Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Kamal Ravikant: Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It! (#138)

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

Kamal Ravikant has trekked to one of the highest base camps in the Himalayas, earned the US Army Infantry patch, walked 550 miles across Spain, lived in Paris, and bungee jumped out of a perfectly good hot air balloon. Kamal is the only non-black, non-woman member of the Black Women’s writers’ group. Mr. Ravikant won a San Francisco-wide modeling contest, gotten drunk on the same barstool as Hemingway, co-founded a company with the guy who wrote the first browser, and been fortunate enough to work with some of the smartest investors and engineers in Silicon Valley. Kamal has written 3 books, the latest, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It, went viral. Amazing people all over shared it online and on social media. They bought copies for friends and family. They wrote heartfelt reviews. For some, this book literally saved their lives. For others, it was the first time they ever loved themselves. Thanks to today’s sponsor, LinkedIn Jobs! Visit linkedin.com/impossible to post your job ad for FREE! 00:03:30 Do you see yourself as a scientist? Why do you feel the obligation to teach? 00:09:15 The numerology of your book and the influence of James Altucher. A commitment to writing. 00:14:33 How do you handle the burden of having so many people depending on you? 00:17:33 Discuss the importance of the gym and fitness to you. 00:18:59 A commitment to being honest. And Kamal's painful healing. About pain and loss. 00:26:43 The importance of innocence. 00:34:06 Is "The Practice" the ultimate personal discipline? The importance of calibration. 00:37:01 Do you believe in the adage: "facke it till you make it"? 00:36:03 Humans are feelings first. 00:42:41 What was your mother's influence on you? 00:46:04 Parenting advice. 00:47:37 On blockchain, bitcoin, technology and the purpose of wealth. 00:55:31 Why do people get "religious" about being pro or con about bitcoin? A UC San Diego spinout has taken Brian's suggestion and used the blockchain to document scientific research and discovery. See Stuart Volkow's interview with Nanome.ai Co-Founder Steve McCloskey: https://youtu.be/FSmKRmRq6EU Learn about Matryx here: https://blog.matryx.ai/matryx-calcflow-q2-updates-3c43c058e34d Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating And please join my mailing list to get resources and enter giveaways to win a FREE copy of my book (and more) http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 📝 🎥 🎥 Watch my most popular videos🎥 🎥 Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/3z8RqKMQHe0?sub_confirmation=1 Weinstein and Wolfram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI0AZ4Y4Ip4?sub_confirmation=1 Sheldon Glashow: https://youtu.be/a0_iaWgxQtA?sub_confirmation=1 Michael Saylor The Physics of Bitcoin https://youtu.be/CaN_CDKqXOg?sub_confirmation=1 Sir Roger Penrose, Nobel Prize winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMuqyAvX7Wo?sub_confirmation=1 Jill Tarter https://youtu.be/O9K9OBd3vHk?sub_confirmation=1 Sara Seager Venus LIfe: https://youtu.be/QPsEDoOTU6k?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 🏄‍♂️ Find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔥 Find me on Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating 📖 Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA 🔔 Subscribe for more great content https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 ✍️Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 📧Join my mailing list: http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 👪Join my Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/losingthenobelprize 🎙️Please subscribe, rate, and review the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-impossible/id1169885840?mt=2 🎙️Listen on all other platforms: https://wavve.link/into A production of http://imagination.ucsd.edu/ Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What can I say about Kamal Ravakant? He is today's modern-day philosopher, God King. He has helped millions of people around the world, and he's helped me as well, as you'll find out. He is as brilliant as they come. He is a wonderful writer who works hard and studies the craft of writing. He is a philosopher, and the most important lesson I think I will take away, and you will take away from this conversation, is how deep the mind can go, especially when it's fueled with the self-confidence that can only come with a form of self-love, as Kamal describes so eloquently, so beautifully,

that it's almost irresistible and impossible to not be moved by him, his personal story. He is a legend, a young, a legend, and I am so pleased that he spent the time with me that he did, and you'll see he called it his favorite podcast, and I'm going to put that on my CV because that's one of the coolest things that someone like me can hear who studies not but the scientific literature and not very often in the self-help literature. But Kamal has really been a force for good in my life.

And I know he will be in yours too. So sit back and enjoy this episode with none of them Kamal Rabakant. How to love yourself like your life depended on it. Enjoy. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishing from magic. The way I want to start off our podcast today is actually with the end of love yourself like your life depends on it. And I think the thing that resonated most to me as a scientist is actually in the concluding

chapter. I don't know. I don't know how you got away with like more chapters than the Bible, but somehow there's like 90 chapters in it. They're short. I know there's no slavery. There's no slavery. No one's being sacrificed, man.

But all that, you know, all that stuff about shellfish and not eating, you know, no, I'm just kidding. There's no bacon in this book. But the end of the book by my guest today, Kamal Ravakot, ends with share what you learn from this. Take it away and share it. And it's not based upon like some craven, venal desire to sell more. But I don't think anyone writes a book like this, Kamal, to make a lot of money. It's the experience in it.

It's the opposite. other people. It's like, you know, a Bible commentary. Like nobody writes a Bible commentary to make a lot of money. And I feel like this book, it's a self-help book, but that notion at the very end is where I want to begin this conversation with you in that, I think that you're a scientist. I know that you started off as a research scientist. You thought about going to medical school. You know, I think you might be part Jewish because that's the way, you know, all Jewish kids start off. They have to go to medical school or law school. You know, if they really fail, they could become an accountant, I suppose. But not a a scientist, but you started off in science, and that's what you wanted to do. And I want to ask you, the word scientist in the Russian language means someone who was taught. It probably means like a dude who was taught, but let's just say someone who was taught. Now, to me, that provides an insight

into the nature of science itself, which is that I was taught, Brian Keating as a scientist. That means I have an obligation to teach. I want to ask you, do you see yourself as a scientist and what do you think about this obligation of teaching that I see you as a master communicator being one of the most foremost explicators thereof. So as a scientist or science adjacent, what do you think is the responsibility of someone with the tools, with the experience, with the mentality that you have to share with the world? You know, that's so interesting using that word.

I've never used that word to describe myself. But I was funny enough that you mentioned this today, like in Kamal Landing, that meaning in Kamal's head, there's a lot of activity that happens and trying to figure out life. Always I'm just trying to deconstruct life. And if you think of my books, those are just like snaps just like snaps just and moments of what I deconstruct about life at that time. And when I said life, I mean the human self experience of life and how to create a better experience of that human self.

And I was thinking, like, look, originally, like, you know, if you look at the self or if you look at the distant nature of revolution, it was to pass on. to the next. It was always to pass on. What did you pass on? You passed on DNA. It was always, and what is DNA? DNA is information. DNA is literally information that DNA by itself does nothing. It is just the code. You're passing on, you're passing on your specific code, right? That's all it was. Evolution was passing on the entire reason for existence was passing along your code to the further further and down, we are the result of code that was passed on for whatever, how many millions of years or if you're biblical, how many thousands of years, you know,

whatever rubber hole you want to go down on. But then, but then at the same time, there's not just the code of survival, of the code of the physical building block. There is the code, the meme code, the knowledge code. Like, look, I was actually at Google this today. Funny enough, you mentioned this, because I just wanted to make sure in my head,

you know, like Newton and Newton and calculus, right? I just want to make sure, you know, just come out of, make sure you're correct on this. It turns out there was another person who came of, another mathematician, I think, who came up with calculus separately. Yeah, Libniz. Yeah, Labniz. Yeah. And they were rivals. Yeah, they hated each other. So it's like, look, they passed down a code. They passed down their knowledge. Just like we were like, it's always DNA being passed on which is just coded knowledge. Now it's almost like a responsibility of us as humans that what we learned, we pass that along.

So it goes, it flows down and causes ripple across humanity for until the end of time. because you existed, you were here. What was the extra set of knowledge you were cured that you're passing along? It can be just your genes or it couldn't be like the experience, the lessons, right? Absolutely. And so that's what my books are. That's literally snapshots and Kamal's mind and life what he's figured out and sharing it. It's so funny that you say that because Carl Sagan, so I've got all these finger puppets.

