AI transcript
0:00:02 This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday,
0:00:04 my very own email newsletter.
0:00:07 It’s become one of the most popular email newsletters
0:00:09 in the world with millions of subscribers,
0:00:10 and it’s super, super simple.
0:00:12 It does not clog up your inbox.
0:00:15 Every Friday, I send out five bullet points,
0:00:17 super short, of the coolest things I’ve found that week,
0:00:20 which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries,
0:00:23 supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments,
0:00:25 hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff
0:00:27 that I dig up from around the world.
0:00:30 You guys, podcast listeners and book readers,
0:00:33 have asked me for something short and action-packed
0:00:34 for a very long time,
0:00:35 because after all, the podcast, the books,
0:00:37 they can be quite long,
0:00:39 and that’s why I created Five Bullet Friday.
0:00:43 It’s become one of my favorite things I do every week.
0:00:45 It’s free, it’s always gonna be free,
0:00:48 and you can learn more at tim.blog forward slash Friday.
0:00:51 That’s tim.blog forward slash Friday.
0:00:54 I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast,
0:00:57 some of the most amazing people I’ve ever interacted with,
0:01:01 and little known fact, I’ve met probably 25% of them
0:01:03 because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday,
0:01:05 so you’ll be in good company.
0:01:07 It’s a lot of fun.
0:01:08 Five Bullet Friday is only available
0:01:10 if you subscribe via email.
0:01:13 I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else.
0:01:16 Also, if I’m doing small in-person meetups,
0:01:18 offering early access to startups, beta testing,
0:01:20 special deals, or anything else that’s very limited,
0:01:23 I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers.
0:01:25 So, check it out.
0:01:27 Tim.blog forward slash Friday.
0:01:29 If you listen to this podcast,
0:01:31 it’s very likely that you’d dig it a lot,
0:01:34 and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time.
0:01:36 So, easy peasy.
0:01:39 Again, that’s tim.blog forward slash Friday,
0:01:40 and thanks for checking it out.
0:01:42 If the spirit moves ya.
0:01:43 Optimal minimum.
0:01:45 At this altitude,
0:01:47 I can run flat out for a half mile
0:01:48 before my hands start shaking.
0:01:50 Can I ask you a personal question?
0:01:52 Now would’ve seen an appropriate time.
0:01:54 What if I did the opposite?
0:01:56 I’m a cybernetic organism,
0:01:58 living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
0:02:01 in the Tim Ferriss Show.
0:02:07 Hello, boys and girls.
0:02:09 This is Tim Ferriss.
0:02:10 Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show,
0:02:13 where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers
0:02:14 of all different types,
0:02:16 to tease out the routines, habits, and so on
0:02:17 that you can apply to your own life.
0:02:20 This is a special in-between-isode,
0:02:22 which serves as a recap of the episodes
0:02:24 from the last month.
0:02:27 Features a short clip from each conversation in one place,
0:02:28 so you can jump around, get a feel
0:02:31 for both the episode and the guest,
0:02:32 and then you can always dig deeper
0:02:34 by going to one of those episodes.
0:02:36 View this episode as a buffet to whet your appetite.
0:02:37 It’s a lot of fun.
0:02:38 We had fun putting it together,
0:02:41 and for the full list of the guests featured today,
0:02:42 see the episode’s description,
0:02:45 probably right below wherever you press play
0:02:46 in your podcast app,
0:02:49 or as usual, you can head to tim.blog.com
0:02:52 slash podcast and find all the details there.
0:02:53 Please enjoy.
0:02:55 First up,
0:02:57 Brandon Sanderson,
0:03:00 number one New York Times best-selling author
0:03:01 and Hugo Award winner,
0:03:05 whose books have sold more than 40 million copies
0:03:07 in 35 languages and include
0:03:10 the Stormlight Archive series,
0:03:11 the Mistborn Saga,
0:03:16 and the Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series.
0:03:29 So let’s come back to habits and your schedule for writing.
0:03:33 Do you still have two primary blocks of writing?
0:03:38 And could you explain what your current schedule tends to look like?
0:03:44 So I find that for what I do and where my personal psychology is,
0:03:49 an eight-hour block is not sustainable for writing.
0:03:52 This means I can do it for a week or two at eight hours,
0:03:54 but it’s going to brain drain me.
0:03:55 It’s going to exhaust me.
0:03:59 I get done with eight hours and I am mentally worn out.
