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Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the Internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. Hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving if you live in the United States of America.
What we wanted to do this week was pull one from the archives so we could go enjoy our stuffing. Well, at least I could. Brian's up in Canada doing God knows what to those mooses. Anyway, this is episode 36 of Grumpy Old Geeks, where our friend Tim Ferriss joined us. the first time so it is a blast from the past and uh this is back this is over 10 years old now so it's kind of fun to go back and listen to the old days i tried to clean it up as best i could but the original tracks are lost to
the sands of time, unfortunately. And by the way, I did try that new fancy pants AI tool that Adobe has out for podcast enhancement. Well, that didn't work. I tried it and it made us all sound exactly the same. So if you're a podcaster out there and you're trying it, don't try it on tracks with more than one person because it will try and make everybody sound the same. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this blast from the past and we'll.
We'll be back next week with a shiny brand new episode. And I have to say that I hope over the holiday that you enjoyed your Deliveroo! Welcome, our guest. So today we're here with Mr. Tim Ferriss, old buddy of mine from the old days back in San Francisco. I think we met right before your first book launch.
Yeah, we did. Absolutely. I think it was through MJ Kim. Is that right? That's right. That's right. Because your first book release party was at her birthday party, wasn't it? At her birthday party, which was super confusing for everybody. But yes, it was. Yeah, and I got to see you before that at the Ignite Talk, that first Ignite Talk you did. Right, the Ignite Talk at Web 2.0 back in the day. I think that was the Web 2.0.
Ignite that I wasn't aware was actually a competition for the big stage. So we did the drunken Ignite presentation for five minutes in front of a crowd of beer drinking programmers. maybe whatever, a hundred, 150 people. And then they're like, congratulations. So tomorrow I'm like, you get to talk in front of 3000 people. And I pooped my pampers and then had to prepare for it.
I think you're probably used to it by now. You've gotten the hang of it. I've done a bit more. It's funny to watch that very initial... uh, ignite talk, which is on, on YouTube because I pace at like speed walking speed back and forth the entire time I'm talking. It's pretty hilarious. I'm so nervous and it's so obvious.
Yeah, that was fun times. That was right before pretty much everybody that we know kind of blew up. Kevin Rose blew up after that. God, all those guys. Yeah, it's been a wild journey, man, for sure. So now you're doing TV. Yeah. What's up with that? It would have thunk it. Well, TV is something that I've been fascinated by for many years. But I had some very souring experiences trying to get involved with television. Generally speaking, not always. Generally speaking, I...
have a lot of trouble with the kind of duplicitous nature of a lot of entertainment. I'm too Asperger's-y to just communicate with that crowd very well, which usually ends up biting me. The reason I'm doing TV now as opposed to earlier is because this is really the first time that I found a team I gelled with and also felt like I had the leverage to get the creative controls and approvals that would.
sure that it wouldn't become, you know, the real wives of Orange County lifestyle edition with Tim Ferriss or something like that. I definitely felt that I'd watched your first episode earlier today because it's online for free, of course, which is a smart move as well. It definitely felt like you had control of this. This was definitely an authentic.
You production as opposed to you getting shoehorned into something you didn't want to do. Yeah, yeah, I know. And I appreciate that. It's very difficult to make. reality tv that is actually reality uh and i'm i'm in the middle of production still we've done eight episodes we have five more and it is fucking punishing it is really really really difficult uh because
If you think about it, it's like, OK, cool. Like you'll just do your thing. We'll film it and then we'll take out all the epiphanies and cool stuff and make an amazing show. Well, there are a few challenges. The first is that. A half hour show is actually 21 minutes, 20 seconds or something like that. It is really, really short. The second is that...
It turns out you can't just film all the time and then crush post-production by sending them 50 hours of footage. They can't even watch it all. So there's a lot of... pre-planning that has to go into this stuff. And it's meant really, really long days for everyone involved because we are having to capture a lot of footage and then kind of curate it before we send it to post-production. But since we're editing, maybe...
three or four episodes at a time as we are filming simultaneously. So, yeah, it's it's wild, man. It's it's quite something else. But I'm really happy with how the episodes are coming so far. Yeah, it's cool. And this isn't your first one. You did the – was it for Discovery the first time around? It was for History Channel. Oh, History Channel. That's right. Did a pilot with a very similar thesis, right? Because this is kind of – I mean you know this. This is –
what I do anyway. This is just the natural course of all the weird experimentation that I do. I was always kicking myself for not catching any... or very few of the experiments on video for, say, the four-hour body, and did the pilot with History Channel back in the day for...
Japanese horseback archery, the Yabusame. And that was an hour-long show, which means 40 minutes, roughly. And it went well, but that was a situation that really gave me... sort of a once-bitten, twice-shy feeling about television because at the end of the day, if there was any type of creative debate, and at that point I had no leverage because that was actually filmed before the four-hour workweek really hit it big. At the end of the day, it was, hey,
listen, you're fucking talent and we're the producers. So sit down and shut up and at your head and let us make all the decisions about creative, which is a nightmare for me. This time around, I'm a co-executive producer. And I'm also working with a production company, ZPZ or 0.0, which makes really good gritty verite stuff like Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. I was going to say, isn't that Anthony Bourdain's team?
Yeah, it's Anthony Bourdain's team. So I actually did the deal with Turner broadcasting first and then found the production company. And the way it usually works is the production company will find talent, sign them to a really onerous hold agreement, and then... go to the broadcast networks or the broadcaster of some type, you know, the network, sell it, and then they own the relationship with the distributor and therefore all the power.
That's just not at all what I wanted to do. It was really unorthodox. I don't have an agent, don't have a manager, just a really good lawyer. So far, that has worked out. We'll see where it goes. Less fees to split, too.
I've got to say, though, I was a little surprised that you decided to go to kind of, well, not that that network is particularly your normal broadcast TV network, but I was a little surprised because you seem to have based most of your career so far on kind of just going straight. direct internet, et cetera, et cetera. What was your thought process about deciding to go ahead and just go, all right, I'm going to go on major broadcast TV.
