The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep 46: Hating Tech, Hidden Japanese Gems, Sexual Awkwardness, and More

Episode Date: November 25, 2014

This is a special edition of The Tim Ferriss Show -- an audio version of The Random Show with my friend Kevin Rose (serial founder, Google Ventures). The last few episodes have been rather serious, so this is intended as an informal (but still informative) mind snack. There are dozens of topics covered in this bromantic episode of scatterbrained nonsense. Like what? To start off: hidden gems in Japan, hating tech, Kevin’s new obsessions (and projects), gifts, books we're reading, excessive sexual awkwardness, and much more. O-tanoshimi dane! For all previous episodes of The Random Show, including the infamous China Scam episode, click here or go here:http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/category/random/***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.

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Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. For those of you new to the show, this program is really dedicated to trying to dissect excellence, to deconstruct how the best in the world do what they do best. And that can range from billionaire investors to chess prodigies to stand-up comics to seven-time New York Times bestselling authors and everyone in between, professional athletes, people from the FBI. It gets crazy. This particular episode is an anomaly. This is an audio version of The Random Show, which is something I do with my buddy, Kevin Rose, who's a general partner at Google Ventures, has also started a bunch of different companies, very, very successful angel investor and product guy, as they call them in Silicon Valley. And this is generally a video show.

And the video as well as the show notes for this audio can be found at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. All spelled out, 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. That's also where you can find all the other interviews and in-between episodes and all that juicy stuff. But there will be a couple of things that lack visual cues given this is audio, but it's a lot like a stand-up comedy CD. Most of it should make sense on audio. So without further preamble, please enjoy The Random Show. Why, hello. Welcome to another episode of The Random Show, number 279. That's right. I'm Tim Ferriss.

And I'm Kevin Rose. We are your random guests for tonight. And we are normally the guests, so we're here at your house. Randomly consistent. Randomly at your house. And we are having... What? Some awesome wine from our friend Will Harlan. This is the Matriarch 2003.

Will is a buddy of ours. He gave us a bottle of wine. Actually, he brought this over to my house the other night for Daria's birthday dinner thing after her birthday dinner thing. It's hard to explain. The after party? We had a dinner the night after her birthday. He came by, dropped it off, didn't get a chance to crack it. So we figured we'd crack it here.

It's awesome wine. Matriarch. Obviously, Harlan Estate, Matriarch, everything that he does is just awesome. We have a few accoutrements for the wine. Number one, gifted to me by my girlfriend, is a coyote head pourer, which may be hard to see here, but it comes right out the mouth hole like that, which is amazing. Very Game of Thrones. Looks a bit like a dire wolf. And because I know that it would just horrify Will, we're using beakers. These are Kymax beakers that I use for urinalysis in the morning, typically. But not only.

It's also a perfect 200 milliliters. I also have 250 milliliters, which means that you can get three perfect glasses in one bottle of wine because bottles of wine are typically standardized to 750 milliliters. You've never used this for urine. That's right. That's a joke, right?

Probably not. I wouldn't put it past you. You have like a 1 in 12 likelihood. Alright. So let's get right into the show, people. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about. One thing I want to talk about real quick is a new

announcement that I have. I've launched a new app. I have for the people out there that have watched the show, you probably know by now that I typically am a full-time partner at Google Ventures I've now reduced my time to part-time at Google Ventures and I am a full-time entrepreneur now so I have a little company called North we build a bunch of different little apps out there I was like you guys make me and this is our second app so our second app is called watchville

um it's available at watchville.co and it is basically um a tool for kind of what i consider to be like an underserved market like it's the uh watch collector slash watch enthusiast and i'm talking about old school wrist watches not like you know smart watches um this man jewelry man jewelry no it's not man jewelry this is watches. Um, this man's jewelry, man jewelry. No, it's not man jewelry. This is the thing about it's funny. You should say man jewelry because a buddy of mine. So the, the quick little, uh, 10 second version, and I've talked about this on a previous random show, but how I got into watches was that it's a horrible story, but the first time I actually wore a serious watch is when my dad passed away and he left me a watch that he worked very hard for,

which is, um, a Rolex that he wore all the time. Same one. He didn't have a lot of watches. He wasn't wealthy, but he had that one that he really cared about. And I was always watching Paul shit when I was a little kid. And I was left that and I would wear one of like his watch out when I was going out to like nice events and stuff like that. And I was like, Oh, this is kind of cool. And a buddy of mine was like, you know, that's funny. You're wearing a watch. He goes, so only jewelry men can really wear and get away with. And I was like, actually, this is kind of cool. And a buddy of mine was like, you know, that's funny you're wearing a watch. He goes, it's the only jewelry men can really wear and get away with. And I was like, actually, that's a good point. I started reading some of the blogs.

I started reading the blogs on mobile. And there was no tool that pulled together all of the best content, all the best watch blogs out there, along with some tools for actually setting your watch and tracking what's going on with it. So the other side of the app, outside of the best news around the web, is a time setting tool. So current moon phase indicator gives you leap year for watches that require that. It averages out all the different atomic clocks out there to give you the most precise time for setting your watch. And that's important for people that care about like, is their watch running fast or is it running slow,

things like that. But it's just a free little app. Um, if you like watches, if you're, if you're watch curious or anything like that, I hope you'll check it out and download it. It's a watch. Watch curious. Like buy curious. Uh, sure. If you're just like, you know, I was about a year, year and a half ago, I was like, just like, Oh, that's interesting. I'm curious what it's all about. And then I started reading the blogs. And the first thing that you come to realize is that it's not about just wearing a brand for brand's sake. There's people that walk into a store and they're like, I have to have, you know, name the watch. They put in like a Tag2 or a Patek Philippe or a Rolex. And they just buy based on brand. When you really get into it, the geeks, the people that are the true collectors, they understand the movements.

