The Tim Ferriss Show - #527: The Random Show — Life-Extension Misadventures, Blockchain/Crypto Investing, NFT Experiments, Dogecoin, Zen Buddhism, and Weathering Sharp Elbows

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by Viore Clothing, spelled V-U-O-R-I, Viore. I've been wearing Viore at least one item per day for the last few months, and you can use it for everything. It's performance apparel, but it can be used for working out. It can be used for going out to dinner, at least in my case. I feel very comfortable with it. Super comfortable, super stylish. And I just want to read something that least in my case, I feel very comfortable with it. Super comfortable, super stylish. And I just want to read something that one of my employees said. She is an athlete. She is quite technical, although she would never say that.

Starting point is 00:00:34 I asked her if she had ever used or heard of Viore, and this was her response. I do love their stuff. Been using them for about a year. I think I found them at REI. First for my partner, t-shirts that are super soft but somehow last as he's hard on stuff. And then I got into the super soft cotton yoga pants and jogger sweatpants. I live in them and they too have lasted. They're stylish enough I can wear them out and about. The material is just super soft and durable. I just got their clementine running shorts for summer and love them. The brand seems

Starting point is 00:01:02 pretty popular. Constantly sold out. In closing, and I'm abbreviating here, but in closing, with the exception of when I need technical outdoor gear, they're the only brand I've bought in the last year or so for yoga running loungewear that lasts and that I think look good also. I like the discreet logo. So that gives you some idea. That was not intended for the sponsor read. That was just her response via text. Viori, again spelled V-U-O-R-I, is designed for maximum comfort and versatility. You can wear it running. You can wear their stuff training, doing yoga, lounging, weekend errands, or in my case, again, going out to dinner. It really doesn't matter what you're doing. Their clothing is so comfortable and looks so good. And it's non-offensive. You

Starting point is 00:01:47 don't have a huge brand logo on your face. You'll just want to be in them all the time. And my girlfriend and I have been wearing them for the last few months. They're men's core short, K-O-R-E. The most comfortable lined athletic short is your one short for every sport. I've been using it for kettlebell swings, for runs, you name it. The Banks short, this is their go-to-land-to-sea short, is the ultimate in versatility. It's made from recycled plastic bottles. And what I'm wearing right now, which I had to pick one to recommend to folks out there, or at least to men out there, is the Ponto Performance Pant. And you'll find these at the link I'm going to give you guys. You can check out what I'm talking about. but I'm wearing them right now. They're thin performance sweatpants,

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Starting point is 00:03:14 out. Vioreclothing.com slash Tim, that's V-U-O-R-I clothing.com slash Tim and discover the versatility of Viore clothing. part, Tonal's homepage also features a quote from the New York Times. Quote, the machine knew my strength better than I did. End quote. More on that in just a minute. By eliminating traditional metal weights, Tonal can deliver 200 pounds of resistance in a device smaller than a flat screen TV. Tonal mounts on your wall with no floor space required. I've had a Tonal unit now for six to 12 months, which I got after a number of very close friends recommended Tonal. And it allows me to do things I would normally need a much larger gym for, like cable, chop, and lift, or rotational exercises, things I wrote about in the 4-Hour Body. And it allows

Starting point is 00:04:15 me to do these things that are nearly impossible otherwise, like eccentric loading, which I'll mention later. Tonal is precision engineered and designed to be the world's most advanced strength studio and personal trainer. It uses breakthrough technology like adaptive digital weights and AI learning together with the best experts in resistance training so you get stronger faster. So what are these adaptive digital weights? Tonal's patented digital weight system makes thousands of calculations a second to deliver you a smooth weightlifting experience using advanced electronic motor technology. Tonal lets you adjust smooth weightlifting experience using advanced electronic motor technology. Tonal lets you adjust the weight in one pound increments, something that was never

Starting point is 00:04:50 possible with traditional dumbbells. It's easy to dial weights up and down with the touch of a button right in the grip itself. It's pretty cool. Tonal also has built-in dynamic weight modes like chains, eccentric, that's E-C-C-E-N-T-R-I-C, and their patent-pending SmartFlex technology so that you can experiment with more ways to get stronger, faster, without the hassle of extra equipment like Chains and bands. And it, once again, fits on the wall like flat screen TV, so you can make the best use out of the smallest footprint in your home or garage, wherever you end up putting it. So Tritonal, T-O-N-A-L, the world's smartest home gym for 30 days in your home. And if you don't love it,

Starting point is 00:05:34 you can return it for a full refund. Visit www.tonal.com, that's T-O-N-A-L. And for a limited time, get $100 off of the smart accessories when you use promo code TIM100 at checkout. That's www.tonal.com, promo code TIM100. Tonal, be your strongest. I'm stoked, man. We're back doing the random show again. This is going to be one that I hope I can make it through. If you make it to the end of that vomiting onto the screen, we will consider it at least a success. And we require, I think, some context for people listening. Got a text from you about 45 minutes ago asking if we might be able to reschedule what are the reasons for that not to name any any people's names but we can talk about we won't name yeah okay compounds so you and i we we tend to i mean you're the one that got me into this stuff it's really

Starting point is 00:06:57 your fault dubious um you you you got me into the whole scene of trying out these different compounds and and seeing what happens on the body. And actually, you know what? It's a really good thing. It's a good story because I am going to hopefully live longer. Not that I want to have my main... I don't want to live forever. I'm not one of those people that is waiting for the flippening to happen where AI takes over and we just live forever. I don't care about that. But I want to have a good, long, healthy life for my little girls, right. So I pay close attention to all the different biomarkers. And one of the things that has always been an issue for me has been glucose disposal.

Starting point is 00:07:33 So you and I, we sit next to each other. I don't actually, I don't know how you're, let's just say a healthy person. I don't know how your glucose levels are. I know you used to eat all those bear claws. So you do love bear claws. So the issue I have is if I sit down next to a healthy person, we both eat the exact same carbohydrate. If we're wearing a continuous glucose monitor, I will spike higher and the glucose will stay elevated in my blood longer than most people. That's not good. You don't want elevated glucose levels. It's what they would call like close to a pre-diabetic. So, you know, I just need to watch that stuff pretty carefully. Cardiovascular exercise is huge. High intensity interval training, zone two training, all that stuff is really helpful, but there are also some compounds

Starting point is 00:08:13 that you can take that help here. So one of them is called a Zempik, which is this subcutaneous shot that you do. So you just shoot yourself anywhere you want. I just do it in my belly. And it lowers your glucose levels. It's pretty amazing. It just works really well. And actually, some of the other benefits, it's been shown in studies to be cardioprotective. So a physician that I work with actually prescribed it to me.

Starting point is 00:08:40 And they said, hey, the one thing you may wanna worry about, it can cause a little bit of nausea in some people. I'm like, okay. Like, you know, and they're like, you may want to ramp this up. Right. So the little like syringe thing that it comes with, you can twist the little knob and you can choose how much you want to inject. And like, I had a buddy that was doing it too. And he's like, okay, just do 0.25 for like four weeks. And then you can work up to 0.5 and then eventually one milligram. And I'm like, well, all the benefits, and I should say another benefit is that the number one side effect is that people lose weight as well. So like you lose like your beer gut,

Starting point is 00:09:13 you get slimmer, you have better glucose control. I mean, it sounds like a win-win-win across the board until it comes down to the long and lean misery. Yeah. So, yes you know i just kind of jumped a step like yesterday you know i had a couple beers i'm like you know i just should just go in because like i just don't want this to go straight to my god it's combined just i want to juxtapose here this is worth highlighting after a few beers continue well i dude first of all i live in portland oregon best breweries out here. It is very harder than summertime. There's been a major heat wave here, Tim. Better stay hydrated with that alcohol.

Starting point is 00:09:51 Better stay hydrated. All jokes aside, thankfully, we got through the heat wave and the beers here are phenomenal. So it was 4th of July. There was a lot of fun stuff happening. So basically, I just go into where the fridge is and I pulled it out of the fridge and I inject myself and I turned to 0.5 right away. I'm like, I'm going to skip that 0.25 stuff. Let's just like jump into the benefits. Right. So I did it and I felt fine. I was like, you know, no big deal. Waited an hour, two hours. Everything was fine. Went to bed, Woke up at about 4 a.m. just wanting to vomit. Just so bad. I haven't laid on the ground of my bathroom in a very long time. Maybe since when I was doing my old Dignation podcast like 15 years ago or something.

Starting point is 00:10:38 It was not good. So I just kind of stayed in bed this morning, called off a couple of my meetings. And you made a good suggestion on something that decreases nausea. I did that. And here we are. Good to go. Good old Zofran. It helps.

Starting point is 00:10:52 Also really important side note. Generally, when people use something like ketamine in a clinic, they'll give you Zofran beforehand. So it does work. Can work really well. Oh, that's right. Because ketamine causes a little bit of nausea as well at the higher doses right it can yeah very different purposes as far as i know ketamine will not give you a six-pack but yeah do you have glucose issues uh not really not really

Starting point is 00:11:17 i mean so you're just like you wake up in the morning if you were to test yourself you're like 75 80 85 take a look i mean you have to keep in mind also i haven't worn a continuous glucose monitor since check this out 2008 or 2009 oh man you're missing out that was gen 1 dexcom you could not get it unless you are a type 1 diabetic and the insertion procedure was terrible and the device itself you had to track the readout on a proprietary device there was no integration with anything like a smartphone or an iphone and it was really helpful i will say that most of the takeaways were pretty straightforward. It's like, yeah, we need a huge meal. Even if it is quote unquote good food, you really have this gigantic bolus of carbohydrate intake. Even if it isn't carbohydrate, really high protein, still spikes. So most of it was kind of self-evident. And after a few weeks, I was like, I think I have a pretty good read on what my triggers are,

Starting point is 00:12:22 including foods that I respond to strangely. So I didn't feel the need to wear it continuously past a few weeks. Oh man. I remember when we went to the movies and you first had that thing on and you had this back then it was massive. You had this massive, like third party, like little mini tablet with those little device was looked like a page. And I was like, yeah, like a huge pay. I'm like, like what are you doing like no one had ever i'd never heard of those devices before and and you're right the procedure back then was this massive needle they would they wouldn't even hide it they didn't put it behind any like thick plastic so you wouldn't see it

Starting point is 00:13:00 like you would watch the needle go in and inject another little thing into you and then you would have to mainly pull the needle out it was so brutally invasive and now oh dude you gotta try the new ones they're amazing i actually know what's happening i haven't put it in yet okay the old dexcom if someone can think of like a barbecue kind of two-tined pitchfork that you use to like flip steaks or something. It kind of looked like a miniature version of that. It was too long prongs that were kind of like needles that you would have to push into your abdomen laterally. And they were right. And there was no spring loaded.

Starting point is 00:13:38 It wasn't like, like today's you push a button, it's one press button and you pull it off. Yeah. So one of many things I did for the four hour body. Today's you push a button, it's one press button and you pull it off and it's done. Yeah, none of that. Yeah. So one of many things I did for the four-hour body. So are you planning on continuing to take, what is the name of the drug again? I know that.

Starting point is 00:13:55 Ozempic. How do you spell that? Google Ozempic. O-Z-E-M-P-I-C, I believe. Something like that. Yeah. O-Z-E-M-P-I-C, I believe. Something like that. Yeah, O-Z-E-M-P-I-C. We are not recommending that you use this, people, just to be extremely clear. Oh, I mean, you'd have to get a prescription

Starting point is 00:14:12 from your doctor, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so here's the deal. Like, I feel that, well, we can say it because Atiyah has had a podcast on this compound and a couple other glucose-controlling compounds. Yeah, are you taking metformin i am not taking metformin why not i think that well i mean the the thing is like you

Starting point is 00:14:31 tim it's like we just have to listen to the scientists and what they're saying and that for me is all the the scientists and people analysts that atia trains or works with and and and it is a company so um they look at that and say yeah there is a benefit for people with type 2 diabetes but it's not necessarily clear if you don't have diabetes if there's a health benefit there yeah so i think it's it's too too early you know you're talking about beer consumption just to talk about the putting life in your years instead of years in your life side of the equation. Can I share with you an alcoholic beverage that I've become quite fond of? Yes. This is new for me, new for me. So here's the problem, one problem that I have,

Starting point is 00:15:18 is I don't drink beer. It just does not really affect my system very well. So what ends up happening is I'll go out with someone like you and you'll be like, yeah, let's have some beers. I'll be like, I don't really have beer. Okay. What do you want? I'll have a gin and soda. And then we're going kind of gin and soda for one beer, gin and soda for one beer, which ends in tears. Like it just, it ends really, really poorly. And then I was approached by this company to sponsor the podcast and I'd never heard of them. Juneshine and Juneshine makes hard kombucha had not heard of them. And I was like, okay, well, I like kombucha. I do in fact, enjoy alcohol, even though it's fallen out of fashion when people are like, I only use ketamine. I'm so evolved. I'm like, well, we should talk about that. But

Starting point is 00:15:59 some people say, people say that you at parties. Yeah. People are trying to use ketamine. I don't use alcohol. Yeah. And that's, that's turned into this substitute for alcohol which you know may or may not have a place but suffice to say i don't have ketamine in my house for a lot of reasons we could get into those it has a place but i will have this right here this june shine and comes in many different players yeah it's great and so i reached out to my team to ask them about the company. And one of them was like, oh yeah, I know Juneshine. I have three boxes of it right next to me. And I thought to myself, well, okay, that tells me something because my team, I consider to have very good taste, not literally, although they might have that too. And it's great because it's carbonated. It has, I believe, 6% alcohol by volume.

Starting point is 00:16:49 And you can get a nice buzz from one because it's highly carbonated and certainly also has alcohol. And I just don't seem to have the hangover nor the losing arms race of doing like gin and sodas per each other person's beer it's been really nice so this has turned into more of a recreational light alcoholic beverage for me i'm a i'm a huge fan yeah i didn't the one thing i was curious about is what how much sugar were i always see these types of beverages at the store like these hard kombuchas or the hard seltzers all that stuff you know and? And I hadn't tried that white claw before, but I tried it for the first time. Have you tried the white claw?

Starting point is 00:17:30 The white claw. I haven't tried the white claw. It's like the Facebook. The white claw. I haven't. But how did you feel after that? It's not that good. It's not that good. I get why it's like, I don't know. I feel like when we were growing up, it was, what was the hot thing? Like the wine coolers. It's not that good. It's not that good. It's, I get why it's, it's like, I don't know. I feel like when we were growing up, it was, what was the hot thing? Like the wine coolers. It's essentially kind of like a wine cooler type style drink. Oh my gosh. That's the first alcohol I ever got drunk off of Zima. That's so funny. But yeah, 3.6 grams of sugar. That's not so bad. I'm looking at, at their site right now. Yeah. Yeah. It's allowed me to socially drink alcohol without just crucifying my brain cells.

Starting point is 00:18:11 And I've really enjoyed it. You want to see a bad decision? I can share a bad decision with you. Yeah. Okay, a bad decision is this mug I'm going to show you. This is a mug that I bought some time ago as a gift for my girlfriend. And as context, just so people don't

Starting point is 00:18:34 lose their minds completely, my girlfriend will often text me various things like calm down sugar tits. She calls me sugar tits for reasons that are unclear to me, but sometimes she'll call me sugar tits. So I thought it would be very funny when I was walking through this random store and I saw some people chuckling at a mug. And so I bought this mug. I'm going to show it to you first. Can you see what this says? Yeah, it says calm your tits. Calm. It says calm your tits. And it has two little dots in the O and the U of your, so you can imagine that. And then lo and behold uh we end up reuniting because we were traveling separately and in between the time that i bought this and had like put it aside for her in a place

Starting point is 00:19:13 where i knew she would find it the day before we were to meet up we got into this huge fight and so then the next day i I somewhat forget about this gift. She thought you put that out there? Well, I did put it out there, but it was two weeks earlier when everything was groovy. And so then she pulled it out and she's like, calm your tits. Hmm. Thank you, babe. And I was like, oh, I'm in trouble.

