#777: Derek Sivers, Philosopher-Entrepreneur — The Greatest Year of His Life

Well hello boys and girls ladies and girmes. This is Tim Ferriss, welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Thanks so much for tuning in. This time around we have my good friend Derek Sivers back on the show. He is one of my favorite humans. I call him often for advice. He is hilarious and he will do his own introduction because I am incredibly lazy or I was feeling playful and lazy in this conversation. He is a philosopher, programmer, musician, king of sorts.

That is how I would describe him. It is a very fun conversation. I really enjoyed it. You can find Derek's books, including his latest useful, not true, which we discuss at his website, civors.com or SIVE.RS, which is probably just about as confusing to people as Tim.log. If you enjoy this episode, you should go back and listen to the 2015 conversation I did with Derek. The very first one, you can find that at Tim.log slash Derek Sivers and many long-time listeners out of

the nearly 800 episodes have done consider this their favorite or certainly one of their favorites. It is a barn burner of an episode and now we are going to get to it. First just a quick word about the sponsors who make this podcast possible.

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For people who don't know who Derek Sivers is, what is the brief overview of Derek? Oh, I have to do it. Right? I was a musician for many years. And then I started selling my music online in 1997 when there was no PayPal and there was, you know, Amazon was just a bookstore. So I started a little thing called CD Baby just to sell my music, but then it grew and became the largest seller of independent music online.

And I did that for 10 years till I got sick of it and sold it. And then I was a Ted Speaker for a few years and then kind of threw myself into that completely. And then Seth Godin asked me to write a book. So I wrote a book and then people really liked it. So now I've written five. Now I'm a dad in New Zealand, thinking philosophically and living my life. How about that? I thought you did a great job. Thank you for that.

You know, when I can't find a virtual assistant to do work for me, I'll ask my podcast guest to do my job. I will also add number one people if you enjoy this conversation, which I'm sure you will not to apply any pressure to Derek, but I always have so much fun. Go back and listen to the other conversations also because you'll notice a few things. One Derek has one of the most eclectic CVs imaginable. He's worked in traveling circuses. He has played music at pig fairs.

He has been an entrepreneur. He has certainly been a philosopher coater and many other things, but also I would say overarchingly crafted a life that is uniquely Derek's. And frequently tests assumptions and to, I suppose, bucket one of what we're going to discuss today changes his mind and finds himself ziggging when he might have otherwise zagged or where other people are zagging.

And that is part of why I enjoy spending time with Derek aside from the dashing good looks and wit and charm, of course. So let's begin as we were brainstorming what we might chat about because we were hoping to catch up. I suggested a few things we batted a number of things around and we landed on things you've changed your mind about. Things you're fascinated by people you're studying, not necessarily in that order.

So let's start with things you've changed your mind about or on. Where shall we begin? I've got five things for you. I'm starting small and getting big. Coffee. I've never liked coffee. Every time I tried coffee I went, I don't understand how you people like this. And even when I'd be with somebody that knew I didn't like coffee and we were out somewhere and they would go, oh my god, this is the best coffee I've ever had in my life here.

I know you don't like coffee, but if you're ever going to try coffee, this is the one. Try a sip and I'd say, okay. I'd like try to get myself into this mindset. I'm going to like this. I just never liked it. So then I was in United Arab Emirates and I was the guest of this Emirati man that we will get to later. And he said, you're a dezemerati custom. You must have the coffee. And I went, oh, sorry, I don't drink coffee. He said you must have the coffee.

I've never liked coffee in my life because my friend, you must have the, it is Emirati custom. You must have the coffee. All right. I took a sip. I was like, oh my god. This is really good. He was that is Emirati coffee. I went, no, you really, there's something different about this. He goes, yes, it's Emirati coffee. And I said, is that the one where they make it in the sand? He said, no, no, that's Turkish. He said, this is Emirati coffee.

So knowing that we were talking today and I was going to mention coffee, I texted him. I said, hey, what was that coffee? Because he said there are only three places in Dubai that know how to make real Emirati coffee. So he told me one, Betille, B-A-T-E-E-L. If you're in Dubai and you want to try real Emirati coffee, apparently, according to this Emirati, try Betille in Dubai for real Emirati coffee, I've changed my mind on coffee. I now like, at least Emirati coffee. Here's one.

Okay. Just for definition purposes. All right. I'll hold my follow ups. There are going to be a couple of follow ups, including, how do you define Emirati? Is that basically a ramen in the UAE? Sorry, that's what we call people from United Arab Emirates. All right. Everybody. If you are of the lineage, if you were a citizen of United Arab Emirates, you referred to as Emirati. What is special technique, special ingredient that makes Emirati coffee so miraculous for you?

Hey, listeners, if you find out what's different about Emirati coffee, please let me know. I went back six months later, same thing. I tried Emirati coffee and I like it. Severe social pressure. Yeah. Yeah. The magic ingredient. It has social pressure. It makes anything take time. You must have it. And it will, it will be disastrous if you don't like it.

I don't know what it is, but it's surprised. Okay. Python. So I'm just going to include this because 23 years ago, I learned the Ruby programming language. And I became fluent in Ruby. And Ruby and Python are as similar as Portuguese in Spanish. But let's say Ruby is Portuguese, where Spanish became more and more and more popular. So when I first learned Ruby, it's like Ruby and Python were kind of side by side. Ruby was a little more popular at the time.

But then over the years, Python just took off and I refused to look at it. I was like, no, I chose Ruby. I speak Ruby. I don't want to learn Python. It's too similar. If I'm going to learn another language, it's going to be Lisp or Haskell or something really different. I'm not going to learn Python. No. And so for years and years, I've been refusing and then just irrationally prejudiced against Python.

When I was choosing a new language for a new project, I considered everything but Python. And then I realized I had left Python out because of my severe prejudice against it for no good reason. So I finally looked at the Python programming language and I went, oh my God, it's beautiful. It's great. Oh my God, it's wonderful. So now I love Python. And that just felt amazing in my heart to be like, wow, this thing that I was prejudiced against for 20 years is actually wonderful.

Oh, cool. So coffee Python number two. Um hmm. Shackle on number three. Let's go on rats. Okay, rats. I brought a prop. I want to make this a good show. For the first time ever appearing. Are my little pet rats? Okay, if you see on YouTube, I look at that. All right. So we have two rats on video. They're sizable. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. They're chunky monkeys. They are so cute and they're so wonderful and they're so affectionate. You can't maybe tell because I'm holding them up like they owe me money right now, you know, but. So here's the deal. Years ago, I used to kill rats. I hated rats so badly. I lived in a basement apartment in Boston that had rats in and around the apartment that would sometimes be blocking my entrance to my apartment as I would come home and I was tired.

So I killed many rats with great vengeance. I hated rats. And then just a few months ago, my boys said, hey, dad, can we get a pet rat? I was like, haha, and I just thought it was it was kidding. And he said a week later, he said, you know, that really kind of made me sad that you just shot down my idea of the pet rat. I said, wait, you were serious? I said, yeah. Oh, well, why would you want a nasty awful rat as a pet?

He said, no, they're not nasty and awful. Look, and he showed me some videos that rats are really sweet and they're really wonderful. They're smart. They're trainable. You can train them to do little tricks and like pick things out and like go to a wallet and open it up and take money and bring it to you. And you know, very useful in a lot of gold. Yes, it's going to be interesting. The little art for dodgers.

So it's like the difference between a wild rat and a pet rat is like the difference between a wild dog and a poodle. The pet rats are really sweet. So no matter what you think of wild rats, don't discount or don't hate on pet rats. They're actually really wonderful and cuddly. And they're even clean. They use a litter box. They can control their bladder like a cat. They prefer to go in a litter box. And so they're really clean and wonderful.

So, oh, and wait, the lifespan. Their lifespan is two to three years, which as a parent is really wonderful because when a kid says, I want a pet, you don't always want like a 15 year commitment. You know, the kid's going to be away at college and use the pet that your kid wanted when they were 18. So I like that the lifespan is two to three years, which is, you know, so rats are good pets.

And so I love my little rats. We just got these two boys, but even more than loving the rats, I love that I am now cuddling what I used to kill. Like that I now love what I used to hate. It's so sweet. Like I cuddle them, but it's like, God, I used to hate you. This is such a good feeling in my heart that I now love what I used to hate. And you'll see this is the theme of my five things today.

Ready for next. What are the names of the two rats cricket and clover, cully clover and crazy cricket climber. Do they eat crickets? What do they eat? Actually, well, they do love clover, but now they just kind of eat rat food from the store. They eat anything. It's like when you're making opportunities, you've got little leftovers, you've got little bits and crusts or little things that you just give it to the rats. They usually love it.

It's great. I keep them in the kitchen. That's perfect. That's what some folks in South America do with guinea pigs, although the differences they fatten up the guinea pigs on the table scraps and then they eat the pigs. Probably not going to eat cricket and clover and I imagine cricket and clover, but I do like that kind of hang out near the kitchen and give them the scraps. Okay, number four, China.

So in 2010, I went to Guilan, China and then I went to Taipei, Taiwan. And at the time, China was rough. I was walking over rubble. The air was just choking me with its smoke and the sense of oil and everything felt very third world, very rough.

And I just thought, okay, that's what China is. China, you know, developing the economy. It's just rough. And then you go to Taipei, Taiwan. And it just feels like the most refined first world, beautiful version. It's like Japan, but with Chinese culture. And I thought,

ah, someday I want to live in Taiwan because that's the really nice part of China. So here we are 2024 14 years later, I go to bring my kid on a school holiday to China for his first time. And I thought, well, we'll start out rough by going to mainland China. And then we'll move on to like the best of the best with the refined culture of Taiwan, Taipei. And it turned out to be the opposite that China was wonderful. We went to Shanghai. And it was like first world, amazing.

And I had to say, refined silent because all the vehicles are electric now. So that was the very first thing I noticed. As soon as I took the train from the airport, we got off in downtown Shanghai. I'm surrounded by 100 vehicles. And I hear nothing. It's just, that's so nice. And I'm like, oh, my God, what? This is real. Like 20 motorbikes went in front of my face. Like right there, like, you know, three meters away. I heard none of them. They were just the silent movement.

