The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep 24: Kevin Rose - Gut Bacteria, Meditation, Startups, and More

Episode Date: August 22, 2014

Yes, Kevin Rose is back. He was my first ever guest on this podcast, and now he's causing more trouble. All shownotes and links at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast Enjoy! Tim***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Many of you have been asking for more informal conversations, like the one that I recorded with Kelly Starrett and Dr. Justin Major over many, many bottles of wine, which you can listen to at your leisure, versus the more formal, I suppose, interviews that I've done with people like co-founder and president of Pixar, Ed Catmull. And you've asked for it, and therefore, here it is. This is a high-def audio recording of The Random Show. And The Random Show is effectively a catch-up between two friends. And I am half of that conversation, and Kevin Rose, a dear buddy, is the other. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's built many different

companies and products. He is a venture capitalist at Google Ventures. He's one of the best product guys in Silicon Valley and a very, very astute investor. But when we hang out and we do the random show, which is in video, so you will hear some references to visual things. And whenever you hear babe, by the way, that's in reference to Kevin's wife, who is off camera, Daria, you will hear some references to links and show notes and so on. All of those notes and links can be found at fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast, all spelled out fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. And to support the show, as always, just go to the Tim Ferriss book club and you can find books that have had a tremendous impact on my life. There are four or five of them up right now at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash books. And without

further ado, I would like to introduce you, if you've never heard it before, to The Random Show. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for listening. Optimal, minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would seem an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello friends, welcome to The Random Show. I'm Kevin Rose. I'm Tim Ferriss. And this is episode number...gram? We don't know. But you know because it says it at the top of the YouTube player. Indeed. Welcome. It's been a while.

It has. It's been, what, two to three months, probably? It's been at least three months. At least. Maybe four months. Something like that. Lots happened in those months. A lot has happened. My drinking experiment, which we'll get to in a little bit. Don't want to jump right into that one. Yeah, we can hold off on that. It's a good debate there. But I have a list of

stuff to go over today. Do you want to start first today? Sure, we can start with perhaps a caveat. So it turns out, I found out just a few days ago that about 99% sure that I have Lyme disease for the first time. So I grew up on Long Island. I go back every summer. And deer ticks carry the spirochetes or bacteria that cause the symptoms of Lyme disease, which is really intense. I had dodged the bullet up to this point. Everyone in my family has had it as far as I know. And I started getting extremely swollen joints to the point where it was painful to walk one morning. You just woke up one morning? Woke up one morning.

Knees were extremely swollen. Had you discovered any ticks at that point or no? Oh, I'd pulled off four or five ticks. Okay. But every time I go home in the summer, that's the case. Yeah. And I usually, or I shouldn't say usually, but a lot of people develop bullseye circles, so expanding concentric circles around the bite, and then they go get it checked out

because that's a symptom. I didn't have any of those rashes. And I found out later that in a percentage of the people who get bitten and contract Lyme, they don't show that. If you pull the tick off within the first, say, about, I think it's 16 to 24 hours of attaching to you, then you can typically prevent Lyme. But my joints got so swollen, my elbows, my knees, so painful, my memory started being affected, like formulating sentences and whatnot. So I might sound a little punch drunk in this episode. If you're wondering why, Lyme disease. So I'm on doxycycline and exploring a couple of other treatments for addressing it. But yeah, it's gnarly stuff, man. You got to catch it earlier. You can basically develop all the

appearances of, say, cerebral palsy, things like that. That's crazy. But if you catch it early, I mean, you'll be fine. Should be fine. Depends on who you ask. I've heard sometimes that flare-ups happen later in the future and things like that. There are a lot of diverging opinions about Lyme disease. And so some people talk about chronic Lyme disease. Some people think it exists. Other people think it doesn't exist. There's a lot of debate. So if any of you out there are experts in Lyme disease, any recommendations or thoughts, please let me know in the comments because I'll certainly be on meds by the time you see this. Crazy. Well, I hope you're going to be okay. I mean, that's scary stuff. It is scary. I mean, and I always thought it was a very minor thing because Eastern Long Island, as far as I

know, has the highest density of deer ticks on the face of the planet. And you can't really go walking outside in grass that's more than a few inches long without getting ticks on you. Then I started looking at the symptoms and the effects of Lyme disease if you don't catch it. And it's really bad. Yeah. Yeah. It can be a really debilitating disease. So I'm glad that I'm on doxycycline. And now, so you take these antibiotics. I hate taking antibiotics. And I'll make a statement that might surprise some of you. I would rather take the scary anabolic steroids like testosterone or something like that than very strong antibiotics. Because I feel like it's…

They're kind of, but my point being that people look at, say, misunderstood and over-sensationalized drugs like anabolics, say, which are kind of exaggerated to the point of like these, these are madness. Like back in the 60s with marijuana and stuff like that. Yeah, exactly, like the 50s and 60s where like if you smoke a joint, you're going to run through your house and hack off all of your relatives' heads. Right. Well, that was that movie you made me watch, Bigger, Faster, Stronger, Harder, whatever it's called.

Bigger, Faster, Stronger. Yeah, the other one's a... You can buy the cat's drug on the street. It was about all the myths about antibiotics. Fantastic documentary you guys should all check out. But antibiotics are prescribed in a very nonchalant way. You get them all the time, no matter what you have. And you just, the importance of the microbiome and your gut flora is so understated.

I really try to avoid antibiotics. So I'll be sort of seeding my gut. And by the way, the answer is not necessarily probiotics. This is something not many people know. But I'll be doing a bunch more on this. So if you want to post about that, let me know. It takes a lot of time. But if you're interested about how to properly seed your gut for optimal health, I'm doing a bunch of research on that. Speaking about seeding your

gut for optimal health, this is actually a good segue. Okay. This is really a random way to start the show, but I guess it works. There is like this gut project. Have you heard of the gut project? Is it called the gut project? It's something like that. It's gut project gut. You know what I'm talking about, babe? I ordered in the mail. So basically they send you like, my doctor told me about it because like I've had like mild to medium upset stomachs for a really long time. Yeah, you've had stomachs just forever. When we're traveling China, I'm chewing on Pepto-Bismol nonstop and like depends on what I'm eating. I've linked some of it to sadly sadly, beer consumption. And I think it might be tied to gluten in some way.

But anyway, my doctor turned me on to this project that is like this completely non-profit. And they give you all these little test tubes with like little tiny like Q-tips in it. And you send in like, it's pretty disgusting, like little samples of your shit. Yeah. And then they will do the full-on breakdown of all the bacteria. Is it just fecal samples, or you're like swiping your armpit and your mouth? You can do anything, armpit, mouth, wherever you want. And they will send you like the full, but they,

compare it to people that are healthy, people that have like IBS, people that have like all different types of stuff, and they give you the full-on breakdown. You log in, and it gives you all the stats about your bacteria versus other people's stomach bacteria. Are you sure it's for profit it might be for profit i don't know is it called you buy them no there's a company called you buy i'm also doing something very similar actually i have a bunch of kits at home anyway i'll put a link i'll get a link in the comments but you should check it out it's not expensive either it's like you know 300 bucks no i have a

bunch of kits at home from i guess a competitor called you buy them okay cool just based out here but the whole point being, you are effectively, we don't have to go too deep into this, but you are a collection of bacteria. I mean, there are more bacterial cells in your body than human cells. Kind of hard to believe, right? And people have attempted to eradicate bacteria,

viewing them as germs and causes of disease for ages, and approaching it in such a broad fashion is hugely deleterious to your health. And in fact, for those people out there, I don't remember the name of the article. You would like this too, Daria. There was an article in, I think it was the New York Times Magazine, about people who had not showered in weeks or even years. And instead of using soap or I think it's lauryl sulfate, other very strong detergents, they take ammonia-eating bacteria and spray it onto their skin as a way of sort of cleaning themselves and maintaining optimal bacterial health on the skin, which is your largest organ. So not just in the GI tract, but on the skin. Really good article that I'm in the process of

rereading because I'm going to be doing a lot with the microbi. Really good article that I'm in the process of rereading because I'm going to be doing a lot with the microbiome. And we'll link to that in the show notes as well. Yeah, I want to check that out. Yeah, it's really, really, and also a very well-written piece. It's pretty hilarious. That's awesome. Yeah, it's super, super fascinating stuff. And by the way, there are companies out there, big cosmetics companies that are patenting applications of, say, lactobacillus, which you find very commonly in probiotic supplements for topical applications, doesn't really work. I mean, as far as I know, that's for ingestion and application in the GI tract.