Yeah, that's a great question. I debated this back and forth a lot because I felt like I could probably go on Kickstarter and raise enough. to bootstrap a pretty sweet series. And I'd also done the trailers, the book trailers before as kind of a warm-up to production. And I was really happy with how this turned out and met a lot of people who could be part of the team. Ultimately, I decided a few things. Number one is that living in San Francisco or New York City or Los Angeles, any major...
coastal city, let's say, it's very easy to believe that everyone has an iPhone and everyone uses Netflix or Roku or something like that. But the reality is, at least for I would say, and I think obviously technology advancing exponentially as it is, this could be overestimated. But at least for the next, say, two years, broadcasts, television, whether that's network or cable.
uh, is very powerful. It's a, it's an extremely effective Archimedes lever if you hit it, if you hit it big, right? So it's, it's even more, I would say, uh, not polarized, extreme than the world of books. Books are very hits-driven, and a handful of books out of the many, many tens or hundreds of thousands published will generate the vast majority of revenue. In the TV world, I think the polar opposites are even more extreme, where TV is really not going to help me.
much at all unless it is a really big hit. So this is a spin at the roulette table in a major way. Because even moderately successful TV really doesn't have the penetration and distribution that will affect everything. else that i'm doing however if it pops like say no reservations or mythbusters or anything like that uh i don't expect it to be duck dynasty or anything but if it
If it pops, which is a hilarious show, by the way, if it pops, then it could really be the domino that topples many others and facilitates all these other areas of my life. But just to add on to. the sort of the debate that I had internally, I also felt it would be smart to work with a world-class production company at length on a series as an education. So as a perhaps first step towards later doing more myself to really view this as a graduate program. It's almost like a paid internship.
It's a paid internship where I get to check stuff off my bucket list, which is pretty sweet. No, I think that's a really smart way to go about it, too, because I think what we're seeing so often now is so many people are rushing off to Kickstarter and then finding themselves in waters that they can't even imagine. They're just in over their head immediately. So you're going about it with a great team around you.
doing like the best possible production you can ever do and then when if you if you want to go back later and do it yourself you know all the pitfalls yeah exactly and you know i know a lot i will know a lot of people as well yeah and the uh The fact of the matter is, holy shit, I had no fucking idea how goddamn complicated putting together good TV is. I mean, it is so... involved and there are so many spinning plates, it is mind boggling, especially if you're doing something really masochistic.
and insane like trying to do 13 episodes in 13 weeks straight which is just that's ridiculous suicide mission uh particularly when you're when you're when you're doing stupid shit like jumping off buildings and trying to learn parkour and then you're like oh let me roll like those two dozen injuries into the next episode and let me go do Brazilian jiu-jitsu and get my head choked off 14 times in the first day and then get my ribs torn to pieces. Yeah, I am really beat up.
So when you were scheduling the shows, did you factor in injuries as you placed the episodes? Or is that something for season two now that you've kind of learned your lesson? I did actually factor them in. So the way that we filmed, it tends to go in a cycle of very, very physical and high injury potential.
to slightly physical and and more mental where there's less injury potential although you could maybe die and some of them like rally car racing is a little bit physical or drumming is a little bit physical but you're probably not going to maim yourself uh then very highly mental stuff so like learning languages is one episode uh or uh building a business we're doing an episode on building a business And what I underestimated, I guess, was how...
long injuries would persist. My legs are still destroyed from the first episode, which was parkour. That was the first one we filmed. But I got so... maimed that the first episode that's getting broadcast is the drumming. Yeah, man. I can't believe you did parkour. You're not a spring chicken anymore. You know, spring chicken. Yeah. And like in retrospect, I'm like, huh, you know, maybe like 36 year old dude. who has messed up...
Joints to begin with, who's way too heavy really to be jumping off high walls, like, uh, shouldn't try to be James Bond, you know, like maybe that's, maybe that's the way it should go, but. No regrets. And the other thing is the point of the show is not to create a Tim Ferriss highlight reel. So there's plenty of me. screwing up, face-planting, and not all of these episodes have storybook endings, which is exactly kind of how I wanted it to be, if that makes sense.
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Yeah, actually, I think I think that's why you made a really good choice going with the drumming episode as your first episode, too, because, well, first off, you've got the whole music element and the rock star thing. And, you know, you got to wear snakeskin pants, which who can complain about that?
But it was actually cool because when I started to watch it as a musician myself and working within the industry, I was like, there's no fucking way this guy's going to learn how to play drums without knowing a note of music in a week. And you did learn, but not really.
Like, you couldn't do the fills, but you got enough. Like, as you've always said, you kind of do that 80% focus. And you got enough to be able to get through the song. But it was great to fucking watch. And I couldn't actually believe it. And I was cheering for you at the end. I appreciate that. And you know what I would love to do, although it's so difficult to do this with multiple cameras, is to put up the whole song because I actually nailed probably like 60% of the fills.
And I left out some of the, some of the gnarlier stuff, but that was a stressful episode. I just, the editing on it was fantastic because the cuts to Stuart Copeland, especially when he, you know, he went off and I just remember because I was a huge police fan and, you know, he hated Sting about like getting in his face in the middle of shows.
warned you about that. And then you had a guy climbing on your kit while you were trying to play. Yeah, I was gonna ask, was that actually filmed in order? Or was that like a setup after? Because it was so perfect. Oh, no, no, no. That was absolutely true to reality. No scripting, no nothing. It's like Stuart warned me and then exactly that happened. I did not expect Kelly, the lead singer, to get up on the drum kit. That was...
uh, extremely nerve wracking. Uh, particularly, I'm not sure if you could actually pick it out, but when you're holding the groove, Like, you need your snare drum. And he put his foot right on the snare drum. And it was just like, kid, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'm not this good, bro. I'm not this good.