They understand the watchmaker, where they came from, why they make. I mean, it's like people that are really into cars and engines and things like that. You go in there, they're like, oh, they used the blued screws there over a quarter-inch German silver. They know every little facet of it. And it really is a geeky thing. I'm a tech geek and I can appreciate the engineering and the effort that goes into this stuff once you get into that side of things. I think it's also a really smart thing. So you and I were having dinner not too long ago before the launch at Blue Plate,

which is a great restaurant here in San Francisco. I highly recommend going on a cheat day, have either the meatloaf or the fried chicken, and then the key lime pie is just amazing. Best key lime pie I've easily had. We didn't have the pie. We didn't because it was on a cheat day. But we started talking about Watchville, and watchville is so attractive to me for a handful of reasons and maybe not the obvious ones so i don't currently wear a wristwatch but you don't wear anything no rings no no cock ring just a cock ring cock ring and butt plug all day long

it's working on my kegels kegels't visible, though, so those don't really count. No, no, no. I'm working up to the hand rings. So the... So we were talking about it, and what I really like about this is the fact that it disproves, I think, a disabling belief that a lot of entrepreneurs have,

or would-be entrepreneurs are like, oh, everything's been done. Uber for whatever has been done, and there's nothing left. And it's like, no, there's so much left. Yeah, the long tail is left. Yeah, and you found my favorite kind of market, which is a very precisely defined, relatively easy to target, price insensitive, high-end market.

And there's so much potential there, and you can make a lot of mistakes there's a certain like margin of safety if you have really good tech jobs really good design shops right and neither of those have been brought to that world well yeah that's what i was gonna say one one of the pieces attractive one of the pieces i'll add on top of that that i absolutely believe in is like if you're gonna do something if you're gonna build something there's a great book out there peter teal put it out called zero to one it's like yeah it's like, if you're going to do something, if you're going to build something, there's a great book out there. Peter Thiel put it out called Zero to One. Yeah, it's right over here.

Have you read it? Yeah, absolutely. So Zero to One. He talks about if you're going to build something, make sure it's an order of magnitude better than what's already else out there. And if you look at all the other watch apps out there, they're just… What already else is out there? That was amazing. Nailed that or no?

No. But I get you. So you look at everything else out there and if it's, it, it was all crap is what I went in and I investigated. Cause first of all, I'm not going to build an app if there's something amazing out there. Right. So, you know, honestly, there was like a couple little watch apps here and there. I put this out there and it was like tens of thousands of people flock to it. And it's been like five days old and you know, hundreds of thousands of sessions. And it just goes to show show you like if you build a quality product like the niche like people will

they're they're begging for an android version yeah it's it's just insane so i'm pretty happy about it but um for for other people that are out there like to your point like there's just so much opportunity in this like long tail of stuff that no one is touching yeah no one's built an app for like high-end collectors of Nike shoes, Air Jordans. They pay $5,000 for a pair of shoes. It could be anything. High-end hats. It doesn't have to be high-end. It could be like, you know, there's

gardening apps. I think also people get so obsessed with venture-backed startups, they don't stop to consider alternatives to the traditional sort of venture-backed game. You don't stop to consider alternatives to the traditional sort of venture-backed game. So you don't need to have an IPO, a huge acquisition, to build a massively successful company.

I mean, you can be privately held. I think Mars Company is still family-owned. You can build massive companies or at least very highly profitable companies. You don't have to get caught up in all of the echo chamber and romanticizing of Silicon Valley. I think it's really dangerous and unnecessary. But we'll come back to that. I

wanted to talk about just the setting for a second. So this is my house. And we were sitting at my living room table, I guess you would call it. And these are the books that were on the table. I didn't add anything new. And I have stacks of books everywhere in the house, which some people dislike, but it's kind of my way of organizing things. So first I wanted to just give a congrats. This is a new book.

You might recognize the name. So this is a startup that I advise, Refinery29. They're the largest independently owned fashion site, and it's massive. And they just came out with a book called Style Stalking. Probably best suited to the women out there, but it's really about developing a distinct personal style. And this hit the New York Times bestseller list. So they sent me a copy to check out and I can certainly use all the style I can get. I'm trying to tell you something. So a lot of these books otherwise on this table right now

are related to illustration. So I wanted to just point out a few of them. This one is Robert E. McGinnis. And this guy is amazing as an illustrator. He has done everything from the movie posters for Breakfast at Tiffany's to the James Bond movie posters. He's known as sort of the king of paperback illustration. Yeah, absolutely. And they're so incredibly detailed and good. And I think they're discounted. The artistic value of what McGinnis did is discounted in the same way that sometimes Norman Rockwell's art is discounted, the artistic value of what McGinnis did is discounted in the same way that sometimes Norman Rockwell's art is discounted because of how commercially successful it was. And speaking

