The Tim Ferriss Show - #595: In Case You Missed It: April 2022 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the routines, habits, et cetera that you can apply to your own life. This is a special inbetweenisode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can easily jump around to get a feel for the episode and guest.Based on your feedback, this format has been tweaked and improved since the first recap episode. For instance, @hypersundays on Twitter suggested that the bios for each guest can slow the momentum, so we moved all the bios to the end. See it as a teaser. Something to whet your appetite. If you like what you hear, you can of course find the full episodes at tim.blog/podcast. Please enjoy! ***Timestamps:Terry Crews: 00:01:27Tony Fadell: 00:11:16Donald Hoffman: 00:17:57Kevin Rose: 00:24:20A.J. Jacobs: 00:35:05Bo Shao: 00:41:37Tom Morello: 00:56:07***Full episode titles:Terry Crews on Masculinity, True Power, Therapy, and Resisting Cynicism Tony Fadell of iPod, iPhone, and Nest Fame — Stories of Steve Jobs on “Vacation,” Product Design and Team Building, Good Assholes vs. Bad Assholes, Investing in Trends Before They Become Trends, The Hydrogen Economy, The Future of Batteries, and MoreProfessor Donald Hoffman — The Case Against Reality, Beyond Spacetime, Rethinking Death, Panpsychism, QBism, and MoreThe Random Show with Kevin Rose — Current Books, Men’s Groups, Tuna Helper, the Latest in NFTs, Fierce Intimacy, and MoreA.J. Jacobs — How to Be Less Furious and More CuriousBo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the UnpopularTom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss***For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Balaji Srinivasan, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. Michio Kaku, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed the perfect time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types

to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life. This is a special in-between-isode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place, so you can jump around, get a feel for both the episode and the guest, and then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes. View this episode as a buffet to whet your appetite. It's a lot of fun. We had fun putting it together. And for the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode's description, probably right below wherever you press play in your podcast app. Or as usual, you can head to Tim.blog slash podcast and find all the details there. Please enjoy.

First up, Terry Crews, actor and author of the new memoir, Tough, My Journey to True Power. Well, you know, in our house, we call it D-Day. It was the day everything changed. And I've gone public a lot about my pornography addiction. Then there's a lot of people who say you could never really be addicted to pornography or whatever. And it's always been said that. But all I knew is I couldn't stop. That's all I knew. For me, it was a numbing device. It was something that I went to when I was sad, when I was happy.

And I always went back to it. And it left me unfulfilled. And I had to get more just to get a feeling of fulfillment. But then I would be left empty again. So it was a cycle I couldn't stop. But it was also a secret that I held from my family and my wife and the whole thing. And my wife finally confronted me on it.

And let me tell you what was so wild and really, really strange. The question I was asking was, why doesn't she believe me? But the question I should have been asking was, why did I lie? You know what I mean? Like, think about that.

It's all in the context is the same. And I'm sitting here lying and wondering why she won't believe me. It's all out-focused. It was all her. It was the responsibility was on her in order to make me right. Like, you should believe me because I'm telling you this. But I was lying.

I was lying. I don't do this. No, I got no problem. I don't do any of this. And why doesn't she believe me? But once it switched into why am I lying? All of a sudden it went inward. All of a sudden I had to ask myself the questions I had been avoiding for years and years and years. And it was like, hey man, you have an issue. Why aren't you doing something about it?

And like I said, and I would pull out that card of excuses and this, and I would say, well, you know, I'm a man, and, you know, men, we need to, I have a high sex drive and this kind of stuff, and I'll pull out that card, and then my wife declined it. That credit card was done. It was expired and she was out. And you know what, Tim? What's so crazy is that I was like, fine, bye, leave. I'm Terry Crews. I can get any woman I want. In fact, I will. And you know what? This is a normal thing in Hollywood. Divorce is pretty normal and it's not a big deal. In fact, my career won't suffer. Nobody cares if I lose my family.

Hollywood certainly doesn't. And then I listened to myself talking like that. And I went, who are you? I didn't like that guy. And I started to have internal conversations with myself. And I was like, man, this is not who you say you are. And I when I say a double life, what I mean is I was more concerned with the image. I was more concerned with the image of Terry Crews rather than who Terry Crews really was. And it was two different people. And once I started to try to put them together, my world crumbled. Everything that I knew, everything that I was around, everything that I thought I stood for, I thought I was like, yeah, you know, women are equal and the whole thing, but nothing in my behavior would do that or even said that. And in fact, I thought I was more valuable than all the women in my life simply because I

was a man, simply because of the culture. I grew up in black culture and hip hop culture and sports culture. And there was a lot of misogyny. It was a lot of, you're the man, dog. Hey man, you better get your girl in line. These kind of words. It was looked at as like, yo, man, you control your wife or your girl. You actually owned her. I remember in the NFL going to the strip club and we'd be in the club and with all the guys and the whole thing and the girls would be up on stage. And one of them would come down and actually want to talk to the players. And I would look at her like, okay, you know, she'd start talking, you know, I got to do this for my kids. And then, and you're like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. You're ruining the experience because you're becoming a human being right before my eyes. I like you to be a picture. I want you to

be a doll, a mannequin. Tim, once you open that can of worms, it's literally like a domino effect. Everything started to fall on itself. I went through a huge, huge, just, and then I got to say this because in my culture, when I grew up, therapy was looked at as ridiculous. And where I grew up, it was like, you know, you can't cure crazy. That was the term. It was like, you're crazy. You can't cure it. My father being an alcoholic, I remember him going to, he went to a psychologist one time. And I remember I was probably around 12, 13 years old. And I'm like, wow, I think, you know, my dad's finally going to get some help and the whole thing. And dude, it was crazy because like a week later, the psychologist killed himself.