Well, you could have given him a little stick to the hi-hats and he might have gotten down. Yeah, exactly. A little sack tap would probably fix that. Yeah, there's – the only – what's so tough for me – is having these episodes cut down to 21 and a half minutes because this could easily, easily have been...
you know, an hour long show, 40 minute show. And it would have, there's so many good scenes. Uh, but that's, you know, that's the challenge with any kind of editing, whether it's a book, you know, I cut 250 pages from my last book. You really have to like sacrifice some of your children, uh, which is.
really painful uh but of course part of the process that's also the good part about the current you know kind of stated thing in the internet age because while you can make a 21 minute uh tv for broadcast you know, edit, and you can do your book for kind of mass consumption. I mean, you kind of did this with your books anyways, you then released
you know, further versions that had expanded content and all the stuff that you had to cut out. There's, you know, that's, that's the opportunity afforded nowadays with, with the kind of deals that you can make and the internet. So you can do, you know, the 40 minute version and here's all the extra footage.
that we shot that we thought was really, really great. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's primarily a post-production constraint at this point. But yeah, I'm hoping at some point that we'll be able to put up a ton of extra stuff because there's so much. OK, so I got a quick question. Why HLN? OK, so, yeah, this is a very good question because most people are like HLN. Isn't that all court stuff? It's the Nancy Grace channel. Yeah. Like what's what's up with that? So HLN.
I had the chance, or I should say the opportunity to work with a couple of different channels. The HLN option came around because of this big initiative from Turner. which is called Upwave. And Upwave is this sort of wellness... programming that is transmedia. So it's very much web-based. They have a lot of web content. And then they have a corresponding block of television, which is, I believe, this sort of...
7.30 to like nine o'clock or whatever on Sundays. And they initially contacted me because they wanted me to be part of this Upwave launch, which starts this Sunday, December 1st. And the benefits, I'm not going to name the other channels that I could work with, but the benefit of HLN, as an example, as part of the Turner Broadcasting family, is that I get the marketing muscle and dollars.
from Turner, a very large parent company, as opposed to, let's say, an isolated smaller cable network. And I also get the ability to promote the show and myself through other... Turner channels like CNN. And I just felt like they would do a very proper job of promoting the show. particularly if it were part of a larger block of programming and perhaps even considered the sort of anchor tenant for that block. So those are...
Those are many of the reasons. Also because Turner was willing to help me craft a deal that I could live with and many other places are really – kind of polishing brass on the titanic and very draconian with their contracts and i was just not willing to sign 99 of what i've seen up to this point and i'm you know i'm sure Brian, you can comment on this, but if you look at some of these music contracts, it's like, what, a seven-album deal? Are you kidding me? Oh, I know.
The broadcaster or in the case of music, the distributor or the label will own 360-degree merchandising rights. I can't sign that stuff. Yeah, the music deals out there are draconian, and it's kind of what you were saying.
earlier is you've got a little bit of juice now, so you can do that. These young kids out there, these little garage bands that are just getting started, they don't have that. So they're kind of sucked into signing these sorts of deals. And it's good that you were in a position to be able to get out of that. Yeah, and I think that the threshold for gaining leverage is increasingly lower. I believe, maybe you can comment on this, didn't Macklemore come out of nowhere?
I mean, I believe that they were sort of outside the traditional construct. But there are other examples, of course. I mean, if companies that do say really well on Kickstarter and then are able to... craft deals with say traditional book publishers that they never would have been able to craft beforehand even though they've only sold say five or 10,000 copies. So I think the threshold for social proof then allows you to negotiate perhaps non-traditional deals.
You can definitely do that now. Which is really, really exciting to me at least. Yeah, and obviously because the entire media world has become so fractured now, you don't need the same amount of people. It's kind of like a million fans. 10 years ago is about the same as 10,000. Now you get your 10,000 and you're pretty good and you're looking good to labels and other people. Yep. Yeah. I mean, the sort of the long tail of. you know, fractured markets. Definitely. Yeah. Agreed.
Okay, so speaking of this change in media, tell me about your book club. What the hell is that all about? Oh, yeah. Yeah, the book club. So this is something I've toyed around with. For a long time, primarily because when I was researching, say, the four-hour body and the four-hour chef, so looking at physical manipulation on one hand and accelerated learning or cooking on the other.
It was extremely frustrating to me that I would ask, say, 10 top chefs for their top three books. If they could only have three books on a desert island. for cooking for the rest of their lives, what would they choose? And there were always these consensus items. Be like, okay, there's this crazy book.
uh, that you should get. It's your first purchase. And I would go to buy it and it would be out of print. Right. So I would find a copy for like 150 bucks somewhere and buy it. And lo and behold, it's a great book, but The problem there, among others, is that I want to recommend it to my readers and I can't.
You can't get it. There's nowhere to get it. It's out of print. Yeah. And there's nobody that owns whoever owns the rights, whoever knows who even that is anymore probably isn't really thinking about it or concerned or care. Right. Exactly. So this happened over and over and over and over and over again. And I got really annoyed. And so if I had a bunch of wine with someone and it came up, I'd be like, you know what? This is fucking ridiculous. I should just.
hunt down these rights, buy them and print the fucker myself. And I kept on saying it. I kept on saying, I kept on saying it. And then I had that experience with audio books because I like to take long walks.
And listen to audiobooks to decompress. Or on airplane rides, sometimes I listen to audiobooks. And I couldn't find audiobook versions of some of my favorite books or books that had been recommended. And again, I started bitching and moaning about it. And so eventually I realized, well, hold on a second.
I have a million plus readers per month on the blog. I am advising this company quarterly, so I have this box that goes out every three months with physical goodies. I could be the author's... entire marketing and PR department wrapped into one if they give me their or sell me their audio rights or ebook rights.
I started thinking about it and I approached Rolf Potts, who's the author of Vagabonding, and he's become a friend of mine. His book hugely impacted my life. I traveled with it around the world for almost 15 to 18 months in 2000.
for 2005. So it really affected all of the lessons that led to the four hour work week. And so I chatted with Rolf and I was like, Hey man, like, What would you think about his, his audio book hadn't been produced by the publisher after 10 years, you know, that was just sitting there.