I'm working on a Kamal Ravikon puppet, but this is- Oh, my God, that'd be awesome. I don't know if you recognize this guy. This is Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan was one of the foremost explainers of science in the popular world, and he was actually reviled by proper scientists for being too good at explaining things. I actually had his widow and his daughter on The Into the Impossible podcast last year, and I'll put links to that in the show notes perhaps later on. But my favorite quote from Carl Sagan was a book is proof that human beings can work magic because a book is written by someone, who may or may not be with us, centuries old. And that book makes you have the author's voice in your head. It's as close to magic as humans are capable of. So now I say, you know, and I'm

sure this is true of the curious Kamal podcast, but I say a podcast is proof that human beings can work magic. Look at this. We're separated by hundreds of miles, you know, time and space. We're having an instantaneous conversation at the speed of light that will be shared with people around the world, potentially. And here we are. And here are your ideas preserved with your voice, with your image, and for all time. And I think it's part of who we are is the DNA of a human being, that we are the only species that's capable of doing such a thing, of passing on our legacy in addition to our genes in terms of our memes and our thoughts. Yeah. And like, look, what if, you know, Duton hadn't passed on calculus? He came up with it.

great, good for me. Good for me. I figured it out. And then, you know, it was great. What if Einstein did the same, you know, didn't do, he goes up since going, good for me. I figured it out. What if that's all it was, you know, good for me, I figured it out. Right. Humanity would be, we would still be banging on caves and bones, you know. And sometimes we are, but yeah, that's, that's, that's the, you know, we have more sophisticated bones. Our bones have 5G have 5G in it. But we still stare at, you know, pieces of rock, silicon and glass. You know, we're not. We're not. We're not that far removed, but I want to start also in the book. There's a lot of numbers in this book, a lot of numerology, and you and I are engaged in an interesting project to have you

come up to speed on quantum mechanics. And I'm doing that selfishly, Kamal. I have to admit that in front of my audience, because I'm interested in knowing what the mind of Kamal Ravakant will bring to a subject that is esoteric, that is arcane, but is incredibly important, not only for its practical applications, but for the way it will change your mind. And I am so curious, as I did with our mutual friend James Altucher, who put us both in touch in some sense or one another, as influenced each one of us to write a book. I know that. I want to get into that. I love him too. And I want to say, you know, one of his ideas that I've been working with him is teaching him about the Big Bang. And I learned so much from him about his ideas and he has, and I'm just hoping that you and I can

have a taste of that as well. But let's start with James Altitcher as a friend of the show. and the numerology of this book. You basically have given him so much credit, and you mentioned him in the book, as inspiring you to put this on paper, not just for you, but for the whole world. What do you feel like when you write a book like this that has impacted millions of people around the world?

Is that a burden to you? Do you feel a pressure to live up to this expectation, or do you just get on with life as if it never happened? You know, it's very interesting, because I get emails every day from readers, and there are just heartwarming, heartbreaking, and the effect this book is having. You know, like, and I can tell what,

it's come out of a different language, different country, because I started getting emails from that country. The latest has been Russia. I'm getting all these emails from these wonderful Russians, right? That from like these places in Russia, I have to Google and see where it is, you know? Like, it's a big country. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, but the thing is,

I take it in, I respond, you know, sometimes I fall months behind, but I usually catch up with, and I always respond with apologies aren't from being late, and I respond. And it's beautiful, it's heartwarming. But then I move on to Kamal Land, you know, which is just, what is this whole show about? Why am I here?

What am I doing? You know, like the whole thing. It's very hard to walk around just feeling the, I don't, I feel the responsibility when I'm writing. And the responsibility is not to any audience. It's not to any human being. You know, when I wrote that original version, I love yourself, I didn't expect it to take off like that.

I literally, I set out to be, I trained myself to be a, to be a fiction writer. You know, I wanted to write a literary fiction. I wanted to write the kind of fiction that some did professors taught in college, you know, like that level of fiction, right? And yet, I ended up writing this little self-help book, right? I didn't expect you to take up. I was just purely to share something I'd learned that was very important. And I made a commitment to my friend, and I keep my commitments. It's just, you know, the classic, you're a man, your word is your bond, be a man.

Literally, I'm speaking because I'm a man, but I can say as a human being. Yeah, of course. Your word is your bond. Keep your word, right? And so it's something I really firmly believe in has become one of my cornerstones. and who I am. And so I did it. But so there was no expectation I was going to go take off or be this big or whatever, right?

Or even the second version, which I put out, which was like, okay, let me seven years later really share all the nuggets I've learned over time and answer the questions that have come up. It's, it's, what it is is, it's the commitment to the work. It's like, I have to make this work as precise and as honest as I, as I am capable as a human, as myself at this point in time. And I do that obsessively, word by word, draft by draft. I mean, like, to read earlier drafts, I mean, they're garbage, but I let my mind throw garbage on the page that I can then hammer and chisel,

start hammering and chiseling. So it's a commitment to the work, commitment to what I'm putting out. It's actually a commitment to the book, not, you know, and which in itself is a commitment to the reader. But if you start doing something for the reader, I didn't know that I would have 16-year-old girls in Russia reading this book. you know, or like veterans or like these grandmothers emailing from England or like there's other places and people tell me about the, you know, like they stopped him coming to suicide.

You know, the first ever reader I actually had was it who emailed me was an Israeli guy who said like the book stopped it from killing. So I'm like, dude, here's my number. Call me like, you know, like. And we met years later in New York City or hugging each other. Like I didn't expect something. Like I've never been to Israel. I don't have that life experience he has.

So what I did was I had a commendment. me telling the truth, my truth, of what I'd learned. So that level of commitment to also deconstruct it, to deconstruct it in a way that I can wordsmith and get across that anyone can then apply. So that's that commitment that I feel immense pressure towards. But I don't feel pressure towards how it's going to go out and what it's going to do. Does that make sense? Yeah. What I love about it is that it's not pure theory. It's not only full. There is a lot of philosophy in it, but it's very practical. It actually outlines as, you know, I'm a pilot, and one of the things pilots take very seriously

are checklist. So we have a checklist, and there's a saying that, you know, there are no old pilots. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old pilots. And I think that's it. You had on Curious Kamala, you had a fighter jet pilot. I'm sure he's not bold. And I'm sure he doesn't rely on raw skill and like hand-eye coordinate because by then it's too late.

So you rely on your process, on your procedures, on your training, and on your checklist. I see this book as a checklist and as a manifesto for achieving happiness. But before we move into the book, I still want to talk just one last thing about, you know, I don't know you very well, but I can't imagine the burden. I get a burden. I get emails, you know, once a month, you know, from someone in Egypt. Like, here's some Jewish guy, you know, from New York City. and I'm getting an email from a devout Muslim girl from Egypt.

And I'm like, oh, that's awesome. But it's about like, you know, physics and she has a cosmole. But it's not like I'm going to kill myself. And I do talk about suicide in my book. But how it just seems like this immense burden. And I know that you're a giving gracious soul. But there's a saying, as you know, from piloting, you know, being on planes, you got to put your oxygen mask on first.

How do you handle that? I mean, you have an obligation to survive. if nothing else because so many people depend on you. But how do you handle that pressure? That's a little hard because I sometimes forget it's hard, but it's also beautiful. You know, like I've gone through things in life since the book and that's been very hard. Like you and I know, like I went for elective surgery and I, they really messed up. By the way, that's a whole different story.

And I bled to death and washed myself bleed to that, spraying blood out of me and the whole experience. And then what they did the trauma series that do to save me and save my life. and bring me back. And then the recovery, which was, you know, it was just in everywhere horrendous. You know, like I was, point of enough, you know, I like reading esoteric test and mystical stuff. And I was reading in the Bible, you know, I will put you through the furnaces so you can be cleaned and all this. I was like, hey, that sounds familiar.

Like, you know, I felt like I went to the furnaces, you know. And in those moments, no matter who your audience is and what your responsibility, you have, you forget all that. And it just, you just has reached out within yourself. And it comes down to you and you. And, I mean, there was times there. I wanted to quit. You know, I'm very, I, um, there was a time there when after going through that,

where I was like, I don't think it's worth it. I've done my work. I came to this earth. The earth is better because I was here. I can, I can actually say that. And I, I seem the, like these books wouldn't exist if I didn't exist. They are, you know, maybe I've done my work and it's time to leave. I was at that place last year.

And, and then you just reach in and you start, did. But, you know, I eat mine dog food. I read it. You reach it. And no matter what, you're like, you start, you start doing the work. You start doing the work, nowhere where you are. You start doing the work. The inner work.

It's always the inner work, you know, that expresses itself to the outer, to the outer self. And in those moments, sometimes you do think, huh, that'd be kind of ironic. The guy who wrote this book, you know, just at some point, like, fuck it, I'm out. Well, no, but, I mean, you're very candid in the book about the thoughts that you've had. And, yeah, I mean, I keep thinking about that. because I know the trauma that you've endured recently since the book. And the book, by the way, has had many incarnations, not just in physical space, but in spiritual space, so to speak.

And it's affected so many people. But again, I'm just like, yeah, this man, he has this capacity, but does he have an infinite capacity? And that's, I worry for you. Again, I don't know you that well. You don't know me that well. But I'm like listening to the book, reading the book again and again. And I keep thinking like, God, I just hope, you know, a silent prayer. Like, I hope you're taking care of yourself.

And it's not selfish to do that. And so, again, you know, there's not really much of a question there. It's just more of an observation that the practice is what saves you. And it seems to keep saving you and coming back. You talk about, you know, this dovetails with what I do, you know, in some sense as a joke, but like gravity, the importance of gravity because the gym is actually a very important thing to you as your physical soul and so forth. Can you talk about that and kind of the daily practice

and coming back to it? First of all, are you still doing it despite all these setbacks and challenges that you've had? Or is it just like, you know, sometimes you're better than others? No. It's like I'll learn each time. You've got to do it more. The mental work is more important than any other work.