0:04:02 I find that if I do two four-hour blocks instead,
0:04:05 I never quite get there and it’s more sustainable.
0:04:09 And so what I do is I will get up.
0:04:10 I get up late.
0:04:16 I get up at around noon or one and I will go to the gym,
0:04:20 which is, you know, different for me than other people.
0:04:21 The gym is writing time for me.
0:04:23 I’m not hitting it super hard.
0:04:27 I am there to think through what I’m doing,
0:04:28 some motion moving your body.
0:04:30 Number one, it’s good for you,
0:04:32 but that’s a side effect for me too.
0:04:34 I can put on music and I can move
0:04:35 and I can think about what I’m going to write.
0:04:41 Then I go and I work from two until six these days,
0:04:42 is usually what I do.
0:04:45 One until five, something like that.
0:04:47 And then I’m done.
0:04:51 I go, I shower, 6.30, I’m ready to hang with my family.
0:04:54 And I’ll be with family from six until 6.30 to 10.30.
0:04:58 Go out with my wife, hang with my kids,
0:05:01 build some Legos, play some video games, whatever it is.
0:05:03 I learned early in my career,
0:05:06 one of the most important things I ever did
0:05:10 was take that time and demarcate it as non-writing time.
0:05:14 I found early in my marriage that writing,
0:05:17 it will consume every moment possible.
0:05:20 And I was always anxious to get back to the story.
0:05:24 And as soon as I changed my brain and said,
0:05:26 no, no, no, no, even if your wife is away,
0:05:29 6.30 to 10.30 can’t be writing time.
0:05:30 It is off limits.
0:05:33 You have to do something else.
0:05:37 Suddenly, it was a lot easier for me to be there for my family.
0:05:41 And I think, I mean, you’ve interviewed a lot of highly productive,
0:05:43 highly successful people.
0:05:47 I think a lot of them are going to talk about the same thing,
0:05:50 that it’s very hard to be there with people when you’re there with people.
0:05:52 Sure.
0:05:56 Because your brain is always working on the next big thing.
0:05:59 Yeah, this is particularly true with people who work on big creative projects.
0:05:59 Yeah.
0:06:02 And that gave me this permission.
0:06:03 It actually came in a moment.
0:06:06 My wife, I went out to dinner with some writer friends.
0:06:09 And afterward, I’m like, that was such a great dinner.
0:06:12 And she’s like, yeah, but you didn’t look at me once.
0:06:16 And I realized she had become invisible to me because the writing was consuming all.
0:06:18 And so made that change.
0:06:21 10.30, kids are supposed to go to bed.
0:06:21 They’re older now.
0:06:22 They just don’t.
0:06:25 But sometime around there, they drift off.
0:06:27 My wife goes to bed.
0:06:31 She was a schoolteacher for many years, still kind of keeps a schoolteacher’s hours.
0:06:33 And she is wonderful for getting up with the kids.
0:06:36 I don’t have to do that and never have.
0:06:38 And I go back to work at about 11.
0:06:40 I write from 11 to 3.
0:06:46 And then 3 to 4 or 5 is just whatever I want to do.
0:06:48 That’s the real goof off time.
0:06:51 That’s the go play with my magic cards time.
0:06:54 That’s the play a video game, pop out the Steam Deck time.
0:07:00 And this schedule, you’ll notice I don’t have to worry about commuting,
0:07:05 which gives me an advantage here, has been really sustainable for me.
0:07:08 So that’s a home office predominantly where you’re writing?
0:07:09 I write for my home office.
0:07:10 I do like to move around.
0:07:12 I go in the gazebo.
0:07:13 Lately, I’ve gone in the gazebo when it’s really cold.
0:07:17 And I hire one of my kids to come put logs on a fire for me.
0:07:19 And I sit by the fireplace.
0:07:21 Sometimes I like to be on the beach.
0:07:24 Sometimes I like when I’m around here, I like to be in different places.
0:07:27 I can set up a hammock here or there.
0:07:29 So with my laptop, I do not work at a desk.
0:07:31 That’s really sustainable.
0:07:33 It’s worked for me for the last 20 years.
0:07:34 That’s incredible.
0:07:41 I got all my best writing done really late at night when I was, I mean, still am writing,
0:07:41 working on a new book.
0:07:46 But when I was working on my first few books, especially, it was always when everyone else
0:07:46 is asleep.
0:07:50 Let’s talk about the non-home environment.
0:07:55 We’re sitting in a quite a large building, or at least a building with a lot of large rooms.