It was on the front page of the newspaper. Oh my God. And I went, that don't work. You know, my whole mindset was like, huh? Did my father kill him? Like, you know, did he say something that made this guy jump off a bridge? And he got literally jumped off a bridge.

And I was like, what? That doesn't work. And so I had in my mind that all this therapy stuff is mumbo jumjumbo and so there was a block there was a resistance to that and I finally saw a counselor who said you need to go to this place and get some therapy and I was like oh no you know and I remember and my wife said look you know what if you don't do this you, there's no hope of us ever coming back together because we had split up at that time. And so I went and I said, all right, I'll give it a shot.

And I'm sitting in this room with these people. Terry, may I interject for one second? Oh, yeah, go ahead. Just one question. So did you guys sort of split at that point or were things on ice because of how you handled the situation D-Day in that conversation? Or was it the subject matter, like the addiction itself and other things? I guess I'm asking, was it what you did or was it how you handled what you did or something else? It was what I did because what happened was I confessed to a infidelity that happened 10 years earlier as a result of this addiction. Because, you know, I went to a massage parlor and got a hand job and I vowed I would never, ever tell anybody, you know, it was one of them things,

but I was, it was at the beginning of my career. I was, I was in Vancouver. I was by myself. I thought I would never be there. I thought I'd never do something like that. But, you know, it was wild because I found myself in those circumstances and I did it. But I vowed I would never tell. I was like, I'm taking this secret to the grave, man.

This is never, ever coming out. But my wife constantly, she was like, no, you did something. She said, there's something you're not telling me. And again, I was lying the whole time. And she could feel that. You know what I mean? You could feel when your significant other is not telling you the truth. And it was just, there was something she didn't know.

And when I told her, I remember just, it came out and I remember she's going, that's it. Like, wow. You know, who am I living with? Like she had no idea. And that was the thing because I was, I had put an image in front of her. And what was so crazy is that she was married to this image. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to her. There's no honesty in a relationship because you have to cover a lie with another lie. And then it just keeps continuing to grow. I mean, we were getting

farther and farther apart is what was happening. And she knew it. She felt it. And that was the D-Day moment. And she said, I'm out. She's like, that's it. You can't come home. You have to show me that you want this, that you actually want to do something. And like I said, in the beginning, I was like, I'm fine. And then I realized, I was like, you know what what because the whole thing was it was about her and it's little bitty questions it was just like man you know maybe it's me a realization that hit me that it was me that it was next up Tony Fadell of iPod iPhone and Nest fame and author of the new book, Build, an unorthodox guide to making things worth making. Could you tell us what you learned from Steve Jobs about taking vacations? How did Steve Jobs take vacations? Well, I don't know of all of his

vacations. I know of the vacations he took while we were together at Apple for 10 years. And what was really happening was, you know, Steve would go on vacation and in my early days there, I would be like, yes, he's going on vacation. It's great. We're, you know, we're not going to have to hear from him for seven or 14 days or whatever the case may be. Well, that dream met reality and the reality was very different. It turned out that Steve, you know, he would go on vacation. He would usually vacation at one or two places and he'd go to the same places all the time. That's what he liked and that's all good. And he would go silent for the first kind of 24, 48 hours. He would be gone.

He would be in transit. He would be, you know, with his family, what have you. For those first 48 hours, you wouldn't hear anything, maybe 72. But somewhere right after that, you started getting calls. Wasn't emails. It was calls from Steve. And Steve would be on vacation and he would be pondering where the next product, the next direction for Apple, new technologies, things he's reading.

He used that vacation as a time to kind of expand his thinking and get outside of the Apple day-to-day and the projects that we all knew and loved. Or maybe there was a couple of things to improve on the projects we were working on. But he would start thinking about, oh, let's go buy a music company. Or should we go and do this other kind of product? Or what technology will it take to do this? Because he's also reading. He's reading or he's listening to others saying different technologies. So he would be calling going, you would be like Google for him. You're like, hey, what is the latest on this? And you're like, okay, Steve, here's what we know. I don't know that I can go get back to you. He's like, Oh, let me know when you know, send me an email on that. And then 15 minutes later, he might call back with a different idea. So it was literally while

he was on vacation during reasonable hours. This was a crazy hours, but you might hear from him on vacation five or six times, depending on what he was thinking about at that time per day. Could be as much as maybe zero per day. But sooner or later along that vacation, he would call you and want to brainstorm something or want a piece of knowledge or want to know the latest about something that was related to some idea he had in his head. And so you loved it because you got to talk to him about all kinds of things that weren't the day-to-day. But at the other times, you were like, okay, Steve, you need to be on vacation.

And then two is, how much work are we going to have when you come back? Besides the incredible mountain of work we're already on top of, we're trying to get on top of. Why did you lead with that? And why write this particular chapter? Because flashing back again to our first conversation, which I encourage people to read, I'm going to try to not overlap too much with that. But back at General Magic, you had a certain, let's say, approach to work, which was high volume, high intensity, kind of 10 out of 10. And that seems to have changed over time. And just for people who have no idea what general

magic is, I just want to say, and tell me if this is off base, but it's kind of like Jodaworski's Dune in a sense where if people don't understand that, that was an attempt at making Dune, which failed, but the talent that was assembled ended up being this incredible diaspora of technical innovation that then spread all over the place, like Geiger creating Alien and so on. So General Magic was somewhat like that, I would say, the genesis of a lot of amazing careers. It's a great analogy. Yeah, great analogy. So why did you lead with that story in that chapter? And why even write that chapter?

