The Tim Ferriss Show - #645: The Random Show, Mega-Holiday Edition — 2023 Resolutions and New Tools, Extensive Bullshitting, Booze and Ethanol Alternatives, The “Yearly Delete,” A Million Sidebars, Ayahuasca Revisited, Recapping the COCKPUNCH Saga, and Much More

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Starting point is 00:02:30 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-resistant.

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Starting point is 00:03:29 and then with a separate ottoman in a matter of about 60 seconds. It's pretty rad. So I mentioned I have all of these different things in this room. I 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. So check it out. Take

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Starting point is 00:04:48 What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss, and this is yet another edition of The Random Show, episode number 4732. Kevin Rose, serial entrepreneur, amazing, good fella, generous soul, kindred spirit. We started when we were four, doing these podcasts together. We did. We did quite a few episodes. Avid wearer of trucker hats and drinker of red wine,

Starting point is 00:05:28 as we've already established by the sound effects that preceded this introduction. Kevin, nice to see you. Yeah, it's good to see you as well. We need to do this in person more often. We do. It was so fun. It was so fun to do it in person. What nectar of the gods are you suckling over there?

Starting point is 00:05:44 Yes, I'm having a little bit of the mascot from napa valley the harlan family we know will obviously over there and they are quality producers of quite fine cabernet red wine that is just amazing this is like my favorite to be fair i'm conflicted a little bit because I am on their advisory board, but they make great wine. They do make great wine. It's fantastic. I've been over yonder back when I was living in NorCal.

Starting point is 00:06:13 You and I had quite a bit of that, even before you were on the board. Very, very tasty grapes. Tasty, tasty grapes. Yeah, absolutely. They can put that on the label if they want as a quote. Tasty grapes from Tim. Just in the back. Founder of Cockpunch. Tasty grapesrapes. Yeah, absolutely. They can put that on the label if they want, as a quote. Tasty Grapes from Tim. Just in the back.

Starting point is 00:06:26 Founder of Cockpunch. Tasty Grapes. Exactly. I'm sure that'll do wonders, I think, for their floor price of their wines. Yeah, for that very high and top shelf legacy, multi-generational branding that they're going after. I think that would really help. That's what you want. It's just Tasty Graves. Tasty Graves. I am drinking

Starting point is 00:06:48 I don't know if you've ever seen this before, this thing which I am drinking. No. It's this little can of R13 ginger mule hard ketones. So this is ethanol free alcohol. Jesus. Hold on. I have other

Starting point is 00:07:03 ethanol alcohol as well. You're drinking hard ketones now. Hold on. That's where we're at. Pause. Don't knock it until you've tried it. So R13 butanediol. I know where you're going to take that. So the R13 butanediol, a few things. Number one is you do get drunk on this stuff. You cannot drive if you drink this stuff. Like all alcohol, pretty much. Like all alcohol. But the point being that it is not ethanol, so you are avoiding some of the metabolites and issues

Starting point is 00:07:38 through liver metabolism that you run into with regular alcohol. It is also an appetite suppressant. So if you're used to drinking and then just housing five pizzas, like I did the other night, then this is a counterbalance. And what I've been contemplating, I've already done this one.

Starting point is 00:07:57 It speeds you up though. It's ketones, right? So it's like Coke, alcohol. Here's the thing. No, it's ketones, but it's not beta-hydroxybutyrate or a performance-enhancing ketone. This is a hard ketone intoxicant. So you have to be very careful.

Starting point is 00:08:12 They have warnings, no pregnant ladies, et cetera. All this stuff, do not consume more than three per day. Oh my God, dude. You legitimately get intoxicated when you drink this. So you have to be very careful, but it contains, does it burn when you pee? No,

Starting point is 00:08:29 it does not burn with when you pee. It does not give you horns or a vestigial tail or, or eyelid hair, none of those things. And I have been enjoying experimenting with this because what I will sometimes do, and I haven't done this much, but I will have one of these.

Starting point is 00:08:44 You're an investor. I can tell. I am not an investor. Bad placement. Yeah. This is like the Wayne's World when they're drinking Pepsi. I will have one of these every night at 7 p.m. I am not an investor.

Starting point is 00:08:57 I have no vested interest, unlike that shill Kevin Rose. I have no vested interest. I said I was involved. I almost spit the grape juice that you called it. Tasty grapes. So yeah, I am not involved. I have no problem hawking the stuff when I am, but this is actually very tasty. So ginger mule tastes like a Moscow mule, but it has no ethanol-based alcohol in it. And here's what I'm going to do.

Starting point is 00:09:26 So I'm going to have this first, hopefully, and this is, I think, perhaps wishful thinking, but I'm hoping the ketones will have some neuroprotective effects so that when I then shift into fifth gear to have this, which is a tequila I've become very, very fond of. I'm not involved, but I have been drinking it because I had it first at a restaurant called Suerte, so Suerte here in Austin, which has excellent Tex-Mex food, very high-end, outstanding cuisine.

Starting point is 00:09:59 And the first time I had this that the server recommended was at that restaurant when I was having dinner with Chase Jarvis and we were both blown away. I love Chase. Chase is a great guy. Chase and his wife. Fantastic human. Both wonderful humans. And we were both really impressed with this and I enjoyed it so much that I ended up buying a bottle, which is quite rare for me because I don't drink that much, but I do really like tequila. I mean, if you're in Texas and you drink alcohol, you owe it to yourself to explore the range of tequila. And this stuff is outstanding. It's just fantastic. So this will be step two. I have two questions for you. Actually,

Starting point is 00:10:35 one question. You can cut this later if you want. Oh boy. You said on a private text to me that you had a couple of drinks with Atiyah last night. Atiyah is not a big drinker. No. At all. No. Every time I've gone out to dinner with him, he has one tequila. I had more than he had. I had more than Peter.

Starting point is 00:10:54 Okay. Was he into this ketone thing as well? No. Was that what you were drinking or no? No, no, no. We were drinking red wine from Spain, which was fantastic in the moment. I've just found I love red wine. I'll continue to have it on occasion.

Starting point is 00:11:09 Maybe I'm just becoming the cryptkeeper. If anybody gets the reference, got to be pretty old already to get the reference. My body tolerates wine of any type increasingly poorly with respect to sleep. If I have three glasses, man, I feel like somebody put a pillowcase over my head and just punched me in the face for like an hour in the middle of the night. It's rough. Do you get the hot sweats? I do. Reliably. And you can track it. If you have an Oura ring or something else on, you look at it, you're like, good Lord, what happened to my body in the middle yeah and it's just this happens to daria too she's like a sweaty linebacker in the middle of the night like it's like you don't want to go near it it's like brutal yeah it's a

Starting point is 00:11:52 lot and i know that's going to happen which is why if i'm going to have a drink a real drink or otherwise i have not found this stuff to help sleep by the way R13. As much as I am interested, and I have boxes of this stuff, and I'm not an investor, because I'm interested in how I might use this to moderate ethanol-based alcohol consumption, which I enjoy. But let's just say I can pregame with one of these, get to a point where I'm kind of loopy. I will say that one of these compared to one, say, tequila soda, the R13 will fuck up my verbal acuity or my ability to speak much more than the... Yeah, and that's all you're really looking for.

Starting point is 00:12:42 So it's perfect for this podcast. And then today you just want to be slurring your words. Yeah. And this stuff also, per can, I have found to throw off your physical coordination a lot more than an equivalent single alcohol drink.

Starting point is 00:12:58 So you do need to be careful with it. It's not something you want to pound and then grab a chainsaw and go out gathering wood. Well, that's the weird thing is it's such a non-obvious... I would never have imagined you were going to say that when you started this podcast because typically I think ketones is like, okay, I'm going to chug a bottle pre-workout. So I mean, I guess you could go lifting right now, drunk lifting if you want to.

Starting point is 00:13:20 No, this would be terrible for performance. This is bad for performance. I mean, it's not... Well, let's put it a different way. It is not a performance enhancer in the same way that other ketone supplements might be. So I have taken, even earlier today, I took a different exogenous ketone supplement because I was eating pretty low calorie today before recording a podcast this morning.

Starting point is 00:13:43 And it, within 20 minutes or 25 minutes, reliably kicked up my blood ketone levels as would be measured with, say, a... Do you use piano strip or... Oh, no, you... Precision extra. You can breathe one. You can use a breathalyzer.

Starting point is 00:13:59 You can use the finger pricks. I didn't measure it, but reliably I will see a bump of one to two millimolars, which is substantial. And I went from being foggy and tired and slow to being fast with my words, not having to search for turns of phrase. Everything was coming quickly.

Starting point is 00:14:22 It was very reliable as a performance enhancer. This, what I'm drinking, will have the opposite effect. Actually, this is really interesting. One question for you on that front, Tim, because I know having traveled with you a ton to countries where you've been so generous as to be our translator, where Tim will translate for you for about six hours, and then he'll just shut down. And then I get so grumpy. I'm going to get pissed. You're just like, you figure it out.

Starting point is 00:14:49 I'm done translating. Google Translate's good enough, goddammit. I don't want to do this job anymore. Exactly. Tim was like our paid translator of one of my birthday parties for the entire trip. Unpaid. Unpaid. So I'm curious, though.

Starting point is 00:15:04 You mentioned how quick words just flow like butter. Would it help in a situation like that, do you think? Have you tried it? Ketones when translating? For translating, I'm sure it would help. If you're using the right class of ketone, because when we're talking about ketones, you have ketone esters, you have ketone salts,

Starting point is 00:15:21 and I'm not qualified to talk about the intricate science of it all. Someone like Dr. Dominic D'Agostino, who I've had on the podcast at least twice, is one of the preeminent researchers in the space who also works with, I want to say the Department of Defense, might be DARPA, in synthesizing compounds for special forces

Starting point is 00:15:43 and Navy SEALs and stuff. Yeah, I was going to say, the SEALs using it at some point? Right. And so they need measurable benefit. And one of the measurable benefits is that it helps you to sustain physical and cognitive performance under conditions of low oxygen, which you might experience if you're doing, say, extended deep diving or submersion, which you might also experience if you're at altitude. So I recently, this would have been early October, I used ketones to help acclimate to altitude and then tapered off of the ketones so I wouldn't perhaps prevent some of the physiological adaptations that I would want to sustain without using ketones every day. So they're fascinating. I will say,

Starting point is 00:16:32 if I'm taking the other side of the argument and making a counter case, I am skeptical that taking exogenous ketones constantly when you are consuming a normal diet which is relatively rich in carbohydrates so your blood glucose is not necessarily pathologically elevated but if your glucose is normally elevated and then you have very elevated blood ketone levels levels, my understanding is that does not readily occur in nature, at least with humans in an organic capacity, unless you are in a dangerous position as a diabetic where you're experiencing ketoacidosis, which can be fatal. I mean, it's very, very precarious. So my feeling is if this doesn't occur in nature, because normally you'd be producing ketones in a state of starvation, even though I should be clear, we're producing ketones

Starting point is 00:17:32 a lot of the time, but in trivial amounts. By the time we get to the point where we're noticing it and we're breaking down meaningful body fat in order to produce these alternate sources of energy, which the heart and the brain really love. The heart and the brain really like ketones. They prefer them over carbohydrate, is that right? Or glucose, is that right? I've heard that said. I don't have that much difficulty believing it from a first-person perspective when I've done extended fasts especially, the ketones provoked or the, maybe it's just the spectrum of changes provoked by fasting, say on day two or three, where my ketones will naturally be in 1.5 to 2.5 millimolar range, that condition feels different

Starting point is 00:18:22 and I feel sharper than I do when I use exogenous ketones, supplemental ketones, to get to the same measurement using a single device. And I'm not sure why that is, but it feels different. You feel much sharper when you get there through fasting, in my experience. And that is to say, not all ketones are created equal. So this right here is going to make you slur your words and shit the bed from a performance perspective, but might be fun as an experimental ethanol replacement. And then there are others.

Starting point is 00:18:56 There are many different options out there that are documented for performing. Excuse me, documented, there go the words, documented for improving performance. So one question Excuse me, documented, there go the words, documented for improving performance. So one question for you, Tim, and we can move on to all the whole slew of topics that we have. Otherwise, this will be a two-hour ketone episode. But I'm curious, when people are listening, it's like, there's no doubt right now. A lot of people are like, okay, this sounds crazy. This sounds kind of fun. Maybe I want to try this. You've already mentioned the drink. What about if you're just doing it for mental performance? Is there the one brand that

Starting point is 00:19:29 I know had licensed the patents from somewhere in England? Was HVMN? Yeah, HVMN. You know what I'm talking about? I do. I believe that they are very focused on this particular type of ketone, the R13. I don't want to say that with great conviction, but I would say to everyone, you owe it to yourself because you're putting something in your body that is going to have, one way or the other, could have a significant impact on your blood chemistry

Starting point is 00:20:01 and your entire biological system. Read a few studies, find out what the exact ketone is and go on pub bed or somewhere else and just read at least a few abstracts. Yeah. But we just want to know what you're taking, dude. Just tell us the brand.

Starting point is 00:20:18 What are you, what are you, what are you juicing up with? What am I juicing up with here? Hold on. Like, what did you take me for the podcast? I'll grab it.

Starting point is 00:20:23 I'll grab it. Hold on a second. I'll grab it. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'llicing up with? Here, hold on. What did you take before the podcast? I'll grab it. Hold on a second. I'll entertain you all why Tim is gone. What Tim doesn't know is we've secretly replaced his ketones. Diabetic horse urine. I love it.

Starting point is 00:20:38 This right here, you know what? The details are not... The specifics are not on the back of this. It's on the back of a larger box, but the label, the label does not scream scientific credibility, but it's a fun label. So this right here, it's going to be a little hard to see. The label reads ketone aid. So that is the brand snake water, ketone ester and electrolytes. So it's ketone ester plus electrolytes. The brand name is ketone ester and electrolytes so it's ketone ester plus electrolytes the brand name is ketone aid one word snake water i want to be super clear though because i think

Starting point is 00:21:13 people can fuck themselves up with these things i am not a doctor i do not play one on the random show or on the internet do your reading and talk to your doctor because there are people for which something like this would be contraindicated. So pay attention, folks. Yeah. I mean, never take a supplement from the man that created cock punch. That's just fair to say. I think those are very wise words. Yeah. Yeah. Furthermore, just as a side note, I want to say I love when I'm talking to someone and maybe, especially in Austin, you can't throw a rock without hitting someone who wants to tell you about their latest ayahuasca experience. It's just like you can't escape it. And if you're at a group dinner, sometimes something will come up related to psychedelics. You cannot avoid it in Austin, which rubs me the wrong way sometimes, but I'm kind of, I guess I contributed to it probably in some way. So there you go.

Starting point is 00:22:08 Just desserts. But the point I want to make is be having a group dinner and somebody will say, I don't really don't do drugs. I just drink. And I'm like, oh, you mean the civilization destroyer? That's the only one that you use? Right. It's like, it's a drug. Yeah. I mean, to use right it's like it's a drug yeah i mean to pretend like alcohol is it's just yeah yeah come on i was just gonna say anything you put

Starting point is 00:22:32 in your body that provokes a change that's a drug banana ketone tequila you know prescription medication they're all they're all drugs every time i to Atiyah about alcohol or anyone on his team, they're just like, don't do it. It's just so bad. It's the worst. It's so bad for you. And yet. Sometimes you just want to have a drink.

Starting point is 00:22:54 Sometimes you just want to have a drink. All right. Speaking of which. Let's move into the show. Let's move into the show. So New Year's resolutions. What do you have, Kevin? And is there anything that's been on there

Starting point is 00:23:03 for like five years straight? And you're bringing it up? We could go back. We have at least five years of random shows that we could probably do a flashback to every single failed one. All the failed resolutions. That'd be an amazing montage. Oh my God, there'd be so many.

Starting point is 00:23:21 So I would say, I want to hear yours as well. I'll do a rapid fire on, on mine. And, and if you feel like digging in deeper on any of them, you're welcome to. So, I mean,

Starting point is 00:23:31 the no brainer is just not drinking in January. That's, that's a no brainer. It's just a good reset. Have you done that before? Yeah. Kind of like, uh,

Starting point is 00:23:41 that was a little, so, so hand signal we got. No, I mean, it's like, uh, you know, little, so, so hand signal we got. No, I mean, it's like, uh, you know,

Starting point is 00:23:47 it, it, it depends on how many months or how many, Oh boy. It depends on how you define January. The witness is getting uncomfortable. He's sweating, starting to shift around.

Starting point is 00:23:58 I know. Listen, I just got back from a seven day silent meditation retreat. I did not do any alcohol and, um, paragon of self-control. You didn't get seven-day silent meditation retreat. I did not do any alcohol and... Paragon of self-control. You didn't get hammered on your meditation retreat. Yeah, exactly. So question for you, if you're not going to drink,

Starting point is 00:24:13 I know that people may not know this, flying makes you super, super nervous. As far as I remember. He really doesn't like flying. Yeah, we shouldn't be in the sky. Yes. No, we shouldn't do it. It doesn't make sense.