So where you apply a probiotic or prebiotic or anything like this makes a big, big difference. So don't believe the hype. Anyway, enough on that. So don't believe the hype. Anyway, so on that. Well, one more quick point. Um, speaking about my stupid stomach issues, um, I have been reading a book called grain brain. Have you read it yet? Or have you heard about it? I haven't. I'm guessing there's grain brain. There's wheat belly. Yeah. They're all in the same vein. I'd imagine they're pretty similar. Yeah. So, I mean, that's what got me to like, I actually, I didn't tell you this yet, but it's been about two weeks now I've been gluten-free. You just sent me a photograph today of your dog with a beer can balanced on its head.

That wasn't my dog. Oh, it was the toaster doppelganger. It was the Japanese dog I found on my Instagram feed. Okay. But I actually just got some gluten-free beer, some IPA. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to do it after this wine. But anyway, what's interesting is that I think that I had some gluten like a couple days ago. Yeah. And I woke up the next morning being like mentally foggy a little bit. And it describes some of that that's happening here. Anyway, it was just one particular. I'm going to go and try to do it for at least like 60 days.

They say until you really feel it is like a couple months. So we'll see what happens. We're going to come back to this in a second. So if you're interested in this kind of stuff, there is an article written on my blog. They say until you really feel it is like a couple months. We'll see what happens. We're going to come back to this in a second. So if you're interested in this kind of stuff, there is an article written on my blog. I'll link to it by Rob Wolf, which I headlined, How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream. But it relates to grain consumption, leaky gut syndrome, and a host of other associated issues or factors. It's a very interesting read.

If you're like, you know, gluten-free, gluten-less, what the fuck is gluten actually? And nine out of 10 people who are gluten-free can't answer that, check out the blog post. So you're going to go gluten-free for 60 days. Yeah. It's not that hard. It really isn't. So now speaking of things that are hard, I hate to bring this up so early, curious to see what kind of debate you think this is going to become. So you committed last last time we spoke, to go 30 days without alcohol. That's right. And you failed to complete that 30 days. And the wager was $1,000 to one's charity of choice. And we spoke on the phone

before I actually turned through in the towel. You remember that conversation? I remember texting, and I still have the text thread. You're going to try to pull some, Kevin. No, I'm not trying to pull some kevin no i'm not good you're channeling your spirit animal you remember what you said your spirit animal was a little worm the weasel no you said i think you were drunk when you brought it up you said that you said listen here's the deal i went through some really tough times it had been three weeks of no drinking i'm not saying i didn't break the rules.

I did. I had a glass of wine, and it was wonderful. A couple glasses of wine. But what I'm saying is that I went through some tough times. We got protested in Portland. We got protested. People that don't know. That's because you were raising historic landmarks.

Okay, I'm going to take 30 seconds and explain this to the people that are watching this. Basically what happened is my wife and I, we went up to Portland, Oregon. We fell in love with the town. It's a great city. Love the food scene. Love the kind of like, they have awesome cocktails out there. They've got hiking trails they got fishing they got everything that like i would like to eventually one day have a

place as a little retreat notice the second thing you mentioned is excellent cocktails continue so we went up there we found a place and we found a place that we thought we were going to remodel it was an older place older meaning over 100 years old and ultimately it turned out that the cost to remodel it was more or less on par with building something from scratch yeah so we proceeded to move forward and have the house taken down and build something new we went through that process the neighbors found out about they freaked out they had had the the easter egg hunt in the yard of the house for the last 20 years. It was a very beloved house to the neighborhood, but it was not historically significant. We took several contractors through, walked through.

And the thing about historical homes is you have to be able to point to something in the house. Like, oh, that's the crown molding or this banister is like historic in some way. The only thing they ever came up with, nothing with the house, except we found out the house had asbestos. The only thing that they came up with was that there was a prominent attorney, Portland attorney that had lived there at one point many, many years ago. This guy doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. He was big in Portland at some point, an attorney. We wanted to move forward and take the house down because it's old and the neighborhood loved it, but it wasn't historic. You had a tough couple weeks like they protested us they put banners out there there were people

crying in the streets it got like what there's like old people crying in the streets like neighbors and stuff at the end of the day i'm not an asshole my wife's not an asshole we sat there and we said you know we threw our hands up and we said you know what it's time to abandon ship and we sold the house back to one of the neighbors yeah and we went on and now you know well eventually at some point we'd like to find another place but i don't know when but anyway that was the story around that so all this shit is going down like there's a freaking like change.org protest i'm getting emails from it and like people are calling the reporters and like i'm like not drinking during this time and i'm calling tim and like i'm like not drinking during this time

and i'm calling tim up and i'm like tim please like just one drink it's been a long day and you're like no deal's a deal fucker like in the text i think that's fair and i'm just like and you're like you can break it we can talk about on the show and so my ass that's what we're doing right now is that you give me pro rata for the time served of that month, and let me pay the remainder to you. I'll give you a 10x or nothing if you go to the next 30 days without booze. No way. Now, what charity do you want it to go to?

I'm not giving it to you. I'm donating it to the charity. Why would I ask you to give it to me? I don't want you to give it to me, because then I'm going to have to pay taxes on it and to donate it to the charity. Why would I ask you to give it to me? I'll give you it. I don't want you to give it to me because then I'm going to have to pay taxes on it

and then give it to the charity anyway. I'm just saying we should give it to charity. If you're going to give it to

charity. I think you should give it to, don't say the Portland Historic Society. Kevin Rose, ladies and gentlemen.

No, he said that to me. He said that on the phone. I didn't say it on the phone. You keep on bringing up

these phantom phone calls. over text or something. The Portland Historic Preservation Society. You said you were going to do something like that. I think that's the proper thing to do. But in this case, just to prevent you

from binge drinking for the next 30 days since I know that's how you respond to stress. Don't want that to happen. DonorsChoose.org 1000Gs to DonorsChoose.org Whose name should I put it in? You don't make it out to an individual You can't say like in memory of

In memory of my lovely Portland house That's what you could put in the memo So DonorsChoose is just real quick, first pro tip So for those of you who have any stock that is appreciated,

if you're going to make charitable donations, in some cases, and I'm no tax attorney, but it makes sense to donate. I didn't realize this until very recently, appreciated stock. Why? Because if you take a thousand dollars that you've earned, you're going to have to pay income tax on that money. And then you give, say, that $1,000 to Cherry, well, it costs you then 30% plus the whatever. Yeah, 30% and all that. Now, on the other hand, if you have stock that's appreciated and you have $1,000 worth of that, you give the stock instead of cash to the nonprofit.

And then they can take the gains. And they take the full $1,000 in value. And you can write off that full amount? As opposed to the $700 that you would give them otherwise if you sold the stock and gave it. That's interesting. So if you're sitting on some Tesla stock or some crazy stock, whatever it is, and you're like, hey, I'm going to make my annual $1,000 gift to this company, then boom. That's sweet.

And you can go on almost. And they'll take it. And the embarrassing thing for me, I'm kind of flabbergasted. It took me so long to figure this out. But I would go to donation pages on DonorsChoose.org or Charity Water or any of these places, and they would have it very clearly indicated, if you want to donate stock, click here. I almost thought to myself, why would I ever want to donate stock? I never understood the rationale, and that's it. You get like 30% more to the charity

as opposed to paying it in tax dollars. So it makes a lot of sense. Anyway, yeah, DonorsChoose.org. Check it out. I've been an advisor for a long time. They're endorsed by people like Michelle Obama, Stephen Colbert, Oprah. It's a long list. So yeah, DonorsChoose, it basically provides funding. It allows you to fund projects in public schools in very high-need areas.

