The Tim Ferriss Show - #209: The Random Show Threesome -- Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose, and Matt Mullenweg

Episode Date: December 16, 2016

My first live podcast in New York City was recorded at the 92nd Street Y to a sold-out crowd of about 900 people. This episode comes from The Random Show segment of the evening when I took the stage with Kevin Rose and Matt Mullenweg. Kevin Rose (@KevinRose) has been my partner in crime for many things. He's one of the best stock pickers in the startup world, the co-founder of Digg and Milk, a general partner at Google Ventures, and CEO of Hodinkee. Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) is most associated with a tool that powers more than 25% of the entire Web: WordPress. He's also the CEO of Automattic, which is a multi-billion dollar, fully distributed startup. We talk about lots of things -- including setting goals and New Year's resolutions. I hope you enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Rhone Apparel. Dozens -- maybe even hundreds of you -- have asked me: "What shirts are you wearing in your recent YouTube videos?" They're a very specific set of shirts from Rhone. I'm packing for a trip for seven to ten days, and I would say half of what I'm going to pack is from Rhone. These are the most comfortable shirts (and Rhone stocks way more than shirts) that I have ever worn -- at least for active wear. But you can even sneak them into a business casual event or dinner if you're a Long Island kid like me. Rhone has minimal branding, so you don't feel like you're walking around with some sort of billboard on your chest. They come with pure, melted-down silver in the fabric -- anti-odor technology so you don't smell like a musk ox halfway through the day. I love Rhone's shirts, pants, and shorts, and I've been wearing them pretty much every day for the past few weeks. Luckily, there's no risk in trying them out: free shipping and a 100-day return policy should help you decide if they're worth it. Plus, listeners get an exclusive 15% off for using the code TIM at checkout and a special holiday bonus. Find 'em at rhone.com/tim. This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim. ***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Why, hello, my dear little mate-tion. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different walks of life, industries, spheres, whatever you might call it. This episode is a little bit different. A, I am in the offices of my publisher in New York City, hence the bounce off the walls.

But the episode you're going to listen to is recorded live at the 92nd Street YMCA. And no, it wasn't on bleachers in front of a junior varsity basketball game. It was actually in a gigantic venue, which is gorgeous, to a sold-out crowd of about 900 people. This was my first live podcast in New York City, and it was split into a few parts. This part is a live edition of The Random Show, and there are two guests. We have Kevin Rose, my partner in crime for many things,

Kevin Rose, Twitter, Instagram, at Kevin Rose. You can also find him at thejournal.email. It's a great newsletter. He's one of the best stock pickers in the startup world. He predicts even non-tech trends with incredible accuracy. Co-founder of Dig, Revision3, which was sold to Discovery, and Milk, which was sold to Google. After that, he became a general partner at Google Ventures, where he was part of the investment team that funded companies such as Uber, Medium, and Blue Bottle Coffee. And he's now the CEO of Hodinkee, the world's leading online

wristwatch marketplace and news site. And he has a lot more of course, in his bio. The other, this is my first random show threesome is Matt Mullenweg, one of the most popular guests that I've had on the Tim Ferriss show. Incredible guy. Twitter, Instagram at photoomat, M-A-T-T. Website, M-A dot T-T. He's been named one of Businessweek's 25 most influential people on the web. But I think that's an understatement. He is perhaps best known as the original lead developer of WordPress, which now powers more than 25% of the entire web. If you visited sites like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, TED, NFL, or Reuters, or my website, then you've seen WordPress in action. He's also the CEO of Automatic,

and maybe you didn't notice it's M-A-T-T in the middle, Automatic, which is valued at more than a billion dollars and has a fully distributed team of 500 employees around the world. I'm also an advisor to that company. So we had a blast. We talk a lot about setting goals, New Year's resolutions, and so on, because quite frankly, I wanted to ask them. I'm always looking for help myself. So I do hope you enjoy this Tim Ferriss Show episode and also Random Show episode with Kevin Rose and Matt Mullenweg. All right, so we're going to bring our next guests out, and we're going to get to it. So please welcome to the stage Matt Mullenweg and Kevin Rose. Hello. And thank you, guys, these mics. Howdy, howdy.

Thank you, sir. Hello. This is a live edition threesome of The Random Show. So welcome to that. And what do we have here, Kevin? What are we drinking? I have no idea. This guy's a corner store.

It's a $7 pinot. Fantastic. And we also have, I may have to hail the crazy Bulgarian. I think I will do that, actually. Crazy Bulgarian. You all should get one. They're on sale on Amazon. Thank you.

Risto Vasilev. Richo. Thank you. So we also have $7 pinot, and then we have Matt's reacquaintance. Casa Dragones is a sipping tequila and we have the finest Dixie cups and money combined. Last time we had this, we had the Blanco and this is the Hoven. That is correct. Mixing it up.

We're upgrading. What is the Pino, the $7 Pino? They want to know. Oh, the tequila. Tequila is Casa Dragones. It's a sipping tequila, which means you do not make shots out of it. It would be very, very expensive to do that. There we go.

