The Tim Ferriss Show - #670: The Random Show with Kevin Rose — The $1M Bitcoin Bet, Japanophilia, Rare IPAs, Preventing Hangovers, AI Companions, Fringe Discords, Affordable Luxuries, High-Fidelity Audio, and Much More

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your sleep preferences. Their lineup includes 14 unique mattresses, including a collection of luxury models, a mattress for big and tall sleepers, that's not me, and even a mattress made specifically for kids. They have models with memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on your side, as I often do and did last night on one of their beds. Models with more responsive foam to cradle your body for essential support in stomach and back sleeping positions, and on and on. They have you covered. So how will you know which Helix mattress works best for you

Starting point is 00:00:34 and your body? Take the Helix sleep quiz at helixsleep.com slash Tim and find your perfect mattress in less than two minutes. Personally, for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one of those in the guest bedroom, and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. They frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. Helix mattresses are American-made and come with a 10- or 15-year warranty, depending on the model. Your mattress will be shipped straight to your door, free of charge, and there's no better way to test out a new mattress than by sleeping on it in your own home. That's why they offer a 100-night risk-free trial. If you decide it's not the best fit, you're welcome to return it for a full refund.

Starting point is 00:01:18 Helix has been awarded number one mattress by both GQ and Wired magazines. Helix is now offering 20% off on all mattress orders, plus two free pillows for you, my dear listeners. On some mattresses, this can mean savings of more than $500. So go to helixsleep.com slash Tim. This is the best offer that they have made yet, and it will not last forever. With Helix, better sleep starts now. So one more time, check it out. Helix, H-E-L-I-X, helixsleep.com slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is one of my favorite companies out there, one of my favorite platforms ever. And let's get into it. Shopify is a platform, as I mentioned, designed for anyone to sell anything anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for

Starting point is 00:02:11 big business. So what does that mean? That means in no time flat, you can have a great looking online store that brings your ideas, products, and so on to life. And you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day business and drive sales. This is all possible without any coding or design experience whatsoever. Shopify instantly lets you accept all major payment methods. Shopify has thousands of integrations and third-party apps from on-demand printing to accounting to advanced chatbots, anything you can imagine. They probably have a way to plug and play and make it happen. Shopify is what I wish I had had when I was venturing into e-commerce way back in the early 2000s. What they've done is pretty remarkable.

Starting point is 00:02:50 I first met the founder, Toby, in 2008 when I became an advisor, and it's been spectacular. I've loved watching Shopify go from roughly 10 to 15 employees at the time to 7,000 plus today, serving customers in 175 countries with total sales on the platform exceeding $400 billion. They power millions of entrepreneurs from their first sale all the way to full scale. And you would recognize a lot of large companies that also use them who started small. So get started by building and customizing your online store, again, with no coding or design experience required. Access powerful tools to help you find customers, drive sales, and manage your day-to-day. Gain knowledge and confidence

Starting point is 00:03:31 with extensive resources to help you succeed. And I've actually been involved with some of that way back in the day, which was awesome, the Build a Business competition and other things. Plus, with 24-7 support, you're never alone. And let's face it, being an entrepreneur can be lonely, but you have support, you have resources, you don't need to feel alone in this case. More than a store, Shopify grows with you and they never stop innovating, providing more and more tools to make your business better and your life easier. Go to shopify.com slash Tim to sign up for a $1 per month trial period. It is a great deal for a great service. So I encourage you to check it out. Take your business to the next level

Starting point is 00:04:11 today and learn more by visiting shopify.com slash Tim. One more time, shopify.com slash Tim, all lowercase. optimal minimal at this altitude i can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking can i answer your personal question now would have seen an appropriate time i'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. I forgot there was a camera. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show.

Starting point is 00:04:51 We have, yet again, The Random Show. Yes. Kev, Kev, Rose, Rose. Kevin Rose. Thank you for having me, Tim. It's good to be here. It's good to be here in your home. We're in a home.

Starting point is 00:05:02 We have our matching mini scooters. We do. We also have a miniature kitchen set behind us. We were making pinto beans and homestyle ice cream. You may or may not be able to see that. Their favorite topping for pinto beans. And by then, he means his progeny. I have a couple little ones that hopefully will not be making an appearance and have gone to bed, but we shall see. We already had a princess on the run, a little jailbreak who came flying through. So, Kevin, before recording, actually while recording, you said this is the important

Starting point is 00:05:31 juice, but that was off mic, so I relayed it into the mic. What is this important juice that we have before us? So, I mean, we've been doing these shows for a very long time. Super long. Well, not always. We've highlighted some of our favorite drinks over the years. And one of the things that comes into my possession about once a year is a limited edition run. You know it's expensive when it's in passive sentence form.

Starting point is 00:05:55 It comes into my possession. That's right. It sounds very fancy. It's just a beer pupil. So one of the things that I like to do, and we've talked about this before at some point, but unlike wine, the cool thing about beer is you can buy the best beer in the world, like the number one ranked beer, and it's going to cost you $100. That's not the case with wine, obviously.

Starting point is 00:06:14 So in terms of different styles of beer, it's typically not IPAs that win the number one slot on that. It's some of the heavier stuff. But on the IPA front, the second highest ranked IPA by Beer Advocate, and I would argue the harder to find version of the IPAs, because the number one ranked IPA is called Heady Topper, and it is in production year round. This particular beer by Russian River Brewing is called Pliny the Younger. Now, you may have heard of Pliny the Elder, which is you typically find at Whole Foods and things like that. The Younger is a limited edition run that they do once a year and used to have to go to Russian River Brewing to actually consume it. And just recently, probably I'd say three or four years

Starting point is 00:06:58 ago, they started putting it in bottles. So this is it in bottle form. I would argue that this is probably the most sought after IP in the world. It is $75 a bottle. So it's not cheap. It is a 16 ounce bottle though. So per ounce. Nope. It was one pint. Yeah. One pint. So it's, it's expensive juice, but it is quite good. And I wanted to share it with you. Thank you. And I also want to tell people out there how to find the rarest beers in the world. Let's do it. I may have mentioned this at one crazy long ago random show, but there is a place that I go to called mybeercollectibles.com.

Starting point is 00:07:35 This is an ad. I have nothing to do with them. Every time I mention any URL, you're in the same boat. Check out code KevKev2023. Exactly. Make sure you get my 20%. But one of the things that this is i'm probably going to get them arrested but one of the things that is very difficult to do is to sell

Starting point is 00:07:51 alcohol online and so on the beer front if you say and this is true if you were to drink this bottle you can sell the bottle by itself for let's just say five dollars or whatever it may be because the bottle is just collectible in its own right and so what they claim is that everything you're buying is a collectible and so you're not actually buying the beer and so it's a peer-to-peer marketplace yeah and so they have people that go and buy that i've been using them for several years now they're gonna have the best month of sales before they get shut down it's gonna be really a blaze of glory they've been okay they've been okay and i always find really good sellers on there. And you see on the side of this, it says, you know, not packaged for resale.

Starting point is 00:08:30 So you have to know somebody to get this. And yeah, I love a good IPA. And I would say this is up there. This is pretty good stuff. So you know the wine world. You know probably something about the beer world. You also know the high- i'm not even gonna call them watches god forbid timepiece world sure very well how much of the fame that comes from being

Starting point is 00:08:54 sought after is derived from the quality of the product versus the scarcity versus the positioning if there is such a thing, marketing, other factors. Yeah. I've become really interested in this question, and there's actually a spectacular episode, I haven't listened to it yet, on LVMH and the building of that. Right. From its very meager beginnings to its insane current state. And there's a book called How Luxury Lost Its Lustre.

Starting point is 00:09:21 So a lot of alliteration, which I read a long time ago. I do find the study of scarcity and high-end products very interesting. Have you read the book, The Luxury Strategy? The Luxury of Strategy? No, it's Luxury Strategy. The Luxury Strategy. I was like, the Luxury of Strategy. It seems like a necessity. No, I haven't. It's actually another really good one. It talks about just brand positioning

Starting point is 00:09:41 and just how to set yourself up as a really sought after yeah premier brand and some of the mistakes that brands make where they go down market and they become a commoditized kind of like raw stress for less it's part of the reason why the fashion industry goes and destroys so many clothes they have leftover clothes they could go and sell them it's what happened to guess jeans or any of these other brands where they said hey we have this extra inventory let's discount it let's do outlet stores right let's do you know these these discounting stores and it ruins then they get anchored in the mid-market exactly and then you can't go back up right once you go down you can't you can't regain that we are and there's so many ways different ways to differentiate as one example we're in la right now and i had never been to erwan so for people

Starting point is 00:10:26 who don't know erwan is a very famous very expensive it's not expensive this is well water let me paint a picture i went in and i went to their hot meal cafeteria line and i got a couple of boxes i mean it's two meals maybe two and a half meals for me and i was like oh i got a couple of boxes. I mean, it's two meals, maybe two and a half meals for me. And I was like, oh, I got a kombucha too. And you know, maybe a water. And I think that was about it. There wasn't much more to it. And it was $147. I wanted to go there just for the spectacle because-

Starting point is 00:10:55 I mean, there's a dating scene there as well. There's this dating scene. It's, yeah. The point I was going to make is I was having a conversation with someone and I told them the story and they said, wow, that's insane. I imagine if you took the same inventory, you could sell it for 20% less and do really well. And I said, you could, but if Erewhon lowered their prices, they would be dead. I think because part of the allure, part of the story, part of the word of mouth is how expensive it is.

Starting point is 00:11:25 Yeah, I mean, it's that, but also we could get into Erewhon. I mean, look, they have other stuff that is, I'm sure, of incredibly high quality, and I respect that also. But it has become, the reason I hear about Erewhon in a place like Austin or other places in the country is highly exclusive, very expensive. And I'm not saying that as a knock. Well, I think it's what we've seen, well, just talking about grocery stores,

Starting point is 00:11:50 even though this isn't that interesting of a topic. But this maps to a bunch of other things. Oh, for sure. But I think when you see Whole Foods get bought by Amazon and it becomes this kind of mass-scaled enterprise, although it was, you could argue, beforehand, when you go in there, it's not the level of quality it was a decade ago. It's just not. It's been degraded. And this is

Starting point is 00:12:10 now that next new level. I would say that when you go into Air One, it doesn't feel bougie, though. It doesn't feel crazy, just luxury for luxury's sake. Is that what you mean by bougie? Because that word, I've heard bougie said more times than I can count since I got to LA about a week ago. I think it's just kind of like the one thing, I've only been in LA a few months. And the one thing that I love about it actually is that it's a choose your own adventure. So you can go as crazy high end as you want to however you define that, or you can find an awesome little dive bar with a great cocktail, right? And so I actually like that. And for me,

Starting point is 00:12:45 I tend to float somewhere in the middle. Don't get me wrong. I like a nice, awesome steak at a great killer steakhouse, which they have a lot of those out here. But at the same time, it's different than Portland. Portland, we didn't have the high end. We had a lot of the middle. So Erewhon is very small. It's a very small grocery store. It's super small. I was actually expecting it to be much larger yeah so i go there and i've been there since and it is high quality the food is high quality i think the name is also if i'm getting this right an anagram of nowhere for people who may be wondering about the name interesting the experience that i had actually yesterday brought a lot of this to top of mind for me. And my experience yesterday was going to this place

Starting point is 00:13:27 called the Magic Castle for the second time ever. How nice, you went. I did. And for those who don't know about the Magic Castle, I'm not going to do it justice, but it is the mecca of magic in the sense that people from all over the world, the kids who become obsessed with magic, sleight of hand, illusion, et cetera, the one place, if they've heard of it, that everyone wants to go is the magic castle. And anyone who's anyone more or less in that world blows through the doors probably once a year. Did you dress up? You have to dress up. This is where I was going. You have to wear a suit and tie. Not just tie, suit and tie. I did not come here with a suit and tie, nor did I come here with dress shoes. So a friend of mine who was visiting,

Starting point is 00:14:13 who also didn't have any of the fancy clothes, because the opportunity to go came up very last minute. Men's warehouse. We went to Hollywood Suits on Hollywood Boulevard. You rented? No, we couldn't rent. So we bought suits. But here's the thing. From the moment we walked in, and I know these are quality problems. The fact that you can buy a suit that you'd never intend to wear again is kind of insane.

