#812: The Random Show — New Health Gadgets, Tim’s Latest Adventures, How to Drink Less, Zen Retreats, AI + Your Genome, and Colonoscopy Confessions

Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where it's my job to interview world-class performers from every imaginable discipline to tease out, you guessed it, the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply to your own lives.

This time we have a very special episode. This is always a listener favorite. A recording with my close friend, Kevin Rose. Kevin Rose, for those who don't know, at Kevin Rose everywhere. He is indeed a world-class entrepreneur, serial founder, investor in the smallest of seed rounds up to the largest of companies and what we always do we trade our latest discoveries our latest findings what our friends have sent to us

And I think it is one of our best. But first, just a few quick words from our sponsors who make this show possible. I don't know about you guys, but I have seen a lot of crazy stuff in the last few weeks. I saw an AI generated

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Kevin, good to see you, sir. Tim Tim, always a pleasure. Good to be here. So the ravages of childhood illness are... ripping through our household at the moment? I mean, it was one of those things where I hit you up this morning. I was like, yeah, there's a cold going around. Can we boot this podcast? You're like, I have to have my colon examined. And so we decided to do it today. So I felt pretty good though, actually, all things considered.

True story. True story. We have all of the fun things to discuss in our advancing years. But, you know, one step at a time. One step at a time. By the way, I have a lot of pro tips for the colonoscopy, if you haven't already done one. Let's do it. I have done a colonoscopy before. The reason that I am methodical about this

is not to immediately start on a down note, but a friend of mine ended up getting terminal colon cancer, which metastasized, I guess, prior to that diagnosis to his liver. And so I have been... Very much on schedule. with doing this type of checkup even though it's inconvenient even though it's unpleasant you gotta do it you just have to do it yeah I had a friend who actually had a big, massive chunk of his colon removed because of this. He had some cancer.

Yeah, very important to stay on top of it. But I will say, the drugs they give you when you're going in, propofol? Propofol. Yeah. That's what Michael Jackson died on. You know that? That's what he died on. Well, that's why I won't self-administer. No, you don't self-administer that. But I will say, if you have a cool doc, and it's typically the anesthesiologist that does this, they will do what's called the slow rant.

where rather than push it all in and give you that bull's dose where it just knocks you out, it lets you just chill and ride it for about a minute or so. And I can see why Michael Jackson was hooked on this shit. Like, I did that with my ass for the slow ramp when the last time I got it. Dude, you feel like you're amazing when they do that stuff. Yeah, it was crazy. That sounds like an anti-sales pitch. I think if it's likely that I will just

remember the bliss of that experience and want another bite of the apple, maybe I won't ask for the slow ramp. I'll just say, hey, just blow dart in the back of the neck. Take me out as quickly as possible. So that is I think where I'll go with tomorrow's lovely procedure. I didn't tell you this the last time I did my colonoscopy. It's always hard when there's a really attractive nurse in the room. and like they're like flip on your side and you know what they're gonna do and it's just like

I don't really feel like this is the right crew. The right setting. The setting was not right for me there. but there was I went through with it there's nothing you can do at that point you just like flip on your side hopefully you don't remember anything and you don't and you're good so that is okay but anyway Godspeed tomorrow Tim wishing you the best Godspeed well you're also the reason we were Comparing notes.

for self-care and how that can change over time is you said that you have a scan scheduled for this week, right? Yeah, I have a Prunovo tomorrow, so full-body MRI scan done. I'd mentioned this on a podcast we did a while back, but they found... Basically, a little tiny thing in my brain that could turn into a larger vessel rupture. And so they have to keep tabs on it. So I go back once a year and it's been stable. It's been totally stable for the last year and a half.

So they're like, yeah, you could have had this your entire time. That's part of the problem with getting these full body MRIs, right? Because you go in there and on the plus side, like, you know, I've had a friend that found a tumor in his brain and he had it removed. It was as a golf ball. It was crazy. It was fine. And catch that stuff early and it's amazing because it saves your life. And then on the downside, lots of false positives.

like little tiny cysts and things that have just been there your entire life, or just positive positives, but they're small things that you can't or won't do anything about, so you just need to accept. You have exactly like a brain aneurysm, which is what I have. And now I know that I have it. So there is that. Yeah. What are your suggestions for people psychologically if they're listening? And for instance, I think of my.

parents who have been, by and large, especially one more than the other, averse to getting comprehensive checkups in part because ignorance is bliss until it isn't, right? If it's something serious, then you just accidentally signed your death warrant. If you take it, to an extreme extent, but they are afraid of what they might find. What are your thoughts on this? My thought is,

Step number one, honestly, for me, is just develop a baseline of scientific literacy. You could listen to studying the studies or read that from Peter Attia. There's a book called Bad Science that I actually excerpted for The 4-Hour Body at one point just to give you an idea of what matters and what doesn't because a lot gets sensationalized in the news and so you can... train yourself to blow things out of proportion. And once you've realized

just how inert and unimportant. For instance, I have a number of, I don't know if they'd be termed cysts or otherwise, but like one on my kidney and then one in another place. And it's not fun to see those things, but I suppose having done so much In terms of medical checkups, blood draws and so on, there is also a conditioning over time where you become less sensitive. But if you only do it once in a blue moon, You're more prone to overreacting. Any other thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think you nailed it where it's like for me it's an annual thing so I'm just like automatically going to do it no matter what and once you get two or three of them Under your belt, you're much better off.

I would say that, you know, one of the things I've heard time and time again is people don't like going into MRIs because they put you in this little tiny tube. And a lot of people have claustrophobia around that. And I know that you can watch Netflix on some of them now and they got all these little displays.

It doesn't help people. So I would say there's two things that I've seen that people have done to sidestep this. One is if you talk to your doctor and you really do have severe anxiety around claustrophobia, they'll give you some kind of benzo and just kind of chill you out for a little bit. You can go in there and just. and you'll get through it. And the second thing is there's another test called GRAIL. I don't know if you've ever done the GRAIL test, but my physician does that as well.

Yeah, and it's just a blood test and it's going to screen for a bunch of cancers as well. And so, you know, if you're like, hey, no way with the MRI, I don't want to know about the cyst, but I still want some cancer screening. I think the Grail is probably the best to market for just general blood work cancer screening.

All right, and should we move on from old man roll call? Dying. Yeah, exactly. From death. From death. All right, I'll kick us off with something that I think is pretty fun. I certainly was not aware of. And it's a documentary. So this is a documentary. It's called 32 Sounds. And people can check this out. If you're going to watch it, watch it with a headset. It could be

in-ear AirPods, something like that. But certainly if you have higher quality headphones, I would use those. Here's the description. It has 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. 32 Sounds is an immersive feature documentary and profound sensory experience from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green. featuring original music by J.D. Sampson. The film explores the elemental phenomenon of sound by weaving together 32 specific sound explorations into a cinematic meditation on the power of sound to bend time

cross borders and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us. It's just a fundamentally different movie going or film watching in this case listening experience than anything I've ever seen so from that perspective I thought it was worthwhile, very worthwhile. And it will certainly lead you to, for a period of time afterwards, relate to the world of sound.

And this ability that sometimes we take for granted, which under the hood is pretty bizarre or at the very least amazing. So that's a recommendation to get us out of death land and into savoring lifeline. So walk me through this as someone that hasn't even seen a trailer for it. Are we talking like sound bath action here? Like are we seeing visuals on the screen? What is it? You're seeing visuals. There are points in the documentary, for instance, where they'll prompt you to close your eyes.

If you are sighted, they don't assume that everyone is. And it weaves the visual... and the auditory together along with background, context from the filmmaker. into a documentary that is just unlike anything I've seen. So I, for that reason, thought I would throw it out there because as you know, Kevin, and maybe we'll talk about this, but we

Spent some time together. My first time with Henry Shookman in New Mexico, we did a mini Zen retreat. And you can really sharpen your awareness Broadly speaking, by honing in on the specific right so you might do a session where you're focused just on breathing in and out and the sensation at the nostrils for instance you might also focus on soundscape and when we were sitting we did a lot of focusing on

soundscape different types of sounds things that are intermittent things that are one-off things that are droning in the background and This documentary can be a tool in the toolkit. I just think it's a nice way to jumpstart that type. or magnify the awareness that we already have. This is one of those things where I don't know about you, but I found myself drawn to more kind of indie, weird documentary style stuff lately, just because there's so much

commercial shit out there where I'm like, I don't need another show. I don't need more violence in my head. I watched Flow not too long ago. I think we talked about that once before. That was a fantastic movie. You didn't like it though, right? I haven't watched it yet, and I guess what I want to know is How long does it take for you to get accustomed to the lo-fi aesthetic of that particular animation. Because it looks

I'm not even sure how you would describe it. Like a very polygonal, right? It's very, if I'm getting the pronunciation right. Polygonal. I think I'm getting there. Low poly. Yeah, which polygon, polygonal. There we go. Something like that. I'm getting too fancy for my own good. But how long does it take you to get accustomed to, and if my memory serves me right, it's from a filmmaker somewhere in Hungary or Lithuania, something like that. Animated film, all about animals.

The visual, I guess, aesthetic, the look is what kept me from watching it. So maybe you could just speak to that for a second. Yeah, so it does have this very low-poly kind of Nintendo-type vibes to it where it's like, it's not the PS5, it's kind of like a crappier version where you can see some of the artifacts. But there's no speech at all. It's just completely a silent film. Well, not silent. It has sounds, but there's no talking at all. And it's kind of post-apocalyptic.

vibes. This cat is trying to kind of make its way through this new world. It's beautiful. I'd say about five minutes of that weird, like, where am I? Why is this low poly? And then all of a sudden... You feel polyamorous. What is it when you get used to something like that? Low polyamorous. Low polyamorous, yeah. So you get used to it, whether you like it or not. but it was latvia was where it was it came out of there we go it's beautiful watch this

Watch the trailer. It's like a minute and a half long. It's absolutely stunning. It's like this cat forms these relationships with these birds and these dogs, and they're all trying to survive. And it's 84 minutes of just good, fun, low-poly documentary.

Is there a minimum required amount of enhancement before you watch such a thing or were you watching a stone cold? Okay. Dude, I'm clean. I'm clean these days. We're inspecting something I want to talk about. I'm so clean right now. Let's talk about clean because sometimes.

When I hear you say clean, that means that you've been clean for like 13, 14 hours. So what are we talking here? Let's hop right into it. 24 hours. No, I'm just kidding. And I'll watch Float tonight. I've been meaning to watch it. And for whatever reason, I've kept pushing it. I don't really have a great excuse. So since I'll be up all night shitting my brains out, drinking these various potions that the doctors prescribe me, I might as well try to watch something.

So I'll give you a, just real quick on the Flow movie, $3.5 million budget to create this. So it was like very scrappy, $36 million in the box office. You know, it was at the Cannes Film Festival. It premiered and it just won a bunch of awards. So anyway, I highly recommend checking it out. I think you can stream it for free. But yeah, on to...

Should we switch to... Yeah, clean. Let's do it. So, dude, here's the deal. Okay. We've had this conversation... And you and I will get on a phone call and I'll be like, how you doing? You're like, oh, dating's hard because you have to drink every night. You know, I'm like, life's hard, so you have to drink every night. I'm like, life's hard, so you have to drink every night. You know, so it's kind of like, you're damned if you're doing it.

