The Tim Ferriss Show - #807: In Case You Missed It: March 2025 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

This is a special inbetweenisode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can easily jump around to get a feel for the episode and guest.Based on your feedback, this format has been tweaked and improved since the first recap episode. For instance, listeners suggested that the bios for each guest can slow the momentum, so we moved all the bios to the end. See it as a teaser. Something to whet your appetite. If you like what you hear, you can of course find the full episodes at tim.blog/podcast. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by 5-Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter.Timestamps:Craig Mod: 03:16 Ev Williams: 13:49Richard Taylor: 23:57Full episode titles:Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by SpiritsEv Williams — The Art of Pivoting (e.g., Odeo to Twitter), Strategic Quitting, The Dangers of Premature Scaling, Must-Read Books, and MoreRichard Taylor and Greg Broadmore, Wētā Workshop — Untapping Creativity, Stories from The Lord of the Rings, The Magic of New Zealand, Four Tenets to Live By, and The Only Sentence of Self-Help You NeedSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers of all different types to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life. This is a special in between a soad, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can jump around get a feel for both the episode

and the guest and then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes view this episode as a buffet to whet your appetite a lot of fun with fun putting it together and for the full list of the guests featured today see the episodes description probably right below where we press play in your podcast app. Or as usual, you can head to tim.blog slash podcast and find all the details there. Please enjoy. First up, Craig Maude, a writer, photographer, and walker

living in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan. And the author of Things Become Other Things and Kisa by Kisa. You can find Craig on Instagram and X at CraigMod. This excerpt comes from Tim's first interview with Craig. 2009 hike to Nepal, is that enough of a cue? Can you tell this story? Yeah, that's an inflection point.

I just got like goosebumps actually. So I really struggled with alcohol in my 20s. My teenage years, I didn't touch anything. I was militantly straight edge-ish. And basically, looking back now, I realized I had such a strong impulse to make sure I could get to whatever the next place was. Anything I saw that could hold me back, which included falling in love or doing drugs or anything like that that was like a retarding agent as a teenager, I was like, immediately I was like, okay, I don't need this. And I got to Japan and it was like, oh, this is a place to reinvent myself. And I started drinking as you do, because people drink so much here. And it turns out that I can drink a lot. I can have 15, 20 drinks, not throw up. I black out,

sure. But there's something in my genes that allows me to just drink. And then after two or three drinks, something activates where it's just all we live for is more drink. And I think for most of my 20s, because I had such a low sense of self-worth, because of where I came from, because I felt this abundance of people around me that I didn't feel I had. And I didn't know how to ratchet that up. And I had this desire to produce culture or to produce art, to produce literature at a level that I didn't know how to, and I didn't know how to bridge that gap. And what I ended up doing was because I didn't have mentors, because I didn't have archetypes near me, I just drank like a fish. And I played a lot of music because that was one thing I did have mastery over. And I played a lot of music and I played a lot of

that blacked out. I'm really lucky I didn't die. I mean, it would be one of these things where many, many mornings of my life I've woken up and it's just been checking, is my face okay? Did I break my skull open or something like that? And I was madly in love. I fell madly, madly in love. I was 26, 27 years old and I had the most incredible love connection I'd ever felt, this otherworldly sense of being in love with this person. And we connected so intensely and immediately went on a 40 day trip. Like a week after meeting a 40 day trip through Tibet. We went to Tibet. I was possessed by a spirit. I like, I spoke in tongues. Like this, we hiked up to a glacier. We can't really skipped over getting possessed by spirits. We stayed at this one little hotel in Lhasa that had not always been a hotel. It was this old structure. I woke up the next morning and my girlfriend was being very strange.

