The Tim Ferriss Show - #636: The Big Reveal: The Legend of CØCKPUNCH — Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss on Tim’s New and Extremely Bizarre Art Project

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Starting point is 00:03:08 mauinuivenison.com slash Tim, and use code Tim at checkout. You can also find the link in this episode's description. This episode is brought to you by Allform. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep and their mattresses, which I've been using since 2017. I have two of them upstairs from where I'm sitting at this moment. Helix has gone beyond the bedroom and started making sofas. They launched a company called Allform, A-L-L-F-O-R-M, and they're making premium customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores. So I'm sitting in my living room right now, and it's entirely all-form furniture. I've got two chairs, I've got an ottoman, and I have an L-sectional couch, and I'll come back to that. You can pick your fabric. They're all spill, stain, and scratch

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Starting point is 00:05:19 slash Tim. That's A-L-L-F-O-R-M dot com slash tim. Allform is offering 20% off all orders to you, my dear listeners, at allform.com slash tim. Make sure to use the code TIM at checkout. That's allform.com slash tim and use code TIM at checkout. before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show,

Starting point is 00:06:02 where it is usually my job to interview and deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply in your own lives. This episode is something different. It is an exploration of my creative process, how I think about first principles in a bunch of different areas,

Starting point is 00:06:18 and how to get serious things done without being serious all the time and burning out. This is an unusual conversation. And in this case, I am the guest and Kevin Rose is the host. Who is Kevin besides being one of my best friends? Kevin is a technologist, serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, self-experimenter, and all around wild and crazy guy. You can find him on Twitter at Kevin Rose. For more on the project discussed in this, and I can't believe I'm saying this on my podcast after 600 plus episodes and 900 million plus downloads, whatever it might be

Starting point is 00:06:52 at this point. For more on the project discussed, The Legend of Cockpunch. That's right, folks. Visit cockpunch.com and follow on Twitter at cockpunch. What glee. Mint date is coming up soon. And there's a lot of wink wink inside jokes here. So make sure to follow that Twitter account, meaning at Cockpunch for news, as well as at T Ferris. That's my main Twitter account. T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. And if you want extra credit at Tim Tim Nifty's, N-I-F-T-I-E-S.

Starting point is 00:07:23 I'll also be announcing next steps via my newsletter. That's the Five Bullet Friday newsletter that has several million people on it, and you can sign up at Tim.blogs.com. Please note before anyone goes crazy on the internet, 100% of NFT primary sale proceeds from this project are being donated to the SciSafe Foundation. That is one of the main drivers behind the whole thing, is fundraising in a creative way. So all funds from the primary sales are going to SciSafe Foundation. SciSafeFoundation.org is where you can learn a lot more. It is a registered 501c3 nonprofit private foundation that funds cutting-edge scientific research and other initiatives related to psychedelic medicine, mental health therapeutics for conditions like complex PTSD, treatment resistant depression, and so on, and much more. Again, you can find a list of projects, including

Starting point is 00:08:10 a lot of firsts that have been accomplished through various grants at scisafeoundation.org. The episode you're about to hear was originally published on the Proof Podcast. It's a great podcast hosted by Kevin, which provides in-depth NFT coverage. The Proof Podcast is part of Proof Podcast. It's a great podcast hosted by Kevin, which provides in-depth NFT coverage. The Proof Podcast is part of Proof, broadly speaking. Proof is creating community-centric products that celebrate art, connect collectors, and activate creative entrepreneurship. Under the Proof umbrella, they have the Proof Collective, a private collective of 1,000 dedicated NFT collectors and artists. There's also Grails, which I'm actually a part of, and I put out my first short fiction story ever as an NFT There's also Grails, which I'm actually a part of, and I put out my first short fiction story ever as an NFT as part of Grails. There's Grails, which is the proof

Starting point is 00:08:52 curated collections with artists revealed post-mint. That'll mean something to some people out there and not much to others. Then there's Moonbirds, of course, a collection of 10,000 utility-enabled PFPs featuring a diverse pool of traits. There's more, and then there's much more. Kevin is doing a phenomenal job. I suggest you check out what they are doing. Find Proof at Proof.xyz and at Proof underscore xyz on Twitter. And now, after that long intro, thanks for sticking with it, let's take a trip to crazy town, shall we?

Starting point is 00:09:20 I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. And here goes nothing. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Proof that covers all things NFTs, including a brand new project done by none other than Tim Tim Ferriss. Tim, welcome to the show. So great to be here. Good to see you, brother. Dude, good to see you. Sorry, I have a new... And for those who have not seen what happened before we press record, I've been enjoying nonstop sound effects of every possible type because Kevin has a new toy.

Starting point is 00:10:00 That's right. I do. And, you know, investor dollars put to good work here. We have our own little soundboard now, which is awesome. No, in all seriousness, though, it is nice to actually have a somewhat professional studio. It'll be very professional once we actually have a real home home. Although this is coming together quite nicely. Mal's done a fantastic job setting it up and we actually have you know real mics real lighting things of that nature so it's great i like i like the purple background effect that you have working for you it brings out your eyes you know what's crazy thank you uh first of all and uh it's crazy that we just moved in here this is actually a temporary space uh a couple days ago and mal rushed to get this set up. So it's a good job. Looks

Starting point is 00:10:46 excellent. But yeah, so dude, this is crazy because we've been talking NFTs for a long time now. You were very gracious to let me chat your ear off about NFTs on the random show and talk about the early stuff and the early proof of past days and then obviously in the chaos that became Moonbirds. But what people may not know is that you immediately went all in, as one does, especially you, and went deep. And we really started going crazy with NFTs, especially around our trip to Marfa, Texas. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:23 Remember when we went out there and you started buying some serious like Chromie squiggles, like you got some great NFTs as a collector first, right? Collector first. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I haven't, and that has been for me.

Starting point is 00:11:35 I mean, I really haven't showcased any collections of any type. I've just been collecting to scratch my own itch and to explore the world of NFTs, which I think for a lot of folks has been entered through the gateway drug of NFT artwork. And as someone who's been very, not just interested in, but involved in art from a production perspective, right? From an illustrator perspective, a lot of that background is, or has been invisible to, I think,

Starting point is 00:12:15 a lot of folks who have read my writing or have listened to the podcast is that prior to all of that, my plan was to be a comic book penciler for 10 plus years. And it's not too late. And worked in illustration and paid a lot of my way through college expenses and so on with illustrating books and magazines and acting as a graphics editor and so on. So I've been very, very interested in all of these intersections within the kind of Venn diagram of NFTs. And also our background goes way, way back in terms of early stage tech, experimenting with new tools and playing with these technologies. That goes, I mean, certainly way back, you even further than I. But for me, 2007, 2008 at the latest.

Starting point is 00:13:08 So this has provided a really fun opportunity to re-engage with all sorts of things that I'm interested in. I feel like that is one of the things that you and I bonded over very early on where, you know, I was more obviously on definitely on the tech side and the angel investing side, you were just kicking off your career as an author and angel investor. And then you were in a big, big into biohacking, which I was always curious about, but you were like, you know, in order to magnitude more sophisticated in terms of like your understanding of published papers and the literature and all that stuff. So I would just kind of follow what you were doing, except for the stuff that got you in the hospital or other things. But I kind of fast follow where it was appropriate.

Starting point is 00:13:51 I could give you the do not try at home list also. I could save you some hospital visits, which, you know, that's what friends are for. Yeah, exactly. And then we would, you know, do angel deals together, try out new technologies together, things like that. And so, you know, when I got into NFTs and all that and knowing your love for art, it makes sense that you would then venture into the space and kick the tires. Now, that said, it's November 8th. As of this recording, NFTs might be dead right now. We don't know because it's been a hell of a day. It's been a very exciting day. It's been a hell of a few days. Hell of a few days. Yeah, very exciting. I mean, exciting in the way that an avalanche is exciting, perhaps. But exciting nonetheless. You like to watch kind of, but you should be far enough away.

Starting point is 00:14:34 But sadly, we're right in the middle of it. Yeah, better on video instead of being on one ski going directly into the avalanche. But, you know, some people choose to ride the bear. Some people choose to do something else. Dangerous hobbies. Great t-shirt for you.

Starting point is 00:14:49 Ride the bear. Ride the bear. So let's talk about your project. Like, can we, what would be a good, where would be a good place to start?

Starting point is 00:14:59 Would it be with the kind of, the idea of a PFP or if you consider this a pfp or can we what can we what can we say and what can't we say about the project right now well i think because ultimately you and i will uh sit around and have martinis and decide when pub date is i can just go for it and we can get into the nitty-gritty and then we can release it when it makes sense. But I think it might make sense to start at the beginning in so much as, let's see here. So early 2021, you and I were having a conversation and you're like, you got to look more closely at these NFT things. And I think maybe prior to that, or maybe just after that, the timing is slightly lost on me. I think it would have been just before that. I don't remember the exact date. I'd had Katie Hahn on the podcast and we talked about NFTs. And then you had encouraged me in early 2021 to roll up my sleeves and actually start using some of the tools and to buy NFTs.

Starting point is 00:16:06 Those phone calls. Yeah, those phone calls. The MetaMask support phone calls. Oh God, it's just like remedial, walking your great-grandmother through buying the first NFT. Sorry about that, Kev Kev. But I appreciated the 101 short school bus help there. And it made me very, very excited on a couple of levels. the 101 short school bus help there.