This is so nice. And the people were just so polite and cultured. And it was none of this, like hacking and spitting that I associated with it before like the shouting and the spitting. Yeah, that's good to hear. I remember the spitting from my visits. A lot of spitting. Yeah. And even just transactionally, you have to get Alipay or WeChat on your phone first before you go, like attach it to your credit card.

But then once you're there, all transactions are just beep. Everything is so easy. And they're beautiful, like rental bikes everywhere laid out in perfect color-coded cues. And you can just walk up to one and go, beep, and step on the bike and then just go where you want to go and you drop it off. You go, beep. And everything is just so civilized and wonderful. I was so, it completely changed my mind about China. And then I don't want to sound like I'm trashing Taiwan.

But it was just interesting that by comparison, then I went to Taipei and I thought, whoa, if China's this nice, imagine how nice Taipei is going to be. And I got there and it was kind of like stinky and trashy. And they don't take credit cards or they don't have the apps. And so you have to pay cash everywhere. And I'm like, money and paper and coins. And I was like, wow, interesting. And so I met with a Taiwanese woman for lunch that I emailed with before.

And she's an investor that goes to mainland China often. And I mentioned something about this cautiously. I was like, yeah, I don't want to trash your home. I didn't say it like that. But I just cautiously said, hi, I noticed something. And she said, I'm glad you noticed. She said, I noticed this too. She said, I go to mainland China cities every six to 12 months.

And she said, I feel like Taiwan may be plateaued like 12 years ago, like we kind of hit first world status and then stayed there almost like Japan. You know, it's like Japan used to feel futuristic. Now it feels kind of stuck in the 90s, you know, facts, machines and stuff. And which is kind of cute in a way. Like again, not to knock it. It just feels like it got to a certain point. And then it said, okay, we're happy here.

And plateaued, yeah. And she said, every time I go to China, she said, there's visible noticeable improvements like every six months. She said, it blows my mind that they just keep improving and keep pushing. So I read a book called China's World View by David Dao Quilly that changed my perception of China's government too. It's really impressive.

He's a guy that's in but not in China's government. And so he kind of is trying to explain the mindset of China's government to outsiders. And it's a beautiful book. I highly recommend if somebody wants to understand China better China's World View. China's World View. Just as a sidebar note, you're mentioned of Japan. I love Japan. And I've spent time in mainland China and in Taipei.

It's time for me to get back to both of those. I've spent much more time in Japan. But when people are going to Japan for the first time, they're like, I can't wait to experience this futuristic view. 30 years ahead, I typically say, look, especially if they're going to stay there for a longer period of time, I say, you're going to love it. And it is 30 to 40% blade runner and 60 to 70% DMV. Just like feeling filling out paperwork and triplets and facts machines.

It's going to drive you nuts. If you actually try to live there on some levels, right? There's so many beautiful things about it. But yes, it does have the feeling of having frozen in time in a sense. As opposed to continued to inflect the way that it was perhaps some time ago, you need to get back to the east, so to speak, it's been a long time already. I think you have actually because of this newfound love, I'm actually going to shenzhen and Chengdu in a few weeks.

Oh, wow. I just want to keep experiencing different Chinese cities. Are you going to do any factory tours or see manufacturing there? I'm just meeting with people. That's kind of how I travel these days. I tend to go to a place instead of just, instead of seeing the sites, I want to meet the people. So I'm meeting with people that I've emailed with over the years and just, I chose those two cities because I know a lot of people there.

Great. Going to hear the report. So I think I'm no mathematician, but maybe you have one more? Smart ass. Okay, number five. Dubai. So this is my big one because when I lived in Singapore, Dubai would often come up. People would compare the two and they would tell me things about Dubai, about the shopping malls and the millionaire pandering and the Instagram hashtaggy. You look at me kind of crap. And Dubai was in my top 10 places I never want to go in my life. Fuck that place. It sounds awful.

It sounds like everything I hate in one place, you couldn't pay me to go there. But then I have to notice that feeling in myself. And this is going to be, we'll get to like the theme when we're done with this number five. But I had a flight from New Zealand to Europe that it changed planes in Dubai and I looked at that and I went, Dubai. And I was like, wait a second. What is this prejudice in me against Dubai?

It's like saying, I hate artichokes, but I've never tried artichokes, right? Like I hate Dubai, but I've never been to Dubai. Well, maybe I should go to Dubai. So instead of making it a three hour layover, I made it like a three or four day layover. I went, wow, okay, I'm going to Dubai for a few days. So I read a book called City of Gold, which was about the founding of Dubai and the creation of Dubai. And dude, it was so good.

It is such a great book. Anybody listening to this? If you want a great read, read the book City of Gold about the history of Dubai. It is inspiring the wisdom and the foresight and the boldness it took to make that place happen. It was really just like a vision that saw its way through to the end against all thoughts, right? So super inspiring. Then somebody said, oh, you need to read Arabian sands by this man named Fessager.

And that gets into like the Arab bedouculturus written in the 1940s or 50s, kind of like a Lawrence of Arabia kind of guy. Like from England, but went through the desert and kind of became one with the bedouc people and got to know the culture and wrote about it. So that was really inspiring. And then the United Arab Emirates itself, as I learned more about, so Dubai is a city in a region inside the United Arab Emirates.

It's one of the seven states, the Emirates in that country. So sheaks I add, the guy that was really like the father of the nation, was a really great dude, kind of like when I moved to Singapore and I learned more about Lee Kwan Yew and started to really admire the decisions he made. It became a bit of a role model, like learning about him, like makes me want to be a better person.

You know, I just noticed that it actually subtly influences my actions. And so when I'm in Singapore, I feel like a little bit infused with the role model. Like I feel the presence of the role model of Lee Kwan Yew. And when I'm in UAE, I feel a little bit inspired by sheaks I add, because it was just such a great generous dude. And also I think it's interesting that Arab culture gets a really bad rap in the media.

Like Hollywood portrayal is usually some like white actor with brown makeup being stupid saying, you know, I like this building, I'll buy ten of them, you know. I think I want a penguin colony in the desert, you know, make it happen. And they're kind of portrayed as fools that are too rich. And so getting to know the culture felt like this is really interesting. I really had the wrong idea about this culture.

Okay, so as I read these books, City of Golden Arabian Sands, I have a thing on my website where I always show what I'm reading and I take notes from the books and I put notes on my website. And a friend of mine that lives in Muscat, Oman saw my reading list and he said, what is your interest in this region? I've noticed you're reading books about Middle East and I told him I just really interested in Arab culture and he said, you must meet the man from Tamashii.

I said, what? And he goes, go to tamashii.com, T-A-M-A-S-H-E-E.com. And he said, you will see a shoe store. His name is Muhammad Kuzn, he designs sandals. But underneath the surface, he's an educator of Arab culture. So the sandals are just like the storefront. It's like the pirate shop in San Francisco. Oh, I haven't heard this. There is a place in San Francisco, it's on Valencia Street and it is used for now educating kids, writing workshops, things like that.

But because they couldn't get it zoned in San Francisco, they couldn't get permission for what they actually wanted to do. They had to create a storefront and then do the teaching in the back. And they created a pirate attire store and all the classrooms are in the back. So that was a bit of an antiggression, especially because I can't even recall the proper name of the writing outlet that is associated with this.

But Tamashii, shoe store, sandals store on the front end, but it's actually education in disguise. Yeah, well, at first I thought there was no connection. Then I realized that his sandal designs are actually kind of reflecting Arab traditions and culture through the design of the sandals. But it's like his true passion are these cultural trips he does. So if you go to tamashii.com and you close in the menu, you can click cultural trips and then you'll see.

So my friend introduced me to this guy. So I met with him on my trip to Dubai. We meet by the creek and he tells me that his grandfather built the first building in Dubai. That was his grandfather. That's how young that city is. And he's just like, yeah, right. Basically right over there. There was a very first building in Dubai. My grandfather is the one that built it.

So I said, can you explain to me something about Arab culture and and he said, well, wait, first you got to understand the culture of the people of the desert is very different than the people of the sea. They were being coast and which is very different than the people of the hills. I said, okay, well, where's your family from? And he said, well, from the desert.

But he said, but you know, two uncles got in a fight and so kind of half the family moved off to Iraq for a while and there was kind of like a split in the family. But then they kind of reunited in Abu Dhabi.

And he said, but then Islam came along. And I said, wait, hold on, Islam. That was like the year 600. I said, have you been telling me your family history from 2000 years ago? And he goes, well, 1800 years ago. Yeah, I said, wait, how the fuck do you know your family history back 1800 years? He said, well, we keep good records. Wow. Imagine what that does to how you see your life.

If you see yourself in this long lineage of 1800 years of recorded family history, like how that affects your dating and whatever choices on where to live. So, Muhammad Kuzm, this guy is a badass. I love this guy. He's such a wealth of information and he communicates it so well. It really helps, by the way, that so he's got a complete American accent. He went to college in Boston for six years, like got into finance, came back, worked in finance in Abu Dhabi.

And then just said, no, my real passion is teaching the Arab cultural traditions that I think have gotten lost in our modern skyscrapers. So that's why he made it his passion project. You know, he could have made way more money in finance, but he has this tamashi.com sandal store and he teaches Arab culture. And I admire the hell out of this guy.

That's a really cool easter egg. All right. So I'll link to that in the show notes. And I also pulled up this word that was on the tip of my tongue, Mick Sweeney's Mick Sweeney's dot net. People can check it out. There's some hilarious writing. The one that I most recently shared with someone after it was shared with me is

that Cormac McCarthy writes to the editor of the Santa Fe, New Mexican by John Keenan. It's only going to be funny for people who have read some of Cormac McCarthy like the road or bloodmuridian, but there's a lot of really good stuff. So that is the outlet. Also wanted to mention, because you mentioned Iraq, Iraqi music, traditional music, some of the most incredibly intricate music.

I've ever heard using a dulcimer or hammered dulcimer. There are different instruments involved. Absolutely spectacular. A lot of that has been destroyed, unfortunately, culturally and various teachers and so on due to all of the goings on in Iraq or in the last while. But what is the overarching lesson that you take from the five things you have changed your mind on?