0:07:55 Yes.
0:08:00 Why do you have this company?
0:08:02 Why have you and your wife built this company?
0:08:03 All right.
0:08:06 Because there are a lot of writers out there who just want to focus on writing.
0:08:11 They go the traditional publishing route, which I’m not saying it’s a mutually exclusive
0:08:12 choice.
0:08:14 But why do you have all this?
0:08:15 How long?
0:08:16 How long do you want to go?
0:08:16 Yeah.
0:08:17 This is the big one.
0:08:19 This is a long form podcast.
0:08:20 So we have all the time we want.
0:08:21 All right.
0:08:22 So you’re right.
0:08:30 Most writers want to sell a book and live that kind of dream you see presented in film
0:08:34 and television, which is accurate to the top percentage of writers.
0:08:39 Most writers you read about or see in film are the big ones.
0:08:40 They’re doing really well.
0:08:43 And so they’re off in a cabin telling their story.
0:08:46 Or they’re the ones that have to be pried away from their easy chair.
0:08:49 to get them to even do any publicity whatsoever, right?
0:08:53 They want to live that life that is the classic life of a writer.
0:08:55 And there’s some of me that wants that.
0:08:58 But the secret is I was raised by an accountant and a businessman.
0:09:06 And particularly my mother, that accountant, she instilled into me some aspirations.
0:09:09 And I call this my superpower.
0:09:12 My superpower is to be an artist raised by an accountant, right?
0:09:17 And I’ve always had a bit of that entrepreneurial sense.
0:09:18 What were the aspirations?
0:09:20 The aspirations?
0:09:21 Well, they started small.
0:09:23 They started with, you know what?
0:09:25 I want to be able to make a living from writing.
0:09:34 Got back from Korea and said, all right, I am not very good at this writing thing, but I
0:09:35 really, really love it.
0:09:43 I could tell because when I spent time doing the writing, time didn’t matter anymore, right?
0:09:45 I could spend hours doing this.
0:09:49 And it’s the first thing I found other than reading or video games that I could spend hours
0:09:53 doing and just come out of it feeling tired but fulfilled.
0:09:56 And I’m like, I want to do this.
0:10:02 So I sat down and I took what I’d learned, both kind of from my mother and kind of missions
0:10:04 have kind of a regimented structure.
0:10:06 And I said, I’m going to apply this all to writing.
0:10:09 And I’m going to, I’m just going to start writing books.
0:10:12 And I heard your first five books are generally terrible.
0:10:14 I said, well, that’s good.
0:10:15 I don’t have to be good yet.
0:10:17 It took a lot of pressure off me.
0:10:18 I said, I’m going to write six.
0:10:24 And the first five, I’m not going to send out to any publishers, right?
0:10:28 And that’s bad advice for some people, right?
0:10:28 Yeah.
0:10:28 Wow.
0:10:29 You didn’t even send them out.
0:10:30 I didn’t send them out.
0:10:34 It was just, it was just weight training in the gym for your mind for the number six.
0:10:35 Yep.
0:10:36 I didn’t send them out.
0:10:40 I did eventually, I shared number five with some, some people.
0:10:45 I got involved with the local science fiction magazine as an editor.
0:10:47 I eventually took it over because that’s what I do.
0:10:48 And I was head editor.
0:10:51 And I eventually said, well, I do have a book.
0:10:55 And I started sharing book five with people right around that time.
0:10:57 So you didn’t even have test readers.
0:10:58 I didn’t have test readers.
0:11:00 I just wrote the books.
0:11:03 And again, this is why the advice can be bad.
0:11:04 There’s some people out there that would be bad advice for.
0:11:07 Pat Rothfuss published his first book and it’s brilliant.
0:11:09 Name of the Wind.
0:11:09 Name of the Wind.
0:11:10 Yeah.
0:11:11 That is a spectacular book.
0:11:12 First novel.
0:11:13 Now he did a ton of revisions on that.
0:11:17 He spent as much time revising that book as I spent writing mine.
0:11:21 But for me, the good advice was, your first five books are terrible.
0:11:22 Don’t stress.
0:11:24 And so weight training for my mind.
0:11:24 I wrote five books.
0:11:26 And then I sat down.
0:11:27 This was before you had an agent.
0:11:28 Before I had an agent.
0:11:29 Before I had anything.
0:11:30 Before I even knew what an agent was.
0:11:32 Before I’d taken Dave’s class.