Starting point is 00:16:29 It made me very, very excited on a couple of levels. To explain why, I need to give a bit of additional context. There were a lot of things that came together for me at once. One was new tech. Always interesting to me, especially when there is some type of on-ramp slash trojan horse that allows a lot of let's just call them not obviously early tech candidates to become involved with early tech if that makes any sense right if there's some type of like muggle pathway for someone like me to get involved really Really interesting. The next was for,

Starting point is 00:17:07 I would say two or three years, probably two or three years at that point, I'd have to go back and look. I had been brainstorming, trying to brainstorm ways to run a, I suppose, let's call it contemporary art auction with donated artwork to raise money for my foundation, SciSafe Foundation, which supports a lot of the early stage. It has supported and continues to support a lot of the early stage cutting edge science related to psychedelic therapeutics and addressing so-called intractable psychiatric conditions of all different types. So complex PTSD, OCD, anorexia nervosa, a pretty broad spectrum of difficult-to-treat conditions. I had been trying for a long time to try to put together something resembling a physical contemporary art auction. And as soon as I saw the mechanics

Starting point is 00:18:06 and the marketplaces involved with NFTs, I thought to myself, wait a second, there may be a bunch of other options here that don't involve putting on the knee pads and begging, fill in the blank, like agent of artist X to give me a canvas, which it turns out they hate doing generally. I was like, there may be a more elegant solution here that allows me to also experiment with the technology. And then on top of that, uh,

Starting point is 00:18:35 and if, if anybody goes back, if they've been following my Instagram for a while, they will have seen over the last two or three years, various attempts on my behalf to get back into using my hands to produce artwork. So you'll see experimentations with charcoal, you'll see experimentations with pencil, with pastels, with different types of different media to get back into the physical production of artwork. And so I saw in NFTs a great combination of excuses to engage firsthand.

Starting point is 00:19:10 So that's when the wheels started to get moving. And I would say at that point began all of the most ridiculous ideas imaginable, right? Popping into my head for what I might do if I were to do something in NFTs. And at first it was, what could I do that would be really easy, that would be exciting for me, lightweight, fun. And then as it went on, my desire, I guess, got more and more ambitious and elaborate in terms of folding into a potential art project, which is how I viewed it. These things I wanted to explore,

Starting point is 00:19:54 but it never really had the incentive to explore in a real way, like fiction and world building. Last but not least, revisiting all the things that made me happy as a 12 and 13 year old so uh i've spent a lot of time with a bunch of people i respect recently and almost all of them have been discovering and resurrecting joys of theirs later in life that were core to their enjoyment as a 12 or 13 year old so when all of these ingredients in the cocktail then got kind of shaken up and stirred over the last let's just call it i guess what the hell is it now a year and a half uh that has led i guess in the last nine months and especially in the last six months to this project that is going to launch now in the next few weeks which is pretty crazy to think about at the arguably the worst possible time to launch anything uh ever in nfts which i'm which i'm actually very pleased by in a way because number one if i were

Starting point is 00:21:09 doing it just for a money grab this would be the worst time imaginable to do it i could have done you know i could have farted out some really terrible artwork and done something long ago i decided not to do that uh and i should say up front like 100 of the primary proceeds are going to my foundation so that's that's that uh and that% of the primary proceeds are going to my foundation. So that's that. And that piece of the experiment is important to me. Also, when the markets are really bad, and you think back to when I first got involved with the angel investing, like 2008, 2010, I mean, that was kind of a dot-com depression. And it was just the best time to be in the game because it was when the true believers were left on the field. Do you know what I mean? All the fair weather folks had to split. They just took off.

Starting point is 00:21:52 Oh, that's happened. Yeah, it's happened. Yeah, a lot of the casual tourists in the herd have been called already. And it forces you, and by you, I guess I'll just say me, to think about all of this much more creatively and to come back to first principles and think about like, okay, why am I doing this? How can I make sure that I stay true to certain priorities, like fun and play being the absolute core of all of my decisions around this? So I'm having a hell of a time, man. And you've seen it.

Starting point is 00:22:36 You've seen it in me because we've hung out so much and had so many conversations. It has been, let's see here, since publishing Tribe of Mentors, that came out, I want to say 2016, 2017. It's been five years since I've been this energized by anything as a public-facing project. It's great to see that in you. But I'm curious, what does this mean for you? Where does this fit in your career in the sense that, let's assume you get everything you want out of this project. Yeah. Obviously, you have some primary sales coming in. That goes to your foundation. 100% of that money goes in.

Starting point is 00:23:18 Yep. That's great. That's awesome for the foundation. But we know royalties are up in the air right now. Who knows what the royalties, you know? Um, so what is a, what's a win for Tim over the longterm here? Like, what does this project turn into? Because I think if, if, uh, if I'm putting my, uh, devil's advocate hat on, which I love that onion post devil's advocate, uh, turns out just to be asshole. Um, put on your asshole hat.

Starting point is 00:23:45 Let's do that. Yeah. Put my asshole hat. I'm ready. People will say like, okay, uh, celebrity,

Starting point is 00:23:51 um, NFTs. We've seen this playbook before PFPs. We've seen this playbook before. Yeah. Yeah. But what I, what I know,

Starting point is 00:23:58 and the reason I'm asking this question is because I know what you're doing behind the scenes, which I think you're ready to share today. Yeah. It's a lot cooler than, than just checking boxes. Uh, and, and obviously you're not behind the scenes, which I think you're ready to share today. Yeah, I'll share a bunch of it. It's a lot cooler than just checking boxes. And obviously, you're not doing this for the money. So what's the creative win for you?

Starting point is 00:24:12 Yeah, shit, so much fucking work. Oh, my God. If I did my hourly on this, I'm working at Burger King. It's fucking hilarious. Anyway, so the win for me is continuing to play the game. So that is effectively a quote from Kars and sort of the finite versus infinite games side of things. Aimed here is giving myself compelling excuses slash reasons to engage with creative muscles that I have, but I haven't exercised in a very long time. And one way to do that is through something that I'm reasonably comfortable with, but that I haven't done in a very long time. That's visual art. I have very, very, very acute visual senses. I have pretty good fine

Starting point is 00:25:12 motor control. I've realized through this process, work with artists really well. That's new for me. I've always been the artist when I've designed, say, all of my book covers with the exception of Tools of Titans. I designed all of those book covers with the exception of tools of titans like i just i designed all of those book covers through sketches and then had them professionalized and polished obviously to get ready for actual printing but the visual piece is something i feel i feel like a whole human being again when i'm engaged with and it feels feels so good. It feels so good. But I need reasons to do that because when all I'm trying to do is say, take a lesson with a teacher once a week, other things crowded out, right? Other things crowded out, life gets in the way. And

Starting point is 00:26:01 trying to adult my life as best as possible. I'm like, oh, well, that's not important. That's optional. But when I have a team and when I have a project and when I have deadlines, the magic is that shit gets done. And I actually do a lot more art. So, I mean, I have in my bag right now, I took it with me to a coffee shop, a huge sketchbook.

Starting point is 00:26:25 I have an iPad with Procreate on it that I have still not figured out how to use. I've just been putting it off because I'm enjoying scribbling in my notebook so much. So that's part of the game that I want to really continue to engage with is fiction. right? Thousands of pages of published material in the books, let alone the other thousands upon thousands of pages that were cut from those and the drafts that were thrown out and so on. Nonfiction is an incredible craft. It is super interesting and challenging in a million ways. However, I think when it's done best, generally, you're a really good architect, and then you do a ton of research and you assemble all the materials, and then a lot of it is carpentry. You're putting together what you

Starting point is 00:27:36 laid out in the blueprint. And that has its own creative challenges, but what I really have enjoyed about playing with fiction and what back in the day I enjoyed so much in D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, right? By the way, I still have all of my modules, all of my books, all of my maps, all of my 20-sided die and four-sided die from when I was a kid playing D&D. I kept all of it. I still have it to this day. That's awesome. I wish I would have kept some of mine. I have all of it. It's literally in a room about 20 feet away from me right now. And what I enjoyed so much about D&D, whether I was a dungeon master or a player, and what I have enjoyed so much about art and what I've enjoyed so much about now doing fictional

Starting point is 00:28:22 world building, this is coming back to the question of what game I want to continue playing, is that you can set these initial conditions or set a situation, say with a character or with two warring clans, or with, in the case of Dungeon Master, might just be a setting in a particular campaign with different characters, and here's the opening scene. And then you go from there. So even I, in this case as the writer per se, do not know what the ending is going to be. I have no idea what's going to be around corner number seven. And that is fun for me, right? I'm not just putting together brick by brick the building that I already know the finished look of. That's not the case at all. So what I would love- Can I ask you a question?

Starting point is 00:29:17 Sure. About that though? I mean, what you're saying is you're talking about writing, but we're also talking about NFTs. So I think what we're missing is- The connection. How that thread is connected. Yeah about writing, but we're also talking about NFTs. So I think what we're missing is how that thread is connected. Yeah, totally.

Starting point is 00:29:29 Because I would say most NFT projects, they'll say, hey, we're the crazy buff squirrels or whatever. And then you've got the squirrel page and then there's some copy about the lore of the squirrels and how they got their anabolics and all these things that go down. And then that's kind of it, right?

Starting point is 00:29:46 It's like a page and you're like, okay, that's all you're talking. This isn't just a one pager. This is the characters. I buy this. No, no, it's not a one pager. Now I, you know, I want to be clear. I'm not committing to writing, you know, the half-assed version of game of thrones or something. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:02 It's not 12 novels, but I have spent hundreds of hours thinking about world building. So the NFTs here for me are a project with deadlines, with deliverables that keep me on track in thinking and engaging with art and fiction writing. So what this means in practical terms is that this project, when it comes out, will have, I'll give you some of the specifics. It's going to have eight primary great houses. These are like clans. And they're going to have different characteristics, different strengths, different weaknesses, different cultures, different religions, different natural resources. I mean, there's going to be a lot of fucking detail. And this has been written. I've already written this.

Starting point is 00:30:59 And furthermore, I've already hired a primary voice actor. There will probably, probably, I say probably meaning hopefully be more to perform these as also, this is an exclusive newsflash. that i'll do the sound effect myself it will also be a podcast so limited edition season one of a podcast that will have this lore performed and that will come out in drips and drabs so that people can slowly sort of look through the haze and begin to piece this world together there's going to be a lot of embedded secrets and mysteries and mythologies that folks if they're interested will really be able to explore and in some cases we'll have to piece together so all of that writing's being done and uh that's already in process you've got these these houses you have maps like i have art to review right now related to refinements to a map like a lay of the land of the known territory per se and the writing then thus far has been related to a lot of the backstory and the histories. But the conditions are now set in sort of the present day, and there will be at least one primary figure, character, who's going to be very nebulous in a way. I shouldn't say nebulous, but physically he will be at this point sort of unknown, who will be telling the story or rather trying to piece together the story himself. And he's a stand in, in a way, for the listener or the reader. And so how to NFTs figure into all of this, it keeps me on track. Because if I were just writing this, I don't have any desire to write a fiction book right now. Putting it out as a blog post or a series of blog posts could be interesting, but it's kind of like a fart on a crowded train.