Starting point is 00:19:42 I'm getting pulled into the deep water. Oh, I did this to myself. I feel like she would find that funny under normal circumstances. Under normal circumstances, she would have found it hilarious. But the fact that we had a heightened, let's call it a heated, a passionate discussion within 24 hours that had not yet been fully resolved led to calm your tits not being as funny as I'd hoped. Yeah, that's fair so so good decision bad decision what else do we have on the roster oh man lots of stuff to talk about

Starting point is 00:20:13 we got a lot yeah i mean you know one of the things we can we did put out a little tweet asking for people's questions lots of questions around blockchain and mps all that crazy stuff we can save that for later we can go and stay on the health front. You want to do that or do you want to go into some of the blockchain stuff? Up to you. You know, since I will be mostly just staring at you with a blank expression once we get to all the technical details of crypto and blockchain, I'd say let's stick with health for a little bit longer. Yeah. So I'm curious, actually, you know, looking at the video now,

Starting point is 00:20:47 we're going to put this video out or no? It'll be a video as well? Yeah, why not? Yeah. So you got a little like device up above your doorframe behind you. Yeah. That little guy right there. So one of the questions that I had for you actually is like, you know, we're not as young as we used to be. And for me, flexibility has been such an important thing to focus on and flexibility with supporting muscles to, so that when you do get flexible, you're just not just like a blob. And I'm curious, you know, I saw that machine hanging up behind you. Is that for flexibility? What do you do? Like, what's your focus these

Starting point is 00:21:22 days on the training side? Are you in core as you're getting older, are you incorporating more around like the, not longevity, but more around just less mass and more just, you know, practical, like old people stretching? Like what are you doing? Watching a lot of Richard Simmons videos. Yeah, exactly. I am. So for people who can't see this, there is a pull-up bar within the door jams behind me. And so the design is such that as you pull down on it, the physics of the engineering cause it to sort of buckle outwards without damaging the inside of the doorframe. So it's a cool design. It's a really elegant design. You can find them on Amazon. And I use that for hanging and really just decompressing or compressing, depending on how you look at it, my back scapula and also just relieving my lower back and hip flexors from sitting for too long a period of

Starting point is 00:22:26 time. My priorities from a training perspective right now, I would say, I can just lay it out pretty simply, would be conventional weight training once or twice a week, probably no more than that. It's really to maintain muscle mass, perhaps build a bit of muscle mass and also to make it a little easier to maintain healthy glucose levels right so if you are increasing your muscular mass particularly if you're doing these workouts prior to a meal your glucose disposal is just going to be improved like a glute for transporters and so on will be more effective at doing their job. So let's say once or twice a week. On top of that, right now, my activities are kind of

Starting point is 00:23:13 seasonal these days. And they're seasonal in part because I really want to identify types of exercise that not only I enjoy, but that I can do with my girlfriend. And that's actually a byproduct of a conversation at one point with an incredible trainer, performance coach, and all around hilarious guy named Kelly Starrett, who's a beast. I think when he turned 40, he celebrated by running the quad dipsy, which is an ultra marathon. By the way, he weighs like 220 or 230 pounds. He's extremely muscular. Doing a standing backflip and like cleaning and jerking 350 pounds or something like that. That's how he celebrated his 40th birthday, just to give you an idea of who this guy is.

Starting point is 00:23:55 It's a party. Yeah, it's a party. And great guy, the ready state. You can look him up, Kelly Starrett. And he was telling me about how he has prioritized activities with his wife over everything else. He's like, once you have kids, you've got a family, you've got business demands. Anything that you choose outside of that is pulling you away from time with your wife or your family. And so he's really tried to prioritize that. And before I

Starting point is 00:24:25 have kids, I'm hoping to develop some of those habits. So for instance, rock climbing is something that I'm doing more and more and I absolutely love. For basically everything that involves pulling, you're going to check the box. And I really, really enjoy it. It's very cognitively challenging too. I mean, it's like putting together like an upside down Tetris. Yeah. I mean, well, they call them, they literally call them problems, right? If you're bouldering, they're called problems because you have to sit there and spend 15 minutes thinking about what you're going to do before you even attempt it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I really enjoy that. And so we'll, we'll go to the climbing gym two or three times a week, usually the lifting will happen after the climbing

Starting point is 00:25:06 in the same gym. Kettlebell swings once or twice a week. I'm going to get around to answering your macro question. These are all mostly strength and muscle mass focused, but the climbing does help with mobility. So I would say that my focus more than focusing on flexibility, which invokes this image of passive stretching, you know, laying on the ground with your legs split and like reaching forward and just kind of hanging out there for 60 seconds, 90 seconds. The Van Damme moment. Van Damme. Van Damme. Everybody wants to do the Van Damme though.

Starting point is 00:25:41 Everybody wants to do the Van Damme. This is true. However, where I have had what people would consider the greatest flexibility gains and also just the most practical transfer of seeming more limber, it's been through weighted mobility. So acroyoga, for instance, involves a lot of pressing, handstand work, inversion, a lot of pressing. And in the process of doing something like acro yoga for the legs and the hips or rock climbing for less of the upper body but more the hips and the way that you rotate to improve your reach and so on has been really really helpful there's something called jefferson curls that you can do and you must do very safely i describe how to do it via someone named coach summer who is the former men's team men's national team coach how to do something called the jefferson curl

Starting point is 00:26:31 which is effectively a slow rounded back stiff leg deadlift and you're using very light weights but you kind of roll down almost as you would do in a yoga class, vertebra by vertebra. And when you get more comfortable under weight in these end ranges of movement, then your body effectively says, oh, okay, now that we've developed some strength in this end range, we can extend the end range. Interesting. So it opens up naturally a little bit once you've got that supporting structure there. Exactly. And it relates to the Golgi tendon reflex and all sorts of things. But when I'm trying to develop flexibility, my question is usually, how do I actually develop strength at my current limitation? And that's also part of the reason why something called PNF is very effective for stretching.

Starting point is 00:27:22 Just a more active sort of contract and release-based form of stretching. What is PNF? What does that stand for? Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation, I believe. It's been a few decades since I've thought of it. But PNF usually, I shouldn't say usually, but it's very often involves partner stretching

Starting point is 00:27:40 where someone would take, for instance, your leg extended, you'd be laying on your back. One leg is extended above you. They would push it forward until you reach the end range of your hamstring. You would then push against them for say seven seconds and then relax. And then they would increase the stretch and you would go a bit further and then you'd repeat that. Is this what you see like NBA players, like before they're about to go into a game, you see them kind of laying on their back and they have a trainer come in and they're spread out weight training. So you wouldn't, you wouldn't, as far as I know, you wouldn't do PNF every day. For instance, you would, you do PNF a few times a week. So my focus right now is, this is going to sound kind of funny

Starting point is 00:28:38 because it's so simplistic, but just feeling good because there are times when I've been huge, right? I mean, I weigh 170 pounds right now. I've been 220 pounds and not fat. I mean, huge. But did I feel comfortable walking around? No, I couldn't turn my head. I was like a turtle, you know, I had to like rotate at the feet. I mean, it was ridiculous. So being comfortable, I'm doing a lot of weighted hiking also. So I'd say mobility, meaning strength in the end ranges, strength training, and then rucksacking, which I love doing when you have access to hiking trails, which you do in Oregon, certainly. And is that with that one backpack we talked about a long time ago? Use this weighted backpack you take with you? It is, yeah. Go Ruck. So Go Ruck is the brand I use. There are many

Starting point is 00:29:21 other brands. You can get vests. Personally, don't love the vests. If you're going to run with these things, which I'm never going to do, then I think the vests probably make more sense. But I prefer to use the weighted backpacks. And I have a 20 pound, a 35 pound, and a 45 pound. And then you can add different things to that, depending. It is a lot harder than people might think. And what you don't want to do is what I did in San Francisco the very first time I got a weighted vest. And I was like, well, at the time I was really big. I was like, I can squat X number of pounds for Y number of reps. No problem. I'm just going to put on a 60 pound weight vest. And then I very, very stupidly

Starting point is 00:30:00 just started walking with no plan, right? I was just like, well, I'll just walk. And then when I start getting tired, I'll turn around. And I kept walking and I got to the point where it hurt so much that I had to take it off. And I was like, well, how do I get this home? I was like two miles away. So I had to leave the weight vest on a sidewalk. And then again, I was like, if anybody steals this, they deserve it. Like they can, if somebody's going to, if somebody's going to steal a 60 pound weight vest, like good for them because clearly they have more endurance than I do. And so then I had to walk back, sort of do the walk of shame back to my house without this vest and then get a car and go pick it up. But very big on, on the rucking, very, very big. And honestly, these days also, and this might sound like a cop-out, but for a long time, my maxim was, as far as resistance training goes, train to failure, right? One set, train to failure.

Starting point is 00:30:53 There are many, many, many ways to build strength. I'm not saying that it's the one and only way. Some people get very dogmatic about these things. It's just for bang for the buck, like per minute of workout time, that's a great approach. However, as I have got a little bit older and I've been looking at things like time outside, time in nature, sun exposure, I'm not trying to optimize to get it under 20 minutes or under 30 minutes. I actually enjoy the process of doing it. So those are a few of the ways that I'm thinking. Let me ask you a couple of questions there. I'm curious about, so granted this information is a bit dated, but I was, I was climbing a lot in my youth and did quite a bit of

Starting point is 00:31:35 indoor and outdoor. And one of the things, one of the people that I trained with was like a, you know, semi-pro climber that would tell me a couple of things. One, every ounce of muscle he considered to be a potential negative in that it's some, it's weight that can pull you off the wall because in his mind, he's like, it's dense weight and you want to be as lean as possible. And then the second piece was that he was a big fan of low weight, high rep. So just, you know, I mean, the guy could do a hundred pull-ups in a row. It was just like insane, right? I'm curious.

Starting point is 00:32:14 How's it the pup? Yeah, it's Molly going crazy. She doesn't like the idea of a hundred pull-ups, apparently. I'm curious though, what is your style? Like if you're not going for mass and you're going for lean strength, it's not about gaining, you're not eating really high protein then? Or what are you doing there? Well, there are also many, many, many, many different ways to train. And I don't think I have particular insight when it comes to climbing. Although I have asked around, I've taken lessons and

Starting point is 00:32:45 have thought about it. So my short answer is I'm doing some high rep work, like the kettlebell swings are generally going to be higher repetition. And I'm using a 53 pound and then maybe a 72 pound kettlebell doing two and one handed swings. You get a lot out of that exercise. Then when I'm doing other types of exercises like inversion training, where I'm doing handstand work, where I'm really developing actually a lot of finger strength and shoulder extension, kind of bringing your shoulders to your ears if your hands were extended over your head, for instance, as well as some of the training for bouldering specifically, it's super short duration. So you could view that almost as you would view powerlifting. I'm trying to avoid a burn, generally speaking, in those types of scenarios. And I'm looking to build kind of

Starting point is 00:33:41 neurally based strength, better recruitment of motor units and things like that. So I'm combining the two, but certainly I agree with your friend a hundred percent. It's like the more weight you got to haul up that wall, the harder you're going to have to work. It's like cycling. Like cyclists do not want to have large upper bodies. It's just drag.

Starting point is 00:34:01 That's all it is. And for me right now, I am perfectly happy to be smaller and strong and working on things like climbing. There's no need for me to be large. And a lot of people don't want to be muscularly large, but it's hard to find anyone who wants to be weak. I think everybody would like to be strong and you can develop incredible relative strength and really develop yourself as a strength athlete

Starting point is 00:34:36 while adding minimal body mass, even as a male, you can do that. I got to say, man, the biggest change for me going into my forties, that is it been absolutely fantastic. Well, let me stop for a second, jump back. You know, I've got a three year old and a two year old when Zelda started getting a decent size. And when you have a little toddler running at you at full speed and they want you to like catch them and you like, you know, especially when it's not straight on, it's kind of out of angle and you're doing one of these one arm like like like touchdown like like football catches with the one hand like you're doing that with like a you know 25 pound little toddler or whatever i literally like have thrown my back out like five times like to where i am on the ground and cannot move and i

Starting point is 00:35:20 had to crawl to my bed and lay there for like a day and a half that's terrible and it dude it is like when you i never knew that back pain because you know when you're a kid you're jumping off walls you're doing all kinds of crazy shit like you're you know i was jumping off my house on the trampoline yeah for sure and then you get older and you realize like things just start breaking and back pain is a real thing i mean I know you've had some back issues in the past. Like it is no joke and I needed to fix it. So I started doing Pilates twice a week and I stuck with it. And it's been about six months now, maybe five months. And I haven't had a single issue. I have not had a single issue since developing that core. It is crazy. And I can, I can toss the little kids around as much or more than I could back then. It's just insane to me. Cause like, I was always like you, well, I would always go to the gym and be like, okay, biceps, triceps, chest back out. Right. And like same, you know, or shoulders too, you know, and like the same workout every single time. And like, you look in the mirror and you're like, yeah, I look pretty good. But then, then it's like, you know, your toddler takes you down. Yeah. Exactly. Do you do in person or do you do virtual over zoom? Oh man. Yeah. So she's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Don't mention her name. Cause then

Starting point is 00:36:37 she'll get the hug of death. But I want to referral after we finished because I have been, and this is where a lot of our listeners are probably gonna be like, Oh my God, they've totally lost it. But Pilates really technical Pilates is not easy. And that's right. I have never felt better than when I am doing a combination. If I look back and like when I have felt the strongest, the fastest, the most limber, it's when I was doing a combination of Olympic weightlifting, Pilates, and Acro Yoga. I felt so limber and simultaneously strong at all of these crazy end ranges. And the Pilates with a really technical trainer is incredibly, incredibly beneficial.

Starting point is 00:37:27 And there's a lot of carryover. In the same way that gymnastic strength training a la Coach Summer, S-O-M-M-E-R, has a lot of carryover. So despite the connotations that people might have associated with that word Pilates, and there's a lot of ridiculous, ridiculous stuff also done technically. It is really hard. I'll give you an example. I remember last summer, I was doing Pilates over Zoom and a friend of mine was visiting who is a former international level competitor in kickboxing. I mean, he went to the world championships multiple times, was also a high level athlete in a number of other sports. Like he's a fit guy, had decades of competition. And we got halfway through this Pilates class and he was thinking sort of some type of kind of side plank bridge doing stuff with his obliques. And he just collapsed and he was

Starting point is 00:38:22 like, Jesus Christ, this is embarrassing. This is what's happening. It was great. It is not easy. No. So I'm definitely a proponent, strong proponent. Yeah, you appreciate all those little small muscles that you never really pay attention to.

Starting point is 00:38:40 And it is such a little, a good teacher will get in there and really help you work all those little tiny stabilizing muscles. And yeah, it's just fantastic. Anyway, if anyone out there is having back issues, highly recommend. Yeah, check it out. who lift weight in some fashion to be heavily biased against body weight or calisthenic type exercises. And it's very easy for people who do body weight, calisthenic type exercises, including something like rock climbing, to glance askance at people who are lifting weights. And I think they are very, very complimentary. But man, I have seen some gigantic bodybuilders

Starting point is 00:39:32 and powerlifters do a yoga class and just end up on the floor because it is a different exercise. So I do think they compliment each other very, very well. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. they complement each other very, very well. energy. You might think of blood sugar. That is glucose. When glucose levels are steady and you avoid spikes, you're improving your metabolic fitness. An important way to take control of your metabolic fitness is to eat and fuel with foods that help regulate blood sugar. To help enhance my own metabolic health, I was introduced to UCAN by Dr. Peter Atiyah, who said there is no carb in the world like it. UCAN's patented ingredient, super starch,

Starting point is 00:40:24 has the remarkable ability to provide a steady release of energy without spiking blood sugar levels. I use UCAN's energy powders and low-calorie bars to maintain focus throughout long days for exercise, better performance when training, and to avoid fatigue without making metabolic compromises. When I need a Scooby snack, when I need a little pick-me-up, I reach for UCAN. UCAN has a variety of different products with super starch to help you balance your blood sugar from energy powders and bars to granola and almond butter. There's a whole suite. Check out my favorites at UCAN.co. Tim. That's UCAN.co. Tim. And save 30% on your first order. That's ucan.co slash tim. All right. I say with a sigh, blockchain, DeFi. Will Tim ever make his own NFT? I would like your advice here because I'm fascinated by

Starting point is 00:41:22 NFTs. I have tracked them very closely, although I stopped following it quite as closely maybe a month or two ago. I do find the technology very interesting. Conceptually, I think there are many, many, many, many, many applications of NFTs well outside of, say, artwork. And I've also made some investments in OpenSea, for instance, which I think there was a question on Twitter also about picks and shovels and so on. I think

Starting point is 00:41:50 that OpenSea, not to narrowly put it into that category, but I do think that they're in a very good position to establish themselves as a dominant player, regardless of what types of standards might be developed, for instance. All of that said, great interest. So why the hell have I not done it? I've not done it in part because there has been this mad dash and money grab related to NFTs, and I don't want to be perceived, nor do I maybe subconsciously even want to be driven by trying to capitalize on a hugely speculative bubble, right? Where the goal is not to enjoy the artwork. The goal is to resell the artwork for more.

