AI transcript
Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss
Show, where it is usually my job to sit down and interview world-class performers of all different
types, to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply to your own
lives. This time, we have a slightly different format, and I happen to be the guest. Here’s some
context. This past April was the podcast’s 10th anniversary, and the platform River, which I
suggest checking out. It’s very cool. GetRiver.io helped listeners around the world organize, get
together. There’s parties in more than 180 cities, more than 4,000 people RSVP’d, and it was one hell
of an evening, and that evening spanned across the world at different times. I was able to join
about 40 cities via Zoom for quick halos and drinks. So huge thanks to Ray and Anna for the amazing
quarterbacking, and I had a blast also surprise dropping in on the Paris Meetup in person, which
I always like to do if I can, and I need to get out more. Maybe I’ll do more of that. Huge thanks to
everyone who gathered for the wine, the celebration, and most important, meeting like-minded people. A
lot of folks who met for the first time at these Meetups have stayed in touch and are doing amazing
things. So that makes me happy. And after all the parties and as a thank you for their hard work,
I invited all of the hosts to a private Q&A where they could ask me anything,
and that’s what you’re about to hear. It covers a lot of ground, a lot of different subjects.
I had a great time, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. But first, just a few quick words
from our fine podcast sponsors, and only maybe 15%, 20% at most of the people who want to be
sponsors for the show become sponsors because I personally test and vet everything. So with that
said, please enjoy. About three weeks ago, I found myself between 10 and 12,000 feet going over the
continental divide carrying tons of weight, doing my best not to chew on my own lungs, and I needed
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and every single night. Now, regular listeners probably know I’ve been taking momentous products
consistently and testing them the entire spectrum of their products for a long while now. But you
may not know that I recently collaborated with them, one of the sponsors of this episode,
to put together my top picks. And I’m calling it my performance stack. I always aim for a strong
body and sharp mind. Of course, you need both and neither is possible without quality sleep.
So I didn’t want anything speculative. I wanted things I could depend on and it is what I use
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Momentous sources CreaPure creatine from Germany and their whey isolate is sourced from European
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chain about how they manage all of these things. It’s incredibly complex. And they go way above
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At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
Can I answer your personal question? No, I would have seen it for a good time.
I’m a cybernetic organism living this year over a metal endoskeleton.
First and foremost, thanks everybody. I really appreciate all the hosting.
And amazing celebrations and goings-on around the world. It was super fun for me to be part of
and to watch and to participate in. So thank you very much for all of that.
And what I thought we would do is bounce back and forth between these questions here.
And I’ll improv jazz as we go through. And I’ll pick some questions. And then we will also do
some live questions. So why don’t we start with some live questions? And then I’ll hop in here
and I’ll answer as many questions as I can that were pre-submitted as well. All right.
RJ from Malaga, Spain. Believe it or not, I have some ancestors from Malaga, Spain.
One of them was killed in a bullfight. So be careful with the bullfights.
All right. Here we go. If you had to pick a topic for your podcast that I’d stick to
from now on, topic or theme would you pick? Probably reinvention of different types.
I think I would focus on people who have reinvented themselves instead of sticking
with the tried and true groove. People who have taken the time or the space or just the attention
to step back and reexamine their assumptions, reexamine the things that have worked up to this
point that may not be those things directly that they want to continue pursuing. So reinvention,
I think. Let’s see. Kate and Cody, how do you think about over-optimization? Today,
many of us have the resources to enable us to spend countless percentage of our life tweaking
and attempting to optimize every little thing. I would say that you want to pick very carefully
what you choose to optimize as a very dear friend of mine. I won’t mention him by name
because you might not like that, but very top 1% of 1% in terms of performer put it to me. He’s
like, “You want to be incredibly excellent, the best you can be in one or two things,
and then for everything else, it’s good enough.” Passing grade for everything else. He walks that
walk and it’s got a great family. He’s a great husband and father. He’s very good at the things
he chooses to optimize and for the rest, he’s not worried. Claudine, what has brought me a ton
of joy or fun recently? Archery. I’ve been doing a lot of archery training. I’m not sure if you
can see my forearms. They are all screwed up. I’m shooting both right and left-handed, but
I find that incredibly joyful and meditative. Joel, hello Joel, our group. It’s so much in
common. It was so fun. Everyone wants to stay connected. They asked if there might be more
opportunities for me to facilitate keeping us connected in the future. Greatest joy that I
got from the parties for the 10th anniversary and so on was how many people came together
with some shared interests or curiosities, at least, who then wanted to hang out after the event.
People who wanted to stay connected, that made me super, super happy. That was really the
not-so-secret agenda all along. That made me really happy and I’d like to explore ways that
I can facilitate that without having to manage it myself. Cindy has a question. “Cockpunch,
update please.” Yes, I have a ton of artwork and a lot of material to share with respect to world
building. Frankly, I’ve let perfection be the enemy of good. I’ve wanted to present all this stuff
in this high production value video with all the bells and whistles and I’ve been sitting on this
stuff for many months now. I think that is my perfectionism getting in the way of simply
sharing these things. I have lots of stuff to share and I need to get on that, I would say,
in the next few weeks. It doesn’t need to be fancy. I feel at this point, expediting is more
important than optimizing delivery. All right, I’m looking for questions that I can answer.
Oh god, worst funniest date I’ve been on. Yeah, we’ll need another
live chat to cover that. Irina, how am I today? I’m doing really well. Beautiful day here. It’s
a little warm. I don’t handle heat terribly well. I’m going to go shoot arrows after this Q&A
and hang out with Molly outside. I’ll have her behind the line of fire. She’s a very good archery
dog in that way. I’m a little tired. I’m not sure why. I might have a fever. I’ve been training
really hard, so who knows? Maybe there was a bug in the food or something. I’ve been very tired
today. It’s unclear why because I got plenty of sleep. That’s how I am today, but happy to be
doing the Q&A. All right, I’ll do a few more and then I’ll hop into the pre-submitted.
All right, this is from Andres. Andy from Buenos Aires. What place does Argentina occupy in my
heart today and why? Why a deep affection for Argentina and the Argyz. I would like to get
back down there, honestly. I recently, for the first time in 20 years, basically went to a tango
festival in Austin. I bought new shoes. I didn’t even have shoes. I haven’t done tango in ages,
and I’ve forgotten 99% of it, which is very painful for me,
but had a blast. Just had so much fun. There’s nothing like it. I think at some point it’s
possible. I’ll go back to Argentina and do three to four weeks full immersion, tons of tango,
lots of steak, and probably lots of Malbec at the same time. I would say I’m very eager to get
down there, revisit it, learn of the current events and leadership in particular in Argentina,
which I find very interesting. And we’ll go from there. What type of business/investment
is the most exciting for me right now? Anything that is aligned, I’d say, and this isn’t an
invitation for pitches, but anything that’s really aligned with the ethos that I might be
looking to incorporate more in my life. So, for instance, Maui Nui-Venison from an ecological
perspective, from a founder perspective, husband and wife team, incredibly high integrity, beautiful
family, beautiful people, and also very good operators. It’s a good business, but it’s also
doing a lot for the native ecosystem in Hawaii. So, that’d be an example of something that I feel
very aligned with, even though it’s not the kind of tech multiples that we would be used to in
potential outcomes. Something I feel very good about, also very involved with quite a bit of
climate work. And let’s just call it technology intended to help with many of the extreme weather
and climate challenges that we’re going to continue to face. Let’s see here. Top three snacks I’m
eating right now. Yeah, I mean, I have Maui Nui right around the corner. So, the Maui Nui-Venison
sticks. And then, often, it’s some type of mixed nuts minus peanuts and, let’s say, cans of lentils.
So, boring, but I find that very helpful. There are a number of questions about AI,
I would say. I largely feel unqualified to have strong opinions about this. But if I invest,
and I’ve invested in one or two AI focused companies, they’re very niche and they have some
type of at least intermediate term defensible mode. A lot of the AI stuff that’s trained on
publicly available data is just going to get cloned as soon as it shows any traction.
And, as some people may have noticed, a lot of stuff that was Web 3, at one point, those people
have now pivoted into AI. And I’m trying to be cautious of anything that is kind of the
investment sector du jour. And they’re still interesting things in Web 3, although I think
blockchain is probably a better way to put it. And there are very interesting things in AI. But
I like to invest in what I know, where I think I have an informational advantage, and I do not
think I have an informational advantage with AI. This is a question on a few different things.
I’ll pick two of these. On modern dating, as a public figure, how do you navigate the complexities
of modern dating? I would say slowly and very carefully, what qualities do I look for in a
partner to ensure a meaningful and sustainable relationship? Well, first and foremost, I would
say the smaller the social media footprint, the more comfortable I am. But it also makes
it very hard to find people if they’re not online, since it’s not like I’m going out to bars and
just doing cold approaches. So I would say discretion, someone who prefers a certain degree
of privacy, those are all indicators for me in the positive direction for trustworthiness.
I recognize a lot of people live online, so that’s just the nature of our current day.
But I look for those things, a demonstrated ability to do hard things over longer periods of time.
I want to know that life isn’t always hard for someone. So if they’re able to focus on, let’s
just say, higher education for four years at a demanding university, that doesn’t automatically
make them a super genius who’s perfect for me, but it shows probably they’re able to focus on
certain things that are challenging for extended periods of time. Same thing if they’ve been at
jobs for at least some jobs for more than one or two years. If it’s constantly lily pad hopping
all over the place, I don’t find that to always mean someone is very resilient when things get
hard and things always get hard at some point. So those are a few and then there’s all the stuff
you could guess, beautiful, feminine, all that stuff. But I would say those are a few, also
someone who has an identity where they feel confident in having done hard things. That’s
the other benefit of, I would say, people who have done something objectively to the extent
that it’s possible, difficult, is they have a certain confidence that helps the whole relationship.
I feel like you need to have a certain identity, confidence in your own abilities and skills and
selfhood, self-authoring before you can really be a good partner. I think that’s the case,
as best I can tell. But I don’t think I’m the last person you would want relationship advice from,
but let’s wait until I have it a little more figured out. On self-experimentation, you’re
known as using yourself as a guinea pig. What are the next five things I’m planning to experiment
with? I’ll probably get back, I don’t do as much crazy experimentation as I used to. I am looking
at some regenerative medicine protocols, possibly for helping inflammation and some of the lower
back stuff, which has greatly improved since I started doing a few things. But the jury is still
out, so I’m not going to get into that yet. I don’t want to make any prescriptive recommendations
until I’ve really tested things. And archery training, a bunch of new types of archery training
that I’m excited to play around with. And beyond that, really a lot of it is just putting in the
work with things that I believe will be high leverage, like working on hips, internal and
external rotation, and a few other things that I think directly contribute to overall core and
low back functionality, for lack of a better way to put it. But nothing crazy, in my opinion.
Some of the medical stuff people might think is crazy, but it’s pretty solid research
that’s backing this stuff, 10 to 20 years of research, so I don’t feel like it’s high risk.
Let’s see, what risks have I taken in the last 10 years that have really paid off?
Are there any that did not pay off? Well, the podcast, we could look at as a risk, but
risk for me is a very specific thing. So when people say this is risky, this isn’t risky,
I think definitions matter a lot. For me, risk is the potential of an irreversible negative outcome.
Very few things fall in that category. So the podcast was very off the beaten path for me,
but I didn’t view it as risky because I could always stop doing it. I could always just hit cancel.
It was low cost to get started. I enjoyed the process. So the outcome wasn’t the only measure
of success for me. And that was quite a divergence that paid off, certainly paid off. I would say
that I’ve made some good investment calls and I’ve made some bad investment calls.
So the good ones, fortunately, more than make up for the bad ones. But with, let’s just say,
Web 3 is an example. I went very heavy and hard into a lot of Web 3 and put money into a bunch
of different funds and various things. Cockpunch as an NFT project was successful. And I set
expectations, I think, properly at the beginning. If you go back and read that FAQ, I’ve delivered
on all of those and I’m going to deliver continually beyond that. I have a lot more to share and
everyone else has run for the, not everyone else, but pretty much everyone else has run for the
hills and they’re like, forget about all that. No, no, forget about all that. Sleep. Sleep.
They don’t want anybody to remember. I don’t mind at all. I took all those proceeds and donated
to the foundation. The foundation, SciSafe Foundation is going to do some amazing work
with the whatever it ended up being, $2 million or something, maybe a little bit more.
So a lot of good will come of that. And it was a huge creative catalyst for me.
And I think that without that, I wouldn’t be working on a new book project right now,
as an example. So it checked all the boxes in terms of its objectives, but as a sector,
I would say, took a lot of huge hits on that one. And you live and learn. I wasn’t playing
with money. I couldn’t afford to lose, but it was enough that it was very painful.
So there’s an experiment that didn’t pan out, but there’s a reason they call them
experiments and not guarantees. You got to choose your bet sizing properly so you don’t
put yourself in a bad situation. All right. So that risks that have paid off. That was from Rebecca.
Andres currently in a moment where I don’t know what to do professionally. If you had those moments,
yeah, right now. I’m not sure what I want to be when I grow up. And some days it’s really stressful,
to be honest, which sounds silly, I know, but it is. I like having a plan. I like executing
to plan. So the book is really the only thing that is in my sights at the moment that looks clear.