Are there kind of meta lessons that you take from this? Yeah, you can see the theme, which is like, I love my rats, but even more. It's like, I love that I used to hate them. And now I don't. And I could have gone on twice as long about Dubai, by the way. The place is amazing. It is this cultural melting pot that just warms my heart.

Sitting on the second floor of the Dubai Mall and watching the whole world go by, just the Nigerians and the, I don't know, the Saudis and the Russians and the Chinese and the British are just all walking through in the same place. It's so amazing. I just, I kind of want to live there. But as happy as it makes me, I get this extra happiness of going, wow, I used to hate this place without even knowing it.

And I take a sip of this coffee and it's like, wow, for my whole life, I'm 55, I hated coffee. The Python programming, like, but the secret has been held back from you. So now you have to go to Dubai to have the coffee. Right. The theme is that if you feel completely averse to something, get to know it better, that whatever you feel yourself leaning away from, try leaning into, if you hate opera, then go learn more about opera.

And if you hate sports, well, then go learn more about sports. It's usually just learning about something gives you an appreciation for this thing that you used to just dismiss. At the end of the year last year, I just thought, God, this has been, I think maybe the greatest year of my life. I think this is the happiest I have ever been in my whole life. And I think the reason why was because I had five major things in one year that I used to hate that now I love. God, this is the greatest joy.

So major things. So the rats makes it into major things. I like this. I like it. I mean, you know, they're my, they're my, I'm not minimizing rats. I'm not minimizing rats. But it's, you know, even the coffee and even the Python, I'm doing something Python going, wow, I can't believe I hated this for 20 years. Well, I suppose they're major in the sense that to the degree you had a fixed position beforehand, these were kind of strong fixed positions of dislike.

So that turn around is very interesting. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. About three weeks ago, I found myself between 10 and 12,000 feet going over the continental divide carrying tons of weight and I needed all the help I could get.

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Dubai, you had a layover that then prompted you to extend how long you stayed there. I thought I'm not sure exactly how that about face came to be. But having experienced the past year, you say to yourself, this is one of the greatest or maybe the greatest year of my life. High levels of happiness. I think it's because I had these changes in mind. Are you farming for opportunities to change your mind? Proactively? Yeah. And if so, how are you doing that?

I don't have a systematic thing I can share. And nothing I'm not sharing it. I just don't have it. But it just made me notice like now I just need to notice in myself when I'm irrational. Averse to something. It can't even be a thought process. Sometimes, okay, this is actually in my useful not true book that just came out.

This idea that was actually a little bit sparked by you where somebody dismisses everything a person says dismisses everything a public figure says because they don't like something about that public figure. Right. Like, oh, I don't like the way he acts on social media. So fuck him. I'm not going to listen to what he says. And that was inspired. I think I told you last time that the first time I encountered that was years and years ago when I saw somebody holding for our work week.

And I said, oh, wow, great book. And he goes, yeah, the guy is full of himself. Here you want it. He's like, he didn't want to read the book because he saw one thing in there that made him think you were fully yourself. So that's it. Fuck this whole thing. Fuck this 400 page book. There's nothing in it for me because there's something I don't like about this guy. When I think about that, to me, that's trying to think of people as either true or not true instead of useful or not useful.

That's judging the box, not judging the contents inside. And so I think there are many things in my life where I have judged the box like Python. No, you know, China, rough, do buy fuck that place. Rats coffee. Sorry, just had a spit all five times. And all of those I was judging the box. But if you learn a little bit more about it, then you get into the contents. And you go, oh, actually, the contents are wonderful. It was just I was dismissing the package.

He probably had the first edition where I had that whole chapter on my cock size that ended up being a little over the top. So I took it out for reprints. And then he put it into four hour body. It was a bit much. Yeah, then I'm putting that as an appendix on the four hour body. So fair play on his part. I would actually build on that to say that I look to my close relationships.

And I pause and question how I'm thinking about friendships. If in every case, there isn't something substantial, I disagree with each of those friends on. Does that make sense? Yes. I love that. I really want friends where the differences of opinion bring us closer and make our friendships more valuable, not the other way around. Yes. If you and your friends agree on pretty much everything, I view that as symptomatic of a problem.

Okay. I'm so glad you brought this up. Sometimes I wonder about your motivation for continuing these podcasts and how you keep up the enthusiasm for doing this for so long. And then I thought, God, wait, you must be immersing yourself in so many diverse worldviews that it made me think about the comparison to investing.

I was in a situation recently. You've probably had this many times and I think it's maybe part of why you left California where you catch yourself in a group of people and everybody agrees with everybody else. That's like this group think even if they're all really smart, but dammit, they all basically agree with sucks. And I thought about the benefits of diversification when it comes to investing.

Right. So anybody who learns like investing one to one learns about having a low correlation between your asset allocations. So your US stocks, international stocks, real estate commodities, bonds, gold, cash, some things risky, some things riskless. And the whole idea is they're supposed to have a low correlation. So if one goes down, they won't all go down. And I thought about that in terms of the thought portfolio in our head, any given person.

So you say it with the friends you have around, but I assume aren't you then by knowing your friends so well when you're in a certain situation you're thinking about what to do. You don't just have Tim's thoughts. You also have this friends thoughts and that's friends thoughts. And it's like, how would this friend of mine approach this? Do you do that actively?

Oh, yeah, I definitely do. And I'll give a real world example. And I don't know if we want to get into the thick of it. But I was reading some of your writing before we hopped on the phone. And I was taking an ice bath also right before we got on the phone, which I know I am fonder of than you are.

But I was sitting in the tub, freezing my balls off and there were certain statements and positions in the writing that got me all riled up. And I was sitting there getting riled up and thinking about my counter positions. And then I thought to myself, well, that's interesting to observe these feelings coming up these very strong feelings. Then I thought to myself, this is really good.

This is good because the feelings are coming up in a strong way. And you're not someone to shy away from a conversation about those things. And what a gift to be able to have civil disagreement with friends like what a fucking treasure that is. Because we don't have a lot of models for civil disagreement. I would say at least not in most media or online. It's just not what sells.

And I very much want friends who are going to call me on my bullshit or at least take counter positions and help me think through things. And I think that in your new book, for instance, this is a very good job of discussing perspectives and perspective taking and how you can read many things differently from different viewpoints. And you want friends who can help you do that.

So that you don't get trapped in your own thought loops. And furthermore, just on a very practical sense, you want to be able to speak truthfully to your friends and you want them to be able to do the same. And if you do that and you talk about a really wide breadth of things, if you never have conflict, one or both views probably being dishonest.

Yeah. And if you're going to have some friction in the system, which you probably will, if you're really being honest, then you're going to need to be good at conflict resolution or repair or talking about hard things. So that's a very long stream of consciousness that I just let out. But if I look for friends who I can and will disagree with on things, then it becomes my dojo for life overall with people I really care for in love.

Good God. What an amazing gift and advantage that is. So yes, I do that deliberately and I invite people on the podcast who I suspect or know I will disagree with on a few different levels. And that gives me a chance to interrogate their thinking, but also interrogate my own thinking. But I've noticed within myself that when I'm around people that I know agree with me, my inherent curiosity level drops a bit.

And when I'm around people that I know don't think like me, my curiosity peaks. So when I meet somebody that is like a scientist that is also Hindu, I'm like, oh, oh my God, I have so many questions for you. Can you explain to me how this? Okay, like I'm filled with curiosity to meet somebody that grew up Hindu and still actively has the Hindu beliefs. I want to understand this better.

I've read two books about Hinduism. I don't get it still. I have so many questions for you. But if I'm around somebody that's like me, I'm like, how are you doing? What's up? Yeah, me too. Cool. All right. So I think it's a deliberate overweighting if we're going to kind of use a back to like quantitative and investment metaphor. I have a whole lifetime of thinking my way.

Now I want to overweight learning other ways of thinking. And to me, it's just pure curiosity. There's no debate. There's no like let's work this out and get to the right answer. It's just no, please tell me this other way of looking at things. Tell me this other way of looking at your family history 1800 years. Tell me this other way of looking at, I don't know, spirituality, life after death, etc.

Please, I'm so curious because it reminds me that my way of looking at it is not the only way. I love dislodging my first impression. I think our first thought is an obstacle. We have to get past it to realize their other ways to look at the situation. Once you realize that you can get past your first way of looking at something, then you can do that.

Like what do you call it systems to thinking, right? Thinking fast and slow. You can go, all right. Okay, hold on. That was my first reaction. What are some other ways I could look at this?

That's what my whole useful not true book is about. Yeah, I remember also this is I think this was on the podcast in one of our earlier conversations, but I asked you it was on the podcast. Probably the first conversation. I asked you who the first person was you thought of when I gave the word successful and your answer was along the lines of well, I think answer number one isn't that interesting because I might say Richard Branson.

But really, where Elon Musk, but if Richard Branson wanted a life of peace and tranquility and a slower pace, if that were his goal, then he's utterly failing. So maybe that isn't success, but perhaps overarchingly, I think I've used that twice now as an advert. That's pretty funny. I never used that word. But the question should be who's the third person you think of when you hear the word successful. I'm so impressed that you remember that.

It's a long time ago. Yeah. And that is an example of what you're talking about is getting past the first thought. I think the operative word there's thought, right? Because just to draw distinction for me, I think paying attention to feeling the first feeling can save you from a lot of pain.

In the short end, the long term, in other words, long lines of the gift of fear, Gavin DeBecker, etc. If your system says no, pay very close attention to that. But if you have a inbuilt story, I hate Dubai because A, B, and C, which is very different from. I don't feel safe in this airport. And I don't know why those are two very different. Very question. That first story can pay a lot of incredible dividends.

Dude, I love this subject so much to me that it's kind of like the key of life. So often the difference between success and failure is the mindset that leads you to take different actions. But if you just look at a situation and you say, that's it. That's what the situation is. I'm not talking about physical things. I mean, declaring something to be a dead end, declaring something to suck.

These are all things of the mind. And nothing of the mind is necessarily true. Everything that's just in the mind is just one perspective. Like physical things are true. Sure. You know, there are some physical realities. The number of votes cast in an election is a physical reality. But an alien or a computer could observe and agree.