Starting point is 00:24:26 So when Kevin flies, Kev Kev tends to have a drink or two or three. I mean, I like a glass of champagne on, you know, it's like, you know, there's nothing wrong with it. We can pretend that's what we're looking at. No, you're right. So here's the deal. So would you have to cut back on your travel for a booze-free January? No, no, no.

Starting point is 00:24:44 Like I'm not that bad anymore. Like when I flew back from the meditationze-free January. No, no, no. Like, I'm not that bad anymore. Like, when I flew back from the meditation retreat, I didn't drink, which is great. Did you take a handful of Xanax, though? Tell me the truth. Yeah, exactly. No, I didn't. I was fine.

Starting point is 00:24:56 I was totally fine. Wow. Look at that. Go meditation. It's one of those things where I don't know why it is. You know what it is about flying? This is going to sound ridiculous. It's that I'm not flying the plane.

Starting point is 00:25:10 I want to be in control and I kind of want to fly it, but I don't know how. That doesn't make sense either. It's a very confusing thing and it's something that is just, you know, we all got our things. I've got plenty of things. Actually, this is a good one. I haven't unpacked this with you ever. You're Tim Tim, the fearless. You do all is a good one. Yeah. I haven't unpacked this with you ever. Oh, boy. You're Tim Tim the fearless.

Starting point is 00:25:26 You do all kinds of crazy shit. What's the one thing that people wouldn't know that scares you? Terrified of heights. They'll say spiders. Terrified of heights. Are you serious? Yeah. And so when I go rock climbing, I do this as a way to try to inoculate myself against

Starting point is 00:25:41 some of the fear to the extent that if I get to a height that many people, even up in a tree, like 15 feet, something like that, my legs will start to shake. I have, I'm very afraid of heights. And when I rock climb, I'll be belaying somebody, let's just say, and it's my turn to go. Before I am even on the wall, I have sweat pouring off my hands. So I end up using, I can't just use chalk because it turns into this sticky mud on my hands. Yeah. And if I go up a wall, even if it's a small wall, let's say it's a 50-foot wall, I'll have to reapply chalk like five times. So what I will do, it's actually, people might find this useful.

Starting point is 00:26:24 There's a product called Rhino. It probably has another word there, but Rhino, basically antiperspirant for your hands used by some competitive rock climbers. And that is the only thing. It was recommended to me by a professional level climber that has helped. And I am fairly sure, sorry, company, it's a great product. If you're constantly inhibiting perspiration through the hands, I have to imagine there may be side effects, I would think. So I haven't used it all the time. But if I'm training, let's just say, as I would like to, this will come back to the resolutions, I guess, but train at least twice a week, three times a week. Like for a period of time, why not? Right? If I did that three, four weeks on, one week off and did that for a quarter, I don't, it'd be hard for me to imagine that would do a lot of damage. But I am very afraid of heights to answer your question.

Starting point is 00:27:22 Have you ever done the VR thing where you walk out on the plank and it's like you're up at a 15 story building or a 20 story building? I'm actually, for whatever reason, fine with that. Maybe it's because it's not convincing enough yet or the kinesthetic feedback isn't quite there yet or the depth perception is quite not there yet from an adaptive eye tracking perspective would you ever bungee jump I have bungee jump before and it scared the shit out

Starting point is 00:27:54 of me and I wanted to do it in part because it was gonna scare the shit out of me and I did it off a bridge in Taiwan this is forever ago and everyone was going backwards and they were kind of falling butt first. And I was like, all right, I want to get tied up and I want to jump off headfirst, looking straight down as I'm going. And I did it and it scared the shit out of me. But I will say, despite all of this exposure, right? So if this were, I guess it's what, prolonged exposure PE therapy, it does not seem to have reduced my fear of heights at all.

Starting point is 00:28:34 Whatsoever. That's crazy. I had no idea. That's new for me. Oh yeah, that's a real thing. It's interesting. The more I fly, the less I care. Just talking about it.

Starting point is 00:28:45 I kid you not. I'm just talking about heights right now and my hands are sweating. So I've done a lot of, you know this, I've done a lot of rock climbing and did it a bunch in my youth. And I think that the sweating thing would happen to me as well.

Starting point is 00:29:02 But that's just natural. You're going up a wall, especially if you're lead climbing and you're clipping in as you're going. But that's just natural. Like you just like, you're going up a wall, especially if you're lead climbing and you're clipping in as you're going. Yeah. It's much scarier. I didn't know they made antiperspirant for your hands though.

Starting point is 00:29:11 Yeah, they do. And I'll look it up and keep going on your... Yeah. On your... All right. So January booze free. Booze free means no booze.

Starting point is 00:29:20 Okay, so booze free. That's right. No drinks. Okay. All right. Wine is fine, but everything else is what wine is fine what kind of just kidding i'm just kidding oh my god amazing moving moving on um so the sad thing

Starting point is 00:29:36 is i've been wearing so i have a whoop on an apple watch on and i've tested all these devices and i really do enjoy playing with them and trying all the latest software out. And one of the things that is really disappointing to me is in the last year, actually a couple of years now since COVID, and watching Apple Watch will have a cardio fitness level built inside of it. And mine's like been slowly going down.

Starting point is 00:30:00 And I'm like, ah, shit, you know, like sucks. I gotta get back into shape. So, you know, my dad died of a heart attack. My grandpa died of a heart attack, like cardiovascular issues are not new to my family. So for me, this is a kind of a big deal, you know? So I'm really focused on cardiovascular fitness for this new year. And I essentially, a couple of things is to let people know where I'm at. I've tried out all the different latest versions of software for fitness tracking. I would like to link this up in your show notes.

Starting point is 00:30:32 There's a scientist on YouTube called The Quantified Scientist that I really like. He's awesome. He does, basically uses a lot of the kind of gold standard ways to track sleep and he'll hook himself up to all the real professional devices and then also use the consumer devices and say, how good are these devices? How accurate are they at really predicting the levels of sleep?

Starting point is 00:30:55 How good are they at heart rate detection while jogging? Is the aura any good because it's moving around on your finger all the time? There's all these open questions. All he does, I think it's his full-time job now, is just put out new videos with all the latest fitness trackers and tell you if they're any good. And a lot of them are crap. That's a cool niche though, that he's basically saying. Yeah, it's a really cool niche. He's like, all right, we're going to look at hydrostatic underwater weighing for body

Starting point is 00:31:19 composition and compare it to whatever this thing is you're wearing. If we take it as, I think I'm getting that description right, but if we take this underwater approach as the, say, Olympic gold standard, how do these things stack up? That's cool. Right, exactly. Exactly, yeah, it's really cool.

Starting point is 00:31:36 And so the TLDR is that the Apple Watch is actually pretty damn good now. It didn't always used to be, but it's really good for heart rate and it's really good for sleep. The Whoop I like because it's not as good as the Apple Watch, but what it does is it does activity-specific tracking. So for example, and yes, you can do that on the Apple Watch too. You can say, I'm doing elliptical or I'm doing all this stuff, right? But the Whoop is cool because you can say, okay, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to do a

Starting point is 00:32:04 meditation. It'll detect that you're doing that. And then it'll give you your heart rate in real time, or it'll show you the graph after you're done over that activity. And it's much harder to try and find that data. Apple's, their device is amazing. Their software kind of sucks. Like HealthKit and the whole health interface, it's just not a consumer app. It's very clinical feeling. So the data is there, but it's not represented in the right way if that makes sense. So anyway, long story short,

Starting point is 00:32:33 Aura has a brand new sleep algorithm. The quantified scientists have yet to test that out against all of his other things. Their sleep algorithm, I think, was pretty screwed up before, but they're testing a new one now. You can enable it in beta, so I'm going to wait and see how that goes for sleep tracking. But anyway, my methods for cardio, Peloton rower. I'm not involved in Peloton in any way. I don't have any stock, but I saw their new rower and it looks pretty interesting. So they give you a 30

Starting point is 00:32:58 day money back guarantee. I just bought it. It'll show up in the next couple of days. I think that's good. They say rowing is 80% of your muscles, which is amazing all at the same time. So if you're looking for a quick hit, like 15, 20 minute workout, I don't know. I'm excited about it. I'm going to give it a shot. I can hop in for a second.

Starting point is 00:33:18 So I had a chance to test the Peloton rower for the first time. And this is part of due diligence because I have been having conversations with Peloton, and you didn't know this before putting together the prep for this conversation. This is the first I'm hearing of it. Yeah, so Peloton and I have been talking about

Starting point is 00:33:39 possibly doing something in terms of sponsorship on the podcast related to the rower. And as is my first step with all of these things the podcast related to the rower. And as is my first step with all of these things, I asked to use a unit. I said, I have to test it. And I had the chance to test a unit. This would have been, I don't know, two or three weeks ago. And I was very impressed with it. And I can give you a couple of tips that might help other people who are also getting the unit so the first is the form correction is very helpful and almost everyone will use their arms too much lean back too far and use their legs incorrectly there so i don't

Starting point is 00:34:21 know what the form correction is is this like in in the software or something? It is in the software. So it will show a profile of you on the rower and it will flash red in areas where you need to correct form. How does it know that? The front camera? Sensors in the seat and sensors on the pulling mechanism. And there are probably other sensors on top of that. And the feedback is actually quite helpful.

Starting point is 00:34:48 There is a competitive or former competitive, I think he's still current competitive rower, very large white guy who has excellent form. And there are other instructors who have excellent form, but he is the instructor who I know, and I'm blanking on his name, people could figure it out, who has a competitive background. And the reason that's attractive to me is if you are going to be a competitive rower in the long term and succeed, if your technique is not efficient, you are going to suffer from repetitive use injuries.

Starting point is 00:35:24 Yes. And they will debilitate you. So I like the idea of modeling, at least in the beginning stages, the technique on someone who has competitive experience. So that would be a recommendation. I apologize, I'm blanking on his name. The last thing I would say,

Starting point is 00:35:38 and I've provided feedback, product feedback, so we'll see, since I think they could make modifications quite easily with firmware instead of changing the hardware. And if my experience with the Peloton bike is any indication, they will make constant firmware improvements. So I expect by the time I'm even saying this, that once you get your shipped unit, I'm hoping there may be some modifications made. The sensors at the very back of the seat are very sensitive. So my experience was you may get a bit too much feedback in terms of a red alert indicating you're leaning back,

Starting point is 00:36:22 when you may not in fact be leaning back that far. So two suggestions, and these are my experiential suggestions, not any type of, I don't think official suggestion, scoot your butt forward just a little bit so that it's not all the way at the back of the seat. Second is absolutely focus on not leaning back excessively. And so I do think as a practice, especially for engaging your legs, it's good to almost lean forward slightly as you do the exercise. And what blew my mind is once I had the technique feedback, once I had the guidance in terms of exertion and some metrics to watch, I found that I could do longer rowing workouts.

Starting point is 00:37:08 I could actually do a long rowing workouts. And I have a Concept2 rower, and I like the Concept2 rower. But what I found is without any of those feedback mechanisms, I would crank up the resistance because there's a resistance dial on the Concept2, crank up the resistance, and I would crank up the resistance because there's a resistance dial on the Concept2, crank up the resistance, and I would go balls to the wall for 500 meters, and I would effectively be done. My heart rate would be through the roof. My arms would be sore, but my legs would not be sore. And I was roasted. I could go longer if I were trying to do something, let's just say, as a short morning workout, 500 to 750 meters. And I was like, okay, I think that at this point, my biceps are the weak link in the chain. Using the Peloton rower and following the feedback

Starting point is 00:37:59 easily could do a 30 to 45 minute workout, which better engaged all of the musculature that you were aiming to engage. So I had a very positive experience, very positive experience. I'm sure that they will, of course, and they already, I'm sure have many plans to iterate on the firmware. So I think you'll enjoy it. I'll be curious to hear your thoughts. Now, I will say, since you gave a peek behind the scenes earlier, I'll do you the same favor. When you send me those naked mirror selfie shots post-workout, every once in a while, I'll get one of these. I always do. I'll get one of these from Kevin. You send me Apple Cash right after.

Starting point is 00:38:37 No, it's great. It's great. Yeah, I did upgrade to premium on your OnlyFans. And I always get the tricep shot. And you have good tr. And I always get the tricep shot. And you have good triceps. I always get the tricep shot. I do not. It's not. It's still there. It's not.

Starting point is 00:38:54 Still got it. It's not frequent. It's not frequent that I get the quad or the calf flex. I don't get those. I have good quads now. What? Come on. Well, they're getting better. I've been

Starting point is 00:39:05 doing a lot of squats. I'll send you some updated pics. Great, great. Good, good, good. Fantastic. Yeah. I was just going to ensure that you understand that using a rower involves your legs. I just wanted to make sure that those... No. You know what's funny? All jokes aside, Tim, seriously, in the last four weeks, I've really focused on my legs. I'm enjoying it a lot. No shit. It's like, I don't know about... So I've always...

Starting point is 00:39:29 I still hate abs. There's nothing about abs that I'm ever going to love. But once you actually start to build up your legs, there's this... I mean, it's like with anything fitness related. There's this painful first few weeks. And if you can cross that chasm and kind of get on the other side of it, I don't know, things are looking up on the legs. And also you just feel, you feel a lot better. You feel a lot stronger. You feel much more stable when you're doing that kind of work.

Starting point is 00:39:57 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, minerals, and whole food source ingredients, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multimineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an immunity formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens. You get the idea. Right now, Athletic Greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all-in-one formula,

Starting point is 00:40:41 which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com slash Tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash Tim. I don't want to interrupt your flow on the New Year's stuff, but I have some physical

Starting point is 00:41:23 resolutions as well. Jump in. Why not? We can jump back to mine. Let's just keep it going. Popcorn it around, as they call it. Yeah. So I am going to be spending most of January and February focusing on skiing. I find skiing to be a perfect blend of some of my favorite things. And I have done snowboarding. I just tend to injure myself immediately because snowboarding comes very naturally. I still think I'm a 15-year-old skateboarder and I start doing stuff at the park and getting fancy and then I injure myself inevitably. So rather than try to rely on restraint, which is not my strong suit. I just don't allow myself to snowboard anymore. Skiing is a wonderful combination of time in nature, being outside,

Starting point is 00:42:15 moving with speed under control where you get an adrenaline hit, but ideally without excessive danger. It is subtle and you can refine technique for a long time and not run out of room to improve. You can make quantum leaps in your performance with proper instruction. And you can do it like when you're 72. And you can do it when you're older. And that has become so much more important for me. And to this end though, I am, or both in process and leading up to it. So let's just say I have actually not that much time.

Starting point is 00:42:57 I have like 10 days, so I'm not going to do a whole lot of conditioning in the next 10 days, but I have done some leading up to it, focusing on lower body, lower leg. I've torn, as you know, I've had so many injuries. So I've torn most of the connective tissue, the meaningful connective tissue in my ankles over the years, just from outrageous decisions and bad commitments with combat sports and getting heel hooked and things like this. So I, as a result, need to compensate

Starting point is 00:43:28 by strengthening the lower legs on the lateral portion, the rear of my calf, everything, to try to compensate for weak ankles and terrible dorsiflexion. And is that your weak point, if someone wanted to take you out and just go for the ankles? Yeah, you gotta go for the ankles yeah you gotta gotta go for the ankles it is a weak spot so yeah you can go for the ankles if someone wants to come at me go for the ankles and i'll just pull out my concealed carry and

Starting point is 00:43:55 shoot you in the face anyway if you're pissed at that cock punch floor price just go for his ankles yeah if you go for the ankles just uh be prepared. I may be packing. So there's that. And the reason I bring all of this up though, is that it's one thing for me to make a commitment in say an urban environment to improve lower body strength and to work on stability and to do so in a way that is sort of clinical in a workout without real-world engagement. But if I really want to stack the deck in my favor to accomplish that, I want to set the environment and I want to set my social interactions in such a way that that goal is served. And I recognize this is a very fortunate position that I'm in, but I do think people can borrow this maybe framework or way of looking at goals to think about, all right, I say I want to do X. How can I optimize spending time with people

Starting point is 00:45:01 who will help me achieve X or who are already achieving X or are trying to achieve X? How can I put myself in locations where I am more likely to interact with those people and absorb some of these maybe ancillary habits related to my primary goal through sheer exposure? So Tim tells that that that is, I think that is such a very, very important thing, this idea that the sum of your closest friends largely makes up what you're into, your hobbies, the things you get excited about.

Starting point is 00:45:37 When you find there's something new you want to go after, let's call it skiing or something, you're lucky because you can pick up the phone and world-classclass skiers will answer and say let me take you out for the day you know so you're tim ferris but like how do you recommend that people going into the new year if there's something new they want to get into like or they they look around their friend group and they're just like this isn't helping me get to the next level like what do you do if you're stuck like that go make some new friends. And I would say furthermore, let's... Friendster.