Otherwise, what I’m doing my best to do is try a lot of little things, little experiments,
expose myself to new people, have a couple of exploratory conversations a week,
or read things, listen to things I wouldn’t usually read or listen to,
and have confidence because I figured it out multiple times in the past that I will figure
it out again. I don’t need to flog myself unnecessarily. I’ve yet to find that helpful.
So that may not be super tactical at this point, but that’s what I’ve been telling myself on my
good days when I’m not beating the shit out of myself in my own head. David, what is your
current next project that I’m excited about? How are you approaching it differently? So this is,
I’d say, the new book. I’m actually being much more collaborative with this book than I have in
the past. And that’s proving to be a godsend because I have people to bounce things off of
and to interact with. It’s just psychologically, I think, much healthier, at least at this point in
my life than being a lone wolf on these projects. Because lone wolf, it’s not a thing, by the way,
like looking nature. No lone wolf survives. It doesn’t work. So I am using that as a broad way
to experiment. By the way, Cockpunch was a precursor to that because I worked really well
with what you guys will see soon with the concept art and a lot of the collaborative writing that
was done. And it was awesome. It was a great process, really had fun. It wasn’t just locking
myself in a cave like I’m in solitary confinement. And that is what I’m trying to emulate
also in the writing of this new book. So we’ll see. I mean, I have about
400 or 500 pages drafted. So it’s going to be another big one. But you know, that’s what I do.
We experimented with peptides. I experimented with BMP 157 or BPC 157 like 12 years ago.
Long time ago. So I am at a date with peptides, but I did experiment way back in the day.
But I really need to educate myself before I can have any thoughts on that whatsoever. And by the
way, just as a quick aside, with anyone online, if they only have high conviction statements,
if they really speak confidently all the time, be very wary of those people. People who are being
honest should say, I have no fucking idea all the time. Or they should say, you know what,
I’m not really sure I need to educate myself. Everyone online should have that response a lot.
If they don’t, then you’re not going to be able to separate out the real from the fake because
they’re saying everything with the same high level of conviction. Be really careful about that.
Okay. What mindfulness practices do I use to prepare for high stakes presentation or performances?
I would say I don’t let fear make me afraid in the sense that I really remind myself,
if you weren’t nervous, then it would be a bigger problem. It is normal to be nervous before you
go up like my hands are shaking a little bit. I’ve done these things hundreds of times and I
still get nervous. I still get sweaty. I still drink too much Diet Coke or coffee or whatever
beforehand as a ritual, which just makes me more shaky, obviously. And it’s like, it’s okay.
It’s fine. Anyone who’s going out to perform at a high level or attempting to do it at a high level
is going to be nervous. So just use it like Mike Tyson puke before he went on stage while on stage
in the ring. Dean Martin used to puke before he went on stage. I mean, these, these are legends,
right? I’m not saying you want to emulate everything about them, but
these are people who are at the top of their field. So it’s okay for them. It’s okay for you.
So I just remind myself of that. And I will rehearse my ass off. There’s no mental trick you
can do beforehand if you haven’t prepared. And for me, the preparation is the mindfulness practice.
I mean, with my TED talk, like I rehearsed it so many times and the voice memo on my phone walking
around, I mean, hundreds of times. So by the time I got to the day of the presentation,
on the main stage at TED, I was like, well, I’ve put in the time, the deliberate practice. I’ve
done everything I can do. So I’m as prepared as I will ever be. So let it rip. Let’s see what happens.
I’d say that’s the mindfulness practice. I thought about doing content more geared at
kids teens. I thought about it. I’m not sure what the best venue is, but I am going to be doing some
experimentation for students, probably older students though, kind of university or business
school level. What am I looking to get out of the TF meetups and how can we help? You know,
that was a question. So if some folks have asked like what question came up a lot, some of the
questions are just like, hey, how’s it going? Because the interactions are so short. They’re
like, hey, how’s it going? Where are you? Where do you want to go? And then we’d run out of time.
But one of the questions was like, how can we be helpful to you? And my answer
was and is now connect with like-minded people do stuff in real life. And this ties into AI. If you
want to harness your humanity, do stuff in real life like meet people, man, because the poison’s
coming in terms of information deluge, it’s going to 10x in the next 10 to 18 months. And most
minds and habits are not going to be ready for that. I think it’s impossible to be ready. But
to be more resilient, I would just say do more in real life. Connect with
like-minded people. Try to do meetups. You can do Zoom or something like that. If you can’t do
live, but really seek out your tribe. And if those people happen to overlap with the people
who came to the meetups, which was my hope, then great. Like you just connected with a bunch of
people who might be of similar tribe. So I would say, I would say do that.
All right. Well, I plan any in-person conferences. I don’t have any plans right this moment. Joel,
I see your note on IVS. I don’t have a lot of thoughts on IVS. I apologize. I just don’t know
much about it. What you could do, and I don’t know if this will work, but I mean, you could just use
like Metamucilic Citrus cell beforehand. I mean, it does slow gastric emptying,
and it does also reduce glycemic index. So if you’re going to eat a meal, you know,
it’s going to spike your glycemic index. Side note, you can take like five of these capsules
with fiber just to slow things down so that the release isn’t as intense. But I’m not a doctor.
I try not to pretend to be one on the internet, but I really don’t know much about IVS, unfortunately.
But I’m looking at anti-inflammatory protocols that could have an effect on this
type of issue, but I haven’t looked at it well enough. So I don’t want to give you any opinions.
Let’s see. What are some of my heresies? I mean, I think a heresy that I have
I think a lot of what we try to do in modern life is a very new experiment. So I think if we
look back at older societies and they’re not all rose-colored, it’s very seductive to look back
at Indigenous group X, Y, or Z and say, “Oh, you know, they had it all figured out. They were in
tune with nature.” And it’s like, well, if you go back, you also very often even now see domestic
abuse and lots of alcoholism, other issues. So it’s not ever perfect anywhere. But I would say
if we look at what gives people meaning, I think we’ve been led astray with a lot of kind of
brainwashing and theory that doesn’t map very well to anthropological study or really just
common behaviors that you see around the world that seem to have some durability
and Nassim Talib will talk about this a lot. So I would just say broadly thinking that in a
lot of ways, individually, just in terms of like rugged individualism, we’ve gone off track a bit.
And that a lot of the, I’d say, common ways that we plan our careers and lives are actually at odds
with ultimately what’s going to give us fulfillment, I would say. Can unpack that more another time.
All right, let’s see. So a couple of people asking about conferences. Maybe at some point,
I’ll do a conference. It would be quite small. It wouldn’t be more than 200 people. So if I ever
did it, it’s a lot of work, frankly. And when I did it last time, it was basically not for profit
because I spent so much money on the quality of the event. So I don’t know. I’m not sure I have
the energy to do it as a nonprofit. And if it were not to be a nonprofit, it would just be
stupidly expensive. It would be like 30 grand a person or something obscene, which I would feel
kind of silly putting out there. How realistic is it to consider the health span possibility,
RJ, to get to 150 years old and good health? I’m not really sure how to evaluate this,
to be honest. I’m more focused these days on experiential lifespan and trying to harness.
And I’ve spoken about this before, but trying to organize events, gatherings of friends,
in some cases, very intense physical experiences, like long, difficult hikes or
pilgrimage trails with people I really care for, to basically pack a few months into, say, a week
at a time. I think that’s a reliable, actionable way to extend your experiential lifespan,
to feel like you’ve basically packed 150 years into your, let’s say, 85. Most attempts at
extending longevity in any meaningful way have all failed to date. And maybe we are, in fact,
at this cusp of all these amazing discoveries that will lead us to live a really long time.
Maybe that’s rapamycin. Maybe that’s some type of time-restricted feeding. Maybe that is fallastat.
And maybe it’s who the fuck knows. You know, there’s always something. There’s always some new
Ponce de Leon fountain of youth that people have found, especially on the internet.
I’m not super bullish on that stuff. Here’s the thing I would say for myself. They’re likely to
fail. So I would rather have low expectations and be pleasantly surprised later than to take
all these things and suffer what will most definitely be significant side effects that we
haven’t foreseen with a lot of this new stuff. So like fallastat, for instance, we basically cripples
FSH in animal models. So it’s like, do you really want to be infertile? Can you reverse that after
the fact? Like, yeah, great, you have eight pack and you look younger than you did eight weeks ago,
but now your balls don’t work. So I’m not ready to make that trade. You know, maybe after I have
three or four kids, sure. But I would just be very careful with that kind of stuff. So 150,
I mean, if we’re talking about that in the next, basically putting people on a glide path that
will land them there in the next 10 to 15 years, I’m pretty skeptical. I mean, especially with
increases in environmental toxins and other issues that will besiege humanity over the next 10 to
20 years, certainly. I mean, more weather issues, forced migrations, all sorts of shit. I’m not
dystopian about it, but it should tell you something that I’m not about my personal beliefs,
at least that I’m not doing a lot of that stuff. Yeah, I mean, if you account for infant mortality
and antibiotics, and then you look at, say, my entire family history on both sides, it’s like,
yeah, males tend to die around 85. That’s just the way it goes. So I would love to live longer,
but I’m not going to take a lot of unnecessary risks where I see significant potential downside.
So long answer. I’m interested in it, for sure, like I track some of the science.
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All right. Andy Bruce, any tips on walking the Kumano Koto, taking your 11-year-old son with
you? That’s cool. That’s fun. There are a million different ways to walk this pilgrimage trail in
Japan, which is the sister trail of the Camino de Santiago in Europe. Those are the only two world
heritage pilgrimage trails. So there are like a thousand different ways you can do the Kumano Koto.
It’s like a tributaries that then filter down to the main shrine and temple because they basically
took Shinto mapping and then put Buddhism on top of it. I would pick one that crosses rivers and
water if you can. That’s just a really pleasant feature when you’re hauling ass and getting
really sweaty and so on. Bring walking sticks for sure, like poles, especially for the downhill.
You’ll be walking on rock a lot. It’s very hard on the joints, so nice thick heels. Hoka shoes or
something like that. I would suggest you will feel it in your ankles and your knees.
My thought is if you’re going to do something longer, because some people will do a week at a
time or 10 days at a time. You could spend months on the Kumano Koto. Do a little bit less than you
think you can each day. Don’t push it super hard because you may be then handicapped the next day.
If your knee really bothers you, you’re not going to want to put a lot of weight on that for
the next 10 kilometers or 20 kilometers. I’d do a little bit less than you think you can each day.
All right. Something about the tweet. If the kettlebell swings is king of the exercise,
where else can you find the king of x? Could your relationships finance anything?
I think a lot about barbell approaches to life. For instance, high-risk angel investing and then
munibond as boring and as stable as you get. It’s one or the other, high-risk high return with
small amounts of money or very stable, predictable, boring and not playing in the middle. As soon as
you start playing in the middle, you’re like, “I’m going to play with tech growth stocks.” Then
you, at least in my experience, that’s how you get your face ripped off. That’s how I get my face
ripped off. I think about barbell distributions a lot in physical fitness and finance and everywhere.
Aside from Richard Feynman, if I could bring back one person from the Dead for a podcast episode,
who would it be? Man, there’s so many. I’m tempted to say like Marcus Aurelius or something, but
Seneca, who knows? I mean, probably Seneca, because I’ve just read so much of his stuff,
and I’m curious if I would find the guy to be an arrogant prick or what the vibe would be in
person, assuming we’re speaking the same language. I would be super curious about Seneca. He gets very
mixed reviews, but I’m once again listening to an audiobook on anger or on Eda, IRA. His writing
is amazing. The guy’s writing is amazing, but what would he be like in person? Would I be like,
“Oh, yeah, this is the uncle who talks too much. God, this guy’s long-winded.” Maybe. Ben Franklin,
I’d be interested, very interested in. Those are a few that come to mind. I could come up with 100
more for sure, but those are two off the top of my head. Do I have any mentors that I contact
irregularly for life advice? This is from Jeff. I found in midlife that I really missed out on
having fatherly mentors in my 20s and 30s. Yeah, there are. I talked to one this morning. In fact,
he’s early 70s, very healthy, really takes care of himself, great marriage, close to his kids,
and I think he has grandkids now. So we did a check-in for about an hour today, caught up,
and this is a good reminder for me to do that more often. So I do feel good about that. Let’s see.
Paula, this is one of my thoughts on ayahuasca and antidepressants. You’ve been doing ayahuasca
for 13 years, only just started taking antidepressants. I’m not sure if I should mix both. This is
from Brazil. You need to be very, very, very careful. So ayahuasca plus certain antidepressants
like SSRIs can cause a potentially fatal serotonin syndrome. So you need to be very,
very, very careful with that. So I would absolutely speak with doctors about that. I would not mix
them until you get the go-ahead from doctors. I imagine a psychiatrist do prescribe the antidepressants.
I’d be very careful with that. Ayahuasca is one of the riskier compounds, at least of the,
let’s call it, classically known psychedelics with respect to combining with antidepressants.