The inner work. And I say mental, it's more like the heart. But I'll actually, I'll answer these in the order you were talking about. And you may have to remind me as I go along is the whole thing about I do feel like I had something important to give to the world when I wrote this book. Like when I especially the second version that came out last year, right? Because now it was like already successful. What do I need to put in here to make it the and I was like I'm going to make it the end all manual. And literally no one's ever done that.

Right. Step by step manual, how to love yourself. Here you go. It's not bubble bats. It's the inner work, you know, which I may lead to bubble bats or whatever, but it's the inner work. And it's a step by step. No one's ever deconstructed it. Your mom, your grandmother, everybody tells you love yourself, but who deconstructs it, right?

And so I set out to do that, and then you become mission driven, because you want to put the very best you can out to the world, especially in a book. You can't unwrite a book. You can't be over someone's shoulders saying, what I really meant to say in that sentence was X or Y, right? And then I also have an obsessive commitment to being honest in my words. in a sense not, hey, read my journal, feel sorry for me. I hate that kind of writing. I hate that kind of conversation.

Failure for them, right. Yeah, yeah, it's more like the lessons. Why am I sharing anything? You know, I shared things about my childhood in that book that my mother doesn't know and I would really break her heart if she found out, right? But why? Because I had enough emails from readers struggling with it

and they thought they were alone. So I wrote, shared it to show them one, one, that they're not alone, and second how I overcame it. So that they realized, look, here's this guy. I'm not some self-help juror. I'm not a self-up writer. I'm a writer who wrote self-help.

Right. Big, big difference, by the way. Huge difference. And so, and I'm very clear about my failures. So they understand, like, who I am. Like, I'm the guy who came up with this for myself, but look how I struggle with it. So you don't think you do this.

And, you know, Kamal's perfect. I'm not so I can't do this. Kamala's far from perfect. Kamal works on himself. That's the only thing. And that anyone can do. So I had this obsessive responsibility to the book. That's where it becomes because this book is my gift to the world.

It's my. And so like, so going back to that searching experience, right? When I got out of the hospital, I was in every pain medicine known to man. Like when I was in the hospital, I was an IV, narcotics, oral narcotics, the whole works. Like, I mean, drugged up beyond belief, all the opioids they make, right? And this is, by the way, for my listeners who might not be familiar. This is someone who didn't drink. I mean, you basically abstain from all sorts of, you know, alcohol.

I mean, I go through phases. I love wine, you know, like, I, me too. But I'm not, I'm not like, I'm just saying to go from like not drinking, you know, maybe you have a glass of Man O'Shevitz every now and then, but then to have like morphine drips, I mean, that was probably radical shift to your system. Well, I was in such an insane amount of pain. Of course. Yeah, no, no.

You could. Yeah. No, but what's interesting is pain, you don't even realize you can, pain can go that far. It's like such an abstract concept. until you're in it, you just sort of, your mind can comprehend that it's something like this is possible. That's right.

And so I'm, thank God for more than you know. I know, it's a godsend, literally. It's a lifesaver. I mean, but here's the thing when they let me out of the hospital. You know, they gave me like, the doctor was like, look, I'll just keep on refilming a prescription.

I can't give you a massive prescription like we used in the old days. But if he literally, I remember this quote, if anyone qualifies for these, it's you, right? So he gave them to me and I'm on them. I'm home. I'm in my place in New York. I was staying in New York.

I was in my couch in New York. They just curled up in pain in opioid, and opioid days for a week, right? And the final draft of Love Yourself was due. This was already in, I got out of the hospital, went in October. The book was coming out in first year of January. And so like the final, final,

like you can't change a word draft, I think was due in sometime in November. By then, and it's the very latest. And so I had a really good draft until then, but I knew there were things that needed to change. And I'd gone for electrosurgery. I was going to come back and work on it. None of this was expected, right?

So I come out and I start working a draft and I can't. I'm on opioids, my mind's too slippery. And if you read my writing, it's written very simple. And that's the hardest thing to do actually as a writer's to write. It's easier to complicate something. Oh, yeah. To break it down to the simple principles using the simplest of the words that a child can understand. That's where the craft comes in, right?

That's right. And so I realized, like, while I was doing it, my mind was slippery. Like I was slipping, slipping and sliding around the words. And I can't be precise then. So I went cold turkey off the opioids. Cold turkey. Wow. I was like, and because I was in a deadline.

And it was my book. It was going out whether, you know, whether I worked in his draft or not. You know, the publisher had their, you know, they have their own, Harper Collins. They have a whole schedule, a whole thing. They can't change. That's like a big machinery that's moving. So I went cold turkey and worked on it. And I would just literally just be sweating.

I'd be like working on my computer, sweating from the pain, trying to get the words precise. It's a word by word. My last chance to work word by word on this book. Why? You know, why did I do that? Why did I, it was like, I would end up to be too much. I would go curl up and just curl up in pain and just like, you know,

I wish I had, I cried because I, maybe crying then would have helped. Just kind of like rode it, rode the pain through. And then got up, back to it in front of, okay, pains, I've ridden that wave, time to go back to the work, went back to the work. Because it was my gift to the world. So that thing about giving, it really, at this point, At a certain point, you start working on something and you realize you're putting out to the world, this is my gift.

And I'm going to make this gift the damnest, best gift I can. And if it takes me riding pain, that's what I'll go through. You know, in some ways, it was a gift to me. Yeah. Because it gave me something to get up for, it gave me something to work on and something to go off the opioids. You know one thing I realized about a weekend? My mind, I like the opioids. I started my mind enjoying it.

And that's, I was like, oh, shit. I get now the addiction. Yeah. You know, because it's like, you know what it is? It's not even they've reduced the pain they do, but what they do something else, they make you not care about it. And I was like, it makes perfect sense. If your life is not going well and you have this thing that makes you stop caring about the pain

and gives you something like takes you away and it can be emotional pain, what a beautiful thing. Why wouldn't you get addicted to it? It's, you can see why these things are seductive. And that brings me to it to, you know. a comment that I noticed from your book. You know, there's an old saying, you know, hatred is not the opposite of love. It's indifference.

So that you just said something. It's like sending shivers up my spine because you're basically saying the drugs are not the opposite of like love or like you hate them or it doesn't make you, you know, the opposite of pain. It makes you indifferent to pain, which is the opposite of loving it, right? So which is why it's so addictive. And you talk a lot in this book about this particular woman. I'm not going to, I don't, I hate it when authors come on in the podcast.

Tell us the entire thesis. Yeah, I hate that too. I'm not even saying it so like you'll sell more books. You sell millions of copies. But the point is, is that you have to enjoy this experience because I found it very few times with books, Kamal. And this, I'm commending you. And you'll note that I do it very rarely. You probably won't find it in any of my podcast.

But you ever finish a book and you're like pissed off that you finished it? Because you'll never experience the thrill of finishing it for the first time. The first time. And I think about that with this book, but also how candid you are. how honest you are, but I did want to ask you about that. Do you agree that the opposite of, like, loving yourself would like your life, would it be that you'd be more scared if somebody is indifferent to themselves rather than they hated themselves? Do you agree with that old cliche? That's so interesting. I never thought of it that way. But I think indifference is when you

stop caring about life. When you stop caring about life, that's when the danger is a danger is. Right? Yeah, when you stop caring about life is when it just goes. slides down hell anyway, you know. So maybe, yeah, you're right. Maybe you're right. Because hatred, you can pull it out. You can pull out. You can like get sick of it. You know, like that thing in, um, um, what was a classic movie? Gone with the Win at the end. She goes, Scott is by witness. I will never go hungry again. You think she'll ever be hungry after that? Maybe one or two days hair and there, but she's going to get out of it. That doesn't come from a place

of indifference. That comes from a place of no more. That comes from like, okay, let the hatred get to the point where you're just sick of yourself and say no more, no mass. You know, as God is my witness, I will get out of this. So maybe, I think you're right. I think indifference is the actual, is the devil, not the, not the hatred. Yeah, you know. Right, you can use hatred as sort of a guide or rocket fuel to like prove all those people

ship around. Right. They said I was fat when I was in high school. I'll show them and you're like ruin yourself. But last thing before we leave that the book specifically and I'll come up, again and again, but specifically towards this topic of pain and pain avoidance, you know, there's all these economics, you know, studies by Nobel Prize winners that say, you know, humans are loss averse, you know, they'd rather, you know, not win, not win, you know,

$10 than, you know, possibly risk losing $1, you know, it's just an incredible kind of asymmetry of pain reception. And I wonder if that, you know, maybe ties into this thing about drugs. And this is where I part ways with Sam Harris, who we were speaking about before I started recording, you know, I have a lot of respect for. But, you know, him and people like, I think you're friends with Tim Ferriss. And, you know, they promote and extol like psychedelics and sort of. And I haven't done that much research on it. And people ask me about it. And I just say, honestly, I'm not that familiar with it.