She was being very weird. And I was like, what's going on? She's like, I'll tell you when we get outside. I was like, what? You'll tell me when we get outside. Like, what's this about? And we go outside and she goes, okay, last night we had to get out of there because last night I woke up in the middle of the night, you were on your side of the bed cradling

something that was not there. You were speaking in Tibetan. I couldn't get you to wake up. I was trying to speak to you in English, trying to speak to you in Japanese. You wouldn't respond. And I finally crawled over on your side of the bed, and I kind of took the air that you were holding. And I turned you on your side and you were able to like calm down and go to sleep. And I was like, Oh my God, I had this, cause I had had this vision slash dream of this woman in white standing in the doorway and for at the foot of the bed the night before. And I don't know what was, what was happening. And like, even now I'm like full body goosebumps right now.

Oh, God, this is like straight out of paranormal activity or something. I'm just like, Oh God, it was so bizarre. And we have been, you know, and you have to imagine like, I don't know if you've ever been in love to this degree where it just feels like everything in the world is fated. Like everything is a sign that you need to be together that this is magic. Like only these things can possibly happen because you're connected, you're together. We both bought, I remember we like pulled out our books on the first day of the trip. We had both brought The Stranger by Camus. It was like, oh my God, we're fated. I went back to the hotel and I went to

the manager and I was like, hey, I don't think we could stay here tonight. He's like, oh, what's wrong? And I was like, well, I was kind of possessed, saw this. He's like, did you see the woman? And I was like, yeah. He's like, oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. possessed, saw this. He's like, did you see the woman? And I was like, yeah, he's like, he's like, oh, oh yeah. No, I, we know what's going on with that here. We'll take you to the dream reader. And so I was like, what? You'll take me to the dream. So I ended up, I'll try to try to truncate this cause it can, it

can kind of get a little bit long, but I mean, I'm not sure anybody listening wants you to truncate this particular story. So go wherever you want. AC- One of the workers there is like, you know, the manager was like, okay, take them to the dream reader. So, and I'm thinking, okay, this is a scam. I'm getting scams. And he takes us and we go to like the outskirts of Lhasa. We go to this like really kind of weird apartment block that was just made of concrete. It was maybe like two or three stories tall. And he takes us to this room on the third floor and there's a line of people,

line of Tibetans waiting at this door. And they were all waiting to have their dreams read. So I was like, okay, this is bizarre. So we wait, we stand in line, we go inside, we sit down inside. The most beautiful, I don't know how old she was. She was anywhere between 15 and a thousand years old. She was just this creature of just the most bizarre light walks out. It was like being in the Matrix. The scene in the Matrix where they're like with the spoon and the bending and you're in this random apartment, the TV's on. It was like that situation. She comes over, brings some yak buttermilk tea, some cookies. Because someone's in the dream reader room and we're waiting for them to get out. And then our turn comes up. I go in there, you go into this room, it's all candles,

Dalai Lama photos, all this stuff. You feel like you're in this really holy space. And the guy from the hotel interprets for us. I tell her the dream, I tell her what happened, and she gives me this blessing, puts a white wreath around my neck, gives me this little satchel of seeds and tells me to put them under my pillow when I sleep, and then writes me a prayer. And she says, okay, here's these three pieces of paper. You have to take them to these three temples and they will burn them for you tonight. They'll know what to do. Just tell them the dream reader sent you and you'll be okay. You'll be fine. Everything will be good. And I was like, no one's asking me for money. And the hotel guy's like, oh, you can

leave a tip if you want. It was like $2 or something. I put $2 in the little thingy. And then we go to the temples. And it ended up becoming this incredible adventure. This connects with a lot of my walking as well. You know, it's like having experiences like this, I think informed this sense of just give yourself up to what the day could potentially give to you. And so I ended up going to all these temples I would have never gone to. I went to the dream reader's apartment, which was the most bizarre, beautiful place I went to in all of Tibet in that entire trip. We went to these temples, met these monks, say, hey, can you burn this for me? Oh yes, of course, absolutely. Give them like

a dollar, 50 cents or whatever. The whole thing costs nothing. It was clearly not a scam. It was clearly this thing that a lot of locals were participating in. And it was magic. It was just pure magic. So anyway, things like that were happening with this woman. And I screwed it up because of my drinking. I ruined the relationship. She punched me in the face at one point, very rightfully so. And she was like, hey, I can't be with someone like you. AC This happened on that trip? Not on that trip. That happened a couple of months later. We ended up staying together for about three months. And basically, I mean, it was about 10 years worth of lifetimes.