Starting point is 00:14:34 But I knew that it would cost close to the same to rent and that we didn't have time to rent because literally we found out that we had the opportunity to go to this amazing show. It's a very small show with an incredible magician who I'll mention here because the show is absolutely spectacular, and then I'll rewind. So I'm going to get his name probably pronounced wrong, but Simon Coronel, C-O-R-O-N-E-L. People, if you don't know this name, you are going to know this name. This guy put on one of the best shows I've ever seen. Young person or?

Starting point is 00:15:01 Yeah, he's young. I mean, I don't know exactly how old he is. Maybe he's my age, so I'll call that young. Yeah. The older I get, the younger I think my current age is. But we went to Hollywood Suits. We had literally, I want to say 90 minutes. And we walked in. We didn't even have 90 minutes.

Starting point is 00:15:16 We had an hour. We walked in. We just said, here are our sizes. Wear your suits. Went over, grabbed whatever looked reasonably good off the rack i hate that at least did the itchy because i hate it well hold on so we get then it's like what size is your neck shirt boom the guy like throws it on top because it's sort of a rack and stack high volume spot and then it's like shoes bell this that and the other thing and we walked

Starting point is 00:15:40 out the door with everything for between $150 and $200 a suit. That's insane. It's awesome. Yeah. So then they can't do the hemming there. So you have to go down this alley around the corner and you think you might be murdered, but no, you find somebody who's in this little room. I've done that before.

Starting point is 00:15:57 You could staple it. We didn't have staplers though. We have to call an Uber in 30 minutes to get to this place. And we get everything done. Literally, we walk in the door, and then 45 minutes later, we're in our suits. And we go to the Magic Castle, and my friend and I both have, I don't have a lot of suits, right? But I have one or two nice suits for weddings and things like that. They're not cheap. And they're fitted in this, that, and the other thing. And both of us looked at the suits and thought, okay, these are not the best suits in the world, but they are surprisingly fitting and surprisingly good. I got a compliment on my suit while I was there. And it raises questions. Okay, this was $150, $200.

Starting point is 00:16:43 What differentiates? And yes, they're better materials. Yes, there's better fitting. But then you're waiting like five months for alterations or whatever when you get into the super fancy class. And you're like, okay, that's not about entirely quality. That's about the story of the wait. That's about being able to tell your friends the process you went through to get the thing.

Starting point is 00:17:02 Which is not to diminish its value. It's just to say, it's really interesting that such a high percentage of the total cost could be placed on that. So I think about these things. Do you think you're going to get into any other high-end stuff? Although I want to back up to your comment that to get the equivalent in terms of grade for wine would just be impossibly cost prohibitive. You're just going to have to pay out the nose and take out a second mortgage. So affordable luxuries, right? In terms of affordable luxuries, anything else that you enjoy that you would sort of put in the same class? For me, one would be chocolate. You can get what some would consider the best chocolate in the world.

Starting point is 00:17:48 And if you're willing to spend even $20, $30, $50. What's your go-to? I like Dick Taylor. I used to be... All right, I want to hear yours. I haven't been in this world for a long time, but about 10 years ago, I really got into it. This is when I was actually, I guess, a little bit earlier, maybe 11, 12 years when I was working on The 4-Hour Chef. I got into this and looked at it very seriously.

Starting point is 00:18:05 Coffee, you can really get incredible coffee if you're willing to pay up just a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. The coffee is one that I do pay up for or a subscription, which is their single origin high-end coffee from a roaster called Proud Mary. And they're based in Australia,

Starting point is 00:18:22 but they have a location in Portland, Oregon as well. And so they have a varietal of coffee called a Geisha coffee. Have you ever had it before? No. So it is just like the most delicate, awesome, floral, beautiful, elegant coffee you can consume. Whereas when you make it properly, I do the whole measuring myself, you know, 32 grams of coffee, 350 milliliters of grams of water, and I do it via pour over. And when you do it, you don't need to add anything. No sugar, no butter. I was thinking of the old days. No pork chops.

Starting point is 00:18:59 Remember when we did the bulletproof coffees? Yeah, exactly. Until I started getting my cardiac markers pressured regularly. Oh my God, dude. I used to do bulletproof coffees all the time where I'd add MCT oil and butter. And then just, you basically drink that coffee and about a half hour later-

Starting point is 00:19:17 Disaster pants. You just shit your brains out. It's just like the worst. Why did we ever do that? Then I got my numbers back from a Tia and it's like freaking, my cholesterol is all jacked up all over the place. Do you have an IV bag full of triglycerides?

Starting point is 00:19:33 Yeah, exactly. What's happening here? You've nailed it. I think chocolate, coffee is another one. Coffee is something I do a cup every day. So that's great. Teas in the same camp, you can get really nice high-end teas

Starting point is 00:19:44 that are amazing for under $50. This is going to be maybe funny coming right after talking about health stuff and metrics. But I think when I get quite a bit older, maybe I'm like, okay, I'm on the tail end here. I think I might take up pipe smoking. No, my dad used to smoke a pipe. I love just the, it looks so relaxing. But not inhaling? And the smell of pipe tobacco is so incredible. Oh, dude. I think I just want to be like a cantankerous old guy in a rocking chair on a porch smoking my pipe, reading my book. I don't know. I mean, maybe I wouldn't inhale. I guess you're supposed to just bring it into your mouth

Starting point is 00:20:22 and then like puff away at it. I don't know. I don't smoke pipes. I think most people would inhale. So I used to go into the old, they used to have these old tobacco shops you could go into where they sell raw tobacco. And I used to go in with my dad, and that's a good childhood memory because the smell is so amazing.

Starting point is 00:20:36 It's incredible. It's really, really, really phenomenal. So what else would fit that? And actually, people should also just ping us on Twitter and let us know if we're missing a category because I enjoy thinking about affordable luxuries that most people could bring into their lives so they can carve out a small piece of time, a small amount of cash to really feel like they're treating themselves to something that is amazing.

Starting point is 00:21:04 And there's just certain categories where that's not possible because of how much demand there is and therefore how high the prices can escalate. There's a bunch of stuff. I mean, for me, there's little tiny micro upgrades that you do around your household when you think about this stuff. And I live near a convenience store and I had run out of body soap. And I went across the street and I bought some Dove body soap and it was like cedar or something. I'm like, oh, that sounds okay, whatever. And I got there.

Starting point is 00:21:32 By the time I got home, I flipped over the back of the label and it was a bunch of artificial stuff in there. Like it wasn't all as pure as the outside had said it was on the front. And I put it on and it was like a perfume bomb. It was like so nasty. And I was like, why did I do this?

Starting point is 00:21:46 And you go out and yes, you spend $25, $30 more and you get something from Aesop or a similar brand. And it's just amazing. Speaking of those little luxuries, and I know that's like probably up on the lamest side of luxuries, but I don't know, I like little things like that. Like little tiny micro upgrades around the house, you know?

Starting point is 00:22:09 I have a very simple rule when it comes to soap and shampoo. Well, you're in a dating life, though. You need to have upgraded shit. Well, let me pause. We can come back to that if we want to. I know you want to. We'll see where it goes. But I actually get complimented on my skin a lot. People are like what do you use for this yeah it's beautiful yeah it's luscious it's great it's luscious it's very supple supple moist

Starting point is 00:22:34 okay and all i use i have for years only used dr brauner's baby, basically unscented baby soap. Yeah, I'm getting a thumbs up from your wife. That stuff is so simple. I never feel like I have dry skin. I'm bald, so it makes it easy, right? It's kind of one tool for all things. And there you have it. It's not exactly a luxury, but I'm just saying. No, it's great. No, I use that too, actually. It's great stuff. And you can buy them in gigantic sizes. They last a long time. Yeah. So that's my comment on personal hygiene and soap. So dating life.

Starting point is 00:23:11 No, we don't have to get into that. Well, what are your questions? No, I was just curious. We haven't talked about this in great detail, but I'm curious, do you change your house? Talking about the upgrades, do you have to create a cozy... Change my house? Well, first of all i'm you

Starting point is 00:23:25 know i'm paranoid and crazy about safety and security stuff so generally i mean first meetings are always out somewhere public and for anyone who is currently in the fray of dating apps they know that it is by and large just terrible it's so bad and i've found it interesting what i would say is if you're in a relationship and you're like, wow, this is hard. This is this, this is that. And it would just be so much easier if I were single and I'd be having all the fun in the world. And it's like, you're just trading a different set of problems. Now, that's not to complain about it, but I don't think this subject is going to go anywhere. We can cut this part. No, we don't have to. I'm just curious but have you changed anything in terms of like your workout regimens or anything like that to

Starting point is 00:24:08 get back into fighting shape uh yes i mean i have been training i mean my training is pretty consistent i would say that one of the bigger challenges about dating is that i do not recover actually this ties into something i don't recover from alcohol nearly as well as I used to. And the fact of the matter is, generally, if you're going out, people are going to want to have a drink or it's just going to be social to have a drink or two. Nothing crazy. I have no interest in that. But even two glasses of wine can completely obliterate my sleep. So the jury is out on what I'm going to bring up, but there is this product, which I think you have tried. Now I've not tried it. This was introduced to me by a friend who swears by it and said he was about to stop drinking, which might've been a good thing,

Starting point is 00:24:56 but he didn't because he started using this product called Z-Biotics. Z-Biotics is pre-alcohol probiotic drink. And there are these, I keep hiccuping like the stork from the Saturday morning cartoons after my like five sips of beer. All right, so 12 bottles of this. And the basic selling point is that you are consuming a prebiotic and I'm going to bring up the exact prebiotics.