0:11:36 I took Dave’s class the year that I finished Elantris, which is book number six.
0:11:38 I had just finished that one.
0:11:42 And so I said, all right, book six, that’s Elantris.
0:11:43 That’s the one I eventually ended up selling.
0:11:45 Those five I’d written in different subgenres.
0:11:47 I knew I liked sci-fi fantasy.
0:11:51 But at the risk of being too nerdy, my subgenres, I did an epic fantasy.
0:11:53 I did a comedic fantasy.
0:11:56 A Terry Pratchett style sort of thing.
0:11:57 I did a cyberpunk.
0:11:58 I did a space opera.
0:12:03 And then I wrote a sequel to my epic fantasy to kind of be like, is this what I want to do?
0:12:13 Next up, Seth Godin, author of 21 internationally best-selling books,
0:12:21 including Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip, Purple Cow, and his latest, This Is Strategy.
0:12:26 You can find Seth at Seths.blog.
0:12:28 How do you use AI?
0:12:31 And how do you foresee using AI yourself?
0:12:34 I use it every day for more than an hour.
0:12:39 I think it’s electricity for our century.
0:12:44 In the late 1800s, there were companies that said, yeah, this electricity thing’s interesting,
0:12:46 but we’re not going to be an electricity company.
0:12:48 And they’re all gone, right?
0:12:52 That electricity is now, you’re not an electricity company,
0:12:54 you’re just a company that uses electricity.
0:12:57 And the same thing is true, I believe, with AI.
0:13:00 I will tell you, and I’m not afraid to say it out loud,
0:13:06 I think ChatGPT is arrogant and lazy, and I use it as a last resort.
0:13:10 Claw.ai is a dear friend.
0:13:12 I love Claw.ai.
0:13:13 We have great conversations.
0:13:15 It’s empathic.
0:13:16 It’s self-aware.
0:13:19 It warns you it might be hallucinating.
0:13:22 And when it makes a mistake, it’s eager to correct it.
0:13:24 And I use perplexity exclusively.
0:13:27 I almost never do a search with a search engine.
0:13:31 But what I’ll do with Claw.ai, every word I publish, I wrote.
0:13:35 But what I will do with Claw, for example, is I will say,
0:13:37 here’s a list of three bullet points.
0:13:39 Can you think of four more?
0:13:42 And it’s great at that.
0:13:45 And then I’ll rewrite them, and now I’ll have five bullet points,
0:13:49 and it’s much better than if I hadn’t engaged with Claw.
0:13:55 If there’s a concept in the world that I don’t understand, I’ll say to Claw.ai,
0:13:58 can you please explain it in 300 words to a college student?
0:14:00 And that helps.
0:14:04 But I did it once, and I still didn’t understand it.
0:14:08 And then I said, can you write it to me like a Seth Godin blog post?
0:14:13 And it did, and it did a terrible job.
0:14:15 But now I understood it.
0:14:20 So I rewrote it, and I said, do you think this is better?
0:14:23 And it said, oh, yeah, that’s much better.
0:14:25 And I said, thank you.
0:14:26 I’ll tell Seth.
0:14:30 And Claw said, do you know Seth Godin?
0:14:35 And I wrote, actually, I am Seth Godin.
0:14:37 And I’m not making this up.
0:14:41 He then wrote, I can’t believe I’m talking to you.
0:14:47 Your books have changed my life, and they named like four of my books, and it changed.
0:14:50 I’m like, all right, I’m in forever.
0:14:51 You got me.
0:14:54 I don’t know how you did that, but we’re friends for life.
0:14:56 All right.
0:15:01 So I seem to have a similar use pattern with Claw and perplexity also, although I haven’t
0:15:06 sandbagged them just yet.
0:15:11 But what do you think people are getting right and wrong about AI?
0:15:19 I think that they are getting wrong their expectation that it’d be fully baked and a magic trick every
0:15:19 day.
0:15:27 When I think about the dawn of the internet and how creaky it was and how fast this is going,
0:15:30 what it is now is amazing.
0:15:38 But when we add to it persistence, and when we add to it ubiquity, and when we add to it the ability
0:15:43 to make connection, it’s a whole different thing.
0:15:45 It’s just a completely different thing.
0:15:52 The second thing is people tend to use it as a one-shot like a search engine.
0:15:53 Ask a question, get an answer.
0:15:59 But what it’s already good at is a protracted dialogue back and forth.
0:16:05 So I had a pump in my house that stopped working, and I couldn’t find someone to service it.