of Rockwell, this is another one for those of you who might be interested. This is Power Magazine. This is one of my heroes, Dmitry Klokov, for those of you... Let me see. Let me see. This guy, he's a beast. But J.C. Leyendecker. A lot of you may not know J.C. Leyendecker. He was one of the primary influences on Norman Rockwell. And you can see his art is just stunning. And if you look at the brushwork and the strokes, it's very elegant. There is not an extraneous line to be found. So some of you who go a ways back with me know that i fantasized for a long time about being a penciler comic book penciler for about 10 years so i've been getting back into exploring that uh so charles uh gibson this is the gibson girl uh it's it's been it's been relatively easy for me to draw men for a

very very long time so i was a comic book nerd and got really good at that. But the female figure is sometimes difficult, especially if you're trying to do to draw a female figure that is not an exaggerated anime type figure with a waist that's that big and breasts the size of this room and so on. If you're trying to do something slightly more realistic, uh, then this is, this is just a fantastic, uh, guideline a couple of others,

and then I'll come back to the thread of the rest of our conversation. These are two very different books. This is really dorky, but I love this stuff. Many of you will know, really into Stoic philosophy, this is just Epicureans and Stoics, edited by the Axios Institute. It's pretty good.

It wouldn't get my highest recommendations. And then the last book I'll mention on the table is a new one. This is actually by a friend of mine, Alex Day, The Underground Storyteller, which is really cool. It's one of these rare books, experiential books that I enjoy. And I get sent a lot of books and most of them are just not that good, quite frankly. This is about Alex trying to ride every line and get off at every stop on the tube in London and tell the history of each of those lines as he goes through it. It's fascinating. So far, it's very, very good. And then just a real quick, on the background here, every book here, as Daria pointed out, nothing here

is accidental. I'm very anal retentive and OCD. Every one of these books, because this is where I look for a lot of my day, has been placed very particularly to elicit a particular response from me. So you have Vagabonding facing out, you have Bird by Bird facing out, Zorba the Greek, Musashi, Dune,

The Magic of Thinking Big, and a handful of others. What's The Magic of Thinking Big? The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. It's an amazing book. I find that when people are failing to accomplish their goals or generally suffering from a malaise in life, it's oftentimes because their goals aren't big enough. Their dreams aren't exciting enough to them. And The Magic of Thinking Big was recommended to me by Stephen Key,

who has made millions of dollars creating different products and toys and licensing them to Disney, Nestle, huge companies, Hasbro, whoever it might be. And it was recommended to him by a number of Fortune 500 CEOs. And it's a super simple book, really inspiring. I've had it for many, many years. That copy is probably at least 15 years old. And I think the externalities of life are sometimes underappreciated. So for me, my external environment represents my internal environment. So if things are relatively neat, which I would say my house is right now, my mind tends to be well organized. If my external environment is a mess, then my head is usually a mess. My thinking is a mess.

So that's what I hear. I always think the same way. I picture it as though if you take your house and you rip the roof off and you look down from a bird's eye view, if you see just chaos and mess everywhere, that's a reflection of basically my brain. I feel when my office is messy, it gives you anxiety too. When you have a messy house, you have a little background anxiety running. No, it's like low-grade anxiety that's persistent. You may not even notice it. So for me, when in doubt,

this sounds funny, but when I'm having personal or business stress or whatever, when in doubt, just tidy your shit up. You have house cleaners, though. Let's get real.

I have house cleaner for cleaning, but they don't organize my stuff. I mean, they tidy up your books. No, they don't. Never. That's off limits. They're not allowed

to touch my books. You are an anal retentive. No, I don't. Never. That's off limits. They're not allowed to touch my books. You are an anal retentive. No, I don't want people fucking around with the order of my books. So I do have people who help. I mean, the wood

takes a lot of care and stuff, but... I don't want to turn this into a fucking... You do not... How much care does your wood take? Like, really?

Well, what are you talking about here? Oh, boy. All right. This is like every day uh oh boy all right this is like i've had lyme disease and i'm on like a million drugs so i've been i've been uh not partaking of the nectar of uh the juice the juice of life this stuff will harlan juice oh god it's just getting better and better uh let's move on to the next item moving on on, yeah. I'm very particular about stacks of books. Oh, you brought me gifts. Yes. What do you got?

So the first gift I have for you, I want you to get a good smell of this. Smell that. Really pungent. Yeah. What is that, fermented coffee beans? So these coffee beans right here, you'll see how oily they are. Yeah, very oily. So we'll put a link in your blog article to this um my blog article i don't know

you have a blog i don't know blogs are stupid so we'll put a link in your blog article to this this little so here's the deal i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you people something listen that's going in my head too i'm'm going to tell everyone about this little place in Tokyo. It's this little hidden coffee shop. My only ask is one thing. You have to understand that they don't speak English in there, and it's almost when you walk in there, there's no tourists. So when you're walking in, the best way I can put it is just be very polite.

Don't talk loud. Don't come there with a big group. And just be on your best behavior that's it you don't have to dress up or anything like that it's a coffee house but they're very like old school you know i go in there there's this guy he's probably what's it called i i what's it called yeah so you go in this little alleyway, you go in this little coffee shop, and the only thing that you can tell this guy, he doesn't understand English,

he's like, what do you want? He hands you a menu, and there's no English menu or anything. And you say, That must be really helpful for picking the non-English menu. Yeah, exactly.

You say, old beans. Oh, okay. And the old beans, he's like, old beans. And then he goes, he goes,

takes, is it racist to say like, It's not racist. That's pretty accurate. I mean, that's actually his accent. No, like, old beans. And then he goes, takes, is it racist to say like. It's not racist. That's pretty accurate. I mean, that's actually his accent. No, it's not racist. I don't mean to like. So chill out, internet.