So I’d be very careful with that. And side note, I learned not too long ago that people who were
taking lithium should really not screw around with psychedelics. A lot of adverse events have been
reported, at least with some of the classical, let’s just call it not entirely tryptamine, but
LSD, psilocybin, etc. So if you’re taking higher doses of lithium, now there are some ways that
could be conflated because if people are taking lithium, what are they taking it for? They might
be taking it for any number of conditions that would be contraindicated with psychedelics in
the first place. So who knows? But I wouldn’t mix lithium with these things either. All right.
How can you incentivize someone to mentor you? I’m not sure how to do that. I think you need to
be a really good student. Number one, you said no money possible. I mean, frankly, I pay for it
a lot. I mean, I have friends who learn from me and I learn from them and they’re older than I am,
and I consider them mentors. But at the end of the day, I actually find it in some ways cleaner
to just pay someone. And if you wanted to get mentorship that isn’t expensive, like maybe you
go to Toastmasters or you join the EO, like Entrepreneurs Organization or YPO. It depends
on what you’re looking for. But like mentors don’t need to be expensive at all. I have a
mentor in archery and he’s also kind of a mental performance coach. Doesn’t need to break the
bank. So I would say you can go to your local YMCA and find a coach in some sport. And if they’re
good at all, at anything, they will have life lessons for you, especially if they’re a bit older.
I would say that’s my advice for the moment. Do I babysit sometimes for some of my friends?
I mean, not really babysit, but like I’ll watch their kids for a little bit or
watch a Disney movie with their kids, like young kids. How did I find it? I think I’m a
kid at heart. So for me, animals and kids are, I don’t want to say easy, but especially if they’re
little, I find them pretty easy. I think when, if I have kids, which is the hope at least,
if they get to the point where they’re like petulant, kind of like mean spirited
kids where they’re just being assholes, I think I’ll have a hard time with that.
I think I will have a hard time once they like know which buttons they’re pushing and they’re
just like drilling it in that I’m going to have trouble with. But like little kids who just like
are dysregulated and lose their shit because they haven’t developed their prefrontal cortex.
Like, yeah, I can deal with that pretty well. Let’s see. My opinion of this is from Judy GLP1
medications. This would be like Munjaro or Ozympic GLP1 agonists. I believe they’re in clinical
trials now for depression/anxiety. Yeah, I haven’t looked at them specifically for that.
Did put up a blog post recently from Johan Hari on GLP1 specifically. So if you want to get some
of the science and also a firsthand report of that, I would just go and Tim dot blog and search
Johan, J-O-H-A-N-N, last name, Hari, H-A-R-I. All right. So this piece of artwork,
you know, people love this. I love it too. I bought this for $80 at an antique warehouse in the middle
of nowhere. I saw it and I just loved it and grabbed it and I love it every time I see it.
Maybe it’s less, $60, $60, $80 at an antique warehouse. Yeah, that’s one of my favorite pieces
of art. That’s a turkey tail below it. There are a lot of turkeys around here. Or not tail,
turkey feather. All right. For agents, book agents and stuff, last time I checked, which was a long
time ago, publishers marketplace is a great place to look. Also, find books that are kind of in the
same category or vein as yours. Look at the acknowledgments and you’ll very often see the
agent there. Then you can reach out to them directly through something like publishers marketplace.
Or these days, a lot of these agents or agencies have their own websites.
Thoughts on how to approach making some great in-person connections. Yeah, I would look at
my talk. I gave it South by Southwest, which had the title, How to Build a World Class Network
in Record Time, something clickbaity like that, but it actually delivers. I would check that out.
All right. This is from Dolan. Dolan, okay. The last set was from Claudine. Thank you for those.
This one’s from Dolan, if I’m pronouncing that correctly. Basically, anything that I would
like to talk about that I haven’t had an opportunity to talk about yet. For instance,
my interests/journey in connecting with animals and nature, maybe some insights from my personal
exploration of psychedelic and non-ordinary states of consciousness over the last 10 years.
So, I have probably a thousand pages and notes on all this. At some point, I feel like that might be
the most important book that I write, but it’s going to be a lot to put it together. In a way,
the book I’m doing now, where I’m collaborating, is sort of a possible warm-up for that, because I
don’t think it’s a book that I would want to do by myself. It would just be such a heavy lift.
Yeah, we’ll see. We shall see. But I think if I talk about that at some huge length,
it’ll probably be in a book. I’d want to think about it, because it’ll get so strange. It will
get so unbelievably strange. Number one, first, all the scientific regulatory on the radar above
the line logistical stuff that I want to handle in the psychedelic therapeutics world, I want
to handle first. Because if I ever write this book, it is going to get so weird that at least 20%
of the people who read it are going to think I’m completely insane. It’ll just be so strange. I
wouldn’t want it to damage my current credibility that I have to get things done in those worlds,
including some of the stuff with animals. If you talk to people who’ve been in this stuff for,
let’s just say, culturally for hundreds or thousands of years, it’s not weird. But to most
folks, it’s going to sound pretty fucking weird, which I get excited about. But I’m going to wait
until I’m like, you know what? I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks, because it’s not going to
interrupt anything else I’m doing. I don’t care. Then maybe that book, but it’s going to be a little
while. All right. This is from Andres. I’ll paraphrase here. Basically, I’m very rational and
methodical about decision making and so on. Rational approach is admirable, but sometimes
being irrational or spontaneous can inject a lot of energy and fun. Have I found space for
rationality to play a role in my life? The irrational and emotional for decisions? And if so,
have they ever led me to alter my well thought out plans for the year? So I would say yes. I don’t
know if irrational would be the word I would use, because you have like, let’s take moral. I don’t
know what the proper word would be here, but you have moral behaviors. You have immoral behaviors.
And let’s just call those non-moral behaviors. Then you have amoral behaviors that are kind of like
in this no man’s land. So I would say if you have like rational, irrational, the opposite,
then there’s like irrational. I don’t think that’s a word, but somewhere in the middle where it’s not
driven by logic, it’s driven more by feeling. I’m doing more and more of that these days,
for sure. I mean, our sort of evolved system here with lots of valuable apparatus for navigating
reality predates language by at least this kind of language by millions of years. So yes, I found
space for that. Although I’d be very careful about, I see this quite a bit in Austin and places like
it where there’s this like neo, new agey stuff where people are like, I’m just using my intuition.
And I think very often that is used by people who just want a justification for doing what they want
to do or doing something that is easier than the hard thing. And they’re like, well, I’m just using
my intuition, right? Intuition is interesting to me when it points you in a direction you didn’t
expect. Let’s just say you go on a date and on paper, they’re perfect. You’re like, I’m going to
love this person. And then you meet them and you’re like, something’s a little weird here. Like,
I want to like them, but this isn’t right. That’s where intuition is valuable. Or like a business
deal. Everything looks perfect. And then there’s something about it, like, oh, my gut just doesn’t
feel right. That’s where intuition is interesting. If you’re like, this all looks perfect on paper.
And you know what, even though all my friends are telling me it’s a terrible investment,
my intuition tells me to do it. Like, that’s where I’d be like, well, wait a minute here,
is this just confirmation bias? What are my thoughts on blogging in the age of AI? I mean,
look, AI is amazing. It’s really incredible. But writing for me is a way of clarifying my
own thinking. And I do think that taking the time to craft words without the assistance of AI is
helpful. I might use AI to get past the blank page. But I think it’s seductive as a drug.
And just like most people can’t tell direction without Google Maps now,
I think it’s very possible, almost inevitable that people will lose certain faculties that
they currently have by overusing AI. So we shall see. But I plan on doing more writing
to the old fashioned way. I have not used binaural beats. I am very interested in that. And actually,
it just reminded me somebody owes me something on binaural beats. So if you have any recommendations
for what types of binaural beats, let me know. Let’s see. For our dog training. Yeah, maybe.
I never say never. Best thousand dollars I spent lately. I mean, it was more than that. But on
the archery training, it’s always something like that. It’s very rarely stuff. I mean,
sometimes it’s stuff like there’s a I bought an extra so write PSO RIT and a mini rumble roller
that I can travel with. And those have been amazing for just like rolling out my glutes and
piriformis and my legs and stuff before bed really helps to sleep a lot. But that’s like,
I don’t know, 100 bucks, 150. I buy very well, I try to buy very little stuff just ends up causing
me more stress as clutter around my house than the value that adds. So I try to get rid of a lot of
stuff. Good question. It was the last thousand dollars worth of clutter that gave me the most
relief when I gave it away. That’s what I should think about. Am I aware of Javier Millay? That’s
how you say his name in Argentina. I am. I’ve actually listened to some of his speeches. Pretty
interesting stuff. I don’t know enough about him, but a number of my friends are big fans. So
need to do more research. Best thing that I spent an ass load on. But the best thing I spent an
ass load on not to get too technical would be family trip. I took my parents and brother and
his wife on a trip around Europe. And that was definitely an ass load of cash. But I think that
was a good investment. I recommend everyone read something called The Tail End by Tim Urban.
That is a good investment of time. It’s very short. All right. Do I like painting,
not sketching as a hobby? I haven’t learned how to paint. I would like to dabble in ideally
watercolor, I think. But do I have any quick tips for getting up to 10 to 20 minutes on the
acupuncture mat? Yeah. That’s for people who are curious. The Nyoya Acu Pressure Mat, I think.
Or other, there are a lot of limitations that I’m sure just as just as good. I don’t go to 20
minutes typically, but like 10 to 15, if I’m going to do it, the first three minutes are going to be
torture. So you just have to get through the first like three to four minutes is my experience.
Otherwise, I don’t have, I don’t have much to tell you. It can be pretty intense.
Thoughts on dating apps. Oh, man. This is like Warren Buffett covering his eyes and pointing
towards Wall Street because half the people are going to have terrible experiences. I don’t know.
To be frank, I mean, I think Hinge has been one of the better options so far. I think that in
terms of just quality, people have to pass some hurdles and add some information. The league is
pretty interesting also because you can search by interest, which is so critical. I don’t know why
you can’t do it on any other app, but you can search for like skiing or whatever to find somebody
with similar interests. But the league is really only effective in certain cities. It’s not used
widely everywhere, but like in a place like New York City or LA or whatever, you could find people
who are pretty well educated, interesting, but a downside is people tend not to use it that
frequently. So you might have a great match and they don’t see your message for six months. So
go figure. It’s jungle out there, folks. Be careful. And there are a lot of people catfishing.
So watch out for that too. Do a video call before you meet up with someone.
What’s my favorite science fiction movie and why? Big fan of the second Dune movie, frankly.
Exbaquina, I remember really enjoying. There are a lot of great science fiction movies. I think
her was fantastic. And you know, at the time, it seemed insane. And it’s basically already there.
If you look at the latest editions of chat, GPT and so on and things like replica with a K replica.
Yeah, her is basically already here. It’s pretty nuts. Give me a second.
Taking a note. Thank you for the binaural thing. Rainwave smart mind. Okay, I’ll check it out.
With questions about cockpunch, it’ll be more interesting once I release the rest
of the stuff or a bunch of it. Then you’ll have a lot more to chew on. And I’ll give you a foreshadowing.
It’s not really foreshadowing. It is a statement that I hope is a statement of fact. And that is
I will have some fanfiction writing competitions, like elimination competitions. And so that will
reward people who really dig into the details. They also have to be decent at writing, of course.
Claudine, have I let the enormity of 10 years of TFS really land? Not just from a metrics POV,
but from a positive kindness, deepening, et cetera, human level. It’s been such a force for good
and lightens world. Thank you, Claudine. That’s very kind of you to say. I would say that I did
when the celebrations were happening, but I could do a better job. I could do a better job
of sitting with that. So thank you for the reminder. It’s easy for me to just move on. Like, yeah,
yeah, good job. But you just did your jobs and don’t get too happy with yourself. And like,
what’s next? What’s next? Right? Like, yeah, you did your job. And that’s fine. But don’t get too
smug about it or self-satisfied. But I find that can be very self-defeating, right? So I did take
time to celebrate for the 10th anniversary. I had a great time. The in-person meetup in Paris was
great. And it was really fun to in-person hear the stories from people who were deeply affected by
the podcast. So thank you for the reminder. I will take a moment today to revisit that. Thank you.
I should travel to meet girls. Well, I mean, why was I in Europe for six to eight weeks?
Who knows? Maybe it was related to that. Is it possible that my mood improved during this Q&A?
Yeah, it’s entirely possible. I was exhausted, guys. I’m not going to lie at the beginning of this.
But I enjoy these interactions. So it is certainly possible that my mood improved as a function of
my energy going up. So thanks for that, everybody. Where do I see myself in 30 years? Good lord. I
don’t know. Hopefully not six feet under. We’ll see. I’ll be 30 years. I’ll be 40. No, 76? 77? Fuck.
So I don’t know. Hopefully I’ll be doing black diamonds skiing because we found the Found of
Youth. Have you suggested workout routines as mags for my parents? If not, what would it potentially
look like? How would you approach it? Yeah, I would say super slow protocol. Look up Ken Hutchins
and the super slow protocol. Yeah, my dad’s lost, I don’t know, 80 pounds. Let’s call it 40 kilos
in the last year. So he’s made a lot of progress. That’s slow carb diet. It’s all straightforward
from for our body. And then super slow as applied. So super slow in the very basic terms is minimum
five seconds up, five seconds down. So if you’re doing a pressing movement, five seconds slow,
right up, five seconds down. One set, one set to concentric failure. Could be even slower,
could be 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down. But especially in elderly, quite effective for building
muscle mass and increasing bone density without injury. So that is probably what I would,
I mean, that’s what I prescribe to my parents. That plus walking to the extent that it’s possible,
right, kind of barbell, once again, with slow carb diet is the glue that holds everything together.