The candle that burns twice as bright. But losing her was probably the biggest psychic damage I'd ever encountered in my life as an adult. I remember just lying in my tiny apartment in Tokyo, my six-mat tatami room apartment in Tokyo, it was three in the morning. I wanted to die. It was rock, rock, rock bottom. This isn't a rich roll story.

I didn't get up and run 40 miles or anything like that, but I was like, I'm going to start running. And I went out and I ran like 5K at three in the morning through the streets of Tokyo. And I was like, that felt good. And I was like, okay, I need to stop drinking. And to stop drinking, I'm going to run this marathon in November. I think it was like July when this happened. And I just started preparing for that. These were actually the first steps for me to deliberately address this lack of self-worth that I've been carrying around for all of my adult life. And that had, I think, driven me to drink the way I drank, to give into whatever those genetic impulses were,

and to start to go, okay, we're going to run. We're going to be someone who runs. A lot of this is also very Atomic Habits style stuff. It's like, who are you going to be and how are you going to set yourself up to be successful? I'm going to be a person who runs, I'm going to be a person who doesn't drink, I'm going to be a person who charges a lot. So at this time, with the publishing company thing, we were producing these books that were winning awards and making absolutely no money. And so I was consulting, doing web design consulting and stuff like that. And I was like, okay, I'm going to start charging absurd amounts of money for my time. The worst that can happen is people reject and they started

accepting it. And I was like, oh, little by little, all of these stupid little steps from the time I was basically 27 to 30, these were the most important years of tiny little steps of my time is more valuable. I'm going to be a person who runs. I'm going to be a person who can take care of himself. I still drank even though I tried to not drink, but I started lowering it. It took me about four full years to completely get off the sauce in a really dangerous way. And part of it culminated in going to Nepal and climbing up to Annapurna Base camp. And that was after we had broken up and I felt like all the magic of my life was done. I felt like there was

no way for me to experience magic again. I felt like she, and again, it's this totally irrational sense of scarcity. The amount of scarcity I felt as an adult in my twenties is just shocking. It was this fathomless sense of scarcity. The money is not going to be there. The love isn't going to be there. The support isn't going to be there. And then when I lost her, I was like, I'm never going to have anyone who will ever love me like this person loved me. And I'm never going to be able to create like I created with this person. And I had to start proving to myself that that wasn't true. And I climbed up. I was like, okay, I'm just going to go to Nepal and I'm going to climb up Annapurna, go to base camp.

And now, Ev Williams, the co-founder of the new social network, Mozi, and the co-founder of Blogger, Medium, and Twitter. You can learn more about Mozi at mozi.app. Metaphorically speaking, the billboard question, right? So if you were going to put a message You can learn more about Mozi at mozi.app. I love this question. I might overthink it. And understand. So we can assume though. The and understand I threw on there with a little creative flourish, it may complicate your thinking. category is something that will help people heal, you know, just be their whole and true selves because I think that's where all our problems come from is the lack of that. And

as much as I care about climate, I think the key to solving climate is to heal ourselves, to heal culture, to heal the planet. And so I start with the self. And then my mind goes to, what's a big fundamental truth that we want everyone, let's pretend if they read it, they'll actually get it and know it. Then I think there's a little bit of tension between like the most fundamental truths and how actionable they are. So if we said, we are all one, which I believe, it's like, okay, we're all one.