Starting point is 00:33:17 Like, will anybody notice? Maybe somebody will notice, but it's not, it doesn't have the gravitas or the connective tissue to really hold collective attention and to foster sort of collective imagination. Whereas if you have an NFT, you have people with skin in the game. You certainly have me with skin in the game. You have a team. I mean, a team. I have a very small team is focused on this for right now. The game I want to continue playing is really engaging with developing the art.

Starting point is 00:33:56 And if I look at, for instance, the first history that I wrote for one of these clans, and I look at the last, I can see a tremendous, and this is not my words, this is from a number of proofreaders, a tremendous amount of progress. I am getting better at doing this and that's super fucking exciting. I don't think I'm the world's best or anything close to a great fiction writer right now, but I have been studying it. I've been going back. I've been reading the classics. I've been listening to podcasts and listening to lectures on world building, on systems of magic, all sorts of things. I've been paying attention. And so it's getting better. And I know there's so much room left for improvement. So basically that is the game I want to continue to play. I'll have so many questions. Yeah. Let me throw in a huge caveat, right? So wait, let me, all right, go, go for it.

Starting point is 00:34:41 Give me the caveat first. Well, the caveat is if by engaging with NFTs and Web3, I just need to deal with a bunch of dicks on the internet all the time, then all bets are off. Then I'm like, all right, fine. I'm not going to continue to just take body shots on the internet if it's energy draining. The reason I'm doing it right now is because I am getting so much energy from it. It's energy draining. So the reason I'm doing it right now is because I am getting so much energy from it. It's so fucking fun. And it's been a long time since I have felt that. And so I pay attention to that just in terms of like, why this? Why that?

Starting point is 00:35:15 It's like, what is giving me energy? Which people are giving me energy? Let me double down on that. So right now it means doubling down on this. 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 Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably AG1 by Athletic Greens. If you're traveling, if you're just busy, if you're not sure if your meals are where they should be, it covers your bases. With approximately 75 vitamins,

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Starting point is 00:36:41 packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash Tim. The thing about the NFT space that is so challenging for me and everyone else building in it is that a year ago or close to a year ago, if you'd asked me as someone that's a builder, how far out do you plan when you're building product in general? I would have told you 8 to 12 months type world. That's very much a web 2 kind of thing. Yeah. And then when I got into NFTs, I was like, Oh shit. Well, we shouldn't be planning more than 6 months out. That's just chaos. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:37:20 Then I cut that down to 3 months. And now I'm in about 30 days. So I feel like anything above and beyond and that far out is dangerous because you promise something. This community, the people that are NFT collectors, maybe it's because the blockchain is just so transparent in general. they tend to and this isn't everyone but the folks I interact with they want a level of transparency and understanding about where the project is going how ambitious is the project and you know what do you hope to build eventually and so I think that's the challenging part is

Starting point is 00:38:00 is like figuring out especially with you Tim because Tim you have such a massive podcast, a massive following on the other end of the spectrum, which is the more kind of like normies, not the Web3 folks, right? Normies, yes. But if you go in and say,

Starting point is 00:38:16 hey, every single episode is going to be plugged in this NFT collection, and it's like, I'm going to put a lot of effort in this. Because there is a world where tim ferris has the power to release comic books to release graphic novels yeah to to do you know miniature series on netflix like there is a world where you could pull that off because you are the type of human that has the wherewithal the knowledge the the you, the fan base, all of that to make this happen. Yep.

Starting point is 00:38:46 I guess the really difficult question is how serious are you with this? Because you just mentioned, if I don't like the crowd, I might pull back a bit. That's going to be the number one question you get, right? Yeah. So let me take a stab. This is one of my favorite topics because I get to be the salty, cantankerous old man, which I'm really embracing these days. So all of those considerations that you just mentioned, right? Like, what's your roadmap? How's this? How's this?

Starting point is 00:39:17 How's this? How's this? It comes down to, if we don't want to call it by too fancy a name, people just wanting to know if they're guaranteed to make a quick buck. By and large, they're like, can I buy this and then flip it for 0.2 ETH more two seconds later or five days? I mean, you can push back, but let me just say-

Starting point is 00:39:40 I will say 90% of people in this environment are exactly that. There are 10% of us that will say, I want to bet on Tim Ferriss over the long term. So I want to come in and own this because I know he's going to create something great. A lot of folks who just want free money for no effort. And that world sometimes exists. There are windows of opportunity, but I am not in any way afraid of the mob in the sense that I am going to let all of my creative decisions be dictated by what the lowest common denominator of day traders wants. Does that make sense? I have zero interest in that. And also, I don't need it. of day traders wants. Does that make sense? I have zero interest in that. And also, I don't need it. Like, I don't need... I mean, just based on the amount of work

Starting point is 00:40:54 I've put into this, I could figure out a way to do, like, compilation interview-based book and call it a day with far less work right so the drivers for this are different unless people complaining for sure oh my god yeah because people who buy a book aren't like how is this going to pay for my you know car down payment or whatever yeah my kids car which nobody i don't think anybody should and put money into speculative anything for for uh any type of important output right it's just too it's just too risky and uh you know there are risks intrinsic to a project there are

Starting point is 00:41:35 risks also inherent to just macro factors that are beyond anyone's control. I mean, AKA, look at the last week. I mean, for fuck's sake. So, you know, look, if you want something safe, NFTs ain't it, folks. So,

Starting point is 00:41:52 with that having been said, so I'm very, very serious and I got some sage advice early on, which was from a different friend,

Starting point is 00:42:04 although you can confirm or deny whether or not you echoed this in some sense, but it's like either promise and promise a lot and then deliver or promise nothing and set expectations very, very low, which is my default with everything. It has been my default

Starting point is 00:42:23 with almost every project I've ever done, because if I set expectations low, there's nothing but upside surprise for people. So except that you just told them that, and now they're like, oh, he's setting the expectations. Well,

Starting point is 00:42:35 I mean, I am setting expectations low, but here, let me, this will be fun. Why don't I, so there's going to be an FAQ on some kind of mint pages or website dedicated to the project, right? So here are a few of the drafts.

Starting point is 00:42:54 Oh, your facts? Of my facts. You're thinking about those questions? Yeah. Do these NFTs come with utility, a roadmap, and a discord? There's no planned utility, no planned roadmap, and no planned discord, but there might be a few surprises. It's a big experiment that I've been thinking about and planning for the better part of a year, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, and then there's some other stuff. Right now, I've given away a couple of things I wasn't going to mention to anybody prior to launch. I was actually going to make these surprises after the Mint, like the podcast and so on, but I've had a number of people say, hey, look, you're really excited about this. If you just hedge and say nothing, it's kind of a disservice to the whole thing. So you might as well mention a couple of them.

Starting point is 00:43:29 Okay. So here's another one. Should I consider this an investment? That's a question. And my draft so far is absolutely not. No. This is an art experiment and you're getting funny and highly stylized JPEGs that are part of a fictional world.

Starting point is 00:43:43 That's it. And then it goes on and on and on. And I just basically say, come into it expecting, as you might, if you were to go to a casino and spend $100 as entertainment money, much like you would spend money at a movie theater. You don't expect to get your money back. You expect to have fun watching a movie, eat some popcorn, and then go home. And hopefully, I give people some soul-enriching laughs along the way, as well as provide a fictional world that people engage with. But I do not want, nor am I positioned... I don't want this to be viewed as an investment, and I'm definitely not positioning it that way.

Starting point is 00:44:25 Yeah. Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but some of these come with free dinners with you and jam sessions. Is that correct? No, I don't promise any of these things. There's another one. Can I read a few more of these? Now, I might have to change some of these, but there's another one that another question on my frequently asked questions is, can I be a dick and expect benefits? If you're a dick, I reserve the right to ban or block you from anything I do in the future. And then it goes on and on. So basically, I'm not planning on running an online preschool for children with behavioral problems.

Starting point is 00:45:02 So if you're an idiot, I don't want you to be part of this world. I don't want you to have any benefits if there are any. So I will block you in whatever way I can. So I just think the sort of norm of being in a community such as online Twitter, which is one of the most unfriendly neighborhoods of the internet, just like pissing on people's heads as they walk by on the sidewalk and throwing potted plants at them is not acceptable to me. That's not the culture that I want to foster. If culture is a byproduct and part of the worst behavior you're willing to accept, I want to set the rules really early. And I think you can do that. It'll be a challenge, certainly. But I was able to do that with, say, blog comments on my blog a long time ago. I was like, we're going to be cool. If you're not cool, you're going to get blocked. That's it. And there's no second chance. This isn't like three strikes you're out. It's like, no,

Starting point is 00:45:56 you get one chance. If I invite you to dinner at my house and you put your balls on the table and then spit in my food, I'm like, okay, yeah, you're not coming back to dinner. That's, that's one strike. I think I've done that once at your house, actually. That's true. I didn't want to name names. I was invited back. It was a lot of tequila. I gave you, I did give Kevin one pass on that. That's right. But here's another one. Okay. So one more FAQ and then I'll stop because I don't want to kind of rain on my own parade and undersell it. I'm trying to be very careful of that. But here's another one. Will you be involved with this forever? Forever, ever? Forever, ever? And then I said, probably not. I'm not pounding the pavement for any of my books or TV shows anymore. And I wouldn't expect this to be all that different. I'll be involved for as long as

Starting point is 00:46:40 I'm super stoked. And it's massively energy giving instead of energy draining. You know, if I have to deal with a lot of idiots online and it's just nonstop punishment, I'll peace out and move on. My goal is always to create something that can thrive without me, but TBD, right? What I would love as a dream outcome,

Starting point is 00:46:57 coming back to your question, is for this to go really well, for me to enjoy it. And then to say, you know what? I want to keep writing fiction. I want to keep producing artwork. Like I already have all these ideas for possible extensions and all sorts of stuff. And you know me. I've thought about the possibilities for derivative creations. I've thought a lot about these things. It doesn't mean they're going to happen. It absolutely doesn't mean they're going to happen but it could uh how do you think about um you know there's there has to be some fans of yours out there that they'll tune into this and say uh this sounds really cool and i'm a fan of tim's i'm sure his his sci-fi writing will be really interesting um more sci-fi it's more like fantasy more like fantasy fantasy sorry fantasy

Starting point is 00:47:43 writing will be really interesting. I, too, am into this because there's, of course, a lot of geeks out there that might be into fan fiction type stuff. Yeah. Is there a world where anyone can kind of help out? Or do you see a world where you involve any community type involvement or collaboration? This is an excellent question, and I have not figured out where I land on it. I've talked to a ton of people about it, and I don't know where I land yet. I don't know tight controls on sort of quality narrative character in such a way that these worlds have incredible longevity right i mean some of their characters and so on have just unbelievable multiple decade long longevity.