I was like, well, why don't you negotiate with the publisher, get them to revert your audiobook rights since they haven't done anything with it. And like I'll craft an awesome deal with you. Create the audiobook. You can narrate it ideally. And it'll drive sales of all of the formats of your book. And so we decided to do that as an experiment with his book launching this book club. And lo and behold, I actually haven't talked about any of the results. So I'll give you a sneak peek.
is the audiobook's done extremely well. I mean, thousands of copies. And beyond that, the print edition, I didn't even link to the print edition in my... blog post announcing it. The print edition went from like 9,000 on Amazon to I think 300 or 400 at the highest, which is really high on Amazon.
Really high. And it's stuck there for quite a while. And I think it's now at around 3,000. But that's the print edition. The audiobook at one point was among audiobooks on Audible. It was right between the two Hunger Games. So Rolf has ended up doing a ton of media and that type of exposure and increase in sales can like... you know, double the advance you get for your next book and certainly improve your income. So I think that...
This will continue to evolve, but as it stands right now, I've acquired a few books that have had a huge impact on me. It's basically taking books that I think never got the attention they deserve that have had a huge impact on me and sharing them with my audience. That's it. And I think it will evolve. For instance, my ability to send out.
Physical books could also be hugely attractive to people. This is also something I haven't said, but I'll give away one of the items in the quarterly box coming out, which is a signed copy. from Rolf of Vagabonding. Excellent. Excellent. I just signed up for your quarterly package. Awesome. Yeah, it's really cool. There's a nameplate on the inside with like a world map and his signature. It's pretty rad.
That's something you can't get anywhere. It's not something you can buy. But it's also, to the author, that's 2,000 physical books that just got shipped out. That's a big deal. And two people like podcasters. Two people like... magazine editors to people like founders of tech companies like Twitter, you know, and like, it's a really good audience for these guys. And many of these authors like super cool. And most, I mean, the ones up to this point are guys. So like really cool dudes.
very, very focused on the craft of writing. And they're, they're not interested. They're not weird like me. They're not like super interested in marketing and PR. They just want to write good shit. And it's fun for me to support that and introduce my readers to it. No, I'm really happy about it because Vagabonding has had a huge influence on me as well. Everything I own fits in my car. I can travel from anywhere in the country within like 72 hours. It's great.
So I was really happy to see that that was the first book. And I'm glad you're doing it because there are a bunch of books out there that you just can't get. Well, there are two really – interesting things that i find about this concept and the first one is is the concept of the kind of curatorial aspect or the you know the editorial voice that we seem to be losing in internet culture i mean we all kind of know that that the amazon you know suggestion engines are
Spotify suggestion engines, those are just horrible. So you're kind of bringing a curatorial thing to this because you've obviously got, you know, you're following and you're a lifestyle kind of guru sort of guy and, and anything that you suggest is probably going to be of interest to most of your followers. So you've got that.
going on, which is great. And then the second thing is totally the intellectual properties thing, because we're seeing that getting trampled left, right and center. But the forgotten story about IP rights right now is that there are so many things that are just kind of...
forgotten about completely and nobody knows who actually owns them anymore. So that's a really interesting thing that you're going down and finding these things and tracking them down and going, hey, this is great. Let's reintroduce it to the world and let's make sure that this person gets protected.
get these rights back yeah exactly and it's become a free-for-all and i'm sure this is true in music oh it's exactly the same Yeah, particularly with like merchandise rights and things like that, because there are bands that are still out there, even just like because I'm 40 now, like bands from when I grew up, like Love and Rockets and things like that, who the music is still owned by a label, but nobody owns.
the merchandising rights anymore. So people are just like printing up free-for-alls and the band's not making the cent because nobody's come around to go, hey, let's make sure that this doesn't happen. Yeah. No, it's what's happening in the world of book publishing. is that the publishers are trying to retroactively add addenda to their contracts to include digital rights, for instance. And it's messy. It's really, really ugly.
Kind of gets screwed. It's a really shitty deal. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. The content makers get screwed? I've never heard of that before. I know. Imagine that. And what you end up seeing also is that most publishers... uh, almost all do nothing effective from a marketing and PR standpoint. So what'll happen is the audio books get the audio book rights get sold. And then.
They just sit there and the people who publish the audiobooks simply cross their fingers and assume that like one out of 100 books will do extremely well probably because the author kills himself trying to make it so. Then they just kind of sit back and let Amazon and iTunes do the rest, which I think is pathetic. So that's been a very big issue.
In any case, yeah, I could lament the State of the Union all night long. But the fact of the matter is I'm super excited about this. I don't think it's going to be – at least initially, I don't think it's going to be a big moneymaker. But it's just like I'm so – jazzed about it that I just, I don't particularly care. Hey man, if you break even, keep doing it. It's awesome.
Yeah, and I'm really excited just thinking about the next one. I can't yet say what it is, but there's some really fun ones coming. Okay, now you've got to tell me, how the hell did you get Neil Gaiman? to do part of your audio book. Oh, dude. I got such a nerd boner when I heard that. I'm like, holy shit, this is so cool. Yeah, I got, so I actually got the files when I was at.
I think I was at South by Southwest, I want to say. It was some time ago that I got them. Was it South by Southwest? I was in Austin for some reason. I can't imagine that it wasn't South by. In any case, I got up and literally danced around my hotel room yelling and screaming. I was like what the fuck what the fuck I was like dancing around like an idiot because I'm a huge Neil Gaiman fanboy I mean since the Sandman days and
And that was just his writing. And then, of course, I started listening to the audio books and I was like. oh my God, this guy is like the best narrator of all time. He's incredible. Yeah. I mean, he grew into that so well. His first books were a little sketchy, but man, he has embraced it and he is hands down the best author reader.
in the world. Yeah. I mean, graveyard book is one of my favorite books of all time as the audio book read by him. It's amazing. So the way I got that, it was, uh, so I put up a post on the blog saying, uh, hey guys, I'm going to be doing an audiobook. It would really be awesome if I could get any of these following people to narrate.
a guest chapter or something like that. Here's a draft of a tweet you can put out, which would be like, Hey, at Samuel Jackson, you know, like he's totally sweet. If you could narrate a chapter of Tim at T Ferris's book, like length, right? And we had maybe eight to ten people up there. And at one point –
And my girlfriend's like, hey, did you see this thing on Twitter with Neil Gaiman? And I'm like, what are you talking about? And one of my readers pinged him and he responded with, sure, I'm in. I was like, wait a second, wait a second. He's probably drunk. I think he's probably totally drunk because I don't think he realizes what he just did.