But only these things of the mind were social creatures and we treat them like they are realities. Like, hey, that person wronged me. And that's just a fact. That's not just a fact. That's one way of looking at it. And you might be a lot happier and a lot more successful if you realize that that's just one way of looking at it. It's not true. It's just a perspective. It's just a thought.

And there's another way of seeing that and that other way of seeing it might lead to actions. It would be much more effective for you. Yeah, for sure. And I think your new book pairs well with Byron Hiddies, the work very much. Yes. It focuses on a lot of what we're discussing. And I was going to say in addition to what we've already covered that the content is different from the mindset. And what I mean by that is you have crafted a very path of Derek life for yourself.

And you've made some very unorthodox decisions, some of which I think are frankly sometimes Kuku bananas, but thank you. You're welcome. If I don't agree, even if I wouldn't replicate the decision hearing you explain why you did it. And how you navigated that the lenses through which you viewed this scenario has allowed me to learn things that I can apply to totally different circumstances. Right. And that's really valuable. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, like borrowing you might not make the same house as someone else, but learning how to use the carpentry tools that they used to build that house could actually really, really really aid you in a lot of disparate scenarios. So that's how I've also thought about it. I so often try to get people to devalue the example, but value the theme, the process, like you just said that too many people focus on the example that you give them. It's like try to forget the example and look for the process.

So thanks for saying that I do that with everything. There's a person that we could talk about here if you want later, but he's a computer programmer, but he gets up and gives a talk about computer programming that I see the theme in what he's talking about. I'm like, oh, okay, we'll forget the code for a second. That's a brilliant theme. And it's fun to be able to do that.

So let's pause. This might be a good segue. Is that part of the next bucket of people you're studying? Yeah, or things you're fascinated by? Where would you like to go next? Because this might be a good segue. Yeah, it's funny. You actually jumped to the last thing I was going to mention. You brought up this diversified portfolio of perspectives. So that was one of the things I wanted to talk about today and you didn't even know that.

Oh, amazing. So did not. That was great. Yeah, let's talk. Okay, you asked me in advance. People I'm studying. So let's do them in reverse order since we already brought up Rich Hickey. So RICH, HICKY, wait a second before we switch to that. Have you ever met Brian Eno, the record producer?

I have not met Brian Eno, but I have his oblique strategies, yes, what parts that I was just reading about how he ended up coining the term ambient music in the hospital because he couldn't get up and changed the volume and ended up he ended up listening to very, very low volume music.

A friend had put on for him. So I'm fascinated by Brian Eno, but I've never met him. Brian Eno is one of these guys that his thought process is fascinating. I don't love his music. I like his music. I don't love it, but I love his thought process.

By the way, if you go to the website musicthoughts.com, that's my love letter to Brian Eno and John Cage and some of these music thinkers. I made that website in 1999 and it's a collection of inspiring quotes from Brian Eno, John Cage and a bunch of other musicians. Music thoughts.com.

It's totally non-commercial. I'm not going to make it penny off of anybody looking at it. So I'm not trying to pitch it, but I'm just saying it's a collection of Brian Eno's philosophies on music and thoughts on music that I would read these quotes to inspire me as I was making music and kind of knock my thinking kind of like the oblique strategies cards to shift my thinking into something different.

I'm not even just reading his interviews. One thing he said is his job as a record producer is to have strong opinions in the studio so that if he's in there producing a record by you too and the guys are fighting about whether to have a guitar solo or not, whether it should be a loud guitar solo or quite guitar solo, he said, well my job then would be to say, well, how about we have no guitar at all in this song and the band members go, what are you crazy? No, this song needs guitar.

Brian, we absolutely need guitar and he goes, all right, happy I could help by you disagreeing with me. I just helped you solidify your position. So that's my job here. So on the other hand, if you would have said, oh, you're okay, no guitar. That's a good idea. Great. Glad I could help. I'm not saying my opinions are right. I'm just trying to help you respond. I love that.

You're providing a foil. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're providing a foil. That's music thoughts.com. Quick question on was it John Cage? You mentioned. Yeah. So I was first exposed to John Cage in a documentary, a friend of mine named Steve Zhang was involved with. Namjoon Pike Moon is the oldest TV, which is about Namjoon Pike, this amazing pioneer in experimental art, performance art, many different media.

And he was inspired by John Cage. Now, I know very little about John Cage, but I did get to see a segment of a performance that he did, which caused like 90% of the audience to leave. Just like the most agonizingly uncomfortable, I would say noise to listen to. That is my sole exposure to John Cage, but I've heard him invoked as this figurehead of great influence. And I'm basing my impression of him only on that.

What I would just say is awful performance that I saw part of in this documentary. How would you sell John Cage or why is he interesting?

I'm no expert, but let's just say he questioned things that hadn't been questioned before. A lot of modern art. The kind where people look at it and go, what? That's it. It's a seesaw over the border between US and Mexico. You call that art. I could do that. And it's like, yeah, but you didn't. Somebody looked at that border between US and Mexico and said, I think we could put a seesaw over that.

And in a way, that's a beautiful statement. It's not about the brushstrokes on canvas. It's about the statement. So I think John Cage was doing that with music. He was questioning the core of what is this anyway. And so that's why I think his most famous piece is called four minutes and 33 seconds, which is just four minutes of 33 seconds of silence.

The point was, hey, listen to the room around you for four minutes and 33 seconds. There are sounds going on here already. I mean, I think that was his point. Maybe he stayed mute on it. Okay. So is it fair to say that he's interesting to you for the same reason that Brian, you know, in the producer capacity is interesting as a provocateur of sorts, like an instigator of new thinking.

Yeah. I want to emulate his thought process, even if I don't love his end results. Well, you said it first. That's why love that you beat me to this. Your friends, you may not want to live my life here with my whatever three glasses and two rats, but you like some of my thought process. Yeah. People keep emailing me about that. Hey, I heard your podcast with Tim Ferris. So three glasses.

So let me explain that for people who don't know the kind of you should get a third right just to give the same number of rats that you have glasses, but when I visited you and you're feeling I was like, hey, do you mind if I have glass water? No, no, knock yourself out. Where the glasses other in the cabinet and I went and I saw three glasses. All of difference dramatically different sizes.

And I was like, what happens if you have more than three people over here like, oh, just buy some more glasses. I was like, well, actually, that kind of makes a certain elegant sense. So those are the three glasses. All right, you know what? On that note, do you want to hear? I am building my dream home right now. Can imagine where this is going. Just 20 minutes north of Wellington, I bought a piece of land or I'm building my dream home.

It is a four by eight meter rectangle with nothing inside. No toilet, no kitchen, no nothing because I thought every house I've lived in came with its default shit. And I adapted myself to its default shit like, well, that's just where the bathroom is. That's just the size of the living room. That's just what it is. And I've always had to adapt myself. So I've never experienced the process of making the place adapt to me through practice, not in theory.

So I thought if I just start with a four by eight meter well insulated rectangle, then over time we'll see what I need. Wait, did you say four by eight four by eight meters is the whole house. Sorry, it's actually two one. So it's a four by 12. Okay, got it. No, four by 14 meter rectangle is that's the two bedroom. Place where I'll sleep with my kid and the next to it is a four by eight where I spend all of my waking hours.

So it's the sleeping house and the waking house. And my kid actually gets his own four by eight meter cube to experiment with. And the whole idea is to see what you need. So I'm starting with no bathroom, no kitchen. I'm just going to put a little induction hob outside and an outhouse. And then I'll see if that's okay with me. Or if I find through experience that I really want a bathroom inside, okay, well now I know from experience not just because it's the default setting.

So I'm trying to start from scratch and this is my dream house because of the process that will allow me to have. Okay, so this is a very mundane question, but I'm curious. Generally, if you're going to have like a kitchen or a bathroom or something, you would have the piping or the power and so on, put in a certain place. So as it stands, that is not the case. So you might have to do a fair amount of demo or deconstructing your house to add any of these things internally.

I got this tip from Stuart Brand wrote a brilliant book that everyone should read anyone who's smart that is called How Buildings Learn. How Buildings Learn by Stuart Brand, you should try to get the paper book because it's just laid out in such a way that you kind of need the paper book. He goes through this analytical thing about buildings and he said, this is a reason why you should never hide your wires and pipes. Just keep the infrastructure on the outside so that it's easier to change.

He has a beautiful line in there. It's almost the opening point. He says, all buildings are predictions and all predictions are wrong. So therefore, that's called less predictive. You can make your building the better. That's why I'm just getting this rectangle. All pipes and wires will just be exposed to nothing buried so that I can quickly change them. I can always see where they are. I'm very much following Stuart Brand's philosophy.

Stuart Brand is a smart, fascinating man, just a quick pitch for Stuart Brand. So I met Stuart through Kevin Kelly. Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired Magazine, fascinating, genius, bizarre guy as an Amish beard. But he's a technology futurist built his own house by hand.

He spends more time in China than probably anyone I know is just an eclectic combination of all sorts of things. And the title of my podcast with him way back in the day was the real world most interesting man in the world or something like that. And in the midst of the conversation with Kevin, or maybe speaking offline, he said, if you really want the person I consider to be the most interesting man in the world, it's Stuart Brand.

He had Stuart on the podcast a number of years ago and boy, oh boy, you want to talk about a polymath, these something else. All right. So you've preserved the optionality. With the possibility of putting things on the outside, rather than on the inside in terms of support infrastructure. And how do you see yourself using a space with nothing inside?

I don't know. See, that would be a prediction. I'm trying to not just I'm just going to show up. It'll be ready in a few months and then I'll start living there and we'll see what happens. That's all I know. It's going to be totally empty. Are you going to have some desks at chair? I mean, are you going to have anything at all? Are you just going to sit on the floor and be like, what do I require at this moment?

Bringing a mattress to start and then over time, I'll notice if if I wish I had a desk here, then I'll get a desk there. So I'll add things as it I feel that I really, really need them. Again, I highly recommend in how buildings learn. He kind of goes into this about like the best spaces are just rectangles and the best places are ones that are easy to alter.