Starting point is 00:48:46 If they oversaturate, so I'll use Disney as an example on this too. If suddenly there's five Star Wars properties coming out every week, I think personally, okay, if you're someone on the exec team who's incentivized by shorter term stock performance and that's going to benefit you and maybe your shareholders over the short term, that's fine. But you can also corrupt and damage a fictional world and characters very quickly by that over saturation right now there are other examples of folks like for for instance uh hugh howie with his book wool which was this huge sleeper bestseller who is really supportive of all fan fiction right he's the opposite end of the spectrum and uh i think that both sides could make very compelling arguments as to why they're doing what they're doing and then there's a lot in the middle right there's a lot in the middle uh so you might have for instance and this is where nfts get so tricky and somebody had asked me like if you could go long in web3 on anything what would it be and i said if i if i could go long on new generation intellectual property lawyers if there are a way

Starting point is 00:50:13 to do that i would do that because this shit is so complicated it is unbelievably complicated let alone like the accounting and tax and all that that. It is so bleeding edge that very few people have any idea where the puck is going. On the IP side, you have situations where, for instance, certain holders of an NFT will have the commercial rights or not to their particular image, but they do not have commercial rights to say the name of the project, right? Because then what's the incentive of the project owner to sort of create a lot of brand equity value if it's just getting sliced and diced into a million pieces, right? That can cause all sorts of problems. And you see this with a lot of the

Starting point is 00:51:02 larger projects in the NFTft space today right so like how do you thread the needle on that is is there are sets of questions that consume so much i well for me at least like a lot of thinking that are invisible from the outside when you just see the output but yeah i i've i'm doing a lot of reading on this i'm talking to a lot of people but i'm not sure where I land yet. Yeah. So, I mean, you've got like Gary Vee, for example, protects all of his IP. So like the sacred sardine or whatever, it can, it's like, it's only Gary's only he can use that.

Starting point is 00:51:35 I don't know if sacred sardine is a thing, but I'll just say it is. I like it. That might be my DJ name. You've got that fully protected. You know, I've gone the CC zero route, which is like nouns and cryptodes and a few other projects out there where we say the remixes, the meme culture, the extension of the brand into a thousand different nooks and crannies is going to be what gets us more visibility long-term, which experiment, know, experiment. We'll see what happens. Experiment.

Starting point is 00:52:06 And middle of the road, kind of bored apes, like we'll give you a little bit of, you know, you can go sell a coffee mug, just don't call it bored apes, call it number six, five, whatever, you know? So any sense on which way you're leaning or no, not yet? Yeah, I would say I probably lean, and this is nothing new to me, right?

Starting point is 00:52:24 I want to just maybe backstep for a second and say, I've had to think about this stuff before. This is not new, right? I've had to think about it with respect to my books. I've had to people are slicing and dicing the podcast? What do I do when people are creating like summary books of one of my books? What do I do when there are various types of derivative products that get put out that are associated with my books or my name or whatever it might be? How do you respond to that? Right? And when do you need to respond to it? Right? Because there are laws established around, say, trademarks. If you never enforce your trademarks, you get yourself into trouble. Trust me, I know this very well. We live in a society governed by laws. And if you're going to think about, here's what I would say. If you're going to think about, if people are investing in a person or a team because they hope that person or team has a long-term focus, anyone with a long-term focus has to take this shit seriously and think about it. Otherwise, they're not thinking long-term. They're just flying by the seat of their pants and their stuff could, you know, the floor could fall out, not the floor in the NFT sense. Although I guess that could be the case as well. But like the metaphorical floor upon which the entire project stands could just disintegrate unexpectedly if they're not minding these details. So where am I right now? Am I thinking probably somewhere closer to a board, a yacht club and Disney? I'm probably closer to that end of the spectrum. Uh, and it's wise. Yeah. For me, I think that for this type of project. Yeah. For this type of project. And also it's like, if somebody, if, if, if folks want me to try to craft a world that they can engage with in some way, whatever that sum is, is kind of like TBD, right? I need to, there need to be certain pieces that are reliable for me as foundational pieces of this world. So I can create, let's call it physics that are reliable.

Starting point is 00:54:50 I can create lineages that interweave in a way that makes sense. And we'll see if that changes. I've also, for instance, come across, I have put so much time into this, Kevin. Oh my God. I mean, you know that I've done a lot of it, but the number of case studies that I've read and case law related to different types of IP is unbelievable. The number of cases I've looked at related to almost every major NFT

Starting point is 00:55:18 project you can think of is mind boggling. And there are some cases of folks who are for instance opening up to certain types of fan fiction and then they'll have their community whether it's a dow or otherwise a vote on pieces of fan fiction that are created that should be incorporated into the canon right sort of the that's interesting which. However, one of my governing principles for this entire thing is actually a quote that I borrowed a principle from Morgan Spurlock, the documentary filmmaker who made Super Seismic and so on, which is, once you get fancy, fancy gets broken. So I've seen a lot of projects become so complex, especially around mechanics, that I think a lot of people opt out because it just looks like a grind to figure the shit out on any level. So for me, I'm like, look, it's art. What you're buying is art. And what that then gives you is some skin in the game as a playing piece in a world that you can then engage with. The form of that fictional world is not going to be 27 different mechanics. It's going to be writing and it's going to be probably spoken word, at least initially in the form of a podcast. And then we see where-

Starting point is 00:56:47 I think that's brilliant, by the way. I'm very, very excited for the podcast because I just know it's going to be fun. I'm excited. So now you've had some, you and I have had this cat and mouse game about the name of this project and the specifics

Starting point is 00:57:02 because one of the things that i love about you is uh you're so supportive of things that you believe in and get excited about and one of the most hilarious uh aspects of your personality is is what goes hand in hand with that is that you man you have a big mouth and so i'm always worried about you blowing my cover with secrets okay you want to talk some shit you're the most paranoid motherfucker i know dude you're like so concerned it's true it can be like something that you've already announced you're like don't fucking say a word i'm like tim you tweeted about it like two days ago and you're like oh okay you're good now yeah i mean look i so i agree we are on you know this is this is we're on the opposite end yeah we're on yeah which is why we get along because like, like I'm

Starting point is 00:57:49 the kind of, uh, like paranoid, uh, squirrel minding the nuts, you know, like that guy from ice age. Uh, and, uh, you're, and you're like, you're more like the Hakuna Matata, like a warthog from Lion King. And so, you know you know we get along it's been a while since i've watched that one what i mean i remember he was fat other than that i don't know no he's just like everything's gonna be great hakuna matata no worries man things are fantastic peace out and uh i will say not that i have any personal experience but uh i went oh shit i just blew my cover someone went to see the lion king show like the actual theater show with a friend of theirs and their friend's whole family including

Starting point is 00:58:34 a bunch of little kids and uh that someone was a little concerned that they just might not be able to like sit through whatever 90 minutes or two hours of this performance really not knowing anything about it so that said person took a handful of gummies and it was one of the most spectacular experiences of said person's life i mean it was just beyond description and how amazing and hilarious especially hilarious it was um so thank you for coming to my TED Talk on Lion King and edibles. The point was that I'm paranoid, you're very much the opposite of paranoid.

Starting point is 00:59:14 And what I wanted to offer is to share with you for the first time ever, this is not bullshit, people. I've actually have not told Kevin the real name. There was a placeholder, though. Do you remember the placeholder? Yeah, of course. So I was going to say the only reason I'm going to agree to even publish this episode is as long as we can say what the placeholder name was. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right. Oh, I remember the placeholder name. All right. So what was the placeholder name? You got a hold of me and said I have this idea

Starting point is 00:59:44 for an NFT project. Can I tell the real story? Yeah. Yeah, of course. Okay. So the real story in this, okay,

Starting point is 00:59:51 let me just put it this way in the spirit of ideation and through working through new ideas, it's come a long way. Oh yeah. Because when you first, when you first mentioned it, it was very much like, imagine a couple of guys having a couple of drinks, like bullshitting about what would be hilarious if they saw this on the blockchain.

Starting point is 01:00:10 Oh, yeah. And that's how I feel like it kind of started. Oh, yeah. Started with. And then you turn it into something where when I first saw the art, I was like, man, fuck, these are good. These are like, and I wasn't joking. Like, they were really good. Like, you did a good job with this crew. And so I was pleasantly surprised

Starting point is 01:00:27 with everything and how it's come together. It was clear to me at some point in your head, it went from, haha, wouldn't this be funny to I'm going to build something pretty badass, right? Yeah. Yeah. All my friends were like, wow, this got really elaborate very quickly. Right. Yeah, exactly. So it started off with Tim being like, wouldn't it be funny just to mess with people and just create an NFT project that was just a bunch of roosters and have it be like cock and balls.

Starting point is 01:00:59 Just call it cock and balls. And you could do blue balls and you could do like, and I'm just like i'm like oh god tim godspeed like please make that happen i just want to sit there with my michael jackson popcorn being like i like watching the shit go down you know yeah so that's that's how it started that's how it started and yes that is so it was cock and balls initially yeah which i immediately registered

Starting point is 01:01:25 all the domains. So you had to buy them from me. Which I knew you would do. So I'm glad that that was. You're suing me now. A red herring. So I'm going to take Moonbirds from you now.