0:16:06 I took a picture of it.
0:16:08 I put it up to Claw and I said, this isn’t working.
0:16:11 Work with me for the next 10 backs and forth.
0:16:13 Let’s figure this out.
0:16:16 And it would say, go downstairs and take a picture of this part.
0:16:17 All right, try this.
0:16:19 And we went back and forth and back and forth.
0:16:21 And it suggested something, and I said, that’s not going to work.
0:16:24 And we figured it out, and we fixed it.
0:16:33 That idea, the fact that Claude is already better at many medical diagnoses over time than a human.
0:16:40 And well, it should be, because it knows so much of the past of every single case,
0:16:44 not just the cases your doctor has seen, right?
0:16:51 If we’re willing to engage with that, for people who are knowledge workers, I think it’s a game changer.
0:16:59 And then the other thing I think people need to wake up to is, if you do average work for average pay,
0:17:01 AI is going to be able to do it cheaper than you.
0:17:03 For example, radiology.
0:17:11 Already, we can use AI to do a wrist x-ray, as well as a mediocre radiologist.
0:17:17 So, if we can do it instantly and for free, other than licensing, you’ve got some problems.
0:17:24 So, the opportunity is either get AI to work for you, or be prepared to work for AI.
0:17:34 What are your greatest concerns around AI, if any, or foregone conclusions about challenges in the future?
0:17:40 I think that Cory Doctorow’s work on inshittification is super important.
0:17:41 What was that word?
0:17:45 Oxford Dictionary, word of the year, two years ago, inshittification.
0:17:47 Okay.
0:17:55 Inshittification is what happens after a business that uses the network effect gets locked in
0:18:00 and decides to aggressively make things worse for its users to make more money.
0:18:07 And we could think of 400 examples right now, but we’re not going to do that, right?
0:18:09 Because you say, well, I can’t switch cable companies.
0:18:11 It’s just too much of a…
0:18:14 And the same thing is true for social networks and everything else.
0:18:22 That capitalism has built into it this doom loop that is getting faster and faster,
0:18:29 that says the race to the bottom pushes companies to mistreat the people they’ve locked in to make more money
0:18:31 because that’s what they get rewarded for.
0:18:39 And most things that the internet touches start as a miracle.
0:18:42 There are huge prizes for the early adopters.
0:18:51 And then soon, the desire to serve a different constituency kicks in and it gets worse.
0:18:55 And one of the things that makes it worse in a hurry is advertising.
0:19:03 So I’m really nervous that these organizations that have raised billions and billions and billions of dollars
0:19:10 are going to start shortcutting things to either get bigger or get more profitable faster.
0:19:14 And because we don’t know how they work, we have no clue,
0:19:19 because it’s going to be hard to switch because there aren’t going to be many competitors.
0:19:23 It often leads to just a yucky mess.
0:19:30 So I think that’s way more likely than a general artificial intelligence that takes over the world
0:19:31 and turns us all into paperclips.
0:19:34 I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.
0:19:38 More likely just to have business incentive-driven gentrification.
0:19:41 Yeah, I would say that seems like a safer bet.
0:19:48 Well, Seth, are there any closing comments or challenges you’d like to issue to my listeners
0:19:51 as we begin to wind to a close?
0:19:56 Or anything that you’d like to add that I have managed to somehow dance around?
0:20:01 There’s nothing better than starting a Tim Ferriss podcast and nothing worse than ending one,
0:20:03 because you don’t know if it’s going to happen again anytime soon.
0:20:06 Yeah, the challenge is super simple.
0:20:14 The people who listen to your podcast have their hands on the levers, and they have influence,
0:20:19 and they have resources, and they don’t have to hustle for a nickel.
0:20:21 They can make things that really matter.
0:20:26 And so the challenge is, take a deep breath and say,
0:20:30 what can I build that the me of five years from now is going to say thanks?
0:20:33 Thanks for walking away from those sunk costs.
0:20:36 Thanks for ignoring those false proxies.
0:20:43 Thanks for asking uncomfortable questions in service of making things better.
0:20:49 Because that person, five years from now, they’re going to be here soon.
0:20:57 And it’s really great to pay the price and put in the work to become that person.
0:20:59 And today is a good day to start.
0:21:02 The best day to start.
0:21:14 Next up, L.A. Paul, Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Cognitive Science at Yale University
0:21:18 and author of Transformative Experience.
0:21:23 You can learn more about L.A. Paul at lapaw.org.