No, but all jokes aside, one of the things that I realized is that earlier this year, I made this very proud statement. that I'm going to go 90 days without drinks. And everybody says 90 days is where the magic happens, you know, this and that, you know, classic Kevin bullshit where I fail after like a week. Right. And so,

I went close to a month. I had a couple little things where I was like, well, I got this event. I'm allowing myself to have two or three drinks, whatever. So it was kind of cheating, but I did a month-ish, right? Around the holidays and then after I lost my house in the fire, I realized that There was this moment where I just realized like what I'm doing is no longer serving me and it's really...

I just didn't feel like drinking was the solution to anything. I wasn't having the same joyous, kind of fun with friends type drinking it was more out of habit and also continuous. So what I mean by that is like rather than I've never been the, like, oh, damn it, I had six drinks last night. Like, those were, I mean, maybe a dignation or some stupid shit like that. But, like...

Outside of the random podcast once a year, it was more a consistency thing. And then I got some really scary blood work back from my doctor where I went and had my quarterly blood check. And my liver enzymes were like 150. And which is just insane. They should be like under 20.

That's like Barry Bonds and his peak level liver. Right, exactly. I should have been jacked as shit from juicing, but instead it was just me hitting champagne or drinks. The problem is I would have two things. One, my liver. is just not what it used to be as I get older. And two, the consistency, like I said, two or three drinks is like a lot of nights in a row. And it was really easy for my wife and I to crack a bottle and just finish it together and just call it a night. so

Long story short, I was like, I need to change something. And what I'm doing is not working. And if I really want to go 90 days, I have to surround myself with people that can help me here, right? And so I have had now three friends that have done one version of a 12-step program. One, I think it's actually been on your podcast before, but I called them all up and I said, hey, I don't think I can do 90 days by myself.

Like I need some help. Like I need some support here. What can I do? What tools do you have at your disposal that I can lean into for support here? And they were super helpful. Each of them had a slightly different recommendation. And I pulled some of those tools and I started applying them to my everyday life. And now, as we speak, I'm 26 days completely, perfectly sober, not a single drink. And it was freaking hard, dude, to get here. But I'm feeling really good now.

Having known you a long time, and maybe if people are first-time listeners, this is a remarkable stretch. Oh, my God. Yeah. When was the last time you went 30 days, brother? I'm actually close to 30 days right now. I had two days probably where I had some drinks in the last almost 30 days. Really? So you're hitting 30 days? We can talk about it. It is.

almost entirely because of the people around me. I mean, that's it, right? So I have some follow-up questions for you, but what were the tools or the things that you did, the things you tweaked that made it? more successful this time around.

Well, it's ongoing, but I will get to three months, and I have no doubt about that at this point. But I would say first and foremost is to reach out and connect with people that have done some type of assisted programs and there are multiple different types of like you know 12 step ish type programs that are out there and

I'd say that the first thing was that a friend of mine said, hey, listen, one of the things that the tenants of kind of AA that it works quite well is it's not about going 90 days. All it is is about waking up that morning and saying, not today. It's about 24 hours. It's always about 24. It's about the recommitment every single morning to wake up and say, hey, I can have a drink tomorrow, just not today.

And then saying that over and over and over again. And when you're someone that went through COVID and I didn't drink a lot, and then all of a sudden I thought we're all going to die, so I drank a ton. And it's this kind of itchiness. that appears at around week one and a half or so. This kind of like, there's a saying like a snake shedding its skin, like this kind of like withdrawal type thing that you have to go through.

That is very challenging. And it's at that point that you have to realize you're in the thick of it. And I wasn't having, like, DTs or anything crazy, you know? What is that, delirium tremens? You're talking about shakes? Yeah, we had, like, shakes and stuff like that, yeah. So this was more just, like, how do I get to a point? Where I can be comfortable in my own skin. and sit here and be okay with just being myself. And it's a very weird thing to say I wasn't able to pull that off.

And actually what it is, is it's phone calls to these people. What happens in a lot of these different programs, and there's two of them that I looked at specifically, is that One of the first things that happens when you join these various programs is they surround you with like-minded people and phone numbers. Phone numbers are people to call.

And you call them up, and it's not like, hey, talk me off the ledge here. I'm sure for some people it is. But for me, it's just like, hey, help me get through this next half hour. And how should I be thinking about this, right? Yeah. And so once you kind of build up enough of a runway here, and I'm finally at the point where I feel really, really good in a way that I haven't in a long time. And I don't want to go back on that. And so...

That support network, I think, is one of the strongest pillars of a 12-step program is, like you said, surrounding yourself with people that are just going to be there to pick up the phone and have that conversation. And then it's a bunch of hobbies to fill out the rest of the time. And it's not just people, too, like you said.

talk you off the ledge which may or may not be the case but people to whom you feel accountable also right you just got on the phone and talked to someone and if you drink chances are you're going to have to talk to them and You don't want to be the person who breaks rank, right? Or who doesn't live up to your commitment. So that accountability is really powerful. You said there were two organizations that you took a look at. What were the two? organizations or groups.

I would just say use ChatGPT and type in 12-step programs, not drinking. You're not supposed to talk about these things.

It's like Fight Club. It's like Fight Club. And you're not supposed to talk about them? Why not? Because I know people, for instance, who have been like, yeah, I'm in Narcotics Anonymous or whatever. I'll give you an example. So Brad Pitt got a bunch of shit for saying he was an AA. If you're an AA, you're not supposed to say you're an AA. Oh, he got shit from AA people. Yeah, exactly. I would think that would be a good thing because he would draw attention.

I would too. A lifeline for people who are having trouble with alcohol. That's interesting. Right, exactly. Most of these organizations don't want you chatting about them, and so it's really fascinating. Weird. But not in a culty way. It sounds very culty-ish, but in reality, it's just like, to protect who's in them and also not make it be about the organization if someone fails.

Because if I were to go back and say, hey, listen, I'm trying this thing out right now, or I tried this thing, or I went to two meetings of this thing, and then later you hear, I only made it 45 days. You're like, oh, that must suck as an organization. And so it's like you don't associate yourself with any of these things because a lot of people...

might see that as a failure and then never try it. So that's one of the other things that they say. Well, I don't want you to come under the wrath of the spider web of AA. One thing that I can suggest is Lego.

Lego. If you're not watching the video, I'm holding up a massive Japanese wave called the Great Wave of Kanagawa. which is a wood block print that was done. Yeah, Hokusai. It was the Edo period, I think, right? When he did these wood block prints. But I spent, like, three days making this with my oldest daughter, which is amazing. So much fun So much fun. Just a quick note on that particular piece. So it's very easy to find. Most people have seen it. A lot of people have seen it.

If you just search Hokusai, H-O-K-U-S-A-I, Hokusai's wave, you'll see this pop up. But if you search evolution of, Hokusai's wave, you get to see over time his prototyping and tweaking and changing of that particular wave until it landed on what we now recognize as this timeless, iconic piece. which is quite cool. So people can take a look at that. It's so cool. Yeah, his stuff is amazing. And the fact that Lego makes adult Legos now, it's so much.

Are they just bigger for larger hands? What makes them adult? Or are they just, instead of being the bat car, they're hoax size waves? Well... The pieces are smaller, so they tend to look a lot more realistic. Like you could hang this on the wall and actually be like art versus a Lego. And then they're doing it with like little mini bonsai trees. And I did with a bamboo shoots. And like, there are actually pieces that you kind of want to have around your house. Oh, check this out.

This one you'll like, too. I haven't done this one yet, but this is one that you can only find in Japan, but I think you can find them on Amazon. This one's called NanoBlocks. It's like a Lego computer. Yeah, so these are really tiny little pieces. I bought this one when I was in Tokyo, but this is a cherry blossom tree, and I can't remember how many pieces this one is, but it's like, they can be in the thousands. Now, this one's 990 pieces for this little tiny piece.

they're fun to do but it just gives you something you know I realize what I need is

A friend of mine actually said he took up golf with his wife and he was like, hey, I took up golf with her because all we did was drink or talk about our kids. It was one of two things. And, you know, you need to have something that you go and do in the evening, whether it be rock climbing or... some type of physical activity that is not that substance.

Yeah, the physical activity piece, I mean, I've always found super effective because you get punished if you're drinking too much. If you're doing something that's really physically intensive. You mentioned this guy going to play golf with his wife. So my question for you, we can always cut this too, but since it is about your surroundings and so on. Is Daria also on board with the not drinking or are you able to take that on yourself while she's partaking? How is that working out?

Yeah, so she's still drinking, and I would say that the one nice benefit has been that she's cut back a lot just naturally. which was cool to see. So her consumption, she's always kind of wanted to cut back, but I don't know how much of it is a result of seeing just My general energy level is going up and I feel a hell of a lot better. Oh, by the way, my liver enzymes are back down to like, you know, low 30s, which is great.

So I'm starting to see like my complexion and like all these weird things are happening. They're just getting better. Turns out not drinking is actually good for you. But it's one of those things where I think that is inspiring her to drink less, which is fantastic. But she still drinks and it doesn't bother me. It's like, it is what it is. Like she's,

She has a hard time with certain things around the house when it comes to the kids and noise levels and stuff that I think it's easier for her to have a drink or two just to kind of calm the nerves a little bit. But I think it's already showing, you know, it's wearing off on her as well, which is great. Mm-hmm. Nice. I'm excited to see what happens at day 90. It seems like a huge difference now as you have the phone a friend support system put in place.

Yeah, the phone a friend is huge, but also there is this group of people that get together and they have a weekly Zoom. And I jump on that as a bunch of this one's guys only as a bunch of guys that don't really want to be drinking. And it is, a bonding moment to just talk about how these people are showing up and to hear stories about people.

that are showing up as better dads in particular, like really hits home with me. Not that I was showing up as a bad dad, but like when I think about my father and how kind of, you know, some of the verbally abusive stuff and his wasn't related to alcohol, but just like,

Dads showing up as the best versions of themselves means a lot to me. It means a lot to be an awesome dad to my kids and When I see these other dads that would have otherwise been alcoholics in their home talking about how much they love their children and how they have more patience for their kids now and patience for their partner because of the fact that they've stopped drinking.

or severely cut back on drinking is just like, it's a blessing just to watch that unfold. And yeah, I'm seeing it in this large group of people that talk about these things, you know? Yeah. I'd be curious to know, we can also cut this, obviously we can cut whatever, but...

It's top of mind because I had Terry Real on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, and his first book, which put him on the map, is I Don't Want to Talk About It, which is specifically focused on male depression, and he talks about covert depression. meaning men have these common modes of covering up depression, whether that be workaholism, alcoholism, sex addiction, fill in the blank, right? Typically some type of kind of compulsive busying or dulling.

addiction. It could be drugs, I suppose. It could be cocaine. That's not dulling, but it's quite a laundry list of things that he discusses as coping mechanisms for depression, right? And I don't think that substance abuse is always that. Some people just meet a molecule that is really not a good fit from an addiction profile perspective. I do think that it could be. Certainly a predisposition as simple as that. It's like your body, your bloodline really shouldn't play with this molecule.

