#709: In Case You Missed It: November 2023 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

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Hello boys and girls. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show where does my job to deconstruct world class performers of all different types to tease out routines habits and so on that you can apply to your own life. This is a special in between a so which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month features a short clip from each conversation in one place.

So you can jump around get a feel for both the episode and the guest and then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes view this episode as a buffet to wait your appetite. It's a lot of fun. We'd fun putting together and for the full list of the guests featured today see the episodes description probably right below where we press play in your podcast app or as usual, you can head to Tim.BlogSlashPodcast and find all the details that there. Please enjoy.

First up a YouTube Q&A with Tim featuring Tim's thoughts on new religions, AI companions, longevity levers, resurrecting forgotten languages, tactics for writers block and much more. Are there any global or national trends in the next five to 10 years that aren't talked about enough or you believe more people should be paying attention to if applicable.

How are you personally preparing for this or these shifts? I would say one that comes to mind is for lack of a better term digital emotional surrogacy. I'm sure there is a sexier or more elegant term for this but the inevitable development that we will have I would say within the next probably two years photo realistic avatars that we can interact with through say virtual reality.

If you haven't seen the demo of the meta metaverse with Zuckerberg with Lex Friedman on his recent podcast on YouTube that showcases what this can look like I would encourage everybody to at least watch the first five minutes to get a taste of things to come with the ability to interact with photo realistic furthermore with the ability to interact with photo realistic avatars who might be your favorite celebrity like a Taylor Swift with very convincing facial expressions.

We are getting to a point where companies like replica for instance replica with a K at the end K a instead of CA where digital companions are going to become for many people not just a supplement to human interaction but a replacement for human interaction.

So I would say that the loneliness epidemic from my perspective is probably only going to get more nuanced more complex and more challenging to address in some respects because especially for people like myself who are introverts I'm taking active steps so I answer that second part of your question to maybe preemptively gird myself for this.

But for those people who are already intimidated or taxed by going out and interacting with one person or groups of people you could see the case of for many of them opting out completely and I think we already have problems with declining birth rates and there are many countries that are below replacement rates at this point so I am very curious to see what's the side of impact that will have the way I am.

Counteracting that for myself is booking things on the calendar in advance and by in advance I mean at this point I'm probably six months out booking trips booking time with friends booking time with family getting it on the calendar putting money behind it doesn't have to be a lot of money but enough money that you can benefit from the sunk cost fallacy and feel invested so you won't cancel things.

And really giving myself very few options for opting out of social interactions that I've proven to myself over time are always in my best interest even if I will drag my feet to get there in the first place I will leave being better off so those are a few thoughts in terms of trends people are paying a lot of attention to say AI and broad strokes or machine.

In broad strokes but my interest and certainly what I'm also watching in my audience are some of the societal implications and the psychological sort of mass psychological implications of these things so you will be able to take steps to perhaps put a moat around yourself to minimize the damage but this is something to pay attention to and I would also say that as these tools become more important to me.

So tools become more and more convincing we've blown away the Turing test it's already been beaten or passed so as these tools and machines become more and more convincing more and more appealing I think that there will be the very natural impulse to offload more and more of the things that we currently handle in our own heads or manually and if you want to preserve some of those abilities you're going to have to do.

You have to decide to be perhaps a selective blood I at least for periods of time be a selective blood I for instance how many people here would say their parents are better at directions offline not using Google maps then the other generations and I would imagine a lot of people would raise their hand and this is perhaps not controversial because people have decided to embrace something like Google maps or many other competitors to have a lot of attention to.

To help them with convenience and accuracy and so on however if you don't use it you lose it and it's easy to embrace convenience and not recognize severe atrophy of capabilities until it's very hard to reverse so I think that that is a meta awareness that needs to be developed as we are. So I'm interacting with these increasingly seductive and powerful tools so long answer but these are things that I think about.

Next up the South Korea episode recorded in Seoul and featuring Steve Jang Tim's longtime friend and founder of early stage venture capital fund Kindred Ventures. Because I've teased it so much what is hot just like that's a kashi is quite Japanese super Japanese for Koreans.

Han is probably the most talked about recent collective trait of Koreans that Koreans talk about but the now people outside are talking about what it essentially boils down to is this idea of this collective suffering that the Korean people have through history. It's a very complicated feeling of we are suffering and we share that pain with each other is not always a negative it can sometimes drive us to express ourselves in strong ways it can drive us to suffer together collectively.

So collectivism is a very Asian thing and independence is something that we revere in the US. That collectivism in Korea is Han. And is it generally you mentioned suffering and there are a lot of different descriptions of this I was doing a little bit of reading. It's really hard to explain in English actually it seems very hard is it a type of so sadness would be a component of that.