But I am kind of a drug non-use maximalist. In other words, with my kids and I'm blessed to have kids, you know, I really really. steer them away from it because I think in contradiction to what I've heard Sam Harris say, that time is not the most precious of all quantities, nor is attention. Like, we all have time to watch cat videos. I watch a lot of cat videos. But how much attention do we have? We actually don't have, you know, sort of tension you can never get back. Time, you can never get back. Money you can get back. So I agree. Money is not the most precious commodity. But actually- Funny, right? Money's actually sensitive. Once you get that mindset, money's like the easiest thing in the world.

And I want to talk to you about wealth and the meaning of wealth and the value of wealth right after this but but before we do that i want to say what i think and get your reaction to it because i know it'll be it'll be it'll be you know really valuable for my listeners to hear and that is i think innocence is the most precious commodity oh god that's beautiful i don't think you can get innocence back i think you can get time back you can get money back but you can't get innocence back and so i want to shield my kids from drugs i want to shield them from violence i want to shield but i've I've said this to people, even like world famous neuroscientists, and they're like, oh, well, then, you know, they're going to grow up and be damaged and be stunted.

And I actually said this to this podcast, which I don't recommend, you know, to most of my listeners to go and tune into my episode called the Drinking Brothers. And these guys called me and everybody an Fing C word and a C and F word and whatever. But at the end, the guy's like from the 82nd Airborne. I know you were in the Army as well. You talk about that. But he talked. everyone we went to boot camp this and we both probably went to benning oh yeah this is dan holloway his name's

i mean if if he was an infantry soldier at least he went to jump school of benning it's funny you know this military used yeah i'm sure and i said to him because he was like no the most important thing is and i said like i think it's innocence and and he just stopped come all he just stopped i saw him get teared up you've nailed it and he goes i've been i've gone overseas i've i've taken a man's life i've had to do it and i'll never get that back even though he might have deserved it or we were in war And if I didn't take his life, he would take my life. And he's done it. And he's like, I can't ever get that back.

I can't ever be the man that I was before I took another man's life. And I feel like if he can say that, why can't I say to my kids, look, I want you to have the first kiss with your wife or your husband. Like, I don't feel better. Like you talk a lot in this book, Kamal, about relationships with women. And you're very candid. And because of your candor, you're vulnerable. And because of your vulnerability, the words penetrate the soul.

But for me, I was thinking like, I worry. Like, are you ever going to be able to get these women out of your bed? Are you ever going to be like when you're with, when you have a past history, you lost that innocence? And I wonder like, can you come clean? Do you believe in that kind of redemption? Or is it like a new you, a new life, is it possible to redeem ourselves once we and I count myself among it, lose our innocence? Or is it something you can recapture? That's a hell of a question, man.

I'm going to have to think on it because innocence. Yeah, you're right. Annocence is magical. Yeah, I can see as a parent. You never want your kids with losing innocence. It's magic. It's literally magic because you can, why not look at the world through filters of magic?

Man, boy, that's, that's, that's, you got me thinking. All right, let's talk about something. No, no, no, but that's amazing. That's amazing, man, you got me thinking, and thank you for that. I mean, and there's innocence in many things. Like, I've never killed a human being in my hands, and I hope I never do. There's that kind of innocence I have, and there's other innocents like, with loyalty in relationships or whatever that I've lost, you know, that wherever it wasn't met.

And do you get that back? I don't know. I don't think you get it back. Yeah, I don't think you get it back. But then maybe that's part of going through life is maybe losing innocence and things. And then what do you do with it? You know, because, I mean, you can't be 100% innocent about everything. You want as well just be in a pod or be in the womb while your life, right? It's like, what do you do with that? And you lose innocence in that, lose innocence in this, we've all lost, if you've built a business, if you've built a company, you've lost your innocence about how human behavior,

how people like money brings out. I've actually seen how money brings out. Some of them have evolved in everything in their life, but when money gets involved, that's usually where they've evolved at least, where they will take the biggest, that's where the ethics will slide. You know, so I've lost that in essence, you know.

But how do I apply it? I kind of more careful about the people I work with. you know it's like um yeah so there are different things in life you're going to lose innocence so where it's like who do who do who do who do who do we become what do how do we choose to live our life to that maybe you love through a different lens not maybe not an innocent lens anymore but maybe through a different lens I don't know that's a hell of a question man I usually go ahead don't get stumped you you you really made me think thank you what a good what a gift thank you well I love your work I love your books and actually the one thing I

what did want to just call to highlight just to jog your memory, because I don't remember everything I wrote, but there's a really delicious, delightful passage where you talk about suicide. And you talk, you literally use the words to get out of this suicidal funk. You needed to, quote, cut a magical new groove in your life. And just as water erodes rock, and you needed to let that process of pain become the redemptive force that took you away from this. And so I do think it is a form of magic and innocence is magic but you know in physics that which can be transformed into something else has a symmetry and an exchangeability and i i think you know it's it's that that we don't know these things it's that we need to be reminded of them and and maybe maybe these business people that

screw over you know you or whatever maybe they're also they have a mission and their mission was to make make you i don't want to say naive but less naive or whatever just like alert you to the nature of human reality because i do think that you are you're an optimist i see you as this like as this a modern-day Buddha, you know, a thin Buddha, ripped, jacked up, yoked Buddha. Dude, I'm so not the Buddha. It's funny, though. But, yeah, so let's turn to lighter topics now. Let's go, let's go to divorce. No, no, I'm just kidding. Not a divorce, a California divorce.

That's right. We invented the California divorce. That's right. That's funny. So I want to talk about, you know, just in practical steps. Do you feel like the practice is the capital practice? Because in other words, is this the only practice? Or can Brian Keating come up with, you know, enjoy yourself? In other words, is this the one-stop shopping?

Or do you envision that it's a framework, a scaffolding onto which I might be able to graph something onto? That actually is my favorite part of letters from readers is when they tell me how they're built on it. That makes me happy. Because look, this is one man's truth. One man freaking shit out. But it's also, who's also an intelligent man who's gone and, like, read texts going back thousands of years on things and realized, like, there are certain fundamental human truth. And he just stumbled upon one as well for himself. And he has the ability to deconstruct and communicate.

So he was able to put it out. But it is a truth. It is a fundamental truth. Loving yourself is a fundamental truth that once you tap into it does change things. But is my version the only way? No. Like, I mean, there's people, I'm sure. like who've been doing this since they were born or like it's natural to them or you can take

this and add to it. In fact, I always tell readers like, tell me what you did. I want to learn from you. You know, like this is one man's experience. Let's make it a collective experience. You know, like build on it. You're absolutely right. But what I, but what I do say is do this first before you branch off. Get the foundation right. You'll see that this works and it'll give you the confidence then to build on it with your own life experience. It's so funny that you say that. Come on, because I've been doing this project called, I call it the assayer. which is so an assayer is an old-fashioned scientist who would be given a piece of gold here's this piece of gold come all and you wouldn't know if it's gold and so what you would do is you take a special

stone and that stone was called the touchstone and the touchstone you'd rub the gold on it would make a certain mark only if and if it was gold and so the stone itself has no value the person who's doing it is not rich, but he or she has the power by this inanimate, useless, inexpensive object to make people billionaires, millionaires. And in so doing, he had to have a touchstone, a companion object that we call a scientist calibration. So how do you know you're getting a pound of coffee when you go down to the coffee show? Well, it's calibrated against some standard. And so I view the practice as outlined in love yourself like your life depends on it as a type of calibration touchstone. In other words, it has value intrinsically, but it also has value in that

it can reveal via comparison additional valuable properties. And so I salute you for that. And by the way, I also think that's true of religion. Like, I think if you're, you're, you know, if you're considering being an atheist or whatever, you should at least compare it to existing religions if and only if to use it as a touchstone as a point of comparison on which you should build upon. So, thank you. Yeah, I salute that aspect of it. I want to ask you, do you believe in this saying, fake it to you make it?

You know, in a different way. Not in a, it's more like, in a different way, not in the, not in the way you see it on Instagram and all that, you know, like on social media. More it's like you start, I think be it, just not being it. It almost comes down to the inner self. It always comes down to working on the inner self. So like if you're working on, even if it's just like we talked about with money, right?

Well, I've noticed it myself. It was just like my attitude about it changes. You know, it's like then my relationship to changes and my life circumstances with a change. Very interesting enough. So in that sense, I think maybe be it. And that's a, okay, that's a very easy, quotable thing to say that I'm sure I'll make a great Instagram

core, but then how does one be with? Right. Right. I hate that shit. Like when it was the last time someone's, life was transformed

with an Instagram quote. You know, like, like what? You know, it's like, so the, that's what part of the,

like, by the way, that what I outlined for love yourself, one can apply for anything. Because it was about creating the groups inside. Right. You can apply, I mean,

I do that. I apply that for other things as well in my life because I learned like, well, it works for this. It'll work for others. Right. I looked at it and I see,

you know, kind of, are you familiar with like neural networks like this process? So, you know, what they do with neural networks is they flash up, you know, to a camera, a billion pictures of dogs, and then hopefully the computer will recognize dogs. And so I kind of feel like part of this message of your book is expose your brain to constant signals of what love sounds like. Maybe not what it is, but the more you can do it, the 10 breaths, the practice, the mirror. If you can do that, you're training this three-pound, you know, squishy computer or supercomputer and the way that it has processing things through its neural network. And so it's not even what sounds like is what it feels like. Hmm.

