0:00Kev Kev Tim, good to see you, man.
0:02Dude, glad we're doing this.
0:03Yeah. So fun to hang.
0:06Back in LA for a little bit. And it is a nice corner of the world.
0:13You know, until the failed state implodes, it's going to be lovely.
0:16Yeah, it's uh we'll enjoy it while we can.
0:20Yeah. So, you have lots that we can talk about.
0:25I've got some things jotted down. Where should we start? Let's start with probably the most talked about thing these days, which is AI.
0:35And I, you know, I know people are tired of hearing about all this AI stuff, but I think there's been an inflection point in the last, I'd call it three weeks that I am just really blown away by.
0:47Like AI has turned into something that I I I kind of saw it coming, but I didn't think it would come this rapidly, which is it is replacing. So when I first thought of AI, I thought, okay, we have this chatbot. We can launch it. We can ask like questions like of whatever, you know, I got to repair this light switch. How do I do it? Like that's typical AI use case over the last, call it, you know, two years.
1:09In the last call it month, there has been a release of a handful of AI assistants that are not your typical like Chad GBT cla. They're different.
1:21So have you played with Instinct at all?
1:23I haven't, but I know people are. Yeah. So you should you should provide some context for folks who don't let's start off. So let me first put the these are the people in the ring that are entering this new kind of era of personal assistant AI which is I would say Instinct Muse which is a a meta product and then you have Grockbot which is essentially Gro which is Elon's project.
1:45So when instinct dropped someone sent me a text invite was like hey you just got to sign up for this. I'm like, "Ah man, I don't want another AI thing." Like, you know, I I already do this all day long. I'm using for coding, all that stuff. Like, whatever. So, the first thing that you notice is it's not another app to download.
2:01It actually is iMessage. So, they have reverse engineered and they actually give you just a phone number to chat with.
2:08It's closer to WeChat in China. Yeah.
2:11Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, I have this phone number. I texted it was like, "Hey, off your Google account." content like I know this is your nightmare from a privacy standpoint but it's like you know give us your Gmail give us your Google Drive here's a link you just click here yeah exactly it's like Russian site or something but I I click through I authorit I'm like whatever there's some hype I hear it happening people are doing this like I don't have any like nudes but you probably do like I don't know I don't know how much you keep all that stuff online probably don't was this
2:40your nudes do you keep it in Google Drive I just post those to my Tumblr account, your private Tumblr.
2:48All in all seriousness though, do you lock down like do you have a separate offline storage for like sensitive [ __ ] Probably should.
2:55Yeah, you should. We should talk about this off camera. Okay.
2:57Like there's just certain things that like in my mind I'm always like, "Okay, what's the blast radius of if something gets hacked?
3:05What is Kevin gives me to worry about?"
3:08Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. All right.
3:09So, okay. So, you author everything and the first thing I notice is that this bot texts me back and it's like, "Hey, you missed this docu sign from a couple days ago."
3:18And I was like, "Oh [ __ ] well, that was like kind of helpful, you know?" So, I went in there and like did it and then it's proactively just watching everything and it learns by my responses everything I've done prior and it really understands what I care about and what I should pay attention to.
3:35And who manufactures instinct? It's just a startup. It's a self-named sting startup.
3:40Yeah, it's a it's a startup. It went from like zero to 10 billion in valuation in like four months. It's crazy.
3:47Sounds sounds like a sign of the times.
3:49Now, why would you trust a smaller company from a privacy and access perspective versus like Muse from Meta or something?
3:57I trust Muse certainly more because it's just going to be battle tested.
4:01Listen, I I I scrutiny. I mean, not that they're always the best actors, but at the same time, right?
4:08Well, they also more maybe more checks and balances.
4:11Yeah. And they came out and they they actually did a whole briefing on their security model around their private instance of they a metad with Muse. Yeah. So, Muse is a very similar product. It actually has an app. I think they're adding a phone number and whatnot.
4:24And so, it is just it's wild. It's wild in that this is something where I never thought it would connect the dots in the way that it does. is like I'll give you an example. I was doing an international flight and I was like, "Okay, I want to have like a prescription for gabapentin so I can get some sleep on the flight, right? Be careful with that." I knew you have to be careful with it. Like whatever. So I had a prescription coming in. It got called in and to get filled and instinct was like, "Hey, just so you
4:53know, your prescription's ready. You should go pick it up. Leave by this time because your flight's on time and if you want to grab it, go over here now. Grab it then and then head to your airport."
5:02Can I tell you something crazy? Yeah.
5:03just in terms of synchronicity. So 3 months ago, I drafted a preface to the new book, this book on no that I'm writing because there are many examples in the book around assistance and some of the very early reader feedback because I tested it with 100 plus people was some of these seem like 1enter problems. Mhm.
5:24And so I wrote a preface which was a letter from it was called a letter from the future and it basically talked about how what's called 78 I was using a gen one Dexcom which was like sticking barbecue tines under your I was with you. You got me on to remember that. The the plunger it was a plunger for people who don't know this is a continuous glucose monitor and now you push a button it's like woo tingly and you get it in you. You used to have to stick a plunger into your body.
5:49You basically Yeah. you basically had to stick two very long prongs under your abdominal skin.
5:55Now it's like a little peck on the cheek. It's so much better. But at the time I was like, "Nobody's going to use this." And I was like, "Well, I don't agree with that because the tech's going to improve very quickly, right?" And particularly once it went from this weird beeper device to smartphone, it was it was pretty clear that the adoption was going to be rapid and then get outside of type 1 diabetics, certainly type two, but then get to kind of health healthy normies and worried well.
6:20And on the assistance side, I was also pointing out like back in the day, yes, it was a 1% problem just like inbox overwhelm and everybody has six inboxes now. But in the case of assistants, it's like sure. It went from like full-time in person to virtual assistant to digitally enhanced virtual assistant. And I was like, by the time you read this, we will have AI assistants.
6:45That can do 99% of what I'm describing. And it's already happened. So, I've had it change flights for me.
6:51I've told it there's a restaurant that's a hard reservation to get into. This is all instinct.
6:55Yeah. I've told it, hey, there's a hard reservation to get into. and it's like hey I can't log in with your open table but it drops at this time every two weeks it give me a link and it's a secure like vault and I gave it my table login and then it nailed it's snag the reservation for me perfectly and like add to my calendar and then the cool thing is if you have multiple friends with instinct you can friend your instincts together so I said to a couple of my friends there was one person I wanted to take to dinner and our instincts became friends and so I said
7:24share the calendar invite and all the details and the instincts talk to each other and figure out the schedule, pick up it's magic.
7:32This is how Skynet autopop populates for all the Illuminati. By the way, they don't exist people. But they put them all in the same calendar invite to get them into one spot so the drone swarm can strike them at once. Yeah, it's going to be awesome.
7:45Uh I'm definitely going to use this.
7:47Everyone is going to be using this, right? I mean, Chatbt just announced Dots. That's their version of it now. So that's come out. How do you think about your history, memory, context, right? If you've predominantly used something, let's just say this may or may not be true, but if you've predominantly used chat GPT, would you be inclined to use dots or would you be inclined to use something else? I don't know if they've made it harder or impossible to export your You can export memories and some of that, but they are I mean, this is the
8:17wedge that they're looking for. They want to have something that is uniquely theirs. That isn't just like what's happening right now with the AI enthusiasts is that if there's a new model that comes out, there's no there's zero loyalty, right? It's like, "Oh, Cloud's better. I'll go use Cloud." Oh, CHTP is better. And like people are jumping all over the place.
8:33This is a finally becoming this durable storage of your life and your story and your history and all the things that you're into. And that is going to be, I think, something where they're going to kind of lock that down. the agentic AIS like once you authorize all that [ __ ] You don't want to do that every time a new model drops somewhere else.
8:50So, question for you. I saw a little news around this. Somebody a friend of mine who's keen on startups and investing texted me about decisions contrast in styles and business models between Amazon and Shopify. And this may have developed very I'm sure it has developed very rapidly. But I think that Amazon blocked Meta's agent.
9:20Right. In part because Amazon's business model, I think it's I don't want to hazard a number. It was texted to me, but they have sponsored placement, they have advertising. I mean, there are a lot of drivers that get circumvented, revenue drivers that get circumvented by Agentic Commerce, right? So, they blocked it. And then like 24 hours later, Shopify is like we are open for business agents welcome.
9:45How do you think that plays out? So this is actually a you're hitting on a very fascinating trend which is this idea where applications destination websites all those things go away. So in a world where you say, "Hey, you know, I just need some new towels for my house, right? Rather than going on Amazon and searching for new towels or whatever it may be or Shopify or whatever independent shop, you just ask Chad GBT." Now, what Amazon is worried about
10:14is if they are top of funnel, if Chat GBT is the entry point, they can just be swapped out. Yeah. Right. So it's like, "Oh, you know what? Walmart has the same thing for $10 less." And they just push that right into the feed. Mhm.
10:26And so for them, they're like, "Oh [ __ ] this was our moat cuz we were the destination. Everyone comes to amazon.com, they shop there, and now the AI is deciding and buying on their behalf." So brilliant by Shopify. But this is happening everywhere. So I'll give you an example. I just shot a podcast with uh Henry Shookman, our Zen Master friend, and I was like, you know, I don't want to send this over to an editor. I'm just going to like do it myself. Yeah.
10:50And so Blackmagic, who's a maker of cameras and editing software, they have they have great stuff. They have an editing package called Da Vinci Resolve and it's like Premiere, Final Cut, any of these editing software suites that are out there. Well, what they did is they launched an M MCP server which essentially means that with one click you can tie it to your AI. So, I drop in three camera shots, two pieces of audio, and I said, "Go make the podcast." And I just said that I told that to chat GBT.
11:19It connected directly. I'm watching on the screen. and it's rearranging everything, editing it, doing all that stuff. Same thing happens with Photoshop now. Same thing happens with CAD software. You don't need the software anymore. You just tell the AI. And essentially, this could be headless.
11:34Like, I would never needed to see Photoshop ever again. I'm like, "Hey, just go build me this book or whatever I want to do or remove this stain or whatever it is, and it's just done.
11:43It's wild because you don't need these destination sites like an Amazon anymore. You just talk to your client."
11:49So, in some sense, all these apps are up for grabs. It's whoever's going to play nicely with that point of entry, and that was always Google, right?
11:57But the thing about Google, it was always pushing you to the final destination.
12:01They weren't doing the the e-commerce themselves. And so, now it's like going to be all in the one suite. So, you'll never need to leave Claude or Chap GPT or whatever. It just does it for you.
12:12What do you think Amazon does? Because Amazon I mean does have huge advantages in terms of economies of scale, pricing, distribution like physical distribution of product, speed of delivery, etc. Right. They still crush as last I checked. I mean in most cases they crush everybody else.
12:30But they don't want to take whatever the hit is for all of these sponsored placements and everything else.
12:37They're going to have to. So do you think they launch their own agent if they already have their own AI? Are they able to compete? I don't think so because you have on device. So Apple, Apple intelligence, those models will get better. Don't don't count Apple out. Give them three years, right? And probably not even that. A year and a half.
12:56That will be that domain. You have Gemini on Android, which is going to power all of Android. And then you have Chat GBT and Anthropic and probably a couple others that will probably just be like, "Oh, I don't prefer Coke to Pepsi." Like you want your own AI. It's better at certain things. And that will be the entry point for all of the internet, all of applications, all of everything. Sponsor ad revenue on Amazon goes away largely because it's going to be sales. Most commerce will start to funnel. Like we saw this back in the 2000s. So in the 2000s it was like okay
13:26online versus offline commerce, right?