Starting point is 00:25:27 I would love to get some scientific input from people who can assess this or who have tried it. Here is the selling point in the pamphlet. So the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. I mean, first, world's first is always a strong statement. So I'd be curious to hear if anybody can verify. But built by PhD microbiologist, Z-Biotics is the only product that actively breaks down acaldehyde. Nope. I added an A. I knew I was going to do it, Daria. Acetaldehyde. I'm just saying it really quickly. Acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde.

Starting point is 00:25:56 I'm going to check one of these while we're talking. In any case. Means when you drink booze, it is intended to help you metabolize or neutralize at least some of the things that will cause you to feel terrible. So this is back to the pamphlet. We started with a natural probiotic, which humans have been eating for centuries. Then we altered its DNA to produce an enzyme that breaks down the aforementioned word that I shall not repeat. This enzyme is just like the one your liver uses, but our prebiotic is designed to deliver it to your gut, a place where your liver can access and where you need it most. So that last paragraph is where I'd love to have people help me understand if there's any

Starting point is 00:26:28 credible science to back this up. I went on PubMed. I looked at some of the studies related to the actual strain of probiotic, which is either bacillus, sutilis, or subtilis. So it's either bacillus sutilis or subtilis, and that is spelled B-A-C-I-L-L-U-S space S-U-B-T-I-L-L-I-S ZB183. The reason I mentioned that is when I looked it up, the study seemed to show that it could mitigate some liver damage with excessive alcohol consumption and so on but i didn't see much on the gut most of the studies seem to be in different strains of animals and insects like silkworms of all things i think were included so who knows how that transfers so we'd love to know what people think what does your buddy say is it like preventing hangovers he said that this has completely changed his life from the perspective in one way like is he waking up without the type of hangover and

Starting point is 00:27:30 costs that have come with drinking prior it's like credit cards yes i'm in charge as much so other people might bring up something like activated charcoal i would be curious to hear if you found anything helpful you have more mileage than i do with drinking booze i love this episode you're like hey you like fancy rich shit like tell me some of the stuff as commoners can use when we first get started dude you you do more rich shit than i do so what oh you're gonna cut that you're gonna cut that don't get you'd lose that one all right yeah you like to drink a lot tell me more kevin you alcoholic you have a broader spectrum of expertise oh thank you when it comes to oh well now that you put it that way yeah when it comes to training yes in the in the dark arts of alcohol consumption. So, Tim, thank you for mentioning that. I did get my PhD.

Starting point is 00:28:30 Now, I would say that I did try this at a party about four or five months ago. And I think you had made a joke before the show started where, like, something about car accidents and a helmet. It's like, if you're going to drive fast enough... Oh, no, what I said was there's a point at which it doesn't really help when you're like band-aids are great if you cut your finger like you want band-aids right but if you just like chop your finger off right that's been my problem is i've every time i'm trying one of these i've chopped my arm off like i was at a party where it was like everyone was passing them out and i'm

Starting point is 00:29:00 like the hangover cure like i'm in and then i have like five drinks it was our big annual nft party not this year but last year and it ended up being a lot of drinks and so i woke up a little hungover so anyway it didn't work for me crappy product no it could be great dory if you you've tried it have you had any success no no success there all right so i'd be curious to hear what people think. And this is really broadly to lob a question into the audience, which is, what have you found helpful for hangovers? And you can just hit us on Twitter with hashtag hangover. And I'm sure there's going to be a bunch of sanctimonious people who are like, I don't drink. That's what I do. But you guys can

Starting point is 00:29:40 not reply because we don't need those. I've cut back a lot on booze, but occasionally there's a place for it. And by the way, all you folks who are like, I'm enlightened. I don't drink anymore. I just use ketamine five times a week. You guys are going to have a rude awakening in a handful of years. Did you hear that they're finding fentanyl mixed in with ketamine now? Of course they are. Yeah, fentanyl is mixed in with everything.

Starting point is 00:29:58 And by the way, folks, two milligrams overdose, you're dead. Yeah. If you get stuff mixed in. It's serious. Don't mess around. Yet another reason not to play around with miscellaneous powders. 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 AG1 by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time

Starting point is 00:30:18 what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably AG1. I view it as my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it long ago in my 2010 number one New York Times bestseller, The 4-Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients, you'd be very hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense formula on the market.

Starting point is 00:30:43 It has a multivitamin, a multimineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an immune support formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens. AG1 makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when good whole foods simply aren't at hand or when you just want to ensure you are covering your bases. AG1 is the ultimate all-in-one nutritional supplement bundle in one easy scoop. And Athletic Greens is giving you a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com slash Tim. You can check it out, athleticgreens.com slash Tim. They also offer a 90-day money-back guarantee

Starting point is 00:31:26 if you are not 100% satisfied. Learn more, try it out, athleticgreens.com slash Tim. What's up next, Dr. Kevin? I want to talk a little bit about my obsession with AI. Yeah, let's do it. Because it's changed a lot. So let me just put it to you this way. You know how I always track new shit. Like I pride myself in always being someone to want to play with whatever is kind of halfway working slash breaking.

Starting point is 00:31:57 If it means that five years from now, I was able to spot something early on and hopefully identify a trend before it really took off. So I would say that GPT, when it came out, the chat GPT, it was one of those things where the first few versions were just fun for me. It was kind of like, oh, I'm having a conversation with AI. Wow, it's actually producing a real result when I'm typing to it. It can help me rephrase or rewrite a paragraph, or it can summarize some bullet point. It was doing a lot of little, small, meaningless, more or less tasks, but quite well. And then 4.0 came out.

Starting point is 00:32:33 Yeah. So when 4.0 came out, my consumption and usage of ChatGPT went from about, let's call it, 30 minutes a week to probably about five hours a week now okay so i use it a lot what are you using it for now i'm using it to code it can code for me now so you know my background here like i studied computer science but i dropped out and part of the reason i don't know how much i mentioned this publicly but part of the reason i dropped out was that i could understand code a lot faster than i could write it yeah and so still to this day, I can read code just fine. Granted, sometimes there's some syntax I would have to look up or figure out, but more or less, I'm there.

Starting point is 00:33:13 The issue was that if I'm thinking through a problem, it would take me three to four times as long as anyone else to figure out the same problem. I just didn't have the brain for it. With GPT, I can come in and as I start to have little hiccups or I want to think through a problem, I can just ask it to figure it out for me. And it writes code that is like 99% ready to go.

Starting point is 00:33:35 Could you give an example of a problem? Yeah, I'll give you an example. Let's say you're a WordPress user, right? That's what your blog's powered on. And you're like, I want to write a new WordPress plugin. And I want it to do this with my audience, segment it like this, do this only when someone is coming from this country and make it appear like this. And you could change anything you want. You just describe it in a couple of paragraphs and say, go. It literally will print out all the code for you. You copy and paste it and save it as a script and you're good

Starting point is 00:34:01 to go. And it works. It's insane. So what does that mean for say five years from now? Well, a couple of things. Practically speaking right now, my engineering team, I had one of my developers tell me, Hey, I had this, what they would call a kind of laborious kind of task of just something you don't want to code. You're like, ah, God, I got to resort this data in a certain way. And like, yeah, this is going to take me 45 minutes. It was done in five. Using ChatGPT. Yes.

Starting point is 00:34:29 And so like all of those little meaningless coding tasks, they're just gone. It's done. It's done. And so I've been using it to create art and I can tell it to go and write P5.js scripts for me, which is what Artblocks is based on for all the NFTs. So art meaning you're using code to generate art. Yes, generative art, exactly. And so I can describe it visually,

Starting point is 00:34:52 and it comes back with something that's amazing. That's cool. I'll show you some examples after the podcast. Yeah, I'd love to see it. And it's crazy addicting, because you start getting into it, and you're like, oh, what if you take it in this direction,

Starting point is 00:35:03 in this direction? You're limited no longer by your skill, but your own internal creativity of your brain. And your ability to prompt well. Yes, yes. But you can even help it, right? So I'll give you an example. This is about to rewrite the prompt. It's helping itself. It's so nuts. And so once you realize that it's so much more than just rewriting a paragraph for you or helping put together an essay, but it can actually create real software for you, I realize now that what's going to happen is that Mark Andreessen was a very famous venture capitalist maybe a decade ago of saying, software is eating the world, right?

Starting point is 00:35:46 And so it was this idea that we had all of these old systems that were largely pen and paper based or weren't connected or weren't efficient, and software would come in and be connected. The data we put in the cloud, and we would have this new type of in-cloud infrastructure, right, that would power everything and be connected like it never was before. All of that is still continuing to happen, but this next generation is what I believe is AI is going to eat the software. So if software ate

Starting point is 00:36:16 the world, AI is going to eat the software, meaning that AI is going to come in and reimagine every single tool that we use. So every single productivity tool that we use, it will be a part of almost every application that we use in really meaningful ways. I've seen it sort data and create, I don't know about you, but when I use Excel, the hardest thing for me to always wrap my head around and figure out were pivot tables. Did you ever get good at pivot tables? No, I never got good at Excel, period. Oh my God. Pivot tables were one of those things where it was just like,

Starting point is 00:36:45 it was a, they're a nightmare. I use notebooks and then I lose my notebooks and I'm screwed. So anyway, you don't have to learn it any longer. You just tell it what you want, how you want the data sliced and diced. And it just like, what I don't mean is output from chat GPT,

Starting point is 00:36:59 but I mean, it will be working in Excel or in Google Sheets and just automatically rewrite the tables for you. You're just going to give it a little prompt, and that's it. And I'm telling you this, this is coming a lot faster than I had thought. So two years ago, it was very linear to me. I was like, oh, month over month, like, oh, yeah, chat GPT-3 is out now, now 3.5, and I see a little bit of an upgrade.

Starting point is 00:37:22 When four hit, oh, my God. It seems like it's just gone vertical. It's gone vertical. It's exponential now. And so dude, the next couple of years are going to be insane. Just insane. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:37:32 I think the next 12 months are going to be, yeah, you're probably right. Yeah. Full cuckoo bananas. I've been not to the extent that you have probably, but experimenting here and there, having my team experiment also to see if people who are non-technical,'m non-technical but i can figure out quite a few things people who really have

Starting point is 00:37:49 maybe even an allergy to a lot of tech tools like what they can do with chat gpt just to try to peek around that corner like okay what is this going to look like when there's more mass adoption and and I ran an art competition, which was an AI art competition a while back, and was absolutely- This is for the punch of cock. This is for the punch of cock. The punch the cock. That's what they say.

Starting point is 00:38:17 Yes. They translate it in so many languages now. Oh, yeah. No, it's a massive global phenomenon. How do you say that in Japanese, by the way? Cock punch. Cock punch monogatari. Yes, that was for the Cock Punch NFT,

Starting point is 00:38:35 which raised 2 million bucks, something like that. Maybe 1.7 to 2 million bucks for the foundation, which is great. All that's been deployed. And that's all fantastic for scientific research. But the point I was going to make, the art competition following that, where fan art was being generated using AI, people could also use Photoshop and other tools to fine-tune or to manipulate anything that it here first, folks, I'm going to be running some more competitions, which will have different formats, because a prerequisite or a condition of valid submission for the competition was you had to capture your entire process well enough that somebody could stand a good chance of replicating your result. by capturing that now we have, let's just say top 10 finalists. You have 10 extremely good tutorials for people who want to step into the ring and play with it themselves. So you've heard of stable diffusion,

Starting point is 00:39:32 right? I have. Yeah. Okay. So stable diffusion is the one like mid journey. It's one like any of these, like Dolly that can create imagery out of prompts, right?