Starting point is 01:01:36 Exactly. I win. There's no NFT project. I just, all your birds, all the birds. That's right. So,

Starting point is 01:01:43 so that is, so that was actually one of several initial spitball ideas where I was like, okay, what is something that would just be really fun? Now, all the other things are also true, right? Like the engaging with tech, the engaging with art, the raising, hopefully raising money for the foundation. Those are all in play already at this point,

Starting point is 01:02:04 but I was starting with, how can I make this fun for me? For me, for me, for me, for me, right? Because when I make things fun or interesting for me, it always comes across to, I mean, in the case of the books, like my readers or in the podcast case, my listeners, right? When I'm not stoked about something, it is very hard for me to hide that so i was like all right how can i make this hilarious and fun for me so cock and balls was definitely one uh was one idea there were other ideas uh one other idea was going to be i was going to see if i could crowdsource eyes, meaning photographs of eyes from my audience. And then this was before Dolly, actually. I mean, now you could really do some crazy stuff. Although I think Dolly by default, the outputs are owned by, is it OpenAI?

Starting point is 01:02:59 They're changing that. And then you have stable diffusion and so on, which I think by default makes everything public domain or CC0. So that would be compatible, assuming that somebody had an approach like you have, potentially, right? I mean, there are a lot of details. thing with eyes and uh initially the eyes as the let's call it the window into the soul was going to be tied into consciousness and then like crypto for consciousness type fundraiser i mean you should still do this by the way you should talk to platon if you chat with him at all do you know the i have he's his photography is fucking amazing i love his photography i don't think he and I've ever met, but I've seen him present. His photos are amazing. I mean, the stories behind, for instance, his profile pic pointing up of Putin sitting in was like, okay, I'm going to be taking molecules of current and lesser known also novel psychedelics that could be tryptamines that could be if an ethyl means it can be any you could sponsor molecule by buying it as an nft well you could potentially so i thought about this also like by buying buying an NFT and looking at certain dynamics or mechanics, I should say, there are ways that different molecules get weighted. And then based on the weighting, funding is applied to say studies that support different classes or types of molecules.

Starting point is 01:05:01 And there are a lot of molecules. Like there are databases of these molecules, at least as laid out in 2D. I'm sure there are ways, there are absolutely ways that you could visualize them in three-dimensional space. But that was another idea, right? And then, I mean, I'm looking through a bunch of my notes here. Yeah, some terrible names too. Watts, Windows of the Soul, W-O-T-S, Watts was going to be some wordplay that would have definitely been changed. I thought about different collaborations, for instance. I really think Brandon Stanton is amazing, the humans of New York. He's a friend. I haven't floated this by him because I didn't want to put him at any risk of some NFT curveball screwing things up. I thought, man, he would actually be an incredible person to potentially collaborate with on something like this if it were purely a fundraiser. Let's get back to it. Wait, there was one you wanted to do with the dilbert uh creator was there there might have been you there was it was the dilbert it was

Starting point is 01:06:12 some comic i don't think it was i i do know i mean scott adams has been on the podcast his his story is quite amazing his predictive ability with him look at your text with him. Look at your text with him. You wanted to call it Dill... Oh, no, no, no, no, no. There was a joke. What the fuck was it? It was something NFT related. Who was it? I think that was a joke. Yeah, I think I wanted to call it

Starting point is 01:06:37 Dill Dog. No, it wasn't Dill Dog. I think it was. No, no, no. Just look at your text with him. You texted him at Marfa and he never wrote back or some shit. He was horrified. It might have been Dill Dog. No, he said that he was going to call.

Starting point is 01:06:56 I think maybe in the podcast we did together that I joked that Dilldog was the name that got abandoned in favor of dog bird. This was something so NFT specific. It was really good. Oh, shit. You know what? I do remember though, because we had had a bunch of tequila in Marfa and you and I were losing it laughing, which happened to be the same time that I stayed with you at that Airbnb

Starting point is 01:07:19 where you're like, yeah, there are no blankets. And I slept on the couch at like in 40 degrees with a fucking towel on and was like dying all night. And then we found the blankets just conveniently in a drawer like two days later. Oh, God. But anyway, all right. So cock and balls. Do you want to see the real name of this thing

Starting point is 01:07:36 and how it's developed? Yeah, yeah, let's do it, please. All right. So I'm going to show you a shot on my phone. So I'm going to hold it up to the camera, and I think you'll be able to see it. We're going to have some actual graphics we can overlay too, because we've got to show all of our work and all that stuff.

Starting point is 01:07:52 And then I can explain the background on this. Now, as a bit of preamble, a little foreplay before I show you this thing. So part of the reason that this name made me so happy, and it still makes me so happy, is number one, I'm just emotionally immature and an adolescent at heart, and I find this hilarious.

Starting point is 01:08:15 Secondly, if anyone wants to criticize this or slam it or whatever, they're going to have a really hard time not using this project name. Oh, no. So in other words, they're going to have to type it out or say it, which is going to make me lose my shit laughing every time I see it. Okay, so here we go.

Starting point is 01:08:43 This is in process. This is not the final version, but this is a possible logo for the project, which is going to also be fully animated, or I should say partially animated. So here we go. Legend of Cockpunch? Jesus! of Cockpunch? Jesus. So you heard it here first, folks. So this project is called Cockpunch. And yes, before you ask, I have cockpunch.com. I have cockpunch.wtf.

Starting point is 01:09:20 I have at cockpunch on Twitter. I've got all the cockpunch. Wow. How did you get cockpunch on Twitter? Oh my God. So this is part of the reason why there's a good chance I'm going to lose money on this whole thing. I've put so much time and money into this, including buying shit like handles for Cockpunch. It's so stupid, Kevin Rose. I can't believe my entire career has led up to the point where the pinnacle, the synergy of all of these things I've done is something called Cockpunch.

Starting point is 01:09:50 But it gives me a lot of g and long-term benefit to humanity. So that is just hilarious that tech and our relationship and everything has coalesced in such a way that a project like this can even exist. So the explanation behind it, so it's called Cockpunch. Why is this called Cockpunch? I've shown you some of the artwork with the artwork, which I'm just so, I'm so happy with the artwork. It is so incredibly detailed. And I'll give a couple, I'll mention a couple of things, which I might edit out later because I'm not sure how much I'm going to disclose before this launches. I was intending for a lot of things to be surprises, but times are tough. It's a weird market. I feel like I should share some of it. So there are eight primary houses, as I mentioned. There is a lot of history that has been put together for this. And what I realized about cock and balls in its original iteration was that,

Starting point is 01:11:17 yeah, it's funny, but it's very short-term funny, right? It's like cock and balls, ha ha, I get it. Cock and balls. It's cock. It's holding some balls, like bowling balls or billiard balls. Like, yeah, okay. It's funny for a second. And then it's just not very interesting. What I also realized about that initial cock and balls, I just love saying it, iteration is there just wasn't much narrative or dynamic connective tissue to it at all right it

Starting point is 01:11:48 was a joke but what what i realized very quickly as i was thinking of variations on that is i was like okay hold on what if there were this fantasy world within which you have this warring states period. So there's basically this civil strife, warring states period, quite similar to Japan way back in the day, not totally coincidental, just because I've studied so much Japanese history. And this is true for many, many, many places, by the way, before they became large nation states, There are these warring states periods. And at one point, this truce of sorts, this peacemaking mechanism was developed, which is kind of similar in some ways to how geopolitics can be exerted through the Olympics now for humans, right? It is kind of warfare through athletic means. So there is this entire area in this realm called the free trade zone. And within the free trade zone, a lot happens.

Starting point is 01:12:56 That is sort of the one demilitarized area within this realm. There is the Eightfold Arena, and within the Eightfold Arena, you have the Great Games. And the Great Games are one-on-one warfare between these characters who are sent as representatives from the Eight Houses, and they're vetted in different ways.

Starting point is 01:13:20 And that's part of the lore that I won't get into right now because I want it to be a surprise. So it's a little mma style slash olympics slash it's like it's like mma meets the olympics meets gladiator and they're all roosters they're all roosters and there are many questions this raises which are going to be part of the mystery of this world but i mean are there any hens uh there are no hens there are no hens and this is going to be part of the mystery yeah that's all i'm going to say about it it's going to piss a lot of people off i'm sure and that's okay uh because then they're going to have to explain to people why they're so pissed off by a project

Starting point is 01:14:03 that is called cock punch for fuck's sake, people. You're taking life too seriously. Find another fight. This is not the fight worth fighting. But there are no hints. And you can see why I've been having so much fun with this.

Starting point is 01:14:20 Oh, it's so great. If you study the connective tissue between the IP rights of these different various projects, there are no hens. There are no hens. Let me be clear. Let me be very clear, everybody. There are no hens.

Starting point is 01:14:30 If you're buying these NFTs because you think they're hens, there are no hens. Oh, God. And so the artwork that you have seen involves all manner of, and there are a lot of elements involved, but they all have different gauntlets, right? So the, I don't want to give away the name, but there is a specific name for these games, but colloquially throughout the realm,

Starting point is 01:15:00 it is known as cock punch. Why? Because it's Bungie Cox. And they have each these gauntlets and that is one of their primary weapons is punching with these gauntlets hence cock punch and so when the punching wait let's let's let's go into the can we go into the actual how they look and whatnot we should walk through what they're sure how would you like me to go through which ones do you want to walk through i would say any that you can send us to put up graphically and then walk through what they're sure how would you like me to go through which ones do you want to walk through i would say any that you can send us to put up graphically and then you walk through them yeah yeah let me i'll show you again what i showed you before and i'll explain some of the components right so so this guy here it looks like it's turned around on my phone so i the quality is

Starting point is 01:15:41 not going to be super high but what you're looking at here is a very very large kind of goliath rooster and what you can what you see if you kind of double click on this you see a handful of things so at the very bottom of this and the configuration of all this is not an accident this is where all of the easter eggs and stuff that's embedded in this fictional world, I think, are going to be a lot of fun. But this example in the logo, as I just shared it with you, is a Goliath rooster who will have many attributes people might associate with, say, a berserker. So think of maybe the fictionalized Vikings with battle axes and things of this type. And the visual, I mean, in this particular case, he's got war paint across his face and huge neck and also very detailed armor and most of it is in this case

Starting point is 01:16:51 leather there is some metal at use but there are going to be one or two clans who have primary access to and expertise with metals and that is one of the types of scarcity that will exist in this world. And that changes behavior. And it changes how things flow. And it changes the interactions. At the bottom of this,

Starting point is 01:17:17 you also have two gauntlets. In this particular case, there are two gauntlets that are bladed. And they have two different types of blades uh but the the the type of gauntlet is really really uh wide i mean i think we have god i want to say close to 300 different attributes that were all designed from scratch. Crazy. It's so incredibly detailed. I mean, how do you even come up with that many? So we sat down and put together dozens of Google documents,

Starting point is 01:18:00 put together hundreds of pieces. This is what I did. Hundreds of pieces of reference images. So it'd be like be like hey it's a blend of these five things but go to this wikipedia page go to the sixth paragraph on this particular weapon that was used in this particular culture i want this aspect but not this aspect and i want it to be roughly this multiple in terms of the size of the hand i want it to be held in this way i mean the level of detail is completely bananas and then there would be rough drafts and then uh illustration and design reviews sometimes those almost always those would start in 2D. So something I haven't shared, which I'll share, and you saw the first teaser that was presented today

Starting point is 01:18:49 that I put up on Twitter, at T. Ferris and at Tim Tim Nifty's. Sorry. And that teaser blew a lot of people away, right? It's well beyond what anyone would have expected. And the story behind how it was generated hints at a whole extra layer of complexity that also makes this very interesting,

Starting point is 01:19:18 which is all of these characters are modeled in three dimensions. So the way that all these teasers were created was by positioning light sources and camera angles around these characters who exist. And by doing that, you get these incredibly cinematic, stupidly, I think, awesome shots of these characters. It's all done with, in effect, the files that people will ultimately have access to in 3D. It's going to start with 2D because these three-dimensional files are, I don't know, some of them are going to be enormous. They'll be like two gigs, right? So for mint purposes, it's going to be two.