So if they need, say, a new blackboard, or they've never been able to take the kids on a field trip to the aquarium, and some of the kids want to be marine biologists, whatever it is, you can then allocate funds specifically to classrooms of your choice. And you can search by zip code. So I've donated money to, say, STEM, like science, technology, engineering, math projects in places that I've gone to school, places or like areas that I've gone to school where I grew up. And you get, I think you still get handwritten letters from the kids, like thank you letters.

It's amazing. It's the first nonprofit to be on the cover of Fast Company for their 50 most creative companies in the world issue. Awesome. It's awesome. Check it out. Sweet. So now, speaking of challenges some of the 10 days

into my uh my latest job now it seems ridiculous but i want to provide some context for the seemingly absurd so the challenge is called knob numb and it's uh it's called that very deliberately it was just a random name you came up with? Yeah, no, I thought long and hard about this name. Let's back up. You did a blog post about this, and you challenged your readers. And what was the challenge? So what I said, and I've said this

something in the last episode, is that going 30 days without alcohol and masturbating and porn is a close cousin, so I know Ixnan the porn as well had a dramatic impact on everything from blood values like free testosterone to sleep quality on and on and on there's a lot of testosterone if you can't use it well i didn't say sex wasn't allowed i said that masturbating wasn't allowed see that's stupid it's not stupid though here's the same thing it's not

the same no you're's just your hand. No, you're married, so you've, no offense, you've got kind of sex on demand, I assume. Now, as for single guys with broadband, they've got porn on demand, and it turns into a compulsive behavior. Why screw them over? They're having a hard time.

It's not a judgment call. What it is is I'm thinking of compulsive behaviors that over time can be very detrimental. And I think excessive porn viewing check out your your brain on porn check it out okay why not just say this why not just say no porn masturbate all you want because i think you need like you have you have like cash just like a like a web browser of all these ridiculous porn scenes in your head and i think you need like a good two to four weeks to clear that stuff out so that you're like actually attracted to normal women and not like crazy cyborg like silicone craziness so what if i go what if one went and like normal by the way i hired a masseuse that gave lotion snap?

Fine. You can have that. That's fine? You can have the dragon roll. I mean, legality aside, if you want to have the rub and tug, then it's fine. So why is that fine? It's still like porn in a way. There's more involved in doing that.

That's an edge case. I don't think a lot of people are going to do it. But look, what I'm trying to provide people with, and so just to give you guys an idea, so it's 30 days without no booze, no masturbating. You should say 30 days of sex too. It's not the same. It's not the same. I think sex is a healthy behavior.

I don't think excessive masturbating is a healthy behavior. Do people really excessively masturbate? I think you kind of just masturbate and you're kind of done. You don't really like, you're not hitting it three times a day. Oh, I think some people are. Really? Absolutely.

Is that your go-to? No, I don't have, I'm too lazy to do that. But we talk about porn, we talked about porn a lot in the last episode. So if you want more porn, including some of my

recommendations, check out the last episode. That was weird that you put your recommendations in the blog post. Oh, people loved it. No. Well, check this out.

It's your favorite porn. So, I mean, it's kind of weird, like, he was watching it and now I'm watching it. Yeah, I pulled it. That's just sad. No. Well, check this out. Your favorite porn. So, I mean, it's kind of weird. Like, he was watching it now. Yeah, I pulled it up. But it's a little creepy. But here's the thing. So one of the people

who's following... I typed it in and I pulled it up and I was like, I'm watching Tim's porn. This is like bullshit. Did you see? So somebody put

a Google Trends screenshot. All right, I'll just tell you. It's Momoko and Angelica with a J. Oh, I didn't watch it. And the Google Trends, it's likeoko and Angelica with a J and the Google trend. That's like, it's just like when you hit play, if that was a startup growth chart, they'd be, they'd be like 50 million. They're making like, where the fuck are we going with

this? Okay. So the challenge was to help people overcome obsessive behaviors and improve the quality of their lives and also their ability to develop new habits by creating a community on Lyft, which is a behavioral change app. And I was actually introduced to that by Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter, who incubated effectively this company. And if you go on Lyft, so lyft.do. I use it all the time. Almost 5,000 people are live doing this nom nom challenge.

Oh, boy. Women also. That's a sad thread. It's not a sad thread. It's fucking fascinating. Are they flirting with each other and shit? There's a little bit, but, I mean, I think probably half the people with female avatars are, like, sweaty palms, fat guys.

So, whatever. You know, when you're on the internet, nobody knows. But I think there are also quite a few women on there, but, you know, this is, I mean, masturbating is, I think, more of a guy dilemma in a lot of ways. The point being, about 5,000 people, and there are already these really fascinating patterns emerging. So very, very common in multiple different threads, extremely vivid dreams. Yeah. Well.

There's no release, dude. You're dreaming it. There's no release, dude. You're dreaming it. Nothing impresses Kevin Ross. There's a whole long list. Anyway, you can check it out. I highly recommend, even if you're not going to use Lyft for a knob-nob, check it out. There are all sorts of things.

Flossing is the only thing that got me to floss regularly, and it's very, very simple. That's that. The challenge is ongoing. If you want to join me, that's why I'm having tea instead of wine. But how's it going for you? You know, it's going well. I would say that I had a pretty tough day today. I'm dressed up because I went to a memorial service for a close friend, Seth Roberts.

Your will be sorely missed. And really one of the grandfathers of self-experimentation and certainly quantified self-movement of the last, let's say, 20 years. So people started drinking at about 1 p.m. today. And I really wanted to drink. I was like, God, what I wouldn't give for just a nice glass of wine. And I think that's when the challenge is most important. It's like, if I'm defaulting to alcohol to treat my stress, that's a pattern that I want to be able to interrupt. So I think that it's only in those moments that the challenge is a challenge. Yeah. I mean, that's the whole point. I went,

when I went there the three weeks, like there was certainly a lot of times where I was like, wow, it's been a long day. And I'm like, gosh, I'd love a, just a beer or something, a glass of something. You know, I just noticed, especially around here with social outings and whatnot, I remember just one day I was like, God, I feel kind of slow and my head hurts a little. And I looked back at my calendar and I was like, wow, I'm not drinking by myself, but I've been out to dinners or meetings five nights a week for like two months. And every single outing, I'm having two, three, four glasses of something. This is me.

I had a work meeting last night on a Saturday, and I went out without Daria, and I went out and had a couple glasses of wine, and they were heavy pours. Yeah. And then we met up for dinner, and it was at a sushi place, and it was like sake, had some of that. And then I just get home, and I'm like, I'm not hammered, but enough to where the next morning I woke up, I'm just like, God, that sucks. Not 100%.

Yeah. So I would just say this, guys. This isn't a puritanical thing. It's not to you so can people i'm sure mennonites i love drinking and also pretty fond of jerking off so this is a 30-day experiment and so i would just say can they join in now by the way join it now no it's not too late and i expect this thing will survive for much longer than 30 days so what do you give people a uh what's the reward uh i think it's uh kind of like no there there is if you join people? What's the reward? I think it's... Is there some kind of like gift? No, there is.

If you join right now, it's just going to be to join the community, which is very strong and extremely interesting on Lyft. For people who started at the beginning, which was August 1st, then we're offering, I think it's $1,500 to $2,000 to the three most helpful people who complete the challenge.

So they have to complete the 30 days, then they have to help other people in the community do the same thing. That's cool. The community support thing is huge. You need that. I could have used that when I was going through my 30 days. If someone was like, she started drinking after two weeks. She made it two weeks.

And props, because she didn't have to do that at all. And then after she caved and she's having a little wine or something, or she'd go out with her girlfriends and come back a little saucy, I'm like, hmm, I kind of want to drink right now. But anyway, let's move on. Move on. So congratulations. Good luck to you, sir.

Thanks. Blue balls. All right. Let's talk about meditation. Yeah. So meditation is something that I have always wanted to get into and if you've been a follower of my blog or have seen when i did have a blog back in the day you know that every single year for my like to-do list for the next year was to learn how to meditate or to get better at meditating headspace the app i think we've mentioned on here before we mentioned headspace on here before okay so there's an app called

headspace that is a guided meditation app that essentially you've used headspace or no i haven't i'm smirking because I feel a moral obligation to mention Calm as well as a competitor. Did you invest in Calm? I didn't invest in Calm but a bunch of my close friends have.