How do I record a podcast while walking? This right here. This is ATH M50X. It’s an audio
technica headset. It has a USB-C attachment like that into your iPhone. And then you can use Riverside
or some other app. There are a lot of different ways to record. All right, let’s see here. This is
from Mariana. Over the years, I’ve followed and learned from you and your guests. I’ve heard you
say several times that I’m interested in parenting. Have you ever considered being a single parent
family by choice? I too, for many years, was trying to find the perfect partner.
So I turned 41 and my doctor told me it was time to unfreeze my eggs since I was still single and
looked for the partner. Decided my best option was to be a single parent. So I got a non-anonymous
donor and had my son when I was 43. I was 6 now. We traveled the world together. Could not be happier
with the drama free life we have. Just wishing to see you fulfill your parenting dream and wondered
if I would consider this option too. Yeah, I would consider it. I would consider it. I think
for a long time it was no, but I would consider it. I would. I mean, of course, ideally I would have
the partner, but I would consider it. Yeah, it’s not off the table, but I’m still fighting the good
fight, getting back into the dating as much as I’m just like, “Fuck, this is a young man’s game,
doing this online dating bullshit.” Frankly, just the communications burden is so much.
Yeah, so anyway, but to answer your question, yeah, it’s on the table for me. Joel, I see yours.
One of my big goals is to create the world’s first coffee mug to sell for more than a million
dollars. I like that. I like that as a goal. I don’t really have a great recommendation for
how to chip away at it. You could look at, from a PR perspective, at least people who have
sold pieces of the Brooklyn Bridge or sold hamburgers that are gold-plated or have
some type of gold on them for $300 at some piece of joint. The reason they’re doing it
is to get attention for everything else. What I would say is you could think about
selling a million-dollar coffee mug and make that your pass/fail, or you could come up with a compelling
argument for why a coffee mug, a particular coffee mug, should sell for a million dollars
and then use that as a PR hook to bring attention to everything else that you’re doing,
which is probably quite a bit easier. But if you do that and someone buys it, great.
Fantastic. You did it. You sold one for a million bucks. Now, that said, if that is the only measure
of pass/fail, then it’s extremely binary. But if you were to use it as a means by which you draw
attention to everything else that you’re doing, then I think it’s pretty interesting. So there you
have it. Have I been to Brazil? Yes, I’ve been to Brazil five or six or seven times, actually,
all over the place. In fact, how big is my staff? Pretty small. A few people, two, three, people,
four? Yeah, something like that. Three or four, I guess, at this point. It’s from Hussain in Toronto.
After the 10th anniversary, I tried to organize a follow-up meeting. However, I had to cancel
due to a little interest. I’ll try again at the end of the summer. Can you think of a cost-effective,
Tim Ferriss way to make attendance at these events irresistible? Well, you might consider,
I’m just making this up so this is on the fly, but you might consider partnering
with another organization like EO or YPO or whoever who might be looking for membership.
And you could say, you know, I’d love to host this type of events for fans of Tim Ferriss or
however you want to phrase it, listeners of the Tim Ferriss show or readers of such and such book.
And perhaps we can do an event where they come for free, get exposed to these following speakers.
I think having speakers would be helpful. So you could try to do that on your own or
you could make it more of an event, some type of activity. So you could do, I don’t know,
Tim Ferriss show paintball extravaganza and get 10 people to go do paintball or something.
Who knows? You have to make it, what are they considering as alternatives? It’s kind of like
with Molly. Let’s just say my dog Molly. I remember at one point I was working with this dog trainer
and she saw me giving kibble to Molly as the treat, just her regular dog food, but in little
pieces and she goes, what is that? I was like, oh, it’s kibble. She’s like, oh, man, she’s like,
you’re not going to train your dog that way. She said, it’s a crowded bar. You got a tip with 20s.
She’s like, you’re giving her bullshit. You have to have really good treats. You have to tip with
20s. It’s a crowded bar, right? To compete with the squirrels and the dogs and the other stuff,
the smells. So I would say those are a few ideas. But if you have small group of friends, you can
just take their temperature with a couple of different options and see how it goes, right?
I mean, those are a few initial thoughts, but maybe helpful, maybe not. All right,
I think those are the only ones that I can really answer well from the pre-submitted questions.
I’m going to take a look at a few things that are left here. Timothy Keane, this is visualization
or affirmations. I haven’t used affirmations much, to be honest. I don’t think. Actually,
that’s not true. With five-minute journal and things like that, kind of these statements like
I am or whatever, I’ll also frequently have something like, you have plenty of time or there’s
plenty of time, right? So that I don’t feel artificially rushed, which never produces great
results or great feelings for that matter. Or something like, frankly, this is true for a
lot of people on this Q&A, right? Like you’ve already won the game. You speak English. You have a
computer. Hopefully, you’re healthy. You’ve already won the game. So just number one, take a breath,
realize there’s no game on some level left to win. You’ve already done it. You’ve already
crossed the finish line, so everything else is gravy. So just take a chill pill and breathe.
And then for visualization, I use that mostly with athletic stuff. Sometimes if I’m going to get it
on stage for speaking engagement, I’ll visualize how it’s going to go. I’ll run through it visually,
just like I have a VR headset on. I’ll close my eyes. I’m very visual, so I’ll imagine the whole
thing walking out, sitting in the right chair, looking at the audience, how I’m going to hold
the mic, et cetera. And I’ll run through some of that as a rehearsal. Let’s say those are what
come to mind. Yeah, check names. I didn’t realize it. Dinky was check for watches. That’s hilarious.
Yeah, what would this look like if it were easy, Cindy question that I still ask myself all the
time? What do I like to ask my, this is Victoria, ask my fans when I meet them, ask who they would
like to hear on the podcast. If they can only pick one or two guests and they can’t say Elon Musk or
some huge name, no huge names allowed. Who would you like to have on the podcast? That’s a question
I ask. And I actually have had a lot of those answers translate to guests on the podcast. Randy,
if we did a fan meetup, would you endorse it or say it’s okay? I mean, this is where I have to be
careful about taking on too much responsibility with these things. So probably not because if I did
that, then anyone who’s ever hosting a meetup would come to me for the same thing. And it would
just create a huge comms problem for me and my team. So I’d probably need to be hands off
to have a fan meetup. I don’t think you need my permission. You know, if you’re turning into like
some crazy business, then using my name, then it turns into a separate thing. But do I like
electronic music? Yes, I do. I mean, I’m pretty old school. I mean, I listened to Shingo Nakamura
quite a bit for like chill mixes, dead mouse, pretty old school. But I wrote for our body to
a continuous mix like a three hour set of dead mouse. There’s all sorts of stuff. But it’s usually
something that’s going to give me a fair amount of energy. I listen to like lo-fi beats type stuff
when writing sometimes if I need something a little down tempo for God knows where. I listen to a
lot of like heavy heavy metal when I’m writing oddly enough. State story strategy. Yeah, I still
use state story strategy. People can look that up. I got that from Tony Robbins. I would consider
having more comedians on the podcast. But I feel like other people do a better job, honestly.
You know, like Rogan, there’s so many comedy podcasts out there. I want to differentiate myself
in some way that feels authentic to me, category of one kind of stuff. But yes, Austin is now a
Comedy Center. It’s pretty wild. All right, you guys, I think that’s me for now. I’m going to get
outside and shoot some arrows. And I really appreciate everyone’s time. Thank you for the
hosting, first and foremost. So awesome. So fun to see all of these events around the world.
And would love people to stay in touch with anyone they met at those events or look to explore,
explore, see what we can learn from each other, right? It doesn’t have to be limited to anything
I talk about. You know, just find people who have, you know, who are philosophically
values aligned and see what you can learn from each other. Go for some bike rides or something.
It doesn’t have to be coffee and wine. Get out and do something, right? Try something new together.
Anyway, that would be my wish for you all. And I really appreciate everybody being so engaged.
And I hope you have a wonderful week. And to be continued, we’ll do some more meetups.
All right, you guys, thanks, everybody. Bye. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing
before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email
from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and
two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to
share the coolest things I’ve found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It’s
kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading,
albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me
by my friends, including a lot of podcasts, guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my
field. And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again,
it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to
think about. If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser,
tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.
This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform that
powers millions of businesses worldwide, including me, including mine. What business you might ask?
Well, one way I’ve scratched my own itch is by creating cockpunch coffee. It’s a long story.
All proceeds on my end go to my foundation, SciSafe Foundation, fund research for mental
health, et cetera. Anyway, cockpunch coffee, it’s delicious. The first coffee I’ve ever produced
myself, I drink it every morning. Check it out. We use Shopify for the online storefront and my
team raves about how simple and easy it is to use. It has everything we need and nothing we don’t.
Whether you’re a garage entrepreneur or getting ready for your IPO, Shopify is the only tool you
need to start, run and grow your business without the struggle. Shopify puts you in control of every
sales channel. Doesn’t matter if you’re selling satin sheets from Shopify’s in-person POS system
or offering organic olive oil on Shopify’s all-in-one e-commerce platform. However you interact
with your customers, you’re covered. And once you’ve reached your audience, Shopify has the
internet’s best converting checkout to help you turn browsers into buyers. Shopify powers 10%
of all e-commerce in the United States. And Shopify is truly a global force as the e-commerce solution
behind all birds, Rothes, Brooklyn, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across more
than 170 countries. Plus, Shopify’s award-winning help is there to support your success every step
of the way if you have questions. This is Possibility Powered by Shopify. So check it out. Sign up for
a $1 per month trial period at Shopify. That’s S-H-O-P-I-F-Y. Shopify.com/Tim. Go to Shopify.com/Tim
to take your business to the next level today. One more time, all lowercase, Shopify.com/Tim.
About three weeks ago, I found myself between 10 and 12,000 feet going over the continental divide,
carrying tons of weight, doing my best not to chew on my own lungs, and I needed all the help
I could get. And in those circumstances, I relied on momentous products every single day and every
single night. Now, regular listeners probably know I’ve been taking momentous products consistently
and testing them, the entire spectrum of their products, for a long while now. But you may not
know that I recently collaborated with them, one of the sponsors of this episode, to put together
my top picks. And I’m calling it my performance stack. I always aim for a strong body and sharp
mind. Of course, you need both, and neither is possible without quality sleep. So I didn’t want
anything speculative. I wanted things I could depend on, and it is what I use personally. So I
designed my performance stack to check all three boxes. And here it is, creatine for muscular
and cognitive support. The cognitive side is actually very interesting to me these days,
weight protein isolate for muscle mass and recovery, and magnesium three and eight for sleep,
which is really the ideal form of magnesium as far as we know, for sleep. I use all three daily,
and it’s why I feel 100% comfortable recommending it to you, my dear listeners.
Momentus sources create pure creatine from Germany, and their weight isolate is sourced
from European dairy farmers held to incredibly strict standards. And I’ve chatted with the CEO
about their supply chain, about how they manage all of these things. It’s incredibly complex,
and they go way above any industry standards that I’m familiar with, and I am familiar with them.
All momentous products are NSF and informed sports certified, which is professional athlete and
Olympic level testing. So here’s the main point. What’s on the label is exactly what you’re getting.
And this is not true for the vast majority of companies in this industry. So this is a differentiator.
Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think. Visit livemomentus.com/tim and use Tim
at checkout for 20% off of my performance stack. One more time. That’s livemomentus.com/tim. I’ll
spell it out. It’s a long one. Livemomentus.com/tim for 20% off.
Show, where it is usually my job to sit down and interview world-class performers of all different
types, to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply to your own
lives. This time, we have a slightly different format, and I happen to be the guest. Here’s some
context. This past April was the podcast’s 10th anniversary, and the platform River, which I
suggest checking out. It’s very cool. GetRiver.io helped listeners around the world organize, get
together. There’s parties in more than 180 cities, more than 4,000 people RSVP’d, and it was one hell
of an evening, and that evening spanned across the world at different times. I was able to join
about 40 cities via Zoom for quick halos and drinks. So huge thanks to Ray and Anna for the amazing
quarterbacking, and I had a blast also surprise dropping in on the Paris Meetup in person, which
I always like to do if I can, and I need to get out more. Maybe I’ll do more of that. Huge thanks to
everyone who gathered for the wine, the celebration, and most important, meeting like-minded people. A
lot of folks who met for the first time at these Meetups have stayed in touch and are doing amazing
things. So that makes me happy. And after all the parties and as a thank you for their hard work,
I invited all of the hosts to a private Q&A where they could ask me anything,
and that’s what you’re about to hear. It covers a lot of ground, a lot of different subjects.