I went through that personal struggle, you know, and I think a lot of people do of I need to work harder than everyone else and spend more time working. So I was working 80, 100, 110 hours a week kind of thing, because that's what I thought needed to happen. I thought I needed to prove myself through the number of hours, through the amount of work that I could get done. And I was also really passionate and kind of like, you're a kid in the candy store. Like for me, I'm a geek, right? I'm like, oh, I can do this. I can do that. And I get to work on this.

And the more hours I got at there, I could go and work and learn from all of these great people around me. So one thing I had to learn how to do the work and the other one is doing the work and learning how to do it at a professional level like my heroes around me would do. So there was a lot of learning.

When you go to school, you go to school, but you're also doing your studying and all the other stuff. So it was a little bit more than going to a university, but your first jobs are really like that. You spend a lot of time, but you also start to learn how to be productive, okay? And what being productive means and doing a great job versus just being there a lot of hours.

And so that's where it all hit for me. I will say this. I was undiagnosed ADD, ADHD at that time frame. I was in general magic. And ultimately, a couple of years later, then I actually figured out what was going on. So I was trying to do my work and perform at a professional level, learn the work. And I had ADHD across all of it. So if you know anything about writing code, writing code and being in the details, and

if your mind's always going, oh, my God, it made everything harder. So it was all of those things compounded. And so that that chapter is really about here's where I was, maybe you're experiencing a lot of this yourself. And here's where a more balanced approach. Now, it's not your typical work like daily balance, but here's a way to do it to be high performing, do amazing things, but to also give yourself the right amount per day as well as per year of time off and time to think and realize that when you get to go away from a certain activity you're doing every time, you might actually be able to think about it more clearly and come up with the answers more clearly if you're away from it as opposed to into it all the time.

Next up, Donald Hoffman, Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Like a lot of people, I was exposed to your TED Talk, Do We See Reality As It Is? And was struck by the desktop interface metaphor. Could you please just explain that in brief, and then we can take that in a number of any directions? The question is, how shall we understand our perceptions and the relationship to reality? Most of us just assume that we know the answer. Our perceptions show us

reality. Not all of it, but when I see the moon, there really is a moon. And of course, I don't see everything about the moon, but I see what I need to see. When I see a carrot, I'm seeing the truth. I'm seeing the correct shape, the correct color, the correct weight, if I pick it up. And of course, I'm not seeing its molecular structure, so there are things I don't see, but I'm seeing truly, if incompletely. And the interface theory of perception takes a different tack on what perception is. It says, if we take evolution by natural selection seriously, we can ask a technical question. Would evolution by natural selection shape sensory systems to tell truths about the physical world around us, or whatever the world might be around us? That's the technical question. What is the probability that natural selection

would shape sensory systems to report true properties of objective reality. And you can show through theorems and simulations, some of my graduate students working with me on this, Brian Marion, Justin Mark, and others, some of my colleagues, Chetan Prakash, Manish Singh, and I have worked on this, Robert Prentner, a number of us have worked on this and the simulations and the mathematics all agree the probability is zero that natural selection would shape any sensory system of any organism to reveal any true properties of objective reality it's precisely zero and one intuition about that is that fitness payoff functions we can go into this later on if you want, fitness payoff functions almost surely have no information about objective reality. They are not so-called homomorphisms of structures in objective reality.

And so if we're tuned to fitness and the fitness payoffs literally are not homomorphisms of structures in reality, then there's no way that our perceptions can be homomorphic to reality, to the structures of reality. So what then, if we take evolution of a natural selection seriously, and I think we should, not because I'm claiming it's the final story, but it's the best story we have. Science always, to its credit, gets new theories. And what we thought was the final theory 120 years ago, we now look back on it, you know, Newton was great, but we have much better theories today. And so I have the same view about all of our scientific theories that we have today. The reason I take them seriously is not because I think they're the final word, it's just that we have, as human beings, no better theories. So we have to take our current theories seriously.

And so if we take evolution of a natural selection seriously, of course, as scientists, we're going to eventually try to show its limitations, right? But what it says in its current form is that the probability is zero, that our senses have shaped us to see the truth about the world around us. So what have they shaped us to do? Well, the answer within evolutionary theory is it's all about fitness. Our sensory systems have shaped us to guide adaptive behavior so that we can live long enough to reproduce, basically. So one way to put that in a metaphor that's easier to understand is to say that natural selection didn't shape us to see the truth,

but it shaped us with sensory systems that are like a user interface to the truth. So, you know, right now we're both sitting in front of laptops and we're able to, I mean, I've got gigabytes of memory and all this circuitry inside my laptop. I have no idea about the truth of that. I mean, I know the words. I'm not an engineer of that type. So I don't really, if I had to toggle voltages inside my computer to do this video with you, it wouldn't happen. So if I actually knew the truth and I had to toggle voltages inside my computer to do this video with you, it wouldn't happen. So if I actually knew the truth and I had to actually toggle all the bits and bytes and so forth and voltages in the computer to make this video happen and you had to do it, it wouldn't happen. We have a very simple dumbed down user interface that lets us control the complexity of the computer without having any expertise in what's really going on inside. And that's what

evolution did for us. It gave us simple user interface that lets us stay alive long enough to reproduce, to interact with reality in the ways that we need to interact with it to stay alive and reproduce without having any idea what that reality is. You don't have a need to know, so you don't know. And that's just the way it is. Very few of us know exactly how the desktop interface on our computer works. And when you drag an icon to the trash can to delete a file, there's a lot of stuff going on inside there that's involved in dragging, in deleting the file. We're blissfully ignorant. And that's what evolution has done. It makes us blissfully ignorant about the nature of reality and gives us icons that allow us to control reality. So to be very, very clear, space and time, which we typically think of as fundamental reality, is just the format of our 3D desktop.