But then there are other cases where there's other stuff under the hood. Do the people in your group talk about that at all? Does that come up? Oh, 100%. Yeah, absolutely. I would say that if I had to guess, it's the vast majority of it is the under the hood stuff. It's not addressing all of the childhood trauma or our kind of family of origin stories, where and how we grew up, and there's almost always

Bit of that so kind of as we popcorn around the zoom and talk about different things One things that commonly comes up is just you know not only how are you showing up today? But some of these little bits get exposed around these traumas that were largely left unaddressed and so led to this kind of dependence or this escape that alcohol can provide.

which is just this dulling of my general... ease being able to sit there and be comfortable in your own skin because of a lot of things that occurred to you as a child and not even knowing it you know And so addressing that stuff I think is a big part of a lot of these

different step programs that are out there. They have different means and ways in which you can go and get that, put pen to paper, get out a lot of those things and address them and put them out there to the world and hopefully move on from them and heal from that. Yeah, totally. you Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.

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All right, so I just got back from the most travel I've done in quite a while, four to five weeks. I was in Taiwan for a week. which was spectacular, and I'll come back to that. Japan, as always, fascinating, interesting. beautiful frustrating depend on which side of it you hit we've talked about this before but it's kind of like Japan is like 20 to 30% Blade Runner and like 70 to 80% DMV in terms of like rules and paperwork and so on. But I love Japan.

and then also spent a bit of time in the UAE, actually in Abu Dhabi unexpectedly. So lots of travel updates. I will say for Taiwan, I had not been back to Taiwan since. 1999 or 2000, so 25 years. And I had had a very tough time when I studied abroad in Beijing. I studied at two universities. And this was 1996. And it was a very, very rough experience at the time for a host of reasons. One was there was a lot of political tension between the U.S. and China.

I had my head shaved and it looked like military, particularly back then. I was a bit bigger. And it was just not a particularly welcoming environment. Also, there are concerns about foreign students affecting domestic students, Chinese students. So we were put in a foreign experts dormitory. We were completely separate. So it was actually very hard

to learn Chinese in the way that I was hoping to learn Chinese. My Japanese got better because there are a lot of Japanese students in the dormitory. I also met some great people who lived in Beijing, so it wasn't exclusive. But I had a really rough time. And when I got back to the U.S., basically decided to stop studying Mandarin. And a friend of mine who... He's a white guy born in the south of Japan.

So he had perfect Japanese southern dialect. His English was a little unusual because he sounded like a Japanese person who had learned to speak English very well. This is a guy who looks like you or me. So there was something funky and really funny and awesome about that. He also spoke Korean really well and spoke Chinese really well. And he said, you have to at least go visit Taiwan before you lay down your pen and retire your Chinese. And so I ended up spending...

about a month in Taiwan, and it just blew my mind, right? Because without the cultural revolution in Taiwan, a lot of the older culture from China had been preserved. Also native, sort of indigenous Taiwanese culture and cultures had been preserved. very different from an interpersonal perspective. and just had the best time one could possibly imagine. And in fairness, I have been back.

to mainland china in other places more recently and it's a very different experience now although once again we're back in tension city between the us and china but what i would say is if you have the chance to go to taiwan you should take the chance. And this might sound also, I don't think it's pessimistic. I think it's inevitable that at some point, Taiwan will be reabsorbed.

by mainland china and it's going to change really dramatically culturally linguistically perhaps the ability to travel there will get more complicated i don't know how it's going to change but it will change a lot and That I could see happening within the next few years. Very surprisingly to me, people on the ground, at least the Taiwanese locals I spent time with, and I was with locals the whole time I was there. I wasn't with any expats.

They're completely unconcerned. They really don't seem to be thinking much about this type of transition, either because they think it's not going to happen. Or because they view it, as I just said, somewhat as an inevitability. So they're like, yeah, it'll change. Things will change. But so it goes. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of hand wringing.

and fretting about it which was super surprising to me i will say though if you want to visit a place that is really warm where the people are really funny where the food is outstanding And it almost feels like there's a blended courtesy that you might recognize also from Japan, and certainly Japan has a long history there, so there could be some of the influence.

Really, I encourage people to check out Taiwan and do it soon. And I want to give a shout out to a restaurant there that two of the locals I know are involved with, and you're going to love the name of this restaurant. It is customized, although I'm pretty sure it predates Google. The name of this restaurant is Really Good Seafood. That is the actual name. It's very descriptive. You know what you're gonna get.

Yeah, it's very descriptive. Fantastic sculpture, also like bronze sculptures in this restaurant, strangely enough. But really good seafood. Highly recommend people check it out. And you just can't go wrong in Taiwan. Try to get at least outside of Taipei for a short period of time. And there are amazing hikes in the mountains.

Yeah, I was going to ask you, did you do any tea? Because obviously the lungs out of Taiwan are just absolutely stunning. Yeah, they're stunning. Did you do any tea tours? We drank a lot of tea. Did not do a tea tour, but actually, if you hold on for a second, let me go grab some tea. I haven't even unpacked. I literally got back yesterday. So hold on one second. I'm going to go grab something. Yeah. All right. So I brought some tea back and.

Taiwan has a lot of everything from a tea perspective, but certainly what gets the most airtime is oolong tea. You really hear about oolong. They have so many incredible teas but this right here cha cha tay which It certainly is not Chinese. But they have these incredible teas. And this one in particular was recommended, which is called Oriental Beauty Oolong Tea. And there are a million different varieties.

Certainly, if you spend time there, I would say do not miss out on the tea. If you think tea is boring, if you think tea doesn't really spark your interest, doesn't capture you, I would suggest Just going whole hog on. as much tea as you can and get out in the mountains. I mean, even an hour outside, of Taipei, you can go on these walks in rainforests that are, to my eye, denser than the Amazon. I mean, it is so lush and so dense.

waterfalls, rivers, monkeys. You just get to see it all. It is really incredible from a biodiversity perspective. And I do think sadly, at least for ease of travel with Taiwan as it exists right now, the window could be quite narrow for a lot of tourism. So I would say... Maybe things will change. Maybe they won't if and when the Big Red Dragon basically subsumes Taiwan. But I would say get there sooner rather than later. You will not be disappointed. And certainly check out

Really good seafood. I have to give a shout out to my friend's restaurant. And then, of course, going from Taiwan to Japan, pretty easy transition. It's a very short flight.

I guess it's somewhere between three and four hours. And instead of tea in Japan, just went on the rampage with coffee, actually, this time around. And one of the main reasons for the trip was to visit my host family, who I stayed with when I was 15. I'm still very close to them. And so we were able to go out to this rambunctious local ramen joint and just... You'd act like old times and catch up as if no time had passed. It's just so nice to have those deep relationships.

And like everyone everywhere, they're getting older, meaning my parents, my host brothers, their kids. And it was wild to see my oldest host brothers older boy is now 16 he's taller than i am i remember seeing him when he was a baby right because i went to my host brother's wedding prior to that and he is the age that i was when i was in japan Which is just so wild. It's so wild and wanted to give a couple of recommendations for people if they want to try.

a bunch of coffee. There are a million options out there, but I don't know how to explain it, and people are going to think this sounds really funny, but the latte at Glitch Coffee in Ginza, for whatever reason, A number of people had it, and we were all like, what? Did they do with this latte? I don't know how it was. I don't know if it was how they blended it. Oh, dude, it's Hokkaido milk, of course. Well, no, no, no. That's the thing, though, because we had like 20 different.

Lattes, but at Glitch in Ginza specifically, the way that they blended it. and put the whole thing together was so obscenely good. It is very small. It's a pain in the ass to wait outside, especially if it's raining like it was when I was there. But I would highly recommend checking it out. But you're right that Hokkaido milk is famous throughout the world, certainly without all of Asia.

And it's just a different thing. It just tastes so much better than the milk that I've had, at least here in the U.S. And I'll give one more, which is Sendai. Sendai Coffee and people can check that out as well. Very cute, different style. And there I would suggest Checking out, they have a few varieties of Colombian coffee. Colombian kindio, wine yeast, peach-infused honey. Now, there's no sweetener in this. But all of these notes are super super obvious this stuff right here

They really know their coffee, man. They really do. Have you been to Coffee Mamea out there? I was going to go to Coffee Mamea, but we did not end up going. Okay, Mamea is by far my favorite in Tokyo. It is insanely legit. They have a couple of different locations, but there is one that they have. They serve the coffee in wine snifters.

And, you know, it's like $35 a cup, and they're getting the world's best geishas in there, and they're just, like, making this fantastic varietal of coffee. Just for clarity, the geisha is the coffee, not the people. That's right. Have you tried any of the aged coffees in Tokyo?

I mean, I might have in the course of going to all these different places, but perhaps not Mamea, I wanted to go to check that out. It's a whole production, right? Like if you go to the one location where they give you the omakase, it's like a whole three-hour commitment.

And I had just at that point in the trip with the amount of time we had, I was like, number one, because tourism has exploded. I mean, I have never seen even a quarter of the number of tourists in Japan that I saw this last trip because the yen is weaker and a lot of people are coming in from all over, not just China, but also Thailand and many other places.

If you want to book a reservation, you need to do it far in advance. For instance, you want to go to like Ghibli Museum. I used to be able to do that a week or two in advance. Now you got to do it months in advance. Yeah, last time I was out there, it was just insane how many tourists are coming over. And I saw Craig Mott out there, which is fantastic. He took me to a secret little coffee spot that I don't want to blow up and ruin by mentioning a podcast. But it was fantastic. Another one.

Just Google L-A-M-B-R-E aged coffee beans Tokyo, and they have coffee beans that they've been sitting on for over 20 years. So they'll serve you coffee beans that are 20 or 30 years old. It's a different experience altogether when you get these kind of like slightly fermented aged coffee beans. This little shop seats like eight people. It's fantastic. I highly recommend. So that was my sort of deal with jet lag plus.

enjoy japan this time around which i hadn't done i'd done a lot of like we experienced it together you know sake tastings and things like that didn't want to go the alcohol route i was very tempted to go to gen yamamoto again who's incredible gen's best yeah but I didn't want to do the booze. So I ended up doing the caffeine route and absolutely loved it. It's also a great way to explore. There's a place I want to say, look it up. I want to say it might be Nezu. Nezu Cafe.

But it does not allow any photographs or social media or laptops. And I just thought that was so fantastic. There's a handful of those out there. Did you go to Bear Pond Coffee out there at all? No, that's a little bit further out. So Bear Pond's amazing. There's a guy there, he does the angel stain. There's one cup of coffee he makes, like this really highly processed, over-the-top espresso, not processed, but like dense.

dense, thick, rich espresso. And then they have Hokkaido milk there as well. I think it's some of the best. It's just unbelievable. Kevin. But there's no social media. I have to stage an intervention. If you're going to be a coffee nerd, you can't say espresso. You got to say espresso.

Okay, espresso. Did I say ex-presso? You said it twice, yeah. Okay. All right. Listen, cut that out, fucker. It's too good. It's too good. I have these sayings that Daria always calls me out on where I say things where I think I pick them up from my parents and there's like three or four things that are completely, like not even close to the actual work. It was from my family, my upbringing, I think. Expresso was one of them.

Well, my mom, her mom, as a joke, would say certain words totally incorrectly. Like instead of horizon, she would say the horizon. And then my uncle went into school to give a presentation when he was a little kid, and he said... and just got like laughed out of class. And then his mom was like, I was totally wrong. I was just kidding.