Starting point is 00:42:33 And that's fine. I mean, it's fine that a market exists. That's true in a lot of traditional art as well, or I would say less digital NFT type art. So I would love to create an NFT just to learn more about the process, right? To mint my own NFT and to go through with all of it, maybe more than one NFT. I would be curious to know how you would think about that if you were in my shoes or in your own shoes for that matter, but in my shoes, because I'm giving you my confessional here. I mean, I think that with NFTs there, you're right. It is a mad dash by a lot of people,

Starting point is 00:43:11 a lot of celebrities entering the space and they are quick to attach their name to a project. Oftentimes they're not even the ones doing the artwork, which is also just kind of like crazy to me. Like, so you'll have a list celebrity come in, say, I'm releasing an NFT, and it's like, I did a partnership with this person, and it's like this beautifully rendered 3D animated thing, and you're like, yeah, they actually never touched the computer, did they? It's like they're just associating their name with it.

Starting point is 00:43:39 Which also happens in more traditional art. If anyone hasn't seen The Price of Everything, I think, it might be The Price of Anything. The Price of Everything, I think. It might be The Price of Anything. The Price of Everything, though, I believe, or The Price of Anything. There's a documentary that goes into some of this. But yeah, it's...

Starting point is 00:43:51 Oh, I have to watch it. Oh, you'll love it. It's awesome. Yeah, so basically, yes, there is some of that. Also, but at the same time, though, you have some really legitimate kind of emerging artists

Starting point is 00:44:01 that are using NFTs as this new medium. And I have collector friends that are not treating it like, let's just grab and flip, but they're going to be holding on it for many, many decades. So there's a combination of both that are happening. For someone in your position, you're right. The risk that you run is that you launch the Tim Tim NFT and it's like, oh great, Tim's making, you know, a half a million dollars off selling this NFT or whatever it ends up going for. He just did it for the money grab, right? So I think if anything, man, you don't need the money. Like just do it for charity. Yeah, I would donate it all. But let's take that as an example. Okay, so 500k, what the hell would I sell for 500k? Well, a good artist with the understanding that a lot of things have sold for i mean there was there was you know people sold one piece uh this collage

Starting point is 00:44:49 for 69 million dollars right so there's certainly he's an incredible artist first i should i should say like the guy is a machine and also virtuoso in what he does and also insanely funny yeah yeah have you had people on your show yet or no i No, I haven't. The guy is just a riot. He's amazing. Yeah, and good for him, you know, because he, well, people can look up his story, but I mean, created every day for what, 5,000 days straight, something like that. Was not clearly not doing it for the money when he got started. I could not be, I could not be happier that people like him are doing well in this environment. I have some graphic art ability. I could

Starting point is 00:45:25 do something that was graphically inclined. You basically have a few different avenues to explore. One, I love putting it underneath the charity. 100% of proceeds go to charity. Fantastic. Boom. You check that box. No one's going to complain. The second thing is, what do you do? Do you take existing media that you have? So maybe it's a portion of one of your episodes. Maybe it's something that you said one time that has resonated with a lot of people that is you want to memorialize in an audio clip with a cover art of your podcast or you can do anything you want there. Yeah, exactly. I better get some royalties on that bitch I interviewed you so yeah definitely split

Starting point is 00:46:10 the royalties with whoever else was on the show no but the other thing is like you are an artist like I've seen some of your stuff you can you can do some amazing things or you could get super artsy you can like mash a body part on a piece of paper like you could do something like that. You

Starting point is 00:46:25 could have hardcore fans. I could get all Art Basel. Tape a banana on a wall, smash a body part against it, sell it for a female. There you go. Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people don't know this probably, but I wanted to be a comic book penciler for probably 10 years. So I spent a lot of time looking at graphic art, was an illustrator for a period of time. So I suppose I could do that.

Starting point is 00:46:49 Listen, I love Gary Vee. I love him. He's a good friend of ours. You've seen his art out there. You know, he's put out some NFTs. Like, dude, I've seen your art too. I would say that you have the skills to put out your own NFTs. Like, if Gary can do it, you can do it, brother.

Starting point is 00:47:05 Like seriously. Yeah, and I'm grateful to people who are experimenting and pioneering and trying all these various things in the space because not everything is going to work. Certain things will work. And I feel like also it's really, really hard to perhaps look at it through this lens.

Starting point is 00:47:23 But with NFTs, like, yes, there's, there are going to be some amazing things. There's also going to be a lot of noise, but it's kind of like tech companies in 99 or 2000. It's like, yes, someone could say all of those companies were garbage, but you know, amidst all the noise you had, the Googles and the Amazons, right? That's right.

Starting point is 00:47:45 And I don't know if it was in 99, 2000 or shortly thereafter, but it was in the same window. And those are like world changers, right? Those are history changers in a lot of ways. Yeah, the thing is, it's just a new canvas type. I don't see it as like, there's a shit ton of like, how many craft fairs have you been to?

Starting point is 00:48:05 Where you go down and it's like, oh, the Sundayay craft fair and you're gonna be like oh my god there's like people are painting on canvas you're like i would never buy that right so it's just that's happening in the world of nfts right anyone with photoshop and the export and save is ping file can create an nft you know so anyone and everyone can participate i think that's a good thing and there will be some amazing kind of cream that rises to the top and that is you know? So anyone and everyone can participate. I think that's a good thing. And there will be some amazing kind of cream that rises to the top. And that is, you know, we're already starting to see it. There's a handful of names out there

Starting point is 00:48:31 that are NFT kind of native that are starting to gain a lot of momentum and serious collectors and followings. And Xcopy is a great example of an artist that puts out these just crazy almost seizure inducing flashing nfts no they're insane but he's been doing it since day one and now some of his one of ones are selling for over a million dollars and christie's and they're going on some of the major auction houses and there's a handful of those folks that are that are doing some really

Starting point is 00:49:04 unique things in this space. So it's not all crap, I guess is what I'm trying. I think Artblocks too is another one to check out on the generative side. They're kind of like, to answer your question about how do you sift through all the crap? I don't know if you had that question, but I will answer it.

Starting point is 00:49:17 That's true. I'll let you create my questions for me. Yeah, exactly. Essentially, Artblocks, they have this editorial kind of board of other artists that then kind of vote in who gets accepted and and put on the platform and so the curated side is are the only the people that meet that bar and i think we're going to see more of that there's a lot of that in the curated marketplaces right there's a lot exactly what is the story with the artwork on your Twitter?

Starting point is 00:49:46 Oh, my Twitter? Man, that June shine is going to my head. Are you drinking right now? Are you really drinking? Or were you just holding the can? No, no, no. I just scald one. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:49:58 No, I'm good. That's amazing. What is this artwork on your Twitter profile? What you're seeing right there is- It looks like a bunch of pills. Looks like a bunch of pills. Yeah, that's a squiggly. So this is crazy.

Starting point is 00:50:10 Essentially, it's funny we're talking about Artblocks. So that piece of art right there is the very first project to launch on Artblocks. And it is this little squiggly, and it looks very simple, like a little tiny snake, a multicolored snake. And essentially what Artblocks is, it's a generative art platform. Yeah, you should define what generative is for folks.

Starting point is 00:50:31 Yeah, let's define that. So basically, if you think about traditional art, it's always an artist, they sit down, they do something, they mint it, they paint it on canvas, whatever it may be, and the artwork is, you know, quote unquote done. And then that is then sold. Generative art is essentially a artist that comes in and says, I'm going to write an algorithm that is a piece of math that will define the basic parameters of a piece of art. But I'm going to introduce some randomness to it. And that randomness is going to be created by the end user. So when you click to mint a piece of generative art, you are then putting that timecode, that kind of timestamp of randomness into the algorithm. And then the algorithm spits out your unique piece of art. So you have no idea what you're going to get until it actually arrives in your wallet.

Starting point is 00:51:21 And so what you're seeing there, that little squiggly is something that I minted. I didn't know what it was going to be. And some of them have more rare attributes than others, different colors, different thicknesses. And people collect them because they love the kind of luck of the draw and what you're going to get. And they love the output because sometimes the output is even more interesting than what the original artist could have ever contemplated when writing that initial algorithm. I think it is a really interesting new form of art that can be captured and held by the blockchain because generative art has been around for a long time. You know, people have been doing computer generative art and they would always like, you could go to showrooms and they would have like, you know, computer screens or monitors up showing off this stuff. And it was always a computer

Starting point is 00:52:04 science-y kind of thing over the last 20 years. But there was never a way to capture that and save it. I mean, you could save it as a file, but then, you know, blockchain actually provided a way to say, okay, the output is now captured and saved in the blockchain. It is a unique asset that can then be transferred and traded. So it's actually essentially a new form of our new art form. We can give you title to this unique digital asset. Exactly. So this is kind of a new form that is only possible or enabled by the blockchain, which I think is really fun. And so that's why it's getting a lot of traction. I'll give you a sense of how quickly this market is growing. So Artblocks two months ago did around 2 million in secondary sales of all their works

Starting point is 00:52:46 of art. Last month, because we're just getting into July now, last month, they did over 9 million in secondary sales. It's really taking off. So I think it's like third. It's like NBA Top Shots, CryptoPunks, and then I think Artblocks is the third platform. Say that one more time. NBA Top Shots, like the NBA collectibles. That's number one. It depends on the month because sometimes CryptoPunks or some other project will appear that is

Starting point is 00:53:10 massive and blows up. But CryptoPunks is the OG original, not generative art, but it was the original kind of randomly created, I guess you could consider it kind of generative in some way, but the random output was captured with all these different attributes. People can check it out at larvalabs.com. Larvalabs is amazing. I mean,

Starting point is 00:53:29 they do all sorts of fascinating stuff. Really cool stuff. And do you know that Jay-Z set his Twitter bio to a CryptoPunk a couple of weeks ago? I did not know that. Wow. Let me take a look at that. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. Huh. Wow. Go Jay-Z. It's one way to add some value to the market you're participating in. I feel that it's silly for people to say this is just all hype, you know, and there is a lot of that out there. They're like, oh, this is just going to go away.

Starting point is 00:54:01 It's funny if you look at like historically when these new mediums come out, what happens and what people say. I actually did a bit of research on all this. And I don't know if you knew this, but back when Canvas was first introduced, before that was largely cathedral wall and mostly on wooden planks that... Oh, are you still there, Tim? I lost you. Well, that was fucking crazy. my house got hit by lightning and the whole the whole show came to a grinding halt did your house actually get was it your house like it's unclear it's unclear it's unclear where there was a massive thunderstorm and lightning and thunder all around this remote house at an undisclosed location. And I'm in the middle of fucking nowhere for context. And everything just went out. And I was

Starting point is 00:54:54 like, oh yeah, this is why you have a generator. This is why I have generators in places like Austin, where I was the only house on my street with power during the snowpocalypse. It's incredible. We'll come back to Jay-Z and the CryptoPunks in a second, but it's just incredible how fragile the infrastructure around us actually is. Yeah. I mean, I had the same thing. I lost power for seven days in Portland during this last winter storm. We had an ice storm and it took everything out. It's wild. It's wild. And I do worry about

Starting point is 00:55:29 or think a good amount about attacks on the power grid, cyber attacks on the power grid. And there's actually a book that I highly suggest people check out called Lights Out, subtitle A Cyber Attack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving surviving the aftermath by Ted Koppel.

Starting point is 00:55:49 And it will scare the shit out of you. I was going to say, dude, I feel like these, these types of things just make one more paranoid. You know, you've heard the expression just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you,

Starting point is 00:56:04 which isn't right it isn't intended to be a justification for like building spider holes in the back of your house and going really above and beyond the call of duty to ridiculous lengths to prep in any sense but having some basic provisions and basic backup plans in case of disaster, I think is pretty smart. I mean, most of us have fire extinguishers. We hope never to use them, but we recognize that having one for a hundred bucks or less, 20 bucks, is worth the downside protection. Similarly, wearing seatbelts, like when's the last time you had a head-on collision? Not recently, probably. But we all wear seatbelts because it's relatively easy to do that and mitigate high levels of downside. I think generators fall in that category. I think backup water falls in that category. It's just a very

Starting point is 00:56:56 present reminder for me of just how, if we saw it during, or personally, I saw it during Hurricane Sandy when I was working on a chapter related to disaster preparedness in The 4-Hour Chef. There's an extensive section on that, which seems to not match at all with anything related to cooking or chefs, but in fact does relate. It was kind of too long-winded to explain, but I was going back and forth with my editor at the time, and they were like, look, Tim, I'm into prepping. And even for me, this seems ridiculous. And then what happened?

Starting point is 00:57:28 Hurricane Sandy hit, and everything was totaled. And people in New York were going without power. And I just think it's a good pop quiz from the universe in a lightweight way. your power goes out in this way it's like all right how much water do you have how much ability do you have to charge your devices without access to the power grid just super basic stuff right because i was thinking okay yeah we were going to record this because we were texting back and forth but as soon as the power went out what happened all the cell towers were overwhelmed so my bars went from like three to one immediately. And I was like, well, you suggested we could record via phone,

Starting point is 00:58:10 like have the conversation and just record locally in a quick time, which is what we're going to do. But that also, you have to think out to like the tertiary effect of something like that. Sure. Up until a certain point where you're just like this is that's the problem i have is like where do you where do you draw the line well do you back up water at home i mean i have like do you have like a week of water for your family

Starting point is 00:58:33 no it's like a few hundred bucks man you should definitely do that well here's the deal do i need a week of water well i'll give you an example. So in Austin, Texas, there have been multiple boil warnings where there are high levels of rain, some type of flooding, the municipal water treatment facilities become overwhelmed and they issue a boil warning. So you can drink the water as long as you boil it. But I have a HEPA, not HEPA, but I have the equivalent of that on the water side that does 99.99 of viruses and bacteria so i have like the crazy over the top like water sanitation like coming in to the house you can just like take your kids diapers and recycle it into your drinking it doesn't matter yeah you just exactly i can just pee into the thing it just works so yeah you know it's i just i just view these things i'm like why

Starting point is 00:59:22 not have a few hundred bucks of distilled water? I get it. I have basically, I would say, probably about four or five days worth of water. Yeah, that's good. Just for you. Your family can fend for themselves. I can get in a car and drive to some place where there's water. No, that's the thing, though.

Starting point is 00:59:39 In Austin, it was like within 24 hours, all water at every grocery store was gone. So it just raises interesting questions for me. Because then you're like, okay, well, if that happens, what are people going to do? They're going to think about driving outside the limits of Austin. So then what? And then what? And then what? But I don't think I'm that crazy about it.

Starting point is 00:59:59 I don't think that's crazy. I'm not like walking around downtown in a ghillie suit or something. Do you have a gas mask? I do not have walking around downtown in a ghillie suit or something. Do you have a gas mask? I do not have a gas mask. I had one in San Francisco and I don't have one. Do you have a gas mask? I do not. Do you have any type of full body virus protection suit?

Starting point is 01:00:16 Like a hazmat suit? I do not. Do you? Oh, so you're not that bad. Yeah. I've got a couple of those. I don't have those. That kid's wearing from nine to five. It's pretty standard in their household. Yeah, I've got a couple of those. That kid's wearing them from nine to five.

Starting point is 01:00:25 It's pretty standard in their household. No, I don't have those in part because right now I'm in a very rural environment. I'm in the middle of nowhere. But you realize quickly also without the amenities of a city center, how dependent you are on things that are easy to take for granted like power or telecommunications and if a tree goes down and lands on the lines like you're just out of luck until it gets fixed yeah yeah i'm on the uh wait list for one of those tesla power yeah those are cool those are cool they're all backordered exactly right so then what then the 0.1 percent of poop

Starting point is 01:01:03 in your water is going to kill you. Just kidding. Something has to get you, man. You're drinking all these, taking all these life extension drugs, and then the poopy water is going to get you. Yeah, exactly. All right, so Jay-Z, you know, I looked it up while I was futting around and messing around.

Starting point is 01:01:18 And for those who haven't seen it, Mr. Carter at SC, it's actually surprisingly hard to find on Twitter, despite that has 3 million followers and zero following. But Jay-Z does in fact have a CryptoPunk as his profile pic. Is that the right term to use? Yeah. That's wild to me. When did that happen?

Starting point is 01:01:41 A couple of weeks back, two, three weeks ago. Gosh. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. It's a big validation. It's a to me. When did that happen? A couple weeks back, two, three weeks ago. God. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. It's a big validation. It's a big validation. I'm sure if he owns one or 20 of those that he just 3X'd his investment, probably. Or does that not translate?

Starting point is 01:01:57 What types of things affect the pricing dynamics for the CryptoPunks. And people can look at this if they go to larvelabs.com and then go to projects and click on CryptoPunks. You can look at the top sales. These things have been covered everywhere. And like you said, they're the OGs, the kind of first edition. They're like the Model Ts of NFTs.