I had a great time, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. But first, just a few quick words
from our fine podcast sponsors, and only maybe 15%, 20% at most of the people who want to be
sponsors for the show become sponsors because I personally test and vet everything. So with that
said, please enjoy. About three weeks ago, I found myself between 10 and 12,000 feet going over the
continental divide carrying tons of weight, doing my best not to chew on my own lungs, and I needed
all the help I could get. And in those circumstances, I relied on momentous products every single day
and every single night. Now, regular listeners probably know I’ve been taking momentous products
consistently and testing them the entire spectrum of their products for a long while now. But you
may not know that I recently collaborated with them, one of the sponsors of this episode,
to put together my top picks. And I’m calling it my performance stack. I always aim for a strong
body and sharp mind. Of course, you need both and neither is possible without quality sleep.
So I didn’t want anything speculative. I wanted things I could depend on and it is what I use
personally. So I designed my performance stack to check all three boxes. And here it is CreaPure
creatine for muscular and cognitive support. The cognitive side is actually very interesting to
me these days, whey protein isolate for muscle mass and recovery and magnesium three and eight
for sleep, which is really the ideal form of magnesium as far as we know, for sleep. I use
all three daily and it’s why I feel 100% comfortable recommending it to you, my dear listeners.
Momentous sources CreaPure creatine from Germany and their whey isolate is sourced from European
dairy farmers held to incredibly strict standards. And I’ve chatted with the CEO about their supply
chain about how they manage all of these things. It’s incredibly complex. And they go way above
any industry standards that I’m familiar with and I am familiar with them. All momentous products are
NSF and informed sports certified, which is professional athlete and Olympic level testing.
So here’s the main point. What’s on the label is exactly what you’re getting. And this is not
true for the vast majority of companies in this industry. So this is a differentiator.
Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think. Visit livemomentous.com/tim and use Tim at
checkout for 20% off of my performance stack. One more time, that’s livemomentous.com/tim.
I’ll spell it out. It’s a long one. Livemomentous.com/tim for 20% off.
This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is the all in one commerce platform
that powers millions of businesses worldwide, including me, including mine. What business
you might ask? Well, one way I’ve scratched my own itch is by creating cockpunch coffee. It’s a
long story. All proceeds on my end go to my foundation, Saise Foundation to fund research for
mental health, etc. Anyway, cockpunch coffee. It’s delicious. The first coffee I’ve ever
produced myself, I drink it every morning. Check it out. We use Shopify for the online
storefront and my team raves about how simple and easy it is to use. It has everything we need
and nothing we don’t. Whether you’re a garage entrepreneur or getting ready for your IPO,
Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run and grow your business without the struggle.
Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. Doesn’t matter if you’re selling
satin sheets from Shopify’s in-person POS system or offering organic olive oil on Shopify’s
all-in-one e-commerce platform. However, you interact with your customers, you’re covered.
And once you’ve reached your audience, Shopify has the internet’s best converting checkout to
help you turn browsers into buyers. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States.
And Shopify is truly a global force as the e-commerce solution behind Allbirds,
Rothes, Brooklyn, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across more than 170
countries. Plus, Shopify’s award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the
way if you have questions. This is possibility powered by Shopify. So check it out. Sign up for
a $1 per month trial period at Shopify. That’s S-H-O-P-I-F-Y. Shopify.com/Tim. Go to Shopify.com/Tim
to take your business to the next level today. One more time. All lowercase, Shopify.com/Tim.
At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
Can I answer your personal question? No, I would have seen it for a good time.
I’m a cybernetic organism living this year over a metal endoskeleton.
First and foremost, thanks everybody. I really appreciate all the hosting.
And amazing celebrations and goings-on around the world. It was super fun for me to be part of
and to watch and to participate in. So thank you very much for all of that.
And what I thought we would do is bounce back and forth between these questions here.
And I’ll improv jazz as we go through. And I’ll pick some questions. And then we will also do
some live questions. So why don’t we start with some live questions? And then I’ll hop in here
and I’ll answer as many questions as I can that were pre-submitted as well. All right.
RJ from Malaga, Spain. Believe it or not, I have some ancestors from Malaga, Spain.
One of them was killed in a bullfight. So be careful with the bullfights.
All right. Here we go. If you had to pick a topic for your podcast that I’d stick to
from now on, topic or theme would you pick? Probably reinvention of different types.
I think I would focus on people who have reinvented themselves instead of sticking
with the tried and true groove. People who have taken the time or the space or just the attention
to step back and reexamine their assumptions, reexamine the things that have worked up to this
point that may not be those things directly that they want to continue pursuing. So reinvention,
I think. Let’s see. Kate and Cody, how do you think about over-optimization? Today,
many of us have the resources to enable us to spend countless percentage of our life tweaking
and attempting to optimize every little thing. I would say that you want to pick very carefully
what you choose to optimize as a very dear friend of mine. I won’t mention him by name
because you might not like that, but very top 1% of 1% in terms of performer put it to me. He’s
like, “You want to be incredibly excellent, the best you can be in one or two things,
and then for everything else, it’s good enough.” Passing grade for everything else. He walks that
walk and it’s got a great family. He’s a great husband and father. He’s very good at the things
he chooses to optimize and for the rest, he’s not worried. Claudine, what has brought me a ton
of joy or fun recently? Archery. I’ve been doing a lot of archery training. I’m not sure if you
can see my forearms. They are all screwed up. I’m shooting both right and left-handed, but
I find that incredibly joyful and meditative. Joel, hello Joel, our group. It’s so much in
common. It was so fun. Everyone wants to stay connected. They asked if there might be more
opportunities for me to facilitate keeping us connected in the future. Greatest joy that I
got from the parties for the 10th anniversary and so on was how many people came together
with some shared interests or curiosities, at least, who then wanted to hang out after the event.
People who wanted to stay connected, that made me super, super happy. That was really the
not-so-secret agenda all along. That made me really happy and I’d like to explore ways that
I can facilitate that without having to manage it myself. Cindy has a question. “Cockpunch,
update please.” Yes, I have a ton of artwork and a lot of material to share with respect to world
building. Frankly, I’ve let perfection be the enemy of good. I’ve wanted to present all this stuff
in this high production value video with all the bells and whistles and I’ve been sitting on this
stuff for many months now. I think that is my perfectionism getting in the way of simply
sharing these things. I have lots of stuff to share and I need to get on that, I would say,
in the next few weeks. It doesn’t need to be fancy. I feel at this point, expediting is more
important than optimizing delivery. All right, I’m looking for questions that I can answer.
Oh god, worst funniest date I’ve been on. Yeah, we’ll need another
live chat to cover that. Irina, how am I today? I’m doing really well. Beautiful day here. It’s
a little warm. I don’t handle heat terribly well. I’m going to go shoot arrows after this Q&A
and hang out with Molly outside. I’ll have her behind the line of fire. She’s a very good archery
dog in that way. I’m a little tired. I’m not sure why. I might have a fever. I’ve been training
really hard, so who knows? Maybe there was a bug in the food or something. I’ve been very tired
today. It’s unclear why because I got plenty of sleep. That’s how I am today, but happy to be
doing the Q&A. All right, I’ll do a few more and then I’ll hop into the pre-submitted.
All right, this is from Andres. Andy from Buenos Aires. What place does Argentina occupy in my
heart today and why? Why a deep affection for Argentina and the Argyz. I would like to get
back down there, honestly. I recently, for the first time in 20 years, basically went to a tango
festival in Austin. I bought new shoes. I didn’t even have shoes. I haven’t done tango in ages,
and I’ve forgotten 99% of it, which is very painful for me,
but had a blast. Just had so much fun. There’s nothing like it. I think at some point it’s
possible. I’ll go back to Argentina and do three to four weeks full immersion, tons of tango,
lots of steak, and probably lots of Malbec at the same time. I would say I’m very eager to get
down there, revisit it, learn of the current events and leadership in particular in Argentina,
which I find very interesting. And we’ll go from there. What type of business/investment
is the most exciting for me right now? Anything that is aligned, I’d say, and this isn’t an
invitation for pitches, but anything that’s really aligned with the ethos that I might be
looking to incorporate more in my life. So, for instance, Maui Nui-Venison from an ecological
perspective, from a founder perspective, husband and wife team, incredibly high integrity, beautiful
family, beautiful people, and also very good operators. It’s a good business, but it’s also
doing a lot for the native ecosystem in Hawaii. So, that’d be an example of something that I feel
very aligned with, even though it’s not the kind of tech multiples that we would be used to in
potential outcomes. Something I feel very good about, also very involved with quite a bit of
climate work. And let’s just call it technology intended to help with many of the extreme weather
and climate challenges that we’re going to continue to face. Let’s see here. Top three snacks I’m
eating right now. Yeah, I mean, I have Maui Nui right around the corner. So, the Maui Nui-Venison
sticks. And then, often, it’s some type of mixed nuts minus peanuts and, let’s say, cans of lentils.
So, boring, but I find that very helpful. There are a number of questions about AI,
I would say. I largely feel unqualified to have strong opinions about this. But if I invest,
and I’ve invested in one or two AI focused companies, they’re very niche and they have some
type of at least intermediate term defensible mode. A lot of the AI stuff that’s trained on
publicly available data is just going to get cloned as soon as it shows any traction.
And, as some people may have noticed, a lot of stuff that was Web 3, at one point, those people
have now pivoted into AI. And I’m trying to be cautious of anything that is kind of the
investment sector du jour. And they’re still interesting things in Web 3, although I think
blockchain is probably a better way to put it. And there are very interesting things in AI. But
I like to invest in what I know, where I think I have an informational advantage, and I do not
think I have an informational advantage with AI. This is a question on a few different things.
I’ll pick two of these. On modern dating, as a public figure, how do you navigate the complexities
of modern dating? I would say slowly and very carefully, what qualities do I look for in a
partner to ensure a meaningful and sustainable relationship? Well, first and foremost, I would
say the smaller the social media footprint, the more comfortable I am. But it also makes
it very hard to find people if they’re not online, since it’s not like I’m going out to bars and
just doing cold approaches. So I would say discretion, someone who prefers a certain degree
of privacy, those are all indicators for me in the positive direction for trustworthiness.
I recognize a lot of people live online, so that’s just the nature of our current day.
But I look for those things, a demonstrated ability to do hard things over longer periods of time.
I want to know that life isn’t always hard for someone. So if they’re able to focus on, let’s
just say, higher education for four years at a demanding university, that doesn’t automatically
make them a super genius who’s perfect for me, but it shows probably they’re able to focus on
certain things that are challenging for extended periods of time. Same thing if they’ve been at
jobs for at least some jobs for more than one or two years. If it’s constantly lily pad hopping
all over the place, I don’t find that to always mean someone is very resilient when things get
hard and things always get hard at some point. So those are a few and then there’s all the stuff
you could guess, beautiful, feminine, all that stuff. But I would say those are a few, also
someone who has an identity where they feel confident in having done hard things. That’s
the other benefit of, I would say, people who have done something objectively to the extent
that it’s possible, difficult, is they have a certain confidence that helps the whole relationship.
I feel like you need to have a certain identity, confidence in your own abilities and skills and
selfhood, self-authoring before you can really be a good partner. I think that’s the case,
as best I can tell. But I don’t think I’m the last person you would want relationship advice from,
but let’s wait until I have it a little more figured out. On self-experimentation, you’re
known as using yourself as a guinea pig. What are the next five things I’m planning to experiment
with? I’ll probably get back, I don’t do as much crazy experimentation as I used to. I am looking
at some regenerative medicine protocols, possibly for helping inflammation and some of the lower
back stuff, which has greatly improved since I started doing a few things. But the jury is still
out, so I’m not going to get into that yet. I don’t want to make any prescriptive recommendations
until I’ve really tested things. And archery training, a bunch of new types of archery training
that I’m excited to play around with. And beyond that, really a lot of it is just putting in the
work with things that I believe will be high leverage, like working on hips, internal and
external rotation, and a few other things that I think directly contribute to overall core and
low back functionality, for lack of a better way to put it. But nothing crazy, in my opinion.
Some of the medical stuff people might think is crazy, but it’s pretty solid research
that’s backing this stuff, 10 to 20 years of research, so I don’t feel like it’s high risk.
Let’s see, what risks have I taken in the last 10 years that have really paid off?
Are there any that did not pay off? Well, the podcast, we could look at as a risk, but
risk for me is a very specific thing. So when people say this is risky, this isn’t risky,
I think definitions matter a lot. For me, risk is the potential of an irreversible negative outcome.
Very few things fall in that category. So the podcast was very off the beaten path for me,
but I didn’t view it as risky because I could always stop doing it. I could always just hit cancel.
It was low cost to get started. I enjoyed the process. So the outcome wasn’t the only measure
of success for me. And that was quite a divergence that paid off, certainly paid off. I would say
that I’ve made some good investment calls and I’ve made some bad investment calls.
So the good ones, fortunately, more than make up for the bad ones. But with, let’s just say,
Web 3 is an example. I went very heavy and hard into a lot of Web 3 and put money into a bunch
of different funds and various things. Cockpunch as an NFT project was successful. And I set
expectations, I think, properly at the beginning. If you go back and read that FAQ, I’ve delivered
on all of those and I’m going to deliver continually beyond that. I have a lot more to share and
everyone else has run for the, not everyone else, but pretty much everyone else has run for the
hills and they’re like, forget about all that. No, no, forget about all that. Sleep. Sleep.