Nice. How's the audio on that? We added that in. So I think I'm going to wait for a second. Kevin, do you want to do the introduction or should I? You go ahead. I'm pouring. All right. Kevin's pouring. Do you want wine or do you want te do the introduction or should I? You go ahead. I'm pouring. All right. Kevin's pouring. Do you want wine or do you want tequila? I'll start with wine and then it'll end

poorly as I add tequila. Thank you, sir. This is not hangover $7, by the way. It's a little bit better than that. All right. Just so you know, you're not going to. I appreciate that. Yeah. So first of all, I thought you went straight tequila. All right. I'm already screwing things up. Sorry, man. No worries. No worries.

Cheers. Cheers, guys. And cheers, audience. Thank you for coming. This is a great way, a really fun way for me to wind up the week with everybody. So, welcome to The Random Show episode 679. We have no idea what number it is. We always just make up the number.

We have no idea where we are. I am Tim Ferriss. I'm Kevin Rose. And I'm Matt Mullenweg. Special guest. Special cameo appearance. Woo-hoo. So, Kevin, I'm going to ask the same question because, honestly, I ask questions that I'm

trying to answer for myself. This is the big secret of the podcast and and the random show how do you think about the end of the year like how are you thinking about what to change what to keep the same do you have any approach to that ah it's a good question so typically I do like my end of year new year's resolution list this time I decided to forego that and not do one at all, actually, because every year I tend to stick to about half of the things that I want to do. However, I have made a lot of tweaks recently that I want to carry on into the new year. One of them for me was just really dialing in all of my different blood levels. We have a mutual

friend, Peter Attia, who's been on your show a bunch. He's helping me kind of dial everything in now that I'm getting a little bit older. So I've been doing a lot of kind of crazy hacks around that. Like what? Well, I just completed my first five-day fast, which was really shitty, to be honest. Was it water only? No, it was, it was very, a lot of broths that go with it. So, um, obviously super low calorie, uh, still shoots up your ketones, but, um, you know, I thought it was going to be pretty easy because everyone talks about fasting. Oh, it's great. Blah, blah, blah. You lose five pounds. And, uh, obviously it improves a bunch of different markers, IGF-1 levels, hopefully my insulin resistance and things like that.

But I decided to give it a shot. And on day three, I was just beat down, zapped, like in hell. Day four was worse. Day five, I caught a cold. I mean, it was really bad. But after about a week later, I just felt amazing. And I just had my blood draw done. And so we'll see if it improved a lot of those different markers that I'm looking at.

So fasting is definitely something I'm interested in, something I'm going to be doing. You did this using the Fast-Mimicking Diet. That's right. So this is from, I guess, Dr. Longo. Yeah, Walter Longo. It's a prepackaged, low-calorie food. Yeah, so it's pretty... Intended to allow you to mimic the benefits of pure fasting while consuming nutrient-dense food of some type.

Yeah, so he's a scientist that basically said, okay, we all know that fasting with just water only really sucks. Is it possible to... That was actually, I think, the headline of it. That was his paper, actually. No, but he said, okay, there's a lot of people that can benefit from this, cancer patients and people with diabetes and a few other folks that we know benefit from fasting.

Were you not recording? No, I was recording. I'm turning off the mic that isn't being used. Okay. Yeah, if you could just repeat all that. Exactly. So anyway, long story short, he was like, okay, I'm going to do a study and do some research and see what the minimal amount of food that you can eat but still get these positive benefits on the fasting side.

And he found out that it's right around 500 calories a day, which sounds like a lot, but actually it's just like a couple sipping broths. It doesn't sound like a lot. And like two olives and like one almond is basically what I eat every day. Do you think your fast would have been easier had you not gone through the torture of being like, okay, I'm going to eat, but I'm only allowed to have one and three quarter olives. I think it would have been easier. So the problem, and i'm curious if this is so long goes diet actually suggests um things like a pretty high starchy diet so you don't get into full ketosis so you're in

kind of this like really shitty zone where the limbo misery yeah you're like 0.8 millimolars of ketones like it's kind of this really crappy no no energy, not enough carbs to have energy, not enough, not few enough carbs to be in full ketosis. So it's a bad place to be. I would like to, and something I was working with Rhonda Patrick on recently, another scientist that's been on your show, her thoughts are, okay, let's take the same amount of calories. Let's flip it and say all high fat though. So you can fully get into ketosis. Um, so that's kind of the thinking on round two that I might try and see what it, see what it does. Yeah. I endorse the second for sure, which is basically what I do when I, I mean, when I'm fasting for any period of time through, and by the way, you should do this with medical

supervision. Clearly he is, uh, but allowing some degree of fat or at least say exogenous ketones or MCTs to make the first two days a little bit easier in transition don't you also like sleep in a hyperbaric chamber or something like uh like michael jackson yeah just gonna say that uh i don't sleep in a hyperbaric chamber i've done uh hyperbaric oxygen treatments before during fasts uh primarily just google that just to see what would happen well it turns out that dominic dagostino who's this incredible scientist who's been on the podcast who has uh i think the second longest chapter in tools of titans which goes deeply into ketosis and fasting and ketogenic diets and so on has also done studies looking at how to use