Starting point is 00:46:08 Friendster. So aside from Friendster, I will say, and I'll mention this, I don't mention it that much. The 4-Hour Chef, confusingly, is actually a book about accelerated learning and skill acquisition. I talk a lot about this in The 4-Hour Chef. So even if you buy it, you don't give a shit about cooking and you just want to learn about meta-learning and acquiring physical skills, there's a section called meta-learning in The 4-Hour Chef. And I highly recommend that people dig into it because the recommendations work. and I've used them dozens of times now. One of the points that I make is if you go on Google and search whatever your target sport is, let's just for the time being assume you're trying to learn a sport. I want to play that pickle sport. Pickle ball?

Starting point is 00:46:57 Yeah, I haven't tried that yet. Yeah, pickle ball is fun. Pickle ball is fun. It's more ankle-friendly than tennis, but you can still roll an ankle or two if you're not careful. So it is exciting. Austin is also not only the third coast capital of ayahuasca and unending ayahuasca conversations, but also pickleball. There's a lot of pickleball here. And in Central Valley, California, it's become very popular.

Starting point is 00:47:24 But putting pickleball aside for a second because that is not yet an olympic sport let's say you want to get better at a sport that is a professional sport or i should say amateur or professional sport represented in the olympics could be swimming could be it could be just about anything, snowboarding, et cetera. If you search for snowboard silver medalist, bronze medalist, or even maybe gold medalist from two Olympics ago, there's a very good chance, and this is not to minimize their achievement, but the fact of the matter is

Starting point is 00:48:05 there are many sports that are financially rewarded in the US, basketball, baseball, and there are many that are not. And I don't think that's fair in a sense. It's not reflective of the dedication or skill necessary to be good at certain things. Gymnastics would be another one. However, that does mean an opportunity for a lot of people. And you could find a silver medalist or a bronze medalist who, by the way, in many cases, is just a gold medalist who had a bad day. That's it. And you could get one-on-one remote or in-person training with them in many cases for a hundred bucks an hour and i realized that's amazing i hadn't even thought about that yeah it doesn't even metal any metal is fine like yeah no no no and and here's the thing like yeah you don't need you

Starting point is 00:48:58 don't need also if you are i mean i am not the best skier but i do ski black diamond i've done some hella skiing and i've done a lot of off-piste kind of off-terrain i'm not a great skier but i have a basic foundation of ability i do not need a gold medalist i need someone who is substantially better than I am, and this is very key, and who can teach. Because in many cases, you will find, say, a college coach, maybe they're retired, doesn't really matter, in a given sport, who will be a far better instructor and get you further ahead than a gold medalist. if that gold medalist has never really taught everything they've done since age five has become second nature so they can't explicitly name or describe what they're doing so you have a broad menu of people you can choose if you're trying to learn a new skill. And it is so mind-bendingly affordable in so many cases.

Starting point is 00:50:11 There are so many fields. Let's take an example. I am very excited about archery. So some of my goals relate to archery for the new year. And I've been taking it seriously for a while. I feel very comfortable with compound. I'm focusing now on recurve and barebow. Are you better than Atiyah or is Atiyah better than you? I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea. I mean, Atiyah has gone so full with archery.

Starting point is 00:50:39 He's making his own materials, putting on his own fletching. He said he's better than you. Well, then he might be. No, I'm just kidding. Then he might be. I feel very confident in my ability to do what I've tasked myself with doing. Well, you got into bareback riding a long time ago, that archery. Remember that?

Starting point is 00:51:01 You were doing bareback archery in Japan. It's not bareback, but I was doing yabusame horseback archery in Japan with traditional bows that are long bows, about six feet long, where you- Was there a saddle on that horse or no? There's a saddle, but the saddle is very, very thin wood. The only purpose of the saddle is to hold the stirrups on the horse so you can ride the horse without sitting on the horse. So you're effectively doing a wide squat in the stirrups. The only purpose of the saddle is to hold you on the horse. And the saddle is not intended to be sat upon. I have two antique saddles at home that were my reward. Those were my first real reward I gave myself in any meaningful way for anything I did. And it was for our body hitting number one New York Times.

Starting point is 00:51:52 That's why I have the saddles. Oh my God, dude. Yeah. So, gosh, Tim, we've known each other a long time, man. Super long time. I remember walking in, what was that downstairs place that you had where you had like walking, you went down this hallway to Tim's house and it was like, there was a big, huge Japanese, like you had the full armor, right? Off to the left. What was that? It was a little condo you

Starting point is 00:52:16 had or something? That was, the armor had traveled with me for quite a while. This was Kendo armor that I used in Japan. A condo you had in San Francisco, right? With that little... Yeah, it was on the right-hand side. So as you walked in, it was in two different places. One place I rented, and then another place that I bought. And the place that I bought, which was in Glen Park, I guess both of them were in Glen Park. The first one had this hallway leading in, pretty long hallway, and it was all kettlebells it was all kettlebells it was just like 20 kettlebells and then you walked up and the armor was to the right it was directly to the right across that's right this walkway that went from the living room into

Starting point is 00:52:58 the kitchen and the armor was directly on the right when you came in to the place that I bought later. You'd walk in and on the left-hand side was an entire chalkboard wall that had artwork on it. So it was like 12 feet of chalk art, which was incredible. So good. I was so impressed with this artist. And then on the right-hand side had the Japanese armor. And that was the Kendo armor I used when I was in Japan. Tim's house back then was exactly how,

Starting point is 00:53:27 because I met you and you just launched for our work week. It wasn't, it was just the launch party was when I met you for that. And I remember I came to your house and I remember just walking at some point to hang out. I didn't know you that well. And it was just like, you walked on this aisle of kettlebells.

Starting point is 00:53:44 It was like a hall of kettlebells yeah and then there's like japanese armor and like weird saddles and shit maybe the saddles were later i think saddles were a few years later yeah yeah and then there was like books all over the place with all these little note things in them and i'm just like this guy is crazy but like it was the honeymoon phase of our friendship. That's right. Kettlebell date. So I am, I suppose, taking a long roundabout way of saying, do not assume that you do not have access to really good teachers. It's right there, but people don't look for it because they assume that it's not. And this type of outreach and finding instructors, I did well before I ever had the first book. And you can do it. There are very direct ways to do it. Particularly if you know the right

Starting point is 00:54:43 questions to ask, you need to know the right questions to ask. It is your job to use the instructor like the niche expert Google you want them to be to provide feedback. You have to know how to be proactive as a student. And if you learn how to do that, you also remove one of the requirements I gave, and that is you can take someone who is not experienced in teaching and make them a good teacher by virtue of feeding in the right questions. And I don't want to sound like I'm hitting it too hard because, frankly, I make next to nothing on these books. But the 4-Hour Chef Med Learning section has all of this. It's very in-depth. So I encourage people to check it out awesome very cool yeah what else you got should we get into a couple more resolutions or yeah let's do it i've shifted into fifth gear and i'm making the transition to

Starting point is 00:55:37 the lalo tequila just fyi i'm on my second and a half class so it's gonna get interesting real quick here all right so a few more things um on my list and a half class, so it's going to get interesting real quick here. All right. So a few more things on my list, and then we can move on to, I want to talk to you about your NFT ventures and figure out how that's going. But I finished my seven-day, very first ever Zen meditation retreat. It was fantastic in so many ways. And I would say that the one thing that it gave me is when you sit for eight hours of meditation per day, you realize very quickly that 25 minutes is actually nothing. It's just nothing. And it has really, really helped me create, since returning from that trip, I just haven't missed a day. And it's just been solid.

Starting point is 00:56:21 Because it feels like it's so trivial. It's like, of course, I can find 25 minutes to go and sit or do a double sit in a day and get to 50 or 55 if you're doing walking along with it. But it just reframed that entire thing for me, which I think is fantastic. And it also gave me this sense of just knowing I want to go deeper in this realm. And the experience of the community at the Zendo and everyone getting together, you've been on one of these. And I know yours was a little bit rocky.

Starting point is 00:56:54 I'd be curious to see if you'd go back to one. But I had a fantastic time. And so I know meditation is going to be top priority out of all the things that I do going into next year. Well, okay. So let me ask some follow-ups. I will say that I would be open to doing something like that again. I would probably try a different format. So at the time, I had done a Vipassana silent retreat, and the sitting was similarly intensive, and the vast majority of your day is sitting or

Starting point is 00:57:26 walking meditation, mostly sitting. And I've told that story before, so I won't tell it here. If people want to hear that and effectively, it gets into some very heavy stuff. So I won't rehash it here. But if you want to hear the story, I told it on 10% Happier, the podcast with Dan Harris, and we got into it quite a bit. I had effectively a full psychotic unraveling at my extended meditation retreat, which relates to a bunch of childhood trauma and abuse and so on. So it's not what I would consider family listening, but if people want background, they can listen to that. It ended up being a very important experience family listening, but if people want background, they can listen to that.

Starting point is 00:58:05 It ended up being a very important experience for me, but it also scared the shit out of me. And I was very worried about being in a psychological freefall. an extremely masterful and skilled teacher, meditator, who is a clinical psychologist, has worked with veterans, adolescents who cut. He has an extremely hybridized toolkit, which makes him very, very, very effective. And he walks the walk. That guy is as legit as it comes. So people may also want to listen to the podcasts I've done with him. I would be open to testing another format though. And I've been extremely impressed with Henry Shookman, who is your Jedi master, as I understand it. And... Henry's amazing. He's been on your podcast twice now.

Starting point is 00:59:05 He has. And I wanted to thank you for that introduction. You had recommended it. And he's outstanding. He is a very, very good teacher. He's a compelling speaker. And I could see delving into a different format to see what that provides.

Starting point is 00:59:23 And I'm not in a rush to do it. I am, however, feeling some urgency to begin meditating again. I've completely fallen off the horse. And so that has been at the very top of my list, and I continue to find excuses to put it off. And it's funny because this happens to me once every year or two where I'll be meditating, meditating, meditating. And then suddenly it's like the excuse factory took a vacation for a year and then it's like, I'm back. And all of a sudden I fall off the horse and I stop. And it does not take a lot for me to feel tremendous benefits. I would say if I do, and my default for kickstarting this tends to be a concentration practice like Transcendental

Starting point is 01:00:14 Meditation. I just find it to be the easiest way to get back on the horse. That or- Yeah, mantra-based is easy. It's like that. It's good. Using something like that, or if I want to make it an even easier on-ramp, using, say, the introduction or the introductory course with the Waking Up app and Sam Harris. I find that to be extremely well done. It provides you with very discreet and cumulative tools as you go through it.

Starting point is 01:00:44 Really anything to get you into the habit. And I'll actually bring up something from a conversation I just had this week with James Clear. So James Clear wrote a book called Atomic Habits. It sold 10 million plus copies. Habits are his thing. And he shared something with me, a phrasing that I found very powerful and very memorable. And I'm going to paraphrase here. I don't want to speak for him, but he effectively said something along the lines of, when in doubt, keep the schedule, reduce the scope. Which means, let's say you've made a commitment to work out one hour every Monday in the gym. You're going to do leg day every Monday.

Starting point is 01:01:30 And maybe it's not a 60-minute commitment. It's just, I will do my leg workout every Monday. And your leg workout, as it's currently outlined, takes 45 minutes. But then life happens. Shit happens. Who knows? The kid's got a bloody nose. The work call runs over and you look at your watch and you realize, uh-oh, I'm only going to have 15 minutes to do leg day. You have a few options at that point. And the option that I've taken with meditation is I don't have enough time,

Starting point is 01:02:12 I'm not going to meditate. And his point is, even if leg day is a warmup on the rower and some body weight split squats, that's better than nothing. And the momentum and the consistency matters. So for, let's just say meditation, if I were to take that advice, which I have not been, although I just had this conversation with him yesterday or the day before, even if you sit down to meditate for 30 seconds, just check the box. Like sit down and do it so that you can build the confidence to maintain some degree of momentum. And this applies to diet too, right? I think we've all had the experience of being on some type of diet and maybe you had a little bit too much to drink, or maybe you ate a little too many edibles and you're like, I just want a cookie. And you eat one cookie and you're like, well, since I had one cookie, ah, well, I already screwed myself.

Starting point is 01:03:02 So let me eat a whole box of cookies. And the reverse of that is, well, I already have too little time to get a proper meditation session and let me do no meditation. And his point is stick to the schedule, reduce the scope. And I think that's very powerful. And I'm going to try to, I'm going to commit, let me make a different statement. I'm going to commit to applying that to meditation in the new year. That's awesome. I'd love to hear that because that can snowball into some bigger things down the road. Yeah, totally. Totally. Let's just, we can move on from meditation because it's pretty boring topic, but it's literally just sitting there doing nothing. But I would say the one thing that I was very fortunate in that I, you know, you've been to my Page Street apartment back in the day in SF. Like I lived right next to the San Francisco Zen Center.

Starting point is 01:03:50 Like right next to it. Literally right next to it. Sam Bar was there right across the street. And so I took my first Zen course at that Zen Center back, you know, 15 years ago. And I would say that forever I was doing the calm slash, well, Headspace was my first app experience on meditation, you know, and I was doing the 10 or 15 minute meditations. And I did that, you know, consistently pretty, pretty well, like not seven days a week, but, you know, four to five days a week. And it gave me just some nice moments to just kind of, ah, you know, just kind of rest a little bit.

Starting point is 01:04:27 But I got to say, there's something even more special if you can just push into the next zone of that, you know, 25, 55 minutes. Like they call this, this word Samadhi. I'm sure you probably heard of that before, but it's like this, this deep level that I've only slipped into probably a dozen times. And it's, it's, I'm like, oh shit. Like there's a little bit of a flex there. No, no, no, no. Only 200 times or 300 times. No, no, no. I mean, it's not, that's not even near what they, it's just a, it's a deep state of meditation. It's not, it's not enlightenment or any crazy thing. I'm not flexing that hard. But it's a very hard thing to find.

Starting point is 01:05:12 And it turns out that the more you chase it, the more it flees, which is because you're trying for something versus just relaxing into the moment. But true for happiness in general, I would say. Yeah, isn't it? Isn't it? I'll say the one thing that I really loved about Henry.

Starting point is 01:05:26 By the way, a couple of things to mention about Henry as well, just to give him a little plug. He is my teacher. You mentioned the Waking Up app. I agree with you wholeheartedly. That was a turning point for me. I started listening to the Waking Up app. I paid for it.

Starting point is 01:05:39 Love Sam's content. Think it's well-researched. It's probably the most, it's the best meditation app for people that aren't looking to necessarily just check a box, but actually want to go a little bit deeper because it has the supporting content. The conversations and the

Starting point is 01:05:54 essays are excellent. And he has, I think, Henry on the app also. That's how I discovered Henry. Henry was... Sam somehow found him as a Zen teacher. And Henry has several courses on the Waking Up app. So if you're curious about who we're talking to or talking about, you can go and check out

Starting point is 01:06:13 Henry's content on the Waking Up app and also enjoy the app as well, because it's a great, well-made product that Sam has put together. And Henry's voice, he has this mellifluous, dulcet tones. It's fantastic. He's the kind of guy this mellifluous, dulcet tones. It's fantastic. He's the kind of guy, if he read you the, as Neil Gaiman did once, the Cheesecake Factory menu, you'd be like,

Starting point is 01:06:33 oh, I could listen to this all day. He's got a great voice. Exactly. Got a great voice. Absolutely. Anyway, so a couple other things on my list of New Year's resolutions. And then, Tim, I'd love to hear your final list as well. So two boring things, but I think we can all relate.

Starting point is 01:06:52 One, organizing my photos on the Photos app inside of Photos. Like, Jesus, it's a mess. I got to go do that. I want to do that this year at some point. Wait, wait, wait. How are you going to do that? Because I look at my photos, and I don't even take that many photos, right? The youngsters out there take whatever it is, 20 selfies a day.

Starting point is 01:07:08 You send me a lot of bad stuff. Those are usually the most awful. Those two dudes with the one dude in the center. Wait, what? No, those weren't dudes. With the whipped cream. Those were not dudes. You got to watch.

Starting point is 01:07:21 Oh, those weren't dudes? No, they're not dudes. Anyway, so those are the most hideous things that my friends send me in these various group texts. And by the way, side note, anyone out there who, as their personal theater chooses mock outrage, like, oh my God, I can't believe da, da, da, da. Every one of you, if you had your group text shared, would go down in flames like the rest of the world. So please.

Starting point is 01:07:53 Oh my God. Dude, if I had my friend's group text shared, Tim, you and I would both, it would be game over. Oh, everyone. No, but here's what would happen is the entire world would be canceled. There's not, I can't. And I mean, if you wouldn't be canceled, I'm like, I'm so sorry. Your life is so boring and your friends have no sense of humor. Well, that's the whole thing is like, one of the things I love about my friends is that

Starting point is 01:08:17 we can all give each other shit. We take it. And we also share things that are just so ridiculous. They make us laugh. But we're having fun with life. Like, we're just... It's humor. And we realize that. But you know

Starting point is 01:08:33 if that thread got on the internet, people would be like, oh my god, they made a joke about this. And it's like, I'm not making any jokes that I wouldn't... I have no problem with... My jokes wouldn't be considered to be, they'd be considered to be crude, but not.

