The Tim Ferriss Show - #586: The Random Show with Kevin Rose — Current Books, Men's Groups, Tuna Helper, the Latest in NFTs, Fierce Intimacy, and More

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Starting point is 00:06:25 Dude, good to see you, brother. Been too long. It has been a little while. And as I'm sitting here, I'm holding this $80 mic in a probably what is a stand that costs 15 cents to manufacture. And we were laughing a little bit before recording because you mentioned that you had a family plan with some piece of software instead of the business plan because it saves you like $3 a month. And I was wondering, where are you unreasonably cheap or sensitive because i still have a bunch of stupid completely outdated behaviors around saving like i mean literally a dollar here a dollar there twenty dollars here twenty dollars there and i was like and the reason i'm holding this mic is because my cable is too short to have power end this mic

Starting point is 00:07:25 in this confined space at the same time. So after 600 episodes, maybe it's time for me to invest in a better rig. Yeah, I mean, you have budget for that, I would imagine. I do have everything going. Of all the things that I should put a little coin into, that would be one. Is there anything that you're,

Starting point is 00:07:45 you're stupidly frugal about? Oh dude, there's a ton of things like this is the weird thing is I think it comes down from like being raised with not a lot of cash and then having a little bit more disposable income as you get older. And when you think about like one of the things I did is I signed up for the, uh, the Spotify couples plan.

Starting point is 00:08:03 Cause there's, there's like a five pack or something and they're the family plan, but there's a, there's a special couples plan where you, it's just two people. And so I did that because he saves me like $3 a month. But the other thing though, that sucks is like, then you can't tie any other accounts to any of the other devices. So like, for example, I have my Sonos is my account and my wife's account is in her Tesla. And then in my Tesla is my account. And so like, I'll be driving around and like, it'll get switched off because somebody turns on the Sonos or something like that. And it's all because I don't want to spend an extra $4. So I can have those extra couple of

Starting point is 00:08:40 accounts. I just want to point out for people who missed it, two individual Teslas, but at least you're saving those $3 a month. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Saving the three bucks. Old habits die hard. Old habits die hard, man. I mean, we don't have the expensive Teslas. It's fine. It's okay. You're allowed. I would also say, you know, I grew up where we would eat. We had a lot of TV dinners growing up. Oh, yeah, same. We did not have a lot of money. And I became very sensitive to wasting food.

Starting point is 00:09:15 So I would say if I look back at the food poisoning or anything bordering on food poisoning that i've had in the last two years i'd say at least 50 of it is self-inflicted and it's from saving not wanting to throw away food and then like forgetting about some equivalent of like chicken tenders or something that i got take out and then i eat it like four days past the expiration date and then uh i'm floored for two or three days so stupid yeah. Yeah, that's not fun. I used to love dente more beef stew. We did a lot of tuna helper at my house, which was odd because the hamburger helper was way better than that damn tuna helper. That sounds terrible.

Starting point is 00:09:53 I've never even heard of tuna helper. There was tuna helper back in the day. I hope they discontinued it because it was absolutely horrible. For some reason, my dad was like, oh, tuna is better for him than hamburger or something. So it was always when dad was cooking. When mom was cooking, it was like a good meal. When dad had to step into the kitchen, out came the tuna helper or Denty Moore beef stew or whatever that was in the cans. Oh, what a mess.

Starting point is 00:10:20 All right. So we'll segue from outdated behaviors. We could do a whole episode on those. Where would you like to start? I could kick it off, if you want, with a bunch of books, because I've been doing a lot of reading. Awesome. Let's start with books. And there's a little something for everybody here, because I have been reading a lot. And in some cases, it's more of a show and tell than reading. So I'll show you the cover of one that I think you'll particularly like this is a book called visions of

Starting point is 00:10:47 Japan and the subtitle is kawase that's kawase hasui kawase hasui's masterpieces so I'll just show the cover here awesome it's a beautiful collection of woodblock prints. And some people will recognize, for instance, at least one piece of art by Hokusai, who has the very famous piece of these almost fractal-like waves coming over from left to right, these ormen in boats that are coming into these huge waves and a lot of people would recognize this particular image kawase's style is very different specializes mostly in landscape trees and uses snow to tremendous effect so the assistance he had ultimately in his workshop we were helping with the development of the wood blocks, had to develop new techniques to accommodate the complexity of the snow.

Starting point is 00:11:52 And I was introduced to this particular artist through Maria Popova, who created Brain Picker, Brain Pickings, which is now called the Marginalian, which doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but so it goes. It's a newsletter and a site that has millions and millions of subscribers now. She's been on the podcast a few times, started as a casual email to, I want to say, six friends at a time and has grown into this behemoth. She's an incredible writer and prolific, prolific writer. And she had a post on Kawasei Hasui. So that's number one. And it's almost all visual, as you can see here. It has beautiful pieces from every era, every chapter of his life, and every possible season and condition in Japan. So this brought back a lot of wonderful memories. So as a coffee table book, something that's easy to dip in and out of that you don't have to read start to finish, that's one.

Starting point is 00:12:55 I also recently finished a book called A Moral Man or A Moral Man, depending on how you read it. And I know that is deliberate so it's one word a-m-o-r-a-l-m-a-n which was recommended to me by mark plotkin dr mark plotkin who's an ethno botanist and expert primarily in central and South American medicinal plants, but has a fantastic podcast where he goes into one plant or set of plants per episode. These aren't like psychedelic. These are like full medicinal, like...

Starting point is 00:13:34 They're both. So there's some psychedelics. He knows those very, very well. But he'll do an entire episode on tobacco, then an entire episode on cannabis, then an entire episode, which will include hemp and the history of hemp in the United States. He'll do an entire episode on coca, an entire episode on wine, for instance. And it goes back and covers the entire history from sort of day one of human history as we have it recorded.

Starting point is 00:14:04 Fascinating show. Really fun. Really, really fun. I want to hear that tobacco one. I wish tobacco was better for you. And I say that because I don't, I've never smoked at all, but I have had a tobacco infused cocktail one time. Oh my God, dude, those are amazing. It's strong. I was at this restaurant in San Francisco and they had taken tobacco leaves and they infused it in this bourbon and they're not supposed to do this. It's like totally illegal. It was just like some kind of legals. Yeah. And so I ordered, I'm like, that sounds interesting. Like tobacco infused. And they're like, no, no, no. Like it's real tobacco leaves. Are you cool with that? And I'm like, well, I'm not smoking it, I guess. But then

Starting point is 00:14:42 I later read, you know, obviously any form of like getting tobacco and use bad for you. And so I drank it and one cocktail and I stand up and I felt my feet were sinking into the ground. I almost fell over. I was buzzed like super high. I was like, oh my God, if you never do nicotine and then you hit that nicotine, it's real. It can knock you on your ass. And just safety notes. There's an entire book. It's very academic and dense, so I don't recommend it necessarily, but there's an entire book and I'm going to come back to a moral man. But there's a book called something like Tobacco Use in South American Shamanism. And it's an older book. I want to say it was published in the 70s or 80s. The author has a name along the lines of like Johan or Johan Wilbert, I want to say.

Starting point is 00:15:31 I've read this entire book. And tobacco use is highly prevalent across most of the Amazon. It's consumed in different ways. This is true in North America as well. And if you look at- When you say different ways, what do you mean by consumed in different ways. This is true in North America as well. And if you look at- When you say different ways, what do you mean by consumed in different ways? Like what are the different, like there's oral- The different means, there's smoking, but there are many different ways of smoking. There are snuffs.