The universe is one big thing, we're all connected. What do I do with that? Maybe if you really ponder that and meditate on that a long time, it will actually do you some good. But then if you move toward the spectrum of usefulness, of what's a fundamental truth that's more useful, you might have some Buddhist saying, like like all of our suffering comes from our thoughts or inability to accept reality,

which is a little bit more useful, but maybe for the masses, still not very actionable. And then you could move to like, feel your feelings, which I think would do a tremendous amount of good if people adopt, oh, feel your feelings. It's a little bit easier to imagine that. Like so much of our suffering. And I say this as someone who told their first therapist,

I don't understand the point of feelings. I was like, they are just a nuisance and get in the way. So it took me a long time to appreciate that. And the avoidance that so many of us go through. And then one step further might be stop drinking alcohol for six months and see how you feel. Not tonight though. It's fine. We're in a bar. Not tonight. Nice. Starting tomorrow. Starting tomorrow. So following up just on the feeling your feelings,

you said for a long time, and you said this to your first therapist, right? They're just a nuisance. I'd like to know how to rid myself of these irritations. What changed? How did you end up going out to team feelings? So, I mean, it was a long, long process. I mean, the therapy helped, the psychedelics helped. Meditation, growth, learning, reading books,

having friends, stopping drinking actually, just for six months. And I've gone through a lot, I've done a lot of work particularly in the last couple of years. That's been super, super important. Just a note on alcohol, look, I'm going to have some drinks tonight. I do enjoy drinking, but... Whistle.

I'm going to have some drinks tonight. I do enjoy drinking, but... Whistle. But just a PSA for people because ketamine is in the air. Ketamine is probably in a few people's pockets here. They're both dissociative anesthetics, so if you want to feel your feelings, it's a good idea not to engage with those things excessively. And if you have a history of alcohol overuse, I would also stay away from any at-home ketamine. But in terms of books or types of therapy,

did you find if there are people in the audience who are like, yeah, you know what, actually that makes sense to me, but I've never been able to find a handhold to get started. Is there any advice you might give? Probably the best thing I've ever done in that realm is Hoffman. Have you done Hoffman? Hoffman, I haven't done Hoffman, but quite a few of my friends have. So there's a thing called the Hoffman process.

It's 20 years of therapy in a week in terms of the effect. I mean, I got much more out of it than I ever got in therapy. It's a week-long retreat. There's a few different places. The main one's in Petaluma, California. You hand over your phone, you go and do some exercises with 36 strangers and yourself for a week, and you come out a new person.

So I've spoken, well not directly, I have more listened, but had a conversation on this podcast where the Hoffman Process came up, and a lot of listeners have gone to The Hoffman Process, and I get letters literally every week from people who are thanking me for not really the proper credit

because there's someone else who brought it up for The Hoffman Process. I'm very curious, you mentioned the strangers, part of the reason I haven't gone is I'm like, I don't want to air all of my dirty laundry in front of 20 strangers. I don't know these people. And I know you're also, I think it's fair to say,

pretty introverted. I would say I am, even though I'm on stage, like safely speaking into the darkness. Was that an issue at all for you, or how did you get past that? It wasn't easy, but it's just in the context of it, it just feels very safe. One of the fascinating things is, it's strangers. You are not allowed to say your last name or what you do in the real world when you get there. So you connect with people.

And I realized after a few days, I relied so much on people knowing who I was or what I did, that it was this veil between me and other humans. So you get to know people at such a deep level without really knowing any of the normal things that we would say, you meet someone here, what do you do, where do you live? And that, it just feels incredibly safe. But the process is, they've been doing it for 50 some years. It's very evolved, it's very well done.

You take any of it out of context, it sounds weird. Like I knew nothing going in. And about five people brought it up to me in random conversations over a week. And were like, okay, this is a message. I'm gonna go sign up for this thing. Show up, no idea. And then you just dive in.

And it's incredible. Yeah, from what I can tell, it's somewhat like Fight Club. It's like, first rule of Fight Club is don't talk about Fight Club. You're not going to find much detail on the Hoffman process. This also ties into a question I was planning on asking anyway, which is, are there any habits or beliefs that have really positively impacted your life in the last handful of years? Could also be ten years ago,

but you've talked about doing a lot of work in the last handful of years. Any new habits, beliefs, tools, anything come to mind that have been really helpful? Yes, but I feel like they're the ones that everybody knows. Well, so I mean sometimes the fundamentals are worth a review. I mean it is exercise, exercise and meditation, I dabbled in for a long time, and then I got much more serious a couple years ago about both, And really, really dramatic life improvement.