Starting point is 01:02:27 So you can look at largest sales. So right now, to give people an idea, and when you look at these, people are going to just end up gaping, jaws falling to the floor looking at these things and wondering why on earth an alien with a pipe in his mouth would be worth $7.57 million that's outdated dollars outdated oh yeah there's been an alien sale now at sotheby's for 13 million wow that's

Starting point is 01:02:55 crazy i see so off platform i mean these are 20 by 20 pixel little things too these are not massive images they're just so they just happen to be the first. Yeah, just imagine like playing Spy Hunter or one of these, Lode Runner, one of these really old games and the graphics associated with that. That's basically what you're looking at. Okay, so that's outdated. So I see.

Starting point is 01:03:16 So this is, and I know these transactions have taken place off of the platform of Marvel Labs. I got it. So this is not an accurate reflection at all of the top sales. Right, because the top sales are now going off to Sotheby's and Christie's and the traditional auction houses are stepping in

Starting point is 01:03:32 and saying, actually, we consider NFTs to be real art. We're going to offer them to our collectors, which- Surprise, surprise. As you can imagine. Yeah, exactly. Surprise, surprise. Turns out they also charge a 20% commission.

Starting point is 01:03:50 Yeah, very reasonable 20% commission. Suddenly they aren't, you know. But no, it's cool. It's cool that they embrace this and they put their stamp of approval. They've also done that with a handful of other projects now, some other really top artists in the NFT space. Yeah. South of me seems to be really on top of it.

Starting point is 01:04:04 I mean, they were kind of ahead of the curve with the nfts for sure i mean they're really able to capture a lot of that market very quickly at the high end so i have to give them credit for that so it looks like now maybe you can explain to people because i know you i know you have the explanation but we're looking at the largest sales at larvalabs.com slash cryptopunks and you've got two aliens so 7.57 million and 7.58 million respectively then you've got four gorillas then an alien then a something i can't even identify i don't even know why they're apes by the way thank you all right we've got four apes an alien number eight just looks like like a pediatric cancer patient i don't know what this i have no idea what that is then a bunch of aliens not aliens this is what i get for having too many hard kombuchas on my

Starting point is 01:04:59 random show for zombies you're looking at the top, top 12. I'm looking at the top, yeah. All right, so what is number eight? What is number eight? Yeah. Number eight is, number six,

Starting point is 01:05:11 four, eight, seven. So it just looks like a plain person, right? Yeah. And the reason why that one is so valuable is because it has zero attributes.

Starting point is 01:05:20 So there was nothing applied to it. So if you sort by attributes there's only i think like seven or eight that actually have zero something like that got it okay yeah it looks like just like a bald person yeah it'll it'll blow people's minds to look at this in some of the transactions that are going on so have all of the highest price transactions left this platform and moved more to the auction houses and so on. Yeah, that's right. Anytime someone has one of these aliens now, they know it's going to fetch double digit

Starting point is 01:05:51 millions of dollars. And so they want to obviously get as many collectors bidding as possible. And what better way to bring in the old money into the game than to go with the Christie's or Sotheby's and pull from that collector base. Yeah. So that's been the approach. Wild. So that's been the approach. Wild. So wild.

Starting point is 01:06:07 That's really, it strikes me as significant. Maybe I'm over-weighting it that Jay-Z has as his profile pick. A CryptoPunk. Am I overstating that? It's just, I mean, that is really pretty on the nose, right? I mean, it's not subtle. I think it also speaks to what's going on behind the scenes. Jay-Z has a music company called Tidal, which is a big streaming provider on the music side. And they recently sold that to Square, which Jack Dorsey is CEO and founder of, and also obviously CEO of Twitter.

Starting point is 01:06:52 Square is now, I believe, the number two largest purchaser of Bitcoin because people use Square Cash app to buy Bitcoin. As you can imagine, there's been a lot of talk around how artists can potentially monetize songs using NFTs or other works of art using NFTs. And Jack's in the middle of all that. So it would not surprise me that the Square Cash app eventually turns into a way to showcase and kind of purchase and trade NFTs. There's been some rumors now that Twitter is going to jump into the NFT game in some way. Jack famously auctioned off his first tweet

Starting point is 01:07:22 for millions of dollars and turned it into an NFT. That's cool. So, you know, Jay-Z is in the mix of all of this. Jack famously auctioned off his first tweet for millions of dollars and turned it into an NFT. That's cool. So Jay-Z is in the mix of all of this. So I'm sure he's kind of learning what's going on. And obviously, you have to come back to the original project, which defined the NFT standard, which is CryptoPunks. Yeah, so wild. What do you foresee as developments in the crypto or blockchain space?

Starting point is 01:07:47 Or what are you watching closely? Well, I think it's funny because people get so caught up in these kind of bull and bear markets and watching these coins and saying like, oh, it's crazy. It's down 20%. It's up 20%. And I try not to get caught up in the weeds there and just zoom out even further. Because I think once you do that, the lines start to smooth out a bit and you understand that we're in the very early kind of first innings of this entire rewriting of the financial stack. And so, you know, that's part of the reason why I created the podcast to cover these things is because there's just so

Starting point is 01:08:19 much going on right now. We need to bring the average consumer up to speed so they know how to get into this stuff early before it's, you know on paypal.com which is what bitcoin and ethereum are now you know at modern underscore fi you mean oh that's my my twitter yeah just modern modern finance modern finance modern finance podcast check it out folks on the web on the tweets on the twitters it's at modern underscore fi. All right, so you're tracking that. You're saying people get caught up in the micro cycles, right? That's right, and they think it's over.

Starting point is 01:08:54 Fair weather speculators are going to get their faces ripped off and panic and then end up in a bad position. It's because they're always buying at the highs and selling at the lows. I mean, that's a very common thing here. I mean, Tim, you know this, man. You bought in right when everything crashed or just before it crashed. I did.

Starting point is 01:09:10 And you got decimated for about four years. Yeah, I did. I did. Yes, I did. I came in in probably, what was it, mid-2017? Something like that. And promptly got my face ripped off. Right.

Starting point is 01:09:23 But you were smart. You didn't do anything. You just sat there. There isn't a compelling, based on the thesis that I had, which is a fancy way of saying what I hoped would happen in the future based on a couple of assumptions,

Starting point is 01:09:35 there was no real reason to sell, right? There were these really jagged, acute, short-term moves. But if I actually had high conviction in the assumptions that led me to buy in the first place, it would be hypocritical and self-defeating to sell at that point. So I didn't sell, yeah. Yeah, and that was great because that ended up,

Starting point is 01:09:57 it's probably what, up at least 5X or more since all that happened. It's up a bit, it's up a bit. Yeah, I mean, it's not up as much as it was, I guess, end of April, beginning May, but that's okay. That's okay. I mean, I think there are just these

Starting point is 01:10:11 sort of hype and deflation cycles that you see in everything. And my biggest regrets in all of investing are actually the times that I sold prematurely. It's not having invested in things. In other words, it's not having missed opportunities to invest. It's having not held the things I invested in for a longer period of time.

Starting point is 01:10:34 Shopify. Shopify was a huge one. I mean, that was my biggest misfire of all time. But at the time, that represented in absolute dollars a really significant win for me to try to get to a point where I didn't have to be preoccupied with money. So it made sense, right? Like the logic of selling that actually made sense.

Starting point is 01:10:55 Do I regret it? Yes. 2008 when i had one stock that i put a bunch of my a very double digit percentage of my net worth into can you guess what it was and i put it in maybe in 2005 uh wordpress no no although i am an advisor to wordpress and i'm a or Automatic, and I'm a big fan. Trying to think of what you would have bought back then. Maybe Amazon? Yeah. I bought Amazon in 2005 or something like that.

Starting point is 01:11:36 Maybe a little bit later. I'm taking a look right now. So wait, you regret that? No, you don't regret that. I regret selling it. I sold it. Oh, you sold it? No, you don't regret that. I regret selling it. I sold it when the subprime crisis landed and everything was just going through the floor.

Starting point is 01:11:55 And boy, oh boy, that was a mistake. Should have held onto it. And I didn't have clear rules for myself then. It was, I had rules for buying but not rules for holding or selling and I think people at least I get my I've gotten myself into a lot of trouble by having rules for buying which I sort of intuitively have a pretty good feeling for I think you have an even better feeling for it honestly you're just that's absolutely one of your mutant powers but then uh how long to hold when to sell having rules for that in advance is something that i have historically

Starting point is 01:12:31 not been as good at and that has been a big problem certainly with amazon is sort of the textbook example of that you know selling 2008 on a panic and now it's who knows five or 10x i have no idea yeah oops uh but yes all right so coming back to blockchain or crypto i mean there's sort of like one the latter is contained within the former what else are you paying close attention to of course you're observing the sort of mass behavior, right? And misbehavior. What else are you watching? Yeah. I mean, we do a lot of crypto investing at True Ventures. We're on a partner over there. Yeah. So we've probably deployed, I'd say, 50 million or so, so far this year, just in crypto-related deals. So that's a pretty decent chunk of our fund. So it's something that we

Starting point is 01:13:27 track very closely. And I would say the problem for the average consumer is that there's just a lot of garbage in there. There's just a lot of crap. So I would say that unless you're educated and you are really deep in the space and you're listening to all the podcasts and you're reading all the different coin desk every morning, and if you're at that level, then you can probably go out there and say, if you feel like it, you can go out and say, I believe I see where the momentum is taking things. And so that's kind of what I do as a profession. Now, I don't recommend that people do that with their everyday, just random pick of a doggy coin. Cause like all the, you know,

Starting point is 01:14:06 there's a lot of, there's a lot of hype around these different meme coins that are appearing and those come down crashing as fast as they go up. So we have a problem similar to NFTs where anyone can spin up a new coin, which is a few modifications to some of the open source software that's out there, make a meme around it, pump it and and then dump it, and people get burned. So...

Starting point is 01:14:29 Kev Kev coin. Yeah. Tim Tim. Tim Tim tokens. Tim Tim tokens and Kev Kev coin. I mean, we could like literally, within an hour, we could launch a new Tim Tim token, and it would be live. And then we could put some liquidity on

Starting point is 01:14:46 Uniswap. We could get it trading. We get people. I mean, that happens every single day. It's really frustrating, but it is what it is. It's an unregulated market. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's super exciting. There's a lot of innovation happening, a lot of really high quality projects, but a lot of crap to buyer beware. So you just have to be careful on how you evaluate these different opportunities and definitely do not buy into the memes. quality projects, but a lot of craft is buyer beware. So you just have to be careful on how you evaluate these different opportunities and definitely do not buy into the memes that are out there. Those are silly. And I'm not saying that one of them isn't going to eventually... Because there's this fine line between community support that turns into something real and a meme, right? And something

Starting point is 01:15:26 that's being used to kind of pump and dump. So would you consider Dogecoin a meme coin? It started off as a meme coin. And I think that there are attributes of it that I really like. Before the big EM started tweeting about the Doge. Yeah, exactly. Elon started pumping up the Doge. Well, here's the deal with Doge. I knew the founder really well. I had him on my podcast seven years ago or whatever it was. And we talked about Doge Coin and it was a joke initially. It was just like a fun, he set the supply super high. Everybody was using it to tip using these little bots on Reddit. And I had literally millions and millions and millions of Doge Coin because they were worthless. And I was literally millions and millions and millions of Dogecoin because

Starting point is 01:16:05 they were worthless. And I was tipping out 10,000 at a time here, 5,000 over here. It was just like, we all did it. It was just fun, right? And it was just kind of like a way, like a tip of the hat to someone. It was monopoly money. Yeah, exactly. Monopoly money. So that has now evolved into, it had a really strong community back then. It died down for a few years, and then the community came back, and then Elon jumped on top of it. But it's still lacking a few things, like the underlying developers that are working on it.

Starting point is 01:16:37 Now, this could be changing. And I've heard that they're seriously considering refactoring the code base. But it was just a dead project that had minor bug fixes applied to it. So there was no real, outside of it being a quote unquote meme coin and being hilarious and watching it go up in price, the technology stack that it was written on wasn't being well, it was being maintained just so that it didn't break. There was no innovation happening there. And so that is not the future of currency. The future currency that is going to really be a real true utility has to have an active development community behind it, supporting it and evolving it over time. And so that is happening

Starting point is 01:17:16 on a handful of other projects, not so much on Doge, but there is so much interest in Doge now, and it is being listed on a bunch of the major exchanges again, I could see, it wouldn't be crazy if you said, hey, Kevin, guess what? Five years from now, they now have 5,000 active developers doing all these really funky, weird things on Doge. I'd have been like, well, that makes sense because it had the community drive a lot of that. But outside of Doge, they call them like the doggy coins there are a bunch of other doggy style coins that are just like basically well i'm sorry tim like continue there's similar there's similar doggy coins i'm sorry that your mind went there oh dude put that

Starting point is 01:17:59 on me they're doggy themed coins that are just like literally just out there for to get people excited the prices go up the whales sell and you know it's it ends in tears and tears so all right so dogecoin that's not a primary position in the true ventures portfolio i'm guessing no it is not yeah okay how do you, actually a number of questions. So since we invoked the name of the great Elon, you've spent some time with Elon. I have really not, but there are those who attribute the recent correction slash crash to various tweets associated with Elon, including one related to the environmental costs of Bitcoin. Some think that is overstated. Some think that is just something that's understated. A lot of controversy around it. Then there are those who would say,

Starting point is 01:18:59 you know, Elon is a small, perhaps contributing factor, but really it's just an overall macro run from risk assets. So even though people attribute the correction, or some people do, to that type of comms from Elon, it's not really accurate in that it's really a macro trend that happened to coincide at the same time. What are your thoughts? Do you have any thoughts on any of that? Well, Elon certainly carries a lot of weight. I think people more recently, even though he's tweeted a few times about cryptocurrencies since all this went down,

Starting point is 01:19:35 and it didn't seem to really impact prices as much as it did back when he first started doing it. So I would say he probably has a little bit less way and people really got pissed off when he did this. I think that, listen, we had a massive run up over the last six months. So to see a sell-off or correction like that just totally makes sense to me. I don't know that I pin it all on Elon. I think that's certainly his comments and pulling it out of Tesla from accepting Bitcoin. And it certainly sparked something that everyone was already thinking behind the scenes. And that's true. Bitcoin is a very dirty currency. I would say that I have read reports and I have talked to folks that are in the camp of, they will point out that the mining operations have really led to a lot of renewable energy. So a lot of these Bitcoin

Starting point is 01:20:26 mines around the world are placed in places where renewable energy is there and in place and operating because it is the cheapest form of energy. Now, granted, there are other places where it's running purely off of coal. So I don't know that I fully buy that. So I think that I'd have to set that aside. I don't think that the underpinnings of Bitcoin are going to be rewritten anytime soon. The fact that Satoshi disappeared, it's kind of like this. I know they have folks that are in charge, but it's almost like, don't touch it unless it's really broken. It's such a massive market cap and it does one thing really well, which is just store of value. So out of the dirty CPU, GPU mining world into something that is insanely clean and more efficient. And that upgrade will take place sometime in the next year or so.

Starting point is 01:21:35 So there are other cryptocurrencies that certainly realize that this is an issue and they want to get away from the useless. Well, I mean, it's a very, you're also in some sense, when you do this proof of work operations that require a lot of CPU and GPU and are very power intensive, that is how the security of the network is maintained. So they are useful in that sense, but we have, I just think we have better, cleaner tech now that we can apply to the same problem. What are your hopes for Chia, if any? And could you describe what Chia is? Yeah. So Chia is a cryptocurrency that was created by Bram Cohen, who's the inventor of BitTorrent. We all remember BitTorrent from when we were pirating movies or whatever it may be. It was the kind of first peer-to-peer um elegant way to swap large files bram went on to

Starting point is 01:22:27 create chia chia is definitely you know it's one of our investments at true so full disclosure there me too i'm an investor yeah the reason why we backed bram is because i mean there's a handful of engineers that you if they raise their hand they say i'm going to do something new yeah you just realize that the caliber is an animal yeah it. It's just, yeah. It just, just one of the top tier engineers in the world. So you say, always say yes to something like that. So he's come up with a way to do proof of space and proof of time, a blockchain that uses hard drives for farming. So he calls it farming. And it essentially, part of the reason why I was attracted to it initially is because everyone has additional hard drive capacity. And you can turn a normal computer into a farming rig that goes out and will actually plot and farm and do the same functions of a cryptocurrency, meaning providing space as a way to protect the network rather than just GPU and CPU.