Starting point is 00:15:56 So you have insufflation, so inhaling tobacco in one form or another, often combined with other things. You have blowing tobacco, either smoke or ground tobacco into the anus. That's one. You have... You're being serious. I'm being totally serious. You have drinking of tobacco juice, which is the one I wanted to mention as, in addition to several others, very dangerous. A number of people have died in the last few years in South America as, let's just call it psychedelic tourists who have ingested tobacco juice. I mean, you can end up with tachycardia and then heart attacks and

Starting point is 00:16:39 all sorts of issues. It's very dangerous. You can die of nicotine poisoning so you need to be extremely cautious about it have you tried any of these i have stayed away i have experienced sort of insufflation a lot of people now it's trendy i think it's actually too trendy in the sense that it can do quite a bit of damage if you're overusing it, but people listening may recognize a word called rapé or rapé. Some people say it with the Brazilian pronunciation because they don't want it to sound like rapey. Rapé, but it is a pulverized tobacco often mixed with other things that people will blow into their own nostrils. So there's a V-shaped joined pair of tubing and you stick one in your mouth and you've already compressed some version of tobacco into the other side and

Starting point is 00:17:32 then you blow it into your nostril and it shoots up into your sinuses. When you say mixed with other things, what is it typically mixed with? It really depends on, it's like a cocktail. It depends on who you're purchasing it from which tribe a lot of these are of dubious origin in the sense that many psychedelic or psychedelic related paraphernalia and compounds are spun a yarn of this incredible history of indigenous use whereas for instance toad so sometimes referred to as bufo the molecule in question is 5-meo-dmt 5-methoxy-dmt there's this entire story now versions of a story spun about indigenous use and there seems to be no compelling evidence that there's actual indigenous use of the bufal various toad goes by a number of other latin names but the sonoran desert toad there seems to be no compelling

Starting point is 00:18:31 evidence that this specific toad was used as a source of 5meo by any indigenous group and in fact it was ken nelson an amateur biochemist who was a genius in many respects, who ultimately through trial and error developed smoked venom from Bufo alvareus as one means of consuming 5-MeO DMT. Now, 5-MeO DMT is found in other things. It's found in other plant species, many plant species in different types of tree nuts, for instance, something called yopal. There are many different sources, but I guess the point I want to make, which is a long answer to your question, is that a lot of these tobacco cocktails that are being sold to blow up your nostril or nostrils, I don't think have any basis in indigenous news but sometimes it's mixed with things that are not psychotropic i advise generally against this i mean there are potential uses blah blah blah but i know people who just as you can with cigarettes become addicted to udapay but because they're in venice and you know doing like a yoga wasca retreat and everyone's talking about how highly

Starting point is 00:19:48 evolved they are by blowing it up their nostril instead of smoking it, suddenly it's socially reinforced. And then you have people who are going through like an entire canister of this stuff every week because they're addicted to nicotine. Well, and it's still proven that this is bad for the heart and causes cancer. This different delivery mechanism doesn't get around that in any way, right? versed in sort of contemporary medical applications of nicotine. I know that there are almost certainly potential medical applications which would be administered in some way that is not smoking, right? Because lung cancer will kill you, let's be clear. Yeah. I had read something around a study that was done on the nicotine patches, and it was more around heart health and there being some potential

Starting point is 00:20:45 negative effects around that. But I know a lot of the biohacker community, at least a few people that I bumped into, they like the nicotine patches. They'll slap it on and it's a nice little booster. You know, you take it with your coffee in the morning and it's like you do a rail or something. Oh, it'll light you up and it will also put you on the ground. I mean, I've experienced Rope a number of times. It's not not my go-to of Tuesday, wake me up or anything. And I remember doing it with someone who, at the time, with someone who was using it probably, I don't know, 10 to 15 times a week, somewhere in that range, like twice a day. And he had a really high tolerance and he packed my tube with, and he's also like mid 200s probably in body weight. So he packed this tube and I blew it up my nostril and I immediately broke out into like a cold sweat.

Starting point is 00:21:39 Room is spinning and I needed to lay on my back for like 45 minutes. It was awful. It was absolutely terrible. So don't take it lightly. This is a detour we took off of Mark Plotkin. Check out his podcast, Planet of the Gods. He also wrote a book called either The or A Shaman's Apprentice, which is very, very good about his adventures in places like Suriname. Really knows his stuff. He was a protege of an incredible sort of father of ethnobotany in the United States called Richard Evans Schultes, who was at Harvard. I've had Mark on the podcast before,

Starting point is 00:22:12 fascinating guy, also runs a nonprofit called the Amazon Conservation Team, which does really interesting work in helping indigenous communities in particular, not only to secure their land as protected, but also to monitor it using raspberry pie and technology and so on. Because if you can't enforce the boundaries and prevent poachers and illegal logging and so on, there's not really much value to a place being protected, if it makes any sense. But Mark recommended this book, A Moral Man, by a guy named Derek Delgaudio. So Derek Delgaudio, D-E-L-G-A-U-D-I-O, I recognized because there was a one-man show that he did on Hulu, or it was available on Hulu. It was performed in New York City with storytelling, sleight of hand, kind of stage mentalism, although a lot of it was just like brute force, incredible memorization called In and of Itself.

Starting point is 00:23:11 So if anyone hasn't seen Derek DelGaudio's show In and of Itself, Kevin, you would love this. It's awesome. It's so good. Gaudio in and of itself. I recognize the one-man show, and a moral man goes into his entire life story of growing up with a single mom and then learning about magic, ultimately becoming a card mechanic in illegal games, like high-stakes card games. And the whole story is really good. I was very impressed with the writing. So that's one. And then the last one I'll mention is a novel. It's called Ka, just K-A, by John Crowley.

Starting point is 00:23:53 And it is a long book. I would guess I read it on Kindle, but probably 400 to 500 pages about a single crow who basically, I don't think I'll give away too much here by saying it's reincarnated over and over and over again and develops the ability to communicate with humans. And it's a cool book. I will warn you in advance that it takes literally a hundred pages probably to get warmed up to the point where you're like, oh, this is actually now interesting. So there's a lot of setup involved. So be forewarned. But John Crowley is interesting to me because he wrote a book, another book that takes about 100 pages to get warmed up with, called Little Big, Little, Big. And that is one of the best novels I've ever read in my life. It leaves you in an altered state for, at least left me and I know several other people in an altered state for a few weeks after you read this book.

Starting point is 00:24:50 Wait, which one was that column? I'm taking notes here. It's so good. Little Big. Little Big? Little Big. And I think an alternate subtitle or a sometimes included subtitle is like The Fairy's Parliament or something like that. But the pro tip with little

Starting point is 00:25:06 big, it's so good. It is. I just, I'm telling people in advance, it's like some heavy lifting in the beginning because you have to establish a bunch of context. Once you get to the talking fish, you'll know that you're about to turn a corner into the really wild, fascinating stuff. But there is a family tree in the beginning of the paperback edition, which was given to me as gift by my brother. And I put it down. I tried to read it and put it down like three times. And I'm just like, why did my brother give this to me? Like, it's not that interesting in the beginning. And then when it finally turns the corner, you're like, oh my God, this is one of the best books I've ever read. And wow. So you're back in, you gave up reading new books for a while. Well, I gave up, this is like a technical point that I think is worth

Starting point is 00:25:56 underscoring. I gave up and I still am giving up reading new books, meaning books that are published in this year. But I am reading books. So I'm reading books, but John Crowley's book, Little Big, as well as Ka, these were published many years ago. And the reason I made that decision and policy is because I get deluged with dozens of books a week that I don't request. They get sent to me and then- People want you to plug them. I get the same thing. You get them in the mail and you're just like, yeah. And sometimes they're friends, right? Very often they're friends. I mean, that's like I've done 600 episodes. So it's like of those 600 people, how many of them

Starting point is 00:26:36 write continuously and have books coming out? A lot, right? So I can't accommodate all of them, even if I can have one of them on the podcast, if all I did was read one out of every 10 books sent to me, I would never have time to do anything else. So there's this blog post I wrote quite a while back called, I think it's like the one finding the one decision that removes a thousand decisions, something like that. If people search it, they can find it. If they go to tim.blog forward slash new books, they'll see it because we, I send that now to people. So it doesn't feel like a personalized decline. That's a role in 12 months. People don't send them books all in December and expect it to happen.