So that if you suddenly decide he talks about this MIT building where people are just allowed to bash a hole in the wall because it wasn't some beautifully architecturally designed masterpiece. It was something thrown together quickly in World War II. And people love that building because if they do need to bash a hole in the wall or run some wires through, they can just do it because it's a trashy old building and it's because of that it's such a creative space.

The places that are award winning are often the ones that are the most hated by their residents, they might win the award for the architect, but because they're award winning, they're inflexible. They're sacred. I mean, talk to people who live in a Frank Lloyd Wright home now. And it's like, you know, living a masterpiece museum can't change a single screw or anything because it's the way he wanted it.

So practical recommendation, I would say if you're going to be sitting on the floor a lot, if you're not accustomed to doing that, just so you don't end up with all sorts of orthopedic issues, I would start doing Turkish get ups and getting accustomed to sitting on the floor and getting up a lot. I'll probably get a good chair almost right away, but I just want to make sure that everybody's ready for the rectangle.

All right, fascinating. Another example, I'll let you be the first monkey shot into space on this particular type of home design, can't wait to learn so many things. You experiment with some things I don't want to experiment with and all experiment. You don't want to experiment with all renounce my US citizenship and let you know how it goes. I'll build my dream home of a four by eight rectangle. Let you know how it goes.

Yeah, you got to divvy it up in the redundancy and experimentation is kind of I don't say pointless, but it's more fun to have people doing different things. Other people you are studying. All right, or things you're fascinated by we can hop around depends on where you want to go. I already started Rich Hickey. Oh, that's right. You mentioned him at I wrote him down because that was left dangling and I was like, who is this Rich Hickey?

So Rich Hickey is he's a programmer. He's the inventor of a programming language called closure C L O J U R E. He's actually one of my number one picks for somebody that I would like to get on your show. Like if we did a co-hosting kind of thing and I were to get somebody on, actually I already emailed him. He didn't reply.

But maybe hey, if anybody knows Rich Hickey and if he's interested, nudge, nudge, nudge, he did a brilliant talk. If you search YouTube for either simple versus easy, or I think the name of the video on YouTube is called simplicity matters. Here's his point. I actually jotted down these notes so I could try to bang out his point quickly and then we'll talk about it. And keep in mind, everything I'm about to say, he's just talking about programming. He's speaking to a rumor programmers.

He said, we mistake simple and easy. We think that simple means easy and easy means simple. But he said there two different things. The word complex, if you look at the definition, it's actually it comes from the word complex, which is to braid things together. So if something is complex, it means it's intertwined with other things. And so the adjective complex means that something is bound to other things.

Whereas simple comes from simplex, which means it is not bound to other things. It stands alone. Easy, the root of that means that something is near at hand. It's something you already know how to do. It's within your realm. So easy and hard are subjective, but simple and complex are very objective things that we can look at. Something is simple stands alone is complex, if it's bound other things. And he said, here's where it gets tricky.

Is that it can be very easy to make something very complex. So he says you could just type gem install hairball. And with typing three words on a computer, you can install a massive framework, whether it's Ruby on Rails or WordPress. And if you start using that, well, wow, you are now complex with a huge complicated system that you're intertwined with. And so now everything I say after this, this is my take on his analysis. But it's really easy in life to say, okay, yeah, let's get married.

Or to have unprotected sex and get pregnant and have a baby. That's easy. Adopt a dog. Hiring people. You can have a problem and think, all right, well, I've got some money and I'm overwhelmed. I'm going to get a consultant to like hire 10 people. Okay, great. Now I've got 10 employees. Phew. That was easy to take some work off my plate. But your life is now objectively complex.

You are complex with these other people and their needs and their time schedules and their desires. Handing off parts of your business to say, this is hard. I'm just going to hand off my billing or my something or my this or my scheduling to these apps or these subscription services. That was easy to just hand it off. But now your business is very complex with these other services. So hence my rant on our last conversation over scotch at my house about tech independence.

His point is it can be really hard to make something simple. It can be much harder to do something that is objectively simple that stands alone that isn't dependent on other things. It can be harder to make that. But it's ultimately usually a better choice because it's more maintainable. It's easier to change. It's easier to stop and start. It's simpler even if it's harder to make.

The point is in his thinking is to be aware of the objective measure of complexity or be aware of complexity which can be objectively measured and aim for doing the simpler thing even if it's harder. It might take I think you can make simple things easier just by learning more. Say about the fundamentals of something instead of just adopting somebody else's high level solution.

You can just spend a little time learning about the core underneath it about the fundamentals. Then you can forget norms. You could forget what others do, what others think. And you can just get to the real essence of what you need. I'm not just talking programming now. I'm just being like in life. What would be an example of that? My four by eight house. It's like really I just need a shelter where it's temperature controlled so it's really well insulated. I do need a mattress to sleep on.

And I do need a place I can work. But to me, those are the one I do need a little food. To me, these are the core things of a shelter. But even say with friendships, do I need to live in the same place with my friends? Well, not necessarily my dear friends. My best friends are often far, far away. I don't need to move to a place that has all of my friends if I can reach them on the phone.

I'm very often talking about just the thought process. I very often find myself asking like, well, what's the real outcome I'm after? What's the real point to this? And once I figure that out, well, then what's the most direct route to that outcome? Never mind what other people do. What the norms are. What do I think is the most direct route to that outcome? And then try to keep it simple along the way and be very wary of dependencies and entangling myself with other things. That's my take.

Could you give another example or two of how you implement that in your life? Sure. Or how you might. I know there are more examples. The next two might be less relatable because it's a little less relatable than the four by eight meter. Because I know everybody wants to live with nothing inside. So I mean, well, first here's a good question to strip away some things. Ask yourself, would I still do this if nobody knew?

There might be a lot of things in our actions that we do because we like the way it would look to others because it would be impressive to others. That's the first thing to just strip away when you're beginning this thought process is like, if I were to never tell anybody and nobody were to ever know, would I still do this thing? Okay, well, then that might just be the decoration.

Okay, so two examples programming wise, I'm constantly asking this when I'm building something it's just I need to get this calendar entry into this database. With this time, do I need a whole bunch of JavaScript? Do I need a bunch of CSS and things flying around? Do I need fading graphics? No, I just need this thing there. What's the most direct way to get that calendar entry into that database? So that's like a programming example.

Writing wise, my last two books, how to live and useful, not true, I'm spending most of my time reducing my rough draft. I always spew out everything I have to say on the subject. And then I spend a thousand hours every single word going is that worth necessary? Wait a second, is that whole sentence necessary? Wait, can the point still be communicated without that sentence?

If it can, okay, let me try to get rid of that sentence and see if the point still comes across. Actually, does the point come across without this entire chapter? Oh my God, it still does. Therefore, I don't need this chapter. One of the most useful things that happened recently is a few months ago, an organization in Australia paid me to come give a talk. And I said, what you want me to talk about? I said anything. I said, how about my next book called Useful Not True? They said, sure.

So it was a room of very successful, very effective people and I had one hour on stage to communicate the whole idea of my next book. And at the time, the book was still in process. And that was so helpful because I noticed that there were a few things on stage, even though I had it in my notes, I skipped over it.

And I thought, okay, well, actually, we don't need to do that. Okay, let's get to the next point. And so later when I was back home, I thought, wow, I just skipped over that whole point on stage. So why do I think it's worth killing trees to print that point? Apparently, it's not. Cool. This is now the shortest book I've ever written. I'm very proud of that fact.

I compressed this 400 pages down to, I think it's 102 pages or something. And so those are two examples where I'm constantly asking, like, what's the most direct way to just get rid of what I really want? Get the outcome, skipping the usual fanfare. How do you think about burst order simplicity versus complex, the versus second order, third order, and planning? And the reason I'm asking that is you strike me as someone who prizes freedom, independence, simplicity, all very highly.

But I imagine there could be cases where looking at the first decision and the first order effects you might think, well, it's much simpler for me to do X to renounce my US citizenship to build a box to do everything myself instead of taking on these cloud services for accounting and so on. But there are levels of second, third order complexities that ultimately make it kind of net net more complex than doing the slightly more complex thing upfront. Does that make sense? Almost.

I guess I'm wondering how, practically, people might think about simplifying, but not oversimplifying and then shooting yourself in the foot in a long term. Give you an example. I know people who have moved to Puerto Rico to trim taxes substantially. But in the process, they've viewed that as the most direct route to reducing taxes. Therefore, they can do X, Y, and Z over time with more income or preserved capital gain, whatever might be.

However, in the process of doing that, they've created all of this lifestyle complexity and applied a lot of constraints to what they can or cannot do. And the tax tail is wagging the dog and instead of money serving life now, life is serving money and they've kind of put themselves in a topsy-turvy upside down situation. And if you were to look at it from first principles two years later, you're like, wow, that was really bungled.

And that's not true for everybody in Puerto Rico. I'm not trying to make it sound like that. But I have seen those types of examples where like the thing that seemed simple and straightforward at the outset ended up producing a lot of ripple effects that produced not just complexity, but complexity that was hard to undo. Yeah, great example.

So yeah, how do you think about that kind of risk mitigation? Oh, by the way, my two little examples of that a few years ago, Tony Robbins had a money master the game book. I was like, oh, wow, Tony hasn't put out a book in like 20 years. I wonder how this is going to be. And in it, he's giving these prescriptions for extremely complex like insurance things that you could set it was like, wow, that's objectively complex.

And another example is in Neil Strauss's book called emergency. I'll never forget this point. He said that he's off at one of these nomad sovereign individual. I'm beholden to no country kind of events. And he meets this guy that is bragging to him about his setup. He's like, I got my income coming here, but then all expenses go here. But then I've got a trust in this. But I'm the non-managing member of the trust, which is held by this.

And in the end, he's going to save 30% taxes. And Neil said, wouldn't it just be a lot easier or make a lot more sense to just work 30% harder or like to just make 30% more money? So that's a ton of work just to save 30%. Said it's not that much harder. Just go make 30% more. And dude, when I read that, I love that thought process. So I think that I know that your podcast and the Titans and all that is often about how do we use the wisdom of others to avoid making these mistakes ourselves.

