traditional meditation, it's called Oak, and you can do that at oakmeditation.com.

• 1:22:11Tim Ferriss?

  Nice and succinct. No social?

• 1:22:14Speaker 03

  I don't, you know, Twitter, @KevinRose, but like, I don't know that I use it that much anymore. I'm more a newsletter guy. If you go to my website, if you sign up for my newsletter, I do a once-a-month newsletter. And that's kind of what I use.

• 1:22:27Tim Ferriss?

  It's a good newsletter. I subscribe to it, which I can't say for many. And yeah, Twitter's turned into a bit of a nasty neighborhood. On most days, you just feel like you're minding your business, whistling, walking down the street, and then you have people throwing potted plants at your head.

• 1:22:39Speaker 03

  And then Facebook's a whole shitshow, so it's like, it's the worst kind of show.

• 1:22:45Tim Ferriss?

  What to do? Go back to the tried and true?

• 1:22:47Speaker 03

  Instagram.

• 1:22:48Tim Ferriss?

  Instagram or email?

• 1:22:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:50Tim Ferriss?

  Alright, my man. Well, thanks so much for taking the time, and I hope to see you soon. Come visit Austin. Got a barrel of sauna waiting for you.

• 1:23:00Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 1:23:01Tim Ferriss?

  Alright, man.

• 1:23:02Speaker 03

  See ya.

• 1:23:02Tim Ferriss?

  See ya. To everybody listening or watching on the Youtubes. You can find links to everything that we've talked about in the show notes, tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, be safe, do not take meth for fun.

• 1:23:18Tim Ferriss?

  Follow professional advice with anything medically related. And live the examined life. Just because it is self-help doesn't mean it can't help you. So, I'll leave with that.

• 1:23:32Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:24:15Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Peloton, which I've been using probably for about a year now. Peloton is a cutting-edge indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You can also do on-demand, which is what I do, we'll come back to that. So you don't have to worry about fitting classes into a busy schedule or making it to a studio or gym with a hectic or unpredictable commute. I, for instance, have a Peloton bike right in my master bedroom at home and it's one of the first things I do many mornings.

• 1:25:00Tim Ferriss?

  I wake up, I meditate for a bit, then I knock out a short 20-minute ride in my undies, hard to do that at the gym, take a shower and I'm in higher gear for the rest of the day. It's really convenient and has become something that I look forward to. So you have a lot of options. For one, if you like, you can ride live with thousands of other riders across the country on an interactive leaderboard to keep you motivated. There are also up to 14 new classes added every day with more than 8,000 classes on demand and you can pick based on length, 45 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever, music, hip hop, rock and roll, or say low-impact versus high-intensity or interval. You can pick the class structure and style that works for you. And in my case, I quite like Matt Ropers.

• 1:25:42Tim Ferriss?

  And I tend to do on-demand and listen to a lot of and watch many of the same classes over and over, but I'm kind of promiscuous and also enjoy classes from a lot of the other instructors. They have Peloton, an amazing roster of incredible instructors in New York City with a whole range of styles and personalities, so you can find what you're in the mood for. You also get real-time metrics that you can use to track your performance over time, and that will help, I would say catalyze you to beat your personal best. Now, that all sounds good, right? Gamification, yada, yada, yada. I didn't think that it would work for me or in any way incentivize me, but they really 100% hit the nail on the head. I was very, very impressed with how motivating it was, and it worked tremendously to keep me pushing, which quite honestly takes a fair amount.

• 1:26:27Tim Ferriss?

  I can get quite lazy, particularly with anything that edges on endurance, which is kind of more than five reps of anything for me. So, check it out. Discover this cutting-edge indoor cycling bike that brings the studio experience right to your home. Peloton is offering listeners of this podcast a limited-time offer. Go to onepeloton.com, that's O-N-E Peloton, P-E-L-O-T-O-N dot com, and enter the code TIM, all caps, at checkout and get $100 off of accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. So, get a great workout at home anytime you want. Check it out. Go to onepeloton.com and use the code TIM to get started. This episode of The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by LinkedIn.

• 1:27:11Tim Ferriss?

  More specifically, I'm referring to LinkedIn's job recruitment platform, which is a great way to find and hire the quality talent that you need in your organization. You already know, of course, LinkedIn as the world's largest professional network, and in fact, 70% of the US workforce is already on LinkedIn, and 22 million professionals view and apply to jobs on LinkedIn every week. Given those numbers, it's not surprising at all that there have been hundreds of thousands of businesses that have posted to LinkedIn jobs over the past year alone. And because LinkedIn considers skills, experiences, location, and much more, they just have better data to match and promote your job to potential candidates, the most qualified candidates.

• 1:27:52Tim Ferriss?

  Unlike other generic job boards, businesses have rated LinkedIn jobs 40% better than job boards at delivering quality candidates. So check it out. Go to LinkedIn.com/Tim and get $50 off your first job post. That's LinkedIn.com/Tim for your $50 off today. Terms and conditions apply.