I know the founder of Calm. I know the founder who's a smart guy. But Headspace is the leader. So I haven't invested in either one of these companies but I will say that those are the two leaders, right?

Headspace is like number one. They have a big, huge community. They've been around for a lot longer. Calm also has a great app. They're both awesome. So Headspace is the one I kind of like started getting into because Lemire, who we all know, he's a big meditator, and he told me that he got hooked on Headspace.

So they have this thing called the Take 10, which is 10 days of 10 minutes of meditation per day, and it's completely guided. It was really easy to do because 10 minutes isn't a big commitment. I just sat down in my office and I shut the door and I put my headphones on and I hit play and I went through 10 minutes and I did that for 10 days. And I started doing more and more and more. And they graduate you to take 15, which is 15 minutes, then take 20.

I did all of those for 20 days. And so flash forward, like you don't even know this, but I've done 92 sessions and 25 hours of meditation so far. That's great. Which is awesome. And I will say that it is certainly helping me in some really interesting ways. Like there are moments in the day now where normally I would get stressed out or a little agitated. And I can finally use some of those principles and just kind of step back for a second and realize that the anger doesn't exist out here.

It's all in here. And I can just kind of just come to terms with that and let it go a little bit and sit with it a little bit and let it go, which is really interesting. The other thing is I'm now up to like 20 minutes a day of meditation and this only happens every once in a while like every like third one or something but like i'll get this moment where i forget that i'm meditating but i'm still doing the practice and following my breath in and out and i have this perfect presence where my mind just does not

think about anything i'm not really thinking about anything at all my mind is completely free it's the coolest internal feeling that you can feel without taking some type of substance right that i have ever come across yeah and it only mine only lasted i've only gotten these little windows of like 20 to 30 seconds and then my mind comes back online but i can see for the first time and it's been 92 sessions to get here i can see for the first time, and it's been 92 sessions to get here, I can see for the first time a little glimpse of like, whoa, that's what the pro meditators get like hours of. And that's cool. It's pretty awesome.

It's a big deal. I'm a huge proponent of meditation. And I wish there were a different label for it, quite frankly, because I think there's a lot of negative association or connotation with meditation. There's just too much historical use as it relates to hippies or particular methodology. That's the beautiful thing about this headspace. It's not tied to any religion at all. You can find a, there are secular ways, if that's important to you, to practice this, and you could view it as mindfulness practice or even just observational practice. And what I mean by that is I've been meditating for, I don't know, a year and a half or two consistently. How often?

Today was twice a day. Most days it's just once in the morning. How many minutes? I usually do it for 15 to 20. Awesome, dude. That's great. You must have seen some of the very similar results. Yeah, exactly the same. And what you become is is imagine if you're you are watching a movie of your thoughts projected onto a wall and when you first start meditating at some point you're like my god is that really my brain like all the time oh yeah it's just like yeah it's like a caged monkey on meth just like bouncing off the wall it's insane it's like a caged monkey on meth just bouncing off the wall. It's insane. It's totally nuts. You remember I sent this animated gif to Daria of this cat trying to fight an iguana?

You remember? A spastic kitten. He's the weirdest guy to text with. You send animated gifs all the time. I was like, this is how i feel when i meditate and uh the uh but what you you start to observe you start to be able to observe those thoughts and not just feel the thoughts and then when you get angry you're like oh that's interesting like kevin is getting angry right that's not just such a reason yeah and that separation of the actor and the

observer is really fascinating really It's really cool. Because you can realize that that's really not you. That's just like this emotional little thing's firing that like hormones and all the other kinds of shit like causing this outburst. That's really not your core. That's not who you are. There's also some great guided meditations on the website of Sam Harris, samharris.org. I also did two podcasts with Sam. Sam's a PhD in neuroscience, is a very experienced meditator. Oh, that's okay. Adam's getting to work with him, right? Oh, I hope so. Okay. Yeah. Sam is brilliant. So Sam and I did two podcasts. One

is called Drugs and the Meaning of Life, which is an essay read by Sam. I highly recommend it. And the other was a larger exploration and discussion of meditation, imaging in neuroscience, religion, all sorts of things. Sam Harris.org has a bunch of guided meditations as well. I love that we do these things. Honestly, I have notes here of things that I'm going to go check it out. I always pick up a little tidbit. No, it's great. Any good books you've read recently?

I mean, other than Grain Brain, and then I'm starting to get into Antifragile. Antifragile is a great book. I get biased because I know Nassim pretty well. I've spent a decent amount of time with him. And I fell in love with The Black Swan. I thought that was a spectacular book. Fool by Randomness, also very good. Fool by Randomness also very good.

Fool by Randomness, I just like, man, I listened to it, and I got it. The problem I have with his books is I listen to them, and the first 10 minutes, I'm sold. Not the first 10 minutes, but the first hour of the audiobook. I'm sold. I'm like, great, I'm sold. And then he just keeps going on and on and on. I'm like, where

does this end? Where I find, I'll play devil's advocate, because I definitely know that type of book but i didn't get that feeling from from black swan nor anti-fragile with anti-fragile is a bigger book i'm talking about fool by randomness yeah okay all right so yeah so maybe that's the case but black swan was introduced to me by matt mullenweg so the lead developer of wordpress now i guess ce of Automatic, and really, really had a huge impact. Anti-fragile is a big book, and the gems are spread throughout. So you have to kind of pick and choose, absorb what is useful. But I thought the concept of, say, fragile, robust,

and then anti-fragile being the real opposite of fragile was being very, very interesting. So you have, say, fragile people who care about the minority who dislike their work, like politicians. Then you have, say, anti-fragile, who would be artists who care more about the minority who like their work. So it's sort of how you can actually become stronger in the face of chaos or adversity.

Not just be resilient, but benefit from it and grow stronger. That's a fascinating book. I have that one at home marked up really significantly. I read a book that was recommended to me by James Altucher called Jesus's Son. And this book, Jesus's Son, is not religious. It is a collection of short stories. I'm blanking on the author's name, but it is some of the most beautiful prose I've ever read. It's fiction. Does it have anything to do with Jesus? No. How do you know it's not? Jesus is his son. Maybe it's Jesus' son. Could be. Good point. But the stories are so brutal. I mean, they're just,

they're really, really brutal stories. But the prose is so beautiful that it makes it absorbable. And it was recommended to me by a number of people I really respect as readers and writers. And I just flew through this book. I didn't expect it. But that's one. If you're looking for something to read that is fiction that you can probably digest in a day or two, that's a great read as well. Sweet. So let's hop on to some other stuff, yeah?

Yeah, yeah. All right, so I want to show you an app called Sup. Okay. It's a new app that's, you know, I don't have any affiliation with this app. I just saw it for the first time yesterday. I just want to show it to you because I think it's pretty funny

that it's just a random app. So I just sent a request to Daria for a sup and she's going to receive it here in a second um i like apps that are just pushing the boundaries so look it says connecting to daria right now and we can shoot b-roll this afterwards yeah we'll shoot some stuff and then what happens is you get a live connection with your friend okay watch this it's about to begin and then now she's shooting us live yeah and then i can tell her which way to turn the camera oh that's cool and then i'm extending the time by hitting the little heart here i'm like turn it this way turn it this way turn it this way and actually you know what i want to see i want to

see what's up on the up on the ceiling there and then she'll note it. And it says on her screen, turn. Isn't that awesome? That's really cool. I'll turn over here. My buddy Danny was at a concert the other day. And so he was like, give me a selfie. I hit that button. And then she can do a little selfie here.

Isn't that pretty sweet? That's cool. I like that. So this is just a fun little thing that, there she is. Isn't that amazing? That's great. That's cool. I like that. So this is just a fun little thing that, there she is. Isn't that amazing? That's great. That's cool. I like that.