You know, we're human never, we're like to think about thinking creatures. We're actually feeling creatures. The neuro cortex comes into rationalize what we felt. The neurocortex occurred me if I'm wrong was the part that evolved last. Most sophisticated. And we think it's the part that runs the show. It's no, no, no. It's the old. part. It's the oldest. It's the, we go down to the binary code, you know, go down. That's what's running the show. It's the brainstem. It's the tribal self that's running the show. The

neural cortex is just creating rationality for it. You know, that we're not as a density thinking. You know, that's the illusion. And if you become honest with yourself, I'm always, I have this thing about in business, it's like, you've got to know the rules of the game you're playing. First, you've got to be honest with you solve with the game you're playing, then the know their rules. And that's how you do well, right? And be very honest with yourself, not how you want the rules to be, but what the rules of the game are. And it's the same thing here. It's like, we like to think we're like these really, we're intelligence and we're rational. We have that word rational, right? We're anything but. A human being is anything but rational. There is no objectivity.

There's only subjectivity. And it's just the neurocortex is that beautiful layer of illusion, is that beautiful matrix that the old stem, you know, the old wire, the original, the baked in software is running. And the neurochortex is just creating the rationalization around it. So we feel like we're actually, we're smart. So when you realize that, it's like the whole point of this was to actually go to the old wire and to cut in through the, to the chatter, the nearest cortex is also the monkey mind that creates all the garbage, that creates all the drama.

It comes to the new cortex, right? you go, you cut through it, you go to the feeling part. You cut to the feeling, you satisfy that. You give it what it means. And then the neurocortex just rationalizes that. I mean, I'm taking the magic out of this, but really, I think that's what it is. No, I agree with you. Actually, it resonates deeply, you know, actually physically with the credo of Judaism,

which is called the Shema, which means here or listen, and that you're not, it says, like, in this prayer that Jews are saying to themselves three times a day, a catechism of sorts. And it says, do not, so you say with your eyes closed, your hands over your eyes, and you say, listen, and do not follow after your eyes and your heart because they will make you, it actually says prostitute yourself. In other words, you will give up everything for looks or for beauty or for money or for, but you won't like give up as easily for saying something silently or hearing a voice.

Like, I've never been... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The truth. It's not the head. It's that, that voice within. That quiet, that quiet voice within. Absolutely, yeah. That's what the truth is.

Oh, my God. Dude, this might be my favorite podcast I've done. Did you get that? Did you get that everybody? I'm saying it on the podcast. That's on record. That's awesome. And you do a podcast, Curious Kamal.

I am a subscriber. I love it. I leave comments and reviews and ratings. and hopefully everyone will do that too. I can't wait to every episode that comes out is really a little tiny ear nugget treat that I look forward to. Whether it's a movie night or just midday,

Skinny Pop is a salty snack that keeps on giving. Made with just three simple ingredients for an irresistibly delicious taste and a large serving size that lasts. Deliciously popped, perfectly salted. Skinny Pop, popular for a reason. Shop Skinny Pop Now. So I want to talk now, moving into a slightly different direction.

Actually, maybe before we do that. So obviously, you are, you know, you're very well-known in your own right. You talked a lot about how your father's influenced you in a certain way. And obviously, you influenced your brother as well. I don't want to talk about your brother. I don't want to talk about your father. I want to know about your mother. She must be a very special person.

It's more and more influence our mother was the influence, not our father. Because our parents separated when we were young. Me too. Yeah, same with me. Exactly the same with me and my brother. The influence of the father was more as a lack of father, you know, or just the memories of the child of father, you know. Mother was all love and all sacrifice.

And in some ways that was good, something that was also, I can also see where it would affect me in ways that have not been good from me as an adult, right? Because I start to, I, because she literally, like, raised my brother around nothing. We were not poor, we were poor. Like we were homeless at one point, you know, and the rest was just her working minimum wage, gone all day, you know,

working one job, two jobs. My brother and I, my brother and I grew up in libraries, you know, which to our credit made us who we are. Yeah, exactly. You know? I remember one summer I read, I counted, like, I kind of read something like two, over 250 books. It was like I was on a mission, you know, like,

I was just going to library because that's, that was our, that was childcare, you know, like, and so all I did was read. And this was as a young kid. But love, we had love from her and she was there, you know, in what way she could. And the situation she was thrown into, and there's no support network, nothing all alone in a city with two boys, two very independent, very thinking boys, right? And I was a pain in the ass. I was, my brother was much better. My brother was the good one.

I was the pain in the ass. I was literally, I fully admitted, I've apologized to her many times. I was the pain in the ass. And, and, you know, so like you, but it's like, so it was sacrifice and love. And what I've learned, what I've realized is I kind of wired in my head the love deal, love equals sacrifice. And what I've learned is, dude, that's not served you. You know, love does not have to be equal sacrifice always. You know, where I will give up everything for love.

And I give myself up for love. And it's like, no, you deserve. you deserve love without having to sacrifice yourself. You know, but it was like, it was, it's very interesting. A parents, what they give us is beautiful, but we also carry, we can also, we also carry the other part of it. And that's part of adult is like maybe letting go my innocence and letting go of my innocence of that, and that's a good thing.

That's a good innocence to give up. That love doesn't have to be sacrificed. Love can just be receiving because I'm just awesome. Why not that? What do I have to sacrifice to earn love? you know why does love happen to sacrifice no that's beautiful man and i feel you know again you don't know me i don't know you all that well but but i feel like i know you so there's asymmetric knowledge but same with me my father abandoned me when i was a young kid my older brother and i were left to be

raised by my my mother and she had the same thing working minimum wage supporting two kids in the 70s it was not super easy and you know she she bore the scars of that and a painful divorce and so forth but i always say I'm thankful to my father. I actually reconciled with my father. If I recall correctly, you never really did with your dad. But that's another topic for a different day. But with my dad, you know, I felt like, you know what? You know what's the worst thing?

So if you have a weatherman and he's always wrong, that's not so bad because you just do the opposite of what he says. You know, you bring an umbrella when he says, it'll be sunny. I thought like that's what my dad was. So I could like just do the opposite of what he does and I'll be a good dad. And I've heard a kind of joke said by a psychiatrist that I'm friends with in a UCLA named Dr. Stephen Marmer. And he says, your job as a father is pass along half of your neuroses to your kids. If we all do that, it'll titrate, it'll pipette.

Yeah, because it's much better to pass on half of them than all of them. Oh, okay, okay. I thought it said like almost like you have to pass on neuroses. No, no, no, no. If you're neurotic. I mean, I hear that some Jews are neurotic. I don't know for sure. I've been told.

Having spent time in New York, I've learned that that time really does hold. Like, it's almost, I have friends of mine who are Jewish. I'm just like, why? Like, you have to explain this. It's really fascinating. But, you know, the book of the culture and then also the history. Some of it's like, yeah, you can understand. You can genuinely understand when you grow up with grandparents who will always ready to flee.

Yeah. So you kind of get where this comes from. That's right. It's like people say, why are there so many Jewish violin players? I'm like, because when people are coming after you at the pitch for, you could carry a violin better than a piano. So I want to talk about a different subject now. We're going to pivot radically.

So those of you listening out there on iTunes or watching us on YouTube, wherever you may be, we're going to pivot radically because I think you're also a teacher when it comes to new technology. And in particular, when I want to talk to you about is a blockchain and Bitcoin and all sorts of things. Before I do that, Kamal, I want to ask you from a perspective of wealth, like what is it, what is the value of wealth. I've talked to many billionaires. I've been very blessed and fortunate to know a bunch of them, and I've been blessed to know people that are abject paupers. I'm not saying because they're a billionaire, they're good people. But I've had people, you know, extol the virtues of wealth in surprising ways on this podcast. I've had about four different billionaires. I don't know,

maybe you're a billionaire. Maybe you're the fifth billionaire. But I want to ask you, Camal, philosophically, what is the purpose of wealth to you? You know, it's interesting. This guy I've been working with. recently I'm doing some deals I'm doing. And he called me up last week. And he was struggling. He's like, I got to ask you that. He's 22.

He's like, I'm rich now. And I got rich in crypto. I feel like I got rich by pushing paper. He's like, how did you deal with it when you first got rich? Like, how do you deal with getting rich? And like, what do you do? What happens then? I was like, first of all, dude, the word rich is a very, very interesting work.

There's nothing objective about that word. It's a very subjective word. Because you can be around a crew today. I was like, look, you could have a tenth of money you have, go hang out in Bombay. You will feel real, the slums of Bombay. You will feel really rich. Or you can hang out with some of the crypto crew and you could feel poor. You have with the money you have now.