And also anger and I was talking to David Chang from mobile food he's old friend you asked me about Travis Kelley he had never met him and he said you knew he seems like he has a lot of Han.

And I said he's intense and it expresses in a drive to succeed right and obviously we all know that story but for Koreans Han can be a drive to do great things to bond together to understand each other to empathize but it can also just be like you said the anger and the the care rage that you're talking about which channel correctly allows you to build an entire industry.

And succeed on the global level to create was the chips on the shoulder make chips in the pocket pop culture phenomenon that win. Grammys and that movies that win Oscars and light up the world to what's happening this little country that used to be a poor developing country that was broken after colonization and a war. Where does that come from and so I think a lot of Koreans.

And so I think that's the thing that's very real and I think that's what you're seeing in like Korean movies that's what you're seeing in industries the positive energy that can come out of it not just the negative energy so it's very complicated but young. And these are like very simple Chinese characters in Korean characters so I wonder what that I don't know the hunt off any of the song is.

This bond that you feel and so a lot of people will say that they don't have junk with someone or the person does not have junk this is a much more like bonding affectionate thing and it's a very simple word but means a lot yeah. And so the song is also a complicated thing to it's hard to describe without using a lot of words and adjectives and feelings and emotions in English but when you say that in Korean it's very simple.

It means a thing that isn't translatable and then if I were to take two words that would describe Korean people and again I'm not Korean. I'm a couple someone inside but someone outside and so I can compare it to how we are in America or other countries and Han and Zhang would pretty much cover. What what is Nunchi so Nunchi I mean you know a Bobby Kim Bobby yes you had him on the show I did a friend of mine as well great conversation.

He really got it right which is it's reading the room but Nunchi is like noon is your eyes and it's the ability to see what's really going on reading between the lines or reading the room and this is really important. This is not a like happy positive thing this is again a defensive inquisitive analytical skill right.

It's very critical yeah critical yeah there are things that come up when you talk about people you talk about your connection with them and so say if I come in and kind of bluntly or too loosely and rude in a group I walk into a dinner or a room I change the topic really obtrusively. I think it's a more recent modern definition in term I don't think it's like an old classic phrase or term so my sense is anecdotally that it's something that's been a little bit created like guys now.

And then also with Jung that's something that my parents talk about a lot yeah Joe and my parents don't talk about Han it's like maybe the people that really feel it don't want to talk about it yeah really and the people that want to find some reason or some rhyme to why they feel a certain way or something is happening to them that they'll create a concept but I think it is very interesting to look at those two concepts Han and Jung and then that'll help you understand a lot in Korean society

and I'll give you one example if you're a visitor to Korea there's a host mentality in Japanese called omotanashi in Korean there's a concept of your my son name my guest and it's very strong very similar to Japanese omotanashi right they want to exceed in treating you well they want to give you food they want to take care of you they want to do that they want to create this concept of Jung

not to create the concept but to have Jung with you that would be the ideal because Koreans most Koreans not all maybe but Koreans want to have that connection that deep connection they want to drink with you they want to stay out late with you they want to wrestle with you they want to argue with you they want to put their arms are on your shoulder and sing a song after like

downing some soju right they want to feel that like real visceral connection with you and people often I don't really enjoy it but people often in business even in technology which is somewhat of a more cerebral industry they want to go out late and have drinks until five six in the morning and in the US we're like hey this is just way too much like this is bedtime they want to do that to know that they have a bond with you they want to create that

somewhat like abruptly right but you see that yeah I'm trying to find the character for Jung it's really bothering me that I don't wait wait okay Jung is Jung is good Jung is positive Jung is optimistic yeah warm feeling of attachment yeah Han not so much yeah don't you see that character the Chinese character

in pretty sure and concepts like sympathy those types of sort of feeling emotive concepts empathy sympathy affection bonds in every movie in every TV series they're moving in and out of Han and Jung in the narrative in the storytelling and that's I think if you were to whittle it down if you had to really simplify and reduce it to something very like at root level I think it would be that