I don't mean to like. No, just. This is the way he does it. Keep moving, keep moving. So anyway, he's like, takes, he's like, takes 20 minutes. He didn't say it like that. Takes 20 minutes. Yeah, exactly.

And so, but actually worse than that. Literally, he sits there and I will splice in a video gram that's on my Instagram account. I did a hyperlapse of him. Wait, you did a 20 minute pour over? 20 minutes for the pour over, dude. I'm talking like this, going really slow. And he makes this amazing pour-over of fermented coffee beans. And you know how, I mean, talk about fermented foods for a second,

like what you know about fermented foods in general. Well, I mean, fermented foods have a lot of benefits. It depends in part on the format of the food. So you can grind things, you can consume them whole, like say sauerkraut or kombucha have different beneficial bacteria, among other things. And sometimes it makes the ingredients more bioavailable to you as well. Yeah, some of them. I mean, they have certain K vitamins as well that can be, or some people believe are very,

very important for many types of health. And so fermented foods have a major part in my life right now because I'm repopulating my gut and my microbiome after a lot of doxycycline which is a broad spectrum antibiotic yeah so anyway i want you to repopulate your gut with some coffee beans what's the right way to brew coffee um 33 grams of coffee and do it i mean what two three hundred it's a lot no no 33 grams to like 100 no to 350 milligrams of uh like that bag won't last super long. That's two cups, basically. Oh, nice.

Okay, cool. I'm down. Anyway, make it, enjoy it, ferment it. It's fermented already. I got you another gift. Thanks. All right. Next gift is...

I was just in Tokyo, for those people that don't know. It was awesome. Do you know which part of Tokyo the hot dog is from? Do you know what it's... I'll put a link. We'll have a link to the actual place. It's not even the whole name. The blog article, for those of you who might be getting this on audio or YouTube,

is going to be at worldwideweb.com. For our blog. So this... I hope you're right. You're a biologist. have you heard of this company? Listen, listen. Yeah.

Listen. L I S N. Yeah. So this is a small, um, uh, producer of like these little freaking sticks, sophisticated incense for listeners by show. Yeah.

The incense company. So it's all organic. All these smells are non-chemical. They're all from plant-derived. And look at all the different... This is reading. Oh, it's by... Wait a second.

Is this from Japan? It is. It's got to be. Because you got... 223 is for reading. 219 is for gorgeous. I would like to gorgeous. 249 is... You just light that one up and like to gorgeous. 2-4-9 is continue.

You just light that one up and his beautiful women show up. I'm really curious what that is. Sweet masala ignis. I don't know. Mausdei, sidewalk, flash, silent blue, dive into the blue, and then amulet and avenue. Can we light one of them? Yeah, let's do it. So we've got the little stone there that it comes with.

This guy. I think we could use some, I think we should try continue. This is cool, man. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So if you like any of these, they all come in different colors. You can order tubes of just that color. This is fun. This is like a variety pack.

A variety pack. No, it's pretty awesome, though. I like the fact that it's not like bullshit ingredients. The lady was... It's not like arsenic and... Yeah, she was like, listen, we don't use any like perfumes, like artificial perfumes or anything like that. There we go. Bam.

Anyway. Exciting. Thank you. Yeah, so that's... If you want to check it out... L-I-S-N. Yeah, L-I-S-N. And I know they have a website as well, so you can just type in like L-I-S-NISN Incense Japan or something like that, and it'll probably come up on the web.

Oh, and then it gives you the ingredients. So continue is cinnamon and clove. Nice. Selected scents by 100 offered by eight assortments. I don't know what that means. But ego jose janaika. Okay, so we were talking about ice baths. Yes.

I wanted to give people a tip because those of you who follow my nonsensical self-experiments and lack of self-preservation may be familiar with my love of ice baths. And ice baths are a bit of a pain in the ass just logistically to organize. And literally. And literally. Pain in the balls. If they don't get to your throat within the first 30 seconds. And going to, say, Safeway or wherever it might be, a gas station to get ice, is a real pain in the ass.

It's a real hassle. And I found... He's going with this. I have a punchline, which is I've never really used Instacart, and I started using Instacart for ice. And they will deliver 5, 10, or 20-pound bags of ice. It's the weirdest fucking thing, dude. So I can use this, pal. You know, they're like, that's like Ferris.

Order 50 pounds of ice. And get 80 pounds of ice delivered by Instacart like that. It is amazing. It's been such a game changer for me. So Instacart, thank you for that. Can you see the smoke in the camera? It's ridiculous. This is amazing. It's been such a game changer for me. So, Instagram, thank you for that. Can you see the smoke in the camera? It's ridiculous. This is amazing.

Yeah, yeah. This is not for enclosed areas. I can't. Oh, my God. Stop, drop, and roll. Continue. I feel so continued. So, that's my tip for the ice bath.

We were talking about a couple of things. What does the ice bath do? What the... The ice bath is great for hormones like adiponectin, for instance. If you want to increase fat loss. You put them around your neck and stuff, you said in your book.