Starting point is 01:23:27 And it is just so much more green. It uses like one one-thousandth of the amount of energy of, say, using a Bitcoin CPU or GPU and potentially democratizes in a much more broader way. So what I mean by that is that if you were to compete and you're to mine Bitcoin today, you would have to go out and buy a very custom kind of ASICs, custom processor rig, or a really fast GPU if you're mining on Ethereum, and spend thousands and thousands of dollars to go out and participate in the network. So you just can't use an off-the-shelf computer anymore the way you could when it first launched in its first year or so. So now with something like Chia and Ethereum's moving this way as well with proof of

Starting point is 01:24:11 stake, you don't really need the hardware requirements. So you can go out and just use some extra hard drive space, join a pool, and then you can be farming kind of instantly. So the number of active participants in the network goes up, which means it's more decentralized, which means it's better for overall security. So rather than just it being controlled by several thousand, the hope is with something like Chia, you get hundreds of thousands of people participating and doing this farming. And so far, it's been working quite well. They've got a lot of people. They had, you know, warning went out, several big publications wrote kind of warnings that hard drives were being sold out everywhere.

Starting point is 01:24:50 So you couldn't go to like an electronics store, like Best Buy was selling out of their top end hard drives because people were using them for, for mining on Chia. And so there was going to be this massive hard drive shortage. So what Western digital stock like went up because of it. And it's just crazy. That's wild. It's wild. It's wild. But I would say, just playing both sides of the coin, obviously, I said I was a fan because we're investors.

Starting point is 01:25:14 But also, it's early days for this. So I wouldn't go out and say, hey, buy a bunch of Chia. If anything, I would say, just fire up an extra hard drive that you have sitting around and play with it and see what you think. None of this is investment advice. Yeah. To be clear, we are not registered investment advisors or other professionals. This is for informational purposes only. Continue, please. Yes. Yeah. So, I mean, with all this stuff, though, Tim, when I walked you through some of that MetaMask stuff one time, it's like the only way to learn this stuff and to get into

Starting point is 01:25:42 it and understand what you're buying rather than just blindly buying is to play put a hundred dollars in go lose a hundred dollars or something crazy that you didn't understand but by the end of it you you do and so that's where you learn and i think it's the most valuable piece of all this so in an ocean of options and again this is you Again, you and the other partners at True have significant informational advantage and many other advantages compared to almost anyone listening to this. So this is not intended to be advice. But just so I have a better understanding, how do you vet, how do you choose blockchain slash crypto investments? Because there is so much out there. There's this paradox of choice. How do you choose things at this point? Are there any particular checkboxes or criteria? The way that I think about it is that first you have to say, where have we been and where are we going? And so when you start off the kind of where have we been, when these chains first launched, they had one utility. They were like a store of value and a way to send digital currency to and from one wallet to another, right? That was Bitcoin for the first few years. And now when you think about where we're going, there are just a

Starting point is 01:27:06 whole slew of different arenas that this blockchain technology has been applied to. So you have decentralized exchanges, you have the NFTs that we talked about and marketplaces around that, all of the web three kind of censorship resistant communication protocols. You have insanely high performance protocol. Those are blockchains like Solana and some of the others that are out there and that could do 50,000 transactions per second. And so what gets unlocked when you have that type of speed operating on a blockchain, then you have existing big behemoth blockchains like Ethereum and and how we're going to scale Ethereum in the short term. So you talk about what they're called layer two scaling solutions.

Starting point is 01:27:49 The entire financial stack is being rewritten from the ground up. So thinking about what is the future of checking and savings accounts? What does it mean to stream money to people in real time? And how does that work? And so there's a world where a startup pitches, not just recently, where they figured out a way to stream money to people in real time. And so what that means is rather than going into work and like clocking in and waiting two weeks to get paid, you clock in and money hits your account every 25 to 30 seconds in real time as it's being earned. And so there's just like this complete rethinking of

Starting point is 01:28:27 the distribution of financial assets. So what once was, let me pull up like Wells Fargo right now, but if you pull up like a big bank and you say, Wells Fargo, Wikipedia, and you take a look at the headcount that they have to employ to pull off a traditional. So they have 7,200 branches in 2021, 13,000 ATMs, and 268,000 employees for Wells Fargo. So think about what that payroll must look like. Yeah, it's a lot of mouths to feed. A lot of mouths to feed and that bloat that is in the financial system. And so what do you get in return? You have a checking savings account, you get some FDIC insurance, which is nice, and you get absolutely nothing. You get no interest. I get that it's nice that they handle

Starting point is 01:29:21 fraud on the check side and there's a phone number to call and all of that. But all of that money that they're taking your money and lending it out on your behalf behind the scenes and their revenue for 2020 was $72.34 billion for 2020. So that money now in a decentralized fashion on the blockchain where now you have some of these people writing things like Aave, some of these lending platforms, or you have like a BlockFi that is partially centralized and partially decentralized. You have these new banks and new financial institutions and these new protocols that are emerging that take just a handful of people to write code, manage and operate. And then all of that wealth creation is being distributed back to the individuals. So I'm excited for the future of finance because I think that, for example, you and I have talked about BlockFi before. It is a company that is providing...

Starting point is 01:30:22 You and I have talked quite a bit about it. Yes. And BlockFi, for example, Zach, I had the CEO on my show. We talk about what they're really good at is these interest accounts that give people real insane interest at right now. I think it's like 7.5% right now on stable coins, which is just nuts. What are you going to get from a bank? If you keep $100 in your BlockFi account, and I don't mean this to be an ad for BlockFi. I'm not going to put any affiliate code anywhere in anything in Tim's show notes or anything. But it's essentially, they're giving you 7% on your money on these stable coins, which are US dollar coins, which don't change. You don't have to worry about them going up or going down, because they're able to go out and pass that savings. They don't have that massive overhead

Starting point is 01:31:09 that a traditional bank would have. And they just pass it right back to the end consumer. And so a lot of these platforms, whether it be Compound or Aave or some of these platforms, you can go and bring your cryptocurrency in, you can lend it back to the platform, and you'll get paid interest back to your wallet, which is just awesome. It's nice to see that finally going back to the consumers versus just being kept by the big banks. Yeah, it's super fascinating to me. And you introduced me to BlockFi and have since become an investor and don't place a lot of bets in this space. But the idea, and who knows, net-net,

Starting point is 01:31:45 like at the end of the day, what the pie chart is going to look like, but the idea of a blockchain-first banking or finance company is very interesting, right? And it allows you to do certain things like offer this 7% or 7.25% or whatever the APY is on accounts that otherwise don't really exist. Because as you said, there are all of these intermediate cost centers, including headcount associated with traditional banking, that are just simply removed when you shift to this type of technology. The ability to, say, borrow based on your cryptocurrency assets or anything that's

Starting point is 01:32:32 related. These are new frontiers in a lot of respects. And that's part of what makes it super exciting. Obviously, both of us are fans of BlockFi and many other things. What are the risks that you foresee on the horizon? And I know this is a common question, but I'm going to ask it because I think people will be interested in your answer. How much do you worry about regulatory overstep or shutdown? We've seen what's happened in China. Of course, China is not the United States. But how concerning for someone who invests a lot or for a firm that invests a lot in crypto and blockchain is the regulatory side of things. Honestly, I'm very much looking forward to regulation. I think it's going to be a great thing. The lack of clarity around how to treat certain types of assets in this world

Starting point is 01:33:28 is what's holding it back, I believe. The big question to ask here is the one like you hinted at with China, where is it, does the US wake up one day and say, actually, cryptocurrency is illegal, shut it all down. And I just can't see that being the case here. It's too far entrenched into everything that we're doing. Every major bank, whether they like it or not, is now embracing blockchain in some capacity. It's a fantastic underlying technology. So it would just be odd to say we're banning a certain type of technology. Like, I just can't see that happening in the United States. I hope that there's more clarity because a lot of it is very confusing right now. And to be fair, a lot of it's being defined in real time.

Starting point is 01:34:14 We don't know how to handle certain types of assets. There's just weird things coming out of this. Like, I'll give you an example. There's a protocol called Alchemix that are these self-repaying loans. It sounds nuts, but in the world of DeFi, it's crazy. So basically what it does is it goes out and you come in and you take a certain amount of cryptocurrency, let's just say it's $10,000, right? And they take that entire principle and they go invest it into yield generating protocols that are out there in this world of decentralized finance. And they instantly give

Starting point is 01:35:00 you half of it back into straight, let's just call it a stable coin, like a US dollar stable coin. So you take 10,000, they give you 5,000 to go do whatever you want with. And because of the yield that they're able to generate on the entire principle, they take all of the interest payments and pay it back into the loan so that it pays itself off automatically. And at the current rates, it's a little over two years and the loan just automatically pays itself back. So you're receiving your interest payments upfront, if that makes sense. But this is only something that would be possible

Starting point is 01:35:34 in the world of DeFi where you're having smart contract, work with smart contract and not in traditional lending. It just wouldn't make sense because you're taking all of the benefit and giving back to the customer. And in traditional lending, when you have mouths to feed, as I mentioned with the Wells Fargo example, they would never give you that full yield. They can't, right? They can't. Right. Exactly. So this is like, they're only making a mere 72 billion. Right. Exactly. And the odd thing though, is like these repayments are happening in near real time,

Starting point is 01:36:08 paying down the loan in near real time. And so talk about like all these little microtransactions that are occurring over that two years and change. Now, how do you treat those repayments? Who's paying them and where are they coming from? And what's your cost basis? And you can imagine like, it just makes you go cross that that. No one in the IRS is going to tell you how to do this. This has never been defined before. How do you even file something like that with the IRS to explain to them what you're doing? I mean, even handling basic crypto stuff right now with filings is very challenging. You can do it, but it it's very involved so there's some very sophisticated financial these new tools these new types of code that is being deployed in these smart contracts

Starting point is 01:36:52 and we don't really have a clean way to even report them you know let alone understand how to what tax rate we should be charged so i i don't know i i'm excited for some of the more regulation to come into place i think that just to remove uncertainty. So even if the rules are stringent and punitive in some respect, at least the rules will be clarified and defined. Yeah. I mean, I want to pay my taxes. I don't want to go to jail. I just don't know how quite to do it, right? I wasn't implying otherwise, but- No, no, no. I'm just saying in the world of DeFi- The adult protest. Too much. wasn't implying otherwise but no no i'm just saying i'm just saying in the world of defy too much i'm saying in the world of defy this is what people are running into is they don't know

Starting point is 01:37:30 how to handle this stuff so it's a very exciting space but it's a very kind of bleeding edge enter at your own risk kind of world to answer your question of like what am i scared of what are the risks that are out there i think there's a few one is you mentioned the regulation side that that's certainly one that kind of is off there lingering in the background which i'm not so much worried about what's going to happen on the u.s but i'm worried about what if another country bans it because that causes some instability in the markets when other countries ban which would be the most impactful countries were they to ban crypto? Outside of China, are there any countries that stand out that one might not expect? So outside of the US,

Starting point is 01:38:15 who are the players who would really move the markets? Yeah, that's a good question. I think China was the big one, to be honest. And now that that's kind of over, obviously the European Union would be huge. Anything with the UK would be huge. But I just don't see those markets cracking down. So there's nothing out there that is like the big, scary whale that we're just waiting for that to happen. I don't know of any other big countries. If anything, we're seeing countries now embracing cryptocurrency and making it an accepted form of tender. So that's happening, which is just fantastic. Okay, so let's just put that regulation part aside. There's two other pieces that I always think about. One is the meme coins, the shitty coins that rise to the top and people think because it's a top 25 traded coin, they should buy it. That's a huge risk. The second thing is that people don't dollar cost average their way into the markets. So that means that they just buy a big chunk, oftentimes too much, and then they

Starting point is 01:39:12 panic sell. So dollar cost averaging is a very simple concept. You have $1,000, let's just say $1,200 that you want to invest total into cryptocurrency. And you're like, listen, my chunk, what I can afford for me is $1,200. You take $100 and you do one buy the first of every month for a year and you dollar cost average your way in. That way you're never buying at the high, never buying at the low. You're kind of getting that nice blend over 12 months. 12 months may seem like a long time. I personally would do something like that over like three to four months and just figure out what is that. Don't look at the markets in terms of like trying to time it. You just say every, this is the day, second week of every month and every Monday or whatever it may be, whatever your day is. And then you go off and you make that buy. And the third piece is that people run into,

Starting point is 01:39:56 and this is something that comes up a lot, is that people take on too much risk. So it has to be something where if it drops by 75%, you will not sell. So it can't be so meaningful that you're freaking out and you do a panic sale because this is where the risk is. But also with risk comes the reward, obviously. So when you're playing in these crazy waters, these shark infested waters, there's going to be some really bloody days. And if that's the case, you have to just be able to sit there and take it and not panic sell because you know and you believe in your heart of hearts that the future is digital currencies. And if that's the case, the market is going to be bigger five years from now, 10 years from now, and 20 years from now.

Starting point is 01:40:37 And if that remains true, back to that, what is my original thesis around this market, then you're going to be good in the long term, but you have to be able to sit there and close your eyes on those really horrific days. And they will come. And there'll be multiple. Lots and lots and lots. For me, I've realized if I am not comfortable making an investment for at least three years, I just shouldn't do it. Because I probably haven't done sufficient homework to have strong conviction on my base assumptions that should underlie that type of decision and if I'm not willing to hold for at least three years like you're going to get punched in the face at least a few times over three years. And if I've committed to that,

Starting point is 01:41:26 and I've only allocated so much that I can afford to easily have sidelined for that period of time and illiquid, you're going to end up panic selling. Just as I did with Amazon 2008, which was a huge mistake. I'd taken too much, I'd put it into an excellent company,

Starting point is 01:41:44 but I didn't have rules for when I would sell or why I would sell. I only had my reasons for buying, buying back in, in early April of, I guess, last year, early April, 2020. But man, oh man, it would have been a lot better to actually hold onto it for the entire period of time. Here's the crazy thing, Tim. I'm curious to get how you think about it these days. But the one thing that is a little bit different than what you said there around stocks versus crypto is that the people that are the true believers will say there is if you really believe that the future of currency is digital then there is nothing to sell like why would you what would you what would you sell into because you're already holding the best form of that thing that you're holding currency yeah right you don't sell into? Because you're already holding the best form of that thing, that you're holding currency.

Starting point is 01:42:47 You don't sell into the US dollar. Why, when they're just printing more US dollars, that would just be silly. Totally, totally. Right. So I don't want to come out with super strong opinions, but I'm generally not selling the primaries. The primaries being Bitcoin, Ethereum.

Starting point is 01:43:02 I have not sold any Bitcoin or Ethereum in years, and I don't have any plan to in the near future. There are other things, I don't think we should name them, but more speculative things that might, on paper, offer a market cap that just does not make sense compared to the utility and ubiquity of other things. In which case, okay, maybe you take some of that off of the table but because there's not a equally high degree of confidence in the durability over time of those things right

Starting point is 01:43:38 yeah or you just can't find a compelling logic to be like why is this worth x percent of the total market cap of bitcoin when yeah then i consider that but i hear you i mean they're definitely in the true believer camp it's like look if you actually believe ab and see what you're saying you should never sell never is a bit never is a strong word though i would say right given current information given what we know currently given current current information, I don't have any plans to sell BTC or Ethereum. Right. So in my mind, what I think is, okay, if I think about Amazon, of course, Amazon's going

Starting point is 01:44:15 to continue to scale and be the leader in that space. If I believe the same in the digital cryptocurrency space, but I'm in a coin where I think to myself, gosh, I really see this emerging player that's coming up that I really believe in as well. Then I might do a lateral move where I say, okay, well, I have a lot of gains in this one particular cryptocurrency, but I also want to get a little exposure to this other one. I'm going to sell part of this and then move into another coin. And that just kind of diversifies my cryptocurrency basket a little bit more. Now, one other piece is we talked about kind of right-sizing the position that you're holding so that you don't freak out if there's a big dip. At some point, because I believe this

Starting point is 01:44:55 market will expand and continue to grow over the next couple of decades, that position, let's just say you put in 10,000 over the next three months and that turns into a half a million dollars. At some point, you're going to look at that holding and be like, wow, this is now meaningful. I am going to freak if it drops by 75%. And so what do you do then? So my playbook is one, and I'm just speaking for myself, but what it is, is if cryptocurrency grows to the point where it is no longer whatever your number is, 10% of your overall holdings, 20%, whatever you're comfortable with, and all of a sudden it's 40% of your overall net worth,

Starting point is 01:45:30 then my way of trimming is not to say, sell and grab some US dollars. What I do is I say, let's sell, but then diversify into stocks and bonds and more traditional assets. So more of the Wealthfront style, kind of fully diversified. That to me is more of the boring, old school, hoping for 7% a year type of style investing. But I'm definitely not one of these people. You talk to Pomp or something and he'll be like, oh, I'm 100% Bitcoin. You're like, what stocks do you hold? Oh, no, no, just Bitcoin. You're like, wait, what? That's a little aggressive. So I'm definitely a fan of having other assets as well.