I pinged him on Twitter, didn't hear back and sent his assistant. I tracked down his assistant's email and sent his assistant an email and didn't hear back and kind of gave up hope. I was like, oh. Oh, man, what a head fake. And then got a response from his assistant, also got a response from Neil on Twitter, and then kept on going back and forth trying to make it happen.
And eventually I get this email from his assistant. She's like, hey, send over the files ASAP. Can you just send what you want Neil to read ASAP? And I sent it over. And literally, I think it was like 24 hours later, she's like, hey, turned out that Neil's already in an audiobook session. Here you go. Here are the files. And that's when I was like, what? What? Oh, my God. And they were so awesome.
really exactly what you would hope out of Neil and his crew. It was just fantastic to deal with them. And sometimes, I don't know if you've ever had this happen, but you have the kind of heroes with clay feet. experience where you meet someone you really idolize and you're like wow what a dick you know yep yep far too often yes and uh and uh it was
I mean, they were just awesome. They were just awesome. My favorite part of that chapter, by the way, and for those people listening to this who don't know what the hell we're talking about, I recorded. uh, an audio book version of the four hour chef, you know, about 70% of the, of the book, because it's so there are a thousand, like a thousand plus photographs, uh, and gave it away for free. So you can find that out there on the internet. Yeah. We'll put a link to it in the show notes.
Cool. And if you listen really carefully to one of Neil's chapters, he's trying really hard to use american pronunciation of words like basil instead of basil and you know so much and he's reading this thing and he's killing it i mean it's just like a one-take wonder and he's maybe like three pages in and he says herbs instead of herbs and he and he he goes herbs and there's there's this awkward pause and he goes oh fuck off you're getting the british pronunciation
Then he keeps on going. I was like, oh my fucking God, that is amazing. You have to keep that in. No, I think I spit up my water when I heard that. I was laughing so hard. He's so good, man. Yeah, I could just talk about him for the next hour. But if anyone's not familiar with Neil Gaiman, I think it's just at Neil himself on Twitter.
Yeah, we're huge fans on the show and we've covered his books multiple times. Just like the consummate artist in so many formats. It's in so many genres. It's really cool. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about quantified self and like what's coming up because I'm a huge Fitbit fan. Brian uses the Moves app. We're trackers. Yeah. I mean, I've clocked about 4,000 miles on my Fitbit so far. Holy crap. Yeah. I mean, I've had since the Fitbit 1. The first Fitbit, not the Fitbit.
The new Fitbit one, whatever. I've had one since the get-go and I've never taken it off. And the four-hour body is what really hooked me on to your stuff too. I mean I'd read the four-hour work week but it was when you did the four-hour body and the whole idea of like – biology hacking is so appealing to me.
I think it's because I read that you also briefly were considering neuroscience in college, as did I, and then I got out of it too. Yeah, I've gotten back into that, by the way. We could maybe talk about that as it relates to quantified self. I'd love to, yeah. Let's jump into it, man. I love talking about this stuff. We'll go. What do you think is coming next? Because we're starting to see all these watches come out. I mean, everybody's doing, you know, everybody's...
trying to come out with these products now. What's your take on them? Do you think they work? Are they good enough? What do you think? Well, you know, I think that accelerometers are useful. I think that what's coming next, I'm actually involved with a startup. They're not public yet, so I can't announce anything. But they're working on an approach to tracking.
biomarkers usually measured through the blood. Is this the patch you've been talking about? Exactly. When the hell is that coming? You said it was coming this year. We're almost out of time. Come on, man. Yeah, it's no big surprise. I'm like, oh. biotech and a delay. Imagine that. So yeah, it's like a nicotine patch that would then give you a 24 seven. readout of, say, 20 biomarkers on your iPhone. Huge, obviously.
Huge target. Very ambitious. Highly prone to failure. But I think that's where we're going. I think that where the real value lies is in converting in two things. data that is currently gathered invasively, i.e. through like urinalysis or blood measurement, although urinalysis isn't terribly invasive. and converting that into continual monitoring so that people can trend. So the accelerometer data can be useful in many different applications, whether that's, say,
Fitbit or even driving behavior, for instance. So I'm involved with a startup that is developing. car-related accelerometer data to modify your driving behaviors and incentivize different driving behaviors, which I think is, by the way, kind of a missing piece in a lot of the QS.
not just measuring but incentivizing the proper behavior. Oh, yeah. We've definitely gone into that for sure. Yeah, that could be really, really cool. But secondly, so turning invasive, meaning usually blood drawn into non-invasive, is going to be a huge quantum. leap forward. Uh, and, uh, Scanadu is doing, doing some interesting stuff in that realm, uh, as it relates to creating the Star Trek.
tricorder effectively. And I've spent time with those guys. They're pretty sharp. The second is taking data and turning it into actionable information for the masses. That is a very gnarly problem because you could do something, for instance, like I did and take a Dexcom 7 continuous glucose monitor and implant it in your side like a type 1 diabetic. get this reams of data off of a transmitter that you have on your side and put it into an Excel spreadsheet on a PC because the software is so bad.
99 out of 100 people are never going to even attempt that. And so I think one of the biggest challenges is making the information actionable. Right. Without totally bastardizing the science. I'm definitely keeping my eyes open. I think a lot of people are developing self-tracking devices that will probably get regulated out of existence. One type in particular is brain stimulation.
And that's actually why I'm back in the neuroscience world because I'm spending time or have been spending time. This is just a few months ago before. TV at UCSF at the Sandler Neuroscience Lab with a fantastic team called the Gazali Lab looking at something called transcranial direct.
current stimulation and uh tdcs for short and that involves can you guys hear me okay oh yeah yeah yeah that that involves taking uh There are two electrodes, an anode and a cathode, and putting them on your scalp so that you basically sort of cross hemispherially. induce a current that is intended to, in most cases, improve performance. And there are military...
applications to this. And some studies have been done looking at first person shooter games where you do a very short duration TDCS and take someone from like 30% accuracy to 80% accuracy. I mean, it's insane.