Why did you get more serious about them? You just wake up one day and you're like, today's a new day? Or was there a breaking point? It was early COVID. I was like, what the fuck am I doing? I'm going to turn 50 and I need to work a hell of a lot harder to be in shape than I was. So I just started doing it. I was at home. I had the time. So I did that. Although that's increased, you know, because you get the positive reward cycle and it feels great. And meditation, I've always found super valuable.

And I just, last year, on January 2nd, 2024, I had meditated the day before, I was like, I could meditate every single day of this year. And it was just that sort of psychological hook that you find motivating, even though it's arbitrary. And I was like, yes, I'm going to meditate every single day in 2024, that's a goal. And I don't normally set goals like that, but I was like,24, that's a goal.

And I don't normally set goals like that, but I was like, okay, let's see what happens. And my teacher says, you can't boil water if you keep turning off the flame. And so the consistency of meditation, I underestimated what dramatic difference that makes and how fast you can drop in if you do it every single day. You like to know about products, fantastic. Yeah, Henry Shuckman, just an incredible guy. I mean, we'll hope to meet him in person someday. Last but not least, Richard Taylor, the co-founder and creative lead at Academy Award-winning design studio and manufacturing facility, Weta Workshop, and Greg Broadmore, an artist and writer

who has been part of the Weta Workshop team for more than 20 years and is the creator of the retro sci-fi world of Dr. Grodd-Bortz and the graphic novel series, One Path. But first, I do wanna talk about, because this certainly is so iconic and it's in the minds of probably most people listening, which is

Lord of the Rings. And I'd like to understand what some of the most, first of all, kind of how that came to be, Richard, and then what some of the most crucial decisions were with respect to taking on a project of that scope, because for a lot of companies, I could see that being the hug of death, where you suddenly go from reasonably, moderately contained and small to sprawling, taking on so much responsibility, and many companies would implode.

I've seen it happen many, many times. So how did that come to be, and what were some of the most important decisions made that allowed you to grow the company and take that on? Yeah, that's a really big question. I'll try and answer it in a very condensed way. We have time. I just pulled this out, right? This is Sting from the movie. This is one of my favorite things that we've made in the company.

And I keep it next to me and I pick it up and it gives you strength and it gives you a sense of wonder and it connects you back to a very happy time. And it glows if there are challenging clients in the corridor. For people who can't see that, that is a sword. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Those that can't see it here. I'm showing all these visual aids because that's how I think. I'll drive people to the video. I just held up the 1.48 times larger than life size sting

that's carried by Elijah Wood at his scale. I likened it to teetering towards the edge of a precipice. There's probably a much better visual metaphor than this. But, and you do this, you know, frequently in one's life, the decision to start a family, the decision to buy your first home or the home that you'll spend the rest of your life in, like the home that my wife and I bought way back on Meet the Feebles, right? The decision to X, Y and Z. But Peter Jackson offers this opportunity and when he offered it, my wife and I, Tania and I discussed with Peter, and we ultimately settled on doing

the design for and the manufacturing of the armour, weapons, creatures, miniatures, special makeup effects and prosthetics. Like five divisions, a very, very large body of work. And you teeter to the edge of the precipice, and as a human, just as the human animal that we are, you've got a decision. You either step back from the edge and let others take up the slack and do it for you and you follow, or you choose to leap. And you either will then slam into the bottom of the cliff and make a mess with your guts and your brains everywhere, or you will actually arrest your fall through a number of different mechanisms, self-belief being the most important one.

I have four very simple tenants that I operate by and four tenants that I try and operate our company by, and the first one is love of oneself. That doesn't mean that you're egotistical or believe that you're better than you are. But if you can't see in yourself your virtues, how the hell are you gonna expect anyone else following you to see your virtues, right?