Starting point is 01:46:10 So it's not just all about crypto. Yeah, totally. And I should say also, I mean, 7% sounds terrible, but if it's a decent number to begin with and you don't sell and rebuy and rack up all of these transaction fees and management fees and so on you could do worse yeah no oh totally people a lot of people go to zero trying to chase like 40 annual returns actually i have a lot of sympathy for people who had the experience

Starting point is 01:46:40 their first experience investing in this last run up with crypto because they're just ruined forever in a way i'm just like oh my god like this is i don't want to say a non-recurring phenomenon but it's just like if if your baseline is set at hundreds of percentage per year it will be very hard to convince you that it makes sense to invest in something with a reasonably predictable 7% to 10% per year, let's just say. And that's a tough position psychologically for people to be in. Absolutely. The one hack I did want to share with the audience that I think is a really worthwhile one is, well, I don't want to, I also say like, I think that the mistake a lot of

Starting point is 01:47:28 cryptocurrency holders are doing today is that they are holding their cryptocurrency where they're not earning anything for their cryptocurrency. So a lot of people will have a Robinhood account. I'm an investor of Robinhood. So I'm slamming them right now. And I'm sorry, I'm not an investor. We invested at Google Ventures and I hold some of their funds. So I don't mean to talk bad about Robinhood, but they don't give you any interest when you're holding your crypto there. The same thing goes for Coinbase. Coinbase just now said, if you have our stable coin, USDC will give you 4%. But actually they do Ethereum 2 staking, which is nice. But outside of that, they're not really giving you any interest if you hold Bitcoin there. There are some places that you can go, that you can transfer your

Starting point is 01:48:08 cryptocurrency to. PayPal doesn't give you any interest. That you can earn interest on your crypto paid in crypto. So you're paid in kind. So you're getting more crypto as you're sitting there holding it. So my strategy is that there's two sites that I like, BlockFi, which we already mentioned. They give you interest on Ethereum, Bitcoin, a whole slew of other coins. And then Gemini is another really world-class exchange that gives you interest on just holding your crypto there. So every time I launch my wallet, I see that I have more crypto because every month I'm earning interest on it.

Starting point is 01:48:40 I just would hate for people to be letting their crypto sit there and not earn any type of interest. Now, there are risks because they're lending your crypto out on your behalf. But that's why, actually, to plug my show again, I did an episode all around risk with the head of risk of both of those organizations to talk about how they're doing it behind the scenes. And after listening to that episode, I'm confident and comfortable in what they're doing. So I've been using BlockFi for years now and getting outrageous interest rates. It's a great thing to do when you're sitting on some crypto. Why not earn more? Hear, hear.

Starting point is 01:49:12 What else should we talk about? Kev Kev? Yeah. So we covered crypto pretty well. Thank you for the we. I'll take it. It's a fun world, man. You're doing fine. Just keep holding your Bitcoin in the tail. Thank you. I'm just breathing while I listen. Yes. It's a fun world, man. You're doing fine.

Starting point is 01:49:25 Thank you. Just keep holding your Bitcoin in the derail. Thank you. I'm just breathing while I listen. Yes, thank you. I'm doing great. Those are great. You know, one thing I wanted to cover is a question came in from Twitter asking, and

Starting point is 01:49:38 I guess then we can wrap it up unless you have more, but one of the ones that we have on the last in our list here is, the most recent thing you've added to your daily architecture, any new rituals? I was really curious when that came in, because we haven't talked about this in a while. What have you picked up both in COVID and then slowly coming out of COVID, anything new for you? So the first thing that comes to mind is anything and all things related to sleep. This is a perennial topic, but in the last, I would say, month, I've had probably 10 days at least of the best sleep I've ever had. And a lot of that stemmed from a conversation I had with a neurobiologist from Stanford

Starting point is 01:50:22 named Andrew Huberman, really interesting guy. And we talked quite a lot about sleep. He studies the visual system very intensely. Was he on your podcast? Yeah, yeah, he was. Awesome, yeah, he was on Dario's podcast too. Yeah, he's a smart guy, he's a smart guy. And we spoke a lot about sleep,

Starting point is 01:50:41 we spoke about testosterone and increasing testosterone. We talked about performance, the risks of increasing testosterone, different methods, et cetera. And in the sleep camp, we, or I should say he rather, told me about increasing fish oil, specifically EPA, to at least one gram per day. And I'd been taking fish oil, but I had not been taking that quantity. And I began taking fish oil and a number of other supplements, including magnesium beyond just magnesium threonate, which is very good for sleep. And on top of that, paying more attention to circadian and cyclical cues that he and I talked about. So I've been trying to ensure as soon as I wake up that I go outside and spend at least five minutes in the sun. And I'll do that by jumping rope and walking around with Molly, my dog,

Starting point is 01:51:41 but to really ensure that to the extent possible, I don't wake up and then brush my teeth and then check my phone and then check my calendar and sit inside dilly-dallying or even doing important work for an hour or two before getting outside exposure. I've really been trying to very consistently get sun, even if it's cloudy outside, just like solar slash sky exposure as soon as I get up. And I've been having some of the best sleep of my life. It's really, really, really remarkable.

Starting point is 01:52:16 So I'd say- What are you using to track your sleep? Right now, because I shifted locations recently, I mean, not full-time, but I'm outside of my usual home base. So I have an Oura ring that is charging. I haven't been wearing it. I do use 8Sleep also on the bed, which is incredibly helpful for creating two zones.

Starting point is 01:52:39 And my girlfriend, if she could sleep inside a sauna at 90 plus degrees, she would probably do it. I really need to sleep at kind of a surrounding temperature of like 67 degrees, or I have an incredibly hard time getting to sleep. So the eight sleep does provide some tracking. And I found that eight sleeps, I suppose, inference or extrapolation from what they can sense in the bed is pretty good, even when they're paying attention to HRV. Certainly the number of times that you're tossing and turning, getting up, et cetera, surprisingly accurate from what I can tell. I was very skeptical. I do use the Oura Ring. That's going to be the primary for looking at sleep quality and HRV.

Starting point is 01:53:28 So those would be the two tools predominantly. But at the end of the day, even though I find these tools very useful, you know by 1 p.m. if you had a good night's sleep or not. And you probably know as soon as you get up. And so it's a subjective feel as much as anything else. And I am a different person. If I get three or four nights of excellent sleep, I am a different human being. Like qualitatively and probably quantitatively

Starting point is 01:53:52 in a bunch of ways, I am just a different human being. So those are a few of the things that have changed. A couple of questions. Yeah. So when you have a bad night's sleep and you look at your aura data, what does that mean for you? Does that mean lack of REM sleep, lack of deep sleep is very easily compromised. It is very easily compromised. Also, if I have more than two alcoholic drinks, of course, not all alcoholic drinks are created equal.

Starting point is 01:54:32 So 6% is very different from tequila shots, but I've paid a lot of attention to that. And that is another reason why I was actually more than happy to have a drink or two this early since we started recording at 3 p.m. my time. Because if I drink a little bit earlier, this is coming an early happy hour, which is not really my thing, but just for the sake of illustration, like at 4 or 5 p.m., my body is able, in a waking state, to seemingly metabolize a lot of that before I go to bed. And I consequently do not wake up with the rapid heartbeat and the alcohol night sweats. It's the worst. I hate that rapid heartbeat where you wake up and you just got that, you could just feel it going and you're like, what do I do? I'm hot. You can't do anything. Yeah, you can't do anything.

Starting point is 01:55:37 You just have a terrible night's sleep. So having even an additional three hours to metabolize before going to bed makes a huge difference for me. So I've been paying attention to that as well. But almost all of my changes recently have been associated with improving sleep quality. Can I ask you what type of, what manufacturer of Omega threes do you take? Yeah,

Starting point is 01:56:00 I can tell you, let me grab it. All right. Tim has left the room. We'll see if this makes the edit or not. I'm betting it's Carlson Wild Cod Omega 3s. Okay, here we are. You having another one?

Starting point is 01:56:17 These are delicious. Don't judge me, Kevin. This is not my usual, but in any case. The first, I have two here this is a nordic naturals pro omega 650 epa 450 dha and that is right here this guy which i've been using and then the second that i have is thorn that's t-h-o-R-N-E, super EPA. And that's this guy right here. Those are what I ended up choosing. And the effect is really remarkable. And it's difficult. I would say it's impossible. Let me be clear. It's impossible for me to say

Starting point is 01:57:01 that my sleep quality improvements are entirely caused by this. I'm also spending more time outside. I'm doing rucksacking. I'm getting more exercise. I'm getting a lot more sun exposure. I'm in nature. My body tends to just downregulate. It's not the right word, but my nervous system downshifts a lot when I'm surrounded by nature.

Starting point is 01:57:28 So there are many factors. There are many environmental changes in my life that have taken place in the last few weeks, but I have spent a lot of time in nature at many other points and my sleep has not had this dramatic change. So it leads me to think that there are other causal factors and this is the most obvious. This is the most obvious thing. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I've been taking a couple grams of omega-3s for a while now. And I just find for me, I actually see the benefits on the joint side. Yeah, totally. Kind of joint issues. Yeah, I've noticed that actually in my feet.

Starting point is 01:57:58 It's like the old man episode. It is the old man episode. But my family has a history of gout. So my family has gout on at least the maternal side, and a sort of precursor indicator of that is often high uric acid levels. And I've been pretty loathe to start another medication, which will be a maintenance medication forever. In this case, it would be allopurinol. Yeah, dude, I've been taking allopurinol for five years now. Yeah. Even though it's very, very well tolerated, right? As far as drugs go, it's very well tolerated.

Starting point is 01:58:33 But I'm like, oh God, I'm going to end up that old guy with the pill case with a hundred pills that I've taken every day. I don't take that many things right now. I've really tried to minimize it. Although compared to the normal people, I probably seem like a complete disaster. In any case, the EPA, or perhaps it's both, including the DHA, the higher levels of fish oil consumption, unexpectedly, I was stretching and I noticed,

Starting point is 01:59:02 oh, wow, I don't have that usual stiffness, which I thought might be some type of degeneration in the joint, although I had x-rays and it didn't appear to be the case. The stiffness and pain that I feel in that big toe joint, which is very often where gout first presents, which I was very concerned about. I was like, oh, fuck, do I have gout? Really? Am I like some fat aristocrat from like the 1700s in France? Like, what is this? Like, really? How can I have gout? Some people think that that's primarily caused by, I think it's purines in DNA and that's associated with protein and therefore people take by extension that to mean that animal protein should be decreased. It's not quite as

Starting point is 01:59:41 simple as that. There's actually a chapter that i published on my blog tim the blog people can find it on gout and the understated culprit which is fructose as found in high fructose corn syrup and in fruit to a lesser degree so it's not quite as simple as people might paint it to be. Nonetheless, what I noticed is like, holy shit, like that pain in my toes is like 90% gone after a week of doing it. And I cannot think, because this has been consistent for years now that I've had this pain. I mean, it's been a static level of pain. And after a week or two, again, maybe it's placebo, who knows, but I wasn't anticipating this as an effect. So it's hard for me to think that it's expectation. It's like,

Starting point is 02:00:32 you know what? It's hard for me to come up with many reasons not to do this. So I'm going to give it a go. If you take too much, more is not better. I think you could probably cause intestinal bleeding or all sorts of problems if you were just to chew these gummy bears or something. So, word to the wise, talk to your doctor about things like this. But I've certainly found it beneficial. What about you? Your daily architecture. That's a very highfalutin way to put it. But yeah, your daily architecture, Kevin, tell me. Yeah. the only thing i would say that i've i've really stuck with that well a lot of people want to know about our sauna routines and if we're still doing sauna that was a hot topic in the in the hot topic doggy style on the

Starting point is 02:01:16 twitter i i gotta tell you man the sauna sauna for me has been it it's just the best. It's the best money I've ever spent outside of having a nanny from time to time. It's like sauna is just so key. I just feel so much better. I mean, there's all the health benefits and the studies. There's more and more coming out all the time. I will say one thing, one pro tip. Do not oil your sauna. so i oiled my sauna what does that even mean you like so they have this sauna oil on amazon and like when the wood

Starting point is 02:01:54 dries out you're supposed to put oil on it okay and so i buy the sauna oil on amazon i oil it and then it literally off gases like smoke like smoke. Oh, that's terrible. And no, listen to this, dude. It's like a skillet on the oven, on the stove top. That's terrible. Yes. And so I was like, okay, this is crazy. So I went in, I sanded it down, like tried to get it all out, you know, scrubbed it with like soap and shit. And then, dude, it's still off-gassing.

Starting point is 02:02:24 So then I started wearing my N95 mask in there. This is why you need a gas mask to use your own sauna. Yeah. Daria's like, what are you doing? She's like, I'm not going in that sauna again. And I'm like,

Starting point is 02:02:35 listen, I'm like, let me burn it out because it, but I still need to get my sauna on. So I, I used to let my gas mask and then dude, I go in there and my eyes, when I walk out after,

Starting point is 02:02:45 after 20 minutes, my eyes are bloodshot because the, like go in there and my eyes, when I walk out after, after 20 minutes, my eyes are bloodshot because the, like the smoke is hitting my eyes and my eyes were burning. It's not the gummies. No, it was not the gummies. It's not your gummies that you hand me. My gummies.

Starting point is 02:02:59 The honestly, it's just like, so I, I ripped out my entire sauna, had all the wood removed and had to buy a new sauce yeah wow so that sucks anyway so routine routine wise architecture wise it's been one year almost coming up on one year of meditation and that my friend is the biggest game changer i've ever had is when i decided to take it seriously and not just do it like an app, just, but like really sit and do it really like real practice.

Starting point is 02:03:30 So what does real mean? This is an hour a day. What are we talking? You know, what's funny, Tim, and it's, I never told you this style. This is, this is with your teacher. Yeah. It's, it's, it's in accordance with his instructions. That's right.

Starting point is 02:03:42 So what's funny, Tim is one time. I don't know if you ever remember, we were talking about meditation. This was probably seven, six, seven years ago. And you said something to the effect of like, I think that most people, they just close their eyes and think about things when they're meditating. Or like you didn't like, it's almost like you didn't believe it. Oh, I still think that's true.

Starting point is 02:04:02 I mean, I think there are benefits to meditating, but I think most people are just thinking about bullshit with their eyes closed. Right, right, right. I was going to ask you, have you ever found yourself in deep? Have you ever meditated to where you've been? I mean, because you did the off-site, you did the really famous, you talk about that.

Starting point is 02:04:20 Yeah, the Vipassana. Yeah, Vipassana. Psychotic breakdown, yes. Yeah, your breakdown. Yeah, that was pretty deep, having having the full psychotic break i would say it's pretty deep i i have felt yes i've had very very deep experiences some of the best experiences i had were actually blanking on the style and the name currently. Naval would have some hints. Naval would have the answer.

Starting point is 02:04:50 I'll tell you the general approach. And the general approach is having nothing to do. You actually sit there. You do not repeat a mantra. You do not pay attention to the breath. You just sit there. And this is going to sound paradoxical, but you actively try to do breath. You just sit there. And this is going to sound paradoxical, but you actively try to do nothing. You just sit there.

Starting point is 02:05:15 And doing this in a group environment for a period of time, did it with a small group. This was one hour in the morning, one hour, let's just call it 5 p.m., like 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. And doing it in a group, I do think there's a dynamic that has gained, certainly a different dynamic that presents itself in a group. I don't have any explanation for this. There are theories, certainly, pet theories. But doing it in a group two hours a day for a period of even a week produced some very, very, very, very deep states. And I would say in terms of kind of ROI in a short period of time, I found that very interesting. When I came back to so-called normal life, I did not sustain that twice daily cadence for very long. And I think in part because I was doing it by myself or with my girlfriend and

Starting point is 02:06:05 not in a group, having that accountability was very, very helpful. But I have experienced some very deep states in meditation. Have you found those to be pleasant states or just kind of like when you walked away, did you have a smile on your face? Did you feel like,

Starting point is 02:06:20 Oh, very pleasant, very, very peaceful. Yeah. Very, very pleasant and very at peace, for sure. Oftentimes, what I've noticed, this can be, for me at least,

Starting point is 02:06:31 facilitated by doing a very intense but short sauna session for, say, 15 to 20 minutes, and then sitting outside and sort of air cooling and meditating for 20 minutes. Yeah, that's nice. That's just a great feeling. Oh, it's incredible. Found that to be very consistent.