or applications of hyperbaric oxygen treatment or therapy to different types of disease states. And I was just very curious to see what would happen. So I'll give you an example. This is going to sound like I'm completely making this up, but I tracked it and you can choose to believe it or not. I went into a hyperbaric chamber at about, I want to say, 2.5 atmospheres ultimately. And that's an indicator of the pressure. If you're very careful with this, they do not allow you to take anything inside because if it's pumped full of pure oxygen and you have, say, a paper clip, you could just ignite yourself into a gigantic fireball or anything just about. So you can't bring anything in there. You have to wear their clothing and so on. And there were two things that I did simultaneously in the hyperbaric chamber. I was in there for a total of about 90 minutes. And again, don't try this at home. Do this with proper supervision, which I had. I was deep into ketosis because I did

a 10-day fast, which you should never try without medical supervision. And I was at about 6 millimolars or 6.5 millimolars, which is the concentration of ketones in your blood. And I use a device called the Precision Extra, XTRA, to measure this. It's very, very simple to do. So I was in deep, deep, full-blown ketosis. And what Dom noticed, Dominic, and I noticed and other people is that when you're in deep ketosis, and there are scientific reasons that this is the case, you can hold your breath about twice as long as normal, if not more. And didn't Navy SEALs try and do this? Or there was something he was doing training for the government? So Dom has been funded by divisions of and components of

the military to develop supplemental ketones and other therapies that people can use to avoid hypoxic disorders. So if, if for instance, you're a Navy SEAL and you need to be underwater for a long period of time with a rebreather, which is a certain type of breathing apparatus, you can develop, I mean, I suppose in the extreme, brain damage from being underwater for a very long period of time. So if you can extract more energy from every molecule of oxygen, there's a huge competitive advantage. So he's been developing these ketone esters and so on for military applications so i was not only in deep ketosis i was in a hyperbaric oxygen

chamber so i'm breathing effectively 100 oxygen and i did a bunch of wim hof breathing exercises while inside the capsule nice and i pass out you must have i thought my brain was going to melt at one point and I stopped and then I held my breath I did three rounds of breath holding and I held my breath for seven and a half minutes

and then you did high dose mushrooms right after that it might have been two hours before which would explain the feeling of weightlessness no but seven and a half minutes

and if I tried to hold my breath right now it would be about 45 seconds that's my normal how did you count because you can't have any devices oh no

there are windows because they'll show you like cheesy eighties movies where they have a DVD while you're sitting there bored on your skull. So if you want to watch like lethal weapon 17, like it's available. Uh, and they, they have signed me up and they have clocks outside that you can see. So I could actually track the time. Uh about you, Matt? We're going like rewinding here, but in terms of end of year stuff, how do you think about that? Do you do a recap? Yeah, I actually just got out.

I was telling Kevin, we just did the sort of all the execs at Automatic, which is a company where I work at. We make WordPress.com and stuff. Got together to plan out actually the next three years. And then on Saturday, I delivered the State of the Word address, which is like the annual WordPress. This is like State of the Union, but for bloggers, I guess.

So a lot of planning. Basically, my past month has been like super heads down. I've been in a cave. And just like today, coming out of it, which is kind of cool to share that with all of y'all. And all of y'all, that's a Massachusetts accent, if you're wondering. But that is, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's primarily a work focus, right? You're looking at the future of the organization. You're looking at the future of say WordPress as a open source project, potentially. Do you do the same personally?

Do you have three-year goals outside of that personally? Of course, the business involves you. But are there things outside of that that you have long-term goals for? Typically, I make a simple note for each year called goals in the year. I started the 2017 one. The only thing in it so far is to visit Russia. Wait a second. All right.

So do you have a sticky note on your computer and you just write in 2017? Enter. Visit Russia? Or do you put this in? How do you capture this? So Simple Notes, this app. Yeah, yeah. And I kind of dissed Russia accidentally because I was looking at a map of all the work camps in the world.

I was like, hey, Russia, what's up? But just being a geographically ignorant American, I didn't realize that 90% of Russia lives in the Western 10%. So there was actually a work camp in Moscow that I kind of pretended there wasn't. And so all the Russians got mad at me. I figured that was a very bad thing. So I was like, okay, I'll go to Russia. I wrote it down. So it's a diplomatic

mission. Yes. What did you have in your list for 2016? So much. It's actually a long list. And this year it kind of like took a few side turns, you know? So I try to think, actually it's something I often do around the end of the year is I ask a lot of people who I know to crowdsource resolutions. Have you ever tried this? No. You should do it.

All right, what should we do? Let's try it. Okay, so visit Russia. We've done this before, actually. Yeah, we have done this before. We've been on a lot of Thelma and Louise-style travel trips before. I have one for Matt that I want you to do this year. Wait, you have an assignment for Matt?

Just this. We wanted crowdsourcing. We're giving crowdsourcing. Okay, all right. This is exactly the idea. I want you to do the Wim Hof method. Oh, so. The ice training, the freezing cold.

That has been a game changer for me last year. So I just met the dude at Summit at Sea and went to his workshop, but I haven't really done it since. It was a little weird. There's something for your list if you want to add it. Do you ever like Wim Hof in public? Do I ever Wim Hof in public? Well, cause it's like very vigorous breathing, right? Oh, oh.

I'm like, so sometimes I feel like, oh, this would be, I could use a little more energy right now, but then oh. So sometimes I feel like, oh, this would be, I could use a little more energy right now, but then I don't want people to call the police when you're doing it in the waiting room.