So love of oneself is the first of those four tenets. And there is mixed with that, as corny as it sounds, ignorance being your greatest ally. I think all of us operate to some degree where we are blinded by the love of what we do, like Bertram Russell, if I've got the right person, has a lovely quote, work is more fun than fun. And people that don't understand that struggle. Even if you're in a low level position that you're not really enjoying, you can still make the people that you work with really fun.

I used to clean toilets on international airplanes, but man, the people that you work with really fun, right? I used to clean toilets on international aeroplanes, but man, the people I worked with, I put a cricket ball through the window of the international terminal because we were playing cricket out on the tarmac under the planes. You can turn anything into fun. So I had, once again, a very corny, and I couldn't think of something better at the time, but we needed 158 crew working for seven and a half years on 48,000 separate things to deliver those five divisions to the trilogy of movies.

Our works are 98 to 99% of the films because our works in almost every image shot other than mountains with no one in it or etc. And you've got an inexperienced crew. You're highly inexperienced yourself, right? We'd done Hercules and Xena at the time and we'd had a career of about eight to ten years doing Peter's films. Peter of course is a inspiration in his own right and highly knowledgeable so he's helping as well. I used to say no matter how fine and how pale the thread that I give you if you don't weave it with care into the tapestry the tapestry will be in some way threadbare. What I'm talking about, that's sort of more of a silly poetic way to say

you're only as good as your weakest link. And in our case, we literally were linking, right? Handmade chainmail, 12.5 million links over three and a half years. And chainmail is only as good as how well you glue the top link on your shoulder, and whether the chainmail is going to fall off you. So trying to get us collectively, myself and my wife and our team to believe that we could do it didn't require, because there is a, I'm sure it exists in other countries, but it is a fundamental part of New Zealand. I think it's because we're a young nation, we're at the back quarters of the world, a long way from marketplaces where you can buy components to fix your tractor. So there is this intense can-do attitude that still exists today.

Thankfully, we hire people that come with that beautiful can-do attitude, and we were able to benefit and bottle that so significantly on those three films. And the overjoyed nature of knowing that you're trying to prove something, prove that New Zealand could do it, that we could stamp our mark on the world stage. That was really important to us. To do justice to Tolkien's writing was really important to us. To meet Peter Jackson's vision was really important. And to make sure that we had really good fun. That didn't mean that it wasn't brutally challenging,

it was, but at no point in the seven and a half years did I ever think that I didn't want to be doing it. That was really a special part of that experience. Work is more fun than fun. What are the other tenets you mentioned for? Work is more fun than fun. What are the other tenets you mentioned for? Love of oneself, love of what you do, love of who you do it with, and love of who you do it for. That is as a father of a family, well as a husband or partner to a loved one, a father or mother to a family, a president of a country, a CEO of a business. If you can't find those

four tenets, obviously the first one, love of yourself, love of what you do, you've got to love being a parent, you've got to love being a lover, a husband, a wife, a partner. You have to love the people that you do it for. It is so easy to become cynical about your audience or your fans or your family or the person working above you, right? But that's who you're trying to capture it up in your passion for what you do. And the other one's very obvious.

So that's how I think of things very simply. And that's after 30 plus years of working, it started to congeal that that's thinking about all these things that you might think about. That's the things that drive you forward. I think I've settled on those four simple. And try not to be a dickhead is maybe the fifth. There are thousands of self-help books. I've actually only read

one of them. I can't remember the title even. Someone said to me once, you only need one page, a one page book on self-help. And it's simply, and there's only one line, and it just says, just don't be a dickhead, right? And if you put that against almost anything in life, it's actually correct if we understand collectively what being a dickhead means. And no doubt I fall foul of that, and invariably am sometimes, you know, we all are, we can't, it's very hard to not be, but you try really hard not to be. Eh, Greg? Yeah. Yeah, trying, always.

Have I answered your question well enough? I've sort of been a bit fringed around the outsides of it. No, you did. I'll have probably just one or two follow-ups related to that. But before I get to that, you mentioned the can-do attitude of a fairly remote country, right? And the resourcefulness that that engenders. And I'm wondering if there are any other advantages that you can think of, of doing this, whether it's the workshop or Lord of the Rings or the combination of the two in New Zealand. Are there advantages that you can think of?