Starting point is 01:08:48 The apologies start already. Well, I'm trying to classify them. No, I'm trying to classify them. Like they're not jokes that would, people would be like, oh, he's a woman hater or a racist or something like that. Those aren't the jokes.

Starting point is 01:08:59 Yeah, yeah. They're more just like a little bit crude and a little bit rough around the edges. Just a little crude. Just a little crude. Like, dude, your shit is is i can't even show daria some of the stuff you said of course you can the the thing with the two people bumping and she was like jesus oh no that was terrible that was one you know something the worst ones you've ever said oh it was so bad you know something well that's i mean kind of relates to my NFT project in a way.

Starting point is 01:09:27 But it's like, you know there's something horrible and special when you're in a group thread. And I'm not a woman. I don't want to speak for women. Men, I think, just in general, are much cruder, much rougher. I could be wrong. Please prove me wrong. But there's some just terrible shit that floats around. And again, it's not anything that would be illegal, but it's just in its own way,

Starting point is 01:09:54 jaw-dropping. Here comes the backpedal. No, no, I'm not backpedaling. I'm not backpedaling. Now that you've got me started on this whole apologizing to the woke supremacist thing, Now I've been drafted into this thankless task. But the point I was going to make is, I don't know if you've had this experience, but you're in a group thread with a bunch of guys and it's just constant nonsense, right?

Starting point is 01:10:17 It's just nonsense, dick joke, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. And then one person will throw something in and everyone's like oh god jesus god it's terrible right and then you immediately send it to five immediately send it to you that's what when i get one of those gems i immediately send it to you well me and saka like yeah yeah thread with yeah we do sometimes yeah we do have some good ones we do have some good ones so how the hell did we get all right okay Okay. So we were talking, okay. I was talking about organizing my photos. So wait, how would you even do that though? Because it seems

Starting point is 01:10:50 like such an overwhelming task. It's not even probably worth talking about. We can, I would just fire up the photos app and I'm going to go back in time and start like going to town and just deleting a bunch of crap. Definitely not going to do that. Okay. Continue. So here's a more important one though. This actually is something that I... Two things. Well, we don't want to talk about the one, but the one thing that I do want to do is I'm really trying to figure out...

Starting point is 01:11:13 What was the one you don't want to talk about? I've started coding again. Tell me. No, not the plugs that you love. By the way, this is just going off the rails quickly. So I am starting to code again. It's when I move from Keto's to tequila.

Starting point is 01:11:31 That's when all the trouble starts. Exactly. That's how you know. This is going to be a good episode. I'm actually really proud of us. We finally have another holiday drinking one, which is great. Next time in person.

Starting point is 01:11:43 So the one thing that I was going to mention is that, just for fun, I am starting coding again. I want to do something generative on the NFT side, which, and hopefully have something ready for our conference in May, just for fun. And then the last

Starting point is 01:11:59 thing I would say, and it's something that's really important to me, is I want to do this yearly delete of things. And I have this rule, and tell me, Tim, if you have a better idea here. Physical things. Yeah. And so what I'm thinking is that if I haven't used something in six months, well, maybe I should even shorten to three months. Let's call it clothing, devices, et cetera. Something that's sitting around in

Starting point is 01:12:25 your house, just donate it. Donate it, give it away to Goodwill, let it find the home it belongs in, and reduce your stuff to like... I'd love to cut in half, to be honest. I don't need all the crap. How do you feel about that? I have some policies for myself that have been very helpful, I think. And sometimes I overcorrect, and I'll explain why overcorrecting makes sense, at least for me. The first is, and I'm sure you get this, but I think I get it to a much greater degree. Maybe when you were at the helm of Dig, this was an issue. I get sent so much shit. It is unbelievable. I mean, I just get mountains of stuff sent.

Starting point is 01:13:16 We're in the same boat, dude. Yeah. That's part of why I was thinking about it. It's like you get a lot of books. You get a lot of swag. You get a lot of things. You get a lot of stuff. And so one of my rules, and I don't follow it perfectly, but some rules followed imperfectly still add a lot of benefit. And in my case, if I'm going to keep something

Starting point is 01:13:39 new, I try to get rid of something. So if I'm going to accept one thing in, one thing's got to go. If somebody sends me, maybe it's a really comfortable shirt that has some clever thing on it and there's some really minimal branding for their company and it's a friend's thing, and I'm like, okay, this is a comfortable shirt. Maybe I'll keep this. I will try to find a shirt that I get rid of because I have simply too much stuff. I will also go through periods of purging and I try to do it leading into the winter because frankly, if you're out there and you have warm clothing, meaning clothing for cold weather, right? If you have layers or thicker clothing or long sleeve shirts that you are not using and you will not use this winter,

Starting point is 01:14:31 holy shit, there are people who need that. There are people who are homeless. There are people who are without means to buy clothing for themselves or their children, donate that stuff. And here's what I would say. If you're on the fence, give it away, right? And I don't want to do too much of the Marie Kondo stuff, but it's like, if it doesn't spark joy, here's what I would say. This is another... I love your accents, by the way.

Starting point is 01:14:58 They're so good every time you do one. Thank you. Yeah, if anybody didn't know, it's not Marie Kondo, even though it's very convenient for the English-speaking market. It's Marie, Marie, Marie Kondo not Marie Kondo, even though it's very convenient for the English-speaking market. It's Marie Kondo. Marie Kondo. Yeah, she has the most perfect skin of all time, by the way.

Starting point is 01:15:11 People can find a photograph of me with her. I interviewed her in Japan. Have you figured out what her secret is? Genetics, maybe. I mean, it's like an AI created the perfect human porcelain doll. It's unbelievable. I don't know what it is. Are you attracted to her?

Starting point is 01:15:32 She's cute. Oh, absolutely. I mean, she's also married and has a family, and that's not something I'm going for. But she's a good-looking woman. Jesus Christ. All right. Anyway. No, but let me come back to the thought

Starting point is 01:15:47 exercise i have a question for you but go ahead i'm about buying stuff yeah for sure so the what i try to do when i look in whether it's my closet or at things i own is ask on on a scale of, say, one to 10, how much joy am I getting out of this? Or how much use am I getting out of this? And then the follow-up question is, no matter what the answer is, if it's a 10, I keep it, right? If it's a nine, I probably keep it. If it's an eight, I probably still keep it. But if it's less than that, could I give this to someone? Could I donate this to someone who would absolutely get an 8, 9, or 10 use or joy out of this? If so, get rid of it. And if you have some means, right? And that doesn't mean millions of dollars, but getting rid of a t-shirt or two is probably not going to break the bank for a lot of people. In which case, when in doubt,

Starting point is 01:16:45 donate it. Give it to someone who can't afford to buy the shirt. And if you decide later, you know what? Oh, I really liked that t-shirt. I really liked that v-neck. I really liked that fill-in-the-blank. You can buy it again. And I rarely end up doing that, but every once in a while, I'll do a full purge where I'll just take garbage bags and garbage bags of stuff and donate it to Goodwill or somewhere else. And then I'll realize, ah, okay, I kind of got overzealous. I got rid of that one thing that I wore all the time. And then I'll just buy it again on Amazon.

Starting point is 01:17:15 It's there two days later. It's fine. Let me ask you, I have a very personal question and something that I haven't shared before that I'd like to ask you about buying things. Oh boy. Wow. No, I just think that this is something that nobody talks about. And I always like to like, you're so good at finding stuff that you can pick up and you're a very open person, which I've always appreciated about your podcast and just like how you are transparent about feelings and emotions and a lot of things that I think a lot of men could use to look up to.

Starting point is 01:17:49 Oh, God. Is this question going to be a fucking hydrogen bomb? This is a tough one. No, no. So here's a problem that I've had, just being completely honest. Yeah. There was, back when I was in my 20s and early 30s, Dig was doing quite well, which was my startup.

Starting point is 01:18:08 For those of you who don't know, it was an early social news website that was killing it. We had 38 million people a month that were visiting the site. Huge. Back then, it was one of the top sites on the internet. It was crazy. It started to go sideways, and it started to go down. We were losing to Reddit. Reddit was starting to kick our ass in some certain ways down and like not, you know, like we were losing to Reddit,

Starting point is 01:18:25 right. It was starting to kick our asses some certain ways. And, you know, we had had dominated them for many years and then all of a sudden that was not the case. And we were kind of reeling a little bit. I had sold a tiny bit of my stock enough to be able to afford an apartment

Starting point is 01:18:40 in actually buy and put a down payment on apartment. And that's how I got my page street place in,. And I remember thinking to myself, I need to buy myself something. It was a search to feel better. And so I went out and I actually bought, and this is going to sound super douchey, but I'm okay to say this today. Actually, I bought a Porsche. I bought a Porsche 911 back in the day. And looking back on that, I realized I was just in a really difficult, sad state. It was hard for me to watch this baby of mine. And I didn't know how to course correct it. I was just so immature in a bunch of different ways. But I was buying for the sake of trying to fill a gap, right? Don't get me wrong. I still think vintage Porsches and old Porsches and Porsches in general,

Starting point is 01:19:30 they're just beautiful cars. I think they're great. I don't have a 911 today, but I will say that I've noticed the same thing. Kevin is not anti-Porsche in his group text messaging. I'm not anti-Porsche. Please don't't cancel me Porsche. I would love to be sponsored if you want to sponsor me. I'm happy to drive a 911. So that said, here's the crazy thing. I went and ran Hodinkee, the luxury watch brand company. I was CEO there for a few years. And love my experience there because we were covering mechanical,

Starting point is 01:20:03 like a dying art. It was like mechanical timepieces. And it was very beautiful in its purest form. In its purest form, you talk to an artisan that is a single independent watchmaker that takes a year and a half to build something from scratch and sells 10 a year. That's beautiful.

Starting point is 01:20:19 Those days are going away. In its douchey form, you're talking to Lambo drivers that just want to have a flex that they can hold a watch on their wrist that says, I have $5 million on my wrist, right? That's a real thing. And so I met with a lot, as CEO of this company, this is like the, you know, it still is the largest watch brand editorial site in the world. And you would meet all these collectors and they would come up to you and they come in all different shapes and sizes.

Starting point is 01:20:47 And it was clear to me that some of these dudes, like bless them, they were trying to fill that same thing that I was trying to fill. Where you go out and you spend money on something to make yourself feel in a group, to feel connection. Because you'd come out and you'd say, these are other collectors like me. It's tough. And I'm not anti-watch. I may not wear an app watch today,

Starting point is 01:21:09 but I still have a few timepieces that are really meaningful to me, including one that my dad left me when he passed away. And I still love that whole thing. But how do you approach this as somebody? Have you ever spent your money on things? And then how do you approach it with, have you ever spent your money on things and then how do you approach it with like have you ever done that and then also how do you approach that with with significant

Starting point is 01:21:31 others like you know i've had this conversation with my wife about like hey we don't have to wear the flashy stuff it's okay to wear you know i i told her the other night like one of my my favorite times to hang out with you is when it's jeans and t-shirts version of you at a bar. I love that. Totally. Having a beer. We don't have to be fancy LA. I don't want that.

Starting point is 01:21:54 Where do you stand on all this stuff? So I think, and you've probably observed this in me. You're so good at this. This is why I'm trying to pick your brain. You don't do any flashy shit. I'm good, but there is a downside. There is a trade-off. And I have not figured out how to contend with this.

Starting point is 01:22:16 And I'll actually mention also a book that has come up several times in the last week from multiple people I respect. And remember Rick Rubin, the music producer said to me, when that happens to him, he feels like it's a signal from the universe that he needs to take a look at something. And so I kind of feel like that right now with this book, which I'll come to in a second. I have had very few instances of buying expensive things for myself. And you've seen this. I don't think I'm stingy in all things. For instance, I will go to, if I think the experience is going to leave an indelible mark in my mind, I will go to a place like Alinea in Chicago and have a meal. And I did that. And I'm really glad I did. And it's very expensive, right? I mean, I would consider it very expensive. It's like $1,500, $2, bucks for a meal. And that on some level would

Starting point is 01:23:28 make the 15 year old version of me go into a seizure, right? I did not grow up with a lot of money and grew up in a household where scarcity of money was an issue. And- Oh my God. My dad would yell at my mom for spending too much money and stuff. Because she would literally bounce checks. I remember that being a conversation. The account is overdrawn. Yeah. It was a source of stress. It was a source of stress. And so I decided pretty early on as a kid, okay, I do not want this type of stress in my life. That means I need to figure out how to make money. And that, in a way, was the spark behind my entrepreneurial experiments.

Starting point is 01:24:21 It's like, okay, this type of stress that I have been immersed in and exposed to, and I don't think it traumatized me. I wouldn't put it that way. I wouldn't want to remove the power of that word trauma by applying it to something like this. And I think it kind of disgusts me how overused the word trauma is. That's a separate thing. But it affected me. It definitely imprinted something on me. And as a result, I have spent relatively little money celebrating anything. The fact that I spent, like these Japanese saddles,

Starting point is 01:24:54 I bought them at auction from, I can't remember if it was Christie's or Sotheby's, and I think it was $5,000 a piece, right? And to allow myself to do that, the hurdle was not only do I have to finish and publish a book that is 500 plus pages, I think it was maybe 700 pages, which was cut down from probably 1,500 pages. Was this in your head or did something you wrote down? Like this is a hurdle that you had to like,

Starting point is 01:25:28 you're like, I'm gonna like- It was in my head, but I said, if I publish this book and it is number one New York Times, I will allow myself as a reward to buy these saddles that cost $5,000 each. And if I don't, I'm not allowed to do this. So on some level, I respect that. And it's very strict, high standards. And on some level, all of those things are good. But what I will say is when I meet or spend time with friends of mine who have achieved some degree of success.

Starting point is 01:26:09 And it's not always millions of dollars, right? They've just figured out a job and a skill where they've developed a career and they're stable and they fix a lot of problems for themselves and they add a lot of joy for themselves and their families by spending money, the dark side of what I'm describing is that I don't think I've developed that very well. I have more money than I know what to do with. And I think I put it, I don't want to sound like a prick.

Starting point is 01:26:41 That doesn't mean that I'm just doing backstroke through a pool full of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. That's not what I'm saying. I think I am a very, very, hopefully this doesn't sound pompous, I think I am a very, very good capital allocator and steward of money. I think I use what I have to very high leverage means and objectives through funding science and

Starting point is 01:27:09 the journalism fellowship with michael pollan and so on like but but here's what i'll say kevin is there's a dark side to it in that i don't use money to fix problems that i should fix and like what give me an example uh you know i'll give an example which would be there are little things i'll give you a perfect example so there is an article it's not really an article it's more an adaptation of john stewart mills ideas on free speech which is an illustrated edition it's called all One. You can find it on Amazon. You can also get it for free. I think it's at heterodoxacademy.org slash mill. And this came about through a conversation with Jonathan Haidt, who's a fascinating

Starting point is 01:27:58 thinker and professor and researcher who wrote The Coddling of the American Mind and many other books. So this is, let's see, on Kindle, it's I think 78 pages. And I agonized over when I was going to find time to print this and put it together in a hard copy so that I could mark it up. Because I didn't want to wait for the paperback. This is stupid. I have employees. I could send this to someone and just be like, hey, figure this out. Whatever makes it readable, go. It would take in 30 seconds. But there's part of me, for whatever reason, that gets stuck on doing it myself and doesn't even consider that. It doesn't enter my head as an option. And there are many other examples of this, right? I've been to friends' houses where

Starting point is 01:28:51 they love, let's not name names, because you'll probably get it, but I have a friend who really loves Topo Chico. And you go to his house and he always has a refrigerated drawer full of topo chico it's never empty love that he never runs out it's so it's extra sparkly it's good it is yeah it'll definitely take all the enamel off your teeth it's delicious and and uh even though all the hipster austinites have boycotted it because it's owned by the evil empire of coca-c. So they're drinking Richard's rainwater and others, which are fine, fine, fine, fine, sparkling water. But I just find the outrage pretty hilarious. But the point is, he has a team. He pays people to help him and his family with their lives in various ways so that he can focus on things he's really good at, which does not include

Starting point is 01:29:44 figuring out at the last minute, oh shit, I'm out of Topo Chico. How am I going to make it in time to the grocery store to buy this and chew up 45 minutes of my time? I don't have many of those systems in place. And it's not because I am consciously deciding I need to save money. It's like the option doesn't even appear on my mental UI to choose. So this is something I'm trying to figure out, which leads to the book, which has been recommended a number of times now, which is called Die With Zero. I've not read it. I've heard about this. So full disclosure, I've not read it.