Yeah. So just a caveat on Wim Hof for everybody. Fascinating stuff. You have to be very careful. So Josh Waitzkin, we've talked to before. The shallow water blackout

that he suffered from, which could have killed him, was after practicing Wim Hof breathing before swimming. You have to be very, very, very careful. Can I just say anything Tim recommends, you should be very careful? Morning journaling, you can take your thumbs off. If it's high velocity journaling, only professionals. So I'm down with this though. Have you done like the hiking the mountain in your underwear thing? Or like how cold do you get? More or less.

Less than underwear? Less the mountain and less the underwear. I mean, there's a photo on the internet of me in my underwear in the ice. Really? I did go that far. I will say to everyone out there, the Wim Method, you've probably heard him on Tim's show. And he's been on a bunch of podcasts it's 10 weeks of pretty hardcore training um that starts off really slow so you know you

start off with like a 15 second cold shower at the end of your shower and then it gradually builds up to for me at the end it was buying like 10 bags of ice, putting it in my bathtub and then laying there up to my neck for about 15, 20 minutes. Um, and you're not even shivering. So you, you actually gain a pretty high tolerance to this stuff. But the thing that was most interesting to me is that I think that, you know, at least for me, all of us, um, me and most people I talked to, we have this like emotional rollercoaster that we all ride. And, and for me, it's always kind of like between the 80 and 90%. And some days are great. You go up to a hundred, but it's always this, depending on what's going on in your life and what challenges you have, you're always kind of riding that. And I've always considered myself a pretty happy

person, but after about two or three weeks, actually week two, the end of week two, the breathing exercises are great, but it's really the cold that does it. Um, it releases a bunch of different compounds in your brain and you feel just amazing, more energy and focus. And just, I felt as though almost like, you know, when you're, when you're a kid and you just don't have a worry in the world and everything feels amazing and you lose kind of track of time. I got all of those emotions back again. And so for me, it's kind of a winter thing because the cold is coming anyway. So every year, and even now I'm on like week two of it, I started back up again and I just feel so much better. It just, it's crazy. It lifts the bar.

I didn't know the bar could go that high. So you still have those little fluctuations, but the bar is a little bit higher for me. And Rhonda will give you all the science behind it. It's the release of norepinephrine in the brain, but it's amazing stuff. So we both got here at the same time. We were both wearing coats. That's right.

Kevin actually walked through the lobby. He wasn't underwear, and he had ice packs strapped to his body. You don't know what I have underneath me. Do you want me to strip down? I mean, I can go low if you want. Do you guys want Kevin to strip down? This is every time. The people want it.

Those two people want it. So the cold, I'm just going to make a note on that, which is coming back to one of the audience questions about chillness. This is something that I've also invested in, in the sense that I'm regularly going to say Russian baths. You guys are very fortunate if you're in New York City to have some incredible Russian and Turkish baths here, as filthy as they may be, that have tremendous cold plunges.

I took my wife one time. She's like, I'm never going back to that place ever. Yeah. When I went there, I think three trips ago, there was a guy, this old Russian guy, shaving his neck. I was with you. And blowing hair into the, just onto the floor where everyone was walking. We were sitting there looking at this guy blowing his hair. It was disgusting. Wear your sandals. Something about that is awesome. But even as far back as say Van Gogh when he

cut his own ear off, which I also don't recommend, was prescribed cold baths as part of the recovery therapy. Who was that? Van Gogh, the painter? I don't know if he's the best example to follow. No, no, look, there's... No one bats a thousand.

I do have a question about the cold thing, because I know you both do it. Have either of you done that thing where you get in the freezing thing? Oh, yeah, a ton of times. The cryotherapy? Yeah, the cryotherapy. Okay, how does it compare?

I don't think it's as good, actually. I don't... As the ice? I don't use it's as good, actually. I don't, I don't, I don't. As the ice. I don't use it. Ice is better. Whoa, okay. I prefer the ice. The cryotherapy, there are a few things. Number one, it really doesn't.

I just want another device in my house. Well, so it turns out I was going to get a cryotherapy chamber in my house. Very, very, very dangerous for a host of reasons. Oh, you want to attend it, right? You want to attend it, and also the gas that is used can be highly explosive. So I looked into this quite seriously and decided against it for a million reasons. But the ice, super cheap. I mean, I have a standing freezer that is dedicated to ice.

I have bags of ice. I looked at all these sophisticated cooling systems. I just decided, you know, use Instacart if you have the option to get a bunch of ice. This is like I'm their nightmare customer. I'm like the 1% who's like, oh, my God, I can get 100 pounds of ice delivered for $5. Yeah, I'm in. Sure. And then I put it in this standing freezer.

It's dedicated. This is why startups fail, people. People like you. The Tim Ferriss effect. It's like pets.com ordering the dog food for standing freezer. It's dedicated. This is why startups fail, people. People like you. The Tim Ferriss effect. It's like pets.com ordering the dog food for free shipping. Yeah, exactly. The edge cases. Those are going to bleed you.