It's a very subjective thing. So it comes out of the feeling. Do you feel it? Right? It comes out of feeling. It's a satisfaction. It's like, first of all, do you feel it? Because otherwise, if you do it around who you surround it by,

there will always be people richer than you'll always be people. people poorer than you. And that's a lesson I have to learn because I used to, you know, I come from the startup world where the stupid levels of wealth, you're for your friends, a year later, they're like crashing Ferraris and, you know, that they don't even care about and walking away. They almost run your, I've had this happen with like for the friend, like almost ride me over the Ferrari, but a year before he was driving a Toyota Corolla, you know, like, like, it's just like that level of things happen, right? And, and you realize, um, uh, you know, It's a subjective thing.

It's a moving target, especially the groups you hang out in. So what is, go back to the question. What was the question? What is the well? What do you see as the purpose of wealth for you personally? Okay, that's a better question. I give you a shitty answer. I'll give you a better answer to your better question.

The purpose to me of wealth, and for me, it's always been, it's been a moving target, too. Maybe that's where I was getting at, you know, where I felt, you know, I did well and I didn't feel rich, you know. where like now I'm doing well and I'm feeling rich. What's the difference? Now what is the purpose of it? The purpose of it is just it gives you, it comes into feeling, gives you a feeling of I can do whatever I want. I don't have to worry for what I want.

You know, because then at a certain point you get, it's just shinier things. What can I get? I can get something shinier. Or if it's if you're into buying plans, I can get a plan with more seats. That's all that happens. That's the only difference.

But does that change you? I hope not because if it does, you were damage in ways that, like, you know, like, yeah, money's not going to help, right? Yeah, that's what every time you get a more seed, you feel, you know, it's like, that's not it. So I think it gives you a sense of, I'm okay. It's weird.

It gives you a sense I'm okay. I can, whatever, like, I can, you don't, you know, the, I've been a position of my lover or have to worry about money and I've had a position of my love, I don't have to worry about money. Let me tell you, it's much better than a position we don't have to worry about money. Yeah. You know, because it is a worry, right? But the funny thing is, rich people,

worry about money. You know how many rich people, you and I know that all they do is sit there worrying about their taxes. They worry more about money than someone who's poor. Right. You know what I'm talking about, right? Absolutely. Their mindset, if you go into their head, it's a shit show about taxes about how they're trying to cut taxes and this or that, doing trust, doing that, whatever, versus someone who's just trying to pay the bills. They worry less about money. It's funny because almost everyone I've interviewed started off poor or not wealthy and they became billionaires And I think those types of people have a different approach to wealth in that it is a tool. It's a, and like tools in physics, a tool is something that can convert energy to useful work.

In other words, you can do something with it. All of them give back. All of them are philanthropic. All of them see it as a tool and not part of who they are. Yes, they enjoy the trappings of it. They enjoy their boats. And they're, you know, it's funny because I thought of two different quotes from the movie Wall Street that I used on this guy, Peter Schiff and Michael sailor two different sides of the Bitcoin coin. And, uh, and one of them I said to, uh, to Peter Schiff,

you know, Charlie Sheen says to, to Michael Douglas. He goes, you know, why are you making all his money can only water ski behind one yacht at a time. And, and the other guy, and the other time, he says a good quote. So it's true. It's like you can't have two dots and like one at one. Maybe you could with your rings, you know, you're doing the ring workout. You could do two way out. But, uh, but the other thing he says like, ah, he tells his girlfriend, Darrell Hanne. He's like, I'm just saving up. Like, I'm just living for the dream of one day I'll be able to ride a motorcycle across China. And I'm like, you know, that costs like $800. Like you could do that now. Like anybody could do that pretty much if they wanted to. So I see it as as yes, wealth. Of course,

you know, having had some, you know, poverty, extreme poverty in my life and then and more obviously it's easier. It gives you options. It gives you, as you're saying, it's a tool for what I say is risk management. It's like it allows you to hedge. It allows you to take precautions. It allows you prepare. But fundamentally, my goal has always been, you know, bounce the check to the undertaker. Because if you die with wealth, I kind of see these people that die with like millions. Even the woman in New York City who died and she left $80 million to the New York Public Library or whatever. It's like, you know how good she could have treated people during her life? Like there are people starving and like that's a great point. You know, it's like use that before you die.

guy was zero. I had the author of that book. He's an African, one of the first African-American, like hedge fund pioneers and leaders, Bill Perkins. He was on the show. He actually called in this guy, Dan Bilzerian. They're on a yacht together. I know if Dan. Yeah, he's like a crazy guy. I don't know. I know his cousin. His cousin and I are friends on our Twitter friends. But that brings me out, yeah, to this point. And I think it's, it has a tool. It has a purpose. But, and certainly, you know, more is better in a certain sense. But, you know, you look at the, the extreme inequalities that there are in the world. And I just wonder, you know, does that have an effect on you? Because also in Judaism, by the way, it's you have to give 10% of your income away ever. You have to. It's a law.

But you cannot give more than 20% away every year. In other words, there's a cap on how much you can give. Interesting. And that's after taxes, by the way. So it's taxes plus 10%, a maximum of 20%. So you could give away like 80% of your income. But anyway, that's because at a certain level, people that are doing charity might become convinced of their own godliness. In other words, that this hospital, you know, that I'm looking at at UCSD, has a guy's name on it. It has Irwin Jacobs, the founder of Qualcomm. And I'm looking at it, I'm like,

I'm glad he donated that rather than bought another baseball team or something. But at the same token, it's like, you know, he's not God. And there is a value to wealth. And I think the goal should be to die with zero, as Bill Perkins book. I want to ask you, now we're going to switch to actually a cryptocurrency in its purpose. Another quote from Judaism is Anyone who is more religious than me

is a religious zealot and a fanatic And I should not be like him And anyone who's less religious than me Is an idolather Is an idol worshipper Is a loser and a fraud So I feel this way about Bitcoiners Versus Ethereum.

Oh God. It's a religion. It's worse than religion. It's a religion. Don't give these people guns. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. I feel like I'm so sucked down the rabbit hall

And now, like, people are, it's funny because I'll interview somebody about gold. And then the Bitcoin guys will say, I'm a, I'm a gold bug. And then I interview the gold bug and they say, and he calls me a Bitcoin shill. You know, it's like, anyway, why is it so religiously overtoned? Why does it have these implications of, implications of, of zealotry associated with it? What is it about this humble little mathematical aggregate? It's a level of money involved that has that also control. And it's what we talk about in business, man.

people's least evolved version comes out. You know, you can, you see that. At least when shit hits the fan, you can see that. So you can really get to know a person when she hits the fan or the values are. That's, and really, that's how I've learned people's real values, right? They can be great until she hits the fan and then you see, ah, okay, that's what you're made up because they may actually be who you think they are. But sometimes, you know, so there's one very important lesson I learned was,

you know, like there's a classic, there's a Zen story about a scorpion that asked a monk for, for, they're at a riverbank. And he actually, he's, and the monk is about to send to the other bank. And the scorpion says to the monk, could you give me a ride to the other side? And the monk says, no, you're a scorpion. He'll sting me. And the scorpion goes, well, no, because then look, we'll both die, you know, mutually short destruction, right?

So like, so like, so like, just take this, monk's like, okay, that makes sense. You know, do no harm has to help life. So help my back, you know, they go across, half across the way, stings the scorpion. And he goes, what the hell? And he's drowning, he's dying, he's a scorpion. I'm a scorpion. You know, that's what they do. That's one thing you also learn about people, right?

And business is like you can't hold it. You can't take it personally when you stop doing that. And that's the thing about, remember when I talk about rules of the game? And I've learned about crypto. There's rules in that game. And they're all emotional rules. They're human rules and not rules on the blockchain, right? So when it comes to all this, you look at what these people's incentives,

what are their emotional need that they're feeling that they really need to take a stand. You know, often people do that with a movement of any sort. And the crypto is just the same thing. But at the heart of it, most of not being honest with themselves, which I don't like. In the end, it's money. They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't stand to make money off this. If this was purely just changed the world, well, go working in NGO in Africa. You want to change the world. You know, I really want to do something practical. There's plenty of billions of opportunities. Things you can do to change the world, right? Why choose the blockchain, which for most projects don't even need a token.

Let's be really honest, right? I'm not talking about, right? But that's not the rules of the game. The rules of the game aren't because there's money involved, and people can get rich really fast, really. And there's a lot of unethical players. Crypto is full of, crypto brings out the most level of unethical.

First of what is global. And anyone can hop in. And it's a get rich quick scheme for a lot of people. What do you think that's going to bring? You know, all the people in MLM, all the shady people in the internet, they're all in it, right? Plus good players. There's a lot of good actors.

People actually believe in it. Like a lot of people who are, they're creating, they feel like they're really creating the next thing for, they're creating the evolution of the internet. It's like we get to be part of creating the next thing that brings people together that creates power for the individual, right? There's also the philosophy. But honestly, I'll be honest to say that that's a minority,

a fraction of a, like a small, small fraction compared to the rest. The rest are in it to get rich. Yeah. And get rich fast. And you see all the, A lot of false camps. All the hallmarks of religion. Look, there's like this founding origin story.

Which is great. I know. I mean, but it was a virgin. They didn't virgin. They need a virgin involved. Like, if they had a virgin, it would have been perfect. You got Satoshi, who may or may not exist. It's such a great origin story.