Instead of a flat desktop, we have a 3D space-time desktop. And objects in 3D are merely the icons in our desktop. They're not pointers to objective reality in any sense. There's the colors, the shapes, the positions that we see have nothing to do with true colors and shapes and objective reality. They're just a nice format that evolution gave us. And that format is going to vary from species to species. Next up, technologist and serial entrepreneur, Kevin Rose. 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. I've never done one. You've done men's groups with Terry, actually. I'd never done one of these. I don't know if you've done men's groups. I've never done. You've done men's groups with a, 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 going to go around the room and we're going to spend, everyone gets 10 minutes 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 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 eyeopening. And they put you in a group of like 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. 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 these men are bringing up. 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 and up front?

It is a rule. There's a handful of rules. 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. 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 because because 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 audiobooks. It's on Audible. 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 is 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 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, no, that's fucking wrong.

You're doing this, she's right here. And so you hear a lot of that happening in this conversation. I'm like, finally, I like a therapist to take therapist because sometimes I know I'm right sometimes, you know? 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. I, at first I had heard of him was six months ago, but he's a very famous therapist. But anyway, highly recommend Fierce Intimacy. 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. Yeah, somewhere in there. Pretty easy. Do you think you have found it helpful because you are also in the group or is it, do you think it's effective as a standalone, the book? Absolutely. Cause 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. 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 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. 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, um, you know, Daria and I did couples therapy for a bit, especially when you introduce kids into the equation, my God, that changes everything. And so it's like, this is the first time I read a book where I was like, this, this is speaking to me and working. So I wanted to throw it out there. That's great. That's a big deal. 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 unfounded.

Some men's groups are like, all right, we're going to go in the woods and wear furs and bang on drums and yell and scream. And I'm like, eh, I'm not sure 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. And I think that society at large ends up in a very precarious, volatile situation when men, especially younger men 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, that is a significant societal problem. Yes.

And I have thought about that. The other thing, too, 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 setting, it is that sports game, it whatever it may be. And it's very high level, right? Like at that point, you're just like, ah, how things are like,

ah, you know, wife's doing this, blah, blah. You don't have the permission really like in, 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 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, yeah, I triggered something. 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 release, 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 because my father passed away. It gave me that permission to let that stuff go. And it's a very special thing when you can do it because it's so healthy. Next, A.J. Jacobs, best-selling writer and author of the new book, The Puzzler,

one man's quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever, from crosswords to jigsaws to the meaning of life. What does a jigsaw puzzle championship look like? I was totally surprised because I always think of it as a relaxing meditative. So it's like a meditation competition or a napping competition. But I found out about it because I was Googling. First of all, one of the first facts about jigsaws is that hugh jackman is a huge fan he spent he spent about 10 minutes of maybe 15 on uh our podcast he and i together talking about jigsaw puzzles so yes huge jigsaw puzzle fan but one of the other results uh this was right before

the pandemic uh was that there was a world championship in Spain, and it listed all of the countries that were competing. And there were tons of them. There were 40 countries, Mexico, Japan, Uganda, but no USA. So on a whim, I fill out the form and figure that'll be the first of this long process to qualify. I get back an email the next day, you are Team USA. And I'm like, oh, why? That's not good. The next day, no due diligence at all. It was a disaster. Yeah. And I, as I said, I didn't love Jake's. I thought they were, I was a snob. I thought they were too easy. They were not sophisticated. So I was like, oh God. So I recruited my family to be as a four-person team and we flew to Spain and you have eight hours to finish four giant jigsaw puzzles. And I'm sorry, I apologize to my fellow Americans

because we came in second to last. We beat one of the Spanish hometown teams. So that's something. Despite the humiliation, I loved it because it was just so fascinating for so many reasons. First, just being able to see people at the top of the LeBron Jameses of jigsaw. So even if jigsaw, you think is a silly pastime, seeing anyone, and you know this, you've interviewed, that's sort of the premise. You interview the top people of every category and you're going to learn something from them. And these people, their hands move so fast. We finished one puzzle of the four in six and a half hours. The Russian team, these women, four women from Siberia finished in just over four hours, the whole thing. Their hands were moving so fast. And there were rumors of doping, but not confirmed. Another part I loved was just

meeting people from all over the world united by this weird obsession. I talk about jigsaw diplomacy. I actually, I felt I was a little ahead of the curve because I have a paragraph in the book about how much I hate Putin. This was long before the Ukraine. Before it was cool. Yeah, before it was cool. And I say, but I can't hate these people because I'm here and face to face and they're humans. And I am hoping that they're some of the millions who oppose what Putin is doing now, but it was sort of what I call jigsaw diplomacy. So it was a wonderful experience. And also learning, like in everything, there are strategies you think, oh, it's just putting together. And the strategies are sometimes surprising. You don't always, everyone's like,