But the cryotherapy, I also didn't like the fact that on numerous occasions I've tried it, and my eyelids have frozen shut. Just not really a huge fan of that experience or sensation whatsoever. Would you say eyelids? Yeah, my eyes froze shut. So I wasn't a huge fan of that entire sensory experience. It's not something that I would expect to pay for. You just got to open your mind, Tim. Yeah. Trust me. I think it's too open. That's the surgeries and MRIs to prove it. But what other types of resolutions are you hoping to crowdsource? Well, I like this. Kevin gave me one. Can I get one from you? And then we can trade them. There we go. Sure. Yeah, let's do that.

And in fact, the way I learned to swim was by doing this exercise with a friend named Chris Ashingen. We gave each other assignments. So his was a one kilometer minimum open water swim. At the time I couldn't do one lap. So that was the incentive and the potential for never ending shaming that drove me to learn to swim in my thirties. And for him, he was addicted to stimulants, meaning just tons of double espressos, coffees, everything you can imagine all day, every day. And so him, he was addicted to stimulants, meaning just tons of double espressos, coffees, everything you can imagine all day, every day. And so it was a year without anything stronger than green tea, which he also did. And so it changed both of our lives that year. I give you

a resolution. I would say because of how much we have traveled together, I will say conversational fluency in a foreign language. That's been on the resolutions for like 10 years. I know. When we travel, the deal is I'm like the Tarzan sounding translator. I'll try to learn Turkish or whatever language corresponds to where we happen to be traveling. And Matt is the National Geographic photo documentarian. He takes all the photos.

So that's been the arrangement. So I would say learn a language. Didn't you say something about accentuating strengths instead of improving weaknesses? I did, but I think you're trying to dodge this assignment that you've asked for. So I would say conversational fluency, which just means being able to hold, say, a basic five-minute conversation in a foreign language. All right. Can I do one for you? Yes.

I would love that. I think a little bit to what we – have you ever done like a long hike, like a week or more? No. Recently? You're kind of a city comfort guy. No, I like outdoors. You like outdoors? I mean, I do little hikes, like little jaunts and whatnot.

So that's the challenge. Just talking about the two blocks to get some blue bottle coffee. Yeah, I took my dog for a walk. I threw the ball. That would be the thing, like a long hike. Yeah, explain the one that you were telling me backstage, because that one sounds amazing. Oh, is this the Japan walk?

Yeah. So with Dan Rubin and Craig Marr, I did a Kumano Kodo, which is a Japanese pilgrimage show, kind of like the Camino Santiago. I think it's called. So it was about 100 kilometers. We did over eight days from kind of coast to Koyasan. And super amazing. It was like glamping, though, which is totally okay for this challenge, for this resolution, even though you're not doing resolutions.

Don't tell Kevin that. He'll have Sherpas carrying him on a throne. You are more like that than I am. What are you talking about? I am an Eagle Scout, so I have that. Kevin, I'm so tired of this Eagle Scout routine. Like, we could be talking about fucking anything. Don't come back to that.

We're like, yeah, we should really go do this and this and this, and then go pick up our friends at Crosby, and you're like, hey, I was an Eagle Scout. It's like that joke, how do you know someone's an Eagle Scout? They tell you in the first 30 seconds. It's like cross-benton veganism and Eagle Scouts. Dude, why do you got to hate on the Eagle Scouts? No, I like them. I'm just like, thou doth protest too much. It's actually legit. I only made it to Star. Thank you. Eagle Scout is high five. Dude, Star is pretty legit too. I mean, it's okay. So, all right. That was kind. So, Japan. Okay. So, maybe the was kind. So Japan.

Okay, so maybe the outdoor thing. Did Eagle Scout, like, did you ever do Philmont? I bailed on the Philmont trip. Wait, what's Philmont? Philmont's like this famous Boy Scout hiking thing. It's like 50 miles, though. It's pretty. If you're going to do a week of hiking, you're probably going to cover more than 50 miles.

Well, his was pretty short, though. What was it? Another kilometer is not too bad. But it's in the mountains, so you're up and down a lot. That's a good one. That's like an extended trip. So people have asked me about my year plan, my two-year, five-year plan. The only thing that I will, or I shouldn't say

the only, but one type of thing I will schedule far in advance is this type of extended trip. So I think it's an 18-day kayaking trip through the Grand Canyon planned in 2017. It's the only extended block of time that I've set aside, aside from some Japan excitement that is coming shortly. But the benefit of that also is that when you put it on the calendar, and I think both of you guys have experienced this, is that you get the benefit of anticipation,

and that is 90% of the payoff, if that makes any sense. Unless it's a really good trip, then it's like 10%. All right, well, for me, maybe I have a very overactive imagination. It's like 90% of the benefit is the anticipation of it. So I have one for you. Oh, boy, here we go. All right, yes, Kevin. This is easy, and I know you want to do it, but you bailed on it this year. Ooh, let's for you. Oh boy. Here we go. All right. Yes. This is easy.

And I know you want to do it, but you bailed on it this year. Ooh, let's hear this. I want you to do. Are you talking about Van Damme splits? That's all my New Year's resolution every year. In front of everyone right now. Now I want you to go on a 10 day silent meditation retreat. Okay. Yeah, no, this is good. This is I, so I accept and I actually had it on my calendar to do this year. And then, uh, I don't know what it conflicted with. It conflicted with something. Something happened. You bailed, I remember.