They don’t want anybody to remember. I don’t mind at all. I took all those proceeds and donated
to the foundation. The foundation, SciSafe Foundation is going to do some amazing work
with the whatever it ended up being, $2 million or something, maybe a little bit more.
So a lot of good will come of that. And it was a huge creative catalyst for me.
And I think that without that, I wouldn’t be working on a new book project right now,
as an example. So it checked all the boxes in terms of its objectives, but as a sector,
I would say, took a lot of huge hits on that one. And you live and learn. I wasn’t playing
with money. I couldn’t afford to lose, but it was enough that it was very painful.
So there’s an experiment that didn’t pan out, but there’s a reason they call them
experiments and not guarantees. You got to choose your bet sizing properly so you don’t
put yourself in a bad situation. All right. So that risks that have paid off. That was from Rebecca.
Andres currently in a moment where I don’t know what to do professionally. If you had those moments,
yeah, right now. I’m not sure what I want to be when I grow up. And some days it’s really stressful,
to be honest, which sounds silly, I know, but it is. I like having a plan. I like executing
to plan. So the book is really the only thing that is in my sights at the moment that looks clear.
Otherwise, what I’m doing my best to do is try a lot of little things, little experiments,
expose myself to new people, have a couple of exploratory conversations a week,
or read things, listen to things I wouldn’t usually read or listen to,
and have confidence because I figured it out multiple times in the past that I will figure
it out again. I don’t need to flog myself unnecessarily. I’ve yet to find that helpful.
So that may not be super tactical at this point, but that’s what I’ve been telling myself on my
good days when I’m not beating the shit out of myself in my own head. David, what is your
current next project that I’m excited about? How are you approaching it differently? So this is,
I’d say, the new book. I’m actually being much more collaborative with this book than I have in
the past. And that’s proving to be a godsend because I have people to bounce things off of
and to interact with. It’s just psychologically, I think, much healthier, at least at this point in
my life than being a lone wolf on these projects. Because lone wolf, it’s not a thing, by the way,
like looking nature. No lone wolf survives. It doesn’t work. So I am using that as a broad way
to experiment. By the way, Cockpunch was a precursor to that because I worked really well
with what you guys will see soon with the concept art and a lot of the collaborative writing that
was done. And it was awesome. It was a great process, really had fun. It wasn’t just locking
myself in a cave like I’m in solitary confinement. And that is what I’m trying to emulate
also in the writing of this new book. So we’ll see. I mean, I have about
400 or 500 pages drafted. So it’s going to be another big one. But you know, that’s what I do.
We experimented with peptides. I experimented with BMP 157 or BPC 157 like 12 years ago.
Long time ago. So I am at a date with peptides, but I did experiment way back in the day.
But I really need to educate myself before I can have any thoughts on that whatsoever. And by the
way, just as a quick aside, with anyone online, if they only have high conviction statements,
if they really speak confidently all the time, be very wary of those people. People who are being
honest should say, I have no fucking idea all the time. Or they should say, you know what,
I’m not really sure I need to educate myself. Everyone online should have that response a lot.
If they don’t, then you’re not going to be able to separate out the real from the fake because
they’re saying everything with the same high level of conviction. Be really careful about that.
Okay. What mindfulness practices do I use to prepare for high stakes presentation or performances?
I would say I don’t let fear make me afraid in the sense that I really remind myself,
if you weren’t nervous, then it would be a bigger problem. It is normal to be nervous before you
go up like my hands are shaking a little bit. I’ve done these things hundreds of times and I
still get nervous. I still get sweaty. I still drink too much Diet Coke or coffee or whatever
beforehand as a ritual, which just makes me more shaky, obviously. And it’s like, it’s okay.
It’s fine. Anyone who’s going out to perform at a high level or attempting to do it at a high level
is going to be nervous. So just use it like Mike Tyson puke before he went on stage while on stage
in the ring. Dean Martin used to puke before he went on stage. I mean, these, these are legends,
right? I’m not saying you want to emulate everything about them, but
these are people who are at the top of their field. So it’s okay for them. It’s okay for you.
So I just remind myself of that. And I will rehearse my ass off. There’s no mental trick you
can do beforehand if you haven’t prepared. And for me, the preparation is the mindfulness practice.
I mean, with my TED talk, like I rehearsed it so many times and the voice memo on my phone walking
around, I mean, hundreds of times. So by the time I got to the day of the presentation,
on the main stage at TED, I was like, well, I’ve put in the time, the deliberate practice. I’ve
done everything I can do. So I’m as prepared as I will ever be. So let it rip. Let’s see what happens.
I’d say that’s the mindfulness practice. I thought about doing content more geared at
kids teens. I thought about it. I’m not sure what the best venue is, but I am going to be doing some
experimentation for students, probably older students though, kind of university or business
school level. What am I looking to get out of the TF meetups and how can we help? You know,
that was a question. So if some folks have asked like what question came up a lot, some of the
questions are just like, hey, how’s it going? Because the interactions are so short. They’re
like, hey, how’s it going? Where are you? Where do you want to go? And then we’d run out of time.
But one of the questions was like, how can we be helpful to you? And my answer
was and is now connect with like-minded people do stuff in real life. And this ties into AI. If you
want to harness your humanity, do stuff in real life like meet people, man, because the poison’s
coming in terms of information deluge, it’s going to 10x in the next 10 to 18 months. And most
minds and habits are not going to be ready for that. I think it’s impossible to be ready. But
to be more resilient, I would just say do more in real life. Connect with
like-minded people. Try to do meetups. You can do Zoom or something like that. If you can’t do
live, but really seek out your tribe. And if those people happen to overlap with the people
who came to the meetups, which was my hope, then great. Like you just connected with a bunch of
people who might be of similar tribe. So I would say, I would say do that.
All right. Well, I plan any in-person conferences. I don’t have any plans right this moment. Joel,
I see your note on IVS. I don’t have a lot of thoughts on IVS. I apologize. I just don’t know
much about it. What you could do, and I don’t know if this will work, but I mean, you could just use
like Metamucilic Citrus cell beforehand. I mean, it does slow gastric emptying,
and it does also reduce glycemic index. So if you’re going to eat a meal, you know,
it’s going to spike your glycemic index. Side note, you can take like five of these capsules
with fiber just to slow things down so that the release isn’t as intense. But I’m not a doctor.
I try not to pretend to be one on the internet, but I really don’t know much about IVS, unfortunately.
But I’m looking at anti-inflammatory protocols that could have an effect on this
type of issue, but I haven’t looked at it well enough. So I don’t want to give you any opinions.
Let’s see. What are some of my heresies? I mean, I think a heresy that I have
I think a lot of what we try to do in modern life is a very new experiment. So I think if we
look back at older societies and they’re not all rose-colored, it’s very seductive to look back
at Indigenous group X, Y, or Z and say, “Oh, you know, they had it all figured out. They were in
tune with nature.” And it’s like, well, if you go back, you also very often even now see domestic
abuse and lots of alcoholism, other issues. So it’s not ever perfect anywhere. But I would say
if we look at what gives people meaning, I think we’ve been led astray with a lot of kind of
brainwashing and theory that doesn’t map very well to anthropological study or really just
common behaviors that you see around the world that seem to have some durability
and Nassim Talib will talk about this a lot. So I would just say broadly thinking that in a
lot of ways, individually, just in terms of like rugged individualism, we’ve gone off track a bit.
And that a lot of the, I’d say, common ways that we plan our careers and lives are actually at odds
with ultimately what’s going to give us fulfillment, I would say. Can unpack that more another time.
All right, let’s see. So a couple of people asking about conferences. Maybe at some point,
I’ll do a conference. It would be quite small. It wouldn’t be more than 200 people. So if I ever
did it, it’s a lot of work, frankly. And when I did it last time, it was basically not for profit
because I spent so much money on the quality of the event. So I don’t know. I’m not sure I have
the energy to do it as a nonprofit. And if it were not to be a nonprofit, it would just be
stupidly expensive. It would be like 30 grand a person or something obscene, which I would feel
kind of silly putting out there. How realistic is it to consider the health span possibility,
RJ, to get to 150 years old and good health? I’m not really sure how to evaluate this,
to be honest. I’m more focused these days on experiential lifespan and trying to harness.
And I’ve spoken about this before, but trying to organize events, gatherings of friends,
in some cases, very intense physical experiences, like long, difficult hikes or
pilgrimage trails with people I really care for, to basically pack a few months into, say, a week
at a time. I think that’s a reliable, actionable way to extend your experiential lifespan,
to feel like you’ve basically packed 150 years into your, let’s say, 85. Most attempts at
extending longevity in any meaningful way have all failed to date. And maybe we are, in fact,
at this cusp of all these amazing discoveries that will lead us to live a really long time.
Maybe that’s rapamycin. Maybe that’s some type of time-restricted feeding. Maybe that is fallastat.
And maybe it’s who the fuck knows. You know, there’s always something. There’s always some new
Ponce de Leon fountain of youth that people have found, especially on the internet.
I’m not super bullish on that stuff. Here’s the thing I would say for myself. They’re likely to
fail. So I would rather have low expectations and be pleasantly surprised later than to take
all these things and suffer what will most definitely be significant side effects that we
haven’t foreseen with a lot of this new stuff. So like fallastat, for instance, we basically cripples
FSH in animal models. So it’s like, do you really want to be infertile? Can you reverse that after
the fact? Like, yeah, great, you have eight pack and you look younger than you did eight weeks ago,
but now your balls don’t work. So I’m not ready to make that trade. You know, maybe after I have
three or four kids, sure. But I would just be very careful with that kind of stuff. So 150,
I mean, if we’re talking about that in the next, basically putting people on a glide path that
will land them there in the next 10 to 15 years, I’m pretty skeptical. I mean, especially with
increases in environmental toxins and other issues that will besiege humanity over the next 10 to
20 years, certainly. I mean, more weather issues, forced migrations, all sorts of shit. I’m not
dystopian about it, but it should tell you something that I’m not about my personal beliefs,
at least that I’m not doing a lot of that stuff. Yeah, I mean, if you account for infant mortality
and antibiotics, and then you look at, say, my entire family history on both sides, it’s like,
yeah, males tend to die around 85. That’s just the way it goes. So I would love to live longer,
but I’m not going to take a lot of unnecessary risks where I see significant potential downside.
So long answer. I’m interested in it, for sure, like I track some of the science.
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All right. Andy Bruce, any tips on walking the Kumano Koto, taking your 11-year-old son with
you? That’s cool. That’s fun. There are a million different ways to walk this pilgrimage trail in
Japan, which is the sister trail of the Camino de Santiago in Europe. Those are the only two world
heritage pilgrimage trails. So there are like a thousand different ways you can do the Kumano Koto.
It’s like a tributaries that then filter down to the main shrine and temple because they basically
took Shinto mapping and then put Buddhism on top of it. I would pick one that crosses rivers and
water if you can. That’s just a really pleasant feature when you’re hauling ass and getting
really sweaty and so on. Bring walking sticks for sure, like poles, especially for the downhill.
You’ll be walking on rock a lot. It’s very hard on the joints, so nice thick heels. Hoka shoes or
something like that. I would suggest you will feel it in your ankles and your knees.
My thought is if you’re going to do something longer, because some people will do a week at a
time or 10 days at a time. You could spend months on the Kumano Koto. Do a little bit less than you
think you can each day. Don’t push it super hard because you may be then handicapped the next day.
If your knee really bothers you, you’re not going to want to put a lot of weight on that for
the next 10 kilometers or 20 kilometers. I’d do a little bit less than you think you can each day.
All right. Something about the tweet. If the kettlebell swings is king of the exercise,
where else can you find the king of x? Could your relationships finance anything?
I think a lot about barbell approaches to life. For instance, high-risk angel investing and then
munibond as boring and as stable as you get. It’s one or the other, high-risk high return with
small amounts of money or very stable, predictable, boring and not playing in the middle. As soon as
you start playing in the middle, you’re like, “I’m going to play with tech growth stocks.” Then
you, at least in my experience, that’s how you get your face ripped off. That’s how I get my face
ripped off. I think about barbell distributions a lot in physical fitness and finance and everywhere.
Aside from Richard Feynman, if I could bring back one person from the Dead for a podcast episode,
who would it be? Man, there’s so many. I’m tempted to say like Marcus Aurelius or something, but
Seneca, who knows? I mean, probably Seneca, because I’ve just read so much of his stuff,
and I’m curious if I would find the guy to be an arrogant prick or what the vibe would be in
person, assuming we’re speaking the same language. I would be super curious about Seneca. He gets very
mixed reviews, but I’m once again listening to an audiobook on anger or on Eda, IRA. His writing
is amazing. The guy’s writing is amazing, but what would he be like in person? Would I be like,
“Oh, yeah, this is the uncle who talks too much. God, this guy’s long-winded.” Maybe. Ben Franklin,
I’d be interested, very interested in. Those are a few that come to mind. I could come up with 100
more for sure, but those are two off the top of my head. Do I have any mentors that I contact
irregularly for life advice? This is from Jeff. I found in midlife that I really missed out on
having fatherly mentors in my 20s and 30s. Yeah, there are. I talked to one this morning. In fact,
he’s early 70s, very healthy, really takes care of himself, great marriage, close to his kids,
and I think he has grandkids now. So we did a check-in for about an hour today, caught up,
and this is a good reminder for me to do that more often. So I do feel good about that. Let’s see.