Oh, come on. Come on, mom. Oh, I got to tell you, before we move on, people should know if they don't get a chance to go out to Taiwan. It's something I desperately wanted to do, and I wholeheartedly agree. It seems that...

Sadly, tensions are rising, so there is a small window. But a friend that I met in San Francisco, have you ever been to that Red Blossom Tea Company in SF?

Yeah, I have. So I think they are the best importer, domestic importer, at least in the United States, of high quality oolong tea. So if you cannot make it out, and I have no affiliation with them at all, but if you can't make it out, to taiwan but you want to try some of these teas that tim is talking about red blossom tea company just google them the website has fantastic oolongs and they're reasonably priced they're pretty awesome

Yeah, and also just to be clear, guys, this doesn't need to be expensive. These coffees, you might have to wait a little while or these teas, but they're not going to cost necessarily. If you go to a super fancy place, sure. but 99% of what I had is going to cost less than what you had at Starbucks. Yeah, 100%. It's not expensive. It is not outside of reach.

All right, man. Where should we move next? Yeah, I mean, I definitely want to cover how you did on that meditation retreat. We can talk about that at some point, but I can also talk about some tech stuff as well. Why don't we do a tech debrief? Then we can talk about the Zen retreat.

Yeah, so the tech debrief, I would say for me, the latest and greatest is that the new Whoop finally came out, which is This little guy here on my wrist, it's about, I think, 12% smaller. Now I'm auraed, whooped, and Apple watched up all at the same time. The Whoop band, the reason I like it, or I had historically liked it, is that it does not have a display on it.

And so it's not competing with your time in any way. You kind of check the stats in the morning or at night or whatever it may be. And they really maximize the hell out of this hardware because they... had not updated the device in like four years. So it was the same hardware, but they kept doing firmware updates. The heart rate tracking got better. Everything was just

continually getting better via these firmware updates. This is the first new device in like four years. This one is called the MG, which stands for medical grade. It does feel a lot smaller. And there's some new features that I think are worth mentioning that are pretty awesome. Some stuff that the Apple Watch doesn't do. So this one now has blood pressure monitoring as well. So you calibrate it with your cuff, which I did last night, and then it's going to give me insights throughout the week.

It will kind of give you a range or a score range, so it's not going to give you exact cuffed measurements, but it'll generally let you know how you're doing, whether or not you want to pay more attention or not. It's in beta right now, but it seems so far, it seems pretty good and pretty accurate. And granted, I've only had this for a few days now. The VO2 max tracking is awesome. The zone training is great. It's gotten better. They have this feature called Whoop Age.

The whoop age I think is pretty cool because Basically what it does is it takes a look at a bunch of different metrics across the board. So you can think of this as resting heart rate, sleep quality, heart rate variability, stress levels, which is getting through a couple different algorithms that they have, your VO2 max. slew of different things and it combines them all into this score and it says okay

How do we think you're doing? Are you at an accelerated aging pace right now? Are you flat? Or do we think you're actually below average and that you're aging slower than most people, which is where you want to be? And so they give you this cool little whoop age insight, which is fun. I would say Out of all the devices that I've played with and owned,

The Whoop probably is the geekiest of them all. And then it gives you the most data points and the most insights. And now they have this little AI agent you can have a conversation with. You can say, hey, how did I do yesterday? Is there anything I should be paying attention to? And it'll come back and pull from your real-time data that's on your phone. So I like it. It's a little bit pricey, but the one I have is $359 a year, and they do have some that are less expensive.

You know, it's early days. We've only had it for a few days, but it's something to pay attention to in terms of the wearables out there, the track, you know, everything as related to all the different metrics that you can pull from. I don't know if you've had a chance to do this, but I've really been... increasing the frequency of my zone two training. And the way that I've typically calibrated that is with the talk test, sort of per Peter Atiyah, right? Keeping it simple, like you're on a bike.

And you could hold a conversation on the phone or with someone. in full sentences, but you wouldn't really want to. That's my understanding of the simple way to measure it. Now, I've talked to other people who are involved with professional cycling teams and they're like, well, actually you really want to do A, B, C, D and E to calibrate it, which sounds very complicated and I'm probably not going to do it. Have you had a chance to compare what...

The WHOOP says about Zone 2 and something like the talk test to see if they correspond. It's a great question, and I think one that I'm with you in that I want to get more zone two. I'm trying to get like a half hour in per day at least, and Tia really pushes for close to an hour or tries to get to an hour. There's an equation for this as well, which is like age divided by plus, you know, there's like there's a few of these out there that are like, how do you figure out what zone two is for you?

For me, this one is they're using their own model. So they have their own model that they kind of give you a range. But one of the things that I do like is I was messing around with this last night. is if you go in and you do a real legit VO2 max test where they're actually hooking up to the full gear, they're putting it on the treadmill,

You can plug that in and it will feed it into the model or you can manually define the zones as you see them. So you can go in there and type in what you want your zones to be. And it will use that versus their own internal tool, which is quite nice. But yeah, they're using some type of model. I'm not sure which one they're using. Okay, cool. Yeah, maybe I'll compare them.

Since I'm in Austin, so I have access to, you know, the 10 squared facility and I can go in and I did a VO2 max test not too long ago with the whole kit and caboodle, the Bane mask on and everything. Yeah. Which is very... uncomfortable as a first-timer, so I'm curious to see what type of

acclimating or practice effect there is on my next VO2 max training even if my capacity hasn't increased do I get better results because I'm just more comfortable with the gear and the settings and the cycling and so on we'll see we'll find out it's going to be hard to tease that out

The one thing I will say is that there is a great YouTuber that I like called The Quantified Scientist. And what he does is he goes in and he takes every single wearable, at least mainstream wearable, that's out there. And he has the hardcore VO2 max devices at his house. He has all the ECG devices that measure sleep. And he's basically a statistician and comes in and gives you the data and says, how does this actually compare to the gold standard?

for these different measurements. And so he has yet to do that on the new Whoop, but in the Oura Ring and the Apple Watch and the Garmins and everything out there, he'll actually put on the full VO2 Max masks, like you're saying, and then compare them and say this is the closest to the gold standard without having to wear a mask. Oh, that's cool. That's awesome.

For sleep, I guess it could be any number of things. It might be EEG if we're talking about brainwaves. The ECG is electrocardiogram. That's right. Yeah, sorry, this one does the ECG. If you hold on to the side of it, it'll tell me. If I have any AFib or anything like that as well on the new rope, which is great. Okay. Yeah, all right. I'm doing a, literally getting another bike. Well, I should say bike. It's more of an ergometer.

this week because I love so much about this company, but the Peloton seat, is just completely breaking my cock. It's so bad. And to retrofit it or to try to modify it is really, really challenging. So I think that in the interest of reproductive health, and I'm not... kidding about that actually like you can do with the wrong seat you can actually do a lot of damage you're like i'm so massive the seat is just absolutely just destroying my junk

Well, yeah, my elephant trunk. I need to wrap it around this pole in the front. Just loop it over the front bars, you'll be fine. I'm serious that if people are doing a lot of cycling and they're having any type of sexual dysfunction or...

reproductive issues, it's worth taking a look at the seat. Like, this is something that got flagged to me, fortunately, in advance, because I was like, huh, as I was doing some of my workouts, I noticed it seemed like almost a tingling or lack of circulation in one of my legs, and I was like, that can't be good. So, as it stands, I'll test the new device before I give it any kind of endorsement, but I'm moving to another ergometer just so I can do that and have the ability to easily swap seats

if need be. So I might have more on that. should i hop in with uh some new experiments or at least observations? Yeah. Actually, let me give you one more quick one that I think is going to be fun for people that a physician turned me on to that I have been using now when I travel, which is amazing.

Again, no affiliation with any of this stuff, but it was a Stanford scientist that came out with this nasal spray called Profi, P-R-O-F-I, and I bought it on Amazon. And so it's essentially the spray that it's like this hydrogel that goes up into your nasal cavity. You spray one for each side in your nose. And it is like a gel that basically if you're just breathing through your nose when you're on a flight or you're traveling or you're in a big room of people.

it will trap and it holds all of the different viruses and bacteria that you're inhaling into this gel and destroys them at the gel level. And people are like getting less sick. They're not picking up the average. cold, when they're in big rooms. They did a small study in a hospital setting around COVID. I'll find it. It wasn't with this particular brand, but the same. I think it was another generic brand of the same type of gel.

And they just showed that the odds of you getting COVID or the flu were severely reduced for people that were using this gel inside of their nose. So I was like, you know, it's like 15 bucks or something. I was like, hell yes. And so I picked it up and I've been using it when I travel. And knock on wood, I've been doing a lot of travel IQ.

Over the last few weeks, I haven't got sick at all. It was only when I didn't do it at home when my kids were sick that I ended up getting a cold. Anyway, it's pretty awesome. It was developed over at Stanford and I recommend checking it out. Okay, so we'll get a link to that. And actually for years now, I don't know if I ever told you this, for at least 10 years, when I'm about to go on any extended travel, I will get a saline mist spray.

from CVS or Walgreens and just simply moisturize or hydrate inside my nasal passages, which seems to make A big difference also for the purposes of just avoiding my nemesis, which is sinus infections. If my nasal passages and my sinuses get dry, I've had issues with sinus infections since I was a very, very little kid. And if I'm consistent with this type of nasal spray, it seems to help. So maybe the next step up is the profi. I actually think it's... That's a hell of a brand name.

Expresso! I literally saw a sign in a coffee shop in Romania this was in Brasov and it said Dear Americans, espresso does not have an X in it. That's amazing. You're not alone. I feel bad. No, you're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone. Kind of makes sense. You want to be in the express land? Yeah, exactly. Thank you. I'll share a couple of just rapid-fire, like, Scooby Snacks for people, and then I'll talk about a recent experiment. So this is another one from Japan.

And this is not very expensive, but if you can find it online, you might be able to find it at something like a Nijia market or a Japanese market of some type. This is a dashi. And it's got dried bonito and dried anchovies and dried flying fish and sweet kelp, all this stuff. It's from a place called Okume, which was established in 1871. And you can see here... It's a little hard to see, but the package basically looks like a tea package. You have these individual sachets that are full of

this dashi and you put it into hot water so you can have it like tea in the morning without making it a big production. And this is just their classic dashi. They have a million different options. But man, I feel like a dose of dashi and broth a couple times a week does a lot to keep the doctor away so this is going to be a very easy IFT so many times a day already just to swap in one of these as part of the routine will make it more interesting and also I think

could potentially do some really nice things for health. There's a book that I read on my travels, have been reading. I've read it at least 10 times, and every time I read it, particularly if I've taken a break of two or three years, where I say to myself, this is why I need to read the book more often, and it's this one. This is Awareness by Anthony DeMello. Oh, I love that book. Fantastic book.

It's such a good book, and different things hit you at different times. I started reading this, and we'll get to it in a second, after our Zen retreat, because it talks about a lot that overlaps, even though Anthony DeMello was largely based, maybe entirely based in India, but he was a Jesuit priest, also a psychotherapist, and The density, I would say, of insights per page on this is just incredible. It's effectively a cleaned up, organized version of his greatest hits given as lectures.