Starting point is 00:39:39 Stable diffusion went open source, which was a big, like, Oh fuck. Maverick move. Yeah. But it was like, Oh shit. Cause like they release it. Once once you release it open source yeah everybody's got it

Starting point is 00:39:48 and they're running with it in different directions right so buddy of mine gave me a discord to go into and he's like you gotta check this shit out this is crazy right and it's uh it's called unstable diffusion okay and so they basically took all the guardrails off of stable diffusion. Okay. And so they basically took all the guardrails off of stable diffusion. Yeah. You know, all the protections and shit. Oh my God. What kind of stuff do you see?

Starting point is 00:40:11 Dude, what do you think you see? I don't know. Deep fake Taylor Swift porn. I mean, imagine anything, anything you can imagine in its ultra realistic state where you're, you're almost like you look it and you're like,

Starting point is 00:40:25 is that an image? You don't even know. It's tricked you already. It's like porn done in its finest. Very tasteful AI porn. No, no, no, but you can do whatever you want. Yeah. So there's all these different channels.

Starting point is 00:40:39 And so you can go into some channels and see aliens with six breasts and weird shit, where you're like, that looks real. Not like, not the movie of Terminator. Arnold Schwarzenegger was in with the three breasted woman.

Starting point is 00:40:49 You know what I'm talking about? Total recall. Yeah. Not that like this looks a real, like it's disturbingly real stuff, right? Teenage boys are screwed. They're not going to get anything done in the next 10 years.

Starting point is 00:41:02 No, but they're screwed in terms of relationships, dude. I'm telling you, this is what worries me. Remember the movie Her, right? Yeah, I do. Great movie. One of the things about Her, for people that haven't watched it, you got to go and watch this because it's going to become a reality. This man has a relationship with his phone, and the phone has a very serious AI on it. Yeah, phone or laptop when he's at work.

Starting point is 00:41:23 Right, exactly. There's this ubiquitous AI companion. Just following him around, right? And one of the things about OpenAI that you can do now is you can save and train model data to be persistent. What you can do is you can go in and you can say, here are the properties of who I want you to be. And people are doing this. There's this website that has all these AI hacks, prompt hacks, they call it. And you can go in and say, you are this personality type. You're a little bit bitchy, you're sassy, blah, blah, blah. And you can save this and it will respond to you and learn from you. And you can have what appears to be a human conversation with your perfect polar opposite or whatever you're looking for in life. Dude, I'm telling you,

Starting point is 00:42:05 we're three years out from that being conversation-based. Have you heard of Replica with a K? Yes, of course. I looked at that. I almost invested in that company years ago. All right, all right. So you should explain Replica because they claim to have 10 million registered users.

Starting point is 00:42:17 Yeah, yeah. So this is a company that was raising capital quite a while ago, and I saw them, but it was before the AI thing really clicked off. But yeah, I mean, this is this idea. And I worry because like, you know, you think of countries- Replica is her, just so you guys know. I mean, there's more to it, but that's basically it. You would know this better than I would. But in Japan, there's been this decrease in dating. And I've heard about, there's like the shame of like, whether or not you have a

Starting point is 00:42:42 high quality job enough. There's like this disconnect between the male and female population you know what i'm talking about there was a report that came out on the how dating was in the decline well dating and fertility fertility yes reproduction in general is on the decline and they're in a very problematic situation from birth rate like replacement rates they're in a really sticky terrible situation okay so now i think china could be in in like 20 30 years 20 years probably but i think we're all going to be there because i think population implosion you might just have a partner online like a ai yeah like we might just have ai partners you know i was talking to someone about this because as you mentioned i'm single now and they said oh you should hop on replica just like Just like check it out. And I was like, I don't actually want. Did it scare you? Well, it scared me in the sense

Starting point is 00:43:28 that I was like, okay, there are times when I'm really lonely. And humans are messy. Humans are difficult. And if you get close to someone, it's great for a while. You have the honeymoon phase and things are great and puppy love and like everything you do is so funny and then things change and it gets a little more complex but if you had an ai companion who especially if it were compelling voice which is going to happen immediately i mean two years it's already like i've seen ai i can't remember the company names but that have been trained on voice data yes to mimic and i actually know podcasts are being produced right now this show using ai we're not even here ai to read scripts that are sort of pieced together from celebrity sample data yes and listeners have no idea yeah

Starting point is 00:44:21 they have no idea like these podcasts are not quote-unquote real because it's not what you think it is and we are so close to there being the equivalent of like the scarlett johansson her right like sexy smoky voice like sassy funny getting there gives you a little shit from time to time but doesn't ask you to pick up your socks yeah right that kind of thing dark is looking at me i'm just i'm kidding i didn't want to dig into replica because i was like you know there's a chance yeah that it's better than i think it's going to be yes and then i start playing the game because i'm like oh i'm just testing the service and then i start getting my human needs met by this AI and it takes the pressure off of, which maybe sometimes could be a good thing, but takes the pressure off of human interaction.

Starting point is 00:45:10 Dude, this is my point. This is why I wanted to bring this up. I think this is going to happen. The question is, if I... Children of men, here we go. Actually, I have a question for Daria. If I start having a AI, I'm talking to someone on AI that is a female AI person, is that cheating? It is? Yes. What?

Starting point is 00:45:29 That doesn't, no, no, I'm just repeating what she said. That doesn't surprise me. I've thought about this a lot too. I'm like- Is it cheating if I talk to AI? Well, I mean, especially if it's like sexting and this, that, and the other thing. Why is that cheating? It's an AI. What did she what did she say she said well you don't talk to me well stop bitching about my socks i think that this will become an absolute issue oh it's going to be a huge issue huge this is one of the things that it really truly keeps me up being like i either need to invest in this company or avoid it or a combination of thereof.

Starting point is 00:46:07 Yeah, invest in it so that you can have your bug out bag and your bunker. Yeah, exactly. It's just- Everything prepared for the apocalypse. Okay, speaking of the apocalypse, do you mind if we switch to- Yeah, let's do it.

Starting point is 00:46:18 Let's do it. That was a fun one though. Followed you bet. That was a fun one. I'm glad you brought that up. So I'm a spectator mostly at this point. Maybe I'll serve as a stand-in for the audience, for those who are not deeply intimate with crypto or this world. But what bet, so Bology Srinivasan, what bet did he make, roughly? We don't have to get all the dates

Starting point is 00:46:37 right or anything like that. And what do you think of it? Yeah. So basically, for people that don't know, this is an individual, Balji is really well-known. Former CTO of Coinbase. Yes. And also just insanely well-known for nailing a lot of the COVID predictions. Yeah. He came out and said really intimate details like masks will be a fashion statement really early on, where if you read this stuff, and we all have historically going back, you'd be like, bravo, really prescient stuff, right? So when he talks about the future, a lot of people pay attention. And so one of the things that happened with the collapse of a lot of regional banks with

Starting point is 00:47:16 SVB and then First Republic and others is he said, this is not an isolated event. There's going to be a triggering that's going to lead to hyperinflation, the devaluing of the dollar. And in the next 90 days, Bitcoin is going to be worth $1 million a coin. And I'm willing to stake and bet a million dollars that that is the case. And somebody else had challenged that. I think he responded to someone who said, I'll put a million dollars on the line.

Starting point is 00:47:37 He's like, I'll take that bet. Okay. I think June 17th or something. So you're more accurate than I am. But that was essentially it. So that led me to pay attention. I was like, okay, well, that's interesting. Let's dive into this and figure out what's going on with Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:47:54 And honestly, what it caused me to do personally is I hadn't paid attention to Bitcoin in a long time. I've been in the world of Ethereum with NFTs and everything else. And there's something nice about how scalable and green Ethereum is that now that's moved to proof of stake. And there's just a lot more activity there day to day than there is say Bitcoin, right? But I started digging into Bitcoin. And one of the things I realized is that in a world where the press cycles are always coming back to, oftentimes, they're hitting Ethereum pretty hard in that their NFTs go up, they go down, they go left, they go right.

Starting point is 00:48:30 That's like a bad look for Ethereum in some cases. People get hacked, it's a bad look, like lose a certain amount of money. I know that quite well. But I'm just saying that there's these certain black eyes and there's something about the simplicity of Bitcoin and the store of value that is still attractive. Because it's the OG cryptocurrency. It's still trading at over $30,000 at the time of this podcast.

Starting point is 00:48:56 And every year that goes on, it seems to be a more legitimate asset. Recording on April 16th. Yeah, but every year that goes on, it seems to be a more legitimate asset that is going to stay on the test of time. It's not going to zero. It's a digital currency. It was the first of its kind. So I started playing around with some of the layer two that's built on top of that with the Lightning Network and noticed that some of the pain points have been smoothed down a little bit. Can you explain to people who don't know what that is? So Bitcoin is notorious for being just a very low transaction per second

Starting point is 00:49:26 blockchain. So if you threw, say, the Visa scale at it, like how many times a Visa card gets swiped every day, it's laughable. It's like they can do singular low double digit transactions per second, whereas Visa can do 40,000 plus or whatever it may be. These are rough estimates, but you get what I'm saying. It's along those orders of magnitude. So Bitcoin had to figure out a solution that would scale, help it scale that infrastructure so that more payments could happen. And so they created a layer two that kind of sits on top of it.

Starting point is 00:49:55 It resolves back to the main coin. So it has the security and safety of Bitcoin. It's much how Ethereum is scaling right now with some of the layer two networks that sit on top of it. So their main one is called Lightning. It's the Lightning network. And so it allows you to do ultra fast transactions. It can scale up to, they say, I think it's up to a million transactions a second or something. It's something crazy. They haven't tested it at those limits, but that's what the paper is written as anyway. So I tried a bunch of this stuff out.

Starting point is 00:50:21 I kicked the tires on a few things. And then I realized that Bitcoin, unlike Ethereum, the nice thing about it, it has this finite supply that is slowly coming to an end over time. So every, I think it's four, four and a half years, they do a halving event where they decrease the total number of issued coins in half. They chop it right in half in terms of the number of new coins issued. And they're about to do another cycle here in a little over a year. So when this next happening event happens, there's even less currency coming out of that faucet. So these happening events, I went back and looked historically, and they're typically the year before the happening event and the year before the happening event

Starting point is 00:51:05 and the year after the happening event, you typically see a pretty substantial- How many happenings have there been? Quite a few. Five now or something like that. So you typically see, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is not investment advice. This is not always going to hold true. But obviously, if there's more demand and less supply, meaning less Bitcoins being issued, you're going to see a change in price. That's just obviously, we know these markets out and how they play out.