Tim, when I'm talking, I'm talking about Wedder Workshop, we were a small component of the overarching endeavor of making Lord of the Rings, right? We're very proud of the piece we played and we did a lot on it, but the art department, the costuming department, the props department, the camera department, the grips department, the directing department, etc. etc. The miniatures, there was a phenomenal number of people all focused on the same mission. And I've actually said in the past, Lord of the

Rings wasn't made by a director, it wasn't made by a film studio, it wasn't made by a film studio and wasn't made by a film crew. It was made by a nation of people coming together in that moment to try and make Lord of the Rings in New Zealand for the world. That speaks to the phenomenal number of people that Peter and his producer drew into the collaboration of making Lord of the Rings. I mean, the government, the military, the whole country was behind it. The government, the military, our tourism department, I think everyone felt, you would have to have been pretty cynical at the time

to have not felt a certain level of pride in what Peter was trying to do in our country and get behind it. And a lot of people benefited because of it. The driving desire to that term punch above your weight, I don't specifically like that term, but that's a well-used one that speaks to it. New Zealanders do have a burning desire

to try and achieve great things, regardless of where we may come from and the scale of our country, that should not restrict you at all. And you only need to look at our sports teams to see that, whether it's our national ballet, orchestra, contemporary dance, poets, writers, painters, artists in general, never mind the film industry or the creative industries, we have technology companies in New Zealand that are competing with the best in the world. Rocket Lab comes to mind that are doing astounding things on a fraction of the budget. You know, the robots that we're building in our workshop right now, probably at a 500th to a thousandth of the investment cost

of some of the robots that we're seeing online, but we're pulling it off. We're getting there slowly, but getting there with five people and, you know, the money that we can save from projects we're doing. It's that attitude. I think that plays a big part of it. Peter Jackson mustn't be missed in this equation

to his self-belief and his just sheer drive. I've never ever seen Peter quiver in uncertainty, to fluctuate in a sense of uncertainty that he isn't sure of what he's doing. That is an amazing thing to work around because if your leader is confident then you know and there's a lovely quote the Emperor will not remember you for your medals or your diplomas he will only remember you for your scars and I think there is mentality of that very much in our country you just got to knuckle down and do it right grit is a mentality of that very much in our country. You just got to knuckle down and do it, right? Grit is a important component in the journey, not the accolades at the end.

It's the task of getting there that is seen as equal in accomplishment as winning baubles. And now here are the bios for all the guests. My guest today is a dear friend. I've wanted to have him on the podcast for a very long time. Craig Mudd, Craig Mudd, M-O-D. He is a writer, photographer and Walker. We'll talk about that a lot living in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan. He is the author of Things Become Other Things and Kissa by Kisa, K-I-S-S-A. Don't worry about it. We'll get to it.

He also writes the newsletters Rodin and Ridgeline and has contributed to the New York Times, the Atlantic, Wired and more. He has walked thousands of miles across Japan in every conceivable place. And since 2016, he has been co-running walk-in talks with Kevin Kelly, perhaps the most interesting man in the world. In various places around the world, the Cotswolds, Northern Thailand, Bali, Southern China, Japan, Spain, which includes the Portuguese and French Caminos, and much more. Today's episode is wide is wide ranging and I had so much fun with this. We ended up discussing Craig's early life, his path to Japan,

his struggles with self-worth and alcoholism and how he overcame both of them, creative development, his writing experiments, his initial experiences with walking and writing and so much more. I really think you will get a lot out of this conversation as I did. I took copious notes and I also decided to keep some of the behind the scenes banter before the interview in the recording that you're going to hear, which I thought might be fun for shits and giggles just for the fun of it. Why not? You can find CraigMod at CraigMod.com. That's the H-Q for everything CraigMod, C-R-A-I-G-M-O-D.com. You can find him on Instagram at CraigMod and on Blue Sky as well, CraigMod.com.