13:28It was like of course everyone goes to Sears to buy buy their tools, right? And then all of a sudden oh guess what? 10% of tools are being sold on you know on Amazon now or online now. and all of a sudden, you know, a decade goes by and you're seeing the vast majority of stuff that is just being purchased online, right? Versus that's why Sears and J C Penney and all these big retailers just go out of business, right? So, I think what's going to happen is we're going to see that transition happen once again, but it's going to be through the front ends of AI interfaces. So, you'll just be talking to your AI like, "Hey, you know, I just need a refill of this.
13:58Like, can you have it here?" "Yeah, we got you covered with Walmart. They give it to you in two hours." Or, "Do you want to go with Amazon? It's $2 cheaper, but it'll be here tomorrow." You know, it'll be those types of real life conversations that you'll just be having with your AI agent. It's a wild transition time.
14:12Yeah, I've been watching this, but I've actually been waiting to have this conversation. I mean, we'll continue obviously chatting offline to figure out like where to start, right? If I Well, maybe you can just tell everybody. So, it's like if if people are using, let's just say they're using if they're already using Claude and Claude doesn't have theirs out yet, though.
14:33All right. And they're like, "Well, look, if there's an advantage to using meta, what is it called again?
14:38Muse. If there's an advantage to using Muse, let me know. Maybe. If there's an advantage to using Instinct, let me know. Maybe." How would you experiment?
14:48How would you suggest somebody who is non-technical experiment with these things?
14:51Well, if you have the chat GPT app on your phone and you're paying for it, it's going to be there right now, I believe, for everyone. Instinct still invite only, so they're slowly rolling that out. So you'd have to know somebody and you can poke around online on Twitter or whatever and you'll find somebody.
15:06And then Muse has been number one in the app store for like the last couple of weeks. So that one's pretty easy to get and you can just sign up for it. So I would say probably Muse and Gro is still behind. Their models aren't the best.
15:16That one I would just like sit on for a bit. It's a little bit more technical, but yeah, you can just start right away and then just play with it because you you'll launch your little bot and then it gives you a phone number so you can actually call your bot. And so like listen to this. This is actually I'm calling my agent right now on the phone. This This is chatbt.
15:43Hey, good to hear from you.
15:45I wanted a sexy voice. I wanted a sexy voice. Sorry. Can you tell me about the podcast that I'm shooting today?
15:52Sure. Let me pull up what I've got on that. You're recording with Tim Ferrris today. It's 12:30 to 3:30.
16:04Probably bleed some of that out.
16:06Your social security number is Yeah, exactly. So, but I mean, I can just call this at any time. It doesn't cost against your AI credits. So, you can be in the car and just be like, "Hey, can you move this for me or you know, can you follow up with this email or whatever it may be?" And everything I need to mess with that it's time for me to actually It is time. Yeah.
16:23Yeah. Step into the arena.
16:25Amazing. All right. Call to action. I'm in. Should we talk about some other items? Yes. On our non-aggenda, I wanted to bring back an oldie but goody.
16:39I don't know if you've ever tried this.
16:42So, this is a bottle of tablets.
16:47And this is something that I've played with for at least a decade, probably more.
16:54Few tablets of rectus. This is this is interesting.
16:59It's called beta alanine. And the reason I started playing with this again, this is a a dietary supplement is I have I think you know been getting back into climbing.
17:11Rock climbing. And have been training really seriously for about two months. So not very long. But I have coaches or I h I had coaches when I was on the East Coast and in Austin, but now I'm still traveling, so that'll get figured out. But I wanted to see what I could do to improve endurance because I think like many people, when you get on the wall, you're going to use your arms too much.
17:35You're going to end up in these locked off positions, meaning your arms are bent and you're going to flame out your forearms or other parts of your upper body. So, yes, you need to learn how to use your feet, and I'm doing all of that, but I wanted to see if I could address some of the physical constraints. And I didn't want to use some of my normal standards like creatine because creatine leads to water retention and weight gain. And the last thing I need at 180
18:04lbs with these tiny little squirrel paws, with another limiter being finger strength, obviously, to add weight. I didn't want to add weight. it really adds an additional hurdle to progress.
18:17So beta alanine was something that I surfaced again and I wanted to see if it had ever been applied to climbing. And it turns out that there have been studies done specifically with elite climbers and there's not a lot but randomized and double blinded 15 elite climbers taking four grams a day for four weeks or placebo and somewhat like creatine depending on which protocol you use. They are large pills. This will be fun to watch.
18:49Why? Cuz I just Kevin just had two. What's wrong with I'll I'll explain this not be alien.
18:54No, it is. I'll I'll explain some of the some of the side effects in a moment.
19:01But let me give you the the data first. And I mean, look, you're I mean, I just thought it was what you said it was.
19:09When you're with Tim, rule number one is you should never just swallow a bunch of pills from a bottle that he puts on the table. But here's the upshot of it. So, with longer traverse, that means getting on a wall, moving sideways, right? There was in the intervention group with beta alanine after they had kind of saturated. It takes about two to three weeks to start seeing results if you're going to see results. But 57% longer before falling versus 19% improvement with placebo
19:37and an additional 21 seconds of improvement beyond placebo.
19:42That is a ton. Like it is highly highly statistically significant. And then looking at longer traverse and by longer this means like one to two minutes. So the duration's really important one to two minutes which on a say top roping when you have a rope attached doing like a 35 ft wall like maybe that's the duration right which I was doing. I wasn't doing huge walls like 70 or something like that for indoor but I was also
20:09doing top roping and also bouldering which is a different thing. So it doesn't really help super short bouldering that's without ropes but doing let's just say 5 to 10 moves to get to the top campus board like didn't didn't really help any of that stuff. I won't bother with defining that but say longer traverse moves completed right there's basically like a four move improvement in the placebo group just
20:38from training effect and then in the beta alanine group it was 10 moves and I have noticed a difference it took it took a while and you can't really separate out all of the elements that go into it because I am training I'm doing isometrics doing collagen plus vitamin C before training.
21:02So, collagen peptides from Momentous plus vitamin C, you don't need very much. 500 milligrams or 1,000 milligrams. Five I think it was as low as 50 in the research. Boosts collagen production in the fingers.
21:14What's one scoop from them, by the way, cuz I take the same stuff. What's What's a full scoop? Do you know?
21:18I don't recall what's on the label, but it's like a scoop of that.
21:22Plus some Yeah. Plus some vitamin C. And the type of collagen does matter. You kind of want hide if you can get it as opposed to bone just to avoid heavy metal and other contaminant issues. But the the point being I think this stuff has really helped to the extent that my coaches like it was almost by the clock like when I got to 2 and 1/2 weeks of taking this not before they were like whoa what happened there seemed to be like a phase shift where if I'm working on
21:52and it did for me seem to translate to bouldering which makes me wonder how much of it is the beta alanine but suffice to say I've been very impressed and this is something where I've done testing before and after to try to track some of the improvements. So, it is a heavy lift though because if I'm taking in my case not 4 g but 6.4 gram a day roughly, right? I'm taking eight of these pills a day, it's a lot. And uh I
22:22would suggest and this gets to the side effects. This is thorn betalanine SR that means sustained release to minimize and I might be getting the pronunciation wrong on this one side effect which is called paristhesia. It just means body tingling basically it feels like it feels like a nasin flush or like many parts of your body fell asleep like you had crossed your legs for too long and sat down. What do they attribute
22:50this to? Is this is this a cognitive thing? Is it ATP? is enhancement like what was underlying mechanism.
22:56I'm actually not sure of it's carnosine it's I believe it's carnosine saturation muscular saturation but I am getting over my skis so people can look it up but beta alanine has quite a bit of published literature on it. I was just very surprised that there was actually a a study that got funded for 15 elite climbers. Like who even pays for that? I have no idea. Probably some supple Yeah. some supplement manufacturer probably.
23:25So that is one on the supplements and since I brought it up in terms of I I had mentioned with the collagen and contaminants just a quick public service announcement if you're taking say psyllium husks right fiber very helpful for a lot of reasons you don't just need to be boomers like us with aging colons and rectums it's also very helpful for glycemic control like
23:54you can take it for meals and stuff like that. If you take any kind of fiber, you do want to add water. But the point is there are a lot of heavy metals and contaminants in most common brands of psyllium husks. So Yerba Prima Y RBA or Organic India are two that I have looked at testing results for and those are good. But one doctor joked to me, he's like, "Yeah, you could go to fill in the blank major pharmacy chain and grab something off the shelf, but it's going to be 2% fiber and 98%
24:24arsenic." It was a joke. It's not quite that bad, but the contamination actually is worth paying a lot of attention to, particularly if it's something like this that you'd be taking on a daily basis.
24:34Yeah. I read another study recently that just was like, shy, like just killed me. And that is, you know, those seaweed chips that you can get at like the grocery stores, like the little flat papers.
24:45So much microplastics in those cuz they're pulling all that seaweed out of the ocean and they're just like filled with microplastics.
24:52You can't win. You can't win.
24:54Okay, speaking of supplements, you hate creatine.
24:57No, I don't hate creatine. I love creatine. I just don't find it to be the most helpful for climbing specifically.
25:02So, uh, yeah, because it puts a few pounds of muscle on or whatever. Muscle water or whatever. It helps me lift more weight though.
25:10Yeah. So, creatine, we've talked about this, I'm sure, at least on I mean, we've done what, like a couple hundred random shows. I think we've talked about this at least 10 of them, which is creatine can be your friend and sometimes not so much.
25:21If you overdo creatine, it is a problem with the GI. It can be. Yeah. Also, if you're in airport Oh, god. Yeah. You don't don't do what Tim does or Well, I don't do it anymore because I I do learn. I'm slow. But yeah, if if you're like, "Let me have a double espresso, some creatine, and MCT oil on your way to the airport." Don't do that because disaster pass potential is high.
25:44I would say also because of some of the research, you know, Rhonda Patrick has highlighted on the cognitive benefits.
25:50Yeah. 10 grams a day.
25:51I was taking 10 grams a day, but I started getting really wicked muscle cramps in my hands, my feet, and then I I dialed it back to five.
26:01So, I'm at five right now.
26:03Yeah. I think that for my system at least and I think Rhonda's also observed this I might not be getting that right but I think she's she's talked about it publicly also experienced cramping at 10 10 grams plus per day so I've had all kinds my stomach is horrible with creatine like I have just historically you have you're a delicate flower with the stomach anyway sometimes yeah it depends on the thing but like sometimes I'm actually really good it's very confusing but anyway long story short I was doing some research and I don't know this brand at all so
26:32take this with a grain of salt, but the technology is legit. I looked up the study that the technology they're using to create a delayed release creatine. So, this is the only one on the market. So, if you look at these pills, they look wild. They have all these little tiny beads inside of them.
26:49And they looks like I think it was Dexatrim back in the day.
26:52Yeah, totally. Yeah. But I will tell you like this is the first one I've been able to take because of the delayed release and it does not mess up my stomach at all. It's amazing. Well, yeah, you're burying the lead here. Body Techch Elite Dean Beadllet.
27:06Oh, okay. Here's here's the I think critical piece with Nova Spheres trademark.