Starting point is 01:30:24 Chris Hutchins sent this to me. Oh, no shit. Okay, so Bill Perkins is the author. And I should know better than to recommend something before I've read it. So I just want to make it super clear, I have not read this. But the book is Die With Zero, Getting All You Can From Your Money and Your Life. And it's written by Bill Perkins, who's a famous energy trader slash investor. And the Wall Street Journal bestseller, I'll just read a little bit of the description,

Starting point is 01:30:57 which is very seductive to me because it's written by someone who has also been an operator. If this book were written by just someone who's waxing poetic without any real bona fides, bona fides, I would be skeptical. But this is someone who's actually been a real operator in the trenches. So the description is a common sense guide to living rich instead of dying rich. Imagine if by the time you died, you did everything you were told to. You worked hard, saved your money, and looked forward to financial freedom when you retired. The only thing you wasted along the way was dot, dot, dot, your life. Die With Zero presents a startling new and provocative philosophy as well as practical guide on how to get the most out of your money and the most out of your life. It's intended for those who place lifelong memorable experiences far ahead of simply making and accumulating money for one's so-called golden years. And it goes on. This is interesting to me.

Starting point is 01:31:48 And I'm hoping that it provides me with some counter-programming that will maybe help me to do more. And I have, I will say, been finding some outlets where I don't have hangups. And one is spending money on art or supporting artists. I will be doing, moving forward, quite a few experiments with artists and artwork. I did one that is actually running right now as we record. It's going to end in a few hours, but it's a competition for AI-generated or enhanced artwork. Cockpunch-related or no? Cockpunch-related. So they have to work- Are you serious?

Starting point is 01:32:33 Yeah, yeah, cockpunch-related. And the stuff that has come out is beyond belief. I mean, it is hard to wrap my head around. And I say this as someone who has quite a bit of art background and worked as an illustrator, paid a lot of bills as an illustrator for magazines and books in college. It is hard to wrap my head around what this technology will do for creative expression. And it's controversial. I have seen blowback, right? Because AI, whether it's chat GPT for text or other tools, requires training data. So where do you get that training data? If it's graphical expression, if it's what we would consider visual art, they might be pulling from, say, artists on ArtStation.

Starting point is 01:33:26 Right, but it's blending it so well together that you could never pick out individually which artist is pulling from. So in some sense- Sometimes, in less than your prompt, you say, instead of in the style of Van Gogh, which most people would consider fair game, if it's in the style of fill-in-the-blank contemporary artists who makes their living selling prints in part or doing commissioned artwork is that a net positive or a net negative for them i don't know i'm not someone you should talk to who's that you know who's fun to chat with this is i was talking to mike shinoda about this our

Starting point is 01:33:59 mutual friend okay lincoln park yeah and he was talking about how there's this list you can sign up for that apparently will exclude you from the training data if you really want out of it. Yeah, exactly. He was saying that in music, you can imagine this is going to be a big deal. You're going to say, I'm already seeing stable diffusion applied to music in

Starting point is 01:34:21 ways that make your head spin. It's so early. It's not even the first inning. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was asking him about like, hey, what do you think of AI when it says, hey, play me a song like it was written by Mike Shinoda. And what does that sound like? And it's a big topic to go into. How does he feel? I don't want to speak for him, but he was at that time. It seemed like, you know, I, I,

Starting point is 01:34:48 I got the sense and I'm just, I'm paraphrasing here. I'm actually not even gonna paraphrase. I would just say that I got the sense that it's early days. And if anything I know about Mike is like, he's, he's definitely, he embraces the future.

Starting point is 01:35:02 There's no doubt about it. Like he's all web three, he's doing NFT drops. He's doing generous stuff like with music. There's no doubt about it. He's all Web3. He's doing NFT drops. He's doing generous stuff with music. He's awesome on that front. But at the same time, I can imagine if you're an artist in his position, which is just the top tier,

Starting point is 01:35:17 top 1% of all musical artists out there, you kind of also want to protect who you are as an individual in your IP. For sure. That was the kind of sense I got from him is like figuring out how to, how this is going to weave in, in, in what you're going to do in the future.

Starting point is 01:35:30 So yeah, he'd be a fun one to have on and eventually talk about this stuff. I should have him back on. Yeah. I had him on the podcast like a hundred years ago. I should have him back on. He's such a good dude. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:35:39 Great guy. And on the AI front, I will say I have artists in my family. I see how in my family. I see how hard it is. I've been there myself. And I should point out also that I am not necessarily immune to the influence of these technologies in the sense that I have seen blog posts generated using predominantly AI with very few prompts. And things are going to change for writers in a big way.

Starting point is 01:36:15 And that will particularly apply to nonfiction writers. And I am principally a nonfiction writer. And the fiction writers, dude. A lot of these tools are being done around fiction. And fiction. Fiction is going to be harder. I think fiction will be a lot harder to thread, but both will be affected. And so there are many questions that this prompts, pun intended.

Starting point is 01:36:50 One is, what are the factors that will drive, say, reading in my case? How much of it will be being certain that you are reading something generated by a human before you're willing to commit to having an emotional response, even if the output is identical, right? Will there be some authenticity of human production that becomes important? I could see that becoming important. Do you really want to cry watching a movie that was 100% produced by robots? production that becomes important i could see that becoming important interesting like do you really want to cry watching a movie that was 100 produced by robots maybe not maybe that is a hard line that people draw where they're like i don't actually want to have my emotions manipulated yeah but you already do today with with the the graphics right those are created by machines oh yeah so no

Starting point is 01:37:22 it's a question of degree right we're already asking a question yeah what you're saying tim is let's just jump forward 20 20 years from now you're saying there is a world where you could imagine a novel that would have some type of designation on it you know digitally that would say this was human written. Absolutely. Like just to ensure. Absolutely. Oh, that's fucking crazy. That's awesome. Absolutely. I mean, imagine you have these timepieces that are one of a kind produced by the labor

Starting point is 01:37:57 of one or a handful of people over a year and a half. The origin and the story matter you could produce something maybe even superior with advanced robotics and software and so on but you want you want the physical and psychic imprint of these human connection yeah exactly so i human connection. Yeah, exactly. So I think absolutely, just like you have a stamp for organic or humane certified or free trade, it'd be like human generated stamp. I would be surprised if that's not a thing.

Starting point is 01:38:37 I think it'll be a thing. You should go and file your trademarks and patents. That would be a thing. Let me add a few more, though. So another one will be, well, actually, this is more philosophical. So I thought about the counterarguments and the blowback related to AI before I launched this competition. And I understood the counterarguments, and I don't disagree with them.

Starting point is 01:39:06 This is going to affect the competitive landscape for artists, period, full stop. Especially, especially for things like logo design, things of this type. Yeah, of course. Fiverr's fucked. Yeah, like website layout and so on. The way I'm looking at it is if I, Tim, wanted to help as many artists as possible, what would my chess move be? And where I landed was we are going from the horse and the horse-drawn carriage to the car. That transition is happening whether we want it to or not. And if we own a bunch of horses, if we own a bunch of carriages, if we own the equivalent of a taxi service back in the day,

Starting point is 01:39:52 that's fine, but the technology is going to change. So if you want to be in a competitive position, if you want to have advantages, you need to be on the front end of learning about these technologies, which is part of the reason why I wanted to do this competition, to say, hey guys, you can make this work for you in a lot of ways, but you got to be on the early end. You just have to. There's a couple of things that I think are important to point out here in that to me, this just represents another leap forward in technology. Almost the way I would say that the closest parallel I have to this is

Starting point is 01:40:38 probably the graphical user interface that was done by, you know, the Mac and, and that's good for web. Well, just, well, imagine we,

Starting point is 01:40:50 you were an artist back in the day and to draw a circle meant you had to sit down and try and draw a circle, right? Yeah. And now you need a compass. You can, you can, exactly.

Starting point is 01:41:00 You need a compass. And then now I'm so fucking old. You can literally say, so fucking old. Right. Incredible. I love that you pulled the compass references. That's great. But, but now you in Photoshop you can literally say I love that you pulled the compass reference that's great

Starting point is 01:41:07 but now you can literally pencil's too short I'm getting a wobbly circle let me sharpen that thing right so those days are gone and that's okay I'm sure there were some artists that were like you know fuck Photoshop for making that perfect circle

Starting point is 01:41:24 like I used to have to hand draw those. That's kind of what we're going through today with this next jump. It's going to be tough for a few years. It's going to feel weird. It's going to feel not right. And then finally, we'll understand what the tool actually is. And also, I will just say, if you're early, you can learn how to use the tools rather than be abused by the adoption of the tools. It's super important.

Starting point is 01:41:50 If you learn early, holy shit, you have tremendous advantage. So, learn early. Start experimenting now. I'll give you another prediction. I was thinking about this. Imagine, if you will. I feel like Dan Carlin was thinking about this. Imagine, if you will, I feel like Dan Carlin with Hardcore History. Imagine, if you will, General Subodai. No, let me come back. So imagine that you have a book. You have a nonfiction book. It's a biography

Starting point is 01:42:18 of a contemporary figure, Teddy Roosevelt, whatever. Like Theodore, I think it's Theodore Rex, I think is this multi-volume biography that I've been meaning to read forever. And I just keep putting it off because it's so long. And I've heard it's amazing, but I haven't been willing to commit. It's just too long. I think there will be a time, probably in the next year, wouldn't surprise me. Within the next year, I would imagine for books that are well-reviewed, have a lot of coverage, and are contemporary, meaning within the last hundred years, I will be able to say something along the lines of with a prompt interface to stable diffusion or any number of other tools and i think a lot of these tools will get combined into user interfaces where the

Starting point is 01:43:17 mechanics the underlying mechanics are invisible oh my god God. Dude, wait. Pause for one second. Okay. Can I get this to slip something in real quick? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. There is a service you have to try. I don't know if you remember our buddy Addison Kowalski. He created prompthunt.com. Ooh. I like it. It actually is...

Starting point is 01:43:38 It's taking exactly what you said where right now it's 50 words to create this prompt, this perfect AI. Oh, that's cool. And he's making themes around it. Genius. It's really, really cool. Okay.

Starting point is 01:43:51 Yeah. So this is exactly what you're talking about. This will do well. Yeah. If it's executed well, prompt.com will do well. Because the magic is in the prompt. It's kind of like being a magician with a spell. I mean, you have to get-

Starting point is 01:44:03 That's what they realized. You have to get the incantation right. And if you don't, zero. You come up empty handed or you get some fucking mongrel. That's right. Monstrosity. Side note really quickly. Rhinoskinsolutions.com is what I was referring to earlier.

Starting point is 01:44:17 The dry spray and the Mikey's tip juice. Sounds porno. Is what I have. So there you go. But what are you talking about? You're talking about the hand stuff. Yeah. The,

Starting point is 01:44:30 the anti-perspirant for the hands that helped. That was a big callback. That was a big callback. Deep back. Okay. So let me do one more than one more quick callback. Side note. This is the last one.

Starting point is 01:44:43 I promise for all those that were, we talked about the Tim, this is the last one I promise. For all those that we talked about, Tim, you mentioned the book Die With Zero. Our friend Chris Hutchins, the reason I said that he had mentioned it to me, he actually did a podcast with him. I know you love Chris. He has a podcast called All the Hacks.

Starting point is 01:45:00 All the Hacks, Die With Zero is the one to check out. I'll check it out. Chris is very diligent. He is, I will say... He's like a mini you. Honestly, I want to give him more credit. He's the first Chris Hutchins.

Starting point is 01:45:15 I thought I was OCD about prep. He's giving me a run for my money. He really does a lot of preparation and is meticulous in how he approaches the details of these things. So I will check out that podcast and we'll link to it in the show notes. AI prediction, big book, three volumes, biography.

Starting point is 01:45:38 Fuck, I'm never going to listen to that. I'm never going to read that. I could put in a prompt, which is something like, create a Ken Burns-like documentary that allows me to cover the most important parts of fill-in-the-blank book or book series with, say, archival photographs or footage with a voice overlay that provides narration, which is pulling from the highlights of that book using sources like quotes from Goodreads

Starting point is 01:46:10 and Kindle highlights. This is going to fuck you, by the way. It's totally going to fuck me. It's totally going to fuck me. I mean, I am absolutely going to be simultaneously the beneficiary and the cockpunch recipient of artificial intelligence. 100%.

Starting point is 01:46:27 Oh, it's going to rock the boat in such a significant way. But what I'm committed to doing is being a student of the craft because it is the Model T and the car coming after horse-drawn carriages, and this is inevitable. It is not reversible. Sadly, there's no lobby i can think of no it's out of the bottle it's out of the bottle it's out of the bottle so there's that should we talk about cock-a-saddle maniacs yeah let's talk about your cock punch let's let's have anybody

Starting point is 01:47:00 name name that movie reference cock-a-sadiac. Do you get that reference? No, I don't. You're older than I am. I'm older than you are. Give me a break. Look at those white whiskers you got over there, Mr. Sea Otter. Oh, fuck you. At least I have hair, biatch.

Starting point is 01:47:19 Yeah, that's true. You do have a nice Los Angeles slick going with that black hair. What the fuck was I just talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true. You do have a nice Los Angeles slick going with that black hair. What the fuck was I just talking about? Oh yeah, Cockstable Maniac. Very important film reference. This is a reference.

Starting point is 01:47:34 It takes place in a bar scene in the Winchester in Shaun of the Dead, S-H-A-U-N, Shaun of the Dead. Oh, I know Shaun of the Dead. One of the greatest of all time. I watched it several hundred times as background when I was writing the four-hour work week. Little known fact. That's awesome.

Starting point is 01:47:51 Okay. You have gray hairs yet or no? Oh my God, I'm covered in gray hairs, man. Yeah, I was fortunate slash unfortunate to lose my hair before my hair went gray on my head. But oh, chest hair, beard hair, salt and pepper mania. Absolutely. Do you get the, uh, the grays? I give you the gray, the grays down under. Of course I do. How would you have anybody who's

Starting point is 01:48:20 like, yeah, I have gray in my beard and gray in my chest but my my pubes are like the mane of black stallion give me a fucking break that's bullshit no i swear i only have had like two and it's it's depressing it's depressing because you trim them real quick because you're going to get them out of there but like oh i gave up on that did you you're just full great you're santa down there i'm like i'm like adam gazzali's beard on my balls. Oh my God. You're welcome, Adam. Please, please, please leave that in. Oh my God.

Starting point is 01:48:53 One of the greatest neuroscientists of the modern age. One of the greatest neuroscientists of our age. You basically just call him the ball psych. I love that. All right. So Cockpunch, how's NFT land been been so you so well let me ask you this first blow back oh i'm happy to talk about all of it uh i i will say just to just to preface the whole thing i am still having so much fun there was good there was like a death valley of anger

Starting point is 01:49:19 and like the trough of sorrow for sure. Yeah, the taint of sorrow. It's like you have to travel through. The taint of sorrow was sorrowful. So I'm not going to downplay that. We can talk about it. But what did you expect was going to happen? Let me start there because you've been through this rodeo multiple times now.

Starting point is 01:49:39 Honestly, Tim, I kind of knew you were fucked. I would have said something if I thought it was career ending for you. And I didn't think that. What I thought was that, I told Daria this, actually, my wife this. I said, you know, I'm glad that Tim has enough money to not give a fuck because he's having fun. And all you can ask for anyone, I think about this with my kids a lot at the end of the day,

Starting point is 01:50:04 because Daria is an academic and she got her PhD in neuroscience and I clearly am not. I'm a college dropout. And at the end of the day, what I want for my children is them for to find their life's work and their fun in life. Did you say them for to find? What? Did you say them for to find?

Starting point is 01:50:24 That was an amazing sentence. For them to find. Oh, okay. All right. I for them to find oh okay all right i think you yeah an extra word or two go again okay i probably did i'm sure i'm like deep into this bottle of fantastic wine which i will say is the mascot um so all jokes aside um i love when i see tim having a good time because tim i've known you for a long time, man. And I know that you're, you're a very interesting cat and that you're like both insanely playful, but insanely serious at the same time.

Starting point is 01:50:53 And you have these two sides of your life that you just like, you know, sometimes are at odds with each other. And anytime I can see playful Tim come out, I'm just like, I'm happy. I'm a happy person because I love to see you happy. And if this is that for you, it makes me happy.

Starting point is 01:51:10 So that's great. Well, what's also a timing hilarity in all of this is that as I'm about to go into this huge experiment that I've been working on forever, and Kevin's my Sherpa, right? Kevin's like- Oh, Jesus. No, hold on.

Starting point is 01:51:28 Put Brendan in there too. Well, no. Okay. I'm going to give Brendan credit where credit is due. But you got me interested in, along with Naval and other people, interested in Web3. You led me to my first,

Starting point is 01:51:43 actually rewind the clock. You led me to my first crypto purchases in late 2012, early 2013, somewhere in that range. You have introduced me to a lot of very important technological innovations. You also walked me through as my MetaMask tech support. My first NFT purchase. I believe I have a shirt that says that, but I'm a MetaMask tech support. MetaMask tech support. VIP white glove tech support. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:52:16 And then I'm getting ready. The launch is coming. Holy shit, I'm nervous. People on your team are helping me. And then Kevin's like, I'm nervous. People on your team are helping me. And then Kevin's like, I'm going on a silent meditation retreat for seven days. And I'm like, what?