Today my guest is Ev Williams and what a story he has. Ev is the co-founder and chairman of Mozi, a new social network that helps you connect in person with the people you care about most. Over the past 25 years, Ev has co-founded several companies that have helped shape the modern internet, including Blogger, Medium, and Twitter. Ev is also the co-founder of Obvious Ventures, an investment firm that focuses on world-positive companies addressing major systemic problems. Ev grew up on a farm in Clarks, Nebraska, has two sons, and lives mostly in the Bay Area.

This particular episode, this conversation was recorded live in Austin, Texas at the DIG Nation relaunch. That's dignation.show for the show itself. And that is where dig.com was relaunched. It was recently acquired by its original founder, my good friend Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, formerly Arch Nemesis, but they have joined forces and invited me along for all the fun and surprises as they celebrated the relaunch. Go to dig.com and sign up to get early access when the invites go out. One more time, dig.com, that's D-I-G-G dot com.

You can find Mozi, that is Ev's newest creation, at mozi.app, that's available on iOS right now. You can find Obvious Ventures at Obvious.com, and you can find him on Twitter, that is also known as xatev, at E-V. known as X at EV. At EV. Today I am interviewing two people I would consider decathletes of creativity.

The first is Richard Taylor. He is co-founder and creative lead at Weta Workshop, which he runs with his wife and co-founder Tanya Roger. Weta Workshop is a concept design studio and manufacturing facility that services the world's creative and entertainment industries. What you'll see is just how much they do. Believe it or not, it started by them assembling things and making things on top of their bed. We'll get to that.

They've been recognized with five Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, three Thea Awards, and more than 30 other national and international accolades. Their practical and special effects have helped define the visual identities of some of the most recognizable franchises in film and television. You will know some of them, including The Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes, Superman, Mad Max, Thor, Megan, and Love, Death, and Robots. If you haven't seen Love, Death, and Robots, check it out. There are some amazing, amazing shorts. In addition to that, they do a few other things. Get ready for this.

What a Workshop offers tourism and retail experiences, consumer products, an interactive studio, public sculptures, and private commissions. They've also done augmented reality and video games and all sorts of things. Richard now focuses much of his time on their immersive experiences, which I've had the chance to experience firsthand.

I recommend them very highly, such as the Thea award-winning Gallipoli, The Scale of Our War, Weta Workshop Unleashed, and the giant Atrium installation, Aura, Forest at Edge of the Sky. Next we have Greg Broadmore. Greg is an artist and writer who has been part of the team at Weta Workshop

for more than 20 years. His design and special effects credits include District 9, King Kong, Godzilla, The Adventures of Tintin, and Avatar, and he is the creator of the satirical retro sci-fi world of Dr. Grodbortz. Featuring a myriad of collectibles, a world touring art exhibition, four books, and a game for Weta's pioneering spatial computing platform. Most recently, Greg built Weta's video game division and directed multiple Doc G video games for Magic Leap. He's currently working on the graphic novel series One Path set in a brutal prehistoric world where dinosaurs and cave women are locked in a grim battle for supremacy. So these two guys have their hands in a lot. They apply creativity to more things than I can count, and they do it with incredible endurance.

How do they do it? That's what we're going to explore. And as you listen to this or as you watch it, you're going to hear a lot of moving around as they pull things from their offices, from their workshops, from around where they're sitting. So it will sound quite hyperactive. And I suppose that is totally appropriate given the nature of what we're discussing. So I'll leave it at that. You can find wettaworkshop at wettanz.com slash us. That's wetta nz.com, of course, wedda nz.com of course and on Instagram at wedda workshop you can find

Greg at Greg Broadmore that's B-R-O-A-D-M-O-R-E Greg Broadmore.com and on Instagram at Greg underscore Broadmore. Hey guys this is Tim again just one more thing before you take off and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter, called Five Bullet Friday.

Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on

that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts. Guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blogslashfriday, type that into your browser, tim.blogslashfriday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.

Thanks for listening.