27:12Yeah. So, I did the research on what Novars are and they're legitimology.
27:17All right. Look at that.
27:18Yeah. So, I mean, if if it's just one of those things where like, listen, I I have also when I travel, I'll use I I kind of flip brands all over the place, but lately I like the stuff from Momentous because of the quality checks they do.
27:30And I have their little travel satchels that I take with me and just mix them with some stuff. As long as I slow drink it over like 3 hours, I'm fine, you know? But this is the first time I've been like, "Okay, on the go, I can just like chug five pills at once and no issues." So, anyway, that one's fun.
27:46Should we talk about sperm quality?
27:47Let's do it. Oh, that's where I wanted to go next. How did you know? God, we I got the request.
27:52Yeah, Kevin tried to anonymize it through through random YouTube live stream and I was like, please talk about sperm quality. I was like, all right, I know it's you, Kev. Kev, was this a question somebody wrote in?
28:07So, I have long been fascinated with nuts. Not in the testicle sense, although that's probably true. Also, just some of the benefits of consuming different types of nuts like Brazil nuts.
28:21I literally thought you were talking about a ball sack the entire time you were saying that.
28:25There is a double antandra here.
28:27So, I talked about for instance Brazil nuts and selenium way back in the day. And of course, you have to look at the funding sources and so on, but there's a brand of nut butters. I'm sure they do other things called Artisana. And I don't know why their their raw almond butter is just better than every other brand in terms of consistency.
28:50They somehow homogenize that might not be the right word, the oil so that you're not dealing with like the oil slick on the top and like getting it all over your countertops and stuff, but I ended up just for shits and giggles buying their walnut butter cuz I had never had walnut butter and it has some cashews in it. Mhm. And you know, I'd like to have a family, ideally a couple of kids. So, it's good as as as I age into my soon 50s, I'm like, you know, I should keep the twins
29:19as healthy as possible. And I tend to think that if you optimize for fertility, you get a lot of other things right as downstream effects.
29:28And the two ingredients are raw walnuts and raw cashews. I'm bringing this up because there are actually walnut specific studies. There was a 2012 randomized control trial in 117 healthy men aged 21 to 35. And they were randomized to either continue their normal diet or add 75 grams a day of walnuts. And it's not impossible. Like 75 grams just to turn that into something people might recognize. It's like 6 cups of chopped
29:57walnuts. Like two and a half handfuls. It's not that crazy. Yeah.
30:00And the improvements in sperm vitality, motility, and morphology all were statistically significant.
30:08We just want Are there other health?
30:10That's the question. That's the question. So, generally speaking, nuts seem to be supportive of fertility. So, in 2024, there was a meta analysis that showed that at least 60 grams per day, so that's less than the 75 we talked about. Let's call that two handfuls of nuts as an estimate. Improved sperm mo sperm motility, vitality, and morphology. Although it did not significantly improve sperm concentration. So, of course, be aware of the caloric
30:39density, right? If you're just housing nuts all day, you'll have 6,000 calories of nuts, it's going to have other side effects. But I thought this was super fascinating and it only came about because I ended up loving this walnut butter and I was like I have read or actually not read. I had been told that wal consuming walnuts could improve testosterone and free testosterone and I was like let me fact check that. And I did not get back confirmation on that but I got back
31:08these research results related to sperm quality. I was like fantastic. Okay. Yeah, with Brazil nuts in the selenium side of things, it was a reduction in prostate cancer, right? There was some study that I don't I don't recall. For me, the reason that I was looking at that with for our body and man, it's crazy to think about how [ __ ] hard factchecking and research was back then compared to now.
31:27Oh my god, it's like you kids have good now GPT and Claude and so on. It's so much easier. You need to know how to interrogate the system. But the reason I was looking at that and this is still relevant today that that looking at your micronutrient
31:48consumption and absorption matters right so if you have a copper deficiency or a selenium deficiency that can be reflected in all sorts of issues with say sex hormones right and I have friends there's one actually multiple friends who had testosterone issues is they ended up and I don't know who the latest and greatest I think it was Spectraell back in the day but I don't know who the latest and greatest would be for options for testing but they ended up just having
32:17like three Brazil nuts a day and they're like I feel like I'm on cocaine like their lived experience changed so dramatically and sure this isn't randomized controlled I don't know if that was placebo or not but I saw it enough times where I'm like look this seems to be low hanging fruit.
32:36Top soil is depleted everywhere. You can be sure as [ __ ] that most vegetable matter you're consuming is not as nutrient-dense as you would like probably.
32:46So, it's just something to keep an eye on.
32:47Yeah. And so, people should also know that Brazil nuts, like that nut, it it receives its selenium from the soil itself. So, it's the uptake from the soil. I've seen this now at grocery stores. There's Brazil nuts that aren't even made in Brazil.
33:02Yeah. So you have to make sure like it has to say product of Brazil on the back of the nuts. Is there a certain brand that you like when it comes to that or are you just checking for that on the label?
33:11I'm looking at not really. I mean I haven't done the due diligence there. I've just been looking for organic cuz man oh man like I really want to minimize pesticide consumption. I understand there are issues with the designation of organic to begin with.
33:25But it I mean this is just a general kind of meta principle that or it underscores a meta principle that I think about a lot which is like you're there's the expression you are what you eat but that's not sufficient like you are what you eat ate right so if you're eating salmon like not all salmon is created equal like what is the salmon consuming right similarly this applies to
33:54vegetables It applies to salad greens like where was this grown? How was it grown? What were the nutrients that were absorbed or not absorbed that were present or absent?
34:04And uh with tools that you have now, I mean it's a lot easier to try to do this type of due diligence.
34:10Most people don't know that non wild salmon like they add dyes to like make them it look more pink, which is just insane.
34:16Yeah. There's a lot of this kind of stuff. And look, I mean, you don't have to get every detail right, but there are little things here and there to pay attention to. And you there are also like lots of weasel words out there when people say all natural, right? I mean, there are many terms that are just not defined in any meaningful way. So, they can be used to confuse consumers. But look, point of the story is walnuts perhaps good for your nuts.
34:45I'm going to do it. So, and Artisana products are delicious. So, why not try them out? Should we just keep going on the food?
34:53The food kit. I have so many supplements and [ __ ] today. This supplement day. So, this actually I've been doing more gym time, which has been great. Been trying to like, you know, get a little lean, try to lift a little bit more weight. I've been trying to find like a good source I brought you this one. Oh, thanks.
35:07A good source of protein. Can I try it?
35:10Yeah. So, I have no By the way, none of the stuff we talked about today. No, we have no affiliation with this stuff. So, this was one that I found largely because A2 protein, are you familiar with A2 at all?
35:22So, I I am I have not done my own homework on this, but I can tell you how I I came across this just so people understand what we're talking about. You want to read the label here because you sent me a hilarious video of your refrigerator where you're like, I got a little bit of this, a little bit of this, and then we have some protein. And there were like 40 of these in your refrigerator.
35:42Well, I mean, Pioneer Pastures.
35:43Yeah. So this is Pioneer Pastures. I mean they literally sell it at Target and whatnot. A2 protein though was the only protein that cows would produce about a thousand or so years ago. They said 500,000 years ago somewhere around there until this variant took over and it was became non A2 and it became a combination of A1 and A2. And it's it's a type of protein that comes from the casein which is the slower digestion version of protein.
36:07Bodybuilders used to take casing at night before they would go to bed because of the cottage cheese.
36:11Yeah. Exactly. So, but the thing about A2 and what's so cool about it is that way less stomach discomfort. Like, it is the natural clean form of protein and it's really hard to find. So, I found this one drink, 160 calories, 30 gram of protein. It doesn't need to be refrigerated until you lactose free. Lactoseree and it tastes really good.
36:36Yeah, it's pretty good.
36:37Um, it was two grams of sugar. I mean, I enjoy it. So, for me, this is like a great I just want something first thing in the morning to kind of like especially if I train hard the day before, like to just get some protein in the body, take this with some coffee.
36:50You know, the first time I saw this, this is the first time I've tried it, actually, but first time I saw this was in the offices of Chris Williamson, the podcaster. No way. He is jacked AF. I mean, the guy is basically a bodybuilder. I mean, he's very strong, very lean. And much like your refrigerator, there were like 30 of these sitting in a in a fridge at the offices.
37:12And that was the first time that I had someone describe to me the difference, I suppose, or the the differentiator with AE2 protein.
37:21It doesn't taste bad, right? I mean, no, it's totally fine.
37:24There's a lot of shitty tasting protein out there, so I was pleasantly pleased.
37:27There's also a lot of protein products that are basically candy bars or junk food masquerading as health food. So, looking for kind of the minimum effective dose of ingredients.
37:40Yeah. I mean, this has monk fruit in it, but it doesn't have any of the other like fake sweeteners or anything. And it's very, very few ingredients relative to like if you were to compare, not to throw them under the bus, cuz I will occasionally have them when I'm caught in a pinch, but like if you were to compare the number of ingredients on this Pioneer Pastures with say muscle milk.
37:57It's like seven ingredients versus 40.
37:59Dude, muscle milk was like the like gym shake during like the 90s, right? Like everybody wanted muscle milk.
38:06Yeah. Yeah. You know, hey, desperate times. What was that pre-workout that everyone took that just got you cranked as [ __ ] in explode?
38:12Oh god, that stuff. Yeah. I mean, basically just bodybuilder crack. It was so strong. So I I you know on the muscle milk I you might find this interesting like when I was training to compete this is probably two years ago in archery. So I had like my period of intense training and the reason I'm not doing as much of it anymore is because it's just very isolating right like you're it is a solo practice and you're
38:42repeating the same thing over and over and over and over again. I do still love it, but I wanted to do something more social. Yeah.
38:49And just a little more physically engaging like rock climbing, right?
38:54Which I I just love to no end every aspect of it.
38:57The reason that Muscle Milk is relevant to this story is that I wanted training nutrition that could not be broken by inconvenience on the road. So basically when I was doing my training sessions, which would be like 3 to four hours, and this is going to sound gross, but basically I would only consume stuff that I knew I could get at almost any any gas station because I knew my competition was going to be in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And Lancaster
39:27is actually a beautiful town, but I didn't know where the competition would be. And I suspected it would be in the middle of nowhere, and I would only have access to gas stations or some type of quick convenience store like a 7-Eleven. And that turned out to be the case. But I was comfortable with muscle milk, almonds, like roasted almonds of some type and then zerocalorie monster energy.
39:53Oh god, I know. I know. With some torine, right?
39:56But I got comfortable using the most commonly available stuff so that I felt like I had and even if it's only psychological, a competitive advantage. Oh, an unsweetened iced tea. That's it. And in any case, that was my sidebar note on muscle milk.
40:17You look at the ingredients now. I don't know if it's changed, but back in the day, it it was not healthy stuff.
40:22Yeah. And it's like, look, I mean, great name though.
40:26Great name. Also, as I continue to do intermittent fasting a few times a week, I don't do it a ton because I'm actually trying to I want to add some like muscle mass and connective tissue strength, and you just need nutrition for that. Did you get that gripper, by the way?
40:42Yeah. Look, I have grippers.
40:44Did you get the one that our buddy sent us?
40:45No, I got a different adjustable gripper because my right arm is still recovering from the elbow surgery I had a year ago.
40:52We should link that up in the show notes. That gripper that that's a really good one. Yeah. Yeah. We'll we'll link to a couple of different grippers if people are interested. I I'm going pretty light cuz I'm still strengthening the extensors and the right elbow that was repaired.