And it's very easy to read. It's very funny. It's very short. It's only about 170 pages. And once again, I'm reading it and different things are popping out at different points in life. And I actually have multiple hard copies that I've highlighted at different points. And the highlights are different things. They're really...

The passages that resonate at different points in time. Oh, man. Yeah, to anybody out there who, and it's not exclusive to this, But if you suffer from anxiety or depression, or if you just feel like you have a little too much edge, you're running a little fast, you feel a little overcommitted, clogged, stuck at points, whatever it might be. This book is fast-acting medicine, and it's not a panacea, but it's really complimentary for almost anything else that you would do.

to help with the types of symptoms that I just described, which are really symptoms of modern living, ultimately, especially for people in urban environments. And even if you're not in an urban environment, if you've got one of these phones, you are plugged into the anxiosphere, right? It's like the world of anxiety because that is how you keep clicking and that is how platforms continue to gather data they can sell. in one form or another. So Anthony DeMello, awareness.

Always recommend it. Haven't read it myself in a while and long overdue. So I did want to mention that. Oh man, Tim, thank you for reminding me about that book. I don't have to keep coming back to this, but when my house burned down, I lost all my books. And it's funny, I forgot that that was one of my favorites that I had on my bookshelf there. And like you, I know you do this as well.

There's like three or four books I would buy like five copies of, and I just leave them at my house because when I have a friend stop by, I'm like, oh, I need to give you this book, right? There's ones that you absolutely love so much that you just want to gift out because you just feel like you should give as many people as possible this book, right? This was one of those books. And I just ordered it on Amazon. It's $10 on Amazon in the U.S.

They said you first bought this in 2019, probably via your recommendation. But yeah, fantastic, fantastic book. Thank you. I just bought mine. Yeah, for sure. And do you want to talk about... Actually, let me give a couple of other quick... recommendations for folks?

One is an oldie but goodie, much like awareness, that I had not seen in probably, I want to say 10 or 15 years. Now, who knows? Maybe the brand was different back in the day. But as a quick status update on my... increasingly eclectic laundry list of injuries. So my right elbow has been a problem for 20 plus years. It started with an accident in jujitsu. My arm got hyperextended, pop, pop.

And then over time, I've developed these tears in my extensors. So people think of tennis elbow, right? So if you kind of... Pull your fingers up on your arm towards your face where you're looking at your fingernails. Let's just say you're admiring a nice new manicure that you have. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So if you're just pulling your fingertips back.

towards your shoulder you're using your extensors and I have tears in both of those it's gotten bad enough that I had to stop rock climbing that was the first indication When I started to get to, say, like 5.11s in the gym, when you're crimping and starting to pull, the knuckles back. I think I basically grabbed the paper tear and ripped it further. So I had a point where I need, almost certainly need surgery. And this is your right hand. This is my dominant side, yeah.

Oh, man, that's extra brutal for you. Yeah, it's my dominant hand. Yeah, you're going to lose that one. That's not the one you want to lose. Yep. So, unfortunately, the surgery is pretty straightforward. I don't know what you're thinking about, but... I am not left-handed either. The stranger. Yeah, the stranger.

Don't underestimate the stranger. Oh, hello. If you get it, you get it. All right, let's move on. So I will probably need... two to three months of rehab before I'm able to get back to full force and even now for instance using barbells for any kind of weight training creates too much torque and tension at the elbow and it really ends up

being incredibly painful. So I'm using a lot more dumbbells. The reason this is relevant is Because of the back injury and the back compression, I don't really like putting barbells across my shoulders. I won't get into all the details, but I'm holding dumbbells for extended periods of time.

And normally that's not a problem, but if you're doing most of your leg workout by holding onto kettlebells or holding onto dumbbells, the first thing that's going to go is your grip, especially because my right elbow is really compromised right now. And to use standard Basic lifting strap.

for dumbbells is really challenging. If anyone's used these, you know what I'm talking about, to sort of wrap the strap around multiple times and to get it into some type of symmetrical position with both hands. So this thing right here, is another option what i'm holding is called versa grips v-e-r-s-a grips g-r-i-p-p-s and it's a lifting strap but really all you're doing is folding it over once

and then putting your hand on top of it. So it's a lifting strap that is much more amenable, much more straightforward to use pretty much for everything, but particularly for dumbbells, which I'm going to be using not just to train to do prehab to get myself as strong as possible prior to surgery, but also post-surgery. So I would say if that's of interest, you can check that out. I'll give one more.

wreck, and then we can move on. This is a book that people have almost certainly not seen before. It's called Everything is Its Own Reward by Paul Madonna. And it is a book of beautiful architectural drawings. You might think to yourself, boring. Most of it is in the San Francisco area or San Francisco Bay Area. But it's the philosophical musings and the writing. that Paul has in this book that is so deeply fascinating and weird and thought-stirring to me. And I came across this

The first time in a hotel in the Bay Area, I was just sitting in the coffee shop and I was killing time before doing something. I picked it up and I ended up sitting there and reading it for about two hours. Completely forgot to have dinner. And I've, once again, much like the 32 Sounds documentary, never quite come across a book like this. It is so strange. And I feel like the combination of 32 sounds, awareness, and this very, very weird, often funny

Often profound, everything is its own reward by Paul Madonna, which is definitely going to sell out on Amazon. So the race goes to the swift. Create almost an extended psychedelic experience in the sense that things that you're accustomed to seeing. Things that you think or do or hear on autopilot most of the time, because that's the only way you can survive is to have most things on autopilot. You see a fresh... As if you're encountering them for the first time after.

Taking in a diet doesn't have to be very long, even for a day or two with some of these different books and documentaries and so on. It's really just seeing, I don't use this word lightly, it's more of a metaphor, but seeing the miracle in the everyday. And it makes me think of some people who are really creative who seem to have one foot in that zone all the time. For instance, I was watching an NHK, which is like the BBC in Japan.

mini-series on the creative process of Hayao Miyazaki, who is the founder of Studio Ghibli, which has made pretty much every Japanese animated film most people have heard of. So, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away. et cetera, et cetera. He's sometimes called the Disney of Japan, which is a description he does not like because he says, Walt Disney was a businessman. I'm just a director, just a director, very Japanese. But in one of the episodes talking about his creative process,

He takes a video camera, this is an older docuseries, and tapes it, affixes it to the headrest of his driver's seat in his car. Because he says, I want to see what I'm seeing. Because effectively, there's magic hiding in the ordinary. He's like, that's what you want to find. And I feel like all of these tools

help you to do that, which for me is deeply therapeutic, beautiful, stress relieving in ways that are hard for me to put words to, but you don't need drugs to get there. These are all things that can help recalibrate you. just a few degrees to change your waking experience in that way. Tim, one other thing I'll say is that you had mentioned a book that immediately sold out before called The Well of Being several episodes ago.

And I'm actually rebuying it right now because it's back in stock. I just want to let people know that is now back in stock because it was going for several hundred dollars a copy after you mentioned it and it sold out. So now it's back for $35 again. But that's still one of your favorites, yeah? It's a great book. It's outstanding. Yeah, that's the children's book for adults.

Yeah, that is an outside book. I'm picking that up again as well. And the book you mentioned and the book that I just mentioned are books that you really want in hardcover, if you can get them. That's the intended medium.

for these two books, for sure. One thing I'll mention as a quick throw out there, not everyone can travel to Japan. We get that. There are lots of artisanal Japanese goods that are absolutely phenomenal. A lot of websites that import do so with very limited supply, and then also they mark them up like crazy. So you'll find some of these shops here, especially in LA, there's some of these shops you go to, and it's just like things are just outrageously priced.

one place i found that i really like that yes it is a little premium but is I would say is one of the best curators of fine Japanese goods is a friend of mine turned me on to this. It's called POJstudio.com. POJ. Yeah, you gotta check this out. I think you'll really like it. so if you go to poj studio and then click on shop at the top there and just go best sellers kind of like shop all or whatever and then look at some of these pieces is everything from like

high-end Japanese towels to incense to these beautiful tie-dyed kind of door dividers like the hanging things. What was the name of the URL again? It's POJstudio.com Studio.com. Yeah, in pursuit of perfection. Yeah, okay. Yeah, they got all sorts of beautiful stuff. Absolutely stunning imported Japanese kind of small production artists and stuff from little tiny trays and containers to room dividers to throw pillows to you name it. If you like that vibe.

Oh, they have this beautiful hand hammered little singing bowls that you can use for meditation i got their japanese hinoki wood incense which smells amazing anyway i think this is one of the best importers of small artisan Japanese goods that's out there. So I highly recommend checking out.

And also, if you want to go low-end or mid-tier, I mentioned Nijia Market. They only have 12 stores across the U.S., mostly in California and Hawaii, but you can find Japanese markets, and you can also find... broadly speaking, East Asian markets. If you find East Asian markets, whether that's Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, fill in the blank, chances are they're going to have a lot of Japanese goods and also they will have plenty of good stuff from their primary

country in the sense that if it's Chinese-owned, let's just say China, if it's Vietnamese-owned, although I would put them in the Southeast Asian, I guess, category, but Korean, etc. You can just find some amazing, amazing, amazing teas as an example. Because culturally, that is such a part of the lived experience of those places. Try it out.

walk through pick up something you can't read make sure it doesn't have any allergens that are going to kill you and then give it a shot all right so let's talk about the zen retreat in a second i will tell you

one interesting hypothesis that I have related to something we've discussed once before, which is accelerated TMS. So the compressed administration of Basically a magnetic coil. Oh, you bastard. There's a squirrel on my squirrel-proof bird feeder just trying to go to town right now. You rat bastard. I don't think he's going to succeed. Oh, he is.

Yo, you bastard. Squirrel-proof my ass. Wait, pan over. I got to see this. Can you pan the camera? It's not going to work. I'll knock all my shit over. Yeah, yeah. Oh, you bastard. I think he's been... No, no, he's really getting in there. All right, so I got distracted. Apparently, Accelerate TMS doesn't help with that kind of distraction. I've just never actually seen my bird feeder getting pillaged so badly as it is right now by this squirrel.

nice work squirrel i love this version of tim that's like bird feeding hummingbird feeders little anti-squirrel devices oh he just got set for like a whirligig spin though so there's there's something You need to get a webcam out there. I do. Only squirrels. All right. Accelerated TMS. I feel like the dog in Up. Squirrel. Yeah, exactly. Squirrel.

So the accelerated TMS, for people who are interested in learning more about this, I recommend listening to my podcast with Nolan Williams, who's a scientist out of Stanford. who's the head of their brain stimulation lab. But effectively, different types of brain stimulation, in this case, transcranial magnetic stimulation, particularly when applied in this condensed format

In this case, it's 50 sessions of brain stimulation. They're about nine minutes long each. You're doing 50 sessions in five days. So you're doing 10 hours a day, every hour on the hour. you're having this brain stimulation. And in my case, it's for an anxiosomatic target. That just means it's effectively to reduce symptoms of OCD.

compulsive rumination. I don't wash my hands or flip the light switches and not to judge anyone who does but it's like my form of OCD which I've been diagnosed with and it's not surprising at all is this repetitive perseveration a loop of thoughts that even though I'm aware it's unproductive even though I'm aware it's unpleasant

I feel powerless to stop that type of perseverating, which then, of course, engenders anxiety and sometimes insomnia, etc. Of all of the things I've tried, and you and I spoke about this, when I did my first five-day sequence of accelerated TMS, bizarrely, there was like a two-week delayed onset. Nothing really seemed to happen for about two weeks. And then boom, for three to four weeks, I had, let's just call it complete remission of symptoms. Like all of that stuff just went away. And...