Yeah, if you want to go lightweight, sort of limperous style, if you want to go burly, then you do an ice bath. The way that I've done it historically is typically in a normal sized ice bath and the way that i've done it historically is typically in a normal sized ice bath i'll be using 15 to 20 pounds of ice i will only sit in ice up to about lower nipple area and i will read a book for about 10 minutes and then and only then i go

down to the neck hands out out, for another five minutes. Why hands out? Because you have a very high capillary density in your hands and your feet. And if you put your hands in, you're not going to last even 50% that long. So keeping the hands out is very helpful. You look a little, I guess what, anchorman? No, that's telling the good nights. So that's how I generally go about it.

I'm not a doctor. Don't play me on the internet. If you have a heart condition, blah, blah, blah, blah, your head might explode. Be careful. Talk to your doctor. All right. This, we were looking at this earlier. So this is one of my favorite axes.

For those of you who... Who even has more than one axe? Like, most people are like, I have an axe and I chop wood with it. Yeah, I have five.

You have, like, death axes. I do. Look at this. That's for killing people. You don't chop wood with an axe. I mean, I would say

that any axe could probably be used for killing people. I do chop wood with this, but as it turns out... When do you chop wood? You don't even fucking wood

in your backyard. What do I hear, man? It's too large for my very, very Lilliputian fireplace. Where do you chop it? Out on my patio. Which makes people feel unsafe in my neighborhood. My bed. Because it's very loud.

So this is a SOG axe. And SOG is an interesting company. They make a lot of multi-tools. And knives. I know SOG. uh axe and uh sog is an interesting company they make a lot of multi-tools and knives i have experimented with throwing axes because uh that's the type of thing i do in my spare time and it turns out most throwing axes are very chintzy they're they're made that's very poorly and they break when you throw them and by the way having an axe break and like rebound at you in five pieces is rather dangerous so this axe on, on the other hand, is very, very sturdy.

I believe it was modeled after an axe that was used by GIs in Vietnam. And it's fantastic for throwing. Of course, that's not what I recommend, because you might look at the backside of this. On the drawback, you don't want to spike yourself in the face. So don't do that. And just for you urban dwellers, I would also note that if you happen to be a American history ex looking guy like me, and you go to the park to throw axes to practice,

you might have the police called on you. So if that happened to you, no, if you have a girlfriend or lady friend who's willing to just like come along so you don't look like a psycho and just like a stupid boyfriend then i would encourage you to take that approach but the sog axe is a winner it feels like a good it's solid it is solid uh in other news big announcement to make ke and I are getting married no we're not getting married I am on Instagram I put up regular semi-nude shots of me in my underwear this wine has gone straight to your head

I love it it's what I reserve for Snapchat it's very exciting but instagram.com forward slash Tim Ferris and the first photo ever that I put up is of Tony Robbins who who's like 8'7", palming my entire head

because his hand is large enough to palm my entire head. And he's on your audio podcast. He is on my audio podcast. Anthony Robbins is on my audio podcast on the internet. You don't have video on that one. That's true. I don't have video on it. It's freaking technical. But yeah, Tony Robbins is one of many interesting folks.

Had Peter Thiel. I was your first. You were my first. Yes. Don't think I don't remember. I appreciate that, buddy. And it's gone really well. The podcast has been a lot of fun, in fact. And that's where I'm focusing a lot of my energy.

Because I want to have not just well-known people but just like niche. Who's your nichiest? Obsessive. You've got your obsessive nichiest person. Obsessive nichiest person. You've had Daria on the show. Oh no, I thought you meant like people who like really nichey.

Oh yeah. Audience. No, no, no. I mean like have you had any of those people on that you consider to be really nichey? I have, I think no. I mean, like, have you had any of those people on that you consider to be really niche-y? I have, I think. In niche subjects, I had, the latest episode is a guy named Nick Ganjio.

You probably don't know. He's CTO of ZocDoc and co-founder of ZocDoc. And he's really, really good at explaining, making non-engineers or non-mathematically inclined people comfortable with computer science and math. He's really good at it. And I was turned off of math in 10th grade by a teacher who just busted my balls.

It was a real pain. So I was turned off of math at grade 10. But Nick is one of the most recent. I'm going to have, and this is already recorded, the resident technology futurist for the FBI is on the podcast. That's pretty cool. It's recorded, it's just not published yet.

And we talk about... Oh, I've got a guest for you. I've got a great guest for you. Who do you have? The Iron Sheik. Iron Sheik? Yeah, he freaking DMs me all the time. Really?

He's like, I want to be on the podcast. He's launching a documentary. That could be amazing. He's launching a documentary in like two months. And he's like, he's coming to LA. He wants to do as much media as possible. Wait, where does he live? In Jersey or something?

Yeah, yeah. Like the Iron Sheik would be on your podcast, dude. That could be amazing. So if you have any suggestions for podcast guests, please let me know. Twitter's a good idea. That's the easiest place. It is at T Ferris, F-E-R-R-I-S-S. I'm pretty sick of tech.