Yeah, I know. I did, but I was on the calendar. Ten days is long. Ten days is long. No, challenge accepted. I'll do a 10-day trial retreat. You do it. Challenge accepted.

Eagle scouts do that a lot. Except when they talk about being eagle scouts. It's like the hunted, right? I mean, they're like chasing fugitives. That's what I hear about being eagle scouts i mean it's like the hunted right i mean they're like chasing fugitives that's what i hear about those eagle scouts for the hikes i'll say the kimono kodo apparently that's awesome in uh in iceland where you can stay in like little huts and then uh the camino santiago one and for those people interested i i done except walk in the woods is a great way to invigorate an interesting... Well, forest bathing.

You've heard about this, right? I was talking about a book. Forest bathing? Wait, you said walk in the woods, right? A walk in the woods. A book by Bob Ross. Oh, okay. So anyway, there was a study that came out recently.

No, I will check it out. Okay. I had two glasses of wine before I came out here. So forest bathing, a new Japanese study came out that showed that the Japanese that spend time in the forest have lower levels of cortisol and all these positive benefits from just spending 15 minutes a week in the forest. I completely believe it. And there's some extra wine for you. I'll have a little more.

Oh, I'm good. It's amazing how these new discoveries are the most common sense conclusions that people would have drawn 500 years ago. It's like, let's put you into a concrete prison where everyone's angry and honks a lot and screams at you because you knocked over the cashews. Don't talk about Manhattan like that.

Well, you know, I was just thinking to myself today, I'm'm like i bet if every person stopped honking it would all move at the same speed it's just like so much anger so go upstate take a trip upstate i think that's that's a good call what questions would you guys like to hear answered up here. Anything? Just fire away. Go for it. Okay. Oh my God. I think this is the highest stakes for Kevin. You got to repeat this. Can I repeat that? The question is, what is most frustrating, is that it? And inspiring about the women in our lives?

Oh, Jesus. This is just like, here's a grenade. I'm going to pull the pin and enjoy. That's a great question. It's a really great question. Let's start with the inspiration. I have been very fortunate. I've had some really great relationships. Oh, here we go.

Oh, Jesus. Did I tell you I was an Eagle Scout? Let me tell you. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. I have. I've been very fortunate to have some really, really good relationships with significant others over the last six, seven years.

Fucking Kevin, this guy. You can't take him anywhere. And I would say whether it's with my mom, with whom I have a very deep relationship, more significant than others, I think that the, and this is going to sound funny, but I think a lot of men get, they're proud of how analytical they think they are

and get very good at ignoring like the flashing signal that's right in front of them the whole time and at least speaking personally that's been the case for me and so helping me to listen to like ramit said uh earlier the the intuition as maligned as that might be and to pay attention to feeling this just like a kinesthetic embodiment or a perception of what is good or bad has been hugely valuable to me and also i think that men in general are can be overly aggressive and combative. The fight, I think, is sometimes overestimated as an asset. And the counterbalancing that I've experienced with a number of women in my life

were like, maybe he's just hungry. Maybe he's not out to get you. Or he sent that email that you're so upset about. It's like, maybe you just need a sandwich. Chill the fuck out. Like, you know, like why are you assuming the absolute worst motivation behind it? And having that type of tempering voice has been hugely valuable to me. Frustrating?

Okay. And I think this is a Tim problem more than anything else to be honest but uh i i'm not always the best at expressing my emotions or contending with some of the emotions that i don't view as particularly valuable to me at a given point in time and so i've developed a lot of body armor over a lifetime of believing this and getting the shit kicked out of me for a long time in school. I mean, literally physically have developed a lot of coping mechanisms. And when I am confronted with someone who has, let's just call it more emotional range

than I do more emotional volatility, maybe than I do. I just, I am a deer in headlights. I have a lot of trouble contending with that. And when, for some women, it's just like a tempest that blows in and blows out, and then everything's cool. It's like complete meltdown, like crying hysterics for two minutes, and they're like, I'm fine, I'm fine. And they're totally cool.

And I'm like fucked up for hours by that. So I would say that's probably pretty high on the list for me, which I think, again, is more of a Tim issue than an anyone else issue. You guys? Go ahead, please. This is when the awkward Matt laugh comes out. I mean, inspiration. This is when the awkward Matt laugh comes out. I mean, inspiration, first I think of, of course, my mother.

And just my entire, my mother and my sister, really. Like, Mullenweg women are very strong, so I was lucky to grow up around really strong women. And to this, now, I have the good fortune to work with and be very close friends with women. And in the technology field, I think it is a tough one for women, especially engineers. And so there is examples of folks who work twice as hard to get half as far. And the resilience, I think, is something we can all learn from. I think the thing I've learned the most, actually,

is close to yours, which is empathy. This, for me, has been a year where a lot of emotions opened up that I didn't even know I had. Like what? Fury? I've never seen you really really angry yeah um oh it was grief this year grief you know my father passed we've talked a lot about this yeah and um and sadness and like uh and that you know was this weird thing where because it it kind of

triggered in other places you know I'd see like a story on the news and just get so emotional about it. I was like, wow, where did that come from? You know, that it was like, you know, something that would have never affected me before. I just would have like water off a duck. I'm like, I was like practically in tears or in tears, like for a situation with people I never knew or heard of. And that was like, where did these emotions come from? How are they happening? How do I make it stop? And I've definitely been close to folks who are like that.