So it's just like, you know, we don't talk about, well, I guess we do talk about apps every once in a while. SUP is just like a fun way that if you have a friend out doing something cool, my buddy Danny was at Outside Lands the other day, and he was watching a concert, and I knew he had backstreet passes, so I was I hit him up and then like he was live streaming it to me and I could just get

a little window into his life and so it just there's no audio associated with it so you don't have to worry about any of that stuff that's fun

I like it when I meet an entrepreneur or I see a startup that is not I mean in my line of work and on the investing side you just see a lot of the same old stuff or a slight little variation or something different you see a lot side you just see a lot of the same old stuff yeah or a slight

little variation or something different you see a lot of crap you see a lot of crap i mean you're in the same world yeah and so this was like it was it was new and unique and fun and i just thought like i don't know that this is going to be a big business i don't know it's really going to take off but you know what hats off to them for trying something different you know and it's good it's kind of a fun little thing so just want to give plug. Cool. Do you think we're in a tech bubble? I need you to chime in on this. There's certainly more capital available now for startups in the Bay Area, the Silicon Valley area, than I've ever seen. It's easier to get funded than ever before.

You know, what do you consider to be a bubble? Like, I mean. What would you consider a bubble so what i think is that every time another tech company ipos whether it's a twitter or gopro or you name it you have to imagine that these companies are you know 500 to a thousand people or more and you instantly create you know several hundred millionaires or 100 millionaires or whatever it may be and those are like an angel gets their wings they instantly become like angel investors right like a lot of people in tech are like an angel gets their wings. They instantly become like angel investors, right? Like a lot of people in tech are like,

hey, I get tech. I worked at an awesome startup. I made some money. Now I want to go invest in other things. There are thousands of new angel investors in the last two years. You jump back to 2006 when I first started really seriously angel investing

and there was just, you know, not a handful of us, but a hundred of us, you know, and now there's like thousands. So those people have to go through the process of losing their money. Yeah. Not completely, but like, you know, they'll play some bad bets or some people realize that like, you know, investing is not just, it's not for them. They're not good at picking companies or whatever it may be. And then those investors will fade away and say, screw it. I'm sticking with my S&P 500 and my wealth front and I'm happy.

At the same time, new companies are IPO-ing and new investors are being born. And so there's this reinforcing bubble that's continuing on. But it's not hurting anyone. It's not like back in 2000 when companies would IPO and you have my mom and dad putting their life savings into a tech company and they lose all their money. That's not happening. So who cares if there's a bubble?

It's not hurting the average consumer. So it's some wealthy tech people losing their money. The stats right now are about 2 out of every 10 companies actually make it. And so my advice for would-be new angel investors, because I see a lot of people that have

made some money and they're like, hey, how do I get started in this world, is that don't just invest in one or two companies. But if you're really going to be serious about this, go in and do those 10 to 15 to 20 companies so that you have an entire portfolio. So you're spreading your risk out across several companies rather than just concentrating on just two or three. So I think that certainly valuations are higher than I've seen them in a long time, and there's more investors than I've seen in a long time. So you could consider that a bubble, but one that when it bursts, no one really gets hurt. Depends on if it's constrained to the private markets. That's true.

And the JOBS Act is changing some of that stuff, so that could bleed into the average investor, but I don't know what sort of personal improvement projects you're working on these days besides the meditation uh i've been doing lumosity a lot which i actually like i think it's making me a little bit sharper yeah you know as you get into your later 30s like i am now like certain things like i'm sure you've noticed it as well well i'm like i feel like i'm 80 because i have lyme disease right now i know that which is horrible. But you know what I'm talking about.

In general, before all that, it was just little things. Other than that, personal improvement projects at the gym. Actually, the gluten-free thing has done wonders for my beer gut, which has gone down. Are you doing more than benching? Are you doing back exercises? Why? I'm just kidding. Why are you saying back exercises?

You think I just go to the gym and just bench? I don't know. It seems like you bench press a lot. You have very, very manly chesticles. Dude, I've got some good arms, too. You're just jealous because my arms are bigger than yours now. Oh, here we go. Here we go.

He said testicles. You said testicles? No, I said chesticles. Oh, chesticles. I thought you meant testicles. You might have very nice testicles as well. I haven't had a chance to, you know. One of the things I do do that actually I would recommend to anyone out there that has really trimmed me up,

I've tried a bunch of stuff. Corsets? No. Okay. Kind of, actually. Kind of. Here, I'll explain. Manset.

I'll explain. How are you not drunk you're actually you're drunk so here's get lung disease you're high all day so here's here's here's the thing i've been searching for a long time to find a way to like get some cardio in and make it fun you know like cardio is like it takes a lot of time it's kind of paying the ass blah blah you can do high intensity interval training that's fine but here's the deal i got a treadmill at home i invested in treadmill got one and i have my ipad with me so i can do miscellaneous ipad stuff the problem is you go too fast on the treadmill and you're bouncing all over the place you get seasick and like you're like i'm done right so what i did is i bought a weight vest And I found an article on the internet that shows that all of the new, you know the new Avengers movie coming out, like the new X-Men and all that stuff.

They all, all the trainers there made them wear 20 pound weight vests when they were around everywhere they went. Like prior, like three months prior to the movie or whatever, right? This is a lot more tiring than you might think. Yeah. Yeah, it drains real quick. It's ridiculous. So what I do is I set my incline to 10 on the treadmill the speed to two miles an hour so it's a nice slow walk put the 20 pound weight vest on and then flip open my ipad mini and i play like kingdom rush which is a great like game and a few other games and i'll be sitting there like totally like in my game.

I look up and it's 45 minutes in, I go 60 minutes. I am drenched. I mean, absolutely. Like I'm having to like move my iPad away because sweat is falling off my face. And then I come in the house and I shower and it wasn't like I even worked out. It was like, I just played games for an hour and it's awesome. And the fat just falls off. Dude, you know, you should do is get an Oculus Rift and like play some karate game. So you you can do it on the treadmill while you're walking. That's a fad. Oculus Rift is dead. What?

Really? Do you believe that? I think VR is just dead. A lot of the big gaming producers are building out games that are dependent on VR, or at least Oculus Rift. And they were on the Wii with the freaking thing that you moved around. Really? See, I think once...

I'm sure the hardcore gamers are going to love it. Somebody was telling me the other day or like a few weeks ago, they're like, you don't understand football, man. You're going to be like putting the thing on. You'll be like in the helmet. It'll be crazy. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to go to a Super Bowl party and I'm going to walk in and there's going to be 30 people

with oculuses on their heads. I don't think that's... I think that the football use case and all of that is minor compared to the potential for a Second Life like utopia. Well, I'm really excited about Second Life. I told you

about Hi-Fi, right? Hi-Fidelity? Nah. Well, I've heard about it. You didn't tell me about it, though. Okay. Tell me more. Oh, it's the same guy that created... Philip? Yeah, Philip Rosedale, the guy that created Second Life. He's creating a new virtual world. I think that's a big deal. Have you read Snow Crash by Neil Stevenson?

I think it's going to be like that. I think that you'll have people in less than ideal circumstances all the way up to top of the food chain who are going to treat this, potentially, you know, this secondary world

with highly developed technology like Oculus Rift, it'll become the time-intensive equivalent of what people are doing with, say, World of Warcraft. You know, they're people who spend like 20 to 50 hours a week. No, I get it. You look at, say, you know, the, what the fuck is it, the Kardashian app that is pulling in, you know, pulling in $100 to $200 million in revenue, which is just like a fantasy world.

I think it's just called famous, right? Where you pay money to try to become famous, like get signed with an agent, do different commercials and advertisements. But imagine if you could do that from POV. i don't know man you should do that for your like make it call it call it like tim tim like an amp and you have to like go work out at the gym and like eat beans and protein that sounds really that sounds like that would be amazing though you can like walk through that sounds like a gripping game it's like do you want two more dollars for another spoonful of lentils it's like it's like it's like do you want two more dollars for another spoonful of lentils? It's like,

do you want antibiotics or anabolic steroids? What would Tim choose? Steroids. Contracted Lyme disease.

Time out for five hours. Or you can buy doxycycline for five Tim dollars. For Tim Tim points.