Starting point is 02:06:50 So to answer someone's question that you brought up, I still do sauna very, very regularly and view it as a key and simple lever that I'm able to pull for mental health. Whether it helps me physically or not, I don't know. I mean, maybe, sure, heat shock proteins, all of that. Yeah, okay, maybe. I'm not going to know if it did anything until I'm dead.

Starting point is 02:07:13 So, jury's out. But from just a day-to-day psycho-emotional and mental perspective, doing a sauna, especially late afternoon. If I do it too close to bedtime, it interferes with my sleep. But if I do it four or five o'clock, then it seems to help and also dramatically increase HRV the next day.

Starting point is 02:07:38 Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, I've noticed that, as have a couple of other people. So, but coming back to architecture and your meditation, so one year anniversary, congratulations. That is the anniversary of what maybe you can describe for us. Yeah. So, I mean, I had been like most people that have ever played around with meditation apps, you know, I'd been dabbling and even, you know, help build one that is a free meditation app, but it just was dabbling.

Starting point is 02:08:05 I was always dabbling. I was doing the 10, 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes, just those little sessions guided. And they were fantastic. Very, very great prescriptive meditation. Oh, you have something wrong. You're feeling stressed, fear of flying, whatever it is. There's all these courses for that.

Starting point is 02:08:20 You can take them. There's not a lack of apps that offer this type of content. I think that the shift and the change was telling myself that this is a long road to practice, to really train the brain. Like if you think about, Tim, you know this better than, way better than I do. If you want to be really good at something, it can't just be an afterthought casual. I'm going to make time for this. When I feel like it. When I feel like it. Exactly. So I made that shift in my brain and said, okay,

Starting point is 02:08:50 I believe there is something worth pursuing here that a dedicated longer practice, longer duration in a more serious discipline. So for me, that was a form of Zen called Sanbo Zen. Sanbo? Yeah, Sanbo is like the offshoot. It's more kind of a lay Zen. How do you spell it? S-A-N-B-O. Sanbo Zen.

Starting point is 02:09:16 Interesting. Yeah, so when I heard about this and was introduced to my teacher, Henry, got excited about it and really decided to dive in and say, okay, I'm gonna read a few of the books that are out there on this type of Zen and then create a real practice that is 55 minutes of sitting a day. And I would say, how much is it? 55 minutes.

Starting point is 02:09:39 Why 55 minutes? Well, you do 25. Yeah, you do 25 minutes of your first sit, and then you do a five-minute walking meditation, and then another 25-minute sit. Okay, cool. And for those wondering, so I just looked it up,

Starting point is 02:09:55 Sambokyodang. Sambokyodang is a lay Zen sect derived from both the Soto and the Rinzai traditions. Sambol literally means three treasures. I wonder what the treasures are. Sang is like one, two, three. Sang, three. Sambou.

Starting point is 02:10:12 Bo is like bo-chan, like my darling, my treasure kind of thing. But yeah, sambou is three treasures. And then kyo, we can get into the Japanese another time. But yeah, kyo-dan, religious organization or teaching organization. That's cool. So 55 minutes.

Starting point is 02:10:30 Do you know what the three treasures are, by any chance? Yeah, the one treasure is the Sangha, so the group. The other one is the Dharma, the teachings, and the third one is Escape Me Right Now. You can just type in three treasures.

Starting point is 02:10:45 Three treasures apply more than just Sambo. Okay. Yeah, here we go. Okay, wait a minute. Three jewels are the Buddha. Sorry, three jewels, yeah. Yeah, three jewels, three treasures. You can translate it either way, at least in Japanese.

Starting point is 02:10:59 The Buddha, the fully enlightened one. The Dharma, the teachings expounded by the Buddha, hence the term or phrase Dharma talks, if you've ever heard that, and the Sangha, the monastic order of Buddhism that practice Dharmas. But that's also colloquially thought of as the group that practices together. Roger that. Okay. So you've done 55 minutes a day for a year. I will say that I have certainly missed a few days, but nothing crazy. Not like where I'm like, oh, I missed that entire week. There'll be a day or two where it just didn't work out. And there's been also a handful of days that are on the 25-minute side. There was

Starting point is 02:11:36 definitely versus doing the 55. But yeah, for the most part, I've been really consistent. What is the practice? What is the session? I know you mentioned it in brief already, but what does a session look like and feel like to you? Well, it depends on where you are in your practice. When you're first being instructed, the teaching is essentially kind of counting or just following the breath. So very almost like Vipassana style,

Starting point is 02:12:01 just to get that base level of concentration honed. There's a teaching where they talk about the Zen master that was sitting and the concentration was so intense that they're sweating. You can see sweat on their brow because it is a very active thing that is happening with the honed concentration. Yeah, they hit you with a switch if you're not, if you're not. If you, if you would like to request it, you can go in the Zendo and you can request that that happen. It's not for pain. It's for, for a jolt, you know, like me, it's not like a beating

Starting point is 02:12:36 practice. This is for you, not for me. Exactly. So the initially it's just that initial kind of counting and awareness and then eventually if your teacher and you feel you're ready for it you know you take on a koan which is one of these things to sit with like a zen kind of saying or word to sit with that is used as kind of a what's the best way to put it kind of of like just a... It's like a paradoxical cue, right? Or it's something like that. Yeah, paradoxical anecdote or riddle used in Zen Buddhism demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning

Starting point is 02:13:12 and to provoke enlightenment. That is the definition that comes up for me. Yes. So what you do is when you sit with that koan, eventually you will be able to answer it. And there are hundreds of them. And there are checking questions that are done with your instructor. Checking questions.

Starting point is 02:13:32 That's right. So if you sit down with a Zen master and they ask you, probably the most famous one is the sound of one hand clapping. Yeah, Right. You would then be able to answer that question through a series of checks. And eventually you can go through and kind of answer all of them. So there's a right and a wrong answer to something like that. Oh, more or less. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:14:00 God damn. That's stressful. But I mean, they get it, you get it wrong a lot. So essentially, if you're going to do one of these, they call them like a session where you go and do these like multi-day retreats,

Starting point is 02:14:12 you will go and you will sit and then you have a one-on-one session with your Zen master in the evening when you're kind of wrapping up, you know, and they'll sit you down and say, what is the answer to this question? Whatever you're sitting with. So some people sit with most common one is one called moo. And they'll say, you know, what is moo? And if you, then you can either say, I don't know. And you can walk out and that's fine. They ring the bell

Starting point is 02:14:36 and the next person goes in or you can try and answer it. And what is moo? I mean, not that I'm not asking you to give the cheat sheet for people, i don't know the answer to that question but broadly speaking is mu character is it yeah so there's a japanese character for it it means emptiness or not like mushin mushin is like no mind or no no not exactly yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah mushin so basically they're basically, where that came from is there was a very famous Zen teacher, Zen master named Joshu. And Joshu was asked by a monk one day, the monk came up to him and said, in all earnestness, monk asked Joshu, does a dog have Buddha nature? And Joshu's answer was just muh. And that was coming from, they will tell you that answer was coming from a non-dual

Starting point is 02:15:27 world. So it was like, it gets a little tricky. Yeah, exactly. So I can give you a breather if you like. I've got some, I've got some stuff, but yes, continue. Yeah. So you just basically sit with, um, what are you talking about? What are you talking about, breather? I'm just saying, if you want a moment to gather yourself, because this is some pretty esoteric shit, I can read what I found on the sastral, the checking questions. You can read the answers? No, no, read what you found.

Starting point is 02:16:03 Read the answers, like the mantras for transcendental meditation, where they're just listed out by age. Yeah, I could do that just to really make everyone cry. And I say that as someone who paid for the training and still uses TM. I paid for it. I still use it. So, teachers may probe students about their koan practice using sasho, checking questions to validate their satori

Starting point is 02:16:19 understanding. Although, I would debate the translation of satori there. Or kinsho, which is a really cool word like seeing the nature seeing the phenomenon for the mu con and the clapping hand con there are 20 to 100 checking questions depending on the teaching lineage the checking questions serve deep in the inside of the student but also to test his or her understanding that's wild that there would be questions i'm just trying to, I'm not asking you to spill the beans on the secret cult that you've joined, but the questions that would be related to something like, what is the hand of one hand clapping,

Starting point is 02:16:53 right? It seems like it's unanswerable by definition because it's intended to show the inadequacy of logic. That's right. And so the best way it's been described to me, and this wasn't by my Zen teacher, but I've heard it described elsewhere, is like the answers are going to be something that you will only understand if you've had that Kensho awakening type moment. You would only be able to provide. So your answers in the same way that when the monk asked, you know, does a dog have Buddha nature? And Joshi's response was, meh.

Starting point is 02:17:26 That would make no sense, make no sense at all. So your answers are also going to make no sense in this plane, if that makes sense. But your teacher will understand them because they will be listening from another plane. Does that make sense? I'm kind of sort of, I mean, it's, oh, my hair. Let me give an analogy, It's going to be terrible.

Starting point is 02:17:46 You're going to love it. So it's like if you're trying to explain ejaculation to someone who's never ejaculated, and you're like, it's kind of like a sneeze in your balls. And they're like, what? And they're never going to understand it. But if they've had the...

Starting point is 02:18:01 This is a bad one, Tim. If they've had the experience of ejaculating and then there's kind of no explanation needed, and you give like a moo type answer. And then I go, yeah, I hear you. Moo. It's so moo. That stuff is so moo. There you go. I don't know that that's how I'd describe it, but then I like it. I mean, you're welcome. Yeah. That's just three. You're practically a Zen master. This is three hard kombuchas later. I think I'm enlightened. I think.

Starting point is 02:18:23 That's great no but that's the gist of it is like we would never even if we read the answers it can't be a reading based logic based answer it has to be something that you have a felt experience of right through this thing that is given the label of and that's why there's so many checking questions yeah can show because they'll they'll be checking from a bunch of different angles whether or not you've actually felt or had the experience that's cool versus it just being like just like a red response yeah that's super interesting i think the honestly i mean the even though in some respects are very different there are similarities meaning the psychedelic ecosystem in the realm of whether it's psychotherapy assisted by different psychedelic

Starting point is 02:19:05 compounds or otherwise, you know, there could be a place for these type of checking questions. And actually, in some of the indigenous traditions, there are, I don't want to call them fact-checking questions, but there are sort of standards and experiences that are thought to be representative of different levels of awareness within the context of, say, an ayahuasca experience. So they're not that dissimilar. They're actually very similar. And I should correct something I said earlier, because I was thinking of a different character. Kinshō, the shō is different than the... There are a lot of homonyms in Japanese, a lot of things that have the same pronunciation. So the shou in

Starting point is 02:19:45 Kenshou is a different character than I had envisioned. Its nature or essence is the shou. Ken is to see, like ken-gaku. If you wanted to go to, say, a judo school and observe but not participate, you would ask if you could do ken-gaku.aku is gakus to study so it'd be like visual studying that's super cool man i'm so glad that you're digging deep into all this that's really it's great to see you stick with something for a year yeah seriously it's gonna be a long journey man but you know now's the age to get started yeah why do you think you've stuck with this so there's a uh god what is the expression since we're on of all we i say just like we explained cryptocurrency and blockchain stuff earlier which was basically you talking i'm kind of on this you know speaking in tongues japanese kick

Starting point is 02:20:34 right now but there's this expression i think it's hiyasi samayasi i think that's what it is somebody who's a native speaker of japanese could correct me, but there's an expression in Japanese, which is like, he or she gets hot quickly and gets cold quickly, meaning they pick up habits and routines and various things, and then they stick with them for very short periods of time. They get really excited about something, and then they just drop it, which I think you and I both do, although I think you take it to a whole new level. So why do you think you've stuck with this for a year in the way that you have? What has changed in you or what is it about this particular thing that has grabbed you? Well, I would say that I told myself that I knew that the upfront work of just being able to sit for an hour

Starting point is 02:21:26 and be comfortable with it was going to take some time. And to be able to still the mind to the point where you can just get comfortable and it not feel like just this crazy effort that you're like, why the hell am I doing this is a lot of work. But I said, I'm going to push through until I can at

Starting point is 02:21:45 least get to the point where when I get up off the cushion, I feel better than when I sat down. And I don't feel like it was just a waste of my time. Oftentimes, it was a challenge initially to say, can I calm my mind to the point where I will actually consider this a net positive? And I say it took about three months. It took about three months to get to the point where when I would get up after 55 minutes, I would say to myself, this is great. I feel really good. How did you stick with it for that long? Three months is not, I mean, it's not the, you know, we're not talking about like a hundred years of solitude, but it's a non-trivial period of time for someone who operates at really high RPM. So like, why even have that as a goal? Honestly, Tim, if I'm being really truthful,

Starting point is 02:22:36 it was because I was really depressed. We had a lot of stuff going on both in the country and with the pandemic and having a second child and just having all of stuff going on both in the country and with the pandemic and having a second child and just having all of this stress hit all at the same time. I just felt like I just needed something. I just needed something to be able to sink into that wasn't the news that wasn't what was going on around us. And it was right during the pandemic that I decided to, that's why I decided to do this is because I just couldn't, you know, you're sitting at home and you're not really going out and doing anything.

Starting point is 02:23:08 And it's just like, I can either drink or, or insert any other bad thing to do here, or I can pick up something. I'm just kidding. I hear you. No, but like, it was a lot of that where I was just like, I thought we were all going to die. And I was just like, I need to go deep here. And then luckily that was enough of a driver to get to the point where then it was a lot of that where I was just like, I thought we were all going to die. And I was just like, I need to go deep here. And then luckily that was enough of a driver to get to the point where then it was tolerable and then enjoyable. I'm so happy for that. Dude, I'm not anywhere close to being anything in this world,

Starting point is 02:23:38 in the world of Zen. Like I'm, it's like, it's going to be 20 plus years or longer for me to get really, really deep. But two things, I'm glad I started because I am at a point now where it is enjoyable. And two, I would say that the only thing I've noticed is that little things that just used to get underneath my skin really don't quite hit me as hard.

Starting point is 02:24:00 And so those little edges have been sanded down a little bit, those little rough edges. And so I can take a sharp elbow with down a little bit, those little rough edges. And so I can take a sharp elbow with ease in ways that I couldn't before. So I think that's the one benefit. And whatever else comes on top of that is gravy and I'm excited for, but you know. It's also super weird, Zen Buddhism. And I think that that is a more accurate reflection of what we call reality than the kind of clean, abstracted pictures we like to paint of reality that we would like to be the case because it allows us to grasp it and kind of navigate it so much more easily.

Starting point is 02:24:46 You know, for that reason, I think that the journey through Zen Buddhism actually has a lot in common with deep study of psychedelics. I think they're very similar because the further you get in, the more you realize nobody fucking knows what's going on. Like this is actually very, very, like the more I know, the less I know in a sense. And I find that very liberating actually. I'm a very liberating, it's like, nobody knows what's going on. Okay, all right. Great goals to eventually to get you to study some Zen.

Starting point is 02:25:19 I think you would be so, you're the perfect person for it because it is, there are actual obtainable things you know what i mean like in some sense the whole practice is about obtaining nothing so it's not like it's like but the fact that there just are checking questions is like i'm a kind of person that wants to check a box you know i want to like that appeals to me for sure yeah i can see that appeal to you as well yeah yeah that's good i mean it has always been a venture to me i mean even when i was in japan uh you know i spent time with i remember passing these monks who would be

Starting point is 02:25:55 uh what is the expression asking for alms i mean they would have to do a tour of duty where they would ask for money they'd have to beg for their food if i needed money to buy food and i would always pass these monks not all of them were necessarily zen buddhist monks but i would pass them every day as i was walking back from school and i was 15 as an exchange student in japan and have spent a lot of time recognizing that zen is not uniquely japanese although zen the word that pronunciation is japanese is a tradition that predates its introduction to japan yeah i mean it came from china right initially like that it was called chan yes something like that i don't know the character that was used for that it's probably the same character something like that i don't know the character that was used for that it's probably the same character actually let me just let me look it up it's probably the same

Starting point is 02:26:50 chan yeah yeah chan chan second tone yeah so chan second tone in mandarin and then zen in japanese and then korean I guess that's jeon. Jeon? Somebody could tell me I'm pretty rusty on my Hangul, but my looking at the Korean, I think it's jeon, and then we have Vietnamese and so on. What I like most about Zen is that it embraces paradox because so much of our existence, think is paradoxical and so much of what we want and so many of our conflicting goals can sort of be symbolized by this word paradox that

Starting point is 02:27:40 it's such a fundamental aspect of our existences, but it's so uncomfortable to look at directly also because it's not easily put on a shelf and organized and just slotted into some category that you can understand and figure out. Dude, I want you to have a Zen master on your show. Why wouldn't you do that? Like Sam's has some great- I'd do that.