I think the frustration for, and this is, again, probably a Matt thing, probably a Tim thing too, is just learning around expectations, something I'm learning to navigate more. That, you know, men and women sometimes have different, very different expectations out of the same things. And so learning to navigate that is something I'm really trying to figure out. What type of things, expectations of what types of things? I'm not going to let that slide. So for me, I think part of it's around relationships. It's kind of where I had expectations in mind where I said that.

Is, you know, if you're in a relationship or not in a relationship, like what are the expectations? The parameters, the rules of engagement. Yeah, especially this year where I'm trying to like withdraw a little bit and like kind of rebuild. Also, work's been incredibly busy. Rebuild, you mean just yourself? Yeah. That whole expectations externally can both be flattering and frustrating and like heartbreaking and like everything all in one.

What was the, if you're willing to share, there was a book that you found really helpful when contending with grief. I remember you'd mentioned it to me. And you thought it applied to a lot more than that. I remember when we chatted about it. Yeah, I'd recommend it. It was Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. And she was, one of her first books was the one that came up with the five stages of grief. Like the anger, depression, denial, you know, all that. And then her last book,

which is actually published posthumously, it's called On Grief and Grieving. I think one was called like On Death and Dying, On Life and Living, and then this final book, On Grief and Grieving. And it's really beautiful as well because she wrote it on her deathbed. And grief is something, it helped me understand that grief is something that happens actually before you have a loss, the anticipation of a loss, something during, something after. There's a lot of guilt involved at the various stages of that. And the other thing I didn't realize that's just useful for everyone to know is that stages don't happen in order. I actually have some glasses that have the stages on them,

so you can fill up your booze to like the different levels and then drink it down. I took a photograph of that today. Oh, cool. I thought it was the strangest thing I'd ever seen. Yeah, there's these little line markers on the glass that correspond to the stages. And so part of that implies that they're linear, but you can have a couple going at once and out of order. And sometimes you jump into one of those stages just out of the blue. So that was definitely one that was really helpful this year. And I would recommend for anyone, actually anyone, because we all have parents. Sometimes those parents pass, they get older or just anything in our lives. Like you

said the other day, people often go before you're ready or they're ready. And so it felt like reading it afterwards wasn't ideal, but it felt like I had a lot more almost emotional vocabulary to talk about these things that I didn't even know what the words were or what the experiences were. Good, Kevin. Eagle Scout. So, let's see here. My two. I would say that this last Thanksgiving was probably pretty difficult when it comes to family and the women in my life. My dad passed away a few years ago, so it's pretty much all women from this point forward. And my sister and mom definitely have different political and religious beliefs than I do. And so that is very challenging. Um, especially when it's time to sit down and have the religion talk and

how I should rejoin the fold in certain ways. And so, um, I would say that's been the biggest challenge for me. Um, just because it's, it's just, uh, you know, it's Thanksgiving, it's hard to navigate those waters. waters. I think with any family, male or female, it really doesn't matter. It can be difficult. So that was my biggest challenge. I would say the thing I'm most grateful for and impressed by would have to be my wife's willingness to work on problems together. So, you know, it's easy for me, I think that to get the like angry, I'm pissed off and kind of like, you know, stomp and say like, and put up a wall. And I'm very lucky in that it's kind of like her natural state to kind of try and work on things and say, well,

this is part of being married. Let's continue to work on this and like come to a resolution there and, and kind of, um, really break that side of me down into something that's, that's where I can realize that, oh yeah, we are in this together for the longterm. Let's work on this and it will forever be something that we have to work on because there is no such thing as a perfect state, you know? I mean, there can be for certain periods of time, but you know, there's always going to be something coming up every year. So just the ability to have a mate like that, someone that's willing to work on things rather than it would be hell if you were both like that, right? Cause that's when like relationships fall apart.

So I'm very fortunate to have someone that's that open to that kind of stuff. Thanks for sharing that by the way. That's really vulnerable. So we're going to close with the question from me and then i think we're going to let you guys get to your friday evening and uh we'll move on to for those of you who do have the blue wristbands we'll do that part vip yeah that's right uh vip god i hate that acronym but it's the only one I have as a placeholder. What's your VIP room like? Is there like weights in there? If we're switching, can we go to the kitchens?

It's like kettlebells and ponies everywhere. I'm just going to pour some of this. It's very exciting. I hope that's what you guys read the fine print right on that sign up. I think the 92 white people are just like cursing themselves for letting me get on stage. Oh my God, we're moving to tequila.

No, the VIP thing is just going to be a smaller group where we can hang. So the question I have for you guys, oh God, wow, look at the heavy hand of Matt Mullenweg. It's amazing how quiet the room got on the hookers and below comment. Did you see that? So the question is, I'm waiting for some residual laughter. Okay, everybody got it who's going to get it? Great.