You're like, I don't think the Tim Tim bucks. Oh, God. Dude, I will be a whale on your game and spend a ton of money if you make that game that would be amazing i'm like i just bought 10 10 10 bucks 10 bucks 10 bucks oh jesus all right so let's uh move on yeah um so i showed you sop do you your turn uh well you know this is not something I want to spend a lot of time on,

but I was more nervous than I've been in ages about a week ago when I did my first email to this list that I've been accumulating since 2007. So when I made my first homepage and kind of sketched it out, included an email capture because that's what everybody told me I should do. And then I promptly forgot about the whole thing and didn't want to email people because I didn't want to get emailed myself, yada, yada, yada. And then went back and looked at it not too long ago and saw that I had between 200,000 and 300,000 email addresses, somewhere thereabouts. And so really got in touch with all the experts, sort of re-engaged with A. Weber, and did my first mailing out to folks because I feel like with blogs, right, blogs are considered very old-fashioned in a lot of ways, right? In the world of new social media apps and

so on, blogs are considered kind of old-fashioned. But I find that I do my best thinking in longer form on the blog. And I've struggled with how to get that out because it's so noisy. And let's say I put out a post on Facebook. Because Facebook wants you to, they'll throttle you back because they want you to boost it and pay to promote it to your audience. So you only hit like 10 to 15% of your audience. And then Twitter, Twitter's amazing, but it's become so popular. And I think actually advertising, and I'm testing some advertising on Twitter right now, can be very effective.

But if you're just using your follower base, if you put out a tweet and most people are following a few hundred people, it's like throwing an orange golf ball into a roaring rapid. I mean, it's like that stuff gets pushed down so quickly. You're probably also only hitting a very small percentage. Why orange? Probably a white one. Well, if it's white, you wouldn't see it at all. Right.

But orange, you would see a little bit? Yeah, that's my sort of metaphorical assumption. Just checking. It could be if you prefer bright blue, you could use bright blue. It's funny that sort of I've gone full circle, and it looks like I'll be focusing a lot on email and the blog, where I can actually get now instead of say 10% of my audience or 5% of my audience seeing a blog post, get 50% of my audience

potentially seeing a blog post. And I've already seen such a massive uptick in comments, in sharing, in everything. It's been really eye-opening. So what does the next three years look like for you? Because you've done so much, for you? Because you've done so much. Well, hold on. You've done so much crazy stuff over the years. You've got this great audience of people that obviously want to learn how to work their, create a better lifestyle for themselves, how to get in shape, how to cook better. Like you've done all these awesome things. Like where, what's next? Like what's the, are you doing another big thing or are you going to just focus on the core that you already have or? haven't decided you know there are a few things

that i'd really like to do i have been working on my first screenplay and that's been really fun for me to do uh uh people have approached me over the years about doing something with an adaptation of the four-hour work week and a lot of the backstory is not in there i mean the wild adventures and misadventures and craziness from that year and a half of traveling the world is is not really out there published and uh so i've been playing around it would be a comedy be kind of like a fight club meets dodgeball something like that it'd be like the brad pitt throwing balls around yeah, we can, we could go there. Uh, or like Ben Stiller as, as my arch nemesis in the world of tango. Ben, if you're listening, but, uh, I've been having a lot of fun with screenplays and I've been reading a lot of

screenplays, which are like novels that take an hour and a half to read. It's awesome. Like reading screenplays is super fun. I recommend The King's Speech. I recommend Casablanca if you want to go super classic. My favorite of all time, probably The Princess Bride. That is so good. William Golden is just a genius. Fight Club's great.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is pretty good. But if I'm going to do a next big project, I think it would look something like a feature film. Do you think your audiobook stuff will continue to be a big thing? I'm really enjoying the Tim Ferriss Book Club stuff and been acquiring audiobooks. The next book that's coming out. I'm really excited. I've told you this on multiple episodes, but I think that's the coolest thing you're working on right now.

Really? I mean, it's cool. It's awesome. You're revitalizing all these old books. I'm super excited. I can't name the next book yet, but this is going to be the first book. What is the first letter? W.

Are you serious? Yep. Oh, interesting. Let's figure that out. But this is the first book. People are going to slowly, when they look back at the book club, if it works out as I'm hoping, when they look at, say, there are about four or five books right now, I love all of them. And you can just go to 4hourworkweek, all spelled out,.com slash books.

So 4hourworkweek.com forward slash books to see all of them. But so far, it's just been audiobooks. The next book, I actually have the audio and the e-book rights. I've been figuring out so much with these various launches that I think there will be a point where I'm basically, I would like to take the digital and the audio, blow that out of the water. I mean, just like load it into this cannon

and shoot it into outer space as far as like Amazon sales and so on and awareness and PR are concerned. What I'd like to do is potentially partner with traditional publishers to have them handle the print edition and retail distribution. Astonishingly to me. Are you a complete publisher at that point? Well, I would be a publisher.

But I wouldn't be a complete publisher because I don't want to deal with the prints, not my area of expertise. Right. You're outsourcing that to them, but why do you need to outsource it? Why not just have it printed on the side? Well, I guess they have all the distribution stuff. I'd like them to, yeah, because they have sales departments and relationships that they can capitalize on for the retail distribution. I think that's valuable.

Sure. Especially if, for instance, imagine this. I become a talent scout, and I find people who have never published books but who have amazing writing capabilities. And I kind of coach them through the process. And this wouldn't be like, it's not my main financial thing. It's actually a huge time investment for not very much financial return. But I'm so passionate about the idea that, and this might seem like a ridiculous comparison, but the way that, say, Eminem discovered, and I believe it was Eminem and

Dr. Dre, who discovered 50 Cent? I think it was just Dre. Well, Dre discovered Eminem, then Eminem discovered 50 Cent, and I think, who discovered Rihanna? Was that also Eminem? I have no idea. Anyway, somebody will correct me. But the idea that you could be like, that's talent, but they're going to get chewed up

by the system, and they're going to make too many mistakes that could be fatal, great. Here are the people you need, here's the toolkit you need and then like shoot them off into outer space the idea of being able to do that that's awesome is really exciting i want you to do a romance novel you want me to write a romance novel i'm just i think i think you got it in you how about a bromance novel i can just write about us that's right whatever just just make up a fake name for me and i'll be all good um what about you know let me tell you one thing because uh you know i know we've talked a lot about sort of next chapters and what are we going to do and things like that i'll talk about my next

chapter yeah i want you to so one one thing that i realized i had a really profound sort of uh retreat into the wilderness recently. That sounds so weird. But I spent a lot of time in nature with a couple of very close friends. What were you doing out there? That sounds really weird. I was experimenting with medicinal plants. Let's call it that.

I wasn't there for the record. He was not there. I wanted to go, but I was scared. It was a good decision you didn't go. Yeah. You know how weak I am. Fragile. Not weak.

You're not yet anti-fragile in that department. Can you grab me a beer, babe? Babe, can you please grab me water? Thank you. My wife, babe. She's hot. She is hot. What I was going to say is...

So is your girlfriend, so that's fine. Yes, that's true. So I was really having say is so is your girlfriend so that's fine yes that's true so the I was really having this kind of existential crisis trying to decide what my next project

was going to be and I love the tech investing but honestly there's so much happening right now I find it kind of overwhelming sure I mean just so many emails

we've talked about that so many times it's so overwhelming it's extremely overwhelming and it's an enviable problem to have of course but it's still

a very significant source of anxiety, I think. Because you want to be responsive, you want to be helpful, but there are so many... The barriers to entry with tech startups are so low, you can be in the middle of a tsunami really quickly. Thanks, love. So I was debating all this stuff and one of my friends... No, thank you. Okay, sure. So what my friend said to me, he said, you know, he's also actually involved with tech. And he said, I really owe you a debt of gratitude.

I won't name you by name in case you don't want to be named in that context. But he said, there are a lot of venture capitalists out there. There are a lot of investors. And if you don't invest in a company that's really promising, somebody else will just take your place. There's no shortage of capital. The good companies will get funded no matter what. And he said, but, he saw me at an event

where I had multiple people in line come up to me crying because they'd lost 100 plus pounds and had these dramatic changes. You're never going to have that impact investing in companies. You're never going to have that impact investing in companies. You're replaceable as a VC. And he's like, you should stick with your writing.