But some of these things maybe just have to, I don't know, I think for some of these things, I'm willing to throw myself in and feel the pain to see if I've done it wrong. I don't want to improv jazzing here. So let's keep going. This just not just occurred to me. Because when I hear you talk about code and programming, I mean, there's a poetry to it.

And there's an economy to it that is, seems I'm not a programmer, but I do write. There seems to be something intrinsically rewarding to you about that presentation of elegance. And I'm wondering in the case of following Stuart Brands principles and building this box or doing certain things that seem to me optimized for freedom independence.

Is there even if it ends up face planting? Is there something that you find beautiful and redeeming just about taking the simple approach, even if the outcome is so optimal? It's related. It's finding out in fact, instead of just in theory, we can sit at home and wonder what it might be like to do such and such. But at some point you just got to throw yourself in and go try it. And if you try moving to Puerto Rico and you hate it, well, now you know. It was worth a try maybe.

And now you know, in fact, that doesn't work for you. That's maybe the how buildings learn idea is don't predict that you will want to sink in that spot. Put yourself into that spot first. It live without a sink for a while. I do like it. And eventually you'll get a good feeling for where the sink needs to be. In fact, not in theory. And so I think I do this with my life is I'm willing to mess up happily because I will know that then I found out in fact that that doesn't work for me.

And maybe this is coming from the core of the fact that like I'm a I'm a really happy person. And so I feel that like my base level is up here. I can take some big knocks. You can take a lot of the crazy should have done. I did marry somebody that I hardly knew after a few months because fuck it. Let's see what happens. In fact, you never talked about that directly. But do you know the mindset I was in at the time I had just sold my company. I had a ton of money.

And I felt like I need to change my trajectory because my first impulse after selling my company was literally the next day I set up my next company. And I thought I'm going to move to Silicon Valley. I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to stay on the same trajectory. And I did that for a few months, but then I caught myself going, wait, I want a full life.

I don't want to stay on the same trajectory. I want to shake shit up. So I very deliberately did what we might call the George Costanza principle, which is to the opposite do the opposite of all of my impulses every time I felt yes, everything in me said yes, I would say no out loud.

And everything in me says no, I say yes out loud as a way of deliberately shaking shit up. And so I was dating this woman for a few months and we had no great connection. And she said, oh, well, I can't travel to California with you unless we get married.

And everything in me says, oh, hell no, don't do that. That's stupid. I don't want to marry this person. So I said, yes, let's do that. And so we got married. And I kept doing that in every way I deliberately fucked up my life and made a bunch of crazy fucking decisions. And some of them worked out great and some of them didn't. And I'm so happy that I did that. Like in some ways, I could say that that's my biggest regret or biggest mistake. But in other ways, it was wonderful.

It deliberately sent me on a different trajectory. And I'm glad I did it. That it definitely will. So for people who don't have any of the connective tissue here to figure out how to orient themselves to this, people are going to want to know, right cliffhanger. So how did that turn out the everything in me says no. So I said, yes, let's get married. Let's do that.

The marriage is awful. No, that was terrible. And we knew it like literally like days later, like, oops, we made a big mistake. Yeah, that was that was instantly a big mistake. And that's fine because we knew in fact, then that it was a big mistake, not just in theory.

I could have walked away from that going, God, remember that woman that wanted me to marry her. And I said, no, God, I wonder what what happened. Well, now I get to find out like I did it. Now hold on a second, though, I'm going to push on this a little bit. We could use this logic to be a reverse George Costanza for every decision we think is bad. We could turn around and say yes to right. But as a life strategy, I don't see you continuing that.

Right. So you don't know for a fact that the awful idea would have been awful. But I mean, there has to be a point at which you think about self preservation and time as a finite currency. So you're like, well, when would you apply that versus when would you not apply or you get applied everywhere indefinitely, but certain things are one way doors in summer, two way doors. Right. I mean, like for instance, getting a pet rat. Okay, lower cost.

More reversible. Let's just say then maybe giving up your US citizenship. Right. That is a little harder to control Z. Yeah, I cannot undo that. So moving forward for you, having learned everything that you've learned, when do you play the George Costanza strategy versus not? Right. Because there are lots of things we can't over a fact unless we make the right or the wrong or the good or the bad decision, but you can't make all decisions. So what do you do?

You know, long ago when I said the hell yeah or no thing and it's going to be in your grave stone. Hell yeah or here I am. Yeah. Here he lays. So some people emailed me after that. After that was on your show and they said, hey man, I'm you, you know, I like this hell yeah or no thing. I'm using it for everything.

I just got out of college. I'm getting a bunch of offers. I'm like, I'm not feeling hell yeah about any of them. You know, I'm dating and we're saying, you know, I'm not hell yeah about any of you. And I go, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Everything does not become a nail because you're holding this hammer. You don't, this is a tool for a specific situation when you're overwhelmed with options. You have to have the wisdom to know when to use this tool. You don't use it on everything always.

So same thing with this going against your instincts. Of course, you don't use it on everything always, but that was a specific time in my life when I wanted to deliberately change my trajectory. I wanted to go against my normal way of doing things and deliberately introduce some randomness and variety into my life. Right. It's not your default. Right. But let's look at you know, I mentioned Dubai earlier.

Everything in me said, fuck that place. And then I caught myself feeling that. And I thought, okay, wait, hold on. This is a good time to use this tool. My impulse is saying no, I'm going to try saying yes, I'm going to go get to know this thing because that sounds to me like that would be a learning growing experience to try it.

That's a good example of integrating this into your life. But then say like if maybe you do hit a situation where it's like nothing is working out. You've been an idiot your whole life. You just got fired. You were just dumped by your romantic partner. You're a skid row. Maybe it's a really good time to go against all your natural impulses since it's pretty clear that your defaults were set wrong.

Not working. Yeah, they're not working very well. Yeah, I like integrating it. Maybe it's the question is like, is this going to be a learning growing experience for me? I like leaning into discomfort. Whatever scares you go do it. All right. So I have quite a few follow up questions. We can take them in many different directions. So we've covered Rich Hickey, Clojure, Knock Knock.

We'll see if anyone lets him know he appeared on the show. And I also want to ask you a question we can cut from the conversation if we need to. But since Dubai has come up. That's a great lead in the love that this may be too risky for anybody's years. But here we go.

Two taxes fit into this at all. Is this like people who move to Nashville or Austin? And they're like, oh, the barbecue and the music and they will dance and dance and dance until you corner them with a broomstick. And then they're like, yeah, okay, fine. Yeah, the taxes is also it's a thing is Dubai. One of those or no. Not at all. I mean, I had to ask myself that.

That's like one of those things. Okay, when you ask yourself, would I still be doing this thing if nobody knew about it? I got an email from Guy once it was just like, hey man, I want to travel the whole world. I'm going to visit every country in the world. Do you have any suggestions for me? I said, yeah, don't bring a camera and don't tell anyone that you're doing this. Is it still appealing to you now? Yeah, probably not.

So anytime say Dubai, for example, I was like, whoa, this place is fascinating. Oh my God, I think I want to live here. I was like, would I still live here if the taxes were like 50%. I was like, yeah, that like that has that's moot to me. I mean, look, I'm living in New Zealand where my income tax right now is 45%.

I pay a ton of taxes, but it's worth it to me. I love it here. I don't care. So that thing I mentioned in Neil Strauss's book emergency that sentence hit me hard when I first sold CD baby. That was 2008. There were some things I was thinking at the time. I was like, oh, wow, I just got mega millions. How can I pay less taxes? And it was literally like the month before or month after I sold CD baby that I read that book emergency and I saw that sentence and I went, whoa, good timing.

Good timing. Good timing. Don't jump through hoops to save taxes. Jump through a hoop to go make more money. That's the growth choice. Anyway, that's the thought process that leads you to make growing decisions, not shrinking decisions. So you're about to sell or have just sold CD baby, you form a new company the next day, you're planning on moving to Silicon Valley and you see yourself moving on that track and you decide to throw a castan's a curve ball in and mix things up.

Why, like what was the fear or the hazard you're trying to avoid by following that path? Was it doing something thoughtlessly and repeating what you've done before? There wasn't intentional. What was it?

I want to live a full life at the end of my life. I want to look back and go, wow, I did a bunch of different things. I tried a bunch of different ways of living. I followed this philosophy for a while. I followed that one. I tried this. I tried that. I lived here. I lived there. That to me is my definition of a full life.

My previous book called How to Live was 27 conflicting philosophies and one weird answer. The whole idea was that it's 27 chapters. Each one disagrees with the rest, but each one has a strong opinion of saying, here's how to live. Now live for the future.

The next one is like, here's how to live. Live only for the present. The next one is like, here's how to live. Leave a legacy. These are all valid ways of living. My definition of a full life is I want to experience the different approaches to life. I want to have the diversified portfolio of thought and of experiences. That was it. I just felt like if I was to create a new company the next day and move to Silicon Valley, I'd just be doing more of the same shit I've already done.

Makes sense. Makes perfect sense. Who else do you have on your list of people you're studying? All right. Tyler Cowan just a few days ago in an article on Bloomberg.com called Who was Bitcoin's Satoshi? So we still don't know who is Satoshi the inventor of Bitcoin. And you know, there's this law of headlines that if if it ends in a question mark, the answer's usually no.

So when I first saw the headline, I thought that the answer was going to be it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter who Satoshi is forget it. And oh my god, Tyler Cowan took it somewhere else. Like even if you would have asked me by the way, hey Derek, I'm going to give you an hour alone in a room to think about one question. Does it matter who is Satoshi the inventor of Bitcoin?

Even after an hour, I think my answer would have been of course not. And I would have sat there for an hour just going, no, no, no. Tyler Cowan took it the opposite way. I jotted down his points, but it's a masterpiece in this kind of if then knock on thinking. So he said, okay, if we find out that Satoshi is dead, that the inventor of Bitcoin is dead, then that's a good thing because it means Bitcoin will be more safe because it won't be open to future alteration.

The person can't tarnish the reputation of it. You know, say like Elon Musk and Twitter kind of like, you know, by continuing to be there can tarnish the reputation of something. Sorry, I shouldn't have gone there. Satoshi can't come back and change the rules for the worst. And then he even said, this is why all religions have dead founders is because the founder can't stay in and tarnish the reputation of the religion.