Koreans are moving between Jung and Han in their storytelling in their life business there's a moment with probably with your friends in high school where it's all happy and positive then maybe after a critical moment or an emotional thing or maybe if you guys were drinking beers at night as teenagers where it flipped yeah usually I could tell the eyes got really big I

go oh boy here we go red yeah red phase big eyes like oh oh oh oh I think we're getting into Hulk's there's energy energy frequency has changed yeah so that I mean I wanted to yeah that's that's well think about when I think about like how to whittle it down to something basic next up doctor will be Britain clinical psychologist and founder of Cheetah House a nonprofit that provides evidence based information and support for meditators in distress

are there any intensive retreats that you recommend work standard retreats and I suppose the broader question is how can one know where to practice and vet properly right if someone wants to do a meditation retreat and the reason I ask is for instance with psychedelics which are still largely underground at this point even though at some point hopefully there will be an entire framework for administering them reasonably safely to people who fit certain criteria if someone finds a facilitator

says no one under my cares ever had a bad trip that is a huge red flag because it means they're either deluding themselves they're lying or they're really inexperienced those are kind of the only options on the table because you're effectively using nuclear power to change the

plasticity of the mind of course they're going to be adverse events of course they're going to be outliers and so you want someone who is actually handled those cases to push my F1 analogy if you go to a race track let's just say and you're going to a track day

and track on her says we've never had any accident of any type on our track that's a bad thing because someone's going to have an accident you want to make sure they have protocols in place they have experience the presence of mind a handle it calmly etc etc so I could see that applying

also to vetting meditation retreats but putting myself in the position of someone listening to this I might say holy shit of the people who have tried meditation once x percentage have these persistent problems like this seems really really dangerous

maybe I just shouldn't meditate so maybe offset that a little bit are there retreats that you ever recommend and how can someone vet if they're considering doing a retreat a lot of it has to do with matching the goals to the person so I don't want to necessarily rule out

or recommend any particular retreat across the board I think that there are certain retreats that are pretty repeat offenders and those are ones that have like high dose you know 15 hours of meditation a day no movement practice often you see an alternation between walking

and sitting and sometimes there's even yoga added so more intense practices with no movement and also not necessarily tailored feedback from teachers so I would be very careful before going on one of those and I think just in general there are so many different options for retreats these days

you can do like an afternoon retreat where it's only a couple hours start there tight trade up and you can do this at home you don't even have to necessarily spend the money you can just download an app and do that for a day and see how you do you know like tight trade up and add a day at a time rather than signing up for a 10 day retreat something I have not mentioned before is that I've done shorter meditation retreats like two or three days with no issues whatsoever

so I just want to point that out the other fine detail that I want to mention because I think spirit rock runs a very good ship and I think they're very well formatted and they do have safeguards in place that they explicitly advise against fasting and I violated that rule and I overrode that right

and also added the psychedelics which certainly I'd not mentioned anyone until I had already sort of capsized yeah it's never used to be an issue but I know that people are doing that that people are bringing psychedelics on retreats and I think a lot of the retreats they have to manage a lot of people people are already having like challenging experiences the regular kind of challenging experiences with meditation and so to have to manage people who are also taking psychedelics

is that's a lot it's not really fair to a meditation retreat no it's going to be invisible to them for the most part yeah I'm sure right it's not going to be reported just like people lie on their medical intakes about the psychiatric medications they're taking if they are wedded to taking psychedelics with facilitator this happens all the time people sort of misrepresent their health status because they're so vested in this last Hail Mary Obiwant Kanobi

or our final hope solution panacea that they see in psychedelics and I have to imagine that also happens with meditation retreats I should also say I'd love for you to say a bit more about repeat offenders are there any other characteristics or format issues that you see producing more problems than others outside of what you already mentioned so in terms of the retreat or meditation type or in terms of personal risk factors

the retreat or meditation type that seem to produce a higher volume of people with these issues I would say retreats that recruit or are attracting a certain type of meditator which by the way like you fit the bill like pretty exactly when I heard the story I was like wow that's pretty emblematic of textbook yeah young male pretty educated combining all sorts of tools you know fairly aggressive we used to joke that one of the risk factors was zellotry a kind of zellotry a zeal

so something like that and so there's a certain kind of almost like military this is going to be a really really hard retreat those types of retreats are a little bit more high risk and I think there's also the combination of the person and the teacher slash format one of the things that we found that was really shocking in the varieties of contemplative experience study is that on one hand we expected to see people who ran into problems as people who had lots of problems in their lives

but when we actually like looked at the data 75% had graduate degrees, MD, PhDs, JDs these were like CEOs of major companies these were like super high achieving people and we're like this is so interesting how do we make sense of that and we're like oh right being a high achiever is a risk factor