Starting point is 00:27:15 Well, I actually put, I put something at the beginning of it, which was like, this has been extended indefinitely. So basically if you're about to send me a book that is like sent in any new year, like forget about it. Right. So it's if you're about to send me a book that is sent in any new year, forget about it. So it's going to be a tough sell. But those are some of the books that I've been enjoying. And I will probably go into, I think John Crowley has a collection, a three-part series that is Egypt or A-E, Egypt spelled with an with an AE. So I may dig into that next, but I think the book that kind of mesmerized the most people that I'm aware of is The Little Big. And I left something out. So in the beginning, there's a family tree. Do yourself a huge favor

Starting point is 00:28:00 and take a photograph of that or shit's going to get really confusing. So take a photograph, even if it's on Kindle, like take your phone out and take a photograph of that or shit's going to get really confusing. So take a, take a photograph, even if it's on Kindle, like take your phone out and take a photograph of the family tree because you're going to want to refer back to it. Fantastic book. So that is some of my information diet at the moment. I've got one book to mention. So go for it. Peter Tia, mutual friend, obviously been on your show a bunch. Turned me on. He actually had an episode of his podcast, The Peter Tia Drive, where he interviewed Terry Real, which is this fantastic therapist mainly focused on actually male therapy and issues around that males run into. And I got invited to join a men's group with Terry, actually. I'd never done one of these. I don't know if you've done men's groups before.

Starting point is 00:28:44 I've never done one. You've done men's groups with a – groups with it. It's really interesting. Yeah. So I hadn't either. And I was invited to join one of these men's groups and essentially it is picture eight people over zoom. Terry's there as well. So you have your therapist in the room and I'd never done any type of group therapy thing before I'd done individual therapy and couples therapy, but never group. And he kicks it off by saying, okay, we're gonna go around the room and we're gonna spend, everyone gets 10 minutes

Starting point is 00:29:13 to just tell me what's on your mind, what's going on. And there's none of this bullshit like, well, I took my kids out. No, that's like, no, no, no. What is it hitting you at a deep level that you are struggling with? And he calls you on your bullshit. Like if

Starting point is 00:29:26 it's such generic answers, cause everybody has their shit, right? Like the thing that they're, they're struggling with, like my spouse did this, or, you know, like it could be any slew of different things that you're running into, you know, like right now for me, it's my mom's dealing with cancer. Right. So I like, that was the thing that I went into. And you spend those first 10, 15 minutes, and it's really eye-opening. And they put you in a group of peers that when you look around the room, you're kind of in a similar stage in life. And you have these really deep conversations, and one person can be, you know, got caught cheating on their wife or whatever it may be.

Starting point is 00:30:03 And you realize instantly, like, oh my God, like so many people actually struggle with the same things that I struggle with every single day in my head, which is nice. It's refreshing. And then the people that are having the most pain for that particular session, he does a couple of times a month. It's a two hour long session. He'll go deep with those people. So say, okay, you're the two people today we're going to go deep with. And then you just watch as he dissects and just ninjas around and gets them oftentimes to tears by the end of it and really, really goes in deep into some of these issues that

Starting point is 00:30:40 these men are bringing up. And I had never really thought about doing that. And it was a really beautiful thing. And I had never really thought about doing that. And it was a really beautiful thing. And you're very supportive. They always say, does anyone want to comment on what this person just said? And it's never about judging them or saying, well, I think you're doing this wrong. It's more like, this is how this landed on me. Is that a rule that was established up front? It is a rule. There's, there's no opinions.

Starting point is 00:31:06 You can, yeah. What are the rules? You comment on how it landed on you and how you see it through your lens, but this is only applicable to you. You can say general supportive things like, I thought you were really courageous for saying that. Thank you for sharing it with me. Things like that. You can always pass at any time. So if anything makes you uncomfortable, you can always pass. There is 100% what happens in this room stays in this room. We're talking about some very crazy topics here that maybe some people haven't disclosed that to their even closest friends or partners, right? There's all kinds of issues that I heard came up where I was just like, I can't believe we're talking about this, but it's nice.

Starting point is 00:31:43 It's nice to know that other men are struggling with this stuff. And so that was fantastic. And I've been doing that for a few months now. And it's led me to just, I don't know, there was some great insights in there that I just came away with. But then it led me actually to Terry's books as well, because these are quite expensive kind of groups as Terry's a pretty sought after type of individual therapist. And so he has this book that he turned us on to called Fierce Intimacy. That's one of his books? Yes. Fierce Intimacy. And it's great. He reads his own audio books. It's on Audible.

Starting point is 00:32:18 And it's how to communicate with love and respect, even when you argue. And this has been just a game changer for me when it comes to how I can relate, how I can prevent self-sabotaging habits, just how to deal with your partner in a way that is constructive and moving forward and not judging and being able to know when to let information in and take it in and digest it and let it hit your stuff like internally and when to know that the other person is just venting and actually it's coming more from them. And it's okay to put a wall up sometimes and block that information because it's where they're coming from and it shouldn't land and hit you in the wrong way. It's such a beautiful, simple framework that I absolutely love. And the other thing I love about him is he was kind of a pioneer in this space. He's not a

Starting point is 00:33:03 therapist that just sits there and listens to both sides and be like, it sounds like what you're saying is this. He takes sides in therapy. He's like, he's like, no, that's fucking wrong. Like you're doing this, like she's right here. Or, you know, like the, and so you hear a lot of that happening in this conversation. And I'm like, finally, you know, like I like a therapist because sometimes I know I'm right sometimes, you know? So, so I just found this guy to be really refreshing and probably people that are, some people are laughing because they know this is a really popular person. At first I had heard of him was six months ago, but he's a very famous therapist. But anyway, highly recommend Fierce Intimacy.

Starting point is 00:33:37 Daria and I both listened to it. My wife and I both listened to it. And it's already improved the way that we communicate with each other, the way we have conversations, the way we let information flow in and actually land on us. So I'd put it in there in terms of books to recommend. How long is that book? I did it on Audible. So I think it was like seven hours or something like that. Yeah. So it's probably like 250 pages, something like that. Pretty easy. Do you think you have found it helpful because you are also in the group or is it, do you

Starting point is 00:34:06 think it's effective as a standalone, the book? Absolutely. Because Daria listened to not being in the group, obviously, and she found it effective as a standalone as well. And the reason I like it is it just doesn't dance around this, like, we always have to be head over heels in love. It's like every single day that you wake up, one person might be up, one person might be down.

Starting point is 00:34:28 And it's always about finding your way back to that middle safe, like comfort zone. And relationships are nothing but, you have these moments of beautiful things and bliss happening, but largely it's about the other points, right? And like how you get back to those states. Yeah, and returning back to that state of health

Starting point is 00:34:47 and understanding and how to both know that you're on the same team and have the same goals in mind and working with a framework that supports that. So I don't know, I really loved it. I've really struggled. I've listened to a couple other relationship books because I'm always trying to improve.

Starting point is 00:35:02 I've been married nine years now and Daria and I are in a really good place now. But you know me, Tim, we've had these conversations like one-on-one. There's bumps with all these relationships, right? And it's like, you know, Daria and I did couples therapy for a bit, especially when you introduce kids into the equation.