Starting point is 01:20:06 Things will be more likely to break if we try to do that out of the gate but they are all three-dimensional which means you can do all sorts of fun things with them right if you take the time to learn how to use any of these three you know three-dimensional modeling uh pieces of software you will be able to create photo shoots for your character and rotate and so on. What that also means though, is we did not just create something in 2D. We had to keep in mind what it looks like when you rotate it all the way around, when you look at it from the top. So the sheer number of details to build in was crazy. It's been so incredibly labor intensive, and I've loved it, which is the maybe even crazier part. You mentioned that I'm kind of

Starting point is 01:20:59 paranoid or very paranoid. It's true. Very hypervigilant. I think there are a lot of good reasons for that. A lot of weird shit has happened to me, including some pretty gnarly stuff. So I think my default is on alert. There's that. What that default on alert though has as an upside, because I'm very, very, very visually acute. I can probably draw the layout of every restaurant I've ever been in. That's crazy. the layout of every restaurant I've ever been in. I have incredibly abnormal visual acuity and visual memory. So reviewing this art, well, here, I'll give you a crazy example. You'll believe this too. It sounds unbelievable. I was surprised. So we had to go through at one point and not only did we create like 290 different traits and by trait, like that could be a hairstyle, but more commonly, it's like a really intricate piece of outerwear or a really intricate weapon or really intricate footwear, something like that.

Starting point is 01:22:01 And then we need to go through and name all these things, right? Oh, I've been there. It's a lot of work. Yeah. So I went through with the project manager and named all these things. I love naming things. There's a lot of power in names, a lot of power in names, which is going to be part of the whole lore and world that I'm building and have been building. But after naming all of them, I remembered every image and what name it was

Starting point is 01:22:35 associated with. So for the next week, I'd be like, hey, I want to change that one thing. It was called this, but I want to change it to Amethyst Deceiver. This is what the gauntlet looks like. Here's the reason for doing it. Could you update that in the spreadsheet? So, this is just a way of saying I don't think any there's no detail

Starting point is 01:22:58 that I noticed that has been overlooked in this art. Really proud of it. It's crazy. I was, when I was on a call with you and one of your folks were working on it, they were zooming in like really, really, really close along the edge to make sure that like everything was connecting

Starting point is 01:23:16 the right way. Oh yeah. And I was just blown away at like the attention to detail and just making sure that everything is just so perfect on these things. Yeah. For such a project that like started off with such humble beginnings and you were just like, it's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, and it's, and that right there is a great example of, I think why I'm getting so much energy from this because from our initial conversations,

Starting point is 01:23:40 there's no way I could have predicted this is what would have happened. And that's fun, right? That's fun. And there's another reason why it's like, yeah, what's your five-year roadmap? Number one, I'm not doing this to cater to day traders. I understand that traders are a part of this. I realize that's, in fact, in some ways, I think a healthy part of the ecosystem. We didn't even talk about royalties, but I do... That was my next question, actually. Oh, fire away then, because this is going to tie in. Yeah, so my question that I had around this, especially when you got into a lot of the more insanely well-defined

Starting point is 01:24:18 weaponry and things of that nature, I can easily see you assigning power to each of these individual things and saying this character is has more armor. This character has more of this, this and that. And like, given your background in D&D, like this could be an easy play to roll into either some type of game or, you know, I mean, that's that's an obvious move. if we were back six months ago, eight months ago, and the royalty engine was fired up the way that it was back then, you could say, heck, I could launch this, get on a $10 to $15 million a year run rate in terms of secondary royalties, and fund the hell out of all these kind of crazy ideas.

Starting point is 01:24:57 Yeah, I could fund all the development myself for stuff like that. Yeah, and it's like, that would have been amazing. Sadly, that's no longer the case. Yes. What's the plan? The cherry blossoms have shed their flowers. That's right. Well, you mean the plan in terms of royalties

Starting point is 01:25:14 or just the plan in terms of how I would want to explore things like that? I guess a couple questions to that then. So one, what's your current take on royalties? And I said before, this is the 8th, so things could be completely different by now november 8th um and then also how do you plan to fund things like that going forward uh let me tackle the second one first so the first using first and second in very confusing way all right how to tackle the second one first second hand i'm going to tackle the first one second so first yes uh how do i plan on funding these things in the future i don't plan on

Starting point is 01:25:52 funding these things in the future so just so that is clear i'm excited by the potential like the the potential energy of this project is very very high how and if that gets translated is a different question for me so i am not committing to doing any of this derivative stuff or line extensions because i don't want people to buy any of these nfts expecting that because they shouldn't there's a very good chance i don't do people to buy any of these NFTs expecting that because they shouldn't. There's a very good chance I don't do any of that stuff. In part because there's no funding for it. In part because if I don't enjoy it, if it's not giving me energy and I'm dealing with too much headache and dicks on the internet, then I will change direction.

Starting point is 01:26:38 I'll do something else. So that's that. If I want to explore those things later, I would imagine, given, as you said, that the royalty engine, at least as it existed a year ago, is no longer. Those times have passed, and that the primary sales are going to the foundation, I would either have to go out of pocket in footing the dev costs for all those things, or I would need to partner with companies who would probably license the IP in some fashion, which is another reason why one could make the compelling argument for sort of controlling the integrity of the meta brand and world right on some level you can't totally control it i'm not going to try to do that but to sort of maintain a core integrity to that so i think that if i were to explore whether it's games, an animated series

Starting point is 01:27:46 or something like that, it would almost certainly be in partnership with a specialized company that does that and does it better than anyone else who is willing to figure out some type of deal structure that allows that to happen

Starting point is 01:28:02 that doesn't require Tim Tim to take out a fourth mortgage on his house to try to make it work. I imagine your swag game is going to be pretty... If your hats and shirts and stuff that you sell is probably going to do a lot of revenue. There are so many options for fun things that can be done, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. I want to see what the next, I want to do a good job on this first. All of that stuff is going to be there and I'm not committing to it. It is exciting and fun to think about, but, and this happens to me with books too, by the way, like I need to be very careful about

Starting point is 01:28:39 getting too excited about various spinoffs and marketing opportunities because that's the fun, easy stuff for me to think about. Whereas like the writing and in this case, like the art and the fiction, that's the hard part per se to get right. So I've just been focusing on that, but yeah, the marketing stuff, possible merch, all of that. Holy shit. I have a million ideas. It's, I mean, it's kind of a layup, right? I mean, Hawk Bunch for God's sake. So coming back to the royalties though, because I think this is a conversation that is worth having and I may come off as horribly naive. I'm sure people have arguments for this, that, and the other thing. Let me begin with a story. So during COVID, I had conversations with many artist friends, visual artists, and also musicians who could finally make money in some cases without touring all the time and being away from their family and friends. They could finally justify putting's figure out ways that we can cut other fees. cutting their fees, but if that's not enough for them to survive and thrive and eat market share, let's figure out ways that we can cut other fees, including royalties to creators.

Starting point is 01:30:34 That tide may be impossible to stem, right? That may be something that is just inexorably marching towards zero, but on a philosophical basis, as someone who has contended with very difficult economics in the book world. And look, I have been very, very lucky and managed to jump on top of a shooting star and I made it work for me. But I don't want to get into specifics, but people would be shocked by, relatively speaking, how little money comes out of, I guess, five books now that are number one New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers that are in 40 plus languages. They would be shocked at what that actually translates to. Much like I think people would be shocked to learn what musicians make is launched and kind of up and running, I probably will have spent the majority of after-tax income that I've made from all of my

Starting point is 01:31:54 books combined in the last year. Isn't that fucking crazy? Crazy. It's crazy, right? $50,000. That's crazy. Yeah. So, so it's, but it's, and you know me, like I'm very judicious and thoughtful with how I spend money. Like, I think I'm very good at capital allocation. Like I'm very surgical. So I'm not blowing money. Like I'm spending it very, very intelligently. And nonetheless.

Starting point is 01:32:21 You're one of the best at that actually. Yeah. Thanks man. Like I'm really, I'm really high leverage and surgical how i do it and nonetheless i all in with this thing including like my time which is a lot of time and the time of my team and so on and contractors and everything else it'll probably be be almost certainly more than 50% of the after tax income to me from all of my books in the last six to 12 months. That's crazy. So on a philosophical level, and I'm getting off easy compared to say musicians and most fine artists. I'm getting off really, really easy

Starting point is 01:33:05 because I've had a tremendous amount of luck and good fortune with the books. So on a philosophical level, I want gifted artists to be able to share their work and create new work and to be incentivized to do that in a way that allows them to thrive i strongly stand for that and i'm furthermore yeah furthermore i want nascent artists or would-be artists who are choosing between paths of like sell out to the man and go work at like fill in the blank kind of rank and file institution bank or whatever no not to talk smack about banks like

Starting point is 01:33:54 there's a place and a time for it some people are built for it but for people who would shelve their dreams of exploring art to take the reliable path because they see no way to make ends meet through art. I want to try to preserve options for them to do that. I think the world needs it. And for that reason, I really strongly believe in trying to protect royalties. Now, that could just be whack-a-mole. It could just be a fool's errand because it's all going to zero anyway. But let's telescope out and consider what that might mean. If it goes to zero and royalty streams just disappear and the call to arms and the request or the command from all the traders is, well, what you need to do is have a 10-year roadmap.