You're tired of tech. Yeah, you said you're tired of tech. You've been talking about being tired of tech for a long time. Well, now, in full disclosure, since we're having a confessional here, you've said the same thing to me. Yeah, well, I hate tech. Right. So sometimes we respond via text at various moments randomly with,

God, I hate tech. I hate with, God, I hate tech. I hate tech. Fuck, I hate tech. And there are various reasons for this. Partially, you can't get away from fucking tech in San Francisco. It's like you want to have a normal conversation about something else than someone just like with, you know. And by the way, everybody in Silicon Valley, just because you're a dick doesn't mean you have Asperger's. You can't blame

an asshole on having some condition you've never been diagnosed as having. So dude, I got, I got, I literally had a phone call today with this lady from CNET and she's writing a article. Um, and she was like, I want to talk to you about wearable tech and where you think it's going. And I was just like, I'm so tired of talking about this. And she's like, she's like, well, what's the future? Like what the, I watch it. I'm like, like what's going on? and i was just like i'm so tired talking about this and she's like she's like well what's the future like what the i watch and i'm like like what's going on and i'm just like listen i'm like i don't need any more tech i got i'm teched out like i don't need more notifications on my wrist and all that and she's like oh it sounds like you're getting old or whatever i'm like listen i think tab browsing was the worst like thing ever invented i think we might look

back in like 100 years and be, tab browsing was a bad idea. And just lock it to one tab. Because, dude, have you ever gone off and spent... I literally... This happens to me once a week. I'll be like, 20 tabs deep, and I'll come back to tab one, and I'll be like, oh, that was that email I didn't click send on that this person wanted four hours ago.

I have that right now. And Chrome is going at 1997 dial-up speed because chrome has like 30 browser like tabs right and multiple windows with other tabs behind them and she's like she was like well what the wearables like watches and i'm like what is it gonna give me like a notification graham just texted you i got that on my phone it's in my pocket yeah what else is gonna give me like your heart rates's at this. Great. That's great.

I'm working out. I knew that. I knew that. I don't mean to sound old, but anyway. You don't sound old. I think tech, and by saying tech, I'm going to take a three to four month break on almost all angel investing. I'm looking at the wrong camera here. You're all about the breaks this year. You didn't masturbate for like two weeks?

A month. A month. Oh, yeah. You lost weight on boo month. How was the return to that? I bet you had a great session. Had like some makeup jerking. You're like, I haven't seen you in a while.

It was like, I was like, I gotta say, it was pretty exciting. Special. It was exciting. But the reasons are multifold. Number one, and you've seen this going back

to Watchville and Tiny, is building stuff. And I feel like I can't, I don't have maximum excitement and I can't be of maximal help to the startups that I'm working with if I'm not on the cutting edge. And the only way that I'm on the cutting edge is by building my own stuff. Yeah. You know,

and being out on the playing field by battling it and punting the ball down the field. So I'm having a blast. You don't want to punt. Fucking home running it. Throwing a touchdown, something like that. Punting is like when you're in a bad situation and you've got to kick. Yeah, I was going kind of World Cup, but I hear you.

Okay. So that's one reason. The second reason is I feel like the general coaching in the startup world, and we're not going to take too much time on this, has gotten to a point where everyone is reading from the same pitch script. So you just get, like, I get so many bad pitches from people who feel entitled. And I think that's a dangerous sign, sort of a hubristic sign. So do you think there's a bubble going on right now?

Yeah, I do. I think. But it's not going to hurt anyone when it pops. That's not true. Who's it going to hurt? It's going to hurt the people who are getting way too much money with crazy terms with bad businesses. Well, it won't hurt them. They'll just go out of business and they'll move on to their next thing, right?

Well, I mean, it would hurt them and the people who have invested in them, potentially. Now, I think there's a great opportunity for companies that are, say, in a space with three to five leaders, and there's one company that sees the writing on the wall, raises a bunch of money, is very lean in their operation, against competitors who are not and have really high costs and lots of heads to feed, then I think there's massive opportunities. So I'm not going to stop investing altogether, but I'm going to pick a handful of shots over the next three or four months and I'm going to stop everything else. So let me ask you a question. There's a lot of people out there that are entrepreneurs or want to start a business potentially. What is it that you look for then? Like, what is it? I mean,

you said already lean, but like what in the pitch when someone sits down with you and they're like, like, I have this idea, what is it that you look for in the founder, their body language, the type of pitch? You said you're getting tired of seeing the same old thing. How can someone stand out? The way that people can stand out, Graham, I'm right here, right? Yeah. All right. The way that people can stand out, number one, is don't be in such a fucking rush. And I'm so tired of getting the like, we're oversubscribed,

but if anyone would get this, we think it's you and we're growing 30% month over month. And I'm like, oh, really? Like search and replace. It's the same email I've had from 10 startups this week. And they're like,

well, we're closing in the next 48 hours and we can squeeze you in for 25K. Fuck off. Like that's, if I'm really a good fit for the company, there's no overnight rush. Do you know what I mean? And all of the best companies that I've worked with.

Do they explain to you why? They say, Tim, you can help us with X, Y, and Z. It's just a bluff. It's a bluff. No, I mean when a good pitch comes in. When a good pitch comes in, they have done their homework. They know exactly how things fit together. So what do they say to you?

They say, this is why you're a great investor. Do they spell it out for you? They would say, we're familiar with how you've done A, B, and C. We think that we're different. We know you're interested in this. We're different because of A, B. And we'd love to do something with you. There's no huge rush, but we're probably closing around in the next X period of time.

And they don't give me 48 hours notice. They give me like two or three months Because you're kind of the person that likes to think on things a little bit, spend a week doing your own due diligence. I like to think on it and do due diligence for myself and anyone who might be backing me on, say, like AngelList, where I do most of my stuff now. Angel.co forward slash

Tim. And I think I'm slash Kevin. Yeah, I think you're slash Kevin. And so that's where I do most of my stuff. And you can see all my investments there. But the best companies want a good fit, and they want the right investors. They don't want dumb money with the stupidest terms. Do you know what I mean? And that shows a longer term vision. I also, in terms of founders, and I don't want to turn this into a, I hate tech, let's talk about tech for an hour,

but since you asked the question, the best founders are not arrogant. They're just not. The ones that I interact with, at least, and I'm sure there are exceptions, but in their interactions with me, they're not going to be immediately arrogant and entitled and prickish.