So I went, okay, good point. If Satoshi is dead, that is good for Bitcoin. It can stay as is and won't get tarnished. And he said, so there's a chance that Satoshi is an older guy from this previous movement around E gold. It was generally seen as like a failed project that a bunch of people were into this idea of E gold and it didn't work out.

If Satoshi is somebody from that group, then that means that even projects that look like they've failed can create great things. So we should maybe think more highly or it would be less dismissive of projects that seem to be failing because who knows what they will lead to.

He said, there's a chance that Satoshi is this person on a figure their name, but he said that would have been 21 years old and in grad school at the time of inventing Bitcoin, he said, if that's true, that means we should raise our perception of what young busy people can do that they can do more than we realize this guy wall in grad school also invented Bitcoin.

And they said, if Satoshi is still alive, that means, oh, by the way, we should say for you, I assume people know, but maybe not that whoever is Satoshi has hundreds, okay, let's say at least tens of billions of dollars in Bitcoin that all he'd have to do whoever Satoshi is would have to just take it.

It's already there in the account in the public record that we can see so Satoshi is one of the richest people on earth whoever Satoshi is so he said if Satoshi is still living, that means that some people don't want to be billionaires or just have incredible self-restraint like maybe upon realizing what he created he destroyed the key destroyed the password so that he could not take those billions of dollars.

You know, to protect himself from that there's a chance that Satoshi is a pseudonym for a group of people if that's true, it means a group of people can keep secrets way better than we expected, which means that conspiracy theories are more likely to be true about anything in general about UFOs about JFK or whatever.

If this group of people is Satoshi and they could have hundreds of billions of dollars or tens of billions of dollars, but they are choosing not to and they are all keeping the secret, that's amazing and we should regard secrecy more higher than we can. So that's the end of the bullet points, but I read this one little Bloomberg article and my jaw dropped. Oh my god, this is the kind of thinking I aspire to. That is some amazing lateral creative.

I don't know what kind of thinking do you call that, but that's what I want to do more of. Love it. Yeah, Tyler's incredible. The highly recommend people check him out. That's a really good Tyler example. Cowan co w e and definitely recommend you check him out. Also past podcast. Yeah, that was a great one. Previously to this one of my favorite points of his is he said that restaurants are better in places of high income inequality.

Why? Because these are places that have both rich customers and low paid staff. So somebody can afford to run a great restaurant because there are enough people that will pay because there are rich people around, but there are enough low income people that we can have a good amount of staff. They said that's why the best restaurants are in places of high income inequality. Wow, that's again a brilliant connection.

That's interesting. I would also add to that that a lot of folks who want to dedicate themselves to a craft or an art or depending on the industry, but frequently not going to be well paid for that. And so they're let's just call it volitionally poorly paid in some cases. And I'm thinking of in this particular case San Francisco and East Bay where

a lot of restaurants in San Francisco, a lot of restaurants in different places, but as the price of living went up in San Francisco, a lot of the best restaurant tours, meaning in I should say chefs, a lot of the best chefs, a lot of the best lion cooks, a lot of the best massage therapists, a lot of these people could no longer afford to be there had to move to the East Bay.

And I would say that led to a decline in the quality of all of the goods I just mentioned services. So that would also make sense if you want access to the artists, they're not going to be in the most expensive areas typically, unless it's like a Jeff Coons or somewhere. I haven't been to Pittsburgh lately, but I heard that that happened with some of the a lot of the best chefs from New York City went to Pittsburgh and that now Pittsburgh is harder than you'd expect.

I can see that I could totally see it. All right, Tyler anybody else on the list of people you're learning from or people you're studying those my two that's tired because there's specific things. I love it. All right, so I think we have one more category. We'll see how many we get to, but I heard a sharp inhale. Where should we go?

Okay, so inch word inch word dot com I and C H W O R D dot com. This is actually a bit of a call out. I don't usually do this, but I would like to hear from translators. But if you're a translator, contact me because I've got a lot of paying work because I'm really interested in the subject of translations that are always improving when I always at a certain point you call it, maybe you call it a release. But you know, as a writer, the first time you write a sentence is not always the best.

You improve it the second or third time and at any given sentence we see in your books that might be the fourth time you've improved that sentence maybe over the course of months. There's always room for improvement when somebody makes a translation of one of your books. The incentives are a little off now because the translators incentive as long as they're not translating the Bible or something.

The current incentive is mostly just get it done good enough get paid the publishers incentive the publisher who publishes a translation their incentive is higher. A translator that will make a good enough translation for a low enough price that we can get this out in the market now and make a profit selling it. The next incentive as the writer that sweated over these words for years and really crafted it almost like song lyrics.

I have a different incentive is if I'm going to have a translation of this book out in the world, I want it to be great and really, really great. Which means my incentive is to work closely with the translator to make sure that what they're doing is the best it can be and that it's communicating what I intended. So if you do that in a language you don't speak.

I don't know that's my question so this is the I don't have the answer but I'm fascinated with the problem so so far the best idea is what I'm putting it into the idea of incremental improvement. Oh, so this is your website. Yeah, I made it. It's my little. Okay, all right. So it's this idea where once I call up something done whether it's an article or a book. I put every sentence into its own entry in the database and then I pass it to a computer that does the first round of a bad translation.

So now we have a starting point. So now if you're the first translator to come through and translate the automatic translation into your language. Let's say that's a low bar that's low hanging fruit. So let's say that will pay 50 cents per sentence. But now if you've done one round of improvements over the computer translation and now somebody else comes through and says,

I can improve that further that sentence, not the whole thing that sentence I can improve that one. Now that'll pay like a dollar per sentence if it's an improved and now say two different people have improved it twice. Now a third person looks at that and says, I know how to improve that better. Okay, well now you can make say $2 per sentence to improve it better. The stakes are getting higher for improving it.

They're incentives now to make it as good as can be. How do you know if it's been improved? So yes, how do we know it's a better translation. So then we have readers who reviewers readers, whatever you want to call them, that are paid a little something to just read through in judge. And at any given sentence where an improvement has been made, both sentences are shown in random order and they have to vote for which one they feel is the better sentence in that case.

When it majority votes that that sentence is better than it's chosen and that's when the translator gets paid. So translator can't get money just for coming in and spewing crap. They only get paid when the readers believe that that was a better translation. Anyway, I'm not saying this is the final answer, but I think it's a fascinating problem that I'm willing to spend money on because I'm incentivized to have the best translation of my works out there. That's it.

If they are a good translator, how do you incentivize them to go first knowing that someone might come along and make substantially more money by doing the fourth or fifth iteration? Or is that not a problem? I don't know. See you just asked a great question. Thank you. You're welcome. Your all question is kind of the answer that's a really good thing to ask. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I know nothing about this. I'm not fluent in any other language. But you've probably seen this effect.

Whenever you start to learn another language, doesn't it make you look at your English more closely? Oh, 100%. That's part of the fun. It makes you look at the whole world differently depending on how divergent the language is from your native language in this case English for us. Oh, yeah. So, so, so interesting. Let's just try to help somebody with their approach to Japanese yesterday.

And my first thought was if you have like three or four weeks, maybe you go to South Korea first and try to pick up Korean because the reading is so much easier. So perhaps you could learn the basics of Korean, which isn't identical to Japanese, but the grammar is very, very, very, very similar. And then you go back to Japan with your newfound knowledge of the grammar without the handicap that slows you down of having to learn three writing systems. You don't have to cut that out of the country.

And I don't know if that's a good approach, but it was the first time it had occurred to me. And I was like, huh. I wonder if that actually would be helpful or kind of like Python and Ruby would just be confusing as fuck because now you're like learn Portuguese and Spanish at the same time and you just get scrambled. It's possible that it would be the latter. Yeah. Okay. Do you remember Benny Lewis fluent in three months, Benny Lewis? Sure. Yeah. The Irish polyglot. I think was. Yes.

Yeah. Benny recommends Esperanto for that same thing that you just said. He said because of objectively Esperanto is the easiest language to learn. That's why it was invented in 1888 by Zamanov to be easy to learn. Therefore, if you've never spoken a second language for go learn some Esperanto first, get used to having a conversation that's not in your native tongue.

You can go learn your target language. I wonder if that's too much of a lift. Have you done? Well, I will report. I did it. I became fluent in Esperanto about six years ago on Benny's advice. And I regret it. It's like less useful than clinging on at least in communicating with others, right? Actually, I think Esperanto is hippie cling on. It is. I went to the annual Esperanto conference in Seoul, Korea. And it was a bunch of like 60 year olds and tie dyes singing about world peace.

Kind of like, you know, Woodstock 1969 revisited. They're all singing like, oh, the world would have perfect harmony. If we all just followed the ways of Zamanov and had the one world language. And even though I had spent six months learning this language, I got to the event and I went, I don't like you people.

And I stopped on that day. I was like, I don't want to speak this language anymore. Okay. But so talk about like, you know, the Ruby Python. I never learned any Spanish my whole life, even a group in America. I just thought now Spanish is too similar to English. If I'm gunna learn another language, I want it to be Chinese or Arabic or something very different. So I never learned any Spanish. But just two months ago, I went to South America for my first time.

And so I spent like a month learning Pinsler basic Spanish. And Tim was like, oh my God, this is a great language. This is amazing. This is fascinating. It is. And also it is so easy that when dammit, Benny shouldn't have learned Esperanto for six months. I should have learned Spanish. It's just as easy. And it would have been more useful.

Anyway, I like that you brought up the Korean thing. I think it is proven to be a good technique to do the easier language first to help you disconnect or like you say to help you understand the grammar and then do the difficult one. It does help, I guess, if it's Korean or a language that people actually use, not as pro. Yeah, Spanish is a great language for people who are curious about Korean and just how brilliantly the writing system is designed is a point of national pride.

And it is not something that was out of the box. It was something that was developed long after Korea had first adopted Chinese writing much like the Japanese. There is a cartoon online and it is something like how to learn to read Korean in 15 minutes or how to read Korean in 15 minutes. And it's a comic book. You can find it. And literally, it might not be 15 minutes, but within two or three hours, you can learn Korean well enough that you can read anything in Korean.