Starting point is 01:52:31 So Kevin disappears, but let me catch you up. So pre-ment, Brendan Mulligan, I have to give him a lot of credit. We both known him for a long time. He- Good human. He's a great human. He gives a shit. He cares about quality. He is very thoughtful.

Starting point is 01:52:50 He and his team, I want to give his team credit too. He and his team executed flawlessly. They were so detail oriented, which of course I appreciate. Don't forget about my team. No, your team was amazing. Hold hold on hold on i'm just you mentioned brendan so i'm mentioning brendan first so brendan executed so well and his team prototyping the mint pages as a potential offering through pre-mint incredible so i just want to give a thanks there i'll also give a thanks, of course, to your entire team, the sort of divergence super squad that was absorbed, was eaten, brought onto the island of proof by KK Roro, Kev Kev, Rose Rose.

Starting point is 01:53:41 KK Roro. Is that a new one? That's a new one. You sounded like the South Park guys doing some of their voiceovers. Anyway, some people will get that. And the Divergence team, also world-class. I mean, good job, by the way. I'm just glad you had a great mint, man. Everything went fine. You sold out. Everything went great it's sold out we i think managed it very well people get pissed no matter what but i think we managed it as well and planned it as well as we possibly could have you know how much i agonized over this i mean i went

Starting point is 01:54:16 i held on to multiple variables as undefined until the the 11th hour because I really wanted to try to satisfy as many people as possible. With that, it is not possible to make everyone happy, especially in Web3, especially in NFTs. But the mint went off without a hitch. And then the reveal drops a few days later. Oh, let me back up and just say thank you to everyone who participated in the primary sale because it raised $1.8 or so million for the SciSafe Foundation. All of those funds have already been wired to the SciSafe Foundation. That happened within, I want to say, 48 hours, 72 hours. And money is already being distributed to projects. So this is not a foundation that sits on funds. Those funds are going to immediate use. And I'll be sharing more about that. And

Starting point is 01:55:13 the uses for people who don't know, they can find Saisei Foundation at saiseifoundation.org. Saisei means rebirth in Japanese. has funded and continues to fund critical early stage research related to treating conditions like treatment-resistant depression, complex PTSD, so-called intractable conditions that effectively fail with our first-line treatments currently. And a lot of that is psychedelic-assisted therapy related, but not all of it. I personally and SciSafe Foundation have been involved in funding Mr. White Pubes himself. God, he's going to love that. Dr. Adam Ghazali and his amazing work at Neuroscape.

Starting point is 01:55:58 I'm sorry, Adam. We had to do it. It's okay, Adam. It's true, though. I mean, he's such a superstar. You can get away with it right like that guy is a that guy is an absolute top tier world-class scientist who knows how to navigate all of the complexities and uh therefore thanks huge sincere thanks to everybody who participated

Starting point is 01:56:20 it's all going to very very high leverage high impact stuff and then the reveal comes right and the reveal comes the art comes out some people love it some people hate it i still stand by the art i stand by it one thing that happened that i did not anticipate at all is that a few things i will point out that I'm paying attention to feedback. I don't pay attention to like, you suck balls, man. Fuck you. I don't pay attention to that. And I'll block you if you do that. But I do pay attention to valid feedback. And there's a lot of valid feedback. For instance, because this project is not a PFP project, it is not a profile pic project, even thoughfp stands for proof for picture i think or

Starting point is 01:57:06 picture for proof no profile photo no project no it does not it does not it stands for it stands for picture for proof look it up ended up being co-opted into profile pic there's no f and profile pic project so and profile pic jesus of course you were doing the technical shit it just means like show me your face on the fucking twitter well that's what it means now i'm just i just wanted to throw a monkey wrench and thanks for a second because i know you're deep in the wine so i wanted to stumble things uh the point being because it wasn't a profile pick and i tried to explain this is an elf right it's an emergent long fiction project and to explain that it didn't fit neatly into any category that people could absorb in a millisecond for that reason when the

Starting point is 01:57:55 art was displayed full body it was actually i think confusing to some people even though i'd explain they would be full body and And furthermore, the resolution was ratcheted really far down to be a unique file type that allows, OpenSea in this case, the ability to monitor for counterfeits. So the function is really important. The function is super important. They can flag and remove counterfeits and invitations and scams by utilizing this unique file type. But what it did is it ratcheted down, and I should give a huge thanks to the OpenSea team. They were outstanding in helping with this project in a million different ways. So I want to give them full credit where credit is due. And also the fact that this file type which is incredibly high

Starting point is 01:58:46 utility and important for the platform and for projects because immediately had dozens of scams just as moonbirds did there are a lot there are a lot of fly-by-night grifters in this space and anywhere there's anonymity you're going to run into this. But once you add money to the mix, shit gets crazy very quickly. So that was a good thing, right? In the sense that that file type allowed us to contend with and prevent, or I shouldn't say prevent, but minimize confusion in the marketplace. The side effect of that, though, is that the resolution was quite low. And as a result, people were not able to see a lot of the detail of the artwork, especially because it was full body. And we addressed that later by providing a token ID lookup where people could say, hey,

Starting point is 01:59:37 I own Legend of Cockpunch number 234. Let me go to cockpunch.com slash PFP, put in my number. I get a high resolution image i also get a pfp camera angle from within blender for this character oh cool yeah which has been super fun and so will that wait once one question there so if i put in my number will that give me a cropped version of the head so i can use exactly it'll give the best that's cool crop version of the head and also the best camera angle from within blender which is 3d modeling software and then what i did because i had created these ai blended oil paintings of some of these characters for each of the houses so there are eight primary houses in this world much like like Game of Thrones. And I created what you might consider even like a portrait

Starting point is 02:00:28 painting equivalent of each of these iconic houses. And I did that by using Night Cafe, I think it's also called Night Studio, which largely is a Stable, but also Dolly too. And a few others to blend the original artwork with Van Gogh self portrait. And, Oh, it's amazing. And I see this word. That's probably when I was on my meditation retreat. Yeah,

Starting point is 02:00:56 it was. Where do I see this at? So if you go to, if you go to, and we can talk about Twitter, cause I know that's might be on the docket. We should talk about it. Actually,

Starting point is 02:01:03 if you go to Twitter and then say, if you go to... Slash Cockpunch? Not Slash Cockpunch. If you go to, I'm just waiting on my browser to respond. Wow, is my browser slow or is Twitter really slow right now? Might be Twitter. Or it could be that my account is suspended for the 12th time. That's been happening a lot. Elon. Elon's blocking you. Elon hates cock punches. Okay. I'm having trouble getting

Starting point is 02:01:37 Twitter to display, but if you go to twitter.com, slouch, slouch. Slouch. Slouch. Slouch. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. If you go to twitter.com, Slouch. House. Slouch. We need t-shirts just for the random show that say Slouch.

Starting point is 02:01:58 Slouch. Hashtag Slouch. Slouch. House. Hallux. Like H-A-L-L-U-X. Maybe it'll pop up for you. Okay, I went to slash H-A-L-L-U-X.

Starting point is 02:02:12 Okay. On Twitter? Twitter.com slash house hallux. So house H-A-L-L-U-X. Because if you just do hallux, it's a guy's toes on there. Yep, that makes sense. Okay, there we go. Okay. All right, so do you see what I'm talking about you see sort of yes okay so that's beautiful that's amazing isn't that gorgeous and oh it's so good it's so good so if people go to twitter.com

Starting point is 02:02:37 slash house hollux house hollux is one of the eight greater houses and each of these houses has its background coming out on the Cockpunch podcast, which by the way, you were gone for this, but debuted at number one in fiction across all of Apple podcasts, ended up at top 50 or top 60 across all of Apple podcasts. And people are now listening to these and getting really into it. People are enjoying it. And particularly once I made the, and my team, I should give them credit, the higher res full body images and PFPs available, I put out a video on YouTube, which showed people how to convert their PFP into this Van Gogh self-portrait styled oil painting. And people have been having

Starting point is 02:03:27 a blast. They've been having so much fun. And things have gone pretty bananas. There is a lot of creativity. There's a lot of creativity being unleashed. And this was the hope and hence the description of the project as emergent long fiction. Emergent. Not just emergent from me, but emergent from the audience. So for instance, there is this unofficial Discord. I said from the outset I wasn't going to make a Discord because everybody told me Discord is where all the evil comes out. And I have, however, ended up chancing upon this unofficial Discord where they had, I might've sent this to you and Brendan via text.

Starting point is 02:04:12 They had AI-driven cockfights with different cockpunch characters on this Discord. And I have never seen anything like this. It was so funny that I was sweating through my clothing. I mean, it was beyond hilarious. Like you're rock climbing. Yeah, it was like rock climbing, but a lot more hilarious. And what they did, it was genius. So they had people opt in to competing. So let's say they have brackets like an NCAA tournament, and each character would feed in their name and their traits. So the traits and attributes and he would add a prompt like,

Starting point is 02:05:05 describe an epic battle between or among, and list all these characters with their traits. And then chat GPT would spit out this fight scene. And he then, on Discord in a voice channel, would read this for everybody as it's happening, as it's being generated. So there's a live sports element to it. There was somebody else in the channel who, because a bunch of these characters, especially

Starting point is 02:05:31 from the Amekawa, have an instrument, which is called a shamisen, which is a traditional Japanese instrument. Somehow he managed to pull up this super aggressive, traditional shamisen music. So you have this commentator who's reading the live fights, like the play-by-play, like a boxing match from the 1950s, while this crazy Japanese music is playing. And simultaneously, the text thread is going crazy with all these people commenting and throwing in memes. It was beyond hilarious and so exciting and fucking fun. It was so fun. And I had nothing to do with it. I mean, look, I provided a few of the raw materials, perhaps in the form of a funny name, some artwork, the attributes and the naming

Starting point is 02:06:24 of the attributes, by the way, not accidental. If people look at the attributes, they have not paid, most people have not paid enough attention to the naming of the weapons and the attributes. I spent at least 10 hours just on naming. So that will become more relevant later. But the way that this is unfolding has been super fun. It's been super fun. There was a period of time where I was just like, fuck all these NFT traders, fuck these people. I was so annoyed because there was so much unnecessary spinning

Starting point is 02:06:58 of conspiracy theories. Like Tim's going to send all the money to his own charity and buy a Lamborghini and run off to Bermuda. This whole thing's a scam. It's a rug pull. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I put everything in the FAQ. I told you all of the conditions, all of the objectives. Stop it. Just fucking stop it. But there is, I think, I would imagine you tell me, but inevitably this cycle of over-exuberance, as soon as the floor price drops by 0.001 ETH, 10% of the people lose their fucking minds and become children. Here's the thing. This is the best advice I can give you, Tim, is that having been here in my wise old age of six months longer than you have.

Starting point is 02:07:47 Which is like 10 years in NFT time. I can tell you that what happens is there are a lot of flippers that come in, obviously, that are looking like, how can I two or three Xs in two minutes, right? Yeah. And then eventually you'll realize, and it's really cool that we're starting to see this happen in Moonbirds,

Starting point is 02:08:03 where a lot of that is kind of like that chatter has gone away and it's more about the long-term holders that understand that like you know great projects great visions great businesses they're not built over six months yeah it takes time next decade right and so if we're going to do that like they they they're signing up and believing in us as builders over the long term. And I think that's where you'll get to, is you'll get to people that are like, oh, I love the podcast. I love the lore. I love the backstory. I love what Tim's doing here. I'm a holder for the long term. And what you'll see is your percent listed will drop over time,

Starting point is 02:08:41 right? And that will be because you're getting in just more of the long-term holders that believe in the project over the next decade, which is very exciting. And I already see that happening with your collection today, which is great. The one thing I will say that is amazing is you had one of your golden cocks,

Starting point is 02:09:00 which is your kind of signature cock, go for 55 ETH, which is your kind of signature cock uh go for 55 eath which is just insane 55.550 eath is one of what your your cocks went for and it has the the gold balls attribute it's full gold that is full gold full gold well copper too right it might right? It might be copper. It might be copper. Yeah, there are a couple of different options. Let's see here. There's gold pewter, I believe, which is the silver equivalent, but I thought pewter was much cooler. And then copper, because I love copper. That's a long story, but I really have an affinity for copper. There are a bunch of metals I have affinities for. Copper is one. One question I have for you is you have an attribute called the circle of eight, but my Zen hat on says that's an Enso. So is it an Enso or no?

Starting point is 02:09:57 An Enso. Describe for the audience what an Enso is. It's just like the Japanese symbol for, like you can look up, go and type in E-N-S-O, into Google Images, and you'll see it's like the, you know, it's the standard Zen circle. So look at, can you pull up one of those characters

Starting point is 02:10:16 as you're looking at them? Yeah, I have them up right now. Okay, look at the shirt. What's on the shirt? Can you see what's on it? It's green. Hold on, let me get back to at the shirt. What's on the shirt. Can you see what's on it? It's green. Hold on. Let me get back to it.

Starting point is 02:10:28 I had it. Yeah. It's, it's a green shirt and it's got the single, Oh, there's a dragon. So it's a, it's a,

Starting point is 02:10:35 it's a circle. It's a dragon eating its own tail. Okay. My bad. I thought it was more of the single stroke, like a Zen symbol. You know what I'm talking about? Right.

Starting point is 02:10:42 It may not be unrelated. It's not too, too far. Oh, about right it may not be unrelated it's not too too far oh interesting it may not be unrelated that is a dragon eating its own tail yes in what is called an ouroboros and there are a lot of kind of hyper proud liberal arts folks who use this word or mythological reference in snarky magazine articles, but they don't actually have full understanding of the mythological significance and variation on this concept of the Ouroboros. So people can look into it. But you were going to ask about them. I will say that I think the circle of eight are overlooked. There's only seven of them, though. Why aren't there eight of them?

Starting point is 02:11:34 There is an eighth. He's in there. He's in there somewhere. He's not tagged as circles of eight, though. He is not tagged. And he could be a she. He is not. He is not. No, he can't be a she because they're all cocks.

Starting point is 02:11:44 But yes. All right. So there's not a single ball-less one out of all of them? They're all... There's not a single what? Ball-less one? You said they're all... Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:11:55 They're all cocks. Like, they're all male. It's cock punch. Yes. They're all cocks. You're like, Kevin, maybe the title may have tipped you off. It's actually cock punch. Yeah, I mean, it's very much.

Starting point is 02:12:13 But that is one of the outstanding mysteries in the realm of Varlata, which as described by the seventh scribe in the first episode of the podcast, is there are several very significant outstanding questions. And one is, where are the women? We assume we got here by birth. Is this season two for you? Question mark, question mark, question mark.

Starting point is 02:12:36 Ooh, interesting. Lady bunch. I could go way worse, but I'm not going to say. Cutslap.com. Yeah, anyway. You're definitely going to bleep that one out. No, I just love saying that because I know that some aspirational squatter

Starting point is 02:12:54 is going to go out and buy Cuntslap everything. He'd be like, you didn't get Cuntslap.eth. Now you can buy it from me for $20,000. And I'll be like, enjoy that one. I'm never going to use it. I have a lot of ideas. I'm not committing to a decade of building X, Y, or Z. I've made this clear from the outset. I'm going to do this as long as it's energy feeding, which I think is part of the reason why a lot of traders have ditched, which I'm thrilled about. And not to say that traders are trivial.

Starting point is 02:13:22 They provide liquidity and a really important function. And I understand why they do what they do. But as somebody pointed out on Twitter, who is a holder of one of these cockpunch NFTs, they said with every secondary transaction, you are getting closer to the community that you want. And I thought about that and I was like, fuck, that's true.

Starting point is 02:13:43 And I've seen that even though it's only did that out because that's some sage shit i need to tweet out it wasn't mine it was somebody else i apologize that i can't remember the proper attribution but it's like with every secondary sale you are getting closer to the community that you want and it's so true when you think about it even if i look at the last when did this? God, it seems like six months since I launched, but it's only been two weeks. Three weeks. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 02:14:10 You know, I will say, oh man, when I talk to people who have been deep in the trenches with NFTs for like six months, a year, two years, it is like looking at a before and after photo of Obama when he got elected and four years later, people are worn down. They've got the thousand yard stare. Their black hair is all gone gray. I'm like, holy shit. You really got to pace yourself. Yeah, why do you think all this shit's gray? Oh my God. It's so intense.

Starting point is 02:14:45 I'm excited for you, man. I think this is a fun, creative chapter for you. And I love that you're not saying, this is my next great book. This is my next... It's just a fun outlet, right? It's a fun outlet, but I want to rewind and say something, echo something that you said, and we hadn't had that much booze. This was inanta monica and i don't know if we were recording but i was showing you some of the artwork and i was getting excited i was explaining some of the stuff i was thinking about and you said and maybe you're joking you can tell me you're like this might be the biggest thing that you've done and yeah i don't think that's a zero percent likelihood i i know that sounds fucking crazy but i don't think it's zero percent i really don't no the reason i i say that is because and i i truly did mean that when i said it is because of one simple thing and this is like

Starting point is 02:15:40 it's funny you know just in full transparency a handful of friends are like, what's Tim doing? What's this cock bunch thing? You know, and they come up to me cause they know I know you. Yeah. And they're like wanting to know, like, is this crazy? Like, what is he gone off the deep end? I'm like, I'm like, my answer is always very succinct and it's on point. And then I say, you don't understand.