oh, do the edges first. No, not necessarily. Some puzzles, if they are very colorful, you do the colors first. Sometimes you focus on shapes. If you're hit with the sky, like a huge expanse of blue, you've got to sort them by shapes. So this one has two outies and one innie. So it was just wonderful to see the nuances of this delightful and ridiculous competition. It was one of my favorite experiences. I have a number of questions about this. The first is, how do you delegate or divide and conquer as a team? Because I can imagine if four people were just let loose, having no strategy, trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, it might take longer than just one person trying to do it

if you don't have some type of plan going into it. And second, I'm just curious, did you notice any sponsors? I'm just wondering what kind of financial support is offered to the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championships. I'm guessing it's not BMW. I'm just curious. I know. Maybe not yet. But this was right before the COVID when jigsaws experienced a boom during COVID, not seen since the Great Depression. So they became harder to get than Clorox wipes. So maybe now they could be sponsored by Vian Velvete. But then, yes, the only sponsor was the puzzle company itself, Ravensburger, sadly. So I didn't make a huge amount of money on it. It's the second to last finisher.

Yeah, well, I feel it's something. You finished. No, it's a thing. So for strategies, what do you do as a team? Well, you're absolutely right. That was the secret that the Russians had. They told me it's all about division of labor, like in many endeavors. So there was one woman who specialized in sorting colors, another sorted shapes, another sorted what was good at the edges, and another was really good at the trial and error. Because I often, you know, I'm afraid to put something down if I don't think. She was like, no, just do it. Just be okay with failing. She'd try it.

No. Next one? No. Next one? Yes. So, yeah, it was fascinating to see the division. And I found that as a theme throughout puzzle solving. I went to this one event that was sort of the Ironman triathlon for nerds.

It was called a puzzle hunt. And it was at MIT, 2000 people like real rocket scientists. And they come together for 72 hours and solve the hardest, craziest, most baffling, nonsensical puzzles that involve advanced calculus and Justin Bieber's tour schedule and just the most random things you can think of. And you need 50 people on a team. The teams are 50 people because you needed specialists in all these areas. So yes, sort of a diversification and having different people do different things is a big theme, I think, in puzzles and life. Next, Bo Xiao, co-founder and chairman of Evolve, a philanthropic investment firm.

The way we met was in part around the discussion of inner journey and turning the eye and attention inward, right? We didn't meet at a business networking event. We weren't doing a joint venture together. We met in a very personal context. How did that start for you? How did that process, and I know process is a broad term, but when did that become a priority and how did it become a priority for you? First, I would say that I had no interest in any kind of inner work for a long, long time. In fact, I would look down on people who go to retreats or meditations, whatnot, and say, what the hell are these people doing? They have better things to do in life. I found it almost disgusting, despicable back then, actually. So I had no interest. But life, I think, has a way of, if one pays attention, I guess, to send little reminders. So the first reminder I got was, hey, I was still the same me

with some of the same kind of patterns of behavior, the same level of happiness and joy that I had before the big success. And looking back, I realized that compared to the life I have today, the life back then was more of a black and white television and today is more colorful television. It's hard to describe the difference if I only watched black and white television all my life. The reason I use this example was, because I grew up with a nine inch black and white television,

which felt totally fine for all my life. And without having seen a 80 inch color television, the nine inch black and white looked completely adequate and comfortable. And I think that's where I was back then. My life didn't have a lot of color, didn't have joy. I never cried really. I never laughed, never smiled really. I never laughed, never smiled really. I never even felt lonely, interestingly. I felt alone, but not lonely. But I think some of these things showed up a little bit.

Like, oh, I sort of started wondering, what am I missing? There's a little, little, little things I think, but very small. On that alone, I don't think I would have embarked on a journey. Another reminder was how different my life was with Jenny, my wife, versus with other people. And also I see how she behaves with other people in a way that's sort of beyond my comprehension. I remember like one time we were having dinner with a friend and the friend started talking about how he lost his father. And my wife just stood up and went to hug him. And I was dumbfounded.

It never would have occurred to me to do it. She's telling a story, I'm listening, but I was not in touch with the emotional content of the story. And my wife clearly was. And she is one of the most empathetic person alive that I know. So some part of me started wondering, what's going on? What am I missing? And also I noticed that I could work with people for a decade and not become friends with them, but she would then go to dinner with their significant other. The four of us will go to dinner or lunch.

And then she becomes friends with them. But not me. Even though I've known them for 10 years and she knows them for like one day. So that sort of started something like, you know, am I missing something? Is friendship something I value? Because up until a few years ago, I didn't consider myself as having friends. But I always told myself I don't need friends. I want to ask actually just to follow up there.

Why did you not consider yourself to have friends? Is it because you viewed getting close to people as having little upside and a lot of potential downside? Why did you see things that way? It was not a rational decision. I think deep down, if I were to answer honestly, is because I think I don't deserve a friend. And I think, I thought, and there's still a part of me is probably still thinks that there's something wrong with me that I don't deserve any friends that nobody will really take an interest in my feelings and in what I have to say, unless what I have to say is useful. So when I'm in a position, I'm a board member, investor,

or somebody who could educate or whatever, or help, then I feel comfortable. Like this relationship has substance. But if it's simply a friendship, a part of me doesn't understand it. Like it doesn't feel that why would you or other people take an interest in the inside of me?