You will not understand a damn thing that you're reading, but you will be able to sound out phonetically, roughly, roughly what it is, which is great fun. And well enough that, you know, if you're as I was a few weeks ago in an Uber and you see the Uber app is set to Korean, you could say, you know, thank you or have a nice day or how are you in Korean and below the in the back. How did you know? And you feel like, well, it's Korean on the app.

Oh my God. If you want some cheap applause, that'll make somebody's day. That's an easy way to go. You know, it's funny. It fits right in. Remember your whole like, hey, here's how to learn how to spin a pen with your fingers. Like, here's some things you can learn in 15 minutes. Like the old like Tim Ferris, 1.0 self by Southwest. Yeah, exactly. Speak Korean in 15 minutes.

Also, courtesy of Japan, for sure. This is when all the kids used to do in class. And now I have something that will endlessly distract and annoy everyone who sees it from an airplane or something. Thanks, Japan. All right. What else do you have? Derek, anything else in that top hat? I'll just say this quickly. I love this little phrase. I realized when I was like digging into my incentives, why I do things. I travel to inhabit philosophies. You can hear about life in Brazil or life in Japan.

But it's a different thing to be there in it that I think there's some philosophies, whether it's stoicism or hedonism, that we can just do from a chair by just sitting and changing our thought process. But, you know, Brazilianism, Japanism, Arabianism, I don't know, Parisianism. These are kind of like philosophies, the way that people live in places are kind of living philosophies. But I want to experience what it's like because I want to think that way.

So I would really like to go there, live as close as I can to being like a local, learn the language, live that life according to that way, to inhabit, embody this way of living in order to feel the actual physical results, the actions of living that philosophy. And I thought, this is actually the reason I travel. It's not to look at things or take pictures or post them to impress people. I travel to inhabit philosophies.

I love that. What are you finding of the philosophy? What is the philosophy of the UAE or Dubai? Recognizing that the culture is very different depending if they're by the hills or the water or the desert. But how would you try to express that philosophy? Easy. Generosity. That's the thing when I said that sheks I had who founded it. Better when culture underneath it. And then say, Emirati culture or Arabian Arab culture.

Generosity is by far the number one. If you read this book Arabian Sans by Betcha-Tur, he has all these stories of when he'd be out in the desert on the camels with his little crew of six guys. And they only have this much food left, nothing. And their tummies are grumbling and they're starving. It's funny that it's a tummies that was cute. And thus, they noted that for myself. That's my time story, dad. And also my little rats here. I love kissing your little tummies.

But then if somebody would approach them, like, oh, hello, my friend, whatever. But as soon as somebody approaches, that's it. We're not going to eat today because this is the way you give whatever you've got. So anybody that's stranger approaches you say, hello, friend, come sit with us here. No, have some soup. Don't worry. We're not hungry. We've eaten enough. This is for you now. Come sit with us. When I went to Dubai that first time, somebody I had met once from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

We met briefly in Oxford. He was the only person I knew that lived in the region. So I emailed him saying, hey man, I'm going to Dubai for my first time. Are you going to be around? And he said, my friend, he said, cancel your hotel reservation. He said, you're going to stay at my home in the Burj Khalifa. The tallest building in the world. You're going to stay at my apartment in the Burj Khalifa.

Stay at my home. You're my guest. I said, wow, that would be great. I said, it'll be so good to see you again. And he said, no, no, I won't be there. He said, I live in Riyadh. But my uncle will get you from the airport and just give you the keys. My home is your home stay as long as you want. So I did, I stayed in the Burj Khalifa a few days. This generosity runs so deep. It's hospitality. Generosity. And you understand why you're in the harsh environment of the desert.

Everybody's living a harsh life when you meet somebody that's traveling and passing. It's like, oh, come in, come in. Here, have some, don't even need to tell us your name or who you are, your tribe or nothing. Just come in, my guest. Please have whatever you want. My food, take a bird, stay as long as you want. And that's so deep in the culture.

Yes, I would like to inhabit that philosophy. Now that I've been on the receiving end of that hospitality, pardon me, kind of wants to have a home near the Dubai airport and make that my like my main home base. And for whenever I'm not there and I'm traveling to just open it up for any of my friends in the world. I pleat you're coming through please stay at my home. Like I want to turn that into a six by eight foot.

To say come everything I have is yours. Wait, Derek, quick text. Where's the bathroom? Oh, no, there's no bad. Oh, no, my friend. Question whether you truly need it or not. Yeah, you will find out. Let me know where you think the sink should be. I'll be a bad emorati. I'll be fired. How is it understanding that Dubai is an international city for a lot of different reasons you could get by on English almost certainly. How is your Arabic coming? Have you started tackling that?

I haven't spent more time in Dubai yet. I'm planning on going back very soon and getting to know more people and spending more time there and considering it as a place I really might want to live. Because I've just noticed throughout my life, like I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, then I moved to downtown Boston. Then I moved to New York City in the middle of it and it was like, oh, yes. This multiculturalism like this feels more like representative of the real world to me.

Then when I went back to my hometown in Hinsdale, Illinois, it's like, everybody's white. This is weird. I like places that are multicultural because it feels like I'm more in the real world. I've also lived in London. I moved to Singapore. I lived in Singapore for years. I thought I had been in the most multicultural places in the world. No, I looked up statistically New York, London, Singapore. They're all about 35% or so, 30% to 35% foreign-born population.

Dubai is like 90% plus foreign-born population. Everybody is from everywhere. When I got there, it was like anthropology jackpot. I was like, oh, this is amazing. Everybody's from everywhere. You get into any taxi drive. You know, anybody. You can just ask anybody you see where you from and you're going to get a different answer all the time. I'm from Cameroon. What are you doing here? I love languages. It's okay. What does that mean? He said, well, I love languages.

I thought, where can I get paid to learn languages? I said, I move to Dubai. I'll drive a taxi. And I can get paid to learn languages. I said, did it work? He said, my friend, I can speak eight languages now. I've been here 18 months. I can converse with people in eight languages. Everybody that gets into my taxi, I just talk with people all day long. He said, I speak Urdu, Hindi, Arabic. I think he grew up with friends. He said, I'm speaking to you in English.

He said, I couldn't speak English 18 months ago. Now look at me. And he said, I'm getting paid to learn languages. This is amazing. And I turned to somebody else. I like, where are you from? She's like, I'm from Nairobi. She had the most beautiful accent. And we got into a long conversation about Nairobi. And I just thought, this is what I want. Just by being in Dubai, the whole world comes through there.

And you meet so many people from all over the place. Oh, God, this is what a beautiful place. Anyway. It's like, there we have living in the Cantina and Star Wars. That's fun. God, you said it first. That's what I usually say. It's like Dubai is the bar in Star Wars. It's the Cantina. Everybody comes from all over the world to this spot to kind of do their shady dealings. But oh, my God, if you're, if you're an amateur anthropologist like me, it's heaven.

Well, I'm excited that you're excited, man. It's fun to see. And I hope to break some bread in person in the not too distant future. What's fun? Always fun to hang, man. Always great fun. Is there anything that you would like to say and think it like the point people to mention anything at all before we bring out the little buddies again. Pop off and land the plane. These guys have been sleeping by my feet the whole time we've been talking.

The durable. Yeah, you're really good little pets. They're really. If you don't wash your hands after you cook, then you just let them lick your fingers. Oh, he's looking here right now. It's really sweet the way they like. They never, ever, ever bite. Very gentle. Unlike my hamsters I had when I was a kid. They were biteers. Yes, yes, same. I had gerbils. They were nasty. Anyway, I don't know.

Well, you know, my usual call out. I really enjoy the people that I've met through your podcast. So, hey, anybody listen to this all the way through. I truly enjoy my email inbox. I spend about 90 minutes a day just answering emails and I really like it. So send me an email. Say hello, introduce yourself, especially if you're a translator or if you live in Dubai or you found anything you're fascinating.

All right. Do you want them to do the detective work of finding the email address? Is that the hurdle? Oh, sorry. Go to my website. Just go to siv.rs. There's a big. Contact me here link. Okay. S i v e dot r s. That's my right. Pretty, pretty low hurdle. Yeah, they can't clear that than they have other problems.

All right, man. Well, thanks for taking the time as always. Really appreciate it. Sorry, I missed you in England. Yeah, next time we'll both get our knees repaired and then we'll meet up for another walk and talk. I might ask you some tips on meniscus stuff. Oh boy. Yeah, we'll talk about the near repair.

For everybody listening, go to Tim. Blog slash podcast. I'll link to everything we talked about all the books, city of gold, China's world view, all of these various things, the figures and places, musicians and so on. Oh, I should say that useful, not true is only through my website. It's not a fuck Amazon. It's not on Amazon. I put it on my website only. So don't go to Amazon and look for it and email me and ask why it's not there because I don't like them. So go to siv.com.

Or siv.rs. I guess let's go to the same place and you can find all things about Derek. And until next time, be a bit kinder than is necessary, not just to others, but also to yourself. And thanks for tuning in.

Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off and that is five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday.

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

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

So, way back in the day, in 2010, I published a book called The Four Hour Body, which I probably started writing in 2008. And in that book, I recommended many, many, many things. First generation continuous glucose monitor and cold exposure and all sorts of things that had been tested by people from NASA and all over the place. One thing in that book was athletic greens. I did not get paid to include it. I was using it. That's how long I've been using what is now known as AG1.

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So take testing, very seriously. There's no better time than today to start a new healthy habit. This is an easy one. Wake up. Water in the shake or bottle? AG1. Well, and right now, every week of November, AG1 will be running a special Black Friday offer for a free gift with your first subscription, which is in addition to the welcome kit with 5 AG1 travel packs and a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2.

So make sure to check out drinkag1.com slash Tim to see what gift you can get this week. That's drinkag1.com slash Tim to start your holiday season off on a healthier note while supplies last. I have been fascinated by the microbiome and probiotics as well as prebiotics for decades, but products never quite live up to the hype. I've tried so many dozens and there are a host of problems. Now, things are starting to change and that includes this episode's sponsor Seeds DS01 Daily Symbiotic.

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