41:06But you want to hear about something crazy?
41:09That I've been getting really into. And this is this is going to get into crazy town, but you know, we like getting into crazy town a little bit. So, uh, dream engineering and anesthesia dreams. So I've been going down this rabbit hole related to dream engineering. So can you modify dream content? Can you for instance facilitate two-way communication between scientists and
41:38dreamers while they are dreaming?
41:40And this this is a longstanding interest of mine. And I first read Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by someone named Steven Labberge the very very beginning of high school and became very interested in lucid dreaming which is just to define terms where you train yourself and there is a process for this to induce lucidity while you're dreaming. That just means you become conscious of the fact that you are dreaming. And with exercises,
42:10you can get to the point where you're able to modify your own dream content.
42:14And I used to, for instance, in high school when I was competing in wrestling, I would do additional training sessions at night in my dreams.
42:23I'm not making this up. And I felt like there was a direct translation to improve performance. Okay. But flash forward, I connected I ended up getting inter introduced to uh Dr. Adam Harowitz who took research out of MIT and Harvard to make dream engineering a reality. So he has a startup called Dust Dust S. And in full disclosure, I I am an investor in that. But
42:51what does it do? They're going to be helping people to modify dream content to address things like PTSD.
42:59Now, that's where the conversation started. And he knows that I have long-standing interest in psychedelic related therapies. But psychedelics have taken a backseat for me in the last handful of years because most people I shouldn't say most many people will not be able to take psychedelics for whether it's health reasons contraindications they have psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia in their family that mean
43:27it would be ill advised to take them.
43:29So I've been really focused as you know on neurom modulation brain stimulation and I still am super super bullish.
43:36How often are you doing that now? Uh I'm going to be doing it again probably in the next month. I would say every 3 to four months.
43:42The update there I did get involved with one company and I thought very heavily about it called Ampa Health AM PA Health. They have the smallest most modular option on the market. Very easy to use and I think they are the company if I had to bet on one that's going to get to the point where you can actually power something off of an iPhone.
44:04And they're doing some really really interesting work work. Just to touch on that, they're doing one day protocols now. So instead of five days off of work, that's amazing.
44:13Costs 30 grand or something, you're doing one day of treatment accelerated with this very small dose of antibiotic called descloer, which induces plasticity in the brain, much like certain psychedelics. So you basically let that dissolve in your mouth beforehand. And from let's say a 1 to 10 in severity, let's say my OCD, generalized anxiety, it's at like a eight or a nine. It has taken it to like a a zero or a one.
44:42Holy [ __ ] One day. Now it gets crazier though because you can also use it. People can check out AMP Health.
44:50Do they do it in LA as well or no?
44:52They're all they're all over the country. I mean I mean what I what I'm hoping is that people who are already administering things like ketamine or who are offering CBT or whatever will will just offer this as an add-on because most of the devices that are available now are like the size of a refrigerator. You have to sign like a4 million dollar lease. The Ampa Health product for providers is like three grand a month. You can cancel any time.
45:18I think that's still accurate and it can fit in like the trunk of a car. It's much easier to use.
45:24But what's also amazing, and I did this recently when I was traveling, met a technician and did like 2 hours of I think it was steims every 30 minutes just for a handful of minutes each simulation.
45:38Sims simulations. Okay.
45:40Just for sleep, different target area of the brain. Then in this case, it was the same target. that they're not talking about super publicly yet, but very easy for therapist like technicians to find. How do they find it? Are they just like measuring your head and [ __ ] and looking like it's all based on really, really good science.
45:59They're looking at over overlapping networks that are identified by looking at data from deep brain stimulation, data from lesion research.
46:10No, but I mean when they sit down with you, like if you're going to go into this place and they're like, "Hey, I got to find this region in your brain. Part of what makes how they do it interesting is they're finding targets that are more uniform person to person.
46:22So certain places like the dorsalateral prefrontal cortex, certain areas on the front of the skull or front of the brain, front of the head, right, are a little more variable. You have to be very precise. So they're finding ways to make it very effective, very fast, and less likely to suffer from like clinch and error, right? Because if you really have to thread the needle, sometimes you get no effect. That
46:51happened to me when I was using like earlier targets with other hardware.
46:56If they were off by like a half a centimeter, nothing. And you just wasted a week, right? And like 30 g. No downside. Like, are you not getting headaches afterwards or anything weird?
47:05Mild headache. Mild headache for like a day. Does that not freak you out, though? I mean, that's the only reason I haven't tried any of this stuff. I'm like, I don't know. Like, it's like they're just put magnets in your brain and [ __ ] I mean, I mean, just to bust your balls. Before we started recording, you were talking about some drugs you were experimenting with.
47:23Yeah, but it's like just that's a good old time. It's Yeah, I tried and true.
47:30You've done it, too. I mean, look. Okay. I'm no stranger to farm.
47:33I love that. You're going to say it online.
47:35No, I'm no stranger to pharmarmacology.
47:36I'm just saying in this particular case, I personally found the I think the risk benefit ratio is much more attractive for the general population than psychedelics, which is why I'm spending so much time looking at it.
47:53I think it is much much much more attractive. M it's faster and frankly well let me let me let me come back to these these crazy stories of dream engineering and anesthesia dreams so from uh you know the startup dust right and people can check out the ampa health I encourage them to check it out but they're all over the country now and is that the publicly traded company one or no it's okay private so dust does the dream engineering and
48:21then he introduced me to some research out of Stanford Here are some of the headlines of pieces published by Stanford Medicine. Could anesthesia induced dreams wipe away trauma? Another one. Could anesthesia dreams be a more palatable psychedelic therapy? All right. So, what does this actually mean?
48:38Let me read some of this stuff. Uh, all right. What What dreams here? Here's here's the dream protocol.
48:47Yeah, that's what I want to know. What's the protocol?
48:48I tried to convince I was getting an endoscopy recently just to look at my throat. You know, you you got to do that stuff. the endoscopies, colonoscopies and so on. And I was trying to convince this doctor I'd never met to do this for me. And he was like, "Yeah, I don't think so." But the dreaming protocol has five steps. Number one, tell the patient they might dream under anesthesia. Number two, use propall. Right.
49:07Uh, yeah, very common.
49:09What Michael Jackson did.
49:10Michael Jackson used that plus like six other things.
49:13U, I have a great story about that.
49:15You should not DIY propall but using propall as an anesthetic as the patient is emerging from anesthesia. So, here's the thing. If someone has surgery, they're not changing the anesthesia delivered for the surgery. They're basically using propall to taper them out and tune them to a very particular dose and let's call it radio station so they have pleasant dreams. Okay. But step number three is monitor brain activity etc with EEG.
49:40Ensure at least 10 minutes of quiet undisturbed emergence. This is really important. If you don't do that then dream recall is shot. And then you have to ask them about dream recall. But the the point of this is that the what they're seeing and this is not this is not really super speculative. I mean it is at the edges now but uh they are seeing people with longstanding complex PTSD. They have one of these dreams
50:09where they taper out on propall and they rehearse beforehand to basically imagine their traumatic event ending in a better way with some kind of resolution.
50:18And some of these people 10 months later still zero symptoms of complex PTSD.
50:24They go from severe to zero. The reason I find this so interesting and other people find it interesting is that it underscores the possibility that and I've thought this for a very long time but like the trip matters right because in the world of psychedelic medicine and business right now the name of the game if you want to ramp up your market cap and have an exit for $2 billion or whatever or launch something with an you
50:52know an IPO and make tons of money is you say, "Okay, psychedelics, broadly speaking, a whole lot of them hit these serotonin type 2A receptors. Let's create a drug that hits the same receptors, but that doesn't cause the trip because the trip doesn't matter.
51:10The trip is a side effect, right?
51:11Sounds [ __ ] but yeah."
51:12Well, what's interesting is that I think it's both. But just to just to be clear like you can hit the serotonin type 2A receptor with no trip like an LSD variant and it can be very effective for things like cluster headaches.
51:29Yeah. But I'm talking about the emotional release that comes from Sure. But but but so I would say like also some of these psychedelics and not all of them are primarily hitting the type 2A receptor but have potent anti-inflammatory effects right at subperceptual doses. So also I think that could lead to anti-depression and stuff right.
51:48Um however if dream engineering like Allah dust right if dream if they can dream engineer people to have fewer nightmares which they can and that has psychedelic like outcomes. It's like is it possible that even though there are millions of people for whom psychedelics will never be appropriate like tripping balls for 4 to 6 hours and there are shorter acting psychedelics and so on, methylone and so on. I get it.
52:19But there are plenty of people who will never be able to take take psychedelics.
52:22Is it possible that every night you have an opportunity to harness something similar? And if so, like who are the scientists who are going to figure out how to mold that and shape it? And so what is do the prep work? I I I think it's all touching the same stuff. Let me ask you a question. What does Dust do?
52:42Is it a coaching service? Like because I I have this app that, by the way, I I have no affiliation with this, but I I you should check this out too, Tim. I think you'd really like it.
52:51Before I go to bed, there's an app I use called Claria. C L A R I A. And it is the best hypnosis app that I found out there for a variety.
53:00Who makes Claria? I may have I may have tried. you would recognize the scientists and the team behind it. It's amazing. It's expensive. It's 150 a year, so it's not cheap, but I found it to be a beautiful way to drift off to sleep, and I swear I feel better the next day. And there's a variety of different topics. It can be anxiety. It can be whatever. But anyway, my point is my question about dust is okay, what is the thing? Is it is it could you sit there in this propall kind of state coming out?
53:26So, just to be clear, dust isn't doing anything with propall.
53:29That's totally okay. So, could you do this with hypnotherapy?
53:33That's a great question. I don't know the answer. I also just to be on the safe side, I don't know what they're disclosing publicly, so people can check out the website and whatever it says it says.
53:43But it's something I'm keeping an eye on. But broadly speaking, that ended up being the wedge in the door for me to get back into doing a deep dive on basically dream shaping, right, which is 100% possible.
53:56Mhm. And it's already been demonstrated that you can have dreamers who achieve lucidity communicate with researchers while they are provably in an RAM state by memorizing eye movement patterns in advance like Morse code basically like right left right left something like that to indicate like I know that I'm dreaming and I'm telling you I'm dreaming. It's [ __ ] crazy.
54:22And uh have you talked to Matt Walker about this? I haven't I haven't had a chance to talk to Matt about this stuff yet.
54:28Yeah. So, Matt used to run the for people who don't know, you run the you wrote the why we sleep book and also used to run the Berkeley Sleep Lab uh for a long time. So, yeah. Yeah. He's still very active.
54:36He's in Dallas now. Has a huge lab is doing lots of good work.
54:40Um he and I on the sleep front have mostly talked about the Dora class of drugs.
54:46And just with the You still have a ton of that by the way.
54:49Oh yeah. I'm using something called Qivic instead of Bell Sombra now. Yeah. But and talk to your doctor, guys. This is this is not stuff you can't get it without the doctor anyway.
54:59Yeah. I mean, who knows, though, if they're buying stuff online from Mexico or whatever. Just don't screw around with any of this stuff without talking to your doctor. But the the point of that for people who maybe haven't heard anything about this, Matt Walker has a good podcast episode on this. It's probably 6 to9 months old at this point about the Dora, like Dora the Explorer, D O R A class of drugs. That's dual ereexen receptor antagonist drugs.