And I just see a lot of that right now. And there's so much money flooding the market. There's an oversupply of money and undersupply of really good talent. And it's impossible for me to foresee in the next two to three years there isn't a major correction. Because it doesn't take a million people, 10 million people to believe there's a bubble for there to't a major correction. Because it doesn't take a million people, 10 million people to believe there's a bubble for there to be a bubble. It takes a handful of hedge fund managers to liquidate 20 to 30% of their tech holdings. That's it. And all that takes is a string of bad IPOs, a string of really high profile catastrophes of some other nature. That's it. So for me, the smart people as entrepreneurs

and the smart money as investors are budgeting for that. Anyway. Cool. But at the end of the day, I am having so much fun building and it's been so long since I've... What's your next thing?

Everyone like, you know, they... Yeah, you know, I am not sure what my next thing is. I am trying to be comfortable in that in-between space. Because historically, I've always wanted that one thing. And it's helpful to have that because it's easy to drown in the cool stuff. Meaning, a friend of mine, Derek Sivers, has said, and he's also written about this, your decision should be hell yes or no. Like, if it's not like, hell yes, fuck yeah, I want to do that or no.

Where you get killed, and I think where I've been killing myself, is like, oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah, sure, I'll do that. Like, oh, somebody asked a favor. Like, oh, that's kind of cool. Yeah, sure, I'll do that. And you commit to 10 of those,

you're really stressed out, you don't have a lot of time, and you're not doing anything that you're really super 10 out of 10 psyched about. So for me right now, dialing back on a lot of time and you're not doing anything that you're really super 10 out of 10 psyched about. So for me right now, dialing back on a lot of things and saying no to the startup investing for three to four months, because I'm not a momentum trader, right? I'm not in it for the next six months like a lot of the fair weather angel investors out there. I've been doing this for whatever, seven years, eight years. I'm going to be doing it for the next 10, 15,

20 years. I can wait three to four months. And I think that if there are, people throw these numbers out, there are 15 or 13 or 23 kind of billion dollar plus companies that come through Silicon Valley every year. You don't need to get every one of those. You don't even need to get one of those every year. You get one awesome bet every year or two as an individual investor with a fund that I don't have to allocate over a set period of time. You're great.

You're ahead of 99% of the people out there. So if people are out there and they want to get involved, I mean, AngelList is probably your best bet for going out. I would say so, as far as going out and finding... I think AngelList is a great way to find good investors. I think it's a great way to find good companies. And, you know,

of course, I may be biased. I'm an advisor to AngelList itself, but I think I've never seen anything like it. I mean, I just closed

a $1.5 million round for a company called MD Insider, and the whole thing was allocated in one day. And it just simplifies the whole process. The one other thing

I've had thing I've had is I've had people that have come up to me and said like, you know, I don't have the money to angel invest. Like how do I get involved in the, like the tech phenomenon that's going on? And I always had the same recommendation. It's like, if you have something that you're really good at, that you're like, you're the best at, you know, I'm good at marketing or I'm good at, you know, social media or whatever it may be that is your thing. Yeah. Like just go after these young startups that don't have that person and offer your services. I have a guy right now that's helping me out with a customer service.

He's awesome. This guy, Forrest, he's amazing. And he was like, he approached me and he's like, listen, I'll work for free if you want. Like, like, what do you want? Like, you know, and he just wants a foot in the door, some stock options, you know, eventually like, you know, that kind of thing. It's like if you have a skill out there and you don't have the funds to go out and be your own angel investor, there's still ways for you to get involved in these companies very early on.

That's how you hear about these stories. There's a reason why the secretaries at Microsoft were all multimillionaires. That was a huge story that came out back in the 90s. There's other ways for you to get involved. It doesn't have to be through big checks. I think that's very good advice. AngelList is actually, I just saw an article. It was how I got 30 consulting gigs in 30 days using AngelList.

There's a piece about it. I think this is a very smart approach. For instance, if you were to not try to sign on immediately for a full-time job, but do contract work for a half a dozen or a dozen fast-growing companies. This is what David Prager does. Okay. He goes out and he shoots videos for them. This is a mutual friend of ours.

Yeah. I mean, he used to be on Revision 3 and some of the other stuff I did. But he went out and he shoots these videos, these startup videos for companies. And if there's a really cool company, he'll say, like, you know what, I'll reduce your rates, but just give me some advisory shares. It's the same idea that the guy from Facebook that painted all the murals, he made like $250 million or something crazy because he took all stock from Zuckerberg when he was painting their murals in their office. So anyway, that's kind of where you're going, right?

That's where I was going. And then what you can do is when you do an amazing bang up job for a half a dozen startups, and let's just say four of them are like, you know, we'd love to hire you on a more ongoing basis. Then you can take a look at those people who are hot to trot and ask for advisory shares or equity, or maybe even pull, you know, choose a full-time gig, which is what I advised a very young guy to do not long ago. He actually wanted to work with me or he had a couple of other options, and one of them was Stripe. And this was quite a while ago, and I said, take the Stripe job. And I was like, they like you?