Starting point is 00:51:30 So no one's talking about the halftime yet. It typically, people start raising chatter around this time. And so when every single other time when the halftime events start to happen, and the chatter starts to spin up, the price has always gone up. And I've watched this happen time and time again. So for me, I was like, you know what? Classic cryptocurrency, I hate that it's not green. That kills me.

Starting point is 00:51:54 I'm happy that more mining services are going green and they're moving to cheaper energy sources, which are typically by thermodynamic and a whole bunch of the nuclear energy. But they try to- There's a ton in Texas. Yeah. So they're trying to move closer to these energy sources that can get cheaper power. That said, I still think there's obviously a lot of dirty energy that's being wasted here

Starting point is 00:52:16 on Bitcoin mining. It's a big bummer. That is the one part that just gives me a little bit of pause that kind of hurts my soul. But I did purchase a little position there because I do like it, especially in times where we see the devaluing of the dollar. We see Russia and China buying more gold. And I'm just like, I want a nice hedge that's decoupled from the dollar, that's sitting out there that... I'm not saying it should be a big double digit percentage of your overall asset allocation. But for me personally, I don't mind having a little of that parked and set on the side. So maybe you could repeat for the audience what you said to me, this is a while back, but when we were talking about this, we were talking

Starting point is 00:53:00 about what might happen if the dollar's just massively devalued or if we experience hyper, hyper, hyper inflation. We're like carting around dollar bills and wheelbarrows to buy a KitKat at the local 7-Eleven. Well, you and I were talking about this and we were like, oh, this crazy bet happened. This was probably like maybe a month ago or something. And we're like, this crazy bet happened. It's a million dollars. And if Bitcoin goes to a million, and I was like, what, maybe a month ago or something. And we're like, this crazy bet happened.

Starting point is 00:53:25 It's a million dollars. And if Bitcoin goes to a million, and I was like, well, wait a second. If Bitcoin goes to a million dollars and there's hyperinflation, then a million dollars is worth,

Starting point is 00:53:32 and you said, yeah, like the price of a sandwich or something like that. And I was like, yeah, so it doesn't really matter. Like,

Starting point is 00:53:38 Bitcoin's a hard one because when you traditionally think about currencies, you always think of them pegged to somebody else's GDP, right? So, you you always think of them pegged to somebody else's gdp right so you think of the pound being pegged to what's going on in the uk and it's like what do you peg bitcoin to yeah well also like there's the question of like what is its value in the absence of a reliable peg right i mean this is to be clear i'm sure the maxis are

Starting point is 00:54:02 going to just have a field day with this one. But there are some people I respect and admire among that crowd, but there are also a lot of very aggressive religious fundamentalists in there, which I'd prefer not spend so much time with. But there are a bunch of questions that I have, which I don't have great answers to, but they're just questions. One would be what you just described. If the dollar experiences this massive hyperinflation, how does one establish the value of Bitcoin for the exchange of services or goods? Right.

Starting point is 00:54:31 The second, I think, is for me, what happens in a place like Europe? What happens in a place like Japan? What happens in a place like fill in the blank if the US collapses? Right. What happens in a place like fill in the blank if the US collapses? So where is the sort of currency safe haven if there is one? And then the next question is, if things were to get that bad, if we assume for the moment that the rise in Bitcoin price to, let's just say, Bology's bet of a million is predicated on a similar increase in hyperinflation for the dollar, which would just not be sustainable, right? The whole country just blows to pieces. Do you not have more pressing problems than Bitcoin? Are you going to be able

Starting point is 00:55:16 to get on your United flight to escape the US to fill in the blank location, you're going to have such a series of questions that are more fundamental, perhaps, than money, that if you think that is a likely outcome, you should be in full-blown advanced prepper mode right now. Right. Well, the question I think I have is, are the rails in place for the preppers to get into Bitcoin? Or the Bitcoiners to get into prepping properly. But yeah, but let's, let's, we can deal with the first. Yeah. So the first one I would say is like, we take a look at, this is two of us playing economists on TV, on a podcast, which is not, with some booze, which is never sound advice, but yeah, this is not economic advice. If any central bankers are listening.

Starting point is 00:56:05 Right, exactly. Please, come on, join us. So the one thing that I think is interesting is when you think about what's happening worldwide right now with China and with Russia, and we take a look at the data, what does the data tell us over the last few months? And what has been reported is that China and Russia right now are not buying Bitcoin, but they're buying a lot of gold. And so that to me doesn't signal as though we have an emergent new world currency as much as it does instability and a flight to safety.

Starting point is 00:56:41 And so if there's instability and a flight to safety and gold is still the kind of safe haven for that, which it appears to be, that would explain why, I mean, there's been, since November, there's been a 40% run up on the price of gold. And so I don't know that Bitcoin is that safe haven, but there's one chart, there's one graphic that blew my mind and it made me rethink everything. And that is when the day that SVB came out and said, we're potentially insolvent and all the regional banks took a hit. There was a screenshot. Did you see the screenshot? Do you know what I'm about to talk about? There was a screenshot where someone saved to their iPhone all the regional banks, all the major banks even as well. And it was a list of all of them in the stocks app, right?

Starting point is 00:57:30 You know how you can list them and it just goes down the screen? It's like negative 20%, negative 15%, negative 30%, like just going down the screen. FRB was like negative 60 or something. It was just bloody all the way down. And then there was two at the top. It was Bitcoin and Ethereum, and they were both green like heavy green and that was the first time where i was like oh shit because every single time there has always been at least this is someone's observational data like i'm just like from what i can recall the market has been more or less tightly coupled with bitcoin

Starting point is 00:58:01 and ethereum like the market's down super tightly coupled. The market's down, they're down. It's a speculative asset. And when people start to feel their pocketbooks hurting, they pull out of cryptocurrency. This was the first time where I was like, oh shit, some people are moving into cryptocurrency as the banks start to collapse. Now, in fairness, that is a subset of stocks, especially if you're looking at regional banks and not the S&P 500, right? Yes. I'm pretty sure the S&P was down that day too. So let me ask you this, and you know that I'm pretty heavily vested in these things. So I'm very deeply interested in Bitcoin, but just to act as a stand-in, let us assume that based on

Starting point is 00:58:42 at least the homework that I've done, which your mileage may vary, but the S&P has been very highly correlated to Bitcoin and Ethereum for that matter. Yeah. These are treated as risk on assets. Yes. And when things go down, people sell, especially when you can sell it whenever you want to sell it and it's not just market hours, yada, yada, yada. What is different this time around?

Starting point is 00:59:05 Because I do think there are two issues with the bet. One is that, and this happens to everybody, you develop a, it's not quite a sunk cost fallacy, you develop a confirmation bias. You begin to find reasons to support your book, your existing positions. And just one more thing, and that is, I do think the biology bet can't be viewed solely as a prediction because people pay attention to him. People purchase or sell based also, some people do, biologies, predictions, and so on. And it makes me think of this section in Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis.

Starting point is 00:59:45 It's the book that made Michael Lewis famous. It's a great book. I think it's mostly about bond trading. And there was some big swinging dick, top dog inside, I think it was Solomon Brothers. And he bought some position. He was like, the market's going up for x and he bought like 500 000 worth and it started to go down and people were laughing and he had lost a bet and people were making fun of him and he's like oh yeah and then he bought like 500 million dollars worth of it and the market freaked out and went skyrocketing because they're like oh my god somebody knows something we don't know so he was able to move the market, right? He made a prediction, but he also moved the market.

Starting point is 01:00:27 And I think that, I don't think, Balaji's bet. Balaji can't move the market. It's too big. Well, I'm not saying he can't move the market, but it became global news. Yes. You don't think he can move the market even if it affects larger institutional players and so on? No. I'm not saying that Balaji single-handedly can move the market. I don't think it's fair to say that it has zero impact on the buying and selling behaviors.

Starting point is 01:00:51 Oh, no doubt. I mean, I think anyone can temporarily move the market. If Tim Ferriss tweets out, oh my God, one of my best friends is an insane researcher, just found a hole in Bitcoin. We're all fucked. I have a strong feeling that there would be some movement in prices. But you're saying it would recalibrate. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There's just too much volume going through it every single day. It's a hype cycle. Kramer's going to talk about it. It's going to spread. It's going to have its 48 hour window. And then there's going to be a bump, which I think we saw. And then it'll just recalibrate from there. I thought it was irresponsible to make that type of public pronouncement.

Starting point is 01:01:28 I would be shocked if it gets to a million by mid-June. I don't know that it's irresponsible. I just think it's like, you're making a bet. There are people who cannot afford to take their savings and put it into Bitcoin who are going to do it. Well, the good news has gone up since he said that. So they're up regardless. Well, yeah, it's one thing to get into a position. Yeah, that's a great point.

Starting point is 01:01:48 As you famously know, because you're like, I'm buying this. And then you never tell me when you fucking sell things. As you more famously know, we can talk about your Bitcoin investing. Oh, Jesus Christ. I mean, yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:01:59 Good Lord. All right. So let's move on from there. I have some fun stuff to talk about. Let's do it. I guarantee you, you're going to love this next little segment. All right, I'm excited. Okay?

Starting point is 01:02:08 Yes. We talked about New Year's resolutions before. Oh, God. But I have one that I didn't tell you about. Okay. I want to show you something here. All right. You've seen this for the first time.

Starting point is 01:02:19 You can go ahead and read this for the audience here. What does that say? It says, ABC letter tracing practice workbook for kids. Ages what? Ages three plus. Okay. And then when you open the first page, what does it say? Oh, Kevin Rose, age 45, February 9th, 2023. And then what do you see from here? Oh, your letter tracing. Yes. So I'm learning how to write with my right hand. Amazing. This is incredible. It's pretty shaky. It is a little shaky. Your hands are a little shaky. You can see that I'm having some issues here.

Starting point is 01:02:55 Love, stop laughing in the background. My wife is like dying. It's so good. It's funny. She didn't know about this. This is the first she's hearing about, by the way. This is great. I have started to learn how to write with my right hand yeah and i decided these cute bunnies and acorns it's getting a little mushrooms and puppies making it interesting so i'm just now getting started i got a ways to go but this is one of those things where i was watching my kids do it and i'm watching their brains kind of activate as they're like learning how to trace and how to and zelda's really actually her letters were flopped and turned

Starting point is 01:03:30 around at one point now they're straight that's uh that's what i did you did the same thing yeah yeah i still do it dysgraphia my letters end up backwards and upside down and stuff when i write some letters yeah and handwriting sometimes i skip a letter and then i come back and rewrite it i don't know what the fuck that is, but that's something I got. I don't know. I get too crazy and I just like jump in. Early onset dementia. Great.

Starting point is 01:03:50 Thank you. But the thing here is I have no scientific reason other than to say, I realize that this is activating somewhere in my brain, something new. Yeah. And it's just like one of those things where I'm left-handed. So I've always smudged the shit out of everything I do. It's just like a streak of ink across the page because of my hand. And I was like, you know what?