Starting point is 01:34:53 You need to have a team. You need to raise money. And instead of being an artist, actually, you need to be a startup CEO and founder first and foremost, and a fundraiser in order to get an entry ticket to play in this game, what do you think happens? 99.9% of all the artists disappear. That's what happens. So then what happens? Well, it doesn't paint a very rosy future for the space, I don't think. So personally, even if it's like, all right, this is going to be the hill that I die on and it doesn't really make a difference. I do want to be fixed with code. I don't think the whack-a-mole option

Starting point is 01:35:46 is going to be the one that fixes it for the long term. I think that's an arms race to who can outsmart the other one or deploy a new contract faster. It's an antivirus game. It's like the virus gets released and you have to quickly come up with a patch to prevent it from going anywhere.

Starting point is 01:36:00 It's also not adaptable, right? Because retroactively, if you then need to modify your smart contract, that's not always a piece of cake, right? Yeah. So I think it's going to be, there'll be other technical, let's just say it gets solved over the longterm and you are able to actually enforce royalties. I think the beautiful thing about it is if you see something that's enforcing a royalty and you see it on the screen that it's enforcing the royalty, you don't have to buy it. Like let the market figure out what is what the right, because I think, I think what will most likely happen is gone. It'll probably be, well, I think there's a couple of things. I like to think of these as more dynamic than what, what they are, where it's always like, okay, it's 5%, right? Or it's 8% or it's 10% or whatever it may be. I like to think of them as something that can change with the situation with a little bit

Starting point is 01:36:53 more. Because for example, if there was an option for me- Then I have a dream scenario that I want to tell you about. So please go. But I have this dream wishlist type scenario related to this. So for example. So for me, it's like, you know, well, there's two things. I set the proof collective pass to be a three-year membership, right? And I did that intentionally because I didn't want to time myself up forever, ever to be, you know, part of having to feed the mouse forever, right? And so far it's been great. Do you say feed the mouse?

Starting point is 01:37:23 Mouse. Yeah, yeah. I kind of like feed the mouse? Mouse. Yeah, yeah. I kind of like feed the mouse. That's the name of our new punk rock band. Well, to your point though, right now it still doesn't feel like work. It's like, it's a good, we're creating great experiences for the people that own the passes, but I think it's the last six or eight passes that were sold were done so that escaped the royalties.

Starting point is 01:37:45 And so we have another side of the crowd that's like, hey, turn the pass on to be a forever pass. Get rid of the three years. We're coming up on a year now. We'll be a year in come January 1st. You have two years left. I have some FUD. Make it a forever pass. But how can I make it a forever pass if there's not revenue to hire the employees to do the magic on the other side? Yeah, exactly. So it's just like you kind of like you can't have it both ways, right? Yeah. There needs to be income.

Starting point is 01:38:12 As much as people seem to hate anyone else making money in Web3, at least if I'm to judge it from NFT Twitter, you need fuel to make these things run. Yes. Whether it's a single artist in a fucking studio or it's a company of people who have a roadmap and want to deliver to their community, in either case, there needs to be fuel. The other piece of this that I think is really important is that there needs to be a checkbox.

Starting point is 01:38:43 I believe believe personally, you'd get 80 plus percent of companies that would check this. Whereas if there is a sale where someone is losing money from the last transaction, don't charge them any royalties. If someone is underwater for something that they have collected on the art side, it just isn't working out, why would I want to kick them while they're down? That would be a box that I would check right away. Yeah, that's interesting. And I think you, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:39:08 To me, there's better, solutions are coming. I've been talking with a lot of folks and there's a lot of really interesting tech being built right now. So what I was dreaming about, and I knew it wasn't going to be, I didn't think it would be technically possible, but part of what gives me so much excitement around this is that, and people might view this as a negative. I don't think they should. Like I don't need to do this, right? Like i'm choosing to do this but i don't need to follow i don't feel compelled to

Starting point is 01:39:46 follow the dogma that has very quickly risen up to become scripture in web3 right like you can't do this you have to do this you always have to do this you can't do this you you know it's like 12 months ago you had to have a discord and then a couple of projects don't do it now it's like oh no now you don't need a discord it's just like oh my god it's the same just like opinion competition but these aren't actually the laws of nature yeah there's a lot of room to maneuver so what i was hoping i could do with the launch of this would just would to be to set basically a descending rate of royalty percentage so that if people hold they get rewarded in a sense right so if they if they sell in the first month 50 royalty right if they sell after the first month, but within six months, then it's, I'm making these numbers up obviously, but 20%. And then it goes down and I therefore incentivize

Starting point is 01:40:54 people to hold, or more likely, I don't change any behavior. I attract people who are willing to hold for a longer period of time, which is appealing to me because I don't want to deal with the manic depressive folks who are just yelling on the internet every time they don't get a three X return on doing no work. I just don't have a lot of respect for that. I don't want to cater to that. And I recognize that there are really good people involved with the space. It's just that the worst in the space tend to be the loudest. It is challenging, especially when someone's upside down in something where they put a lot of money and the market takes a turn. And you have a lot of people that are in a bad situation. So you got to feel... It's bad. Coming back like a boomerang to one of the items in my FAQ. Please, please, please do not buy something called cock punch as an investment. Called cock punch. Please.

Starting point is 01:42:00 Please, dear God. I think that's just safe for anything that has the word cock in it I would say that you could broadly apply that to probably more than just yours yeah I agree well the crypto dick butts were hot for a minute dick butts it doesn't

Starting point is 01:42:18 ride the fucking hundred foot wave of memetic power in the same way that cock punch does that's fair. Just saying. So I want to close out with a few more logistical things on the cock side. So collection, you could have done 10K.

Starting point is 01:42:37 We don't know where it's going to land. You haven't 100% locked that in, but you're thinking what, now? I'm thinking... That's what I'm thinking okay and then uh i haven't decided how many to reserve uh but you know i like the idea this entire thing unexpectedly is turned into a study of economics and game theory it's wild how complicated this stuff gets and how deep you can go down that rabbit hole and get distracted, I think, from the art side. But you do need to

Starting point is 01:43:12 think about certain aspects of it, right? So for instance, just the question of like, how many should I reserve? Like on one hand, I'm like, well, no primary sales, secondary, who the hell knows? So let me reserve a bunch and then I'll show that I've got like my skin in the game and incentives are aligned with everybody else. But then somebody said, well, somebody who's pretty well-versed in the space said, well, but if you have a huge reserve, then people will be worried about you selling a bunch at the peak and then flooding the market and driving the floor price down. And I was like, oh my God, I didn't even, I mean, number one, it wouldn't even occur to me to do that. Uh, but it would just ruin your reputation as a human.

Starting point is 01:43:54 So I don't think you would ever do that. No, I wouldn't do that. But the, I mean, so the other thing is like, look, if you don't know who I am, which like, why would you? I'm like tier F celebrity. But if you followed anything that I've ever done, then you can kind of answer any, you can answer most questions you would have about this project if you like followed it. Like if you think that I might do something like that, then you shouldn't buy it. And I don't think you've tracked any of the projects that I've done in the past. I would say there's a couple things there that I like. One, you hold them back and it gives you personal optionality should, let's just say this thing is starting to gain some momentum. And you're like, people are loving the podcast. The lore is going really well. You're

Starting point is 01:44:42 finding a writing groove. like things are going. Now you could say to the community, hey, the first day or the first and 15th of every month, I'm going to sell two of these. And all that cash is going to be used to fund development for X, right? And so you don't have to rely upon the royalties. You can go in and say, I'm holding these back.

Starting point is 01:45:02 Should we ever want to use them? Or I could just flood the market and you all could lose that. But the choice is yours. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to, you know, I don't want to tell you what to do, live your life, but these are your choices. A, you help me or B, I shoot your dog in the head. So yeah. So I, I like, I just like, I do think do think for me right for some people who are scheming bastards who just want to take the money and run maybe they would pull some stupidly short-sighted move like flooding the market with a ton of their product which is stupid uh doesn't make any sense for me uh but i like the idea. For me, I will feel strongly aligned. I like that idea. First, I guess, logistics question that I think I feel quite confident about is roughly being available. I'll tell you another reason why that's important is with the number of attributes that we

Starting point is 01:46:07 have, if we don't have a certain critical mass, we will not get a good distribution of those traits and attributes. That is actually very true. And I want people to see these things. We have put so much time and effort. That's why I think you should do something. Get a few more of them out there. I think given everything that you have on, that you said that you're just going to commit to a first season of,

Starting point is 01:46:34 even just doing, putting your energy into a new podcast that is going to be around this. Yeah, it's not going to hurt. My main podcast, Tim Ferriss' show is going to cross a billion downloads in the next handful of months. It's a big show. When I have launched, and look, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, so please take this with a huge

Starting point is 01:46:57 grain of salt. I launched dedicated episodes for my last two books, Tools of Titans and Tribe Mentors. Things are much more competitive now. There are like 50,000 plus new podcasts come out per week. So everything has changed. Algorithms have changed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But both of those podcasts ended up being number one on Apple podcasts out of all podcasts for a short period of time because of the way that things were weighted at that time. So I don't think that'll happen. I think things are too competitive. But when I launch a new podcast, at least a handful of people should listen to it and they're going to be so fucking confused

Starting point is 01:47:33 that I think it's going to get talked about. To go from dissecting world-class performers and deconstructing the habits and routines and favorite books that you can use in your own life to cock punch is going to be such a jarring transition that people are going to talk about it. So that'll be at the very least a very, very hilarious week. Well, this is great, Tim. I think that I'm relieved. i'm relieved in that when i think of of of people that you know there's there's so many i i'm sure you can imagine when moonbirds like did its thing right yeah and just like really

Starting point is 01:48:14 took off amazing everybody came out of the woodwork to pick my brain on nfts all of a sudden it became like the the number one phone call to like i want want to launch an NFT project. Right. And a lot of them were really with no plan, you know, and my advice to a lot of people, uh, was just like, don't, don't do this unless you're willing to put your reputation at risk or you have something that's new and novel and exciting and is like uniquely yours that you can point to and say, this is why I'm different than everything else out there. Right. Like your superpower, one of many is, is your creativity on the writing side, right. And your ability to go in and dominate that space so well. And so you were playing to your superpowers, the art side, and then also the creative writing side. It's like,

Starting point is 01:49:03 I don't know, that's a good powerful combination that isn't just insert celebrity signing on artists to do drop to make X number of dollars and never show up again, right? Yeah. Yeah. Totally. It's exciting. And I've also, I've sort of painted myself into a productive creative corner in the sense that i decided way before any other decision that the all the primary sale proceeds would go to the foundation right so there is no option for me just rug pulling and running with my bags of loot to the Bahamas or St. Kitts or whatever, right? I have created conditions such that I need to be creative. And that's great because that's what I wanted to do. So I've just created the constraints and the incentives such that

Starting point is 01:50:01 that's what I got to do, which I'm very excited about. I remember being in Austin at Elizabeth Street Cafe, drinking a Vietnamese coffee and eating pastries while you were texting me during the Mood Merds launch. The fucking craziness that was ensuing. And I was so happy for you, man. I love seeing my friends win and win so big. And it was so fun to get those texts. It made me so happy. I was with a friend. I was like, oh, I appreciate that. Look at this, man.