The question is, what would you like, we're at the tail end of a year, any closing recommendations, asks of the audience, or suggestions that you would have just for a very good, in this case 2017, people will be listening to this podcast for probably a very long time. And I'll, I'll start. So the one that I would recommend is two things. So A, be your stupid, weird self and don't be ashamed of it, which is deliberately why I say stupid things like the preceding four or five sentences. And B, goal setting isn't enough. Goal setting is what we all do.

We all set resolutions, and we tend to find the same resolutions popping up the next year, and then the next, and the next. So I think fear setting as an exercise is very important. I'll describe it briefly. Certainly in Tools of Titans, I've written about it elsewhere. You can Google fear setting and find it. But take whatever it is that you're considering or putting off. Could be starting a company, quitting a job, starting a relationship, ending a relationship.

And break the page into three columns. And so you have what you're considering or putting off at the top. You've thought about it a long time. On the left-hand side, you're going to write down all the worst things that could happen in excruciating detail, bullet by bullet, the second column for each of those bullets, what you could do to minimize the likelihood of it happening. And then in the last column, what you could do to get back to where you are now could be two months, six months, a year, if you had to, if each of those happened. And when you go through that exercise, you very quickly realize that nine times out of 10, you're risking, say, on a scale of zero

to 10 impact, a two or three negative transient or temporary setback compared to a potential, say, nine or 10 semi-permanent positive impact. And that makes the bet really easy, right? If I said to you, all right, we're going to roll a six-sided die. If I get a one, you pay me a dollar. Anything else, I pay you a dollar. You would take that all day long. And so you start to realize that and you're able to take the emergency break off, which is what prevents you from hitting the goals that you've set. So fear setting would be my recommendation. Either of you guys? So just recommendations for year end? Yeah. Recommendations, thoughts, asks.

Sure. Okay. So a few things real quick. One, go see the movie Kubo. Have you seen Kubo? Anyone seen Kubo at all? It was amazing. Stop motion animation like The Nightmare Before Christmas. Have you seen it? I haven't yet. Oh, my God. So good. All right.

So see that one. The Birth of Saki is another one you got to watch. Highly recommend. Anyone see that at all? Sake. Sake. Eagle Scout. Sake.

And then I would say my last one is that, is on the meditation front. Obviously everyone talks about meditation. It's like the hot topic these days. We've all played with Headspace and Calm and a few other apps. I will say that my biggest insight in the last six months has been that when you do the 10 or 15 minute little trial and get going,

you kind of, you do it and you think like, oh, okay, I tried that. And you put it away for a while. If you stick with it and you can just go a little bit deeper, things start to unlock. And I feel that the stress level and everything else just kind of plummets. There's obviously, I'm just a couple of years into this whole world, but like, I feel that I didn't know that in the early days, I thought that I had tried it and I kind of gave up. And I would say that in the last few months, um, it's, it's really started to have a kind of deeper impact on me when I dedicate more time to it. It's, it's hard to find the time, but if you can set aside the 20 plus minutes a day,

I think that's when you really start to see what it's all about, or at least get a glimpse of what it's all about versus the really lightweight, you know, 10 minutes I tried it and I'm done kind of thing. And do you track that different from your Wim Hof time? Yeah, completely different. Yeah. The 20 minutes, I mean, I find for me is kind of the magic number in the sense that, like you said, 10 definitely reduces stress. 10 after, for me at least, you know, 20 minutes, 15 minutes in, it's like, okay, now the mud is finally settled and the water is actually clear for a few minutes. And it's those few minutes that are so impactful. Matt? I realized I didn't get to assign you a 2017 goal.

Oh, all right. Here we go. So I'm going to mix those in. I think the 2016 one, which I'm going to carry forward, but you can't really tell whether it's done or not, is everything in moderation. I'm so bad at that. Yeah. You're good at everything except moderation. Yeah.

This is true. And so that's, that's my challenge. Moderation. But the, the specific thing that I'll ask of you and the audience, you all already have Tim's book. I'm about like halfway, three-fifths in, loving it. I'll recommend two other books that are coming up. One is coming out in the beginning of January. It's called Rebirth from a mutual friend of ours, Kamal Ravikant. Kamal Ravikant. Which is actually about a story going on the Camino Santiago. El Camino Santiago.

I forget the name. I'm probably messing it up. That's close enough. Yeah. Really beautiful book. And two, which was probably the best book not written by Tim I've read in the past five years, is called Becoming Wise by Krista Tippett. And it's got a longer subtitle. So that's the other challenge to you.

I would love to see you interview and then later be interviewed by Krista Tippett. Cool. Yeah, I'd love to do that. It's actually very similar to Tools of Titans in that she has interviewed hundreds of amazing folks, but focused more on, like, the, like, Theological and philosophical and existential. Yeah. And so it's actually really fascinating and, like, opened my mind a lot of ways.

And much like your stuff, like, I came out with a ton of notes and a ton of things to read, like go into the source materials and everything like that. So that would be a, you like Tim stuff. I think you'd also like her stuff as like, almost like a different side of the same coin. Yeah. Great.

No, I think I have a book. I think it's very complimentary. Yeah, absolutely. Have you read it though? I have. Oh,

Don, you're ahead of it. I did. I did indeed. All right, guys, please give a hand. Kevin Rose, Matt Mullenweg. Thanks guys. Hey guys, this is Tim again.

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