Keep writing. And that had a really huge impact on me. And that's part of the reason why I've reshifted and I'm focusing a lot on the last few blog posts I've put a ton of time into. And I'm really happy with the response. That's awesome, dude. I'm glad to see that because I love your content too and I think that you're awesome at

doing that stuff and more of that is better for the earth. I'm enjoying it. But I'm sure you, we don't have to dig too deep with this, but it's very seductive to focus on the things that are not bad. You don't dislike them that provide the highest financial return. Sure. And that's generally not creating content, but that's not the only return. That's not the only ROI you can have for investing your time. Certainly. So that's been a big one. But enough about me. Tell me your next chapter. What's going on? I mean, there's nothing new to talk about today other than the fact that I've been really enjoying the whole creative process side of it again.

Like, I've gotten involved in creating some new applications. And so I've got a buddy of mine, Mark Himian, who I worked with briefly at Dig. Daniel Berko was my main designer there for many, many years. And then Mark was hired to work with us a little bit later. And he's a really good product guy and really good, just awesome designer, both mobile and web and all over the place. And also actually a pretty good artist. That's a cool combo.

Yeah. It's like just really talented up and down. So been prototyping some stuff on the weekends, just like sitting out and like building some new apps, both on the desktop and on mobile. I have three or four ideas right now that I've just kind of been sitting on and starting to flesh out a little bit. And it's weird because I just feel really – I mean, Daria, I'll tell you, I've just been working. Not working vetting companies and going and having coffee working because that's like what I do every week. But like this is like me in my office just like, you know, on a whiteboard and having Mark come over and we're like brainstorming ideas and going through mock-ups and like trying out different flows and talking about how things come together and working with developers. And it's just like been fun. To get those creative juices going again and starting something new.

It's just like me with my writing. You're creating something. You're creating something. You're creating something from nothing. And it feels really good. As opposed to just filtering. It's not that you can't be helpful, but there's something viscerally rewarding about taking something in here

that doesn't exist and creating something tangible, whether that's digital or physical, that people can interact with. I mean, it's so gratifying. And I remember talking to you on the phone not too long ago, and I was like, you sound a lot more excited than you sounded in a while. Well, it's crazy because there's two independent moments

that got me pretty excited to get back into this. One was I was at Blue Bottle Coffee, having some coffee, meeting with a founder, and this kid just grabbed me randomly, like I'm sure fans do with you every once in a while. And it was like, awesome. Like, what are you working on? He's like, oh, I got this startup I bought. I used to love Dignation. I used to love Dig. And I was like, oh, thanks. Appreciate it. And he's like, when's your next startup? And I'm like, oh, dude, I'm a full-time VC. And it's like I had just shot the kid's dog. His dropped down he's like and he looked at me and

he's like you're not like you're gonna start something new like he was like expecting me to create the next thing and i was like you know it didn't hit me right away i was like oh i'm sorry and i like i had to run so i took off and then later i was like wow that guy it was clear to me that like he really enjoyed something that I had created in the past, as I'm sure you get with your readers and stuff. It was like, wow, I should keep doing that. Why not? That's what I love the most.

The other piece, that was one story. The other one was I had gotten to know, luckily, Tony Fadell quite well. He was the original guy that created the iPod, created Nest later on. You probably saw my Foundation interview with him, foundation.kr, if you haven't seen those videos yet, go to that website. A lot of great entrepreneurs there. I sat down with him and he created Nest, he sold it to Google. And so I see him a lot more because he's always around at Google. And we were out and like having a drink and I was like, you know, gosh, like what keeps you going? Because you going? Because I won't say what his net worth is, but it's a lot. I would imagine he's, no, I don't know.

But I mean, the sale was public about what he sold to Google for and stuff like this. So I imagine he's got a billion dollars, right? And I'm like, what keeps you going? What drives you to do all the stuff that you do and he's just like it was about the passion around creativity and wanting to just like invent and create and be mixed in with the people that are doing amazing things and like i was listening to his story and you know he has kids and a wife and he's traveling a lot and it was just like the dude is juggling 10x what i am yeah and he's just doing it with ease you know and he's just like a badass like just like can execute like none other what's

his secret sauce is it his secret sauce is just like having understanding that and this is my take on it this isn't what he said to me but like and kind of distilling down everything that we talked about it's just that like he understands that I feel that more or less that, you know, you only have so, you never know what's going to happen to you, right? We talked about this. You went to your friend's memorial today. Yeah. He was just as a side note. Yeah. Well, we talked about this. I mean, he was, he displayed no aberrant, unusual symptoms of any type. I was going out hiking with a close friend. Met up with friends and family in the days preceding it. Totally fine.

And just, they're still doing a full sort of coroner's investigation and whatnot. But just dropped it. And similarly, like one of my brother's best friend's girlfriends. I mean, this is a woman in her 20s, perfectly healthy from all outward indications, in an office, has an aneurysm, drops dead. Yeah. So the lead engineer for Boosted Boards,

those automatic skateboards that you may have saw on Kickstarter that you can control with your hand, which I got a prototype of and was using a couple weeks ago, two weeks ago, was in San Francisco on a music board going like this, just controlling it, drops dead, brain aneurysm. So you never know, guys. Here's the whole thing.

At the end of the day, I was sitting there listening to that, and I'm like, you know, you and I have both been very blessed, and we've done some awesome stuff and gotten rewarded for it. And so I can kind of fade off in the future and be this little investor and live my little life and go down and drink my coffee with my founders and come back home and drink my glass of wine and go to bed and call that a day. Or I can step back up to the plate and try some crazy shit again and like to

see where it takes me. And I was like, you know what, why don't I just go do some crazy stuff, you know? So I'm still a full time investor at Google Ventures and doing all that stuff. But like, you know, there's nothing preventing me from hacking on stuff on the side and doing little things.

So I'm having fun doing it. I'm all for it, man. I think you should keep it up. So anyway, that is that. Oh, last thing I want to talk about. Do you have any more or is it you good? No, I'm good, man. The last thing, we always talk about little hobbies

and stuff like that. One of the things that, I don't know if we talk about little hobbies and stuff like that one of the things that i don't know we talk about hobbies we always talk about little hobbies one of the things in the last like two or three months is a friend of mine a couple friends of mine have gotten me excited about wrist watches and at first you think wrist watches and you think like oh boy like why like we have time on our phones like what do we need why do you ever want a watch and you think like oh boy like why like we have time on our phones like why do we need why do you ever want a watch on your wrist that's my question and um precisely my question my buddy uh i mean you know you know kevin sistrum and i don't know if he would kill

me for calling out but whatever uh well i mean he could watch this kevin you know i've had a couple drinks so basically kev's a good guy and and he was saying that the only jewelry we have is men. Women have earrings, they have necklaces, stuff like that. The only thing we have, I have t-shirts, is a watch. It's like a nice timepiece, right? You could get some earrings. I could get some earrings. And so I wasn't into watches at all.

My dad passed away a few years ago, and he left me two watches. My dad was by no means a wealthy man he was like i would consider him we were very poor for many years and then eventually he broke into the middle class like standard middle class and he bought a rolex watch two of them actually one a little bit older and one new and that was like his prized possessions in fact the second one that he bought he never wore ever he was like i'm saving this. He never put it on. He put it on like twice, but it's like flawless. So anyway, I inherited that stuff. And I was like, wow, this is kind of cool. It's like my dad's stuff. So that was kind of attractive. And then I started learning more about the fact that there's still

innovation happening in these timepieces. And there's like these artisan like craftsmen that still work in this field this dying field making these amazing new innovations of mechanical like not not digital but like straight up traditional hand-wound watches and so i started getting into it i actually traveled out to germany with with daria we went out to um this this place called uh lange and and sons which is like this like this awesome little boutique. They only make 5,000 or so watches per year, and we got to meet them. And I hadn't bought a really crazy watch, and I met this team and walked through this whole compound in Germany, and it was a few hundred people, and they hand-polished every little part. They care so much about how these watches go together.

A little tiny town in the middle of nowhere. You fly into Dresden, they drive about an hour and a half away. And they assemble them, check the time, make sure, use all these fancy gauges, disassemble them, and then clean them again and then reassemble them. And they only make about $100 per year per type of watch. And so I was like, wow, this is really cool.