Starting point is 00:35:17 My God, that changes everything. And so it's like, this is the first time I read a book where I was like, this is speaking to me and working. So I wanted to throw it out there. That's great. That's a big deal. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront, you may have heard of it, pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as robo-advising,

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Starting point is 00:36:29 For the curious, that's called tax loss harvesting. You can also personalize your portfolio with a selection of funds handpicked by Wealthfront's financial experts. Categories include social responsibility, clean energy, cannabis, and cryptocurrency. Wealthfront is helping nearly half a million people build their wealth, and Investopedia just named them their best robo-advisor for 2022. To start building your wealth and to get your first $5,000 managed for free for life, go to wealthfront.com slash Tim. That's W-E-A-L-T-H-F-R-O-N-T dot com slash Tim to start building your wealth. One more time, go to wealthfront.com slash Tim to start building your wealth. One more time, go to Wealthfront.com slash Tim to get started today. You know, I have considered men's groups a number of times. I think I probably have, on one hand, like an unfair judgment, although I've seen this before. So it's not totally unfair. Like some men's groups, like, all right, we're going to this before. So it's not totally unfounded.

Starting point is 00:37:28 Like some men's groups are like, all right, we're going to go in the woods and like wear furs and bang on drums and like yell and scream. And I'm like, eh, I'm not sure that's the medicine I need right now. And then, you know, I've had some misgivings at different points, but the kind of meta commentary that I would make, and this has been a conversation and it's a conversation I've had actually with quite a few women because I've just observed that women, I think, are in general, again, I'm painting with a broad brush, but better at kind of social cohesion and gathering and that type of communal intimacy. And there are very few places outside of a sports team or the bar or fill in the blank option C where men have those communal experiences. But if you look back at our history, if we look back hundreds of years, thousands of years, that was an inbuilt feature of different communities.

Starting point is 00:38:36 And I think that society at large ends up in a very precarious, volatile situation men especially younger men don't have that right it's like okay if you have somebody who is feeling alienated who is pumped full of hormones like let's just say like kind of 16 to 22 right with no sense of social belonging and a lot of physiologically driven or at least informed aggression like that is a significant societal problem right yes and i have thought about that the other thing i'll add on top of that is you know traditionally when you think about men getting together and shooting the shit it is that bar bar setting, it is that sports game, it whatever it may be. And it's very high level, right?

Starting point is 00:39:29 Like at that point, you're just like, I have things like, you know, wife's doing this, blah, blah. You don't have the permission really. Like in my group, I was like, my mom had her cancer return. I'm going to miss her when she's gone because I'm a little boy. I will miss the feeling of my head on her shoulder stuff that I'm just, this is like so deep and intimate to me because I love her so deeply. You don't get that over a beer necessarily to be able to go and to see other men around the table doing the same thing,

Starting point is 00:39:58 because we all at that point have set the ground rules. It's a safe space. We can just really, really let it out. And lots of tears come. And one of the things Terry always says that's really interesting during it, people will start to cry, men will start to cry, and tears will start to cry. And he goes, what are those tears saying? What are those tears saying right now? Give me more. Give me more. Open that door a little bit further than you're comfortable opening up. Like you, yeah, I triggered something.

Starting point is 00:40:25 Here come the tears. We'll unpack that further. And then it just goes from there and it's deeper and deeper layers and it's released, man. I mean, you know how this is psychedelics help with this a lot. When I did my high dose mushroom experience, I was sobbing after, you know, cause my father passed away. It gave me that permission to let that stuff go.

Starting point is 00:40:44 And it's a very special thing when, can do it because it's so healthy. I'd love to actually ask you, because you can probably correct or at least inform my initial impression. So I listened to that episode on Peter's podcast, or I listened to the first half. So maybe I didn't give it enough time, but I listened to the first half and other people I know have listened to that episode and immediately bought a bunch of books. So I may be peculiar in this way, but I listened to the first half and he seemed, my impression was that Terry had a real ax to grind maybe on masculine strength, if this makes any sense. So he talked a lot about toxic masculinity. Okay, fine. Talked about the counterparts to that. And it seems like he didn't grow up with,

Starting point is 00:41:34 say, a kind of healthy interaction with exemplars of male strength. He didn't seem to have the sports background. He mentions his dad wanted him to be this like jocular athletic kid and he wasn't that, but I came away feeling that he had maybe very partial view of masculine strength. And I think it's, I do feel like it is a mistake and it's also kind of conformist groupthink to automatically excise male strength from the topics that we can discuss as important. I do think there's a place for that. So I'd just be curious to hear your thoughts because my impression in listening to the first half, I was like, oh, wow, this guy's like rah-rah kind of feminine energy. The future is feminine. That's fine. But if it's to the exclusion of

Starting point is 00:42:26 trying to cultivate strength in men, even if that does look on some level traditional, even cross-culturally, I mean, we see certain sort of typified behaviors, not saying they're all good, like all things in excess can become sort of the opposite of what we're aiming for. How would you speak to that? Because that turned me off and it probably says more about me than about Terry. No, it's actually, it's, it's funny you should mention that because when I listened to that episode, I immediately thought I don't want to go any further here. It wasn't necessarily for me either, but I trust Peter. and yeah and i know that peter i know that peter's a very masculine dude yeah i mean i watch videos of him shooting his bow out of his

Starting point is 00:43:12 house like into the backyard from the center of his house i'm like who shoots bows in their house into the backyard like he just he's crazy like you know so peter is as masculine as they come and i listened to that episode and i think we unfairly got a very small slice of what terry's all about and when i listened to this book i was like oh thank thank god in some sense like i'm so i'm glad it's much more it seemed a little one-sided there yeah yeah okay got it all right that's helpful i felt the same thing you did dude i absolutely felt the same thing you did i was. I absolutely felt the same thing you did. I was like, okay, is this like, I'm not going to say what I'm going to say. Yeah, I did. I was worried. Yeah. And you know, I think also, you know, for those people who are interested, you can kind of look at Mark Andreessen's commentary on the current thing, right? He has

Starting point is 00:43:56 a lot of thoughts on the current thing in quotation marks. And I don't want to speak for Mark, but I used to start every presentation I did with a quote from Mark Twain. And in this case, I do think it's actually verified. I know it's like Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, and like Gandhi and Groucho Marx get like 90% of all quotes on the internet or Mae West. But the quote was, and I think I'm getting this right, you know, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. And just to identify how much of what I'm actually not just saying, but believing are conclusions I've come to from like first principles or actually following some kind of logical process or from direct experience and how much of it is just conditioning how much of it is a subconscious or conscious fear response because i see people getting you know having

Starting point is 00:44:54 gasoline poured on them and being lit on fire on the internet metaphorically speaking whenever they voice the opposite and i think it's very very important to pay attention to that not just with respect to you know where we segwayed from with with terry but it's like whenever you're too in line with kind of what the majority are saying like it might be true but very often we're absorbing beliefs or perspectives or positions that really aren't, we haven't earned, if that makes sense. We haven't earned those positions. I mean, the same goes true for food.

Starting point is 00:45:33 Like, you're like, oh shit, I'm eating McDonald's. Everyone else is eating McDonald's. Maybe this isn't the best thing for my body. It's just certainly one way to, yeah, that would be one example. So speaking of herd behavior, I'll go the other direction. Should I talk about my first ever NFT? Oh, dude, I'm so excited. You've jumped in. I hesitated partially because as, as you know, since you're responsible for sort of pulling my attention, I've been tracking this stuff for a while. Right. And, and thankfully you got me off my ass cause you're like, Hey, I'm going to be doing this thing. Don't tell anybody. Now we can talk about it. It's going to be called grails. And do you want to be part of it? And do you want

Starting point is 00:46:22 to explain just very briefly what grails was, what it is, and then I can hop into it? Yeah, absolutely. And for those that are listening that have no interest in NFTs or read the headlines out there, rest assured that I can tell you that I, too, being so deep in NFTs, believe that there's a lot of hype in the sector. Like there's a lot of anyone armed with Photoshop right now can publish an NFT to the blockchain. And that means that there's going to be a lot to kind of like sort through and sift through to find the gems. But as an underlying fundamental technology, it is a sound one. And that there's proven scarcity, there's durability of the asset, meaning it doesn't degrade with time. You can transfer it. I mean, there's a bunch of great things about it that it will be around forever, I have no doubt.