You've got a priest. As a writer, man, is a sci-fi writer? Like, this would have been such a great story. I know. It's so perfect. And then you just have people like just banding terms around and like, you you know, thermodynamics of money and I, you know, whatever. I find it kind of funny and enjoyable because it's like I talk from a physics perspective

and then, you know, they think that, oh, well, I know the, you know, I've heard of the second law of thermodynamics, you know, so that makes me a physicist. And now I can say all these big words like entropy and, you know, whatever. But I find like the vehemence from the, you know, against the apostates. So there are apostates just like in a religion. You have to have apostates. You can't have religion. There's sacrifices.

there's, you know, there's all sorts of these, these characters, characteristics of religion. And as I always say, you know, the Nobel Prize is a type of religion. It's centered on a, you know, three-inch golden graven image with a picture of its founding father, Alfred Nobel. And these are scientists that are bending down to worship. The founder of dynamite. Yeah, exactly. Financial dynamite is, you know, but yeah.

So I actually want to ask you about these, the non-Bitcoin aspects, because I actually think there could be some application. So as James Altitcher always recommends to us. we should always have ideas and those ideas should have sex and then you produce new ideas. And so one of my ideas is like, let's take blockchain, which is really cool, as a cool idea, and science and inventions and discoveries, which is another kind of cool. And let's put them together. So how would that work?

Well, let's say I make a big discovery. I discover a unified theory of gravity and quantum mechanics, which you and I are studying together, correspondent style via text message and Clubhouse. I love it. I'm going to get you your PhD, Kamala. James didn't think he could get a special. Ph. He's getting it in cosmology. You're going to get in quantum mechanics. But let's say I've got the Holy Grail. It eluded Albert Einstein who tried for, you know, the last 10 years of his life,

unsuccessfully, to come up with a unified field theory, uniting the laws of quantum mechanics and the very small with the laws of gravity and the very large. He failed. But I have come up with the idea or somebody else. But I haven't worked out all the details. But I don't want you, Kamal, after I've schooled you and taught you so much stuff about quantum to come and scoop me. because then you'll win the Nobel Prize that I should like, so I'll have a second book, I'll have to write another book, losing the Nobel Prize part two. So I think one interesting thing would put it in a blockchain somewhere, put the discovery somewhere out there and then use that later on to show like, actually I had to work out a couple of extra details, but I had the right idea and I have proof of stake, you know, that I actually had the stakes out first. because science you may not realize is actually extremely competitive as any Fortune 500 or takeover or VC because there's millions of companies, right, but there's only one Nobel Prize. And so it's a conserved monopoly.

So I want to ask you, like, do you see other, you know, kind of beyond like artwork or whatever? I mean, I can get, I can talk. I don't think it's heretical the way that the Bitcoin maximalist think to talk about NFT. But do you see a role for it maybe in science or inventions or patents or things like that? That's where blockchain gets really interesting, right? Because, look, in the past, we needed a middleman. We needed some sort of scroll or scribe we went to and said write down this record that now it's official. I paid you, you were the scribe, you were the notary. You know, like, Da Vinci's father was a notary.

He came from a long line of notaries, right? And I was reading his biography. And turns out they were like really valued, respected upper class because they were the notaries. They were the middlemen who said, I'm putting the stamp. Right, they were the assayers. They were the assayers, yep. But more than that, they were just, they were more like, didn't create anything. Right.

They were just like, I'm putting the seal that, and it's a legit, I'm the scribe, I'm putting the seal. And so this is legit, right? So that was the, that's up in all of human history. You know, you had to do that. But what blockchain makes really interesting is the fact that you don't need that. The entire community, the humanity, anyone running a computer or a phone is a fraction of that. we all become that together, become a piece of it. That's what makes it really interesting.

That truly is the descent. It becomes the internet of anything. You know, like I think my brother actually said they used to call Bitcoin the internet of money, right? Which is really smart. And I think the smartest thing that was dumbed with crypto was attach it to money because then everyone wants a piece of it. You know, you get money involved, right? So, but that doesn't stop there.

You can use this technology, which is permission less. You don't need someone's permission, which is trust less. You don't need to trust a middleman. You know, you don't need, it's immutable. You don't need to, like, you know, if you do the blockchain's right, it's like someone can't change it, you know, sneak it at night, pull out that piece of paper, put in their piece of paper, and now there goes your proof or steal it. It's gone. You know, you don't need a safety buzz and box, right? So it does that.

So now you can, it's basically like the perfect record keeping system. And a record can be a contract. A record can be a financial transaction. A record can be you and I talking, you know. So that's going to be interesting to see where this goes. And that's purely up to just the imagination of the human beings. So that means this can go anywhere. Including, and I think you're absolutely right, as far as scientific discovery.

And also, why shouldn't scientists, I think you and I've talked about this. It came from you. Why shouldn't scientists share the spoils of the discovery? Because right now, what are the best generations of our mind doing? They're at Google creating a way to get you to click on more ads. Or they're a hedge funds trying to figure out that extra fraction of a thing that they can screw over someone else because stock is a binary game. Someone has to lose for you to win. It's not the kind of games I like to play. I like to put the games where like you win, everyone are most

involved wins. The infinite game, not the zero sum, not the zero sum game. Wall Street. So that's why they have the quants, right? How can I make the other person lose so I win? Like someone's got to sell me at a cheaper price so I buy at a higher price, right? So, you know, the best generation, best minds of a generation, I take it up by clicking on ads or screwing someone over so You can make a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a penny, a piece of stock times of bazillion. That's the best. So economic money, economic incentives. But what if that person was doing research and that research they were able to put out in a way that's like then you can attach to things at anything that comes out of it and they get a percentage of financial gain?

What would that be worth? You would have the people creating world class research and becoming rich because of it. That would be amazing. And that's how it should be. Imagine scientists started getting rich. And no one's ever done that. No one's ever had like a VC fund for scientists. You've had people that do, you know, donations.

Because you can't monetize. You have to have a payout at the end. Otherwise, that's why it's a VC fund. If you want a VC fund, people ask me, what's your thesis on your VC fund? It's return on capital. I'll be honest. That's the rules of the game. I have LPs who put money in my fund because they want me to return significantly on capital.

Right. And I deliver. Right. Now, if you create away an economic system, that rewards that creates an outsized outcome and also a VC funds you get an outsized outcome. Like I passed on a deal a couple of weeks ago, which probably would have been a 10x. You know, for every dollar you putting to get $10 back, I passed on it. Because for the kind of work I do, I want like 100 X or a thousand X.

Right. So that's a kind of, if you, but what's the scientific discovery work for what was calculus worth? You know? Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, like, what is the, you know, what is like a new theorem that? it combines things or whatever that lets you have, all of a sudden have faster laser. Or a laser that can be done with like one-tenth of cost. Or fusion.

Or you kind of laser. Yeah. What is that worth? Now, if you can tie that to a system that's recognized and say like this person and then, but you got to get other. The problem is this doesn't just exist in some blockchain universe by itself. You have to time the real world part. You're trying the economic incentives.

You have to get players involved. You have to get universities involved. the day license it because normally universities get from the patents, right? Or it could be,

but if someone was to create that, I think you could create a whole renaissance and discovery because now all of a sudden all the greatest minds or that 16-year-old kid

in his garage who's trying to figure shit out and does figure something puts it on there rather than go work at Google and make you click on ads one ever 100 time extra. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And the incentives that you create the monetary incentive and we could literally transform like the case of acceleration, you know? I actually think the first step is awareness because what's happened is, you know, so the physics community invented the hypertext protocol that is the backbone of the World Wide Web that was done, you know, Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN, the particle accelerator, the transistor was invented by physicist, the laser was invented for, and these are trillion-dollar

contributors to the world economy. So, you know, email and semiconductor instructions and, and, and, you know, anything that uses a laser and the global positioning system. And even your cell phone was invent, you know, the only modern invention, which isn't really like social networks. Those weren't like started by physicists, but the underlying architecture of the internet was. But cell phones certainly were. They came out of Bell Laboratories, the same place that made the first transistors. So my feeling is that first we need to start with education. Because imagine all these scientists died basically penniless, you know.

That's not the ones at CERN because they're working for a company in the company. And some is rightfully, so they're paying the salaries. Yeah. They're paying them to work. They're paying them. And the output is intellectual property. Right. So, you know, that goes to the company.

It kind of makes sense. And they should actually, but they should get a percentage of it. But in education, the ones who are starving, how do you drive those scientists to go work in education, right? To actually work in a lab rather than work in a corporate lab. Yeah. And I think that's like prestige, that's influence. And, you know, you see nowadays, it's just like, you know, Kim Cardan. will have a billion followers and so forth, although, you know, you only follow one person on all of Twitter,

and I'll leave it to the reader or the listener to go and find out why. But I can always happily explain why. Okay. Yeah. Why's the Rock? I know, but tell the Rock. Tell me. Look, I'm such a fan of the Rock.