I was just about to say like the drug addiction in the medical profession is off the charts like Susa it's off the charts so it's because these are the kinds of people that you're like okay you're gonna sit and follow your breath and they're like okay like they're the ones that show up early for the meditation and they're the last ones to leave they follow instructions exactly they would never modify the instructions for their own benefit

that would not even occur to them unless they make it more intense you know the kinds of people that and this is kind of where trauma comes in if you've been trained to scan what are the expectations here what are the sort of unspoken social rules that I need to ace in order to not be punished

if that's like kind of your MO running in the background then we have all these people like following instructions exactly not modifying them basically listening to an external authority rather than their own internal compass that's the recipe for disaster and so if you can interface with really any type of meditation spiritual system with maintaining your inner compass that's gonna be a recipe for a much better outcome not everybody can do that and not all systems are tolerant of that

and so I would also encourage and we've had lots of trainings with meditation centers trying to be able to be able to be more flexible and so if somebody knows like I need to be able to leave the meditation in the middle so that I'm not continuing to meditate

and the meditation retreat manager is like no that won't be allowed you have to say if you come you have to stay for the whole thing that's not really allowing flexibility so are there ways that people can titrate the amount of practice that they're getting within a retreat is there a way to like

hey on on Wednesday we'll have burger night for people who need to like increase the like that intake you know that is actually happening now the vegetarian diet piece is super interesting I mean I don't know if the acuity is is sufficient as a factor

but it makes me think also with for instance some of these conditions that are let's just say contraindicated for most psychedelic use schizophrenia borderline personality disorder understanding these are all kind of like word salad things taken from the DSM

which is kind of a big question mark for a lot of reasons but some of these more for lack of better terms of chaotic conditions are contraindicated respond really well to something called metabolic psychiatry with then Chris Palmer is spoken about this out of Harvard using high fat effectively

ketogenic diet but like high fat moderate protein some of these people respond incredibly well so if you look though at the food served at these meditation retreats uniformly effectively the exact polar opposite right which is kind of interesting last but not least she laheen co founder of triad consulting group and co author of thanks for the feedback the science and art of receiving feedback well and difficult conversations how to discuss what matters most

one foundation thing is have the two of you had a conversation about how they prefer to get feedback and that can be one of the most helpful and powerful things to do which is to say I'm talking about hey what makes you feel appreciated because some people need to hear the words other people

don't really care about the words but the fact that you come to them for advice with some of your toughest problems or you you know would like their input on your proofreading tells them they're valued right so what makes you feel appreciated if I have coaching for you

what's your advice to me on when and how to give it do you have pet peeves about feedback generally we all have pet peeves that's a really interesting conversation to have when you're triggered by feedback how can I tell how will I be able to tell and

it's totally obvious but sometimes people shut down and I can't tell whether you're taking it in or arguing in your head and when you are triggered or feeling defensive what advice you have for me on what will help and we have a we have a little template that's like how to get the best out of me that each of us can jot down some thoughts too and then talk about how to get the best out of me is that a template that is available online or that we could put in the show notes?

Yeah on the Triad Consulting website try and consulting group.com we have a nav called help yourself and it's got a bunch of templates exercises etc. so just having that conversation up front means I don't have to guess at how to give you feedback

because you've already told me and hopefully I've taken some notes which I keep handed to remind myself and so I can refer back like hey I had a couple of thoughts about the presentation last week and I wonder when it would be helpful to chat about it a little bit or whatever right

the second thing is that really the fastest way to change a feedback culture and to help people be more receptive is to become a good receiver yourself and be soliciting and eliciting feedback from others and to assume every conversation

even when I think I'm pretty clearly the giver here I'm probably going to end up being a receiver because what they're going to say is well the reason I did that is because you were so unclear about what you wanted or whatever so I have to assume there are things I've contributed to the situation

that are going to be part of the conversation even when for me the primary purpose is to tell you what I think you could do differently or better there's a question that we use a lot that I think is incredibly helpful just in building a habit of integrating feedback into daily life

which is not hey do you have any feedback from me which we've talked about as a terrible question well intended but terrible particularly from a leader because giving feedback up feels very risky and fraught so if you are in a position of leadership you are impacting more and more people

and fewer and fewer of them are going to take the chance to tell you about it so you've got to actually have some pretty advanced skills in receiving feedback and inviting it one way you can do that is to ask what's one thing what's one thing that I'm doing or maybe failing to do that you think is getting in the way or what's one thing that if I could change it would make a difference to you or what's one thing that in our Monday morning meeting we could change to make it more efficient

because I know people are flagging they're in juice flagging that's a question that you can toss off while you're walking down the hall and lowers the stakes it's very clear you're asking for coaching you're looking for something to improve and you're also signaling and by the way I expect you to be receptive to coaching also because I'm going to demonstrate I value it I assume I'm still learning and I expect that you're still learning too and now here are the bios for all the guests

this episode is a bit of an anomaly a bit of a highlight for me it deviates from the usual format I am interviewing a world class performer in this case my good friend Steve Jang who is one of those people one of those tech founders and entrepreneurs and investors

who seems to be able to look around corners to see things before they go mainstream and he has an impeccable record but in this particular sit down we are in person in Seoul South Korea I had wanted to visit Korea for 20 plus years and had never pulled the trigger finally did