Starting point is 00:47:09 Now, that said, there was a lot of hype going on into the world of NFTs here, and there still is, six or so months ago. And I thought to myself, like, let's create an NFT project and call it Grails. And the reason it was called Grails, it was Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, where he has to choose that cup, that very, very famous episode there, I'll choose wisely. And if you choose the wrong one, you turned and shriveled up and died, right? So the thinking there was that so much attention at that time was on flipping NFTs. Oh, I'm going to grab this one. I'm going to buy it for five grand, sell it for a hundred. Also, I'm just going to interject for a second. Also, some people refer to what they might consider like the blue chip

Starting point is 00:47:47 NFTs as grail NFTs. There's also that use of the word. Yeah. Continue. That's right. Yeah. So the thinking there was, okay, let's put the emphasis back on the art and allow people to look and consider each individual piece.

Starting point is 00:48:02 And then they have to make a decision. So 20 artists, 20 anonymous artists, all up on the site. As a member of my little group called The Proof Collective, you got to choose one. So you could go in there and just pick one that you wanted, and then we would do the grand reveal. And so afterwards, we would reveal who the artists were. 100% of the sale of the NFT and the royalties went directly to the artist. So I did not profit at all. And you were kind enough to say, I'm going to be one of those artists that people have

Starting point is 00:48:33 to guess if it's me or not. Yeah. So there are 20. Basically, imagine you go to a website. There are 20 thumbnails of different types of artwork. Most, if not all, artists who are established did something that was non-identifiable. A lot of them did something completely different stylistically so that you wouldn't know it was them. And then people were guessing, right? So there's a lot of speculation in various discords and so on about

Starting point is 00:49:05 who might be the artist behind which piece and when you initially offered it to me and i'll skip to the punchline real quickly if people want to see this uh what the output was i can go to tim.blog slash nft and i'll just forward to a page on open c where you can see what this looks like but i bounced around a whole bunch of ideas and then I realized, wait a second, about a year ago, a bit over a year ago, I wrote a short story and I've never published fiction anywhere. So I've never had a fiction blog post that I can remember. I've never published any fiction in book form. I've never had a magazine article that was fiction. And I decided to take that, which was about, let's say, 1,400 words.

Starting point is 00:49:55 And the name of the piece is How to Start a War. I'll come back to why it's called that, because this was written, keep in mind, more than a year ago. So it has nothing to do with the current conflict. But How to Start a War. It's 1400 or so words and decided to make that the background of this piece and then to layer images on top of it. So I ended up thinking on my own and then along with this designer, Lisa Quine, about how to create something that would actually make a nice, say, poster in a frame on a wall or a print i needed some parameters i needed some constraints i was like okay let me not like blue sky this totally it has to look decent on a wall if someone put this up on a wall

Starting point is 00:50:36 and it's called how to start a war because it is based on a real experience i had which i'll let people read the piece who want to read the piece. The only place you can find this first published fiction piece by me is as this NFT. That's the only place you can find it. And it's an easy read, but the way it starts is with someone handing me a business card and saying, if you want to start a war, call me. And then it's like the whole thing goes down a pretty deep rabbit hole. And most of it is a composite, but true to life, which made it pretty easy to write. And that's it. I mean, that's how it started. And it's been really a fun experience for me. So thank you, Kevin, for getting me off my ass. All the proceeds from this NFT go to my foundation.

Starting point is 00:51:29 So they'll end up funding scientific research and other initiatives related to primarily mental health, possibly longevity and life extension or health span extension, but predominantly mental health. And I feel really good about it. So it's been a fun little experiment and a chance to also kind of understand how some of the plumbing works. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:51:50 It's like, if you want to, there's a point, you can only read so many books about like playing soccer and then you got to get out there and actually kick a ball around, right? Like you're not going to really have a feel for it until you start screwing around

Starting point is 00:52:01 with the actual mechanics and plumbing and having to do things. And you've had some good success, man. One sold for 15 ETH, which is current prices is around 50k. You know, you've had a bunch of good secondary sales. People were pretty pumped. Yeah. And it was fun to also have the reveal. So I think a lot of people minted. And, you know, ultimately, I hope that there will be some durable value because it's not only my first NFT, but it's my first published fiction piece. So you kind of get a two for one. So we'll see.

Starting point is 00:52:31 Let me ask you a question. This is meant to be cut out if you don this original Tim Ferriss piece, something you do in the future, like let's say you do another NFT drop, you get some extra special rights, or maybe they come to one of your live shows, they get to do a meet and greet. Like, have you had any thoughts around like maybe offering some perks to people that own and hold your NFT? I have. I have thought about this.

Starting point is 00:53:01 You're not going to like my answer. I don't want to do it. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, this leads me to a question for you, actually. So I decided I want to under-promise and over-deliver or at least not under-deliver. So as it stands right now. Under-promise and never deliver? Or just never promise.

Starting point is 00:53:19 Never promise and never deliver. Never promise and therefore you don't have to deliver. I wanted it to have, to the extent that it can, again, this is not investment advice. All this stuff could go to zero. Who the fuck knows? But I wanted there to be intrinsic value as a first. And there is, I think, to the extent that there can be. I did not want to make any additional promises. And I asked you a while back, and I'd love to talk about it on

Starting point is 00:53:46 the show if you're open to it. I have a friend, I'm not going to mention the name, but this friend has started different projects in Web3, NFTs, and has made these promises that are kind of ongoing promises. And then the value of whatever he has created is tied to the ongoing delivery of more and more things. And it's ended up being a huge stressor for him because he feels like, A, I have to do this forever. B, I can't figure out how to extricate myself. B, if I don't do that, then when the music stops, like the last people left holding these NFTs will just lose all their money. So he has tremendous guilt also and stress around that.

Starting point is 00:54:35 I'd love to just hear how you think about this and maybe common mistakes that you see people make because it does seem like more and more promises are being made. And so when you launch a project now, and again, this comes back to the Mark Twain thing. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. But I've talked to yet different friends who are like, hey, man, if you launch a project now, like it's table stakes, you have to do this, this, this, this, this, this. Private community, this, events, access, Q&As, da, da, da, da. And I'm like, well, hold on a second. I'm not convinced

Starting point is 00:55:12 everybody can or will deliver those things. And if the table stakes just keep getting larger and larger and larger, that is not ultimately scalable indefinitely, right? Things are going to break. People are going to lose money. Yeah. How do you think about this kind of stuff? What you're describing is what's becoming a pretty normal thing in the NFT world where it's called the utility NFT, where it's not just about the artwork. So many people have heard the name of Beeple or any other, you know, the bigger X copy,

Starting point is 00:55:41 the bigger NFT artists. And like, that's pretty straightforward. It's a JPEG. It looks great. You collect it. You hang it on your wall. Done deal. You're never getting anything else, but it is a piece of art, right? So the utility NFT world is one where when you do buy the NFT, it comes with additional unlocks. And those can be both online, offline. They could be things like with the board apes when they had their token that they launched you. So you got some ape token that came along with it. They had some liquidity to it. It could be things like with the Bored Apes when they had their token that they launched. So you got some ape token that came along with it that had some liquidity to it.