Starting point is 01:04:11 My kids are learning. Why don't I learn at the same time? And so that's something I started recently. That's awesome. Anyway, I thought you'd be able to do something amazing. Yeah, it's fun. You just like, actually, my hand gets really fatigued. And so I have to start.

Starting point is 01:04:21 So I set a timer for 10 minutes. And I just go to town and start doing my numbers and my letters and then I got two workbooks in my office. That's amazing. I thought you would like that because as a lifelong learner, this is something you'd be into. I'm totally into it.

Starting point is 01:04:35 Do you know what it's doing for me? It's helping a certain part of my brain. Dari would know. Dari would have more credibility in discussing this in any capacity. There is something kind of similar. When did you start this? Just at the beginning of the year. Have you tried writing with your left hand? I have because I've broken so many things so many times. So when I shattered my right wrist,

Starting point is 01:04:52 one of several times, I had to do all my writing in school with my left hand. And for the first week, it was terrible. I was also just thrown into baptism by fire because it was like, okay, now you get to write for like several hours a day with your non-dominant hand. So I just got crushed. So are you good? Can you? Oh, I don't think I'm good. Especially because left-handed is, I say it's weird.

Starting point is 01:05:12 I'm sure right-handed is equally weird for you, but just like the whole like hook claw. Yeah. So I wanted to pull up the name of an artist who got me back into penciling. And she was not aware of this, but she published a book that I ended up grabbing, which was unbeknownst to me, a guide to her toolkit and approach to much of her artwork.

Starting point is 01:05:38 Artwalk. Artwalk. Artwalk. Artwalk. I'm so tired, folks. It's not any booze. I slept terribly last night. Maybe we'll talk about my low back. I have all sorts of low back issues.

Starting point is 01:05:47 I had low back this morning, dude. So this woman, I might be pronouncing her first name incorrectly, but I'm going to say Aliza Ivanova. And her account on Instagram is Aliza, E-L-E-E-Z-A. One of my favorite artists out there. She's spectacular. Can I see some of her stuff? Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:06:02 Formerly at Pixar. And her ability to draw animals and portraits is just spectacular. And there's a certain surreal feel to it. And what she's using here, I'm showing an Instagram video. She's using a smudging stick instead of, say, crosshatching, which can be really rough on the wrists and the hands, to very quickly create amazing pieces of art. And she has a number of books. I bought her most recent book, which gives sort of an overview of her technique and approach to artwork. And so I have been like this type of stuff, for instance, rather than starting with sort of a stick figure or a not quite mannequin,

Starting point is 01:06:49 that's not the word I'm looking at. Maquette, not maquette, but rather than starting with the bones of someone starting with the outline of the figure, then adding, she's so good. Then adding the details and going back and forth.

Starting point is 01:07:00 It's so intricate. I wish you had that skillset. I mean, you're really good, but you're not that good. she's better. Yeah better yeah she's obviously much better do you have a screen protector on by the way yeah i do i can't see this this is a new thing all right you want to hear a story you're gonna love this you're protecting your protecting my screen yeah but well this is a privacy screen yeah and i went to a restaurant here in LA and sit down at the bar because that's what's

Starting point is 01:07:27 available. Huge bar. It's like 75 feet wide. By yourself? Yeah. Was this a date? No, I just finished a workout. Oh, she just texts me up when you're doing shit like this.

Starting point is 01:07:36 I didn't come join you for a drink. That's horseshit. You're always super busy. We're in the same neighborhood. I will text you next time. Please do. Seriously. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:07:42 Yeah. So I had done a workout. I finished and then I was just like, hey, looking for a place to eat what can you guys recommend ended up at this restaurant i was sitting there ordered my food having a great time beautiful venue flirting a little bit with the waitress like that's not going to go anywhere but it was fun like she was yeah it was just good vibes like it wasn't it clearly wasn't going to go anywhere but it was just it was just fun and then somebody comes and sits right next to me there's like 20 empty seats oh jesus i had this one i was pissing one time yeah movie theater okay all right well there was 30 urinals and a dude walks all the way down and

Starting point is 01:08:14 stands right next to me and i'm like yeah all right yeah thanks buddy so sat right next to me and ultimately ended up being a fan of mine and he was very cool but the fact that he was sitting right next to me meant i felt very self-conscious looking at my phone i was like if i look at anything on my phone or i try to text someone or anything this is incredibly visible to everyone around me and so i ended up getting a privacy screen for my iphone which is fantastic. I mean, such a simple solution also protects the screen. Yeah, it works quite well. And there you have it. That's my story about the privacy screen. Yeah, cool story, bro. Yeah, Jesus Christ. It works quite well. I'm actually kind of shocked because I can't see shit from you and I'm sitting like a foot from you. I really can't see anything on your screen. It's amazing. It's really helpful. So let me try to find this. gonna all right i'll start with the next story while you're there is a well hold on there's a

Starting point is 01:09:08 brand it starts with a b it's not belcom belsky it's not belsky belkin belkin yeah yeah thank you daria i initially was looking for a belkin because those are well known And I ended up being unable to get it quickly. So I just have something made in China that is a similar design. So there you have it. The key term is iPhone protector slash privacy screen. And if you search for that, you'll find something. All right. Now that your privacy is covered, let's move on to my next story, which is Nintendo.

Starting point is 01:09:47 Enough about you. Let's talk about me. So let me ask you a question. When do you think Nintendo was founded? Oh, I have maybe some unfair advantages here. I'm going to say 1880. Yes. How did you know that?

Starting point is 01:10:00 Was I close? Yeah, it's in the late 1800s. Yeah. Yeah. Because 1830. No, it was it's in the late 1800s. Yeah. Because 1839. No, it was like later 1800s. 1800s. So the reason I know that,

Starting point is 01:10:10 actually, you probably don't even know this. No, I don't. So there's a Japanese card game. There's tiny little cards. They're like half the size of a business card. And one of my favorite games I played when I was an exchange student is called Hanafuda. Hanafuda has these beautiful drawings

Starting point is 01:10:24 and it's a matching game in in a sense and nintendo became famous for first making these card games oh crazy can you still buy them and they're like collectible yeah you can still get so cool it's super cool super super nintendo on them it must be in japanese it's in japanese yeah yeah absolutely is it a little mario characters no mario characters but yeah that would be amazing nintendo i don't know what the nin is ten is heaven and then do is like place of so like shokudo is a cafeteria like the i thought do is the way the it's a homonym so do is the same do is the same like aikido do like is the way is the way yeah different character okay Okay. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:11:05 Katakana. No, Kanji. Kanji, different Kanji. Yeah, different character. But Nin is probably Sekinin no Nin, we can come back to that. All right, speaking of Nintendo. So Nintendo,

Starting point is 01:11:17 as you know, my firstborn is named Zelda. There's a new Legend of Zelda, the Tears of the Kingdom, opening May 12th, which is soon. That is soon. I'm very excited for this release. And I started playing the old original Zelda,

Starting point is 01:11:31 like the very first one. Cool. So you can play it on the Switch. They have emulators now that you can get on the Switch. Now the Switch has the old school classic, the traditional Switch controllers. But Nintendo released the original, and these are charging, so they off check this out this is the original nintendo controller that's cool you can get so that's awesome yeah

Starting point is 01:11:53 exactly so it's this brings back so many memories official from nintendo not because you could always find like the clone usb nintendo controllers that were the fakes and all that that has the same feel like you push the buttons. Everything about it is legit. And then they charge when you slide them on the side of the Switch. They charge. That's brilliant. It's so cool. That's brilliant. Isn't that awesome? That's super awesome.

Starting point is 01:12:15 They have their pass now where you can get all the original Nintendo games. That's fun. It's crazy. I was on the marketplace and my dad's passed away. And one of the things that I remember as a child is there was the original nintendo pinball game and my dad used to watch me play and he he actually had a little tiny tv for me so i could like play next to him as he's watching his shows or whatever i remember he never wanted to play any games with me like he was an older dad and he didn't really like get into nintendo but when pinball came up he's like okay

Starting point is 01:12:44 let me grab the controller and so he played nintendo with me so when i saw that i was like oh my god like you get to i mean it's so much nostalgia yeah exactly nostalgia i'll just teach a word for for folks who may be interested in japanese they use it a lot more than we say nostalgia but they would say not to kashi not to kashi ah that's sort of got the same feel as nostalgic but they use it kind of like saudade in brazilian portuguese but it's roughly like ah like how nice like ah that's really nostalgic that brings back the memories there was a blog post that i saw where it was like 25 words that exist in japanese that don't have english meanings you know yeah and they're so beautiful like they capture these like amazing just like moments in time like there was this

Starting point is 01:13:31 one that was like the sunlight as it falls between branches branches yes komorebi yes komorebi is like dappled sunlight coming through tree branches and leaves it's so good it's so good it's so amazing like they have a word for that. Komorebi. That's so amazing. Yeah, super beautiful. So I was in Tokyo. Yeah, I was talking about that.

Starting point is 01:13:51 And so I celebrated my 10-year wedding anniversary out there. Congratulations again. Yes. That was amazing. And we had a ton of fun. Daria met me out there. We did a Moonbirds meetup. So we had over 100 Japanese-speaking Moonbirds collectors out there,

Starting point is 01:14:04 which was challenging and awesome at the same time. And then Henry, my Zen instructor here in the United States, introduced me to the head of his lineage of Zen, who I got to go out and meet with and sit down with and have a little private... Go to karaoke. Yeah, exactly. We went drinking and just did karaoke together all night long. No, but we had a little private gathering and sit down and did a private... Did he lay his hands on you? Exercise the demons? He helped me with my practice and he speaks...

Starting point is 01:14:38 His English is quite good. It was very intimidating. Very intimidating. This is the head of Sambo Zen, the three treasures, like a big lineage of Zen. And I'm sitting here with this guy, you know,

Starting point is 01:14:51 and he's just like asking me very pointed questions about my intention in Zen. What is your intention with my daughter? Yeah, more or less. Like it was, but it was like very cutting questions, dude. Like what?

Starting point is 01:15:10 Like a surgeon just coming in and just, I don't know if I should say the things, because it's this private interview, you know? I'll give you an example. It's more or less like, why are you here? Where are you? You know how in Zen they have these, we've talked about these cons before. You've done interviews with and thank you for doing those where it's like these moments where of really good Zen master can come in and look at a student and know kind of exactly the little nudge they need to give them. There's these like moments where they grabbed your coat and yank you in a certain direction just to kind of get you to like snap, like boom,

Starting point is 01:15:40 they want you to pop. Yeah. And it was very much that. Why are you here here what do you want from this like boom boom boom i think the guy on the street when i walked back to my airbnb in venice asked me those questions exactly but less uh fentanyl driven but um yeah so it was amazing it was very i hear the zen masters have cut back on their fentanyl a lot yeah this guy was operating in a different way what did that feel like for you?

Starting point is 01:16:06 Why did you want to do it, first of all? You know, Henry had said such great things about him. He will never say this publicly, but I believe he is one. I'll say it for him. No, I will, because I think it's important. Like, he's such a modest guy. Henry is one of, I think it's like five or so fully sanctions and masters in this lineage. And that's a big deal when there's hundreds of teachers in this realm.