Let me ask you a question really quick about this, because this is all... getting like super crazy kind of weirdly invasive and and you're obviously involved with a lot of these companies at the startup level what and i but and i don't think i've ever heard your take on this or at least i haven't read it yet where do you you feel where are you on line on privacy issues and security issues with this sort of stuff.
Because a lot of these apps, and we talk about this a lot on our podcast, scare the crap out of us in terms of we don't know where our information is going. We know it's not really being held very securely. We don't know who it's being sold to. And this is where we start to get in a really gray area where even me as a geek who is totally geeking out on everything that you're saying is also starting to get really paranoid and freaked out.
Well, Jason and I have talked about paranoia before. Let me get my bug out bag. So here's my position, specifically as it relates to the TDCS. I think it's very premature to go to Kickstarter and create devices. that allow people to self-stimulate their brains with electricity. I think it's very safe. But people already have done that, which is kind of another weird issue that I have with Kickstarter right now, which is anybody can do anything the hell they want. No, they can. Well, not quite.
Because the TDCS really just involves using a 9-volt battery, it's very easy to trick yourself into believing, well... nine volt battery doesn't seem like much of a charge. Therefore I can apply it to my brain without injuring myself or damaging anything. And that's just not very true. It's kind of like candles, not candles, not very hot.
or it's not a very large flame, so therefore I can apply it to my eyeball. It's just not a very prudent idea. Yeah, but come on. Who as kids did not stick a 9-volt battery on their tongue? We were doing brain... Brain activity back then. Tongue is not quite the brain, though. Yeah, it's close. It's a little. But understood. So on the privacy side, I get very nervous about this kind of stuff. I mean, to the extent that... particularly with genetic data.
And how it might be used to decline health insurance, for instance. I think that's absolutely coming and it's probably already being done. So when I was writing For Our Body, this part didn't make it into the book. Because unfortunately, like the genetic information.
It's really hard to use proactively as an individual, but it's really easy to have it used against you currently. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. You get your 23andMe data and you're like, oh, great. I'm predisposed to Parkinson's. That sucks. And then you don't know what to do. But the insurance companies know to block you. Exactly. So that is problematic for me. So I actually basically looked at how terrorists – like not launder money but –
use prepaid debit cards and stuff like that to preserve anonymity. And I did a number of genetic tests with like celebrity names like Michael Jackson because I didn't want. my name to be associated. Uh, so I, I, I'm, I'm quite, uh, I'm aggressive in self experimentation, but in certain instances, very private with the data.
A lot of what I do is so public that it doesn't make any sense for me to try to hide it, like injuries and surgeries and things like that. But the genetics, I think, have further reaching implications than many people realize. For instance... There are people out there like Sergey Brin who are like, oh, here's my genome. And I was talking to a scientist at NASA who at one point helped design customized biological weaponry, meaning like if you want to kill –
a Russian plutocrat, like, okay, well, let's figure out he has a predisposition to disease X. Great. Like we can help trigger that by blowing like molybdenum into his face at a crowded rally. And like that shit is real. That is not.
That is not science fiction. Maybe you don't see yourself as a target for that kind of thing. My position is, why risk it? There are weird people out there and crazy people out there. I try to... keep a lot of that private and i think it's a good policy to do so yeah it's actually uh have you been watching that new show almost human the new jj abrams show oh no i haven't okay so all these cops get inoculated for a certain suite of uh
biological agents in the, in the environment in the, in the near future. And, and the criminals actually created a bio agent that just went after cops because they all had those markers, you know, it's that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, that stuff's coming. It's probably already – It's kind of the same thing. It's interesting that you're keeping it to yourself, and that's a good thing. And I'm just – when we're talking about it, does 23andMe have like a really good security data?
policy because, I mean, they've got – they're cross-referencing you with people who might – like celebrities you might be related to and ancestors and all this stuff. It's like who – like where do they draw the line with privacy? These public companies that are actually – they get your blood. They sequence you and then –
do this suite of cross like big data tests. And it's like, well, what if I don't want that? You know, then I particularly get worried with these kind of more startup and younger companies. And this would even count. It's like if these companies happen to unfortunately go under. any reason that stuff gets sold off as assets yeah they own the data and that terrifies me and we're getting into a very strange world with this sort of stuff
Yeah, yeah, totally agreed. So, I mean, I'm in a different place than many folks in so much as... So much of my life is, whether I like it or not, very public. So I'm kind of past the point of no return. So I actually... In some respects take much more precaution and then in other respects take no precaution at all because I'm like, it's already out there in so many places that it's –
It's ineffective for me to try to do anything. What I would say, this is getting into – let's delve into paranoia for a bit. All right. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. Bring it on. I do think that if you are trying to avoid problems related to privacy, sometimes you cannot prevent your data from being released. or found. But what you can do is you can seed incorrect information. So I think that deliberate disinformation is oftentimes more effective than trying to get...
trying to keep your stuff from getting released. Yeah. Rather than cover your tracks, flood the marketplace. That's correct. Yep. So. You would definitely get along with one of our previous guests, Dr. David Teeter, who was in the spook world. He's pretty good at that stuff. Actually, we talked about him. He's the SOMA guy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We'll cut this a little bit out. But he was a spook for a long time. And he's like, yeah, just flood the waves with information. And there's no way that they can parse through it. Yeah. Yeah. Create noise. Absolutely. Okay. So I have a question from the audience for you. Yeah. The audience being my 22 year old little brother. All right. I gave him your first book. I mean, he's 22 now. So whenever the four hour work week came out, he was he got one of the first copies.
Nice. He just graduated from the University of Wisconsin. He had a major in physics and a minor in Japanese. Oh, cool. So now he's a medical physicist, but he's also into dance. He's been dancing for like 15 years. Like he goes to classes three times a week. So he has a question about tango and how you got to the level that you got to so quickly. Yeah. He's like.