And I didn't have that trust. Of course, this has a lot to do with how I was brought up, and I'm still in the process of understanding and feeling it fully. But I've told myself for the longest time that I don't need any friends. At least that's the conscious thought. The deeper down realization happened much more slowly. And I think it's still happening as we speak. It's a continuous journey of discovery and being free from those patterns I developed. So that's the second thing that, you know, in terms of friendship and relationship with other people,

I see myself with Jenny in a different way. I see Jenny with other people in a different way. That's all got me thinking a little bit. Is it okay if I continue on this, right? Absolutely, of course. And then, and the third, which I think is probably the biggest one that I couldn't avoid looking at was being a father. I was a terrible father.

For a while on the Chinese Twitter, Weibo, I was very reasonably popular and a lot of people followed me. And my model, I guess, whatever I wrote right under my name was a perfect husband, but a so-so father. And I think I was giving myself too much credit. I don't think I was a so-so father. I think I was a terrible father looking back. I didn't know how to be one. I knew how to be a teacher. I knew how to be a disciplinary, but I didn't know how to be a father the way I understand it now. And I didn't know how to spend time with them. I did not know how to give them love and attention. I didn't know how to give them support when they need it, emotional support in particular, when they need it. And I also just did not enjoy being a father.

I remember my wife will remind me to go spend time with my kids when it's eight o'clock at night or something like that before they go to bed, before they went to bed. And my thought at the time was, why should I? And I felt some kind of resentment being called to do my job. It was really funny thinking back, but back then I really didn't enjoy it. And that got me thinking a little bit, hey, there's something missing here that people talk about being a father being enjoyable, but I really didn't enjoy it. And also, I know that I knew that I was doing something wrong because I was repeating some of the mistakes that my father made that was sort of shocking because you would imagine that you would never do what was done to you that he didn't like. But I was repeating the same thing.

And if my wife didn't stop me, I would have been worse, far worse. So one of the things that my father, for example, did to me is if he got really angry, he would threaten to throw me out of the home. And I did that to my son. And that was very traumatic for him. He still remembers it today. Even for like two seconds, closing the door on him. It was so bad, but I didn't know what else to do. That was all I knew. When I got desperate as a father, when something happens outside of my control, I got desperate. So I guess I resorted to what worked because from a short-term perspective, what my father did to me worked. I became obedient. Thank you for sharing, Beau. I'm really glad that we're having this conversation.

I think it's going to be meaningful to a lot of people. And I'd love to hear as you began observing these behaviors, as perhaps Jenny called things to your attention and you decided to try to change or at least become more aware what are some of the things that you found helpful what are some of the tools or modalities that end up being helpful because i would imagine in the beginning certainly i had this experience myself it's hard to know where to begin right and it's kind of like a chimpanzee with a mirror or something like you're looking behind the mirror you're like am i supposed to see something over here am i supposed to see something over there and i would just love to hear because i know that you have tested many many many different things what are some of, say, the tools, modalities, or otherwise that you have found to be personally helpful? I definitely try many different things. In some ways, I'm like you,

Tim, that when I get on something that's really important, then I would want to get to the bottom of it. I want to learn the best or form the best. First of all, I would say that there are three components to being a good parent that I've learned. And these are not necessarily, they might be orthogonal to each other, meaning being good at one component doesn't mean necessarily going to be good at the second component. So the three components in my view is one is understanding what's going on inside of our children's heads and what's going on in their biology, in their psychology. And the main thing is we are, children are so different from us. We assume that they should have executive control of their body or of their mind or their actions. But the reality is, for example, for a boy,

their prefrontal cortex doesn't fully develop until they're in their 20s. So when they are 12, expecting them to behave in a disciplined way is simply not right. So understanding what's going on inside of them is hugely, hugely important. From a developmental perspective, you mean? Right, from a developmental perspective, both from a physical neurobiology as well from a psychological development perspective. And there's a huge amount of science out there that unfortunately hasn't been made available and accessible to parents, which is one of the things one of our companies is working on. And the second is, as parents, why do we get triggered? Why did I get triggered in certain ways? My reactive patterns, which were usually formed very early on in my own childhood,

maybe my own insecurity gets reflected in certain things. And then that's why we get triggered. So for example, if a parent always wished they went to the best schools and they were feeding down on themselves for not having gone to the best schools, they're probably going to be more demanding of the child. And if the child has bad grades, they probably tend to be more triggered. So there's all sorts of things we need to understand about our own self and our own childhood that would enable us to be a better parent. And so in some ways, I went into a lot of these workshops thinking that I just need to learn a tool or a trick or some kind of way, like positive discipline or whatever it is to be a better

parent. And to a certain extent, those tools and modalities help, but foundational wise, I needed to become a better person, quote unquote, in some ways to be a better parent. And that has to do, everything to do with our inner journey as an independent person and has nothing to do with us being a parent, actually. It's just something that's really, really foundational. And then the third is what's in the relational field between a parent and a child. And becoming aware of that relational field any moment in time is really critical because when

that relational field is not right, no amount of teaching on the rational side and analytical side will help because the kid's brain is underdeveloped. So when they don't feel safe and connected, they can't listen. When a typical parent sees a child, children not listening, maybe their reaction is try to say things more clearly, you know, repeat things. It doesn't really help. And what's needed is for the children to feel safe and connected. And then they will listen a hundred times better. So these three components, understanding the children inside of them, understanding ourselves, understanding the relational field, for me, that's the foundation. Then on top of that foundation, there are lots of tools that's actually very useful.