Starting point is 02:16:07 Tim is a creativity factory and if you point that in the right direction, look at those triceps, by the way. Yeah, look at those triceps. God, look at the forearm of those triceps. If you point that in the right direction, you're going to have just something that could turn into a franchise

Starting point is 02:16:23 and something that is much bigger than you're even imagining. Oftentimes, we see this in technology all the time, whether it be Twitter or Instagram or you name it. I can probably point to 15 companies that everyone thought when they launched that it was a fun little fad. Yep. And then it snowballs into something bigger and bigger and bigger. And all of a sudden, it would not shock me if five years from now, and I know you're not saying this, this is me saying this, but you're in some major motion picture, crazy shit, multi-print book world where this blows up into something much bigger. And so when I looked at that, I said, wow, this is, if you take your nonfiction

Starting point is 02:17:07 world and move it to fiction, this is your creativity shifting to that fiction world, which I want to watch. I want to watch every chapter of that, you know? So I'm excited for you. Thanks, man. Yeah. I'm having a lot of fun. Or it could be nothing. Or it could be nothing, right? But that's the best part. It is. You haven't promised that this is the future.

Starting point is 02:17:30 You're saying, I'm going to have a great time, and let's see what happens. I have the emergency exit. If I get sick of it, I'm out. And what you described... And the floor goes to zero. Maybe. I don't think that's inevitable.

Starting point is 02:17:45 I do not think that's inevitable because my goal is to create something that can perpetuate without me. That's always the objective, right? When's the last time I gave an interview for the four-hour work week? 10 years ago? Right.

Starting point is 02:18:00 Still one of the top books on Amazon. Right, that's a great point. So my intention, and here's the thing, there's a cohesion and a shared incentive and an alignment with NFTs that does not quite exist with books. And that's very interesting to me. So I'm studying this very deeply,

Starting point is 02:18:22 having a lot of conversations. I could ditch in a month if I deal with like a thousand consecutive dickfaces on the internet, maybe. But so far, it's been pretty easy relative to all the things that I've had to contend with over the last, let's just say, decade. It's been pretty easy to discard that just because the nonsense is clearly nonsense. And the people spouting nonsense are generally spouting that nonsense to other people who are spouting nonsense. And even in two weeks, just being able to withstand the heat in the kitchen and staying in the kitchen. Oh, then you know you're good.

Starting point is 02:19:08 A lot of that has resolved itself already. It's going to calm down. Yeah, in 10 days, it's already calmed down. And so for me, this is when the interesting stuff starts, right? This is when things start to get interesting. When I have a critical mass of people as evidenced by this unofficial discord and these competitions, which were unbelievably entertaining. I mean, I think this could get to a point where people pay just to be a spectator at these competitions. I know that's a strong statement, but... I mean, look at esports, man. It's freaking huge. It blew my mind. So I give everyone who did that a lot of credit.

Starting point is 02:19:47 I was flabbergasted. It was truly one of the greater holy shit moments I've had in the last several years. So if that is what's happening within two weeks, holy shit. And I'm excited. I'm having fun. fun and also you think about non-fiction and all of the if you're a responsible non-fiction writer who is engaging in creative non-fiction but within the broad category of creative you need to adhere to a certain factual basis that is verifiable.

Starting point is 02:20:47 When you remove those limiters and you enter the world of fiction, which requires, if you're going to do it well, I think some degree of you tap a wellspring of creativity that is enormous, that just does not exist when you're writing fact-based, I don't want to call it literature, but when you are trying to produce fact-based writing. And I'm having fun, man. I'm having so much fun. And it opens the door to so many things, right? I was talking to somebody on my team today and I was saying, you know, I've never ever wanted to sell Tim Ferriss branded shit.

Starting point is 02:21:21 Like the idea of somebody walking around with like a Tim Ferriss show t-shirt with my fucking face on it, like that makes me want to puke well i mean i have your thong the limited edition one you did the limited edition thong with my face right on the balls that's true you did get the one of one that is that is the first one of one i was so nice of you yeah you're welcome happy anniversary uh but the the idea of having my face on say a t-shirt just always made me puke a little in my mouth that isn't no never just never want just never want to do it but people do that stuff right and i don't who does their face on a t-shirt i'm not gonna name your logo well i even just tim

Starting point is 02:21:59 ferris on a shirt feels weird to me so it's just too hard, like, I'm sure I'm a narcissist, but I'm not that narcissistic. I just couldn't get there. But the idea of having a small subculture of people who at some point might walk around with a Cockpunch logo on their shirt, probably without Cockpunch on it, right? That would be too in your face. But like a logo on it where anyone who sees it knows,

Starting point is 02:22:27 and that can be like the Fight Club wink. That's fun. That's super fun. And I'm not saying I'm going to do that, but it's fun for me to imagine that being a possibility. So suddenly all of these handcuffs that I'd placed on myself for good reasons around what I could or couldn't do are gone.

Starting point is 02:22:48 They're completely gone. It's called cock punch for fuck's sake. I can do whatever I want. It's fun. It's fun. I'm really excited about it. I have one awkward question for you, and it just popped in my mind as a consumer of your podcast, but something you may not agree to divulge in which we can cut it out.

Starting point is 02:23:07 Okay. But there was a point here a few minutes ago where you said the four-hour work week is still on the New York Times bestselling list. No, I didn't say that. I said it's still one of the top-selling books on Amazon. Top-selling books. Okay.

Starting point is 02:23:21 Top-selling books on Amazon. Yeah, you're right. These are different things. I'm sure there's a lot of people. And Tim, don't take this as like I'm being, oh, if you're willing to divulge, a lot of people would be curious, what did you receive for the signing bonus to do that book?

Starting point is 02:23:37 Because it was your first big book. Oh, for our work week? Yeah. Yeah. And then what does it look like over time? And then what do you make now on that book per year? Can you talk about that? Yeah, I can talk about it.

Starting point is 02:23:50 Forget the ego stuff. I think it's really interesting, right? I'll talk about it. I'm happy to talk about it. And these are not going to be, well, in the case of the ongoing annual stuff, I'm not going to have an exact number, but I can give you an idea. Yeah, just rough estimates. Yeah, rough estimates.

Starting point is 02:24:04 So a few things on the book publishing side. And I may have to take a pee break because after the ketones and tequila and soda water. We can also stop here in a minute. We're like two hours in or something. I'm having fun. I'm happy to go. We're two hours, 24 minutes in. But this is a good episode.

Starting point is 02:24:20 We're covering a lot. My advance for the four-hour work week which was paid out in four to six installments i want to say i don't recall exactly over probably a year and a half was 75 000 if i remember correctly okay your first book you you approached them or they approached you or how this well the way it happened is a long story. I ended up finding a very good editor named Stephen Hanselman who had just become an agent. He was untested largely as an agent, but I trusted his taste and we hit it off. He then took the book and pitched it to a bunch of editors,

Starting point is 02:25:06 27 or 29 of which rejected it, in some cases, rudely, really rudely. Ultimately sold it on one of our last meetings in person in New York City with editors and publishers. And Crown took a risk at the time, Crown within Random House. Now I think it's Harmony Books. The publishing world has a lot of shuffling constantly, so it's hard to keep track. But I believe, and the person who gave the go-ahead was Steve Ross at the time. I think it was Steve Ross. I think I'm getting his first name right. at then at Crown. So thank you, Steve. And it was 75K paid out over probably a year or a year and a half. Now that's an advance, right? So they're saying if you sell that many books,

Starting point is 02:25:58 you have to break that first, right? Yeah, exactly. So we're prepaying you for a certain number of books. And if you exceed it, then you get the royalty. And the royalty per copy for hardcover is going to be anywhere between 10% and 15% of cover price. Well, a couple bucks.

Starting point is 02:26:19 So let's just say it's 20 bucks and let's make it, it's not going to be 10%, so it'd be let's just say it's 20 bucks and let's make it, it's not going to be 10%. So it'd be, it'd be, let's just call it 15%. That'd be $3 a book. From that $3 though,

Starting point is 02:26:32 keep in mind, you got to pay taxes and you also have to beforehand pay your agent, which is generally going to be 15%. And then anything else that comes out of it. Okay. So,

Starting point is 02:26:47 right. So I sold millions of So, you sold millions of copies. I sold millions of copies. It took time. It did not flash boil as quickly as, say, Atomic Habits or as quickly as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. It did not flash boil as quickly as either of those books. It took some time. It took some time. It came out in April of 2007. It did not hit number one New York Times, which it did first on the monthly business list until I want to say August. It took some time.

Starting point is 02:27:18 The initial print run was 10,000 copies and it sold out and then nobody could buy the book anywhere. Wow. which is a quality problem and it's actually a significant problem and that is the advanced story or at least the numbers on the advance so what's your yearly look like at this point like is it like 50 grand or well let me in that book let me uh you know i asked this recently let me try to pull up my text thread i was trying to come up with this number recently. Just like a rough estimate is fine too. Yeah, I just don't want to.

Starting point is 02:27:52 You know how particular I am. I don't want to misrepresent anything. But it's sub 100K. Is that right? Or more? You're probably selling over 100,000 copies a year. Maybe 100 to 150K. Okay.

Starting point is 02:28:11 I mean, I've written and published now five books that were number one New York Times and or Wall Street Journal. And many of them stuck for a very long time. I'm looking at a text thread with my agent and he sent a photo, which is pretty fun, with four-hour workweek on the trending rack at Barnes & Noble after 15 years. After 15 years. Now on this rack, you have Think and Grow Rich, which has been around for decades. You have the intelligent investor, Benjamin Graham, been around for decades. Four-hour workweek, the millionaire at X Store, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Starting point is 02:28:46 Rich Dad, yeah, exactly. I was going to say, that one's always up there. Power Positive Thinking, I'm just going to name a few because why not? Trust and Inspire, I'm not familiar. Tribe of Mentors, so I've got two on this rack. Atomic Habits, Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, The 10X Rule, and a number of others. So on the trending rack, I'm actually in good longevity company with a number

Starting point is 02:29:10 of these, but 15 years afterwards, it's still trending. You're like a musical artist at this point. It's basically like if you're insert any Queen or Michael Jackson or whatever, there's just ongoing royalties that just

Starting point is 02:29:25 trickle in over time because you're that's right you've hit that point it's it's evergreen content it's evergreen by design and i'm looking at this here so amazing i would say all of my books on an annual basis mean, these are not the most successful books of all time. This is not Harry Potter, but this is probably top 1% in terms of earnings and track record for nonfiction books. And my total royalties pre-tax would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

Starting point is 02:30:05 And I don't know the exact on that. That buys a lot of Campbell's soup in Denny Moore Bistu. It buys a lot of Campbell's soup, but let's just take it as an example. I mean, I have put many hundreds of thousands of dollars into the development of Cockpunch. And I won't bore people with all the specifics, but there's a lot of money that has gone into Cockpunch.

Starting point is 02:30:24 I love that's where you went with that. That's amazing. Yeah. So no, this is just to say. You're like, I'm taking all of your money from four-hour work week and put it right back into Cockpunch, you motherfuckers.

Starting point is 02:30:34 No, well, it's not so much a guilt trip. It's just to say, I think it's crazy to think about the fact that I could take almost all or all of my royalties for all of my books, decades of work. All of the proceeds that I get from that, I put into an NFT project, which doesn't highlight that an NFT project done well costs a lot of money, although I do think it requires some. It's to highlight the fact that part of my reason for engaging with Web3 and NFTs was the promise that artists could resurrect, in a sense, their creative powers through an ongoing royalty, which turns out this is a shocker and was a shocker to a lot of people, is not automatically baked in and guaranteed by your smart contract across all platforms.

Starting point is 02:31:31 It's platform dependent. Let's be real. Let me give you some real talk now, Tim. Real talk. It's like, okay, real talk is that you've had 5,396 ETH in total volume. Your creator fee is 6.9%. So you did, and I'm not, please, please, ETH in total volume. Your creator fee is 6.9%. So you did, and I'm not

Starting point is 02:31:48 please, please let everyone know on this podcast, what you did no one does, which is the primary sale, you give all the money to charity. Secondary sale, you're saying this is what's going to maintain the project, which I think is awesome. To be clear, I actually said Tim might

Starting point is 02:32:04 use it on Whis and whores. I didn't even address what secondary sales. So given that Tim is single again, the second piece of that may kick in. We can cut that out. Jesus, I'm sorry, Tim. I didn't mean to say that.

Starting point is 02:32:20 So 5,396 total ETH times.069. Your creator fee is6 total ETH times 0.069. Your creator fee is 372 ETH. So 372, obviously, times, let's just say ETH is at 1,200. That means you've already broken even. You're at $446,000 in secondary sales. I have not even recouped my costs for Cockpunch yet. But yes.

Starting point is 02:32:41 Your costs are more than a half million? Yes. Wow. That's crazy. Well, and you have to pay taxes on this because this is revenue, right? And that is not counting my time. I'm working at below minimum wage, given the number of hours I put into this.

Starting point is 02:32:56 But if we discount that, if we're just considering hours for contractors, the costs, which I view as an investment for artists, for my team members who are allocating a significant portion of, let's just say their annual salary to these things, I do not think I have yet broken even. And I'm totally fine with it. I'm totally fine with it. I am totally fine with it. You're going to break even, dude. I'm not worried. There's no doubt. I'm not worried. Yeah, I'm not worried. I'm not worried.

Starting point is 02:33:26 As the storyline matures, the lore matures, your commitment matures, there's no doubt. Dude, well, I won't even say what other projects I can compare these against,

Starting point is 02:33:37 but you are so much more. The project's doing well. Yeah, the project's doing well. The project's doing well. The project's doing well. And what's most exciting to me is the trend that I am seeing and the coalescing of a community of people who are actually excited about it

Starting point is 02:33:54 and thoughtfully excited about it. They're not just drunk on cockpunch fumes. They're actually thinking about the lore. They're tracking the lore. They're tracking some of the details that a lot of folks have missed. And they're paying attention. And they're excited about it. They're having thinking about the lore. They're tracking the lore. They're tracking some of the details that a lot of folks have missed. And they're paying attention. And they're excited about it.

Starting point is 02:34:08 They're having fun with it, which is the whole fucking point. This is exactly what I'm most excited about the Moonbirds community and what we're doing over there is that we're finally getting the point where I feel like the community is tipped over and said, we're in this for the long term.

Starting point is 02:34:23 They're excited about what we're building. They're excited about some of the novel mechanics that we're doing on the technical side that haven't been done before or being done in different ways. And once you get there, you're in a great place as a project because you feel good.

Starting point is 02:34:35 You feel energized to go into work and really put in more energy into this, which is what we can all kind of hope for. I will say a couple little things to hit before we wrap things up. One thing certainly worth checking out for everyone out there, especially high-risk folks.

Starting point is 02:34:51 And Tim, I purposely put this in the rundown so that we could chat about it, but there is a mode new to iOS called Apple Lockdown Mode. And if you go into settings on your iPhone, you'll probably do this because I know you're paranoid like this shit, but if you enable

Starting point is 02:35:07 lock down mode, it actually disables five very common things that you would typically allow on the iPhone, but it prevents most of the compromises that happen from state actors like other governments

Starting point is 02:35:24 and sophisticated attackers. Yeah, protect devices against extremely rare and highly sophisticated cyber attacks. Exactly. It's things like if you get a lot of payloads, meaning the vulnerabilities will come over SMS, right? Or text message. And if you get something from, say, someone that you don't know,

Starting point is 02:35:43 it by default blocks them. Things like just obvious things you get something from, say, someone that you don't know, it by default blocks them. Things like just obvious things you should have enabled. It does cripple a few things in terms of the functionality of the iPhone. Anything else before we wrap things up? Well, I'm kind of curious. You have a couple of bullets. Love your spelling. Am I done with ayahuasca?

Starting point is 02:36:10 I'm assuming that is the question. That's right. And then about investing. Let's talk about those two. So real quick on the ayahuasca front, let me just preface this a bit in that I would consider you to be the first person I ever heard about ayahuasca.

Starting point is 02:36:22 Let's call it like eight years ago or whatever the fuck it was, like a long time ago. It was from you yeah and nobody was doing that shit it was like you had to get a proper shaman blah blah now like Los Angeles like you know CVS is doing like ayahuasca things at night like like it's like everywhere yeah what what god what say you you fucked everyone and then you created this crazy trend. And have you found durable, lasting effects from it? Would you still recommend it for most people?

Starting point is 02:36:54 What's your take on that? I wouldn't recommend it for most people. I have found durable benefits, and I've also found unpredictable risks. So I will say that about a year and a half ago maybe two years ago i had an extended deep depressive episode for several months precipitated by two nights of consuming ayahuasca and there are reasons for that it's not unexplainable. It was related to a lot of the content of that experience and a certain sense of meaninglessness and nihilism that was, I think, a predictable result of the content and experience that I went through.