How did you advance to the World Cup in Argentine Tango so quickly? Was it through raw practice or was it some technicality like what you did in your sumo competitions? And as a corollary, is it possible to apply the metal learning you discovered? Okay. Yeah, let me tackle that. So it wasn't because of a technicality. And the technicality I took advantage of was actually in Chinese kickboxing, but I was nicknamed sumo because I was pushing people out of the ring.
tango the the way that i progressed in tango as quickly as i did uh which was i guess around six months from first class to world championships was And I didn't win that. I mean I made it to the semis, which I thought was pretty good. But the way I went about doing that was number one, questioning the conventional ordering of – how one learns tango. As a male, typically you start off obviously learning all of the male role and steps and whatnot. I actually learned the female role first.
hypothesizing that that would then allow me to lead. It would teach me how to lead much more effectively, oddly enough, right? So I had a female teacher first who taught me the female role and then after that only moved. to practicing the male role uh which seems really weird but it's actually very common uh in old art in old tango in argentina for like men to dance together so uh that is first unorthodox thing that i did the second
unorthodox thing that I did was I reviewed competition video and then took classes with the people who were competing. And I tried to discern a few things. Number one, What do the best competitors have in common technically when I watch their competition footage? Second, what are they teaching explicitly that they claim is important? And what are the techniques?
that I see in competition that they are not teaching. In other words, the stuff that's important that they rely on that they're not aware is what they rely on. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Okay. And then I focused on those things as my competitive advantage. And so it turned out that things like very long linear steps... And varying your speed, even in something that's supposedly like 100% slow, having like a small acceleration and then slowing down again. Those were two.
aspects of the top competitors that were not taught explicitly. So I made a point of learning those things. So next, when I came down to practice, I videotaped I would practice, practice, practice, and then if I had an epiphany or if there was a certain technique that I wanted to review and practice later, I would take these classes during the day. I would videotape it, and then I would... I would go home. I would categorize these techniques into different folders on my computer.
Oh, God. I'm just trying to think. You might have some type of – like enrozque is a specific type of spin. So there might be like five or six different types of that. spin that I wanted to group together in practice. Boom. So that's one folder. And then I would create a to practice list. in a notepad for going out that night and practicing.
You know, sparring basically. So you're taking a class where everything is very tightly controlled and you're doing drilling. But the real test is going out to a dance hall and trying to lead a woman you don't know in a move that is brand new to you. Fucking embarrassing. But that is when the real learning occurs, right? I mean, it's the same thing for language. You can sit in a room all you want. It's getting out in the street and being surrounded by it. That's when your brain kicks in.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's like doing drills on a piece of paper for grammar and language versus going out and talking to someone after two drinks. It's completely different. So that is how I practiced. And then I would kind of score myself on these various things that I'd set out to practice that evening. And that would give me a... to practice list for the next class the following morning or afternoon. So it's very methodical about how I approached it. Extremely, extremely methodical.
Excellent. Excellent. Okay. I think that will definitely answer his question. Does the meta-learning from The 4-Hour Chef apply to physical or somatic skills? Absolutely, 100%. Okay. Wow. That was really good because I was actually I was wondering about that myself.
Because you did kind of jump like straight to, you know, you talk exactly about how you won the kickboxing. And then when it came to tango, there wasn't really kind of a deep explanation. And that you've just filled that gap. So thank you very much. Yeah, of course. My pleasure. Oh man. Oh, I actually want to go back and hit on some of your previous work, your best hits as it were.
As well, because I went back and it's been a long time since I've looked at the four hour work week. And I was just wondering what your thoughts are now, because how many years on now, like you talk a lot about how, OK, let's just avoid our email for a while. I don't think anybody can. anymore. In fact, it's part of the job for a lot of people that they have to check and be available 24-7. What are your thoughts on some of the concepts that you laid out and how they may or may not apply anymore?
Well, I would actually – I would challenge the assumption that people have to be available 24-7. I think it's a common belief. I think it's common behavior. But I'll give you a very personal example. I mean the costs, the financial cost of me going completely AWOL has never been higher, right? The opportunity cost has never been higher for me. You're dicking around with us for an hour, so there you go. I know. A gajillion dollars. Yeah, right. No, but this, I mean, there's...
Not everything is obviously financially driven. I mean this is fun for me also. But the point being, before the four-hour work week, implementing what I recommended, despite the fact that I was running a company and got plenty of email, was relative to now much, much easier for me. So it has never been harder.
And more important, I think those two go together for me to implement this stuff. That having been said, I think it was about six months ago. It may have been a bit before that. It's all a blur at this point. But I took four weeks off of computers, phones, and calendars in Indonesia. I mean, literally nothing. I mean, completely off the grid and had to create systems.
as kind of outlined in the four-hour workweek to ensure that things, number one, not only would they not collapse while I was gone, but then when I got back, the systems would persist so that they would actually... continue to add value in terms of automation and simplifying things. So I would say that the principles in the four-hour workweek are as relevant, probably more important than...
even in 2007 or 2009 when the revised edition was put out. I'm sure a handful of the URLs in the book could probably be updated. But aside from that, I think the... The general principles and tactics are even more relevant now that people feel much more so than in 2007 that they can't be.
offline for an hour i mean it's it's incredible how much pressure people feel to constantly be connected and i think that continual uh feeding of cortisol release and the continual exposure to blue light late at night which interrupts sleep is really fucking people up i mean i think that
Well, the interesting thing is I think it's really causing problems for a lot of people in kind of our generation. I look at the kids right now. They don't want to be disconnected ever. Like a lot of us, we're like, oh, my God, I need to get away from this.
The next generation just seems to be like sucked right onto that teat. And I'm terrified to see what happens with them when they, when they finally burn out, it's going to be scary. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm curious to see even just from very basic.
visual development standpoint, like how many of these kids are just going to be extremely nearsighted because they're constantly looking at an iPhone or a smartphone or a screen of some type that's eight inches from their face. Oh, God, I have nieces and nephews and a bunch of friends that have.
babies and they're basically, I mean, they're being raised on iPads. The kids love that. Babies love that stuff. And that's, that's going to be really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed, man. Totally agreed. So, yeah, I think Brian's point was that we're in the service industry, so we're always... We always need to be on call. So how do you kind of mitigate that? And although for today, what I did was I told my client who I'm on a deadline with that's due in three days.