And on top of that, you realize when you invest in something like this, especially like something that's like not so much a Rolex where they make a million a year, they make a million Rolexes a year, but something really small and boutique-y, they actually go up in value. So it's like, you know, in your head you say, okay, well, I'd normally put this much into my 401k per year. I'm going to carve out a little bit. Hold on. I know it's like, you know, in your head, you say, okay, well, I'd normally put this much into my 401k per year. I'm going to carve out a little bit. Hold on. I know it's creepy.

Don't put your 401k money into time pieces. Please. Listen, that's true. But what I'm saying is like, you know, I started following some of the blogs. One in particular, Hodinkee, which you should check out if you're at all curious about this. It's probably the best watch blog. Hodinkee? Yeah. How do you spell it? H-O-D-I-n-k-e-e.com i knew it was gonna be some twist okay um too easy but

but anyway check it out it's a really great blog and and you start to learn a lot about what goes into all these things and some of them can track the moon phases and do really crazy stuff so anyway this is one that i picked up here about three weeks ago. It just came out. It's actually made by Swatch of all brands. This here, this watch here is called the System 51. And it's because it has 51 parts, which is like it's an automatic watch, meaning it's self-winding when you wear it. But 51 parts, and it's all machine-assembled. It's the first fully automatic meaning self-winding machine assembled watch it has like 17 new patents it's very collectible it's 150 bucks

you can buy it now 150 bucks i mean that's pretty awesome it's not crazy and uh it's just like a pretty cool watch and it winds itself when you wear it and it has a lot of horological significance and that is like that's what they call people that are into time keeping horologist i laugh all you want but anyway you were waiting for me to laugh i'm just waiting for you to continue anyway it's um so i started kind of getting into like the whole like the scene of like learning more about it and just like you know starting to appreciate this stuff and it's funny you meet other people and they'll tell you something very unique about their little time piece and if you're into engineering and you like that side of things which like i think all

geeks do you can understand what goes into the manufacturing and why it's pretty awesome so anyway so i might actually get i haven't had a watch in years i might actually get a watch not because i'm going to collect but because i like to take sort of a technology sabbath on saturdays i go i try to go screenless on saturdays so no no phone pick up one of these guys so it'd be but it's kind of a pain in the ass to keep track of time so it'd be nice to have just some lightweight watch i mean this is this is one of those things where i think that in the next not five or ten but maybe 20 years like this thing will probably be five ten times the value of what it is today yeah but i mean it's 150 but it's it's a freaking cool watch and this is a very significant watch

like and the whole scene was blowing up about how crazy this watch is for the engineering that's gone into it yeah but um what's crazy about swatch that you don't know and this is like a little geeky and I promise we can stop the show, but like Swatch owns like almost all of the shit out there. They do all the internals for like almost all the major brands and like they own, they're a huge company.

Forget the retail stores and the little plastic cheap watches. They have all the engineering. Consider them like the Intel inside of like all of their watches's kind of cool oh yeah so like you go like swiss where are they based yeah so you go and like buy like i'm not cartier's like like or like a high-end designer watch like a harry winston or cartier or something like that like some of those are like this brand called like edda like the patek where do you put patek philippe there so patek philippe and and um and longe are tied in my mind for neck and neck for the number one brand in the world like

they're they're both amazing do they use the intel inside do they use it they don't use any technology so those are all considered original movements where they have their own in-house manufacturing and their own in-house engineers that actually make all the the internal movements we actually met the head guy head engineer at lange and he he like he had dinner with us it was amazing this guy all he does is build like these little tiny i mean they're so small like the number of components that go in here that is rather it's just fascinating it's a super old school thing but for me like you know you gotta understand like i'm in i'm doing tech all 24-7. That's all I do.

To break away from that and actually have a conversation with someone that's brilliant in a non-internet way is so nice. That's so much fun. Yeah, totally. That's part of what was so fun about being out on the East Coast for a bit is you just have more diversity of interests, quite frankly, and also industry. Like an old, old wooden ship? Diversity? Do you know diversity? I have no idea what you're talking about.

Have you ever seen Anchorman? No. What the fuck? You have never seen Anchorman? I haven't seen it. Are you kidding me? What readers follow me don't follow him? What the hell?

All right, wait, I'm going to trade. No, I haven't seen Anchorman. Have you seen Step Brothers? Yes. Okay. Have you seen Step Brothers? Yes. Okay. Have you seen King of Kong? Is that one of your porns? No.

You've seen it, right? King of Kong. Oh, I have. I have. The arcade guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's about the rivalry for the Donkey Kong world record. And if you're going to see, just do that indie documentary.

Actually, you know what? I'm curious. Graham, any top documentary picks? Graham, let's get your light on. King of Kong is amazing. Men on Wire is also incredible. Yeah. I'm a big fan of King of Kong.

But I actually just watched one today about people that live in tiny houses. Oh, cool. I like that. Tiny houses. Tiny house. Tiny house. It's about people who live that tiny houses tiny house tiny house about people who live in tiny houses that are living in like 200 square foot of space that sounds awesome I've seen those they're amazing we've had a bunch of conversations about trailers so that they don't have to build it to building code

yeah exactly tiny house you know mortgages property tax like all that kind of stuff sweet they can be really well designed some of those tiny houses and did they show any of the ones in there's property defects, like all that kind of stuff. Sweet. I never have trouble finding them. No, no, no. They can be really well designed. Some of those tiny houses in, did they show any of the ones in China? They didn't show any in China. The ones that are like folding. Cults,

like these small communities of people that follow each other on blogs and things like that and pass around plans on how to build tiny houses. Oh, I want a tiny house. You know, building it in their backyard

and then they move it onto a plot of land in Colorado and live there I just asked my wife if I could have a tiny house and she goes have one with Tim that's what she just said

that would help me write my bromance should we have a tiny house together it's on Netflix Brookbeck Brookbeck Rose Netflix tiny house

any like one before we end up the show any one last thing that like product book anything that Graham is Graham's a cameraman you guys all know that any like one, before we end up the show, any one last thing that like product book, anything that Graham is, Graham,

Graham's a cameraman. You guys all know that. Not really. I mean, I'm with you. I'm getting into watches as well. Oh, you are.

You're getting into watches. Like I've been wearing a time mess weekenders for a long time. And I really, I really like those. And now I'm kind of like, what should I get next? Oh shit. We got to talk.

Awesome. Dangerous. talk awesome are you masturbating I mean are you doing his thing I didn't mean it that way he's not on camera he can do whatever he wants are you doing Tim's Tim's thing sorry I'm done he's only all masturbating all the time

that's what I meant I couldn't give up alcohol sorry he's only all masturbating all the time that's what i asked all my friends when they walk in the door are you masturbating right now all right let's uh on that note anything else uh no you know i haven't been uh getting into watches but i have been getting back into fiction and reading a lot of kurt vonnegut so if if you fashion yourself a nonfiction reader and you're like, ah, I'm not going to read fiction. It's a waste of time. If I want to make stuff up, I can just do it myself. Do yourself a favor.

Just read Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and see if you still have that opinion. I think you will change your mind. It's very short and very fast. Awesome. Well, that is it. That's all I got. That's all you got. That's all I got.

Good luck with your 30 days. I will donate my $1,000 to DonorsChoose. Awesome. Well, that is it. That's all I got. That's all you got. That's all I got. Good luck with your 30 days. I will donate my thousand dollars to donors. Choose.org. Thank you for watching everyone. Uh, I will see you back here and you'll be drinking next time. I will be drinking in the next episode. Not that I need it,

but I'll give me some extra personalities. Well, seriously, I hope, uh, everything goes well with the Lyme disease stuff. Thanks. Yeah,

I'll be okay. If you have any tips, let me know in the comments. Cool. See you with the Lyme disease stuff. Thanks. Yeah, I'll be okay. If you have any tips, let me know in the comments. Cool. See you guys. All right. Peace. Peace. If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes

or go to 4hourblog.com. F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com. Where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter. It's twitter.com slash tferris. That's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S.

Or on Facebook at facebook.com slash timferris. Until next time, thanks for listening.