Starting point is 02:37:47 And I think in some way, the conclusion landing in this void of meaninglessness and nihilism is justified, but that doesn't make it productive, and it was certainly not psychologically beneficial. So after that experience, I decided to take a hiatus from partaking. And there are significant, not just psychological, but in some cases physiological risks associated with ayahuasca. You can experience, especially if you're on concurrent medications, like certain SSRIs, serotonin syndrome, you can have severe, severe side effects. So this is not a trivial undertaking. And I have largely in the last year, year and a half, paced down significantly any consumption of psychedelics. I think that they will be an ongoing component of my life

Starting point is 02:38:49 until it's game over, or at least this game over, and I transition from this physical form, should we say. I do think that they will be in- To the cockpunch that you truly are. That's right. Until we all ascend to the Valhalla of cock punch but i do anticipate it'll be an ongoing aspect and important ritual component in my life but i have dialed back the frequency substantially. Let me ask you a question. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:39:26 Do you see the benefits degrade over time? Meaning that if you had to go back and talk to your first ayahuasca self, let's call it eight years ago or whatever it was. Yeah, 10 plus years ago now, yeah. Yeah, let's say 10 plus years ago. Would you say, hey, Tim, do it 10 times or do it five times or do it whatever? Is there a kind of beneficial return the more that you do it? Tough question to answer.

Starting point is 02:39:52 I think it depends a lot on the individual. It also depends on the reasons for which you are using it. I would say I wouldn't have said that to myself. I wouldn't have said do it 10 times and call it quits. I wouldn't have said that to myself. I wouldn't have said do it 10 times and call it quits. I wouldn't have said that. I would have said, here's what I probably would have said. I would have said, number one, if you take this seriously, the deeper you go, the more interesting it becomes. If you pursue very qualified training through people who have a proven lineage of focusing

Starting point is 02:40:31 on this for hundreds of years, you can go very, very deep and it will get more interesting. I would have simultaneously said, be very cautious about how deep you go because you can get lost. If this is not your tradition, if this is not your culture, if you've not been steeped in this, if you didn't start drinking ayahuasca when you were five years old, which is when a lot of these, let's just call them professionals, will start drinking is when they're five, six, or seven years old. Like a full dose or just little tasters? I don't know how it's introduced.

Starting point is 02:41:09 Probably it's smaller doses, but very quickly getting to full doses. Very quickly getting to full doses. Is it fun when you do a little cough syrup on the side, or do you have to do a full dose to get the... I've never done it. You know that. Yeah, I do. I will say... Can I say one thing, Tim?

Starting point is 02:41:28 Yes. Can I say one thing? You can say two things. Let me say one, one, one thing. You can say three things. I'll say one thing. If you decide to do it again this year, if you would have me,

Starting point is 02:41:37 I would do it with you, finally, for like 10 years. All right, all right. That's interesting. That's interesting. All right. I will not hold you to that but that's good to know yeah i'd love to man i know that you would be a good guide i know you'd be a good

Starting point is 02:41:50 friend i know you'd be a good shoulder and you know i know there's having done high high dose um mushrooms i cried and wept over my dad's passing over a lot of shit that would obviously comes up and you need you need a support structure and i know you would over a lot of shit that obviously comes up, and you need a support structure. And I know you would be a fantastic friend at that. Oh, thanks. I would love that if you'd have me at some point. Yeah, thanks, Kevin. And also the meditation training you've been doing will be instrumental.

Starting point is 02:42:16 It will be incredibly, incredibly helpful. So that's good to know. And I will say that i'll just wrap up quickly the the advice i would have given my younger self's number one is the deeper you go the more interesting it will become assuming that you have proper guidance from people who have a proven track record before this was fashionable of over generations cultivating an awareness and toolkit for interacting with these spaces. I was just going to say one little tidbit to that.

Starting point is 02:42:52 You know, even just being out here a couple months, I hear, hey, come to our ayahuasca little thing in the LA Hills, blah, blah. And it seems very commercial at this point. And I'm like, in my head, I was always like, I'm only going to trust him on this shit because he's got that OG, that original shit, that good stuff.

Starting point is 02:43:11 But you know what I mean. You must feel this. You know I'm strict. I know you only seek out the best. Yeah, and I'm very, very, very, very particular and meticulous about how I assess expertise. I think that is one of my core forms of expertise, is assessing expertise. I think I'm very good at it. I think the vast majority of people who consume these things are children playing with loaded handguns. They don't realize the

Starting point is 02:43:46 risks they're taking. And the horrifying episodes generally don't get a lot of airtime. So there's a survivorship bias where people end up hearing the positive life-altering experiences, and then the incorrect conclusion is made that the vast majority of experiences are like that. And I have not seen any evidence to suggest that's true. There are many positive life-altering experiences, but ayahuasca specifically is a big gun. It is very powerful. And the other warning I would give, in addition to if you go deep, given that you are not native to this environment, there is a risk that you will become lost. And being lost could be an indescribably terrifying experience, where the line between reality and what you might perceive as a hyper-reality in this other dimension, or fabricated reality as a UI as we perceive it versus any type of objective truth.

Starting point is 02:44:56 Things can get very, very unclear very quickly. And I don't expect anyone to understand this or even take it as reasonable that you could have that experience if you haven't been there. But take my word for it, you can get to some very, very slippery terrain. Furthermore, I would say, no matter how many times you have done this, it doesn't matter if it's 10 or 100 or 200, you always stand the chance of pulling a Joker card from the deck and getting your fucking ass handed to you in a very serious way that has lasting- I don't want to do it anymore.

Starting point is 02:45:37 That has lasting consequences. Now, I will say, just for you, Kevin, the group matters. I don't want to fly either. The group matters. I don't like to fly either. The group matters. And I will say more so than perhaps at least from a format, a traditional format perspective, the people in the group matter.

Starting point is 02:45:57 So you are going to have, this is another reason or another example of where I think many people don't. Are you saying though, when you're doing this? If I look over at you while we're doing this, you're not going to be like doing something crazy. I'm like, Tim's freaking out. Fuck, I'm freaking out. He's past being a ruler.

Starting point is 02:46:15 Generally not. No. Generally, I'm not like- I'm going to look to you to be solid ground. Well, I'm not like the exorcist. My head's not like spinning around while vomiting in all directions and speaking in tongues.

Starting point is 02:46:30 Things can get very strange and they almost certainly will get very strange, but I have never had the experience. Actually, I take that back. In my first few experiences, there were one or two times where I felt out of control, fully out of control,

Starting point is 02:46:45 and was completely dislocated from anything resembling this reality. But generally speaking, now, or in recent history, I can go through very, very, very challenging experiences. But if someone near me says, Tim, are you okay? Or Tim, how are you doing? I can reply to that in perfectly coherent English. That's amazing. It snaps you out a little bit. Even if I am, by all subjective interpretations, completely removed from time-space identity. I can still respond to that, which is a developed, I think that's a cultivated skill,

Starting point is 02:47:33 at least for me. But the fact of the matter remains that I could not have foreseen how violently I would be destabilized from that experience a year and a half, two years ago. And I think that was in part due to a degree of overconfidence after many rounds for a non-clinician, for a non-professional. I mean, the professionals drink four or five nights a week and do so for years and years and years on end. So anyone who's like, I've done ayahuasca 10 times,

Starting point is 02:48:06 I understand ayahuasca. You are setting yourself up for like spiritual head kick. The reason I'm excited about this, and tell me if this is foolish, and I'm fine with you saying that. The one thing that I really appreciate about this practice of meditation is that there's two things.

Starting point is 02:48:26 One, it's Henry slaps his legs and he says, just this, just this. This is the moment, just this. And that really snaps me back into this is the moment. And the second piece is that this idea of surrender where you have something that's facing you and you're like, that's just a thought. Let's surrender back to the moment has been a big piece of this practice. And do you think that either of those things would be helpful? 100%. I'll tell you how they'll be helpful in my experience and how they'll be a hindrance or how they can be a hindrance. So on the helpful side, in these very, let's call them unusual and alternate experiences of reality

Starting point is 02:49:16 in say an ayahuasca experience, and you can have nothing nights also, by the way, you get a brew that's super weak, or you just simply, for whatever reason, have your body veto the experience. You can have null experiences. It's pretty wild. I have had those. They're rare, but I've had experiences where I've had three cups, which I never do, three drinks, and have been more sober than I am right now because I had one real drink, or two real drinks.

Starting point is 02:49:46 And I don't have a good explanation for how that happens. But let's just assume we're talking about the full ride and you're in. There's an expression, and this is used in therapy, but it's especially applicable, I think, to some of these stronger psychedelic experiences, which is what you resist persists. So if you're having an emotion, it's not that the emotion is the problem, it's your response to the emotion that's the problem, right? So that is very much, I think, compatible spanning the gap between what we might consider meditation and a psychedelic experience. It's the same. It's just magnified. If you resist something in meditation, there's a certain consequence. If you resist something in psychedelics, it's that consequence times 100.

Starting point is 02:50:38 So if you're able to rehearse and practice and cultivate the ability to observe without resisting, it is very helpful. The risk, and I have seen this with experienced meditators, is that they effectively, in the psychedelic experience, are able to almost dissociate from a first-person experience and sit on the sidelines. They don't allow themselves to be taken. Yeah, I love that. That's what I want to do. I love taking. And there's a certain wisdom in that.

Starting point is 02:51:18 There's a safety in that. But you do not, in my opinion, you don't get the full experience. Yeah, you're the coach. You're watching the players on the field. You're like, yeah, good job. Keep it up. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 02:51:31 Clap, clap, clap. But you're not having the in-the-zone experience. I get it. Of being on the playing field in a way that allows you to ride the lightning. Well, that's not true of surrender then, right? Because if you're really, truly surrendering, you would let it take you, right? If you allow it, for meditators, it's a conscious decision in many cases, unless they just get it.

Starting point is 02:51:54 Unless they have the choice. Most people don't. Most people don't. They just, for most people, it's not surrendering. It's being taken without thought of there being an alternative. Right, right. For meditators, I will say, I mean, there is a dose that will render you just a piece of fucking... It could just be one cup, depending on the brew.

Starting point is 02:52:20 It could just make you a piece of driftwood in a hundred foot wave, right? I mean, there is... I love that. the brew. It could just make you a piece of driftwood in a hundred foot wave, right? I mean, there are circumstances in which I don't really care how good you are at meditating. You're scaring me. Stop talking about it. Let's just do it next week. But the room composition matters. And this is where I'm going to get out there. So welcome to crazy town, everybody. But when you have proper guidance in the form of someone who is quarterbacking the experience and you have a room of, let's just say, four to eight people, I think around six is really the sweet spot for me.

Starting point is 02:52:59 That is the right size team for something like this. You are going to effectively have unprotected spiritual sex with everybody in that room, which is part of the reason why I typically do not drink with any strangers. I want to know what is under the hood for people on some level, because it all gets put on the same shared table in that experience. And I don't have any scientific proof for this. I only have my own direct experience and I try to trust in the fidelity of my direct experience. Stuff gets shared in that room. So it's good to have some basic familiarity of what you're contending with. And well, what's interesting, it doesn't

Starting point is 02:53:47 necessarily manifest in a negative way. So for instance, I have a friend who I have sat with many dozens of times now, and we will often have the exact same experience. We will see the same things. We will hear the same things. We will experience nausea at exactly the same times. Or more interestingly, one of us will get super nauseous and then the nausea will disappear and then the other person will vomit as if that has been handed off to the other person. They assume that burden or responsibility or feeling and they handed off to the other person they assume that burden or responsibility or feeling and they process it for the other person it's very odd it's very odd and it is very very common so you should get a good crew together who are we gonna get it's you me david David Blaine Mike Mike Shinoda lead singer

Starting point is 02:54:46 Kiss I gotta run I gotta get back to my girls this has been awesome yeah good to hang man

Starting point is 02:54:55 and it is great to see you man I want to say a couple things real quick before we wrap up one

Starting point is 02:55:01 happy new year I love you I miss you yeah I love you too. It's always great to do these. It's been so many fun years of us doing these, these ridiculous, makes me so happy.

Starting point is 02:55:12 Ridiculous podcasts. Yeah. You know, like speaking of cock bunch, like this is the cock bunch of podcasts. Like it really is ridiculous. Like it's good. Hashtag forward slouch.

Starting point is 02:55:25 Yeah. The thing I love about, like, just to say this, cause this goes on your main feed is like, you know, you have a very successful podcast that makes a lot of money doing what you do so well.

Starting point is 02:55:37 And the fact that you would say, Hey, I'm going to dumb it down from time to time and just have a good time and do these types of shows. It means a lot, man. It's, it's like,

Starting point is 02:55:46 it's, it's, it's kind of, um, I think it's core of who we are though. Like we, we, we both like to be professionals on some level and then also just fuck it.

Starting point is 02:55:55 We're going to die soon. Let's have a good time. Right. Yeah. A hundred percent, man. I, I love these conversations.

Starting point is 02:56:01 I miss you, miss the family. And I hope to spend more time in person. I'm hoping you come to LA more often. You're thinking about that, right? I would like to spend some more time out there. It's perfect weather. There's a lot to be

Starting point is 02:56:16 said for it. Easy access to nature. I get to hang out. In terms of the dating life, I think you're going to have a good time out here. Yeah, that's true it's a large playing field out there and i am a lot of pickleball out here a lot of pickleball a lot of pickleball i don't even know what that means oh yeah yeah you don't know what it means oh what a what a class act and i also have a lot of friends out there. I also have a lot of friends.

Starting point is 02:56:45 And it'd be fun to do these in person, man. We used to do in person all the time. We used to always do in person. All the time in SF, yeah. It was so fun. So we looked a lot younger, less gray ball sacks. Yeah, the ball sacks were really resplendent in their youthful vigor. I had like a ponytail on mine.

Starting point is 02:57:04 I had the whole ponytail on mine. The whole thing. Little ponytails. It was good luck. On that note. Oh my God. I'm sorry if we offended anyone today. Obviously we've had a few drinks. I'm not sorry.

Starting point is 02:57:15 We've had fun. I'm so not sorry. If you're offended, please, Jesus, relax. You're going to die soon. Have some fun

Starting point is 02:57:25 exactly alright man alright brother good to see you man and to everybody listening I don't even know if we're gonna have show notes but maybe

Starting point is 02:57:34 tim.blog slash podcast that's where you can find the more serious stuff and happy holidays and happy New Year's everybody

Starting point is 02:57:44 happy New Year to you too, man. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and

Starting point is 02:58:26 so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange, esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. 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've launched a company called Allform,

Starting point is 02:59:14 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 resistant.

Starting point is 02:59:36 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. 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 wanted 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

Starting point is 03:00:09 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 use 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. So check it out. Take

Starting point is 03:00:48 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 GiveWell. Donating money to help other people is a wonderful act. But how can you be confident? How can you know that your donations are actually improving or saving lives effectively? It's hard to do.

Starting point is 03:01:30 You could do weeks of research to find the charities that are out there, what programs they run, what their administrative overhead is, how effective those programs are, and on and on and on. It would be a full-time job. It could take forever. I know this from experience because I tried to do it that way manually. It is a ton of work. GiveWell spends more than 30,000 hours each year researching charitable organizations. Then they direct funding to a few of the highest impact evidence-backed opportunities they've found. They do the work for you. More than 100,000 donors have used GiveWell to donate more than $1 billion, which includes 678,000 donated by you, my dear listeners. So it makes a difference. Rigorous evidence indicates that these donations will save more than 150,000 lives and improve the

Starting point is 03:02:20 lives of millions more. That's why GiveWell does what they do. And using GiveWell's research is free. GiveWell wants as many donors as possible to make informed decisions about high-impact giving. So they publish all of their research and recommendations on their site for free, no sign-up required. They allocate your tax-deductible donation to the charity or fund you choose without taking a cut. If you've ever donated to GiveWell's recommended charities before,

Starting point is 03:02:49 you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year. That's 2022, so one more time. If you've never donated to GiveWell's recommended charities before, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to givewell.org, give, G-I-V-E-W-E-L-L.org, givewell.org. And when you get to checkout, pick podcast and enter Tim Ferriss Show. It's that simple. Make sure they know that you heard about GiveWell on the Tim Ferriss Show to get your donation

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #645: The Random Show, Mega-Holiday Edition — 2023 Resolutions and New Tools, Extensive Bullshitting, Booze and Ethanol Alternatives, The “Yearly Delete,” A Million Sidebars, Ayahuasca Revisited, Recapping the COCKPUNCH Saga, and Much More

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #645: The Random Show, Mega-Holiday Edition — 2023 Resolutions and New Tools, Extensive Bullshitting, Booze and Ethanol Alternatives, The “Yearly Delete,” A Million Sidebars, Ayahuasca Revisited, Recapping the COCKPUNCH Saga, and Much More

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