Starting point is 02:28:01 You should have Henry on your show, man. He's amazing. I'd be open to having Henry on the show. I think part of it is that I don't feel like I am qualified to ask informed questions about it, if that makes sense. He's had a lot of students also that have dabbled in psychedelics, so he has some good background there as well. And kind of comparing, like senior students that also practice Zen and do psychedelics. It'd be interesting to draw some more background there as well and kind of comparing like senior students that also practice zen and do psychedelics it'd be interesting to draw yeah that could be parallels there yeah and i'm not a even though i support a ton of the science and i'm very involved with the policy and regulation and all sorts of aspects of the psychedelic ecosystem right now i'm not a hammer

Starting point is 02:28:41 looking for nails i don't think that psychedelics are is. And I mean, you're on mushrooms right now. You know, it wouldn't be out of character for that to be the case, but I'm not, I'm not on mushrooms right now. You're just casually chewing in the background. Just like just chomping on some mushrooms, like trail mix. No, no, I'm on, I'm on the, I'm on the hard kombucha kick right now, but I would love to have somebody on. I think that would be a really fascinating conversation because you are, I mean, you have such a great background in all things Japanese, and obviously,

Starting point is 02:29:12 the whole space with psychedelics and Japan, all these things, they're all interconnected in some way. Yeah, yeah, they're definitely interconnected. And also, I don't view these tools as mutually exclusive. And I was listening to an interview recently with Dennis McKenna, who I'm going to have on the podcast soon. Dennis McKenna is the younger brother of Terrence McKenna, who is considered the Irish bard of psychedelics.

Starting point is 02:29:41 Very, very smart guy, incredible storyteller. Dennis is more of the scientist and the ethno-pharmacologist, phytochemist of the two. He's very scientifically literate and understands organic chemistry and synthesis and things like this. And one of the points that he's made and did make in this interview I heard was, our experience of reality is mediated through chemistry and neurotransmitters. So when you hear people talk about, say, getting to certain states naturally and arguing that that is better than augmenting or using psychedelics, the argument rings somewhat hollow when you really start to dig underneath it. And that's not to say that one should not develop

Starting point is 02:30:33 self-directed capabilities without the use of drugs or plants to achieve these states. I'm not saying that. But the fact is, when you practice something, unless we're going to go into transpersonal psychology and some really gnarly terrain, which I could do, but what we're talking about is an experience of reality, which is a hallucination that we are creating as the mind applies filters to incoming information to optimize for a few things like propagation of the species and when you enter in a non-ordinary state of reality whether it is through ingesting say four or five grams of dried mushrooms in the case of psilocybe mushrooms psilocybin containing mushrooms or doing very dedicated Zen practice,

Starting point is 02:31:26 you are changing the cocktail. 100%. And in that respect, they're actually very close cousins. Although certainly some compounds and plants, I think, are better for achieving states similar to Satori or Kensho, maybe, than others. Like, meth, probably not, right?

Starting point is 02:31:47 I'm kidding. I don't think that anyone's going to suggest meth for coming to terms with some of these deeper realizations necessarily. But I think there's more common ground than not, at least for those who make a really deep study of it, like Dennis, as an example, who I really encourage everyone to check out. Very, very very bright guy i'd love to have him on henry i think it'd be great yeah henry schickman yeah he's um he's done a couple q a's with sam sam has him creating a lot

Starting point is 02:32:17 of content for sam harris's meditation app so he has a whole dedicated zen section in there but yeah i think you'll find him fascinating because he's also really well versed in all the latest science and studies going on. And especially some of the neuroscience is happening around the study of emptiness, which is this kind of Henry can speak to it, but it is like the state, like that Kensho state of,

Starting point is 02:32:40 of no thing like non-existence. Yeah. Machine. Yeah. So I think you guys, I would be very interested. I think mostly, and maybe this wouldn't be the case with Henry.

Starting point is 02:32:51 I mean, sometimes you can get into kind of dangerous pop science territory unless you're talking to someone like Adam Ghazali. How the hell does he say his last name? So Ghazali. Yeah. Ghazali. Ghazali.

Starting point is 02:33:01 Side note, who got crazy treatment somewhere in the Middle East because of his last name. Did he tell you this story? No. Yeah, yeah. There's a sort of iconic figure in, I want to say Persian, but it could have been actually in Saudi Arabia or somewhere, in Middle Eastern culture and history. It was Ghazali, G-H-A-Z-A-L-I.

Starting point is 02:33:23 And they saw his name and he landed at the airport and they're like, are you Adam Ghazali? And-H-A-Z-A-L-I. And they saw his name and he landed at the airport and they're like, are you Adam Ghazali? And he's like, yes. And they're like, you don't need to wait in this line, sir. Like you come with us. And he was like, uh, what? Is it gonna be really awesome or really bad? Really, really bad.

Starting point is 02:33:38 Yeah, so Adam Ghazali, Ghaz Ghazali, I should know this after decades of knowing the guy, but is a world-class neuroscientist, right? So speaking to him about science is one thing I would be most interested with Henry to just talk about his personal experience and to see how well he can describe his personal experience. For me,

Starting point is 02:33:59 it's like either like you got to choose one end of the pole or the other. It's got to be like randomized controlled studies or personal experience like both of those right i'm very open to it's the stuff in the middle that gets really wonky and kind of macgyvered and and hard yeah his descriptions of enlightenment and waking up and some of the the best i've ever heard they're just like cool yeah you will be blown away and you'll have some and you could ask him about the checking questions some of the, they're the best I've ever heard. They're just like, yeah. You will be blown away and you'll have some, and you could ask him about the checking questions because he does that with the students, right?

Starting point is 02:34:29 So he's clearing all the students and how many of them make it. That'd be really curious. But are those off limits? Are those like the level 29 of Scientology where I can't ask that until I clear a bunch of hurdles? It's not a Scientology type thing, man. I know, I'm'm just saying is that like

Starting point is 02:34:46 protected knowledge where i can't think so okay and you can always say i can't tell you yeah also yeah which is fair like i'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing i'm not comparing what you're doing to scientology no disrespect to scientology i know you guys like to sue people don't sue me some of my best friends are scientists but i'm into it man oh boy here we go i was just about to make some Scientology comments kevin i love you guys kevin hates you guys it's definitely i studied uh for a while and uh thought it was great you know i had a good time there good good uh buffet on sundays oh god all right here we go into the thunderdome we enter we're both dead next week we're both dead next week it was nice to know

Starting point is 02:35:39 you guys yeah so where do we go from here hard to segue i would be interested yeah so i'll do the introduction yeah yeah email intro henry and i'm excited that'd be cool i'll be into that i mean it it overlaps with so many of my interests yeah and i'm not averse to it i don't have an aversion to it the word enlightenment i'm not gonna lie bothers the shit out of me because you gotta say that then bring that up i'd be really curious to yeah it's just like the idea uh because it just it creates this bifurcation between like the unenlightened and the enlightened it kind of creates this priesthood and i have some fundamental allergic reaction to like this intermediate to the divine if that makes any sense and i'm not saying that is how it is presented within zen buddhism but i do see how that could be used to create power dynamics that are unhealthy yeah so that's that's

Starting point is 02:36:31 that's one of the things that i was concerned with having grown up in a religious household and later you know kind of understanding that some of what i was told was not necessarily true but the reason i'm so attracted to zen when we're talking about earlier is just like they ask you it's not about believing what they say they ask you to taste it for yourself that's what they say you know yeah i dig that that's cool i can get behind that awesome man well please make the intro and then i'll i'll chat with mr henry what an episode this has been. We've had lightning strikes. I almost threw up at the beginning.

Starting point is 02:37:09 Yeah, Kevin almost puked in the beginning. Technology was taken down by an act of God. Right. Covered a lot of ground here. Yeah, yeah. Good times, man. Well, it's good to hang. Good to spend some time together.

Starting point is 02:37:23 Anything else you'd like to mention before we wrap? I asked my wife what we should talk about on the show and she said, how about my podcast? So I should, I thought that was a funny one. And yeah, so my wife, Daria Rose, she's a PhD neuroscientist from UCSF and she has a fantastic new show called The Daria Rose Show. She's covering some crazy topics, dude. She has other scientists on so they can talk science. You should give some background on Daria for people who don't know. I mean, she has a lot of scientific training, so you should just maybe explain that for those who may be first-time listeners. Yeah, well, we just talked recently about Adam Ghazali and his lab over at USSF. So she worked with Adam.

Starting point is 02:38:06 So she's got her PhD from there in neuroscience, studied stem cell biology, and anything above and beyond that is outside of my pay grade. But for her, what she loves to do these days is really focus on how to take science and break it down, like things that we can actually trust, and break it down, like things that we can actually trust and break it down so that the average consumer can understand it. So she has several episodes on like, how can we trust vaccines? Why should we trust vaccines? What does the science actually say? Who should

Starting point is 02:38:38 we look for or to for that information? She's going to be covering like birth control and what we understand in the science there. A lot of women's issues as well, how to raise children in a thoughtful way that doesn't damage them forever. She had Dr. Andrew Weil on recently, and they talked about how to trust alternative medicine. Like, what do you know is true out there? There's so much BS. How do you vet that stuff? So I'm just really proud of her. You know, she's just kicking ass doing, she and Drew Huberman on the show, like you said about the whole episode on sleep. So many great takeaways there, but yeah, she's done a great job. And yeah, Daria Rocheau. Yeah. Daria is very legit and very, very smart. Very good at translating without

Starting point is 02:39:22 dumbing down also, which is very hard to do. It is very hard to translate without dumbing down. And she does a great job of that. Miss Dardar. I know. We need to get together, dude. We need to do a little couples thing. Please give hugs to Daria. People definitely check it out. Anything else? That's it, dude. You can find me at Kevin Rose on Twitter. Modern dot finance is the podcast or I shouldn't say dot it's,

Starting point is 02:39:51 it's called modern finance, but if you want to go to the website, it's modern dot finance on the web. And yeah, dude, thanks for having me on. This was fun as always. Yeah,

Starting point is 02:39:58 man. Super, super fun. And yeah, for me, I don't have much to say. You can find me on Tim dot blog. Everything I do is there

Starting point is 02:40:05 twitter at t ferris two r's two s's at t i am ferris at tim ferris on instagram yeah tim tim coin is the new coin that's right i'm gonna launch that i'm gonna do a salon coin can i launch a cryptocurrency under your name please don't this is called tim tim coin oh that'd be that'd be really great for my liability just what i want to think about is i'm going to bed by the way just launched two minutes ago 11 12 p.m tim tim don't worry about it i'll take care of it yeah i'll put a ton in your wallet what a mess what a mess, I won't do that. But I may do some NFTs.

Starting point is 02:40:48 You should do an NFT, dude. You really should. I mean, why not, right? I mean, people don't have to buy it. If you understand, it's just a speculative experiment. I'm doing something weird to learn more about it. Why not? Yeah.

Starting point is 02:40:57 I'd definitely bid on your first Tim Tim's Talk Talk. Episode one. All right, Kev Kev. Well, it's good to see you, man. All right, Kev Kev. Well, it's good to see you, man. All right, brother. Good chatting. And to everybody listening, you'll be able to find show notes,

Starting point is 02:41:11 links to everything, all the companies, books, compounds, God knows what. Then we mentioned Japanese terms. Sorry, show notes, friend. You'll be able to find it at tim.blog.com. And until next time, thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off.

Starting point is 02:41:32 Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little

Starting point is 02:42:12 tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Viore clothing spelled V-U-O-R-I, Viore. I've been wearing Viore at least one item per day for the last few months and you can use it for everything. It's performance apparel, but it can be used for working out. It can be used for going out to dinner. At least in my case, I feel very comfortable with it. Super comfortable, super stylish. And I just want to read something that one of my

Starting point is 02:42:57 employees said. She is an athlete. She is quite technical, although she would never say that. I asked her if she had ever used or heard of Viore, and this was her response. I do love their stuff. Been using them for about a year. I think I found them at REI. First for my partner, t-shirts that are super soft but somehow last as he's hard on stuff. And then I got into the super soft cotton yoga pants and jogger sweatpants. I live in them, and they too have lasted. They're stylish enough. I can wear them out and about. The material is just super soft and durable. I just got their clementine running shorts for summer and love them. The brand seems pretty popular, constantly sold out. In closing, and I'm abbreviating here, but in closing, with the exception of when I need

Starting point is 02:43:38 technical outdoor gear, they're the only brand I've bought in the last year or so for yoga, running, loungewear that lasts and that I think look good also. I like the discreet logo. So that gives you some idea. That was not intended for the sponsor read. That was just her response via text. Viori, again spelled V-U-O-R-I, is designed for maximum comfort and versatility. You can wear it running. You can wear their stuff training, doing yoga, lounging, weekend errands, or in my case, again, going out to dinner. It really doesn't matter what you're doing. Their clothing is so comfortable and looks so good. And it's non-offensive. You don't have a huge brand logo on your face. You'll just want to be in them all the time. And my girlfriend and I have been wearing them for the last few months. They're men's core short, K-O-R-E. The most comfortable lined athletic short is your one

Starting point is 02:44:30 short for every sport. I've been using it for kettlebell swings, for runs, you name it. The Banks short, this is their go to land to sea short, is the ultimate in versatility. It's made from recycled plastic bottles. And what I'm wearing right now, which I had to pick one to recommend to folks out there, or at least to men out there, is the Ponto Performance Pant. And you'll find these at the link I'm going to give you guys. You can check out what I'm talking about. But I'm wearing them right now. They're thin performance sweatpants, but that doesn't do them justice.

Starting point is 02:45:00 So you got to check it out. P-O-N-T-O, Ponto Performance Pant. For you ladies, the Women's Performance Jogger is the softest jogger you'll ever own. Viore isn't just an investment in your clothing. It's an investment in your happiness. And for you, my dear listeners, they're offering 20% off your first purchase. So get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet. It's super popular. A lot of my friends I've now noticed are wearing this and so am I. Vioreclothing.com forward slash Tim. That's V-U-O-R-I clothing.com slash Tim. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but you'll also enjoy free shipping on any US orders

Starting point is 02:45:40 over $75 and free returns. So check it out. Vioreclothing.com slash Tim. That's V-U-O-R-I clothing.com slash Tim and discover the versatility of Viore clothing. This episode is brought to you by Tonal, T-O-N-A-L. Get ready for the smartest home gym you've ever seen. That's a men's health headline about Tonal, folks, and that gives you the gist. If you're wondering about the smart part, Tonal's homepage also features a quote from the New York Times. Quote, the machine knew my strength better than I did. End quote. More on that in just a minute. By eliminating traditional metal weights, Tonal can deliver 200 pounds of resistance in a device smaller than a flat screen TV. Tonal mounts on your wall with no floor space required. I've had

Starting point is 02:46:25 a Tonal unit now for six to 12 months, which I got after a number of very close friends recommended Tonal. And it allows me to do things I would normally need a much larger gym for, like cable chop and lift or rotational exercises, things I wrote about in the 4-Hour Body. And it allows me to do these things that are nearly impossible otherwise, like eccentric loading, which I'll mention later. Tonal is precision engineered and designed to be the world's most advanced strength studio and personal trainer. It uses breakthrough technology like adaptive digital weights and AI learning together with the best experts in resistance training, so you get stronger faster. So what are these adaptive digital weights? Tonal's patented digital weight system

Starting point is 02:47:05 makes thousands of calculations a second to deliver you a smooth weightlifting experience using advanced electronic motor technology. Tonal lets you adjust the weight in one pound increments, something that was never possible with traditional dumbbells. It's easy to dial weights up and down with the touch of a button right in the grip itself. It's pretty cool. Tonal also has built-in dynamic weight modes like chains, eccentric, that's E-C-C-E-N-T-R-I-C, and their patent-pending SmartFlex technology so that you can experiment with more ways to get stronger, faster, without the hassle of extra equipment like chains and bands. And it, once again, fits on the wall like

Starting point is 02:47:40 flat screen TV, so you can make the best use out of the smallest footprint in your home or garage, wherever you end up putting it. So try Tonal, T-O-N-A-L, the world's smartest home gym for 30 days in your home. And if you don't love it, you can return it for a full refund. Visit www.tonal.com, that's T-O-N-A-L. And for a limited time, get $100 off of the smart accessories when you use promo code TIM100 at checkout. That's www.tonal.com, promo code TIM100.

Starting point is 02:48:12 Tonal. Be your strongest.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #527: The Random Show — Life-Extension Misadventures, Blockchain/Crypto Investing, NFT Experiments, Dogecoin, Zen Buddhism, and Weathering Sharp Elbows

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #527: The Random Show — Life-Extension Misadventures, Blockchain/Crypto Investing, NFT Experiments, Dogecoin, Zen Buddhism, and Weathering Sharp Elbows

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.