And for not the reasons people think, I never watch, I don't watch wrestling. I've never seen him wrestle. You know, I enjoy his movies. I like the roles that he plays. He plays a lot of fun roles, right? but it's because of who he is. He is a commitment to excellence in his life that is just so rare that I just really admire that. And he lives it.

And he's also, he always gives back. He's friendly. He's great to his fans. He's gracious. Given who he, where he's reached in society, he is incredibly humble, incredibly gracious, you know, consistently, including I know people have met him. They all say the same thing. And so like I, so for me, like that's a person like I would, that's the kind of

people I, if I'm to admire people, that's who I admire. Yeah, so that's our father of rock. So, Kamal, I have a birthday party for a little girl that I have to go to in a few minutes. So I want to finish up if you will indulge me. Whose name is beautiful. I love that name. Thank you. I hope you meet her someday soon.

I would love to. I want to ask you the questions that I ask all of my guests on the Into the Impossible podcast. And they're kind of deep philosophical. I know we've been talking frivolous, but we've also talked some deep things. But they're all about either future you or past you. And I think you'll be probably the foremost person I've ever asked these questions soon. So first thing I ask all my guests, there's a tradition in Judaism that the biblical age that is,

you know, kind of perfect, you know, to live to is 120 years old, not too old, not too young. We'll leave that aside. Hopefully you'll have life extension and we'll look at 120 will be the new 30. But for now, I want to ask you, when you reach that biblical age and you are departing this mortal coil for the last time, and you want to leave something behind, not in material form. You want to leave it in ethical and wisdom form. It's something in Hebrew called a Zava-a, and it means ethical will, something you give that's intangible.

You cannot physically hand someone your wisdom. So I want to ask you, come on, when you reach that age, what wisdom do you most want to bequeath to humanity to not only your biological heirs or relatives, maybe, niece, nephews, whatever, but to your ideological offspring, of which I count myself as one, because I've been so influenced by you. That's a hell of a question, man. So it's not like my books. What's in my books?

You're asking you like a phrase or a little, like a idiotic art? Some thought, some wisdom. Exactly. Yeah. I think there's actually someone I read, it was a Christian mystic, I think in the 20s in the U.S. and he was actually taught by Ethiopian Jewish rabbi mistake. You know, that he talks about it a lot.

And what he taught it was, it was this core fundamental thing that I'm applying more and more, which ultimately actually love yourself came from that, which I would be realizing it. He said, there is no one to change. There's nothing to change but self. Nothing to change but self. So leave the outer world alone, working yourself.

That's beautiful. Yeah, it's true. It's like the rabbi told me right before I got married when we were under the hoop of the wedding canopy. The rabbi said people want to change things about their spouse. But just remember, people say that people don't change, but that's not true. People do change. They get worse. So the only person you can change is yourself.

And so, okay. So the next thing is a quote from Richard Feynman. And I want to phrase it. I know you do. I know you do. I know you do. I'm going to give you some assignments from him. My goal is to work you up past his level, so we'll see if that works.

But I want to ask you, he made a kind of thought, and it was about if the end of the world came and there was a cataclysm, what piece of information would he most want to use to summarize what mankind had accomplished or, you know, kind of the magical nature of humanity, et cetera. and he said, if all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation, I believe the sentence that would convey that most amount of information, in the fewest possible words, is the following. The atomic hypothesis. All things are made of atoms, little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart,

but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that sentence, you will see there is an enormous amount of information. about the universe, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied. I ask you, what's like the coolest thing, the most interesting, magical thing that you've discovered on this time that you spent on this rock orbiting an average star in the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy? So you're not talking about things I've seen and experience. You're asking for an actual idea.

Something amazing, something brilliant or magical, or something that, a place that you might have been to even. And like, what? But for me, it's always like staring at stars or staring at, like, being on top of a mountain and, you know, the climb that you did to get there. And then the view that was worth it, you know. But you know, what's an idea? What's it was an idea? That's always, I've been my favorite.

That's which is why I'm, like, loving this. I mean, you know, you have me studying stuff that I haven't studied since college, right? Is I want to learn more about the observer effect. That fascinates me. That down to the, down to the nature of reality, down to the fact that you have, you have, you. firing photons or electrons. No, you're firing photons, sorry, at a screen. And yet the observer determines what form they take.

That's right. What does that say? What does that say about this whole show? Isn't that amazing? What is that shit? That intrigues me to know. And I think if you believe that and what, if you leave with that, where are they going to go with it?

Where is the greatest mind is going to go with it? That's what I would go for. So yeah, we'll talk about that as we get into our exploration of quantum mechanics. But yes, I knew that one of your podcasts you talked about, you know, the kind of the nature of reality. And what's so exciting to me about that is that people act as if that thing that you just described is a settled science or that, you know, we know the wave function of the universe. Therefore, reality is determined. Therefore, I cannot blame you, Kamal, if you commit, you know, adultery. Like, you, that was foreordained by the Big Bang and the Big Bang wave function of the, it's all bullshit.

We have no idea how the universe came into existence. We know nothing about quantum mechanics. And we know the least of all about consciousness. And do you know, Kamal, there are people that think that protons, neutrons, and electrons are conscious in a certain way. It's all bullshit. But I don't want to get there yet. We'll have a part two or we'll discuss it.

We'll do it another time. But I just want you to know that that is wide open, as you in the venture capital world, would say, Blue Ocean. You can still make a contribution there because it's. It is far from settled science like climate change or evolution. It is wide open. And almost everybody has a stake in it. Even my friend Deepak Chopra, who was on the podcast about a month ago, he has some speculations.

And he's actually written papers with Nobel Prize winning science. He's not some, you know, charlatan guru, you know, whatever. He's a serious, sweet individual soul. But anyway, I want to close with the final question. And that's the phrase from which the name of my podcast derives. And it relates to Arthur C. Clark, who I am the co-director of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego. And yeah, and we do incredible activities here, ranging from spaceflight experiments, putting tiny little micro brains into space. And we deal with the consciousness, question of consciousness, quantum mechanics, and cosmology and everything in between.

But I want to ask you, one of Arthur C. Clark's famous laws that I open the podcast with goes as follows. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That's his first law. His second law is, for every expert, there's an equal and opposite expert. And his third law is how I got the name of the podcast. It is the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. So that's the name of this podcast. I want to ask you, Kamal, advice to your former self as a 20-year-old.

If you could talk to that 20-year-old come on and tell him some piece of advice that would give him the courage to venture into the impossible, what advice would that be? And it could be from your book, by the way. Yeah, yeah, that would be almost trite, though, if I just said, you know, from my book. But I would give him something that would let him figure that stuff out. That's what you want to give someone. You don't want to give them because then see where, because if I had known this kind of stuff, if someone giving me the fabric of it, I think, 20, what I would have come up with probably would be way more advanced and more interesting than what I have come up with so far.

Right. So I would basically say, like, look, um, and so I'll be just working on your outside, work on the inside. Just go all in on your inside. And I would give him that piece of direction. And I know him that he would, if he took it to heart, he would go all in it. He would figure new things out. And that's what that's the gift that would give him.

Wow. What a beautiful gift. Yeah. And I feel like exactly. the job that we have as parents, too, as to not overgive, not give too much, not show, let them figure it out. As you said, kids love puzzles. They love mysteries. They love to solve things. And once you solve something, it's a lesson you have for life. And I just want to thank you, Kamal, for being so gracious with your time, with your mind, with your spirit, this gift that you gave to the

world called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depended on It, Your Other Books, which will put up also in the show notes. And again, I just want to wish you blessings. And, uh, Godspeed. And then I want to also fortify you because the road ahead is going to be challenging replete with things like strange languages like Sokatoa and other things that you will encounter on my way to impressing upon you and learning from you perhaps the nature of true reality, the nature of the observer. And I just can't wait to see where your adventure story goes from here. Kamal. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you. And I'll tell you one quick thing. I was thinking about this yesterday.

I was studying trigonometry yesterday, thanks to you. And I was like, shit, I'm enjoying this. I didn't enjoy math at all in high school or college. It was a chore. You did because you had to to go pass a class. I was doing it to pass a class. Right. And I'm doing it purely out of curiosity now.

So like learning about the, you know, the Sokato, which immediately came back. But just to, but now out of curiosity, it's math is a delight. It's really interesting. Like, what a gift you've given me. So thank you. As Richard Feynman said, yeah, as Richard Feynman said, calculus is the the language that God speaks. And I do want you to know that you're in good hands. I'm a doctor. I am. I am. I'm not going to prescribe, you know, oxycodone to you. No, you have other doctors

that can do that. But I want to say that I am cultivating and curating the experience that I would cultivate for my child or whatever as we go into the impossible and learn about quantum mechanics. So I'm looking forward to these explorations. Thank you. I'm grateful. Thank you. All right, my brother. I got to go put on a party hat and eat some cupcakes. It's great talking to you, We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Thanks for listening to End of the Impossible with Professor Brian Keating.

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visit Brian Keating's website and sign up for his informative newsletter at Brian Keating.com. Into the Impossible is produced with the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination in the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego.

Produced by Stuart Volko and Brian Keating.