Starting point is 01:16:29 So this is his master, his teacher. If you get a chance to take that meeting, you take it. And so I went in there. You're not like, nah, I'm busy. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to try out some new shoes. I'm too busy. Going to try some fancy Japanese coffee, which I did, which is amazing. Cafe Mamea out some new shoes. I'm too busy to go on to try some fancy Japanese coffee, but which I did, which is amazing.

Starting point is 01:16:46 Cafe Mamea out there is fantastic. But honestly, the one thing that I took away from it for people that I will share is that one of the things that he asked me is he's like, how often do you practice and how long do you practice? And I said, you know, I practice 25 minutes a day, probably five days a week. And he goes, what about the other two days? And I go, well, I got a startup. I got this and got that. And he goes, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he goes,

Starting point is 01:17:07 I don't care if you practice five minutes a day. He goes, don't miss a day. Don't break a day. Continue to do it. Don't miss a day. And since then I have not missed a day. And I will say it's kind of amazing because even if you can sit down for five minutes, it just keeps that continuity going and it actually keeps me slightly elevated more i don't know it keeps the commitment stronger like it feels better and that was sound advice it's great advice uh can i trouble you for just a little bit of water please thank you so muchはいありがとうございますいつもお世話になっておりますお水どうぞお水どうぞ

Starting point is 01:17:47 ちょっと待ってちょっと待っておいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしい

Starting point is 01:18:00 おいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしい

Starting point is 01:18:04 おいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしいおいしい yeah i know the water's tasty what mizu mizu mizu omizu mizu yep omizu like mizu tani mizu there are a lot of mizus out there so let's stay on the japanese kick for a second this is a book in front of me which i'm just digging into japanese death poems let's talk about japanese death poems i did not actually i'm embarrassed admit, know this was the thing. This was given to me by a friend who has spent a lot of time in the military and has developed a rather unique perspective, unique perspectives on death from the vantage point of a lay person, right? Of a civilian.

Starting point is 01:18:40 And so this book is, I'll just read the quote on the back. This is one of the blurbs. A wonderful introduction to the Japanese tradition of jisei. This volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems. So these poems are written on the verge of death. And literally the subtitle is written by Zen monks and haiku poets on the verge of death and literally the subtitle is written by zen monks and haiku poets on the verge of death yes and it's incredibly well researched you have not just the english versions you have the introduction and all the context you have the

Starting point is 01:19:19 japanese and then you have footnotes describing what these various words might mean, what the metaphors allude to. And it's really just a phenomenal window into an aspect of Japanese culture that I had no exposure to. I would have expected that I would have been exposed to this before, but I'm looking forward to diving into this and I've already read perhaps the first 10 pages. So this is Japanese Death Poems by Tuttle Publishing, compiled and with an introduction by Yoel Hoffman. So I have a handful, I don't know if I've told you this, but I have a handful of haiku books that I've read by Japanese masters. And one of the things I always felt was just so beautiful about them is they always include their kind of death poems, like at the very end. It's oftentimes like on their deathbed when they're about to pass,

Starting point is 01:20:15 what is the last thing that they wrote down, right? And it's often in haiku form if they're a haiku master. Yeah, totally. And so it's just, it's beautiful stuff. Yeah. Yeah, there's some really japanese stuff in here right like this is died 1698 for not honoring my parents while i lived in my last hour i feel remorse that is super japanese the autumn hues of knotweed seem like cups of wine are you a big fan of haiku? I am. This is my first time really being exposed to a lot of Japanese, and it does sound better in Japanese. There's a certain cadence to it. So I'm not going to get the pronunciation quite

Starting point is 01:20:59 perfectly here, but it's like if you have, okay, so is this person died on the 19th day of the 12th month 1766 so the english and i'm gonna fuck this up in japanese so i apologize to any japanese speakers out there but the english just listen to the sounds like the cadence so the english is an ailing mallard falls through the chilly night and teeters off. Okay. The Japanese is yamukari no yosamu ni orite obotsu kana. Right? So it's just like has a cleaner,

Starting point is 01:21:31 crisper cadence to it, which doesn't mean you shouldn't do the English. But this is my first time being exposed to a lot of haiku in Japanese, which is fun for me. Number one makes it

Starting point is 01:21:41 very hard for me to decipher in many cases. But they have a beautiful sound to them. That's awesome. I have to pick that book up. Death Poems. There's a great poem about haiku and about the masters called Three Simple Lines. Okay. Have you ever read that? No.

Starting point is 01:21:56 It's a fantastic book that is written by a Zen practitioner that covers a lot of the Zen masters of haiku and along with a really beautiful personal story. So very short read, definitely worth picking up along with this. Yeah. I mean, how Japanese relate to death, which is something I have some exposure to, but not to the poems, this particular jisei format tells you a lot about how they live i mean it does provide sort of a prism through which you can appreciate how they navigate a lot of life as well in addressing the final hours and thinking about dying death the path to death when you get a better understanding of that many of the things you observe in japanese culture make more sense yeah a way. Have you ever done an escape room?

Starting point is 01:22:46 Yes. You have? Yes. How many? Multiple. Really? Multiple? What does that mean?

Starting point is 01:22:51 Like 100? Like four. They're so stupid. The fatigued way. So I did my first escape room today. I had a fucking blast. I don't know what's wrong with you. You're getting old and boring.

Starting point is 01:23:01 No, it's just like you're going in there and it's like, what are you doing? You can get out if you want to are they really locking you up no it's called a game kevin yeah i know but when you're playing zelda you're trying to like do shit in a video game you don't actually need to do those things no but i just sorry you can explain it like you know i'm talking about like you go in there and you're they lock you up it's a little room and they're like really quick grab the book and like open up the book and turn to chapter 12 and people are yelling shit out and you're just like I don't want to do this I just want to have a drink all right so I'm gonna provide a contrast in styles here so Kevin

Starting point is 01:23:40 who got so outraged that I implied that he drank alcohol earlier. No, I just, all my friends want me to do it sober. And I'm like, why are we doing this sober? And they're like, you can get through it faster. We could break a world record. Well, yeah, doing it in a hyper competitive way, I think is probably not my jam, but I had the chance to do escape rooms for the first time today. I went to this place called Escape Revolution, which is here in LA. Ilan Lee, who is one of the co-founders of Exploding Kittens, was kind enough to invite me.

Starting point is 01:24:11 I don't want to name other people who are there because maybe they don't want to be named, but it was a small group and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. You have an hour, there's some type of pretext or story, there's a narrative arc. So in our first instance, and I'm not going to give away any of the tools, so I won't provide any teasers, but we had a real armored car that's locked in a garage. That's closer than mine. And you're robbers and you need to get the money out of the car,

Starting point is 01:24:40 but the mechanic who set up all the security systems ran off because the police were on the way. So you have 60 minutes to figure it out. And we had a blast. And this place is built in such a way that the set design and the sound effects and the entire experience makes it, I don't want to say cinematic, but it's just a very compelling way to become immersed in a story. And you have to collaborate. I also, part of what made it fun is that I have a game designer, right, in Alon Lee. I had a number of other people who were very accustomed to mechanics of different types, not car mechanics, but like game mechanics and so on. A woman who had done almost 2000 escape rooms herself, which is all to say it was a cool group of people to interact with.

Starting point is 01:25:31 They were into it, but then there were two newbies. I was one of those two newbies who'd never done this before. And then the second one was a jailbreak and we were locked in cells, which were like legitimate cells with, was that solo? What are you talking about? Did you have to figure out how to get out of your own cell?

Starting point is 01:25:48 It was three people to a cell, and then you needed to figure it out. I kind of wish it was solo. I don't know. I just have this hard thing where we're all yelling shit, and I'm just like, can we just relax for a second? I don't know what your group was like. There's no yelling. Maybe I wouldn't want to walk people.

Starting point is 01:26:02 There's no yelling in this group. Yeah, no. Do you like it? Yeah, Dari doesn't like it either. She hates games. Maybe I haven't had the right experience. The ones in Portland were kind of jank. I don't remember much.

Starting point is 01:26:20 I just remember that we went in there and there was shit hidden in little bookcases. And I'm just like, why am I looking through these bookcases? There's other things to do. I've got emails that I haven't checked. I just like a lot of shit. Oh my God. It felt like work. It felt like work. It felt like work.

Starting point is 01:26:35 Where I'm like, why am I working to figure out this thing when it's not even a thing? Well, I mean, you don't need to work out in the gym to like outrun hyenas on the street. So what are you doing in the gym? Suns out, guns out, that kind of thing? Well, I'm glad you had a good time.

Starting point is 01:26:50 I had a fucking great time. One other thing I did this weekend, which I'd never experienced, and if people have the chance, I would recommend, is experiencing high-fidelity immersive sound for the first time. Like actually listening to music in a store or a location where they're paying attention to all the variables yes the most i've ever done is really to the extent that i personally can set up a few sono speakers in a house yeah that's it that's as fancy as i have ever gotten and i was having dinner with a few friends well one close friend

Starting point is 01:27:24 and a few new friends who are professional musicians. And they heard me say this and they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. We need to go to a good location and put you in a seat to let you listen to some of the music you think you know. Where did they take you? In super high fidelity. This place called Common Wave. And the staff there were exceptional. We went from one setup to another setup to another setup to another setup. And it was spectacular. It was like having a full-blown psychedelic experience in some respects. So for those who may have the opportunity, if you have the opportunity, I really came to appreciate just how much goes into music.

Starting point is 01:28:06 I thought I knew, but it only listened to at, in hindsight, relatively low bit rates. Yes. And it is just a different experience altogether because this came about initially at dinner because I asked somebody at dinner who's a, who's a TV writer.

Starting point is 01:28:23 I asked him if he ever watches TV and has trouble immersing himself in TV. And he said, I don't really watch TV. And I was like, well, what do you spend your time doing if you're just having fun? He said, I listen to music. And I was like, you listen to music while you're doing something else? Or you listen to music as a dedicated activity? And he said, I listen to music as a dedicated activity. I was like, okay, tell me more about that. And that's how we ended up. So one thing you might want to consider, I've been down this path a couple of times, and there's two ways to approach it. One, you either go high fidelity system for your house, or you go really high-end headphones. And I recently realized that back even just two years ago, to do a high-end headphone setup required its own dedicated amp. There's a whole rig that you have to get. More recently, there are now lossless over-the-air audio codecs that can go to headphones that sound amazing. Over-the-air, you're saying Bluetooth? Yeah. So I got a Bowers & Wilkins.