Starting point is 00:56:07 It could be a whole slew of different things. So it is a slippery slope. And it is something I would certainly, it's buyer beware for sure, unless they are taking it serious enough to build a real team around it and considering it a business. What we do at Proof with the Proof Collective membership is it's very much a business for us it's a corporation we have employees we have payroll we have all of that yeah and it is a new type of of media company that we're building from the ground up so i can imagine one is put on the shoulders of an individual like if it was just you doing it a tim nft where you have to manage a discord and do

Starting point is 00:56:44 meetups and all of that. Like, that sounds horrible, right? And the other thing too, is you do have to think about end of life for these particular utility NFTs. So I think the ones that you're right in that you can imagine a world where if you have a utility NFT and it ends at three years, you know, what happens to the price at two years and six months? Do people start bailing on it? And who's the buyer? And if there's any buyers at all,

Starting point is 00:57:11 it just plummets in value and people lose all this money. So our solution, and when I came up with the Proof Collective, again, this is like with Tim's NFT, I'm not telling you to go buy this. First of all, they're outrageous right now. So 1,000 memberships, the current price is $300,000 for a membership. Man, that's amazing.

Starting point is 00:57:25 But we set a three-year limit on this actual, on the benefits. We're four months into a three-year membership. So what happens at year two to this insanely like, you know, crazy asset? So we figured out that there's two things that happen. And for us, one, we're working with, well, we will be working with a very well-known NFT artist to convert and swap out the artwork from a membership card into a real piece of art. So at $1,000, you can do that. You can make them scarce and rare, and you can make them actually individually collectible. And we're going to have to pay this artist because the one that I'm thinking of that we're talking to, it's going to be a very expensive, like million dollar plus kind of check to write to go and have this artist do something really unique. But then when it expires and that swap happens at the last day, you're like, OK, I have value here because this is a real art NFT. And then, of course, at the very end, you do things like there's a season two.

Starting point is 00:58:23 Maybe they get a half discount off into the next season or whatever it may be. So there's ways to mitigate some of that. There's no perfect solution, but I think that is the best that I've come up with to date is really making it something that can stand on its own, even when membership goes away or the benefits go away. I think it's super smart. When you described that to me, it was the first time I had heard of that type of kind of time bound conversion event. Super clever. It's very clever. And I think it highlights also how, as you said, if you're going to participate in anything that has a value predicated on future deliverables and roadmaps, make sure that you do the diligence to evaluate the team behind it.

Starting point is 00:59:12 Yeah, I mean, 100%. Like, really make sure you do that because, holy speculation, Batman, like, there is a lot of action in the space and you need to... Yeah. If you don't have a good way to assess teams or if you don't have an approach to that then don't do it a lot of people talk about something called fud and they don't like it it's this fear uncertainty and doubt and in the nft world they'll be like don't spread fud don't spread fud but i'm actually of the opposite end of the

Starting point is 00:59:39 spectrum and that i believe fud is actually a good thing like we need to have fear uncertainty and doubt in each of these projects and properly evaluate them. Like there's multiple fears when it comes to NFTs raising money. There's a fear around the use of proceeds. What are they going to do? Are they going to disappear after they receive the money?

Starting point is 00:59:55 There's fears around execution risk. Are they going to actually deliver on their promises? There's market fears. Crypto is very lumpy. Does this drop in value by half? Like you need to really evaluate these things and make sure there's a credible team behind them before you go into them. And also pointing out risks is not FUD. So FUD, just to use this in a context where I have exposure

Starting point is 01:00:16 to it. So fear, uncertainty, and doubt, usually when I've run into it in tech. So my first job out of college was selling storage area networks, fiber channel in competition against network appliance and EMC and so on. And the bigger companies would use fear, uncertainty, and doubt, but it wasn't always based on fact. If we were close to winning an account, they would say, well, hey, they're a startup. Yes, they have funding, but how long do you think they're going to be around you just don't know like they might be around in five years but they might be out of business what happens to your service contract who manages the the upkeep if you have

Starting point is 01:00:55 issues with the firmware what's going to happen when you need to swap it out if they run out of funding right so that type of intimidation through uncertainty is kind of one type of FUD. But if we are off a certain coastline in South Africa and there are seals in the water and it's full of great white sharks, and I'm like, maybe you don't want to go in there because there are a lot of great white sharks. If your response is, stop selling me FUD, man. Everything's going to be okay. Then you might just have your arms bitten off. There's actually like a factual. And you're going to bleed out at that point.

Starting point is 01:01:29 Yeah, you're going to. Oh, yeah, you're going to bleed out. It's not a good situation. Very hard to swim with no arms. So I will say that not to get all. I'm surprised I'm so amped up. I haven't had that much caffeine today. I'm feeling pretty good.

Starting point is 01:01:41 That you need to be very cautious to quote Warren Buffett because you can't really lose quoting Warren Buffett. So why not? Don't ask a barber if you need a haircut. If someone has a vested interest in something and they're telling you everything's going to be all right because their wallet is going to take a hit if it doesn't go up into the right, they are not an unbiased source of information. And, you know, a lot of what's happening in the NFT world, just to mention it real briefly, there's a story I heard a long time ago. It was actually an anecdote that this guy told, this pretty shady cat, this guy who was involved in infomercials. And I happened to be sitting around a table and he was telling the

Starting point is 01:02:20 story to someone else. This was way back in like early 2000s. And he was telling it like this grand lesson that he was like bestowing upon his children. And I was like, oh, wow, this guy's really unethical. And he told this long story about this guy who caught this amazing tuna fish and he canned it and he sold it. And then it sold for $10 and then it sold for $100 and then like sold for a thousand and then 10,000 and then like 100,000. And then one day somebody who owned this like $100,000 can of tuna fish opened it and it was totally rotten. And so he reached out to the person who sold it to him and was like, Hey, you sold me this tuna fish. It's totally rotten. And the guy said, that tuna fish isn't for eating

Starting point is 01:02:59 that tuna fish is for selling. But I think there's a lot of that going on, right? It's like the greater fool theory of investing. It's like, all right, well, as long as I can find someone who does even less diligence than I did, it'll all work out. And yeah, you got to be careful. Well, especially the other thing too, and it's something I'm trying to figure out because I am building in the space is there are a lot of projects that are coming out and they're serving very large audiences. Like the reason why the Proof Collective stuff, we only did a thousand is because I don't think I could handle more than a thousand people with this type of stuff that we want to do on that side. Some of these other projects... Not to interrupt, but I will again, because apparently

Starting point is 01:03:39 that's my thing today. And you have a company building experience, but managing expectations and inbound and requests and complaints from 10,000 people, that is a lot to actually handle well. Right. And so that's kind of like, we have another project that's coming up that is 10,000 people big, but the way that we're doing it is completely different than what's been done today. Because what, basically what happens is, is when you promise 10,000 people the world and you have a budget of X and you divide up that budget and you send them, you make do on your, you're good on your promise and you send them something in the mail, they get like an engraved pin in like a hat.

Starting point is 01:04:21 There's not a whole lot of budget to go around to all these people. So the way that we treat things is we actually, in this next project, we kind of do it almost like the airline miles way that you get different status based on your engagement with the community, how long you hold the NFT for, so that we can put out different tiers based on how you actually have committed to the community. We call it, it's a long story, but the project's called Moonbirds and it's called nesting, but you actually lock up your asset and you unlock additional benefits as time goes on.