Paula, this is one of my thoughts on ayahuasca and antidepressants. You’ve been doing ayahuasca
for 13 years, only just started taking antidepressants. I’m not sure if I should mix both. This is
from Brazil. You need to be very, very, very careful. So ayahuasca plus certain antidepressants
like SSRIs can cause a potentially fatal serotonin syndrome. So you need to be very,
very, very careful with that. So I would absolutely speak with doctors about that. I would not mix
them until you get the go-ahead from doctors. I imagine a psychiatrist do prescribe the antidepressants.
I’d be very careful with that. Ayahuasca is one of the riskier compounds, at least of the,
let’s call it, classically known psychedelics with respect to combining with antidepressants.
So I’d be very careful with that. And side note, I learned not too long ago that people who were
taking lithium should really not screw around with psychedelics. A lot of adverse events have been
reported, at least with some of the classical, let’s just call it not entirely tryptamine, but
LSD, psilocybin, etc. So if you’re taking higher doses of lithium, now there are some ways that
could be conflated because if people are taking lithium, what are they taking it for? They might
be taking it for any number of conditions that would be contraindicated with psychedelics in
the first place. So who knows? But I wouldn’t mix lithium with these things either. All right.
How can you incentivize someone to mentor you? I’m not sure how to do that. I think you need to
be a really good student. Number one, you said no money possible. I mean, frankly, I pay for it
a lot. I mean, I have friends who learn from me and I learn from them and they’re older than I am,
and I consider them mentors. But at the end of the day, I actually find it in some ways cleaner
to just pay someone. And if you wanted to get mentorship that isn’t expensive, like maybe you
go to Toastmasters or you join the EO, like Entrepreneurs Organization or YPO. It depends
on what you’re looking for. But like mentors don’t need to be expensive at all. I have a
mentor in archery and he’s also kind of a mental performance coach. Doesn’t need to break the
bank. So I would say you can go to your local YMCA and find a coach in some sport. And if they’re
good at all, at anything, they will have life lessons for you, especially if they’re a bit older.
I would say that’s my advice for the moment. Do I babysit sometimes for some of my friends?
I mean, not really babysit, but like I’ll watch their kids for a little bit or
watch a Disney movie with their kids, like young kids. How did I find it? I think I’m a
kid at heart. So for me, animals and kids are, I don’t want to say easy, but especially if they’re
little, I find them pretty easy. I think when, if I have kids, which is the hope at least,
if they get to the point where they’re like petulant, kind of like mean spirited
kids where they’re just being assholes, I think I’ll have a hard time with that.
I think I will have a hard time once they like know which buttons they’re pushing and they’re
just like drilling it in that I’m going to have trouble with. But like little kids who just like
are dysregulated and lose their shit because they haven’t developed their prefrontal cortex.
Like, yeah, I can deal with that pretty well. Let’s see. My opinion of this is from Judy GLP1
medications. This would be like Munjaro or Ozympic GLP1 agonists. I believe they’re in clinical
trials now for depression/anxiety. Yeah, I haven’t looked at them specifically for that.
Did put up a blog post recently from Johan Hari on GLP1 specifically. So if you want to get some
of the science and also a firsthand report of that, I would just go and Tim dot blog and search
Johan, J-O-H-A-N-N, last name, Hari, H-A-R-I. All right. So this piece of artwork,
you know, people love this. I love it too. I bought this for $80 at an antique warehouse in the middle
of nowhere. I saw it and I just loved it and grabbed it and I love it every time I see it.
Maybe it’s less, $60, $60, $80 at an antique warehouse. Yeah, that’s one of my favorite pieces
of art. That’s a turkey tail below it. There are a lot of turkeys around here. Or not tail,
turkey feather. All right. For agents, book agents and stuff, last time I checked, which was a long
time ago, publishers marketplace is a great place to look. Also, find books that are kind of in the
same category or vein as yours. Look at the acknowledgments and you’ll very often see the
agent there. Then you can reach out to them directly through something like publishers marketplace.
Or these days, a lot of these agents or agencies have their own websites.
Thoughts on how to approach making some great in-person connections. Yeah, I would look at
my talk. I gave it South by Southwest, which had the title, How to Build a World Class Network
in Record Time, something clickbaity like that, but it actually delivers. I would check that out.
All right. This is from Dolan. Dolan, okay. The last set was from Claudine. Thank you for those.
This one’s from Dolan, if I’m pronouncing that correctly. Basically, anything that I would
like to talk about that I haven’t had an opportunity to talk about yet. For instance,
my interests/journey in connecting with animals and nature, maybe some insights from my personal
exploration of psychedelic and non-ordinary states of consciousness over the last 10 years.
So, I have probably a thousand pages and notes on all this. At some point, I feel like that might be
the most important book that I write, but it’s going to be a lot to put it together. In a way,
the book I’m doing now, where I’m collaborating, is sort of a possible warm-up for that, because I
don’t think it’s a book that I would want to do by myself. It would just be such a heavy lift.
Yeah, we’ll see. We shall see. But I think if I talk about that at some huge length,
it’ll probably be in a book. I’d want to think about it, because it’ll get so strange. It will
get so unbelievably strange. Number one, first, all the scientific regulatory on the radar above
the line logistical stuff that I want to handle in the psychedelic therapeutics world, I want
to handle first. Because if I ever write this book, it is going to get so weird that at least 20%
of the people who read it are going to think I’m completely insane. It’ll just be so strange. I
wouldn’t want it to damage my current credibility that I have to get things done in those worlds,
including some of the stuff with animals. If you talk to people who’ve been in this stuff for,
let’s just say, culturally for hundreds or thousands of years, it’s not weird. But to most
folks, it’s going to sound pretty fucking weird, which I get excited about. But I’m going to wait
until I’m like, you know what? I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks, because it’s not going to
interrupt anything else I’m doing. I don’t care. Then maybe that book, but it’s going to be a little
while. All right. This is from Andres. I’ll paraphrase here. Basically, I’m very rational and
methodical about decision making and so on. Rational approach is admirable, but sometimes
being irrational or spontaneous can inject a lot of energy and fun. Have I found space for
rationality to play a role in my life? The irrational and emotional for decisions? And if so,
have they ever led me to alter my well thought out plans for the year? So I would say yes. I don’t
know if irrational would be the word I would use, because you have like, let’s take moral. I don’t
know what the proper word would be here, but you have moral behaviors. You have immoral behaviors.
And let’s just call those non-moral behaviors. Then you have amoral behaviors that are kind of like
in this no man’s land. So I would say if you have like rational, irrational, the opposite,
then there’s like irrational. I don’t think that’s a word, but somewhere in the middle where it’s not
driven by logic, it’s driven more by feeling. I’m doing more and more of that these days,
for sure. I mean, our sort of evolved system here with lots of valuable apparatus for navigating
reality predates language by at least this kind of language by millions of years. So yes, I found
space for that. Although I’d be very careful about, I see this quite a bit in Austin and places like
it where there’s this like neo, new agey stuff where people are like, I’m just using my intuition.
And I think very often that is used by people who just want a justification for doing what they want
to do or doing something that is easier than the hard thing. And they’re like, well, I’m just using
my intuition, right? Intuition is interesting to me when it points you in a direction you didn’t
expect. Let’s just say you go on a date and on paper, they’re perfect. You’re like, I’m going to
love this person. And then you meet them and you’re like, something’s a little weird here. Like,
I want to like them, but this isn’t right. That’s where intuition is valuable. Or like a business
deal. Everything looks perfect. And then there’s something about it, like, oh, my gut just doesn’t
feel right. That’s where intuition is interesting. If you’re like, this all looks perfect on paper.
And you know what, even though all my friends are telling me it’s a terrible investment,
my intuition tells me to do it. Like, that’s where I’d be like, well, wait a minute here,
is this just confirmation bias? What are my thoughts on blogging in the age of AI? I mean,
look, AI is amazing. It’s really incredible. But writing for me is a way of clarifying my
own thinking. And I do think that taking the time to craft words without the assistance of AI is
helpful. I might use AI to get past the blank page. But I think it’s seductive as a drug.
And just like most people can’t tell direction without Google Maps now,
I think it’s very possible, almost inevitable that people will lose certain faculties that
they currently have by overusing AI. So we shall see. But I plan on doing more writing
to the old fashioned way. I have not used binaural beats. I am very interested in that. And actually,
it just reminded me somebody owes me something on binaural beats. So if you have any recommendations
for what types of binaural beats, let me know. Let’s see. For our dog training. Yeah, maybe.
I never say never. Best thousand dollars I spent lately. I mean, it was more than that. But on
the archery training, it’s always something like that. It’s very rarely stuff. I mean,
sometimes it’s stuff like there’s a I bought an extra so write PSO RIT and a mini rumble roller
that I can travel with. And those have been amazing for just like rolling out my glutes and
piriformis and my legs and stuff before bed really helps to sleep a lot. But that’s like,
I don’t know, 100 bucks, 150. I buy very well, I try to buy very little stuff just ends up causing
me more stress as clutter around my house than the value that adds. So I try to get rid of a lot of
stuff. Good question. It was the last thousand dollars worth of clutter that gave me the most
relief when I gave it away. That’s what I should think about. Am I aware of Javier Millay? That’s
how you say his name in Argentina. I am. I’ve actually listened to some of his speeches. Pretty
interesting stuff. I don’t know enough about him, but a number of my friends are big fans. So
need to do more research. Best thing that I spent an ass load on. But the best thing I spent an
ass load on not to get too technical would be family trip. I took my parents and brother and
his wife on a trip around Europe. And that was definitely an ass load of cash. But I think that
was a good investment. I recommend everyone read something called The Tail End by Tim Urban.
That is a good investment of time. It’s very short. All right. Do I like painting,
not sketching as a hobby? I haven’t learned how to paint. I would like to dabble in ideally
watercolor, I think. But do I have any quick tips for getting up to 10 to 20 minutes on the
acupuncture mat? Yeah. That’s for people who are curious. The Nyoya Acu Pressure Mat, I think.
Or other, there are a lot of limitations that I’m sure just as just as good. I don’t go to 20
minutes typically, but like 10 to 15, if I’m going to do it, the first three minutes are going to be
torture. So you just have to get through the first like three to four minutes is my experience.
Otherwise, I don’t have, I don’t have much to tell you. It can be pretty intense.
Thoughts on dating apps. Oh, man. This is like Warren Buffett covering his eyes and pointing
towards Wall Street because half the people are going to have terrible experiences. I don’t know.
To be frank, I mean, I think Hinge has been one of the better options so far. I think that in
terms of just quality, people have to pass some hurdles and add some information. The league is
pretty interesting also because you can search by interest, which is so critical. I don’t know why
you can’t do it on any other app, but you can search for like skiing or whatever to find somebody
with similar interests. But the league is really only effective in certain cities. It’s not used
widely everywhere, but like in a place like New York City or LA or whatever, you could find people
who are pretty well educated, interesting, but a downside is people tend not to use it that
frequently. So you might have a great match and they don’t see your message for six months. So
go figure. It’s jungle out there, folks. Be careful. And there are a lot of people catfishing.
So watch out for that too. Do a video call before you meet up with someone.
What’s my favorite science fiction movie and why? Big fan of the second Dune movie, frankly.
Exbaquina, I remember really enjoying. There are a lot of great science fiction movies. I think
her was fantastic. And you know, at the time, it seemed insane. And it’s basically already there.
If you look at the latest editions of chat, GPT and so on and things like replica with a K replica.
Yeah, her is basically already here. It’s pretty nuts. Give me a second.
Taking a note. Thank you for the binaural thing. Rainwave smart mind. Okay, I’ll check it out.
With questions about cockpunch, it’ll be more interesting once I release the rest
of the stuff or a bunch of it. Then you’ll have a lot more to chew on. And I’ll give you a foreshadowing.
It’s not really foreshadowing. It is a statement that I hope is a statement of fact. And that is
I will have some fanfiction writing competitions, like elimination competitions. And so that will
reward people who really dig into the details. They also have to be decent at writing, of course.
Claudine, have I let the enormity of 10 years of TFS really land? Not just from a metrics POV,
but from a positive kindness, deepening, et cetera, human level. It’s been such a force for good
and lightens world. Thank you, Claudine. That’s very kind of you to say. I would say that I did
when the celebrations were happening, but I could do a better job. I could do a better job
of sitting with that. So thank you for the reminder. It’s easy for me to just move on. Like, yeah,
yeah, good job. But you just did your jobs and don’t get too happy with yourself. And like,
what’s next? What’s next? Right? Like, yeah, you did your job. And that’s fine. But don’t get too
smug about it or self-satisfied. But I find that can be very self-defeating, right? So I did take
time to celebrate for the 10th anniversary. I had a great time. The in-person meetup in Paris was
great. And it was really fun to in-person hear the stories from people who were deeply affected by
the podcast. So thank you for the reminder. I will take a moment today to revisit that. Thank you.
I should travel to meet girls. Well, I mean, why was I in Europe for six to eight weeks?
Who knows? Maybe it was related to that. Is it possible that my mood improved during this Q&A?