55:25There's some evidence to suggest it might be helpful for people with family histories of Alzheimer's and things like that for they do a spinal tap and saw that beta beta amaloid clearance or health amala clearance.
55:38Yeah. Yeah. They they not just in animals but they've looked at human data. Well, for me, honestly, even though it might be a speculative at this point, because no one's proven that it prevents Alzheimer's, I'm like, you know what, that [ __ ] is so scary and I've seen relatives just disintegrate. I'm like, eh, since I'm APOE34, I'm genetically predisposed.
55:58Let me just be on the safe side.
55:59Yeah, I I bring it with me. I'm actually going to Japan soon. And that's when I use it. I'm like, I I'd rather do that than some type of like, you know, these other class of sleep drugs have been shown to do all kinds of horrible things, including cancers and you name it. So, these are the they look like on paper so far to be the safer class of drugs.
56:17Yeah. I mean, there's some other drugs that seem not to affect sleep architecture horribly, like, you know, the ambience of the world like Trazadone might be a decent choice, but for a host of reasons, I wanted to just it it just seemed to make sense to me to look at the the Doras All right. What else you got? Okay, I'm going to do rapid fire. I got to get a few things.
56:36First of all, have you ever seen these before?
56:39Plum flour curing pills.
56:40Yes. Plumflower curing pills, my friends.
56:46Okay, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Oh, this gets better.
56:51He's like, Kevin, you don't understand.
56:53I was actually in in in Paris and I had like a little bit of like a stomach like, "Oh man, my stomach's a little bit off." Like blah blah. And he goes, "I was about to get food poisoning. I felt it coming on." Yeah. I had had I think it was oysters or something he had. He goes like, "I took two of these. It's from a Chinese practitioner." And he goes, "I dodged a bullet every time."
57:12And let's just call it like once every eight weeks where you're like, "Ooh, my stomach's a little sideways." You know, I take one of these little packets and it freaking works. And I dude, I'm telling you, I know it sounds crazy. And so before the podcast, you just laced with tons of antibiotics.
57:27Yeah, exactly. No, I before the podcast I was like I wanted to look it up cuz it's like a traditional Chinese medicine and I can't pronounce any of the [ __ ] in it. It's a bunch of wild It's like 15 different Chinese herbs.
57:37Yeah, this is unlike the A2 protein.
57:40This has like 27 different ingredients in size two font.
57:43I'm telling you, these little packets are like 50 cents a piece on Amazon.
57:47You can buy them in a smaller thing.
57:49I just love that they're called curing pills.
57:51They work, dude. I if you at all like you know what they work with really is like if you had too much to eat and you're like oh I'm bloated like I just feel bloated like just take one little package take up with ready to go% owner in the company I'm like well that executive chairman Kevin Rose what is this my pictures on the outside you get to Shanghai this thing a rapid fire a fit oh I've got one of those in my bag in your pack what the [ __ ] like on you right now?
58:20Well I don't have it right now but it's in my backpack. So tell people about it.
58:22But the uh I was not able to get the app to work for I got working.
58:26You did? Was it a pain in the balls?
58:27It was a little bit of a pain. So you can get the one without the smart technology in it, but this will also work if you don't even use the app.
58:33So So for people that don't know this device right here, I should just use it without the app because it's been basically I downloaded the app and then they're like, "Oh, you want any utility out of this app at all?
58:41Pay $79 a month or whatever." And I was like, there's no you can just ask Catch Beauty for a training protocol. Yeah.
58:46So, there's two knobs on here on each side of this thing that adjust the resistance on inhale and exhale. So, you put this thing in your mouth like this. This is to train your respiratory muscles.
59:00So, that's difficult for me to do.
59:03They showed after 8 weeks a 30% increase in lung capacity when you train with this thing, which is just insane.
59:09The respiratory muscle training devices are really cool. I had Boss Ruten, this UFC, but also prior to that, like in Japan, MMA legend on and he's done this stuff basically daily for multiple years. There's good data to to suggest reductions in lower back pain, all of these different issues if you improve the strengthening of the muscles that aid in respiration.
59:34Wow. Do you have the same model? Like the same type?
59:36I have a white one that's got like Bluetooth and all this fancy technology that I think I do not need. When did you buy it?
59:43I bought it probably a year ago.
59:44Okay. I don't know why this had the latest firmware on it and it works fine. I haven't had any issues with the connectivity, but I did have one before my house burned down and it it was always having issues connecting. So, I don't know.
59:55All right. Maybe I need a new one. But Airfitit, please improve your app if you haven't in the last year because I found it to be incredibly difficult.
1:00:01Uh, plus your base baseline of programming for somebody who's bought a device should be decent. Yeah. But I do have I do have one in my bag at home. So, I will I will I will just use chat GPT or Claude to help me figure out a Bluetooth free option for training.
1:00:17You can also um what I've been doing with it is Ruck backpack 6% incline on the treadmill.
1:00:23That sounds comfortable with this in my mouth and it's really helped.
1:00:28I'm guessing the people on the treadmills next to you just clear out, huh?
1:00:32No, I might. It's at my house, but yeah, I'm not doing this in public. It's ridiculous. Okay, the last one I have is about man makeup, but we can get to that.
1:00:42Let's come back to man makeup. I'll give another bit of science that I think is pretty fascinating to watch. This was sent to me by an oncologist who specializes in on one level cancers around the eye. So, I had a scare. I might have told you about this. I'm not sure. Still a little bit of a scare, but there was a neas found at the back of my eye, which is like a large freckle, and that can develop into cancer.
1:01:09Oh [ __ ] The good news is they can get rid of it. The bad news is you lose your eye. So, right, this is something I've tracked first every 3 months, then every six months. It hasn't changed in size, but really uh came to admire.
1:01:22Where did you find this by the way?
1:01:25get your eye exam but with retinal scanning with like ver with advanced imaging and certainly I was happy to find it but I mean very scary to find those moment because you don't know if it's been there for 20 years or if it's been there for a month and a half.
1:01:38This is my brain aneurysm.
1:01:40I had a little tiny brain aneurysm that was like you know 1 millimeter whatever.
1:01:43So you found out with like biograph or something?
1:01:46I did and they're like, "Okay, well, we have to watch this and it could explode if it gets too big." And then after 2 years, they're like, "Oh, you probably just have this since you were born." And I'm like, "Ah, shit." Okay.
1:01:55So, she has occasionally will send me science that she finds interesting. And this one, I mean, this is this is probably not the description of the study itself. I think I went to the lay person's interpretation of it, but the the headline here, which I put in my newsletter, five bullet, check it out.
1:02:15Brain stimulating contact lenses match Prozac and depression study. All right, so this isn't an animal model, but let me read the synopsis. Material scientists have developed a wearable drug-free contact lens capable of treating depression by delivering mild electrical signals through the retina.
1:02:31Wow. The study demonstrates that these specialized lenses are as effective as flockitine, that's the active ingredient prozac, at reducing behavioral, neural, and and physiological signs of depression in mice. Okay, so mice are not just little furry humans. So just keep that in mind. This technology leverages the eyes anatomical connection to the brain to stimulate mood regulating circuits non-invasively. So that is pretty fascinating, right?
1:02:56Imagine if now I don't know mechanistically what it's actually doing with the stimulation. Is it affecting veagal tone? Is it affecting something else? Who knows? I haven't done the deep dive on it yet. But imagine this is where bioelectric medicine, right? Whether it's different types of stimulation for increasing bagel tone.
1:03:18There are a lot of [ __ ] devices out there, folks. So just be aware. I'm not aware of anyone commercially available that is not prescription that is credible. But you talked like Michael Lean of Tufts, like will we more and more be able to use electricity instead of pills?
1:03:36Mhm. to treat conditions and I think that that will be the case and in fact you know you look at say anesthesia anesthesia is one of those things where we're like yeah it's just anesthesia anesthesia when you start scratching the surface is so incredibly strange and they really don't know how it works right there are many anesthetics people have no idea how how they work and I mean a few things right if you look at like Michael Pollen's new book he talks about
1:04:05how anesthesia is effective on plants even though they have obviously completely different nervous systems slash I should say more anatomy but it would seem I mean how should I get into this without making a mess of things uh there are some hints of of quantum effects of anesthesia but putting that aside because I'm not I'm not credible enough to talk about that at length
1:04:34some of these anesthetics are inert like they shouldn't do anything.
1:04:38Right. So what is happening? And it would seem that it might be physics and not chemistry. So it's not it's not within the realm of chemists say, "Oh, it's binding to this receptor and doing A, B, or C." Even though they might observe effects that mimic those things that it's somehow affecting bioelectrical fields.
1:04:58And that's the limit of the extent of my cursory understanding. But it's just fascinating. There's so many things like this that we take for granted that we think are understood by the quote unquote experts and we have no idea what the mechanism of action is. There are many examples like that.
1:05:15But isn't that crazy? Like it's something we just like take for granted.
1:05:18We're like, "Yeah, let's pop two of those." Like we have no idea how it works. Like what the [ __ ] There there are a lot of those, right?
1:05:23Like I think for a while that was true of medafanil. There are many many many drugs.
1:05:27Oh, do you takeilafilophilaf whatever that is? Yeah. Boner pills.
1:05:36Uh, no I don't. You don't?
1:05:37I don't because I know there's supposed to be maybe plausible cognitive benefits and so on.
1:05:43I get low dose. I just do a little halfer.
1:05:46Yeah. I get and this is not actually that uncommon. I get horrible flushing back pain.
1:05:52Oh, back pain. Weird.
1:05:53Yeah. It's not super common, but in like a a percentage of people it's reported in the literatur. How about with the other horrible back pain?
1:06:01What about the other ones?
1:06:02Viagra. Viagra similar back pain.
1:06:06What's the deal? Do the people know why the back pain? They don't know.
1:06:09Oh, they they they do. Yeah. I mean, they're like there are different types of phosphodiest phosphodieststerase PTE inhibitors. I think I'm getting this right. I'm going to have to fact check this before this goes gets published, but basically I want to say it's like PTE5 or something like that. So Hubman was talking about there's a potential benefit both in on the cognitive side and also obviously the blood pressure side as well. So brings down your blood pressure a little bit and you don't have to take much of this stuff. You can just take a little
1:06:40I am just on so many things. I'm trying to But they work for you. Like even though it hurts your lower back like you're like a Superman.
1:06:47Yeah. I mean I'll Yeah, sure. I mean I'll have a huge boner about looked like in a UFC fighter round roundhouse kicked me in the in the kidney. Yeah. Oh, cuz they they your kidneys like it pops out. Like your back doesn't pop out, but like my low back hurts so much that I'm like I can't like I can't sit. I can't stand.
1:07:04I thought your like back muscles got hard or something and you have like bulges on your No, I'm just saying it's like it's hard to enjoy the boner if if you're like crippled with low back pain.
1:07:13That's fair. That's fair. It is. I got to tell for people that have never tried these like I don't need these.
1:07:19But no, but hold on. Like this is the random show. We're supposed to be talking about this stuff.
1:07:23Yeah. Yeah. Sure. When you try them for the first time, it is the weirdest [ __ ] Well, I mean, look, because you reach down and it's not you.
1:07:31Well, this this because it's like you're like, whoa, this is where you have to be careful with augmentation, right? Because it's like, for instance, if your eyes are like going a little bit and then you wear glasses and you're just like, "Holy [ __ ] this is a different world."