Starting point is 01:04:53 So it's a way to divide and conquer versus trying to promise these massive benefits to the entire world, if that makes sense. So do the people who hold Moonbirds commit to, I don't want to say, I mean, it's not a vesting schedule, like nesting period in advance. Is that something they commit to? Or is it just however long they hold it and each day they can decide if they want to buy or sell? Or I guess sell in this case. Yeah, when they lock it up at the contract level, it prevents it from being sold. I see. Okay, so they do decide up front yeah but they can they can back out in two seconds at any time they want

Starting point is 01:05:29 it just stops their continuous streak and and their their status level basically okay got it that's interesting then it allows me to carve it out because like if you think about like let's just say you did a nft to 10 000 of your fans you could say okay well the people that have actually been with me for let's just say you did this years ago you could say, okay, well, the people that have actually been with me for, let's just say you did this years ago, you could say that people that were with me for the last three years and have stuck with me and been members for that long, I will do that private dinner with you because it's going to be 25 or something. You know what I mean? It's like, it allows you to like the segment things. I have this private Facebook group for people who supported my subscription podcast, kind of alternative business model years ago. And

Starting point is 01:06:06 that's still around and it's a much smaller group of people. So I could see possibly doing something along those lines. I don't want to mention the name, but I think you will agree that the potential name that I've been coming up with ideas for, for like last two years for this nft project is pretty phenomenal i think you'll you'll agree you have a top top five pfp name in your in your repertoire there like tim has it as idea for a big nft drop that is is powerful it would be very hard for people not to write about it and i expect at least 70 of the internet would go oh my oh my oh oh how could how could he how could he i'd give you a 10 chance of being canceled with that one going on it's a tim after two glasses of wine in a tea project it's probably

Starting point is 01:07:00 four or five glasses of wine it's a tim after four or five glasses of wine. It's a two-minute after four or five glasses of wine. And there is part of me that is like, do I want this to be the most dominant feature of my Wikipedia page? Maybe not. Maybe not. If that's my current activities, I don't know. I don't know. I do think it would be ultimately hilarious.

Starting point is 01:07:19 It would be largely absurdity-focused. So we'll see if that ever happens. i don't know if it'll ever happen i want to see i'm actually super why not though man it's like you well you're yeah why not you have nothing to well you do have a lot to lose if i can't cancel it you would well i mean the you know the nice part is what would canceling look like for an nft project that upsets some people like what is that what does that really look like, right? I guess for you, it's like a thousand people stop listening to your podcast or something. I mean, really.

Starting point is 01:07:51 If you've been listening to the podcast long enough or listening to these random shows long enough, if you're still listening, we've had ample opportunity to talk about any number of things that might cause somebody to get their knickers in a twist. I mean, you literally talked about anal tobacco earlier today. Like that was on today's show. Yeah. We already talked about anal administration of tobacco. We've talked about, you know, when I took that like 30 day, uh, no, what was it? It was like no booze, no masturbating experiment with the audience and talked about like my, you know, Hey, before you go on this porn fast, here's some recommendations. Like this isn't exactly family programming.

Starting point is 01:08:28 So I feel, well, it depends on your family, I guess. I don't know. But, oh my God, I'm definitely putting Tuna Helper in the name of this episode. Amazing. So now I know you have some pretty cool stuff coming up and very cool stuff coming up and you've been working so hard. I mean, I think it's just hilarious that like the less

Starting point is 01:08:53 you need to work, the harder you seem to work. Have you observed this? I mean, honestly, you know, it's, it's, it's funny. Um, have you ever met Bill Harlan or no? Do you know, do you know him at all? Harlan estate, the wines? Are we talking about, I know will. Yeah. That's why I was getting confused. You never met his dad, Bill. Yeah. I may have met Bill at, I can never pronounce this word. It's too fancy for me coming from long Island. Is it promontory? Promontory. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:09:23 Promontory. Jesus. I can never say that word that word. I may have met Bill when we did a site visit ages ago. I may have, but let's just assume not for the purposes of this conversation. For people that don't know, Harlan Estate is one of the most premier culty wines in Napa Valley. It's insanely sought after, multi-year wait list just to get access to an allocation. I've been very fortunate to be on- It's like the moon birds of wine, basically. Right. The moon birds, like the NFT, you have a high-end wine, exactly. Very, very hard to get. So I've been very lucky to be on that board and it's given me exposure to just a world that I would normally never have any insight into. And they have properties too, as well, like Meadowood and the restaurant at Meadowood, which is a three Michelin star restaurant.

Starting point is 01:10:05 So they have a bunch of different things that I always learn about at these board meetings, learn from, and hopefully help on the tech side a little bit and helping them form their thinking around new ways to embrace current tech. So one of the things that he said to me at a dinner just like a week ago, we were at this dinner and Bill's in his 80s now. And we were talking about NFTs and how they're applicable potentially to the wine world and some really interesting ways there, which I believe will absolutely happen. And he goes, and I'm paraphrasing, but he's like, Kevin, I get it. He goes, when you see these markets and you see it before anyone else, He goes, you push in really hard

Starting point is 01:10:45 and you get the outsized rewards. And for him, that was real estate in Napa Valley 30 years ago. And he goes, then you sit around and you wait until you see the next one. And it might be a decade or longer until you see this next big moment when it's time to push your chips in again.

Starting point is 01:11:03 And for me, i have been sitting around waiting since web 2 2004 and granted i was really active in web 2 and there was mobile and there was a few other amazing things that happened vr was stupid but then um you are really doubling down on the vr stupid thing huh it'll eventually get to the right size and price so people will like it um but but i think i think that i had a big fight with one of your other guests, Adam Ghazali. He told me that VR was going to take off like five years ago. And we bet a bottle of Hibiki 30 when it was a lot less expensive. And he still hasn't sent me the bottle of Hibiki 30.

Starting point is 01:11:39 Oh, it's just going to keep getting more expensive anyway. Oh, yeah. It's getting more expensive. It's like five X to price. So Adam, cough it up, man. So anyway, long story short is, well, I'll give you a great example. I was working on the moon birds project till midnight last night and I woke up naturally. And this is weird for me at 6am, got out of bed and started working again because there is this excitement and there's this blue ocean. There is so much that can be done in this space that it's like tim it's like when you came to the nft conference with me and we were sharing a

Starting point is 01:12:08 room and you were sleeping on the couch which was awesome it's hilarious you wanted it the bed i would not let you in the bed it's a true story fucking freezing it got just just a side note so it was so fucking cold this is in marford texas got down to like 40 degrees at night and i'm sleeping on the couch with a towel on top of me. It doesn't even cover like the lower half of my legs, shivering, dying. And I'm like, Kevin, are you sure there aren't any blankets? He's like, no, man, no extra blankets. And then the last day, I'm like, what's that huge drawer on the other side of the bed?

Starting point is 01:12:40 Pull it out. Comforters galore everywhere. Yeah, exactly. Sorry about that. But anyway, when we were there, you and I were both feeling it. We're getting up early, talking about it. And it's not just about the hype cycle. It's about this. There's a new technology that is just taking shape. And yes, it'll be many years before it's fully realized. But this is when you want to start paying attention. It's when there's the most risk, of course, but early investors, you embrace risk because that's where the most upside is, right? So that's what's exciting about it. Yeah. I would also say to

Starting point is 01:13:14 reinforce that. I mean, you know, Marfa definitely had the feeling like, okay, we're on the beach in Northern California and this is kind of the first burning man. It had that feeling. Or South by Southwest, like 2007. Where Interactive was just like the red-headed stepchild. Sorry, trigger warning for red-headed stepchildren. The red-headed stepchild of

Starting point is 01:13:38 South by. Nobody cared, you know? Nobody cared about Interactive and now it is just, not to make this like the Andreessen-themed show, but like software eating the world, right? Now Nobody cared, you know? It's like nobody cared about interactive. And now it is just as, not to make this like the Andreessen-themed show, but like software eating the world, right? Now interactive is like the glue that holds everything together.

Starting point is 01:13:53 And I'm not saying that's gonna be the case with NFTs necessarily, but you definitely had that. And it's more for me of like a physiological feeling. You're like, okay, we're in a really small group. There are a lot of very smart people here who have decided this is what they want to dedicate all their time to. So if you agree with some investors who would take the position that like what the nerds do on the weekends now is what everybody will be doing in like five years or

Starting point is 01:14:18 10 years. I think Dixon said that, right? Dixon, maybe. Yeah. And it's like, okay, I do think there's something to that and there is just this feels like electric feeling which is is hard to put words to but it is it's kind of a physiological response for me and i talked about this a little bit in the podcast with dixon and neval but that's definitely true for this and i would also say it is risky to, what are the cool kids saying? Ape into, wail into a position? Ape into, yeah.