I find that to be so important. It's shocking to me that now looking back that being a parent is probably the most important job in one's life. There's nothing more important. It's probably the most difficult job and we are least prepared for in our lives. We go to school for teaching math. We go to get driving lessons to get a driver's license so we can drive. But to be a parent, there's practically no preparation. Last but not least, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine fame. If you had to teach someone guitar in three months, what would the curriculum be? I was a guitar teacher for a while during my semi-homeless days. And what I taught, the lesson that I learned, when I took those bad guitar lessons where they wanted me to do the boring stuff, I applied that when teaching you know brand new guitar players in the first guitar lesson with every student um regardless of their skill level i would teach them to write a song they would write a song in that first guitar lesson and try to like smash that barrier between there's these

mythical gods who make music and there's you who one day might hope to you know touch their shoes like you're a songwriter today i'm going to teach you two chords you decide what order they go in and how long you play each one boom you've written a song like you and the beatles now are both songwriters you know and there's a i would see in them this like like holy crap like i can write something tomorrow you might write another one and that's what i'd give them as their homework. Like, you write another one for next time. And then you're going to have a catalog of six songs in the first three weeks of your playing guitar.

And we can work on the other stuff along the way, but it's called playing guitar. And that sort of enthusiasm comes from early successes. What are the biggest wastes of time that you see novices making? Yeah. Like, diligent ones. Yeah, yeah. What are the wrong things to focus on? Well, it depends on what you want to do and who you want to be.

Because there's a, I believe there's a clear delineation between musicians and artists. And if you, like I said, when you start playing guitar, what you want to do is you want to sound like... So you're trying to be a musician. I love Angus Young. I want to play Angus Young songs. At some point, are you going to go beyond... You have to make a determination. And many people are delighted and content to be able to learn and play their favorite songs and jam along with the radio. But if you have a vision that goes beyond, you know, aping the technique of your

favorites, then you have to take a different step. And that is a step into risk and a step into the unknown to say, this is what has come before. Now I'm going to write my own songs. I'm going to take a risk that people are going to hate those songs. And I'm going to take a risk of putting myself out there. It's not like, hey, check it out. I can play Van Halen. It's like, hey, check it out. I wrote this song that includes my Van Halen influence and this, that, and the other. And here it is. And that's the only way that art grows. And as an artist, that's the only way to grow. What would you say? I guess maybe that's the answer. But the follow-up to that would be if you're, say, teaching a ninth grader or a tenth grader, really talented, and they're like, I want to be a creator, I want to be an artist.

And they get up there and they just bomb. Yeah, yeah. Crickets, maybe booing. Everyone, yeah. You're not alone. What would you tell them before or after? Yeah, well, I'd tell them, first of all, you're bombing, one thing you have in common

is with everyone, I'd say, name the five artists who you love the most. And I would ensure them that all of them have bombed as bad or worse as they just did then. And then it's a matter of sort of what did you learn from this? And, you know, maybe there's a lot like, you know, basement, you know, music heroes. You have to play with other people. That helps you in a way. You have to play in front of other people. That helps you in ways. And that you do that over time and you will amass a,

you'll, you will have the opportunity to discover who you are as a musician and or as an artist. What books, if any, have you gifted the most to other people? I, well, certainly the one book that I've gifted the most in my life was a book that I first wrote when I was 15 and I reread it almost yearly. It's a book called Watership Down. Watership Down. And it's, you know, I've read books that have been, you know, more serious political tomes in my time. But the heroism, courage, and friendship exhibited in that book among a number of rabbits, it's about rabbits, but it's about much more than that, and it is the single most breathtakingly exciting book

that I've ever read as well, Watership Down. Watership Down. Richard Adams, a strong endorsement for that book. Do you have a quote or quotes that you live your life by or think of often? Those are interesting questions. Give me a minute. And we can come back to it. Sure.

No, no, no. I'm gonna have something for you. There is a quote from, written by Joe Strummer of The Clash. I cut this, I wrote this down, put it on my refrigerator as a, you know, as a youth. It says, are you taking over or are you taking orders? Are you going backwards or are you going forwards? And I would look at that in my refrigerator and I would try to answer those four questions for myself every day. That is good.

And now here are the bios for all the guests. My guest today is Terry Crews. You can find him on Twitter and social at Terry Crews. Terry can do it all. Author, action movie hero, sitcom star, children's book illustrator, advertising pitchman, playable video game character, talent show host, high-end furniture designer, and human rights activist. The list goes on and on. Terry's new memoir is tough, subtitled My Journey to True Power. In it, he chronicles the story of how he went from being a six-year-old boy with a goofy, toothless smile to being utterly selfish and angry to a man who can finally acknowledge his own weaknesses and vulnerabilities and uses experiences to help motivate those around him.

And Terry's story is fascinating, incredible, heartbreaking in some respects, gut-wrenching. It is a story that I've learned a lot from, and I think also a story that you can learn a lot from. But let's finish the bio before we dive into the conversation. Terry has starred as a series regular in three consecutive TV series that have surpassed the coveted 100-episode mark, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Are We There Yet?, and Everybody Hates Chris. Terry is set to star in Tales of the Walking Dead and hosts NBC's top-rated alternative series, America's Got Talent, and its spinoffs, AGT Champions and AGT Extreme. Cruise recently added yet another title, Children's Book Illustrator, which I mentioned earlier, to his resume for his first-of-a-kind augmented reality book, Come Find Me. Terry's

Crew is his latest children's lit entry, a graphic novel set to be released in late 2020. Terry's Crew provides insight into his childhood in Michigan and what it was like trying to find his place. In 2021, Terry and his wife, Rebecca King-Cruz, released an exclusive Audible audiobook, Stronger Together, sharing the staggering ups and downs of their relationship and how they've weathered the myriad crises that have rocked their marriage. Cruz, a lifelong artist, which we dug deeply into in my first conversation with him, released his furniture collection with Bernhardt Designs in 2017, which premiered at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York and was awarded the prestigious Best of Neocon 2017.