1:07:44How do you go back to black and white?
1:07:46You know what I mean? It's like this is another reason why sure like technically people might be able to use all of these peptides and testosterone and GH and all these things and then just get off because you have postcycle therapy or whatever but psychologically Yeah. Yeah.
1:08:03people can get so addicted to the results because they are obvious if these things are used correctly. You know what I mean? So, it's kind of like similarly with this extends back to the AI conversation, right? It's like, man, the siren song, the temptation to use AI for almost everything is so strong.
1:08:25But I'm working on this new book right now and it's like I am not using it to write for me because if I do that, I'm done.
1:08:32It's good. It's too good.
1:08:33Well, there's even I'm using it for version control. If somebody provides edits, I'm like, compare this to this and give me a graphic overview. So I can print it out and look at it in color. Like it can do some tremendous things. But if you want to retain a function, a cognitive ability, be very careful about what you outsource cuz well, let me throw this out there for people that that aren't aware of it because most people won't be. In the world of AI, what they do sometimes is they put these elegant pieces of code that kind of sit on top of the AI that makes it turbocharges
1:09:03kind of the AI to do special things, right?
1:09:06And they're called harnesses. Mhm.
1:09:08And there is a new harness that came out recently just for writers.
1:09:12And so if if you thought Claude or Chad View was really good at helping you write, wait till you throw this harness on top of it. So there's a company called Every out there and they had released a a package for coders called Compound Engineering. They now have one uh you can just type in every compound engineering writer harness and it'll show you the right one. You just install it into your chatbt or claude and it will write the book for you. Like it's it's going to be insane.
1:09:38Yeah. You're done.
1:09:39Yeah. Well, I don't know if I'm done. I mean, I don't think so because I mean, you've talked about this online and I think we've texted a little bit about it, but it's like what's the moat?
1:09:50It is reputation, right? So, so I don't think I'm dead. I think books are harder and harder to sell as a viable format of media. Well, it's funny like back in the day. So, if when I knew when Tim was writing these books back in the early days because I first met you when the I met you the day your first book came out, the 4-hour work weekek came out and at the party and then, you know, you would tell me, "Hey, I'm working on this book." And you would like you would want to keep everything hush hush. You wouldn't want to tell anybody
1:10:20because you were like, "Okay, someone can frontr run me with this idea with the ideas that I have in here. If any of this leaks out, right?" And you were super guarded. That is more of the reality these days. I mean, if someone were to find out the next book you're writing on got a leaked copy of it, they can rewrite the entire thing and have it out in like 48 hours, published and printed. Yeah. I mean, the defense is No, I know there's the moat of you.
1:10:41Well, I'm just saying like that is why if if you are writing about the realm of ideas, that is going to be a hard game to play.
1:10:49Right. If you are writing about lived experience like I did X, Y, and Z, right?
1:10:54Then I think you have more defensibility.
1:10:58Uh, but you know, I I think I'm not sure we talked about this, but I've I've just kind of come down to deciding that I' i'd rather right now. I'm also half pregnant with this book is is like 80% of the way there.
1:11:10Yeah. You've been working on this one for a long time.
1:11:12Yeah, I have. I mean, it's taken it's in a way, honestly, I've been waiting for the technology to catch up.
1:11:18So that I could make the point that I wanted to make, which is, look, guys, this is not a 1% problem. This is a 99% problem. And the tools are also available to 99%. Right? Because I was like, if I published this 5 years ago, people would be like, "Oh, Crimea River, Tim Ferrris has too much inbound, right?" But now I'm like, "How many?"
1:11:34I'm like, "Okay, you've got what? You've got iMessage, WhatsApp, two email addresses, DMs. Everybody's [ __ ] drowning, right? Everybody's drowning." But I couldn't have I couldn't have made that argument as well six years ago as you know like with robots are so good at imitating humans. Yeah.
1:11:55Although I I do test my team will test things if I'm like if this is 100% AI written like it's automatic X right. I just it's automatic archive. But coming back to I I would just rather write a book for 10,000 people than do short form videos for 10 million who forget it 10 seconds later, you know.
1:12:16But I'll give I want to I want to share one piece of long form for people who who uh can still digest it, which is hopefully many of you.
1:12:25There is this is a this is a speech and I read the transcript. It is exceptional. It's called personal renewal. It's by John Gardner. G A R D N E R I don't I have no idea how I found this thing. It's delivered to Mckenzian Company in in November 1990. How did I find this? I have no idea. But it is full of gems. You can find an audio version. Just search personal renewal, John Garder. That's G A R D N R. And
1:12:54it's it's really about personal personal renewal continual learning throughout life. It's really really good. Uh, but it does require a little bit of foreplay to to get to the gems. But here's a really good one and I'll quoting from the piece here. Remember I mentioned earlier the myth that learning is for young people. I want to give you some examples. In a piece I wrote for Reader Digest not long ago, I gave what seemed to me particularly interesting true example of renewal. The man in question was 53 years old. Most of his adult life
1:13:24had been a losing struggle against debt and misfortune. In military service, he received a battlefield injury that denied him the use of his left arm. And he was seized and held in captivity for 5 years. Later, he held two government jobs, succeeding at neither. At 53, he was in prison, and not for the first time. There in prison, he decided to write a book driven by heaven knows what motive. Boredom, the hope of gain, emotional release, creative impulse, who can say. And the book turned out to be one of the greatest ever written, a book that has enthralled the world for over
1:13:52350 years. The prisoner was Cervantes. The book Don Kiote. What a [ __ ] crazy story.
1:13:58Holy [ __ ] And there are many examples like this. So, Personal Renewal by John Gardner, like just maybe print it out, single task, get away from notifications. I've read this one a few times now and uh I just get something from it every time.
1:14:14That's amazing. Man makeup.
1:14:16Man makeup. Do you wear makeup?
1:14:19I don't wear makeup.
1:14:23My TV show? You mean like when I was on actual TV? I Yeah. I mean, look, they've got makeup people who want to like del deg gloss my head.
1:14:29Yeah. Yeah. They'll use like oil patches.
1:14:32You don't do any like little touch-ups?
1:14:33I don't. I probably should, but I don't. Yeah. No. No touch-ups.
1:14:36So, I was on a podcast. I was on a podcast like a month ago and I I looked like hell. Like I had just flown into the city.
1:14:44You're like Aluccino after a bender.
1:14:46No, it was sick. Seriously, I just flown into the city and I I slept like [ __ ] for some cuz I was at altitude where I was at and I went on the screen. I was like I had like I get like rosacea sometimes in my cheeks and stuff and I just look like [ __ ] I was like [ __ ] I need to do something like in case. So you can bleep that. I need to do something in case like I I just like going just bleep the f word.
1:15:06Come on. You had 30 of those the last episode.
1:15:09So I went in to the store. Okay. I'm going to say I went to Sephora. I went to [ __ ] Sephora. I never been in that [ __ ] before ever in my life. And it was all ladies and I was just like I went in there and I didn't want makeup. I was just like, "Hey, do you have something for like when your cheeks get extra red, like rosacea and stuff like that? Like, is there anything you can get?" And they when I'm putting on my little black dress and my high heels.
1:15:31Exactly. I was I was decked out to the nines. Like I get gassed up.
1:15:36This is a horrible name for a product, but it's Dr. Jart. It has something called Seca Pear, which is So, get this. It's It's green. Okay. And I'm like, why is it green? It's color when mixed with red, okay, will even out the tone.
1:15:53It's a complimentary color and it's SPF crisp Christmas neutralizing.
1:15:57Yeah. So, watch this. Like I can do I don't know. We can't get a zoom here, but like we So, there's little dots right here. Now, hold on. Watch the difference now. Hold on. I don't I need a mirror or something.
1:16:07I mean, you Okay, watch. Let me just rub it in.
1:16:09All right. You doing You're doing the This is like an infomercial. You're doing this the one side. I love it.
1:16:14Okay. So now if we look now like do you notice how much like less red it is than the other side? And it's SPF too.
1:16:20I don't but but it looks very well moisturized.
1:16:23It is very well moisturized. It's got a SPF. Anyway, my only point is that seeapair C I C A P A I R soothing color connecting treatment.
1:16:33The reason why I bring this up is because I know a lot of people have rosacea and it's a shitty thing. For me, it's like spicy foods or something and like you get like extra red cheeks and all that. And let me tell the truth. And I wanted something. This is like matte so like if you're on camera or whatever it down like you took a bath in olive oil, right?
1:16:51I just I just I feel for people that have problems that they don't know how to fix. And I was like, "Okay, rosacea. A lot of people have. I might as well talk about the show."
1:16:58You look like you have fewer crows feet than I recall. Have you been doing vampire?
1:17:02I Yeah, I do vampire facials and I do one. Vampire facials is PRP.
1:17:06Yeah. PRP where they draw your blood.
1:17:08Still haven't tried it. How often do you do that?
1:17:10Oh, dude. I do it like twice a year.
1:17:12Yeah. So, they draw your blood. It's the only reason. I mean, I still have wrinkles. If I scr scrunch up, you can still see them on the side, but it's way better. So, they draw your blood. They spin it. They take out the platelet rich plasma. And then they do they rub it on.
1:17:24Well, first they they micro needle your face. This is going to sound like a lot, but like it was like there was a discount package. They micro needle your face and then they rub it in. And then I swear after like two weeks like the wrinkles just go away. Do you look like you got in a street fight for a couple days?
1:17:39Uh you're a little red. Yeah, that's why you got this stuff. But you're a little red and it it works wonders. And then one skin with the peptides is awesome.
1:17:48And I and again I did I did put a small angel check into into one skin because it worked so well for me. But that's it, man. Makeup. I want to mention two other things that I have really been en enjoying finding thoughtprovoking at least. One is a miniseries. I'm curious if you've seen it. The it's a four-part miniseries called The Dark Wizard. Have you seen this? No.
1:18:12So, The Dark Wizard, which was first recommended to me by Andrew Huberman and then a couple of other folks recommended it.
1:18:18It's about this wild, brilliant, but totally tormented artist and athlete named Dean Potter. So Dean Potter way back in the day, I'm going to get the timing wrong, but I want to say like early 90s, sometime in the '90s, he was on the cover of Outside magazine, and this guy's story was so captivating to me that I kept that issue of Outside magazine with this black and white photo of him, like very handsome looking guy, super athletic, and he pioneered all these new approaches to
1:18:48climbing, rock climbing. He also was one of the main, I would say, proilitizers of slacklining and then highlining, which is doing like a slack line over a canyon. Just the scariest stuff.
1:19:00The big long poles and [ __ ] right?
1:19:04And then he ended up wanting to push the boundaries of free soloing, but the problem is, as he roughly stated it was, well, when you're free soloing, you always have to climb well within your limits. And he's like, I want to push my limits. So, he started doing something called free basing where he was combining free soling with bass jumping.
1:19:25And this four-part series is insane and it's incredibly well produced. All of this archival footage, drawings and notes from Dean's personal journals all woven together.
1:19:40There's a lot of darkness like he struggled with a lot many inner demons and depression.
1:19:46And on the flip side, he was just this absolute genius on so many different levels. So, I found it to be a really really thoughtprovoking watch. I actually binged I I started one at like I think each is an hour long or roughly an hour long and I started one at like 11 p.m. and my lady fell asleep in like 20 minutes. Wasn't really her jam and it was bedtime anyway. And I stayed I binged the entire series. I stayed up until like 3:00 in the morning watching this stuff. I just couldn't stop watching it.