Yeah, it’s entirely possible. I was exhausted, guys. I’m not going to lie at the beginning of this.
But I enjoy these interactions. So it is certainly possible that my mood improved as a function of
my energy going up. So thanks for that, everybody. Where do I see myself in 30 years? Good lord. I
don’t know. Hopefully not six feet under. We’ll see. I’ll be 30 years. I’ll be 40. No, 76? 77? Fuck.
So I don’t know. Hopefully I’ll be doing black diamonds skiing because we found the Found of
Youth. Have you suggested workout routines as mags for my parents? If not, what would it potentially
look like? How would you approach it? Yeah, I would say super slow protocol. Look up Ken Hutchins
and the super slow protocol. Yeah, my dad’s lost, I don’t know, 80 pounds. Let’s call it 40 kilos
in the last year. So he’s made a lot of progress. That’s slow carb diet. It’s all straightforward
from for our body. And then super slow as applied. So super slow in the very basic terms is minimum
five seconds up, five seconds down. So if you’re doing a pressing movement, five seconds slow,
right up, five seconds down. One set, one set to concentric failure. Could be even slower,
could be 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down. But especially in elderly, quite effective for building
muscle mass and increasing bone density without injury. So that is probably what I would,
I mean, that’s what I prescribe to my parents. That plus walking to the extent that it’s possible,
right, kind of barbell, once again, with slow carb diet is the glue that holds everything together.
How do I record a podcast while walking? This right here. This is ATH M50X. It’s an audio
technica headset. It has a USB-C attachment like that into your iPhone. And then you can use Riverside
or some other app. There are a lot of different ways to record. All right, let’s see here. This is
from Mariana. Over the years, I’ve followed and learned from you and your guests. I’ve heard you
say several times that I’m interested in parenting. Have you ever considered being a single parent
family by choice? I too, for many years, was trying to find the perfect partner.
So I turned 41 and my doctor told me it was time to unfreeze my eggs since I was still single and
looked for the partner. Decided my best option was to be a single parent. So I got a non-anonymous
donor and had my son when I was 43. I was 6 now. We traveled the world together. Could not be happier
with the drama free life we have. Just wishing to see you fulfill your parenting dream and wondered
if I would consider this option too. Yeah, I would consider it. I would consider it. I think
for a long time it was no, but I would consider it. I would. I mean, of course, ideally I would have
the partner, but I would consider it. Yeah, it’s not off the table, but I’m still fighting the good
fight, getting back into the dating as much as I’m just like, “Fuck, this is a young man’s game,
doing this online dating bullshit.” Frankly, just the communications burden is so much.
Yeah, so anyway, but to answer your question, yeah, it’s on the table for me. Joel, I see yours.
One of my big goals is to create the world’s first coffee mug to sell for more than a million
dollars. I like that. I like that as a goal. I don’t really have a great recommendation for
how to chip away at it. You could look at, from a PR perspective, at least people who have
sold pieces of the Brooklyn Bridge or sold hamburgers that are gold-plated or have
some type of gold on them for $300 at some piece of joint. The reason they’re doing it
is to get attention for everything else. What I would say is you could think about
selling a million-dollar coffee mug and make that your pass/fail, or you could come up with a compelling
argument for why a coffee mug, a particular coffee mug, should sell for a million dollars
and then use that as a PR hook to bring attention to everything else that you’re doing,
which is probably quite a bit easier. But if you do that and someone buys it, great.
Fantastic. You did it. You sold one for a million bucks. Now, that said, if that is the only measure
of pass/fail, then it’s extremely binary. But if you were to use it as a means by which you draw
attention to everything else that you’re doing, then I think it’s pretty interesting. So there you
have it. Have I been to Brazil? Yes, I’ve been to Brazil five or six or seven times, actually,
all over the place. In fact, how big is my staff? Pretty small. A few people, two, three, people,
four? Yeah, something like that. Three or four, I guess, at this point. It’s from Hussain in Toronto.
After the 10th anniversary, I tried to organize a follow-up meeting. However, I had to cancel
due to a little interest. I’ll try again at the end of the summer. Can you think of a cost-effective,
Tim Ferriss way to make attendance at these events irresistible? Well, you might consider,
I’m just making this up so this is on the fly, but you might consider partnering
with another organization like EO or YPO or whoever who might be looking for membership.
And you could say, you know, I’d love to host this type of events for fans of Tim Ferriss or
however you want to phrase it, listeners of the Tim Ferriss show or readers of such and such book.
And perhaps we can do an event where they come for free, get exposed to these following speakers.
I think having speakers would be helpful. So you could try to do that on your own or
you could make it more of an event, some type of activity. So you could do, I don’t know,
Tim Ferriss show paintball extravaganza and get 10 people to go do paintball or something.
Who knows? You have to make it, what are they considering as alternatives? It’s kind of like
with Molly. Let’s just say my dog Molly. I remember at one point I was working with this dog trainer
and she saw me giving kibble to Molly as the treat, just her regular dog food, but in little
pieces and she goes, what is that? I was like, oh, it’s kibble. She’s like, oh, man, she’s like,
you’re not going to train your dog that way. She said, it’s a crowded bar. You got a tip with 20s.
She’s like, you’re giving her bullshit. You have to have really good treats. You have to tip with
20s. It’s a crowded bar, right? To compete with the squirrels and the dogs and the other stuff,
the smells. So I would say those are a few ideas. But if you have small group of friends, you can
just take their temperature with a couple of different options and see how it goes, right?
I mean, those are a few initial thoughts, but maybe helpful, maybe not. All right,
I think those are the only ones that I can really answer well from the pre-submitted questions.
I’m going to take a look at a few things that are left here. Timothy Keane, this is visualization
or affirmations. I haven’t used affirmations much, to be honest. I don’t think. Actually,
that’s not true. With five-minute journal and things like that, kind of these statements like
I am or whatever, I’ll also frequently have something like, you have plenty of time or there’s
plenty of time, right? So that I don’t feel artificially rushed, which never produces great
results or great feelings for that matter. Or something like, frankly, this is true for a
lot of people on this Q&A, right? Like you’ve already won the game. You speak English. You have a
computer. Hopefully, you’re healthy. You’ve already won the game. So just number one, take a breath,
realize there’s no game on some level left to win. You’ve already done it. You’ve already
crossed the finish line, so everything else is gravy. So just take a chill pill and breathe.
And then for visualization, I use that mostly with athletic stuff. Sometimes if I’m going to get it
on stage for speaking engagement, I’ll visualize how it’s going to go. I’ll run through it visually,
just like I have a VR headset on. I’ll close my eyes. I’m very visual, so I’ll imagine the whole
thing walking out, sitting in the right chair, looking at the audience, how I’m going to hold
the mic, et cetera. And I’ll run through some of that as a rehearsal. Let’s say those are what
come to mind. Yeah, check names. I didn’t realize it. Dinky was check for watches. That’s hilarious.
Yeah, what would this look like if it were easy, Cindy question that I still ask myself all the
time? What do I like to ask my, this is Victoria, ask my fans when I meet them, ask who they would
like to hear on the podcast. If they can only pick one or two guests and they can’t say Elon Musk or
some huge name, no huge names allowed. Who would you like to have on the podcast? That’s a question
I ask. And I actually have had a lot of those answers translate to guests on the podcast. Randy,
if we did a fan meetup, would you endorse it or say it’s okay? I mean, this is where I have to be
careful about taking on too much responsibility with these things. So probably not because if I did
that, then anyone who’s ever hosting a meetup would come to me for the same thing. And it would
just create a huge comms problem for me and my team. So I’d probably need to be hands off
to have a fan meetup. I don’t think you need my permission. You know, if you’re turning into like
some crazy business, then using my name, then it turns into a separate thing. But do I like
electronic music? Yes, I do. I mean, I’m pretty old school. I mean, I listened to Shingo Nakamura
quite a bit for like chill mixes, dead mouse, pretty old school. But I wrote for our body to
a continuous mix like a three hour set of dead mouse. There’s all sorts of stuff. But it’s usually
something that’s going to give me a fair amount of energy. I listen to like lo-fi beats type stuff
when writing sometimes if I need something a little down tempo for God knows where. I listen to a
lot of like heavy heavy metal when I’m writing oddly enough. State story strategy. Yeah, I still
use state story strategy. People can look that up. I got that from Tony Robbins. I would consider
having more comedians on the podcast. But I feel like other people do a better job, honestly.
You know, like Rogan, there’s so many comedy podcasts out there. I want to differentiate myself
in some way that feels authentic to me, category of one kind of stuff. But yes, Austin is now a
Comedy Center. It’s pretty wild. All right, you guys, I think that’s me for now. I’m going to get
outside and shoot some arrows. And I really appreciate everyone’s time. Thank you for the
hosting, first and foremost. So awesome. So fun to see all of these events around the world.
And would love people to stay in touch with anyone they met at those events or look to explore,
explore, see what we can learn from each other, right? It doesn’t have to be limited to anything
I talk about. You know, just find people who have, you know, who are philosophically
values aligned and see what you can learn from each other. Go for some bike rides or something.
It doesn’t have to be coffee and wine. Get out and do something, right? Try something new together.
Anyway, that would be my wish for you all. And I really appreciate everybody being so engaged.
And I hope you have a wonderful week. And to be continued, we’ll do some more meetups.
All right, you guys, thanks, everybody. Bye. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing
before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email
from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and
two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to
share the coolest things I’ve found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It’s
kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading,
albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me
by my friends, including a lot of podcasts, guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my
field. And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again,
it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to
think about. If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser,
tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.
This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform that
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About three weeks ago, I found myself between 10 and 12,000 feet going over the continental divide,
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know that I recently collaborated with them, one of the sponsors of this episode, to put together
my top picks. And I’m calling it my performance stack. I always aim for a strong body and sharp
mind. Of course, you need both, and neither is possible without quality sleep. So I didn’t want
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This past April was the podcast’s 10-year anniversary, and the platform River helped listeners organize parties around the world in more than 180 cities! More than 4,000 people RSVP’d. I was able to join about 40 cities via Zoom for quick hellos and drinks (huge thanks to Rae and Ana for the quarterbacking), and I had a blast dropping in on the Paris meetup in person. Thanks to everyone who gathered for wine, celebration, and meeting like-minded people! After all the parties, and as a thank you for their hard work, I invited all of the hosts to a private Q&A. And that’s what you’re about to hear.
This episode is brought to you by:
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Timestamps:
[00:00] Start
[07:08] A focus on reinvention.
[07:43] Optimization.
[08:30] Recent joy.
[09:22] A CØCKPUNCH update.
[10:19] How the day’s going so far.
[10:55] Argentina affection.
[11:51] Intriguing investments.
[12:53] Top three snacks.
[13:12] AI thoughts.
[14:15] Modern dating.
[16:32] Self-experimentation to come.
[17:42] Analyzing the past decade’s risks.
[20:06] Outthinking a career bottleneck.
[21:09] My current big project.
[22:19] Peptides.
[22:37] Be wary of high conviction.
[23:06] Preparation for high-stakes presentations.
[24:42] Kid stuff?
[24:56] Getting the most out of a Tim Ferriss meetup.
[26:13] In-person conferences planned?
[26:18] IBS relief.
[27:03] Personal heresies.
[28:26] What makes conferences worthwhile for me?
[29:00] Longevity and healthspan.
[33:21] Tips for a father-and-son Kumano Kodo walk.
[34:49] A barbell distribution approach to life.
[35:31] Who would I resurrect for a podcast interview?
[36:24] Do I consult any mentors regularly?
[36:54] Ayahuasca and antidepressants.
[38:16] Incentivizing potential mentors.
[39:13] Adventures in babysitting.
[40:04] GLP-1 for depression/anxiety.
[40:37] Cheap but choice art.
[41:05] Finding a book agent.
[41:28] Making positive, in-person connections.
[41:44] Unmentioned things I’d like to talk about.
[43:39] Is there room for the irrational?
[45:59] Blogging in the age of AI.
[46:39] Binaural beats.
[46:56] 4-Hour Dog Training?
[47:00] Best $1,000 spent lately.
[47:55] Javier Milei.
[48:07] Best thing I spent an “assload” on.
[48:34] Painting.
[48:45] 10-20 minutes on the acupuncture mat.
[49:15] Dating apps.
[50:15] Favorite sci-fi movies.
[51:21] Reflecting on the impact this show has had on others.
[52:23] Why was I in Europe for six to eight weeks?
[52:31] The mood-altering effects of Q&A.
[52:48] Where do I see myself in 30 years?
[53:08] Workout routines for older parents.
[54:13] How I walk and talk for podcasts.
[54:33] Would I consider becoming a single parent?
[55:38] A $1 million coffee mug?
[56:52] Brazil.
[56:59] A small but mighty staff.
[57:07] Attracting event attendance.
[59:08] Visualization or affirmations?
[1:00:20] Today I learned this about Hodinkee.
[1:00:26] What would this look like if it were easy?
[1:00:32] What I ask show listeners when I meet them.
[1:00:50] Eschewing endorsement remorse.
[1:01:19] Music I like.
[1:01:52] State, story, strategy.
[1:01:59] The (not-so) funny thing about interviewing comedians.
[1:02:17] Parting thoughts.
*
For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.
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Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.
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