Always drawing and sketching alongside his many day jobs, and that is many, many day jobs, Cruz joined the ranks of a number of other design world heavyweights, including Yves Bahar, as a contributor to Bernhardt's portfolio. Again, you can find him on social, on Twitter, at Terry Cruz, Instagram, Terry Cruz, and on Facebook, Real Terry Cruz. My guest today is a fan favorite. It is his second appearance. Tony Fadell, you can find him on Twitter and Instagram at T Fadell, F-A-D-E-L-L. Who is Tony Fadell? Tony is an active investor and entrepreneur with a 30 plus year history of founding companies and designing products that profoundly improve people's lives. You'll recognize quite a few of them. So stick around, pay attention. Is a principal at FutureShape, a global investment

and advisory firm coaching engineers and scientists working on foundational deep technology. He is continuing to help bring technology out of the lab and into our lives. Currently, FutureShape is coaching 200 plus startups innovating game-changing technologies. He began his career in Silicon Valley at General Magic, the most influential startup nobody has heard of. We talk about General Magic at length in our first conversation, so check that out if you want that chapter. We cover it a little bit in this one just so you have context. He is the founder and former CEO of Nest, the company that pioneered the Internet of Things and created the Nest Learning Thermostat. Tony was the SVP of

Apple's iPod division and led the team that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. Throughout his career, Tony has authored more than 300 patents. That is a whole lot of patents. In May 2016, Time named the Nest Learning Thermostat, the iPod, and the iPhone as three of the 50 most influential gadgets of all time. His new book, which we dig into at some length because it is tactical and practical and very rich in details, is Build, subtitle, An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making. You can find him online, futureshapellc.com. You can find him on Twitter, Instagram, and all over the place, of course. Easiest handle is at TFADELL, T-F-A-D-E-L-L.

My guest today is Donald Hoffman, H-O-F-F-M-A-N. Donald received a PhD in computational psychology from MIT and is a professor emeritus of cognitive sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He is an author of more than 120 scientific papers and three books, including The Case Against Reality, subtitled Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association, the Troland Research Award of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and many other awards. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, New Scientist, LA Review of Books, and Edge. And his work has been featured in Wired, Quanta, The Atlantic, Ars Technica, National Public Radio, Discover Magazine, and

Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. His TED Talk, titled Do We See Reality As It Is, has almost 4 million views. That might be higher, might be past 4 or 5, who knows by now, by the time you listen to this. And you can find him on Twitter at Donald D. Hoffman. My guest today, one of my favorites, one of your favorites, A.J. Jacobs. A.J. Jacobs is a bestselling author, journalist, and human guinea pig. Now, all of you long-term listeners will know I do not apply that term, that label, lightly, but in this case, it applies. He has written four New York Times bestsellers, including one of my favorites, The Year of Living Biblically, for which he followed all of the rules of the Bible as

literally as possible, including, I should mention, Stoning Adulterers. You'll have to read it to get that. And thanks a thousand for which he went around the world and thanked every person who had even the smallest role in making his morning cup of coffee possible. I thought about this morning as I had my coffee. He has given four TED Talks with a combined 10 million plus views. He contributes to NPR and the New York Times and wrote the article, My Outsourced Life, which was featured in the Four Hour Workweek. What a title, Four Hour Workweek. Who wrote that? Sounds like an infomercial. He was once the answer to one down in the New York Times crossword puzzle. You can find my 2016,

good Lord, that's a long time ago, interview with AJ, where we cover a lot of backstory, a lot of our shared converging paths in life at tim.blog slash AJ. You can find them online, ajjacobs.com. The website for the new book is thepuzzlerbook.com. And we'll link to all the social as well, but it tends to be AJ Jacobs on Twitter, Facebook, et cetera. My guest today is Bo Xiao, B-O, last name S-H-A-O. Bo Xiao is a co-founder and the chairman of Evolve, a philanthropic investment firm composed of a foundation, Evolve Foundation, and an impact investment firm, Evolve Ventures. With initial capital of $100 million from the family, Evolve aims to support organizations that relieve inner suffering and facilitate inner transformation. Bo's story is pretty wild,

so let's jump into a little backstory. And we're going to go in reverse chronological order. Prior to Evolve, Bo was a founding partner of Matrix China, a leading technology venture capital firm in China, which manages more than $7 billion and has funded more than 500 companies, 50 plus of which have become unicorns. That means valued at more than 1 billion USD. He is also a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded five companies that have either gone public or become leaders in their respective industries. Bo was born in China and was the winner of more than a dozen national mathematics competitions during high school. For those who don't know what that means, it is a huge, huge deal and a very significant feat. I'm going to leave the rest of his bio to our conversation and we will dig in very, very quickly. The website for Evolve is EvolveVF,

as in Venture Fund, Venture Foundation. So evolvevf.com. So my guest tonight is a revolutionary, and I mean that literally. His musical talents have resulted in the sale of more than 25 million albums and garnered two Grammys. Rolling Stone has recognized him as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, and yet he's only had two formal guitar lessons.

He's a founding member of Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, The Night Watchmen, and Prophets of Rage. Please welcome to the stage musician, singer, songwriter, and author, Tom Morello. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. Thank you. 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 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,

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.