1:20:14Oh [ __ ] That's a strong recommendation. I'm going to check that out.
1:20:16Yeah, it's it it ties into a lot of current interests and also old demons of my own. So, uh it was uh it was it was you know brought up it brought up a lot for me and many people have enjoyed it. So, the dark wizard that was his nickname. And then there's a book that people might not expect I would bring up. This is not a new book.
1:20:38This is a book by Studs Turk. Talk about a good name.
1:20:42T E R Kl. Studs Turkl. He won the Peeler Prize at one point, I think, for working. I might be getting the title wrong, but the book that I was introduced to is called Hard Times, an illustrated oral history of the Great Depression. And it was introduced to me by Brit of all things. Uh, great guy named Ed Cook, who I'm not sure if you know Ed.
1:21:02I know Ed Cook. Yeah.
1:21:04Total total lunatic.
1:21:05Awesome guy. one of the best and most famous memory competitors formerly like world champion of mastery of memory has super good person and he's very good at coaching people to get incredibly good at memory competition there was an entire book written about this called moonwalking with Einstein and he has a startup called Mindmax which is a learning app if people want to check it out but this book hard times an illustrated oral history of the great depression by
1:21:32studs Turle contains many dozens of vignettes and profiles of people who went through the depression from the most destitute to the rich who lost everything to the jingle writers who actually had the most incredible explosion of creativity during that period. And they're very bite-sized profiles. The stories are told both in their own words
1:21:59and in the sort of in words of studs who's uh trying to convey different perspectives on everything from these different vantage points and it is a page turner. It's so well written and it it fleshes out the depression into something very real and complex, right? It's not just like one mom with her hungry kids sitting on a doorstep looking
1:22:27for Lauren, right? There's so many different angles to it.
1:22:31And I just feel like it's one of the one of the better and most unique depictions of history that I've that I've ever come across.
1:22:44It's awesome. I Is there audible on that or No, I wouldn't be surprised if there is. Hard times. It's very, very well written. And Ed told me, he's like, "Hard times is good, but if you like that, working is incredible."
1:22:58Uh, and working, as I understand it, is kind of like dirty jobs before dirty jobs with micro, but looking at all these different professions across the United States.
1:23:07But Hard Times is the one that that that I've been been cracking. So, if I have 15 minutes and I'm just killing time waiting for something, I'll pull it up on my Kindle and I'll read that because you'll get through like one or two profiles.
1:23:20So, I've been doing this in the sauna where I put on an audio book and it's like my way to kind of like just crank through something and I did something very similar speaking of new books and I've been trying to push myself in new directions of things I would normally never listen to like what is something that would never be on my radar and just give me a whole new perspective on how what people are consuming media wise. And so my friend Britt, she was like, "Hey, like I've got a recommendation for you.
1:23:45There's this whole genre of books that are like big." Apparently women like in their mid30s into their 40s like love this genre. Have you heard of fairy porn?
1:23:57No. I don't know what fairy porn is. Is this like the what is it called? The fourth wing. This is This is called A Court of Thorn and Roses. Have you heard of that that book?
1:24:07Okay. So, I'm like, "Okay, I'll I'll I'll buy it, right?" And I downloaded on Audible. It's damn good. Like, it's it's Is it like dime store romance novels with like sophisticated that? But like, I mean, that's what they all say.
1:24:25I never thought I would be listening to this [ __ ] And I'm But how many times does the word throbbing come up so far? Like maybe twice.
1:24:34But it's It is times four. It's actually No, but what's different than like the old like you know when you go to the grocery store you see like the the dudes with like the chiseled abs and everything is they actually are taking these very sophisticated kind of like almost like you know it's fantasy. It's like well written fantasy and then there's a little bit of like like thrown in there that like everyone's like woo like like he like did that like you know and so I would never listen to this [ __ ] ever.
1:25:02Yeah, but I will say it's interesting cuz they had like I was selling like 30,000 fivestar reviews. I'm like, how is this a genre I've just never heard of?
1:25:12So, I'm trying to force myself to say, okay, you know, once or twice a year, pick a genre that's just completely different than you would ever expose yourself to and go deep. I don't know if you you've ever done that with any I do this all the time just to find things that I would never read. Like Hard Times is a good example where I was just like, Ed, give me a book that I would never find.
1:25:31Yes. and he was like, "I got one for you."
1:25:34Uh the So did bring up the fourth wing because this is one that was everywhere. I'm sure it had 100,000 picture of it.
1:25:43I'm sure it has 100,000 reviews on it's it's like that.
1:25:48Okay. And basically I saw again like early to mid maybe like 30 to 40 year old women all over the place reading this book and they seem to be like business women and I was like what is going on?
1:26:02Yeah. The person that recommend why are they why are why are they reading fantasy? Like something doesn't add up.
1:26:08And then uh not to diminish it. I'm sure they're great books but it there it's kind of like dragon porn, right? It's like there is a porn aspect to the whole thing.
1:26:18Yeah, there has to be.
1:26:19And what uh some people may not know, and I think I'm getting this right, it's not like porn. Well, it's not porn.
1:26:25It's a romance. Uh well, I mean, yeah, there's sex, but porn is very different. Like, that's not I mean, look, yeah, depends on what we're talking about, but yeah, it's not like, right, gang bangs every five pages, but there's still some pretty explicit stuff. The what people may not realize, I am almost 100% sure I'm getting this right, but I'm not going to fact check it now on my phone.
1:26:48Do you know how Fifty Shades of Gray started?
1:26:51It was fanfiction.
1:26:54It was Twilight series fanfiction. So, somebody was writing like an extension of like within the Twilight world, her own fiction, super sexualized, and that turned into Fifty Shades of Gray.
1:27:10That is insane. It is something like that. It may not be Twilight specifically, but it was fanfiction, fantasy that then got converted into its own franchise for 50 Shades.
1:27:22I couldn't do it. I couldn't do the writing. I tried and I just all due respect to the author, it just was not I could not digest the pros, but what it what it demonstrated to me was like the power of a simple premise, right? It's just like you have I mean look people are probably familiar with the series but it's like you have this whatever it is like what's his name Christian Gray like this like billionaire rich guy with a sex dungeon and then like you know
1:27:51and super explicit right and you know I remember a number of different uh pieces of coverage described it as mommy porn you know for what that's worth but it impressed me I I I tried to get through the pros. I couldn't do it. But the power of a simple premise, right? It's like how how visceral and simple is your premise and concede. And honestly, that's where, for instance,
1:28:20my third book, the 4-Hour Chef, that's where it failed. It tried to do too much. It was like three books in one. It was not a simple premise. It was very complicated because I felt like it was wellreceived.
1:28:30It was wellreceived. I mean, it sold hundred hundreds of thousands of copies. all sold like 120,000 copies the first week. But that was a function of my diehard audience who would take me at my word that it's worth reading.
1:28:44But if you if you went blind, unfamiliar with me at all to the say Amazon page, it tried to do too much.
1:28:55And I think this is true with presentations. Like if I'm talking to someone who's going, for instance, I was just coaching someone who's going on 60 minutes, right? And they wanted to talk about messaging.
1:29:07And or if I'm talking to somebody who's got a TED talk coming up and they're they're asking for advice. You know, my advice is is always the same. I didn't come up with this. Somebody else gave it to me, which is like presentations fail from too much information, not too little information.
1:29:21And I think that's true with books, too.
1:29:23It's like does this conjure a simple image in someone's head like immediately and that is not easy to do while being differentiated right so 50 shades of gray nailed it completely nailed it and that has turned this thing into a global phenomenon right whereas this third book which I'm still very proud of I think it's a great book but it it's really three or four books combined into one and to try to convey that to anyone in a
1:29:51paragraph is next to impossible Yeah, I mean the same applies to so much in life though. I mean even on the product side of all the products that I've built over the years, it is, you know, and I watch entrepreneurs going to launch new consumer products or whatever it may be.
1:30:04The ones that boil the ocean and throw in every single feature and they're like, "Oh, but wouldn't it be great if it had this?" And I'm like, "Yeah, maybe someday." Yeah.
1:30:12But can you really distill down this idea to that one concept so that when you're in that I used to call it the crowded bar conversation? not the elevator pitch, but the crowded bar in what does it to where they say, "Oh yeah, I'll go check that out." You know, and often times you can't do it. So the battle is cutting features out. This is what Steve Jobs was so good at.
1:30:36It's like he could have added App Store on day one for the iPhone, but it was like he didn't he was like it's going to do these 10 things really well and then slowly build on on that base, you know?
1:30:46Yeah. I mean, if if the V1 iPhone could get away with no copy paste, remember that?
1:30:52Oh, yeah. That's right.
1:30:53Suck, bro. Talk about minimalist.
1:30:59And this is also part of the reason why, frankly, the the book that I'm working on right now is has taken so long. So, I'm like, it's not ready just yet.
1:31:08Because the way that I try to explain it in like the crowded bar test, there are ways I could probably do market analysis to get more comfortable or to confirm or disisconfirm this concern maybe. But if I talk to say some of our friends who are super busy, right? And I tell them it's a book on saying no.
1:31:30And focusing in a world of noise, right?
1:31:33How do you create systems for that?
1:31:34They're like, "Fuck, I need that right now. Please send send me the draft today. I don't care if it's right, but for nine out of 10 people who are not like one of our friends or one of the podcast guests who've been on, when I tell them that, I do not see like the slight eye opening and lean in. I don't see it. They're like, "Oh, interesting."
1:31:55And I'm like, "Hm." Is it because most people are looking for more things to say yes to because they don't have the opportunity?
1:32:01Well, this is what I'm working on deducing. Like, is it the title? Maybe it's the title, right? So, I was just playing around with that yesterday.
1:32:08Is it the description where the promise is unclear?
1:32:14Is it the fact that it sounds perhaps negative instead of affirming?
1:32:20Right? Saying no versus something else because a third of the book actually is like how to pick the one or two things that change everything to say yes to, right? So, it's like, hm, maybe the book positioning should be more focused on that.
1:32:36It would require a very heavy lift on like revamping a bunch of the positioning in the book or explanatory stuff in the book. Uh, but I am trying to learn from past mistakes, right? I don't think this book tries to do too much. I don't think that's a problem. And everybody who actually reads it or test read it, they're like, I was never bored. Like, I would gift this book to my friends more than any of your other books. So, it's like it's working, but if people go to the Amazon page and the
1:33:05title and the description don't work, it doesn't matter. You're dead.
1:33:09So, that like 50 Shades of Gray genius, I want to get that right. Which is part of the reason why I'm like, I don't need to publish a book. I didn't take an advance, right? Which I mean, it has its own drawbacks. I don't have a gun to the head. I don't have accountability to a publisher, which is actually can be a bad thing because like we have 20 different things we're doing at any given time. It's very easy to be like, "Yeah, I'll just push it off another six months. It's fine."
1:33:33And that's actually not a great thing when it comes to writing books. So, TBD, but that'll get figured out. I feel pretty confident in that. You know, that my aim is to have the book done in the next eight weeks.
1:33:46And so, when you go from that to no publisher, like how do you think about printing? How do you think about distribution? Are you going to do like author's equity or any other I'm leaning I'm leaning towards author's equity.
1:33:58I'm a small investor in that company. I mean, not enough to People should know that's James Claire's like from James, one of the largest investors. I mean, talk about a phenomenon, man. Holy [ __ ] What is it? 25, 30 million copies sold.