Take the Stripe job. That's a good horse to bet on, and I was pretty happy with like you, take the stripe job. That's a good horse to bet on and I was pretty happy with that. That's awesome. At the moment. But what else is happening? What's up? Yeah, so this is my last thing I have to talk about.

We can wrap up or I'm sure you probably have something else but this book, a buddy of mine recommended to me. I have not read it. I brought it along because I just got it in the mail and it was in my bag anyway but I figured I'd ask you. No, no, no, honestly, I was going to ask you if you had have not read it. I brought it along because I just got it in the mail and it was in my bag anyway. But I figured I'd ask you. No, no, no. Honestly, I was going to ask you if you had ever heard of it. I've read it

multiple times. Yeah, and so didn't you say you've read it multiple times? I'm like, well, maybe you should talk about it because I'm about to read this. What am I about to get myself into? Yes. And Daria just finished it. My wife just finished this book a couple days ago, right? Because Rameet Sethi's on your podcast,

recommended it on your podcast. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, that sounds right. So this is Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Chialdini. A lot of people say it that way. Chialdini, right? It's a ch, Italian fellow, PhD.

So the cover quote is, for marketers, it's among the most important books written in the last 10 years. And it's a fascinating look at the psychological dynamics that companies and people use in selling services or products, how those can be used against you, how you can implement those for good in your own company, and it touches on things like scarcity, time restrictions,

social proof, et cetera. I'm really excited. And it offers what I think is a very helpful checklist for any type of product launch or, say, message or copy editing. So if you have copy and you probably do on a homepage, then or you're making an offer or you're doing a product

launch or you're doing an email sequence for whatever, or even implementing Facebook ads or something like that, I think that this offers a very good checklist for the components that lead to a compelling offer. So you just finished this book two days ago.

Is there anything you want to add to that? Like anything that you took away from the book? It's also, I mean, that's all absolutely true. It's also really interesting just in terms of human psychology because it's important to remember that people have a lot of different motivations for doing things and it really like goes through the basis of understanding how to get people to act you know and when when you're in my space or any i mean it's for marketing yeah but also like i just i just want to get people to eat healthy you know and it's like for that it's incredibly valuable cool i'm excited i can't

wait no it's it's it's a i think a helpful book. It's a seminal book that has influenced many other books. Whether you're looking at mystery and the mystery method for pickup artists, or you're looking at how, let's say, why combinator companies are coached to pitch investors, or you look at how to get people to change their diet when they've resisted it for 20 years. All of the dynamics, the psychological dynamics that make any of those things successful boil down to a handful of principles, which in general are covered in this book.

So this is not necessarily industry-specific, which makes it very valuable because you can apply it wherever you want to apply it cool yeah that's all i got yeah anything else you know i uh i don't chop some wood i don't think so yeah i got some almond wood which is good for uh what are you doing for thanksgiving for burning good for cooking we're about to go on Thanksgiving. We are. Moving into Thanksgiving. I'm smoking a turkey. I'll be headed to the East Coast to have Thanksgiving with my family. Awesome.

Which I'm very excited about. I have a new wood stove coming in from Vermont Castings. Did a bunch of homework. There are a number of really good companies out there, but decided on that. And I'm excited for a little bit of brisk cold on the East Coast. I don't like to live in the cold all the time. I know what you mean. I was just in New York a few days ago,

and it was nice. It's crisp. It wakes you up. It's nice. Nipples get hard. It's good. It levels up the nipples and brings them to attention. So I like Thanksgiving and Christmas for that.

I'm very... Just for the nipple erections. I think on that note, really, I've covered all the bases this time around. Graham, anything to add before we go? Happy Thanksgiving.

Have you seen Too Many Cooks? No. Too Many Cooks, what is it? It's an adult swim thing that aired at 4 a.m. in the middle of the night, and it's this parody of old 80s TV shows where they have the credits of the folks that are in the show. They'll be doing something, and they'll look up, and their name will be on the screen and they'll like smile at the camera but this is an 11 minute long parody of that that slowly devolves into like a really interesting horror movie like whoa and i think that you guys would enjoy it so go check like go cool too many cooks too many cooks

uh the song will be i apologize in advance the song will be stuck in your head for weeks. It aired at 4 a.m. It aired at 4 a.m. Screw it, we're going to put it up. It immediately, when it aired at 4 a.m., it immediately went viral the next day. No way. It's got over like two or three million views. And it's the creepiest, funniest, like amazing.

You've got to see it. It's awesome. That's a great recommendation. All right. Yeah've got to see it. It's awesome. That's a great recommendation. All right. Yeah. Too Many Cooks. Check it out. And happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Namaste. Even if you are not in America, be thankful. Take the occasion of all the Yanks eating their turkeys or tofu-made textured vegetable protein God knows what here in San Francisco. And think of what you're grateful for. I'm not trying to get too Deepak Chopra on you. I'm just saying. I think it's common for...

I think it's common for type A personalities. I don't know where I'm going with this. Type A personalities to I don't know where I'm going with this. Type A personalities to be very focused on achievement. And it's easy to recognize that you've done so much and you haven't taken any time to appreciate any of it. And I think for just general peace of mind and quality of life, it's really helpful to take some time, even if it's just a minute before meals, grace style, even if you're not religious, to be thankful and make a list of those things.

And in fact, there's a really cool type of meditation that is sometimes called gratitude meditation or compassion meditation, closely related. That's very interesting. But we'll save that for another session. So happy Thanksgiving, even if you're not in the United States of America. Peace out. See you soon.