Nothing has approached that in terms of amplitude and especially durability of effect, and that includes psychedelic therapies. But what's interesting about this is after that five-day treatment, I went back and I did a single day booster, which did nothing. And then I did a three day booster, which also did nothing. Now, I'm not sure if I've talked about this publicly. Maybe I have, maybe I haven't. Part of the reason I wanted to do lower dosing was after my first five-day sequence,

I remember after a week or so, I was like, hey doc, I can't seem to ejaculate. Is that a known problem? And needless to say, That did not help my anxiety. I was incapable of... But you could still get the timber. You just couldn't get the output. Yeah, I couldn't get the output. Okay. And then the doc was like, huh, interesting. We haven't seen that because this is still a very new treatment and particularly for...

anxiety and OCD. The depression has been much better studied, but he said, yeah, it kind of makes sense if we're whacking down your sympathetic response. He's like, yeah, there's this mnemonic in... medical school, which is point and shoot, meaning parasympathetic, to get the erection, and then sympathetic.

to have the ejaculation, to have the orgasm. And he's like, yeah, it makes sense. And I was like, okay, and is this fixable or am I like totally screwed forever? And he's like, no, I should just like return to baseline. And it did. I have an addendum to that though. So I wanted to use lower dosing to avoid that.

One day did nothing. Three days did nothing also. And then I was like, what the hell is going on? Okay, I guess I can do five days. You get nothing done for five days, right? Because you're getting your brain zapped every hour and it basically feels like

You did an all-nighter for the LSATs 10 times a day. I mean, you get very, very tired. When you say zap, does it hurt? It doesn't hurt at all. It feels like somebody lightly flicking the side of your head. It doesn't hurt. So it's basically for nine minutes. It's like there's nothing, and then it's like, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And then there's a pause for, I'm just making this up, let's just call it, I don't know, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, and then bop, bop.

and it's a paddle that's pushed against your head. That's it. I don't find it painful at all. This is with a MagVenture or MagVenture's device. There are other devices that can have different types of effects, which have different types of helmets and caps that are used and so on, doesn't hurt in this particular case. So then I was chatting with a doctor before planning another round, and he was like, well, it is pretty strange that three days did nothing.

And I was like, okay. And we're trying to brainstorm strategy. And what I did is I went back in my calendar and looked at the preceding few weeks before every one of these treatments. And for the first treatment, the five-day treatment, I had had some psychedelic exposure. And I was like, interesting. Because I've long assumed that there could be some type of synergistic effect with these two things. And there are people who are looking at this very closely right now. So...

This time around, the hypothesis is that actually the improved neuroplasticity and who knows, maybe it's even anti-inflammatory effects could be a million different things from the psychedelic exposure. worked synergistically with the five-day accelerated TMS to produce the effect that I then witnessed and experienced which was incredible right if I could figure out how to replicate that then I would do it

let's just call it once a quarter, once every four months, something like that, why wouldn't I do it? And I will say that it took the edge off and By that, I mean I was less motivated to do a lot of types of work, maybe from tamping down the sympathetic nervous system. But what I found for myself was, number one, at this point in my life, totally fine with it. And number two, I actually think it made me better at picking my targets.

and not doing work for the sake of movement. Because I didn't have the underlying anxiety that perhaps I was subconsciously coping. by some type of frenetic activity or over committing to phone calls or work or creative projects or exercise or who knows what it was. So that extra space that was created by not having as much compulsive behavior across the board, I would say.

is no discernible decrease over, say, three to four months in my sort of creative output. Like, totally happy with it. I'm very curious to see how accelerated TMS ends up being enabled or disabled, and I think it might depend on the dose, with different types of pharmaceuticals. And there's one that's been studied called Cetraline with an S-S-E-T-R-A-L-I-N-E. People can find studies related to this.

So that's something I'm going to be watching very closely. Now I have an update on the, because I know you want to know about my ejaculation, Kevin. No, it's always my first thing I ask you whenever we talk. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I don't think it was the TMS, so I actually had a theory that I tested, and it's N of 1, so take it with a huge grain of salt, but I thought it might be the trazodone.

which some people use for sleep. And it's interesting for sleep because it doesn't seem to disrupt sleep architecture as much as other drugs. However, one of the Less common but known side effects can be delayed ejaculation. I was like, interesting. Well, let me take that off the table. And I did take it off the table. And lo and behold, no issues. So back to two minutes. That's your man. Oh god. This never happens, I swear. You don't really have trust over this.

But I thought that might be if people are taking sleep medications, like you can end up treating the wrong thing very easily or pulling levers, forgetting about certain medications that you're using where you haven't taken a moment to look at. side effects that are less commonly reported, but nonetheless statistically significant. So, not saying that was definitively the cause, because I couldn't prove that, but so far so good.

So after these treatments are the ones that were successful, was there anything else that was a positive? Like, were you sleeping better at night or no? Well, for the three to four months that I mentioned, for sure, my sleep was so much better. Now, is that because my rumination is less? Is it because I have maybe like someone taking a Munjaro or something, less compulsive behavior across the board, so I'm not drinking as much caffeine as like a fixation? Maybe. I don't know.

but i did sleep much much better and i mean the quality of life difference before and after was hard to overstate i mean it's really really incredible i will say this time around just like the first round of five days If you were to ask me right now, What difference has it made? I would say it hasn't made a fucking one iota of difference. I mean, I happen to be in the middle of a bunch of very stressful things related to family health emergencies and various other kind of time-sensitive things.

situations that I think would contribute to almost anyone feeling quite anxious. I'm patient this time around because there was the delayed onset. And If it takes two weeks, it takes two weeks. So I'm just going to cross my fingers, not drink. That's a big part of the not drinking also, was preparing for that. And then afterwards, wanting to ensure that I'm giving my brain.

the best chance possible to adapt in the way that I wanted to adapt. So leaving out as many neurotoxins as possible seems like a good, standard operating procedure at least for the next little while and we'll see man fingers crossed but i remain very very bullish on this technology i really feel like for people who fit criteria that would exclude them from psychedelic assisted therapies. Let's say people with a history of schizophrenia or family history of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

This treatment could be very, very interesting in addition to especially combining it with some type of metabolic psychiatry, which I had Chris Palmer from Harvard on to talk about a while back, use of whether it's a ketogenic diet, exogenous ketones, maybe some combination. I think there's a lot of promise. I think there's a lot of promise. That's awesome. That's where the foundation is going to be spending more time also in addition to the psychedelic stuff.

I'm curious when you think about how, you know, these are obviously very expensive treatments and, you know, you can't find them in every city. Are you seeing any application of this technology at the consumer level that you have tried or you've heard good things about? I know it's not the same, but Matt Walker... You've had him on your podcast. Sleep scientist. I ran the Berkeley Sleep Lab. He had a device called Somni, which I haven't tried.

which does transcranial electric stimulation 15 minutes before you go to bed. It's supposed to increase your deep sleep. So he's involved in that product. So I'm seeing more of these kind of like consumer brain stimulation devices pop up in the market. Anything worth playing with here? Or is it just not that just like all kind of not?

Proven out yet. Not ready for primetime? Yeah, I can't speak to Somni. Definitely people, if they're interested in unpacking sleep. I mean, Why We Sleep, I believe, is the title of Matt's book. I'll scare the shit out of you. It'll scare the shit out of you in, I think, a productive way. And then he and I spoke on the podcast about things he might add to that or modify, update, etc.

The consumer grade, it's timely that you should ask me that. So right before recording this podcast, I actually had an investor deck.

presentation with a company that is working on something. So you and I should talk about that separately. I think it's very interesting. As a category, it is incredibly hard to make work, both as a technology, so just scientifically, to show... compelling cause and effect I think is very difficult in this category and from a business perspective There are a number of different reasons that it can be very, very challenging, but I do think there might be

some interesting tools on the horizon. What I will say is, as a general rule of thumb, I can't speak to Somni, and Matt Walker is a credible scientist, so let's exclude Somni from what I'm going to say. but almost every at-home brain stimulation device or Let's just for simplicity sake call it brain stimulation device. I've seen is at best a scam and at worst could do a fair amount of damage. These tools, if they're used incorrectly, TMS, let's just say.

transcranial magnetic stimulation, if used incorrectly, can actually worsen, so exacerbate the conditions that you're trying to treat. You see people online, you see people on YouTube or on Reddit who are just gone. Oh, with burn marks and shit too. Like they get like burned. just DIYing this stuff, I would strongly advise against that. The brain is really, really, really sensitive. You don't want to fuck with it.

without some real bona fide creds behind the device and instructions so i would encourage people to as a general rule steer clear of anything that is being sold direct to consumer i'm sure there are some exceptions but I would say for the most part, this is not across the board. For the most part, you're dealing with fly-by-night operations. And you should not trust the integrity of your brain to these devices.

I'm sure there are exceptions, but just as a general rule, I would say that separately. I would say that, for instance, the therapy that I just paid for is very expensive because insurance doesn't currently cover accelerated TMS, or at least I'm not aware of insurance that will cover accelerated TMS. But I was texting with a friend of mine who is seeing very good results for...

her PTSD, and it gets sort of comorbid with depression and other things, so it's hard to untangle all that. But she is doing TMS conventionally, which is less frequent, and her insurance is covering it. So I would say I'm optimistic that there is a future where insurance, at least some insurance carriers, will cover accelerated TMS, particularly when the, hopefully, cost benefit is really made.

incredibly clear through patient results because some of the stuff you see is incredible, right? Like 70% plus remission of treatment-resistant depression. after a week of treatment. These are the types of results that rival or exceed some of the psychedelic-assisted therapies. And when we're talking about these intractable or very difficult to treat psychiatric conditions, these outcomes are really, really notable. The data sets are super small.

for a lot of the applications of accelerated TMS, but I'm supporting that through the foundation scientifically because I do feel like a lot of the issues we're facing, we're facing because of effectively modern civilization. And I don't foresee it getting any easier. So I do think it's important to try to support these technologies and interventions.

so that hopefully they can reach some level of scale. And I'm skeptical that taking people for a six-hour ride on a mind-bending psychedelic that takes them to the 17th dimension... is scalable. I'm not even convinced that it's a good idea to do that with incredibly large numbers of patients.

So that's yet another layer of why I'm really supporting some of these other technologies. It's super exciting. I think we're about to enter into a golden age of life sciences and see a whole slew of different compounds and therapeutics that are just going to change

the way that we live over the next five years. I didn't tell you this, but I did my whole genome sequencing. So not the 23andMe, but did the whole thing. You spend, you know, I think it's about $700 now to get your full genome done. It's incredible how cheap it's become, huh? Isn't that nuts? It's crazy. Yeah, compared to back in the day. Yeah, back in the day was insane, right? It was like $20,000 or more or something just a few years ago. Oh, I'm crazy.

That was even if it was available, if you could find it. Yeah, right? Because it was really hard to even get someone to do it. But anyway, long story short, I have had the most stubborn homocysteine, which is a biomarker that it's not known to be causal, but it is oftentimes correlated with many different types of cancers. Mainly heart disease.