1:34:11Nobody does that in prescriptive non-fiction. Nobody does that. I mean, James is a nonrecurring phenomenon. Very nice guy, very smart guy. Uh, and he's he's one of the largest investors in Author's Equity. Uh, great team at Author's Equity. So, I'm leaning towards doing something with them. I don't know what the exact form will take, right? Do I do all formats? Do I do some formats?
1:34:37I'm not overly worried about that. I was just chatting with them the other day just to figure out like what are the actual lead times if we're going to do the Dead Tree format in addition to other things. I thought about only doing Kindle and Audible, but I feel like this book here's a hot take.
1:34:51Feels like a giftable book. Well, it's a giftable book. But here's the other hot take is like the more this become I'm holding up my iPhone.
1:34:58The more these become a digital leash that is feeding you 24/7 distraction, the more I want to have a format that forces people to single task. And the only option for that right now, I suppose you could do it on a Kindle if people are using an actual Kindle device that is not internet connected for distraction, but print is a great way to single task.
1:35:24And this is also this is a workbook. This is not a passive spectator book. Like if you put in the work like if you put four hours of work into this book, it should save you four.
1:35:38Yeah. If you put four, let's call it five. If you put five hours of work, inflation, if you put five hours of work into this book, it's like it should save you a 100red hours in the next year if you're a busy person, like without question and it it just goes up from there. So, so we'll see. But the goal is to be done in the next 8 weeks.
1:35:57What is the lead time just out of curiosity for someone looking to make a actual physical book? Like is it 3 months, 5 months? Like it depends a lot on who you're talking to. Some publishers how big the first run is, right?
1:36:07Yeah. And well, yeah, the the size doesn't matter as much as you might think. If it's a simple page layout, black and white or twocolor, I would say it's still pretty slow, right? But there's a lot that goes into it, right? Like if you're going to get a polished book and you're not just self-pubbing whatever comes off your laptop, if you're going to have copy editors and professional layout and so on, like there are things that make that
1:36:35easier. I'm sure AI could do a lot of page layout at this point. I'm sure people are developing harnesses that'll help with that specifically, but if if you're looking to have and I'm not sure how relevant this is to me at this point, honestly, in terms of like retail distribution, I don't know how much it matters in terms of market share at this point. Things are changing so quickly and have been changing so quickly. But if you really want like the full traditional experience, I would say from what you consider finished book,
1:37:04but there's still people who are going to do copy editing and everything else, probably a year.
1:37:12Now, there are cases where you can do a crash book where it's like, okay, let's just say, I mean, this is maybe not a lovely example, but it's like Princess Diana dies. Publisher wants to be first out of the gate. Can they get a book printed and out the door in 3 months? Yeah, they can if they make it the top priority and everything else goes to the back of the line.
1:37:31Yeah. If in most cases if their primary distribution is in the US and they have printers in the US, a lot of publishers uh print overseas. Uh so those are all factors that go into it. And like part of me is like man once I'm done with this I want to out ASAP. I don't want to like wait for a year. So like what does that mean? Do I not do print? Right.
1:37:54Right. Do I do some small print run? It might be interesting to just do one print run ever. Yeah. Do I do I do publish on demand? Right. Like that you can get out the door quickly with with with POD and the quality has gone up a lot. But the collectibility of a single run of like 10,000 could be really interesting.
1:38:12I mean, yeah, I could do that. I mean, who knows? Maybe I do that and then I'm like, hey, if you want the book, like you can either get a hard copy now and there are 10,000 copies, right? Or you can get it in a year or you can get a different format. Yeah. Right. I mean that's cool.
1:38:27So I get I get excited about it. It's a strong book. Like I I feel very very good about it. I wouldn't I mean I wouldn't put it out otherwise. I cut it from I think it was 870 pages down to like 350. That is a lot of cutting. Holy [ __ ] That's a lot of cutting. Yeah.
1:38:45So everything that is in the book right now has been rated by proof like test readers and proof readers multiple test readers as an eight ner 8 n or 10 out of 10 in quality. Like everything that remains is kind of cream of the crop. So that's awesome.
1:39:03Yeah. Should be strong.
1:39:04Excited to check it out.
1:39:04Yeah. We'll see. Anything else we should talk about? No, I think I'm good. I think I covered everything I wanted to cover. You know, I'll send out some of those invites. I can get more of those instinct invites. keenrose.com newsletter over there. Sign up and I will send a bunch out when this goes live.
1:39:22Sweet. And then just uh just to add to the dueling email newsletters.
1:39:28You already mentioned yours earlier, [ __ ] I know. I'm going to do tim.blog Friday. I don't even know if I'm pointing at the right camera.
1:39:32No, it's your newsletter is great.
1:39:34Five five bullet Friday.
1:39:35Yeah, there's five bullets. The kevin rose.com newsletter is slightly longer, a little bit more information dense. Probably more takeaways there. So just chemrosse.com also includes a includes a free nude.
1:39:47Yeah, I include one foot picture with every new subscriber.
1:39:51Please join my only fans.
1:39:53I I'm going to make one more recommendation which is I'm not going to say anti- AI but it's a nice counterbalance. I don't know if he wants credit, so I'm not going to mention our friend who sent this to us, but there is a short article called Please Use AI by someone called Sean Smucker. Smu C.
1:40:11Please use AI. And it's a beautiful piece about preserving the beauty and integrity of human interaction, right? And why you should not always strive for optimizing efficiency with LLMs and computers. So check it out. Please use AI by Sean. It's S A WN Smucker. It's really, really good. I've been sending
1:40:40that to to different uh different friends of mine. And uh what I put that because I put it in the newsletter um not too long ago, maybe two months ago, and I I mentioned that the please use AI piece reminds me of a Kurt Vonagget, one of my favorite writers passage that is about telling his wife he's going out to buy an envelope. So this is this is Kurt Vonagget, wrote Breakfast of Champions and tons of other classics. So, this is
1:41:10Kurt. She says, "Well, you're not a poor man, you know. Why don't you go online and buy a 100 envelopes and put them in the closet?" And so, I pretend not to hear her and go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I'm going to meet a lot of people and see some great looking babes and a fire engine goes by and I give them the thumbs up and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And I don't know.
1:41:29The moral of the story is we're here on Earth to fart around and don't let anybody tell you different. And of course, the computers will do us out of that. What the computer doesn't realize, what what the computer people don't realize or they don't care is we're dancing animals.
1:41:43So check out Please Use AI by Sean Smucker. It's a good one. I'm actually very very very bullish on this idea that AI will make almost everything that we need to do in terms of the tactical day-to-day stuff kind of just almost handled to the extent to where we can get together in person in real life, hang out, hopefully have more leisure time. Yeah.
1:42:07To and I think there will like with everything I mean we've seen we've seen this with alcohol in the last decade. Like alcohol consumption is like at all time low right now, right? There's a there's always a pendulum that swings back the other way.
1:42:17Yeah. The ketamine going the other direction.
1:42:18No, no doubt. But like my we see this like social media like oh now it's bad for us less people are wanting less of that. Like here's here's something I didn't think of. Could the decline in alcohol consumption actually be reflective of people sitting at home and not socializing outside?
1:42:36I know. I love alcohol.
1:42:36Do you know what I mean though?
1:42:39But but you know what I'm talking about, right? like it it could actually correlate to people spending more time at home on their computers and their phones.
1:42:46Uh what I would say is with with the AI stuff, right? I mean, it's I hope it results in people having more inerson interactions. I do think that people are going to feel the poison, right? Like the dose makes the poison. I think they'll feel that it's not good for them in a in a in a very visceral, deep way that has not perhaps been as obvious in the last 5 years minus AI.
1:43:11But, and I'm not the first person to observe this, it's like if interacting with a digital companion is easier than interacting with your actual partner, if they're always supportive and saying the right things and they're not getting disregulated and freaking out like all humans do, right? If kids find their customized LLM a better parent easier to deal with because it eliminates some of the messiness, right,
1:43:39of unpredictable human interactions. You know, what are the consequences of that? The leisure time, I hope that's true. I have not ever there have been so many technologies with that promise. The industrial revolution, we can go through a long list and I have not yet seen it, right? Like I don't know anyone who's like, I used AI to free up a bunch of free time that I'm now using for kiteboarding and knitting.
1:44:06They're like, I was doing two projects, but now I can do 10 projects or something always fills the gap, right?
1:44:12Something's always going to fill the gap and you have to be very selective about what's going to fill that gap. But I will say for me, the daily grind of email and a lot of those other things now that I have these and it's going to be like, "Hey, Kevin, you need to pay attention to this." I don't have to check all the other spam and all the other crap that's coming in there. It has freed up time.
1:44:30Now, am I using it to AI code then? Yes, I am. I'm going right back in. But in theory, I could be doing woodworking or some other thing.
1:44:37The woodworking comes up every nine months.
1:44:44You know, Japanese joinery is amazing.
1:44:46I know your Japanese woodworking is like my JeanClaude Vanam splits. I'm like, you know, someday.
1:44:52I'm going to get there.
1:44:53Someday. between two chairs. I'm going to do it in splits. It's like, yeah, we'll see with those hips.
1:44:57Do you not getting any?
1:44:58Do you have a competition for which one?
1:45:00You can do the splits first.
1:45:04I thought it was going to be if you can get to Japanese woodworking before I I'm down to I want to I've been going to Stretch Lab. I've been having people stretch me out. I'll be able to do the splits and then Vanam split within 6 months.
1:45:13Within six months.
1:45:15How much you want to bet?
1:45:16I'll put some Zcash on that. How much you You want to do $500 of charity?
1:45:23Okay. So if my choice Well, hold on. First of all, this is just a bet about whether Kevin does something in six months.
1:45:29Yeah. Yeah. So I'm I'm out of the picture.
1:45:32Why are you out of the picture?
1:45:33Well, I'm just saying you you're Oh, you don't want to do the splits?
1:45:39I don't care that much about it for But if you're saying you're going to get to Sean Glenn Vanam splits in 6 months, I'm like, I will take the other side of that bet.
1:45:47500 bucks to charity.
1:45:48To charity. Charity of your choice or mine. So either brain stem or zen meditation is where it's going.
1:45:54Okay. Yeah. Something apolitical, not [ __ ] So you're just for clarity, you're saying you're going to be able to do JeanClaude Van Dams between two chairs in 6 months.
1:46:02Okay. So just as a reminder, just so I I have this correct one leg on one chair, the other on the other chair, hovering in the air.
1:46:11Do I have to be like full straight line?
1:46:13Like I mean you can have like like an inch and a half.
1:46:18Sure. Inch and a half. Okay. You're gonna do that.
1:46:20But do I have to pull myself up? Like is that hard to do? I don't know.
1:46:23Yeah, you have to be stupidly strong and you're like adductors. Otherwise, it just tears your legs out like like chicken legs. Yeah.
1:46:30We're going to do this live on the podcast and I'm going to rip my groin and I'll be in a wheelchair for 6 months for 500 bucks.
1:46:40On that note, folks, another random show. Kev, Kev, great to see you.
1:46:44And we'll put stuff in the show notes. God knows. Sorry to my post-production team for lots of supplements, for all the things you're gonna need to put in, but tim.blogpodcast for people who want to check it out and tim.com.
1:46:57There you go. All right. Thanks for tuning in, guys. See you.