Starting point is 01:29:28 I think it's the PX7. It's something along those lines. And these are sub $1,000, but they're still pricey. I mean, I think they're like $800 or something like that. And they can do a lossless codec from your software, from your iPhone to your headphones. And so there's no bit degradation in quality. And Apple Music now supports lossless as well. And so you can listen to insanely high fidelity audio and just sit back and relax and enjoy the music. And the headphones, I mean,

Starting point is 01:30:00 you'll see the reviews out there, but they're fantastic. Okay. Well, yeah, that would be substantially less expensive. Oh, my God. Dude, I've seen some setups, and I'm sure you have too, or you talk to these people. I mean, you're a couple hundred thousand dollars in. Oh, easily. I mean, if you really want to get up to the nerdiest of the nerdy

Starting point is 01:30:17 and the most expensive of the expensive, and I do think there's a dramatic drop-off. We talk about wine and all that right now. There's a point of diminishing returns, but there are people out there who spend $100,000 on a cable. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. You can get as expensive as you want to get. But I would say the in-home systems are certainly going to be more expensive than the headset

Starting point is 01:30:38 you're describing. It's funny. We met with someone recently that was an audio video person. So Daria and I are in an apartment now, and we're moving into a home at some point here in the future. And there was this person that was like, hey, I can come do your home audio video stuff. And like, I literally told the person, I was like, I just want Sonos. I just want Sonos and a decent pair of speakers. Because for me, I don't want to spend insane amounts of money when I could just put on an amazing pair of headphones and kick back

Starting point is 01:31:05 anywhere in the house and either read a book or just relax and listen to... I'm not going to spend several hundred thousand dollars when you can probably spend 10 grand and have an amazing setup. It's going to sound great. Movies, all that stuff's going to sound fantastic. I don't know. For me, audio is not one of those things that I want to blow money on. Yeah, well, you know, I've got my relationship with my replica and single life ahead of me, so I can just sit in a house by myself

Starting point is 01:31:34 in a dark corner listening to Pink Floyd crying and eating ho-hos. As your replica whispers to you. I gotta try this replica. Now, is it that good now i haven't dared set you haven't you haven't even dabbled it's like no hey no no i haven't i have not i have not although a few friends have really if they like it do they get into sexual encounters with the replica

Starting point is 01:31:57 i haven't heard that yet okay i don't think it's there i don't get there oh sure if they're not going to build it, they're silly. Somebody's going to build that in very short order. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm just imagining Neuralink type. I don't think virtual sex, which will ultimately debilitate all males on the planet, once that is actually a real thing. But nothing will get done ever by any man ever again. But there's been a lot of attention paid to haptic suits and that type of feedback and say VR.

Starting point is 01:32:26 Adam Ghazali loves this. Yeah. Haptic suits. They just all there. It's like the thing we always bring up Adam in every podcast. That's right. We talked about his chin hair last time. The haptic suits I always have found interesting,

Starting point is 01:32:45 but kind of dissatisfying because it doesn't replicate your human experience. Right. It feels like something vibrating on your chest. Right. By and large. Like I'm wearing a suit. I'm wearing a suit. That's right.

Starting point is 01:32:54 Dari's doing chest in air quotes. Well, so, okay. Let's say I had like a haptic glove on my schlong, right? It's still not going to feel like the real McCoy. It's not going to be.

Starting point is 01:33:04 Have you tried all the crazy things they have out now because they have those like ones that look like they have different types of materials that's supposed to feel more realistic i have not what what are we talking about well they have like those concrete terms in concrete terms okay i've heard that they have those like those skin like ones are like, and they're locked down, and they're supposed to feel really. You should work in a Foley studio. That was great. But they're supposed to lock down and feel really realistic. Don't act like you've never heard of that shit.

Starting point is 01:33:36 You know more about this stuff than I do. I don't. I would. Look, let me just be clear. I would try that. I have nothing against it. I would try it. I just think at nothing against it. I would try it. I just think at some point I'm going to be like,

Starting point is 01:33:48 I feel like I'm boning a Mattel toy or something. Right. Right. So where I was going with the Neuralink is I think rather than the haptic suit, there's probably going to be quite a bit. Well, at some point I could envision just having a direct link in where you can simulate, I mean, I guess generate really the type of sensation that you would have.

Starting point is 01:34:09 So I think it's going to be the opposite. So here's what I think is going to happen. I think we're going to have essentially AI that comes in and we'll have a relationship with. And then earpieces will go into real humans that will play the role. Like her. That's exactly what. Like her.

Starting point is 01:34:26 That's exactly what happened in her. Oh, is that what happened at the end? I don't remember. Yeah, yeah. So they arranged to have like a normal person come in. Like this woman comes in. Yes. She's got an earpiece and he's got an earpiece.

Starting point is 01:34:39 And it'll play out. And the idea is they don't communicate. He's just communicating with Scarlett Johansson, who's his AI. I gotta watch this movie again. It's been decades since I've seen it. And then they have sex and he has a camera. I think they had cameras so that the AI could also see what was going on and comment on that. Darius saying the Diamond Age book by Neal Stephenson.

Starting point is 01:35:00 Yeah. The VR is basically played out by actual actors. And that's a job. I've heard great things about Diamond Age I have never read it But Neil Stevenson, author of Snow Crash My favorite book Actually, Cryptonomicon

Starting point is 01:35:13 And a lot of people hate on Cryptonomicon But I just absolutely loved it I gotta go back and listen to Snow Crash Alright, I think I'm done with my stuff You covered everything? I feel like we're stopping on the Mattel toys. That's fine. Exactly. Oh, I have a gift for you.

Starting point is 01:35:30 You have a gift for me? Here's my last story. My last story is that when I was in Tokyo, I realized that Lego was obviously pretty popular phenomenon amongst a bunch of my Silicon Valley friends, actually. It's like a time they can get off the computer and build Legos. They have something called NanoBlock out in Japan, which are really tiny. I don't know how they got around the patent of Legos. They're really tiny little baby Legos, and I got you this little castle.

Starting point is 01:35:57 Kimiji Castle. Look at that. Yeah, it's this little tiny castle. Thank you. They're small. They do very traditional Japanese structures in like they even say the original micro-sized building block all right so anyway if people want to ebay it or check it out it's actually really cool because you know just recently lego started adding like things like

Starting point is 01:36:18 bonsai trees and stuff like that when i was walking down the aisles in tokyo of this store these nano blocks they had all these traditional, beautiful Japanese structures. And so if you're looking for something, if you're into Lego or know somebody that's into this whole thing, and I have a lot of friends that built, you know, Back to the Future cars and every other Lego that's out there, check out nano block because they have a bunch of stuff that has very, you know, obviously Japanese influence that you might be really into. Small blocks, big fun. I'm just reading the side here. Chisai wa tanoshii.

Starting point is 01:36:48 Nano block is a micro-sized building block designed in Japan since 2008. Fun to build, attractive to display, interesting to collect. Something tells me that Lego was around before 2008. Yeah, it was definitely around before 2008. Like the original 2008.

Starting point is 01:37:04 Anyway, you do this and then get off the computer and just like do it. It's tiny. So it's like a little fun little thing. I got a couple of her friends. Oh, my AI girlfriend.

Starting point is 01:37:13 I built you a Himeji castle with nanoblocks. Thank you, Tim. That's my favorite. You know how to please me. All right. With that. God save us all. All right. Thank you. God save us all.

Starting point is 01:37:26 All right. Thank you, everyone. This has been fun. Thanks, everybody. 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

Starting point is 01:37:41 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 so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

Starting point is 01:38:14 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 Shopify. Shopify is one of my favorite companies out there, one of my favorite platforms ever. And let's get into it. Shopify is a platform, as I mentioned,

Starting point is 01:38:49 designed for anyone to sell anything anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. So what does that mean? That means in no time flat, you can have a great looking online store that brings your ideas, products, and so on to life. And you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day business and drive sales. This is all possible without any coding or design experience whatsoever. Shopify instantly lets you accept all major payment methods. Shopify has thousands of integrations and third-party apps, from on-demand printing to accounting to advanced chatbots, anything you can imagine.

Starting point is 01:39:24 They probably have a way to plug and play and make it happen. From on-demand printing to accounting to advanced chatbots, anything you can imagine, they probably have a way to plug and play and make it happen. Shopify is what I wish I had had when I was venturing into e-commerce way back in the early 2000s. What they've done is pretty remarkable. I first met the founder, Toby, in 2008 when I became an advisor, and it's been spectacular. I've loved watching Shopify go from roughly 10 to 15 employees at the time to 7,000 plus today, serving customers in 175 countries with total sales on the platform exceeding $400 billion. They power millions of entrepreneurs from their first sale all the way

Starting point is 01:39:58 to full scale. And you would recognize a lot of large companies that also use them who started small. So get started by building and customizing your online store, again, with no coding or design experience required. Access powerful tools to help you find customers, drive sales, and manage your day-to-day. Gain knowledge and confidence with extensive resources to help you succeed. And I've actually been involved with some of that way back in the day, which was awesome. The build a business competition and other things. Plus, with 24-7 support, you're never alone. And let's face it, being an entrepreneur can be lonely, but you have support. You have resources. You don't need to feel alone in this case. More than a store, Shopify grows with you and they never stop innovating, providing more and more tools to make your business better and your life easier. Go to shopify.com slash Tim to sign up for a $1 per month trial period. It is a

Starting point is 01:40:51 great deal for a great service, so I encourage you to check it out. Take your business to the next level today and learn more by visiting shopify.com slash Tim. One more time, shopify.com slash Tim, all lowercase. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your sleep preferences. Their lineup includes 14 unique mattresses, including a collection of luxury models, a mattress for big and tall sleepers, that's not me, and even a mattress made specifically for kids.

Starting point is 01:41:22 They have models with memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on your side, as I often do and did last night on one of their beds. Models with more responsive foam to cradle your body for essential support in stomach and back sleeping positions, and on and on. They have you covered.

Starting point is 01:41:37 So how will you know which Helix mattress works best for you and your body? Take the Helix Sleep Quiz at helixsleep.com slash Tim and find your perfect mattress in less than two minutes. Personally, for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one of those in the guest bedroom, and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. They frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. Helix mattresses are American- and come with a 10 or 15 year warranty,

Starting point is 01:42:09 depending on the model. Your mattress will be shipped straight to your door free of charge, and there's no better way to test out a new mattress than by sleeping on it in your own home. That's why they offer a 100 night risk-free trial. If you decide it's not the best fit, you're welcome to return it for a full refund. Helix has been awarded number one mattress by both GQ and Wired magazines. Helix is now offering 20% off on all mattress orders, plus two free pillows for you, my dear listeners. On some mattresses, this can mean savings of more than $500. So go to helixsleep.com slash Tim. This is the best offer that they have made yet, and it will not last forever. With Helix, better sleep starts now. So one more time, check it out.

Starting point is 01:42:52 Helix, H-E-L-I-X, helixsleep.com slash Tim.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #670: The Random Show with Kevin Rose — The $1M Bitcoin Bet, Japanophilia, Rare IPAs, Preventing Hangovers, AI Companions, Fringe Discords, Affordable Luxuries, High-Fidelity Audio, and Much More

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

Your Ad Here

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #670: The Random Show with Kevin Rose — The $1M Bitcoin Bet, Japanophilia, Rare IPAs, Preventing Hangovers, AI Companions, Fringe Discords, Affordable Luxuries, High-Fidelity Audio, and Much More

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