And I have not, even with multiple physicians helping me out, I've never been able to get it back to healthy levels. So I took my whole genome, dumped it into AI, and we worked out a playbook together. on where we could find methyl donors and which methylated B vitamins I could give to help fix the broken cycle because I have the MTHFR genetic mutation.

It's a very fancy way of saying one biomarker completely jacked up. My dad died of heart disease. I don't want to have heart disease. How can we fix this shit? Right. So we work through a way for me to supplement and start adding on supplements. I'm eight weeks in, and for the first time, my homocysteine is at normal level.

after many years of trying to figure this out. And I was working through this process in tandem with my AI, which was crazy. And it ended up being NAC was the thing that we had to add to the mix. as a menthol donor to get it to work and hack around my MTHFR mutation. Do you think any of that change in homocysteine could be a response to the cessation of drinking in the last, whatever it is, 27 days?

I've done drinking bouts of not drinking before and tested. It's still completely elevated. So it had nothing to do with drinking. I thought the same thing. But yeah, this is because. The only thing I changed that I've added on now is we slowly started adding on B-methylated B vitamins, but there was the NAC.

That was the methyl donor that got me over the hurdle here and dropped it down dramatically. So I'm way in the healthy zone now, which is nuts. My physician is like, what the hell did you do? And I'm like,

Talking to AI. But I'm just saying this is one of many things. We'll have an announcement next time we do a podcast together where I just put $15 million in to a protein, this novel protein coming out of UCSF. that is doing wonders around dementia and Alzheimer's. I did this via True Ventures where I'm a partner over there. So I joined the board of this company and we've got some really interesting data coming out of that.

It's just a very fun time to be alive at the intersection of AI and life sciences. Yeah, it is. And just for reference, so Craig Venter, back in the day, I always fuck up that name because I want to throw an extra N in there, but... He of Venter, Craig Venter. So his personal genome sequencing, that was in 2007. And people can do more homework on this, but that cost $10 million, estimated to have cost $10 million. Wow.

and you just look at where we are now and you can imagine moving forward and actually this ties into my visit to the UAE and to Abu Dhabi specifically because what they can do and what they are doing with AI absolutely blew my mind. I mean, they have Number one, I think it's 70% of government services are administered through an app on smartphones.

and there are AI assistants that people interact with. So for instance, if you're driving, you want to report a pothole, you just take a photograph of it, it geotags it, deals with it, gets it to the right agency, and then off you go. and I suppose looking kind of down the pike also with genomics, I think they're going to be a global leader in genomics because of just how much data they have, not only from a full genome perspective, but from a behavioral perspective and centralized.

electronic medical record perspective. Actually very, very interested to see what they do specifically with life sciences and AI because this intersection is going to be so fertile. I mean, it's just Unreal. If you look at AlphaFold and what AlphaFold has done. Yes. The new AlphaFold's amazing. I mean, we're looking at eclipsing decades of human work in incredibly short periods of time.

Have you done your full genome yet, Tim? I did my full genome a million years ago with a startup that effectively went out of business, so I should probably do it again just to boot that back up.

I did delete all my data on 23andMe because I was panicked that they would get bought by someone. Which they did, just got announced. Yeah, so I was able to delete mine just in the nick of time, but... I saw a demo, this was years ago, of a company taking genome data and with a sufficiently large data set, creating a basically like a suspect sketch of the person's face based on their genome data like if they have photographs from multiple angles of these people

This is what one of these companies was doing. And they have the full genome sequenced. And who knows, maybe this is science fiction. They're peddling something in the future. But I guess what I'm saying is, I don't think... You can anonymize

your genetic data in the way that we would hope to be able to anonymize it. Do you care, though? Do I care? Are they really going to clone me? Are they going to clone you? I mean, they might make your Peloton seat fit better, like if they have the full picture, but outside of that... You know, like, what are they going to do with it? Well, I mean, I run more on the hypervigilant side than you do, right? Yeah, I know you do. I would say for me, it's not a question of,

Why do you care? It's a question of what are the reasons to not have a tighter hold on it? And if there are secure ways to share it, I'm all for it. For instance, I mean, the 23andMe thing, I'm not the only person who deleted their data, for sure, right? And I suppose my feeling is we don't know what we don't know. I don't know how this data might be used. I really have not. So I would prefer to have as much control of it as possible. And also way back in 2010,

when I was writing The 4-Hour Body. I guess it came out in 2010, so I was writing it prior to that. And I'm not sure if this conversation happened shortly thereafter, but it was with a very credible scientist. who was at NASA at the time working on all sorts of advanced

physics and chemistry and so on. And he was commenting on the fact that it was very foolish for a very well-known billionaire at the time to release their full genome data and he said because if you wanted to develop a customized biological weapon to say walk up to that person in a crowd and like blow powder into their face at ted or wherever he's like you could do that very very easily he's like it's actually not hard to design something like that

So I was like, wow. Okay, now you're freaking me out. That is shit. That's fucking shit. And I also don't have the technical chops to call bullshit on something like that, but it didn't seem, this guy didn't have a tinfoil hat, he had a real job, he was producing really good work, he was published, and... That conversation stuck with me. That was around 2010. Think about this. If I have the resources and the power to like build a custom gene killing tim ferris powder agent

I'm pretty sure I can hire someone just to walk up and shoot you. Like you have the resources. Like you really don't need to go that far to take somebody out with a custom.

Or, you know what, the phlebotomist that leaves your house, I can just like pay them for a little dip of your juice and like go get it tested, right? There are ways to do that. I mean, but I guess what I'm saying is within 12 months, I mean, we're going to have LLMs that are capable, I mean, hopefully they have the safeguards in place of enabling your average Joe or Jane to create biological weapons from household items, right?

I'm just saying I'd prefer not to tempt fate as a public figure by... Keeping the reins too loose on that staff. Do you remember that LifeLock guy? Remember that company LifeLock that he put his social security number on a thing and he's like, I'm totally secure. And then he got all hacked and everything. He got his identity stolen and all this shit. It was amazing.

yeah oops and I will also say that something happened to me a couple weeks ago that is like the flip side of the Cambrian explosion of discovery with the intersection of healthcare and AI. And I'm not sure how humans cope with this, but in a sort of post-fact world where what you don't touch and see with your own eyes in person... is going to be a huge question mark. And the reason I say that is a few weeks ago,

I started getting all of these DMs and texts and so on saying, hey, is this you? It was like, hey, is what me? And I clicked through and there was a video of me. saying sign up for x y or z and i'll tell you the three stocks that are underpriced right now that'll make you rich basically something like that And it was a video. Your side hustle. My side hustle, yeah. And the video, I will say, was like 90% indistinguishable from me.

The background, clothing, facial hair, everything was dialed. There were just a couple of max headroom movements for people who get the reference, like a couple of little glitches that raised questions. But in 12 months, that's not going to be there. and I'm not sure, for instance,

from a societal perspective, or let's just say from a personal perspective, like how will people know what is real Kevin versus fake Kevin? Do you have to train your whole audience to use private, understand private and public keys? Like what do you actually do?

Dude, this is top of mind for me right now in a way that you would never believe. Yes. I mean, I'm working on this exact problem. So Alexis, the co-founder of Reddit, and I, you know, we mentioned this, we bought DigBack, and we're going to build a social platform for people to converse about a variety of different topics. And top of mind is that...

In an agentic world where AI agents can be spun up for pennies because the cost is going to zero. And they can have conversations with you. They can convince you of things. They can do all these different, both good and bad things. How are you going to know what's real? Just as a test, what I did recently is I took a model. I picked a pair of $6 headphones on Amazon. And I got all the details about the Amazon. And I said, sell this to me.

is if they will out-compete and out-perform a $500 pair of headphones. And it wrote this really detailed report about the craftsmanship and how they were able to get this in for only $5. And it was super compelling and convincing. And I was like, It's game over. Anything we read online can no longer be trusted, right? And so there is a handful of people right now working on this exact problem.

And we're trying to figure out how we can know both guarantee that there's a human on the other end of the keyboard, number one. And number two, when you go out and you talk about something with authority,

How can we have improved that you actually have wisdom or authority that passes through to what you're talking about? So, for example... I don't want to get too geeky, but for example, and to your point about this needs to be something average consumers can understand versus private and public keys and everything else. But I've owned an aura ring for, let's call it five years now.

Now, I could go on any forum online and say, hey, I love my O-Ring. I've owned it for five years. Now, that could be an LLM that's providing you complete bullshit, or it can be actually someone that's owned an O-Ring for five years.

There are technologies out there. They're really geeky. They're called ZK proofs that can go out and they can work with Service providers and say we can guarantee with an algorithm and create a proof that this person is doing and saying what they're claiming to say, which is that I've actually had a paying subscription for the last five years, right? And we're going to need to have these proofs like,

kind of a cheap way of thinking this is like sometimes you see these like Trustpilot scores or whatever or the Better Business Bureau scores or there's going to need to be that around everything that we talk about online. So including a Tim Ferriss verifiable checkbox that when I click on it it will say this was produced created published and proven that it came directly from Tim Ferriss' lips and not some AI-generated world that has to exist. Otherwise, everything is lost online.

Yeah. Well, keep up the hard work. Folks working on that problem. I literally spent a half day over at World, which is Sam Altman's other startup around proving humanness.

And the way they do it is they actually scan your eyeball. And I had my eyeball scanned, and now I have an ID, a world ID, that is proof that I am that human. They don't own that. They don't have a copy of that. It lives on my device. And it's sharded and kept separate so it only can be reconstructed by me. But we're entering into this really weird time where... There's a trade-off between privacy and proving that it's me and it's going to be messy for a few years.

For a few years, yeah. It's going to be messy for a few hundred years. Sounds like Minority Report. The eye scans. Yeah. I've got a buddy right now that is a hardcore technologist that looks at these things and studies these things and he claims right now he believes that 30% of the Internet's traffic, whether it be people writing back to you on Twitter or any of these social networks. He thinks it's all bots at this point. And he has proof of some of them that will friend you up.

create long-term relationships with you only to convince you of that one thing that they were trying to do and they spent six months building up rapport with you and it's all BS, dude. It's all for pennies.

It's crazy. Have you seen a great movie, Ex Machina? Oh, of course. Fantastic movie. So good. So scary. We gotta go revisit that. We also need to watch her again. You know, I haven't watched her. That'd be another one to watch again. I mean, watching her, I remember watching that and feeling like it was further off than it actually is right now. I'm just realizing it's basically here. It's basically right now.

Did you see that lawsuit that basically there was a bunch of guys that got together and did this lawsuit against OnlyFans saying that they were... They sued the platform because they found out that they were just talking to bots and not the actual models themselves. Did you see this? No. So they're suing these creators. How much are you going to make from that, Kevin? $27?

But yeah, exactly. Here's the best part. The number one upvoted comment on that was like, you were talking to models. You were just talking to large language models. So true. Oh, man. Yeah.