Starting point is 01:14:52 Yeah, if you just take half your net worth and you're not sure how you're gonna make your mortgage payment and you push all those chips into something that's hugely speculative, that's risky, but I don't view that as intelligent risk-taking. That's just foolish and has tremendous downside potential. But I do think you can begin to place little bets and think about mitigating downside, right? Because if right now we're in a phase where there are opportunities for like

Starting point is 01:15:26 5X, 10X, 100X investments, I know a lot of people have become spoiled over COVID where they're like started trading on Robinhood and this, that, and the other thing. And they're like, oh, if it's less than a thousand percent a year, like I'm not interested. I'm going to look for the next best thing. And it's, I think that's going to burn a lot of people, but you can then start to think about actually studying some of these older investors and learning about portfolio construction and really taking a risk intelligent approach to playing only with chips you can afford to lose. And I think you get smarter that way. Oh, absolutely. Because if you go into it and you're like, high risk, high reward, baby,

Starting point is 01:16:07 and you use that as a smokescreen to cover up your complete lack of due diligence, to cover up the fact that you have no understanding of the technology, to cover up the fact that you didn't do any homework on the team behind X, Y, and Z that you saw trending on Twitter because you think that you're gonna make a fast buck,

Starting point is 01:16:24 you're just gonna lose your money. Sooner or later, you will lose your money. But I'm also seeing people who are really taking this as an opportunity to basically go to grad school. And they're like, okay, I'm going to play with just enough. And to everybody, I mean, I don't know if you agree with this or not, but from my perspective, I waited whatever it was, a year and a half after we started talking about NFTs to launch my first NFT. Why? Because I don't think you need to rush. I do not think you need to rush. It is so early.

Starting point is 01:16:55 It is still so early. dabble and just have the foundational knowledge so that when you're ready to have an informed decision and push in and do something, you aren't starting from zero. So, you know, I oftentimes tell people, they're like, how do I get started in NFTs? And I'm like, okay, it's easy. You have to learn how to use MetaMask and you have to learn how to send one ETH to that wallet or $200 with an ETH to that wallet. You have to learn how to safeguard your secret phrase. Like there's some foundational knowledge that's gonna be essential for this world. And now's the time to start, even if you don't wanna spend anything on NFTs,

Starting point is 01:17:32 now's the time to get that base knowledge down so when you're ready, you can pull the trigger. I was just laughing because I went to this conference recently. You know, I'm thinking about you and just how cutting as you are with all these things and so neck deep and everything and able to look around corners and i was at this conference because you have you know i haven't been to conferences in forever with the exception of

Starting point is 01:17:53 the marfa thing but that wasn't really a conference right that was just like i was hanging out having barbecue and just bullshitting and talking about the the potential amazing future that we have ahead of us with respect to these technologies. But I went to a conference conference, and I was going to these sessions and going to these dinners and everybody was asking me, you'll appreciate this, this is gonna sound weird to a lot of people listening, but everyone had their new big project. Like, yeah, my new big project.

Starting point is 01:18:21 And so they'd be like, so, they'd look at my name badge and they'd be like, oh, Tim Fleuris, podcast, okay, you have a podcast, what's your podcast about? And I'd be like so they'd like look at my name badge and they'd be like oh tim flores podcast okay you have podcasts your podcast about and i'd be like ah it's an interview podcast and they'd be like looking over my shoulder for like another finance person to talk to them they'd be like all right this guy this guy's boring and then they'd be like and they'd be like so what's your new big project what's your gigantic new project you're focused on and the best thing i could come up with in part because i didn't really want to talk to these people but it's kind of true i like, I'm mostly trying to figure out how to talk to animals right now. What,

Starting point is 01:18:51 what? And then, and then they'd like, they'd be like, Oh, that's a, that's, that's fascinating.

Starting point is 01:18:56 And then they'd like walk off with their little hors d'oeuvre and like glasses, champers to find somebody else to like give a Ted talk to. But yeah, I feel like I'm kind of going the opposite direction. I become super fascinated, and I have been fascinated by animal tracking specifically,

Starting point is 01:19:12 putting aside the animal communication piece, that's a whole separate can of worms, but tracking one of the oldest human skills imaginable. I mean, it's also an animal skill, of course, but it's like, okay, who are the best trackers in the world? Like if you need to track a given animal. What a fun hobby. Yeah. So I've become, I've been reading book after book after book. And as one would expect, there's a lot of horse shit and a boatload of charlatans who claim to be like, oh, I was

Starting point is 01:19:40 trained by whatever, a such and such scout from such and such tribe. And you're like, okay, there's no way for me to possibly verify that. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I have, you know, it could just be ghost stories this person is telling me. But there are still folks

Starting point is 01:19:55 who are exceptionally good. So that's something I'm leaning into. So if anybody has any thoughts on that, where you can actually verify these people know what they do, hit me up on Twitter at T Ferris, T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S-s anything else you'd like to mention kevin before we cut out because i know we're coming up on time yeah i mean uh i guess the only thing is i'm at kevin rose if you want to follow

Starting point is 01:20:14 all my adventures on twitter mostly around all things crypto and nfts moonbirds is our new launch it's coming out you most likely are just gonna have to find it in the secondary market because it's been insanely oversubscribed but it should should be a really fun utility NFT that you should check out. Yeah. I will be. Always good to see you, brother. Yeah. I'll be along for the moon bird ride. So I'm excited about that. I really appreciate that you're always willing to be like the first monkey shot into space, at least between the two of us with stuff like this. Then I get to, I get to have front row seats. It's as much as my capsule comes back down and what's going to happen. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:20:46 I'm like, yeah, it's awesome. So thank you for that. Cool. You made it in the space. Okay, let's see what that capsule does. Let's see how the return goes. Yeah, how the return goes. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:20:56 I'm so excited for you, man. I'll just say real quickly in passing, and I've said this to you before, but it's so fun for me to see like a playing field and a sport and a set of technologies that is so perfectly suited to like all of the circles that overlap to form the Venn diagram that is Kevin Rose. Like, like you said, it's been a long time since I've seen you this excited about something where this is all you're doing. I mean, yeah, of course you have family and you're a good dad, you've good husband, you're doing all of that.

Starting point is 01:21:26 You're not neglecting everything else, but you are on fire right now. And it's so fun to watch. It just makes me, it makes me happy to see you so excited about something. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm telling you, this is the way it's always been for me.

Starting point is 01:21:39 And I'm sure you can relate is when you find something that you were like really personally love, like you really getting up at six doesn't matter because it doesn't feel like you're working at all. You know? Yeah. Yeah. You have, you have bigger batteries. It lasts longer. Exactly. Good for you, man. Well, it's good to see you, brother. And thanks for taking the time to jam. Yeah. Let's hang in person soon. Let's do it. And folks, we'll have links to various resources and so on in the show notes

Starting point is 01:22:02 as usual, Tim.blog slash podcast. And until next time, thank you for tuning in. Okay, bye. Take care. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend. Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over

Starting point is 01:22:41 that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short,

Starting point is 01:23:06 a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is one of my favorite companies out there, one of my favorite platforms ever. And let's get into it. Shopify is a platform, as I mentioned, designed for anyone to sell anything anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. So what does that mean? That means in no time flat, you can have a great looking online store that brings your ideas,

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #586: The Random Show with Kevin Rose — Current Books, Men's Groups, Tuna Helper, the Latest in NFTs, Fierce Intimacy, and More

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