I always wanted to go with a friend who could show me around and Steve Jang is such a person and Korea exceeded every expectation on every level in every dimension it really blew my mind and so I wanted to do an episode discussing all things Korea

so in this conversation we talk about the K-wave that is the exploding soft power of Korea which is not accidental by the way the poverty to power playbook so to speak how did they go from I don't want to say a backwater but a very handicap economically handicapped country

to being an incredible export economy with a global presence not just an entertainment hardware in all sorts of technology etc. a number of concepts like Han must see movies and much more and before we dive into Steve's bio I wanted to share his top must see Korean movies so I'm just going to list them out give you some scooby snacks in the very beginning here we go old boy wailing that's W-A-I-L-I-N-G so old boy wailing the handmaiden memories of murder parasite many of you will have seen this

and this comes up in the conversation burning me naughty m-i-n-a-r-i broker which is from 2022 and joint security area all right so who is Steve Jang you can find them on Twitter at Steve Jang J-A-N-G Steve is the founder and managing partner at Kindred Ventures

an early stage venture capital fund based in San Francisco he is one of the founder now investor generation of VCs that arose out of the last technology cycle and he and I have been advisors to a lot of the same companies invested in a lot of the same companies

he is very very good at what he does Steve is one of the top 100 venture capital investors in the world according to the Forbes mightest list of top venture capital investors and was ranked number 45 in 2023 he's also a Korean American a Guilbo we'll explain what Guilbo is who is deeply invested and involved in both the technological and cultural worlds in the US and Asia he is often a bridge previously Steve was an early advisor to and angel investor in Uber

and then an early stage investor in some names you might recognize coinbase postmates poshmark tonal blue bottle coffee and humane the AI device platform that is getting a lot of buzz right now in fact he helped Uber coinbase and blue bottle coffee among others to expand into Korea and Japan

he is very familiar with both places as an entrepreneur Steve co founded companies in the consumer internet mobile and crypto space and on top of all of that in the film and music world he is an executive producer his most recent film is a documentary

Nam june pike moon is the oldest TV which tells the story of the greatest Korean artist and father of digital video art which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023 his next film is a documentary about Vitalik buterin the creator of a therium you can find Steve on Twitter as I mentioned at Steve jang you can find kindred ventures at kindredventures.com and you can find Steve on LinkedIn at Steve jang one it is my pleasure today to have will be Britain PhD on the podcast

she is a clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University Medical School and the director of Brown's clinical and effective neuroscience laboratory and that is effective with an A her clinical neuroscience research investigates the effects of contemplative practices i.e. meditation or certainly one example being meditation on the brain and body in the treatment of mood disorders trauma and other conditions

she is especially interested in which practices are best or worst suited for which types of people or conditions and why she is probably best known for her research on adverse effects why they happen and how to mitigate them and will be doing a very deep dive on this certainly

Dr. Britten is the founder of Cheetah House as in the large and very fast cat Cheetah House a nonprofit organization that provides evidence-based information and support for meditators in distress as well as meditation safety trainings to providers and organizations

you can find Cheetah House on Twitter at Cheetah House org Facebook you can find it Cheetah House dot org and on instagram at cheetah.house my guest today is Sheila heen this is her second appearance on the podcast she let us spent the last three decades

working to understand how people can better navigate conflict with a particular specialty in difficult conversations God knows we need more of that expertise for all of our sakes she is a founder of Triad Consulting Group a professor at Harvard Law School and a co-author of Thanks for the Feedback

the science and art of receiving feedback well even when it's off-base unfair poorly delivered and frankly you're not in the mood with Douglas Stone and difficult conversations subtitle how to discuss what matters most also with Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton with a newly updated third edition

that was just released in August Sheila and her colleagues at Triad work with leaders and organizations to build their capacity to have the conversations that matter most her clients have included Pixar American Express the MBA the Singapore Supreme Court maybe we'll talk about that who knows the Obama White House and theologians struggling with the nature of truth and God

she is schooled in negotiation daily by her three children that you can find my first and very popular conversation with Sheila at Tim. Blog slash Sheila Heen Hey guys this is Tim again just one more thing before you take off and that is 5 bullet Friday would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between 1.5 and 2 million people subscribed to my free newsletter my super short newsletter called 5 Bullet Friday

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