Starting point is 01:50:30 I'm so fucking happy. I was so, it made my day that you were having such an amazing, amazing day. So that's what I wanted to say. I got to tell you, well, I appreciate that. That means a lot, obviously, I appreciate that. That means, means a lot, obviously coming from you. And, and, uh, the thing that I'll follow up with this is like, at the end of the day, I think that the, the, the, the thing that I love most about working in this space and the reason why I get up still, still, even in this crazy market, still jazz to play is because it still does feel like play. It feels like we're making shit up and that's okay because this is a new frontier we're figuring out on the fly. And as long as it feels that way, it's going to be fun and good creative things come from a place of comfort, I feel, than a place of stress, right? And it seems like you're operating in a place that is low stress. You're not making it seem like it's this crazy roadmap.

Starting point is 01:51:26 You're just going to have a good time. And I think good things will follow from that if that's the place you're operating. And I'll also say something out loud that a number of people have encouraged me to say out loud. They're like, have you actually said that? And I'm like, no, I haven't. And they're like, you should, which is, and there are a few sentences, so it's not going to take too long. It's not a TED talk. So the first is, if you're serious all the time, you'll burn out before you get any of the really serious work done. You can do serious work without taking yourself and it too seriously, because if you do that, you just burn out. I've yet to see a single exception. And also, and this is a grand experiment for me at least, but it seems very promising that you can get very serious work done in fun ways right so this is a project is it it's a very elaborate art project

Starting point is 01:52:28 with visual art and writing called cock punch that's the proper pronunciation by the cock punch and and the funds from the primary sale are going to the SciSafe Foundation, which are going to fund therapeutics for people who are suffering from debilitating conditions like treatment-resistant depression, which I've suffered from for my entire life. And complex PTSD as a result of trauma like sexual abuse and experience war and so on. I mean, these are serious fucking things. And it can get really dark and really heavy when you're immersed in it, as I have been for many years now. The possibility of having fun and injecting play and having the side effect of that, the output of that, then flow down into these very very serious high leverage places is super exciting so i hope i hope i hope and i mean i don't want to say expect because secret to

Starting point is 01:53:33 happiness is low expectations but i'm very optimistic about this whole thing and if it works holy shit man like if it works the door that that opens to me, because I've been so serious, man, for the last handful of years working on all these therapeutics, and it's dark. You deal with these stories of trauma and so on. It gets very dark. The idea that I can continue to do that work, not abandon it, not abandon those people, not abandon myself, but to also have this like light fun side that offsets it, that gives me longevity and endurance. Oh man, that's exciting to me. Yeah, that's amazing. And I love that you're not taking yourself too seriously and just calling it something just ridiculous that you could also get shit for, for having not be PC by the way.

Starting point is 01:54:21 Oh yeah, I can't wait. I can't wait. I'm excited for you to be canceled next month. Oh yeah. But, but in the process of trying to cancel me, they're going to have to write and say cock punch over and over and over again. Right. Good luck. The gymnastics that people are going to have to

Starting point is 01:54:37 go through from the peanut gallery to try to criticize it without actually taking the bait and saying or writing cock punch is going to be just pure entertainment. Yeah. Well, that and if this does take off, let's hope it's like this could be gravestone material where it's like creative cock punch. Yeah, I was thinking, you know, I was thinking one of the best moves, like if I want to walk the walk of not taking myself too seriously, launching this as my first major NFT project and first attempt at fictional world building is going to mean that I would, what, like a third of my Wikipedia is going to be dedicated to something called Cockpunch? Yeah, that makes me happy. Oh, man. So anytime anyone in the Netherlands is like, we run this business organization.

Starting point is 01:55:27 We are thinking of having Tim Ferriss be a keynote speaker. Let's go to his Wikipedia page. It's going to be like, Cockpunch, hello. So it'll be interesting to see how that turns out. I love it. So good. Well, Tim. Yes.

Starting point is 01:55:42 Yes, sir. Great to have you on the show. Yeah. I'm excited for this launch. I will be minting with bells on and hope I get the rare blue ball cock, which is the rarest, correct? The blue balls are not common. Blue balls are not common. They're treasured.

Starting point is 01:55:57 They are. They are treasured. They are treasured, as are many others. I know we're joking, but that actually is true, right? The blue balls trade is treasured. Blue balls are actually others. People were joking, but that actually is true, right? One of the blue balls trade is treasured. Blue balls are actually rare. And, uh,

Starting point is 01:56:07 I don't want to spoil all the secrets, but yes, blue balls are, uh, prized possessions. Those are going to be, those are going to be on the rare side of things. Cockpunch.com.

Starting point is 01:56:17 Don't miss it. At cockpunch on Twitter. At cockpunch on Twitter. Oh my God. Kev, Kev, how did I end up here? I love it.

Starting point is 01:56:27 Awesome. Thanks brother. I'll see you on launch day with a tweet. I'll be retweeting every related post I possibly can. Oh, it's going to be, it's going to be glorious. Can't wait.

Starting point is 01:56:38 Oh yeah. Great to spend time with you brother. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And

Starting point is 01:56:57 Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out.

Starting point is 01:57:31 Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Allform. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep and their mattresses,

Starting point is 01:57:49 which I've been using since 2017. I have two of them upstairs from where I'm sitting at this moment. Helix has gone beyond the bedroom and started making sofas. They've launched a company called Allform, A-L-L-F-O-R-M, and they're making premium, customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores. So I'm sitting in my living room right now and it's entirely Allform furniture. I've got two chairs, I've got an ottoman, and I have an

Starting point is 01:58:15 L-sectional couch. And I'll come back to that. You can pick your fabric. They're all spill, stain, and scratch resistant. The sofa color, the color of the legs, the sofa size, the shape to make sure it's perfect for you and your home. Also, all form arrives in just three to seven days and you can assemble it all yourself in a few minutes. No tools needed. I was quite astonished by how modular and easy these things fit together, kind of like Lego pieces.

Starting point is 01:58:39 They've got armchairs, love seats, all the way up to an eight seat sectional, so there's something for everyone. You can also start small and kind of build on top of it if you want to get a smaller couch and then build out on it which is actually in a way what I did because I can turn my L sectional couch into a normal straight couch and then with a separate ottoman in a matter of about 60 seconds it's pretty rad so I mentioned I have all these different things in this room I

Starting point is 01:59:02 used the natural leg finish which is their lightest color. And I dig it. I mean, I've been using these things hours and hours and hours every single day. So I am using what I am sharing with you guys. And if getting a sofa without trying it in-store sounds risky, you don't need to worry. All Form sofas are delivered directly to your home with fast, free shipping. And you get 100 days to decide if you want to keep it. That's more than three months. And if you don't love it, they'll pick it up for free and give you a full refund. Your sofa frame also has a forever warranty that's literally forever.

Starting point is 01:59:33 So check it out. Take a look. They've got all sorts of cool stuff to choose from. I was skeptical and it actually worked. It worked much better than I could have imagined. And I'm very, very happy. So to find your perfect sofa, check out allform.com slash Tim. That's A-L-L-F-O-R-M dot com slash Tim. Allform is offering 20% off all orders to you, my dear listeners, at allform.com slash Tim. Make sure to use the code Tim at checkout. That's allform.com slash Tim and use code Tim at checkout. This episode is brought to you by Maui Nui venison, wildly delicious venison. Maui Nui is one of my favorite things on the entire planet. It has been for quite a while. I've been eating Maui Nui venison for now the past three plus years, and there's no going back. My pantry and freezers are full of it. I restock every month. Why would

Starting point is 02:00:23 I do this? One, if I combine Maui Nui venison with even a little exercise, I drop body fat unbelievably quickly. And axis deer have roughly 2% body fat. It's incredibly lean. Two, it's very tender, not gamey at all, tastes delicious, and it's one of the most nutrient-dense meats on the planet. I would go so far as to say it is the most nutrient-dense meat I have ever found because of the rich volcanic soils, remarkable plant diversity, and so on, including wild grazing. So I literally, 10 minutes ago, just finished eating some leftovers of ground axis deer. This is Maui New Venison with some canned chili, just organic chili,

Starting point is 02:01:07 beans and so on that I put into a pan and cooked for 10 minutes. And I would rather eat that than a $500 meal in New York City. Honestly, it makes me happier on a deep level to eat this and it makes me healthier on a fundamental level. So number three, ethically, I feel great about Maui Nui protein. Axis deer are an invasive species on Maui where their population needs to be managed in order to protect vulnerable ecosystems. I think the number that was introduced was perhaps maybe six deer in 1959, something like that, and unmanaged that population could grow to, I think it's 200,000 within the next 20 years. So using stress-free harvesting methods,

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #636: The Big Reveal: The Legend of CØCKPUNCH — Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss on Tim’s New and Extremely Bizarre Art Project

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