Well, here goes nothing, right? This is like the click, click, click going up on the roller coaster. And it's like, here we go. And it's, yeah, I came back from my travels realizing like, wow, I really... think it will behoove me to just take a few weeks to a month and do a very deep dive on what I can do with these models because a lot of what I saw traveling and just

how prescient and invested and advanced certain places are like Abu Dhabi as an example I was like holy shit from a geopolitical perspective this is going to be the haves and the have nots right and

It's like, okay, I guess I'll keep brushing up on my artery skulls. That's why I need the elbow surgery sooner rather than later. Yeah. Well... real quick before we wrap dude let's touch on the meditation thing because that is like in the I need more of which is getting off the computer and actually disconnecting you want to talk about your experience let's talk about it let me give a quick update before we do that like a quick like

commercial break which is this guy so you remember this guy coyote of the game we talked about It hadn't launched last time we were talking, or maybe it had just launched now. So this game, Coyote, which is kind of like rock, paper, scissors on steroids in a group dynamic where you can help or sabotage other players. The game. has become one of the top selling games at Walmart where it is exclusively for a couple of months. It's been one of the absolute top sellers.

has produced two or three of the videos of gameplay, have become the most popular videos of all time from Exploding Kittens, which is the company I partnered with. I mean, tens of millions of views of gameplay. So it's all to say like it's going super, super well. And there's a lot more that I'm going to explore with this over the next couple of months. But so far,

including people with younger kids. They've modified the rules a little bit, but you can, I have friends who played, I mean, Hutchins, our friend, Chris Hutchins played with his like four or five-year-old, I want to say. He sent me a testimonial video from her, not for public use, but she is a big fan. So you can play with younger kids. I would just say I couldn't be happier with how it's turned out. So many thanks to Alon Lee and the whole Exploding Kittens team for

going on this two-year journey of working on this thing together. So if people want to check that out, tim.blog slash coyote, and you can find the game at pretty much any Walmart or order it online. Easy to find. That's awesome, dude. And thanks for giving it out to everyone that came out to the LiveDignation at South by. That was awesome for you to do. Yeah, those are the first people to ever get their hands on one. My pleasure. Okay, this is then.

Getting offline? Yeah. You want to kick us off? Tell us what it looked like, what was the format? If you do a classic Zen retreat, at least in this lineage of Zen called Sambo Zen, which is the lineage that Henry Schuchman teaches, you're in for it you're in for a little bit of an ass kicking and that you

get up at the crack of dawn, and you sit, and then you sit some more, and you do a tiny little walk, and then you sit some more, and then you have some mush in a bowl, and then you sit some more. And you do that until about 8 p.m. at night, and you do it all over again, completely silent. for five to seven days. I've done a couple of these five and seven day errors. They're no joke.

They're meant to be kind of slightly demoralizing slash brutal. They're designed, they're truly designed to break you down in a good way. Break down the ego, break down... your willingness to lay up like it's they're pretty hardcore so But you're working on Zen koans. You're trying to crack a koan. Tim has a great interview with Henry Shookman on his podcast to check out all about koans. But anyway, long story short, this was not that. We said, hey, if we get together a small group of people...

We can talk at night, have some dinners, really intimate, call it like seven, eight people. balls. small and get Henry and Valerie, which are both Zen masters to come in and kind of instruct us during the day. No early call times. I think we got there around nine ish. That's perfect. Which is perfect. You know, I got that morning coffee and ahead of time. And

Had, you know, a great lunch and then afternoon sit and then we all went to a dinner at night. So did that for what was three days and it was fantastic. I loved it. I'd love to hear what you got out of it. I got a lot out of it, and I think one upfront benefit was it was like a very warm bath re-entry to meditation retreat. You had a tough go at your first one, right?

For people who want to deep dive into what happened in my first extended Vipassana, Silent retreat, which I made a lot harder by fasting for a very extended period of time, and then also adding microdosing, neither of which I recommend if it's your maiden voyage. They can listen to my interview with Willoughby B. Britton, B-R-I-T-T-O-N, on some of the occasional adverse events with

meditation, which are very, very similar to those of psychedelics, actually. So if you want to check that out, you can check that out. I also did a conversation with Dan Harris of 10% Happier where we got into this in some length, but putting that aside because the... End result was basically complete nervous breakdown.

Getting back on the horse and doing it in this way was very much a form of recovery for me. Getting back to a point where I feel like there are forms of meditation I can engage with specifically extended meditation that don't necessarily run the risk of the types of issues that I ran into in my first salad retreat, which, by the way, I've spent, let's just say, a week in various jungles or mountains fasting before by myself.

and the same types of issues crop up. Your mind really gets going. I think the fasting actually is the main culprit with increasing the intensity as much as it did, not the microdosing, but I'm sure they acted together. This particular format, And I think the type of meditation with a mixture of silence and intermittent guidance from Henry was not only just a less strained risky way to go about it.

I actually felt like it was very, very productive. And I know Henry and Valerie both commented on how it seemed that people made a lot of progress in a very short period of time in this smaller group. It could have been a function of the smaller group because if you have 40 people, there's always going to be somebody like coughing or farting or fidgeting or whatever in a smaller group. Everyone's on best behavior.

and we were also in a small group that was taking it very seriously. But much like with anything else, Density of practice matters. And when you are sitting once a day, like I meditated earlier this morning, using the Way app, which we're both involved with, that involves Henry.

I sat this morning, I'll sit again later today. But when you're doing a few hours a day, you're able to say to yourself, okay, in the next sit, I want to focus on this particular aspect. And then... if you have a very uncomfortable meditation session or you're just thinking about popcorn and cats the whole time or something stupid and you're like, ah, fuck, I kind of failed that meditation. You have another at-bat

Five minutes later, right? And psychologically, you can develop a certain level of not just confidence, but also momentum that you can take back. into your daily less intense practice. So I found it really, really beneficial so thank you for putting so much time and energy into helping organize that and you know the group makes the difference this was just an outstanding group very different perspectives

Some people had never really meditated before, certainly never done meditation retreats. For others like me, sort of intrepid people, dipping their toe back in. And I found it incredibly rewarding and I would do it again, for sure. That's awesome. Yeah. I had never done something with Henry that involved actually talking during the meditation because it was always like,

You get to sit with him in private interview once a day when you're doing a silent retreat. So you go back into a room and then you get five minutes to talk about were there any hurdles or obstacles that came up and how might we address these. That's typically how you do it on Zen style. So to address those at length in real time was awesome. So yeah, I mean...

Highly recommend trying to pick up a practice. It is challenging for monkey minds like myself. And after a few years, I'm just now starting to... to find my way. I mean, ever since then, Tim, I've been doing close to pretty much 50 minutes a day since we got back, which is fantastic. It's still a challenge. There'll be days where your mind just goes off the rails and you say, hey, that was today, so it goes. You can't beat yourself up, I think, at the end of the day.

Yeah, I was busy with really good seafood. Didn't do as much meditating as I would like. Yeah, really good seafood. But I will give a shameless plug because The reason I got involved with The Way with Henry, this app that he has, is because most people are not going to have access to Henry directly in person. That's just not going to be feasible. I mean, look, I can call Henry. I can text Henry.

99% of the time, I just use the app, which should tell you something. So if you go to thewayapp.com slash Tim, you can get 30 free sessions. And I'm pretty sure you don't need to, at least in the beginning, you didn't need to use your credit card. So you're not in this.

It's not exactly a bait and switch, but this like boiling frog scenario is my understanding. Last time I checked, still didn't require a credit card. So 30 free sessions, you can try it out, thewayapp.com slash Tim, and I will literally be doing that in another like two hours. I'll be doing another session.

KevKev, anything else you'd like to add? No, I think that was great. People should know we did not plan to have that be a sponsor or anything like that for the way. I know you have to say all that stuff, but also it's just a fucking awesome app. So that's the nice thing about being able to pick your sponsors and pick people that you work with.

I love that about podcasting. We started that Dignation podcast again with me and Alex, and I do that every three weeks now, and we have all these sponsors coming. And it is so nice to be able to be, say no, you know, you're like, no, I don't want to do that because I don't believe it. So it's like awesome.

but you're in that spot but I will leave you with one last bit are we wrapping up because I have one last let's do it quote of the day so my quote for you all would be one that a friend of mine that gave up alcohol said to me and I don't believe this originated with him but I thought it was a great one which is I had my first drink for the same reason that I had my last, and that is to be a grown-up. It's a good one. It's a good one.

That's a good one. Well, keep it up, KevKev. I'm impressed. I say that very sincerely. That's a very long stretch. And it sounds like you've cleared a couple of hurdles. You have the phone a friend option. And I'm rooting for you, man. I'm definitely rooting for you. And having this conversation also reinforces that. I think I'll just continue. with my current cadence, which is like, okay, maybe once or twice a month, special occasion only.

And outside of that, just really don't feel the need to do it. And also with everything else I've got going on, I recognize that... I'll give you another quote from Booth, and this was actually something that... A dear friend said to me at one point, he likes to drink. He said, drinking is borrowing happiness from tomorrow. If you're coping at night in some respect with alcohol,

It's not a free lunch. You're going to pay for it tomorrow. And that's also true with recreational ketamine use. Don't think that's a get out of jail free card, so don't fuck around with that. Kevin and I have talked about that ad nauseum before, so we can leave that alone. For me, very inspiring to hear you talk about this stretch and everything that has improved. So I'm going to keep going. I got to say, the main thing for me, man, that was unexpected, without a doubt, is the mood boost.

Like, in the last week, I've noticed that I'm just... I never considered myself depressed or anything like that. I was a happy person, like, pretty good. But, like, I... don't take things as personally, which is weird. For some reason, I'm just getting a little 10% lift in mood, which I'm loving. I'll take it all day long. It's great. Last quote, last quote. I got one more good one too. I love good quotes.

Discipline is the strongest form of self-love. It's ignoring what you want right now for a promise of a better future. That's along the same lines as your quote there. Yeah, I dig it. Was that from your last fortune cookie or do you have a source for it? I don't know where I found that one. Also, this one's good too. Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's the ability to take action despite it.

Yeah, I've got some difficult conversations coming up this week. So that's a good one. Good one to end on. Yeah. Talk for another time. Yeah, I know where this is going. All right, brother. Good seeing you as always. yeah yeah same to you brother also great to see you and actually no it's not what you think it is it's something else but we'll catch up we'll catch up offline and Not the premature ejaculation stuff. Okay. I need to have my level of trazodone. Yeah, no, it's not that.

And that's an amazing place to end an episode. And for people who want links to everything we've discussed, we'll link to the Accelerate TMS, to Nolan Williams, to the books, to 32 Sounds, to all the stuff that Kevin mentioned, the profi. Spray for your nasal gel needs. My favorite Espresso machine. Yeah, we'll link to Kevin's favorite Espresso machine.

You'll be able to find that all at tim.blog slash podcast. And until next time, be a little kinder than is necessary, not only to others, but to yourself. Thanks for doing it. 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.

super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a that i send out every friday to share the coolest things i've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week it's kind of like my diary of cool things it often includes articles i'm reading books i'm albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

these strange esoteric things end up in my field. 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 for the weekend something to think about if you'd like to try it out just go to tim.blog slash friday type that into your browser tim.blog slash friday drop in your email and you'll get the very next Thanks for listening.

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hundreds of thousands millions of dollars to do in the past taken forever and now it's boom snap of the fingers it's crazy so ai is changing everything we know that it is also changing the way startups and small businesses operate things are going to get crazier the rate of change the

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