And get email from literally every four minutes. I'm like, I'm going to be gone for four hours. And the strangest thing happened. I haven't gotten an email from her. And she said, OK. So, you know, I mean, I think a lot of it is you do kind of have to set your own boundaries and then people will kind of respect it. But there does seem to be the reason I brought it up is I see the acceleration and how everybody has this fear of like.
not being around anymore. And there's got to be something that we can do culturally to kind of pull it back. And maybe you're all right. Maybe the principles still do apply. We just kind of have to man up and sack up a little bit more to put our foot down and put them into play. Yeah, I think that I'll recommend a few resources. There's a free PDF out there, basically a white paper written by a CEO called Breaking the Time Barrier. And breaking the time barrier is about specifically...
either improving or breaking out of the dollars per hour model that many people get stuck in. And the service industries are service businesses. are very challenging. I mean, product businesses are as well, but in different ways. So I think breaking the time barrier is worth a read. Secondly, I would say that the e-myth revisited...
would be a longer treatment on working on the business as opposed to in the business. There are ways to convert a service business into a product business. There are ways to move from, say, a per hour model to a... retainer model and set the conditions such that you... Do not get emails every four minutes, for instance. I would be really interested in that because I've actually been, my personal business, I've been running as a retainer model for 15 years and I'm getting...
Massive push from all my clients to switch to an hourly model. I think things are turning that way right now. So that's really intriguing to me that you think that it can still go that direction. Oh, definitely. Yeah, without a doubt. And I think ultimately it comes down to, number one, demonstrating enough value that it's more... cost more painful and expensive for them to reject your retainer model than to leave and seek a
Let me rephrase that. It is cheaper for them and better for them to stay with you with a retainer model as opposed to choose a competitor or force you to use a dollar per hour. compensation model. Secondly, it's very important to curate your customer base. And it sounds like a fantastic problem to have, but... No, that's beyond true in my experience. I agree with that 100%. It's very challenging to initially...
fire a customer, particularly if they generate a good amount of revenue for the business. But I just remember how much my life changed when I did that with wholesalers. And immediately like the insomnia that I had, the like self-flagellating, the anger that I carried around with me all the time just vaporized because I got rid of these two assholes basically.
who are constantly berating me, wanted to negotiate everything after terms had been settled. I mean just the real – exactly the type of people you do not want to spend time with. I think that you can be very assertive in setting your own terms, assuming that you're very compelling versus the competition. Again, I'll just mention the Breaking the Time Barrier PDF, I think, is...
is definitely worth a read. Right. Cool. Yeah, we actually talked about firing clients in our last episode. People who don't have the same sense of humor you have, you probably should never work with.
Yeah, that simplifies things dramatically. Well, especially in the world of social media, when you try and make a joke at four in the morning after you've been working for 20 hours and they don't get the joke and want to fire you. Well, you know what? If they don't get the joke, you shouldn't be working with them. So I know you got to run. I just want to do a little bit of follow up real quick with the honey, the honey experiment that you posted. Okay. I've been doing this religiously.
Until last night when I was so tired, we put out our new Does It Have Legs podcast and I was done at like one in the morning and went up to bed. Got in bed and I'm like, oh shit, man, I forgot my honey. Okay, we'll do an experiment and see if it works. I tell you what, at four o'clock in the morning, I was wide awake. I couldn't go back to sleep. I slept like shit the rest of the night.
Ever since I started the honey, I have slept perfectly through the night. I don't wake up once and I wake up refreshed. So I am 100% on board with that. And it's a delicious little cocktail. Yeah. I mean, I started with the apple cider vinegar and the honey and the cup of hot water. And I've actually just pulled it back to just a tablespoon of honey. And it works exactly the same.
It's more delicious if you do it with the vinegar and it helps you fall asleep a little bit faster because you have the nice little warmth in your tummy. But man, just the honey itself has been amazing. Yeah, I've really been enjoying it and I actually need to. I'm in New York now. I need to go restock tomorrow.
For the next couple of days. But yeah, it's really nice. And I was thinking it might be really tasty to put a little bit of lemon in there as well. Kind of make it taste like a hot toddy a bit. Oh, that's a good call. Patati is my favorite cold cure. Can't go wrong with that. Oh, delicious. Yes. Good to hear, man. Yeah, I've had sleep issues continually and it's always nice when you find something that eases that pain, makes it a little easier to get to sleep or stay asleep.
Yeah, it's the staying asleep. I'm a four o'clock waker upper every night. And then you wake up and it's just exactly that time when your brain is thinking about everything you've done wrong in your life. And you sit there for like five hours going, oh, Jesus, will it end soon? Yeah, sleep is, man, sleep is really just the crux.
issue for so many people. Uh, and I think, you know, one thing that's helped me also quite a bit is using a program that's free called flux. I don't know if you've ever run into this, but it, yeah, we've covered it. We've actually reviewed that on the show. That's my go-to. I love that.
Yeah, Flux is fantastic. So I think all those things in combination are super, super helpful. Cool, man. Well, thanks for taking the time out. I know you got to get back to your family. Turkey Day is coming up. Got to prep. Yeah. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And this is fun. This is fun. So to be continued and people can see that episode that you mentioned.
the free episode of the Tim Ferriss experiment at, uh, well, many places. iTunes is actually probably the highest resolution, but you could also go to, uh, YouTube or just upwave.com slash TFX. So yeah, we'll have basically everything in the show. show notes and uh we're pretty good with research if you you know me for long enough that i'm oh yeah i'm mr fucking research so i love it i love it well guys
It was really nice talking to you, man. I'd love to have you on again in the near future. It'd be great. We can definitely expand on a lot of this stuff and have a great Thanksgiving. Thanks very much, guys. You too. So I'll let you go. Have a good night. All right, man. Have a good one.