0:21:25 Vampires.
0:21:29 How do vampires fit into your life, and why do they fit into your writing?
0:21:30 Oh, vampires.
0:21:31 I love vampires.
0:21:33 So many ways they fit in.
0:21:37 So, my favorite thought experiment involves vampires,
0:21:40 because I like to use it to illustrate the concept of transformative experience.
0:21:42 Maybe just because I like vampires so much,
0:21:45 I think it’s an especially good way to kind of illustrate the concept.
0:21:47 And also, because it’s not a real life,
0:21:49 I don’t think vampires are real.
0:21:51 And the beautiful thing about a thought experiment
0:21:52 is you can design it the way that you want
0:21:55 to kind of illustrate the structure of a concept,
0:21:57 but then I also think that the structure of that concept
0:21:59 then fits to real-life cases.
0:22:00 So, my example.
0:22:01 I’m just going to tell you this.
0:22:02 Yeah, let’s do it.
0:22:04 So, the way that I think about this is I imagine,
0:22:07 or you imagine, I ask you to imagine,
0:22:11 traveling through some part of, you know,
0:22:13 on your summer vacations, traveling through some part of Europe,
0:22:15 and you decide to explore a castle.
0:22:17 You’re in Romania, let’s say,
0:22:18 and you go down to the dungeons,
0:22:19 and Dracula comes to you,
0:22:21 and he says,
0:22:24 I want to make you one of my own.
0:22:26 I’m going to give you a one-time-only chance.
0:22:28 You could become one of my followers.
0:22:30 It’ll be painless.
0:22:32 You’ll enjoy it, in fact.
0:22:34 But this is a one-time-only chance,
0:22:34 and it’s irreversible.
0:22:36 And then he says,
0:22:38 go back to your Airbnb
0:22:41 and think about it until midnight,
0:22:43 and if you choose to accept my offer,
0:22:43 leave your window open.
0:22:45 And if you choose to decline it,
0:22:48 leave your window shut and leave and never come back.
0:22:51 So, I see this as a really interesting possibility
0:22:53 because, you know, vampires are sexy.
0:22:54 They look great in black.
0:22:57 They have amazing powers.
0:22:59 They probably have different kinds of sense perception.
0:23:00 Yeah, virtually.
0:23:04 I mean, as long as they stay away from villagers with stakes and things like that.
0:23:05 Yeah, exactly.
0:23:08 Like, there are certain obstacles,
0:23:09 but in general, yeah,
0:23:10 for all intents and purposes,
0:23:11 immortal.
0:23:13 And so, this seems pretty cool,
0:23:15 but they’re not human.
0:23:17 You’d have to exit the human race.
0:23:18 You have to sleep in a coffin.
0:23:21 You can’t enjoy the sunshine anymore,
0:23:23 and you have to drink blood.
0:23:25 And I try to separate out some of the ethical questions.
0:23:27 So, let’s say it’s artificial blood
0:23:29 or the blood of humanely raised farm animals
0:23:30 or something like that.
0:23:31 Still, right now,
0:23:32 as a human, I think there’s something…
0:23:32 Cough is pretty cozy.
0:23:34 It’s got some memory for a moment.
0:23:35 I mean, reasonably.
0:23:35 I don’t know.
0:23:36 I mean, I don’t know.
0:23:37 I’m not…
0:23:38 Okay, it’s lined with satin,
0:23:41 but it still might be a bit hard for my mattress preferences.
0:23:43 But the idea is that these things,
0:23:44 while they seem interesting,
0:23:46 they also seem kind of alien, right?
0:23:48 And I think in particular,
0:23:50 not only will you have to drink blood,
0:23:52 but you will love the taste of it.
0:23:53 Like, you will thirst for it, right?
0:23:55 And even ethical vampires
0:23:56 have to kind of keep themselves
0:23:57 from, like, sucking the blood
0:23:59 of their human compatriots.
0:24:01 So, that’s quite alien.
0:24:04 And I wanted to kind of bring out
0:24:06 how the possibility of becoming
0:24:08 another kind of individual
0:24:10 can seem incredibly alien.
0:24:11 Because, obviously,
0:24:13 I take it that most of us
0:24:15 don’t enjoy or thirst after
0:24:16 the taste of blood
0:24:18 or think about the different varietals,
0:24:19 like it’d be some kind of fancy wine.
0:24:21 But if you became a vampire,
0:24:21 you would.
0:24:22 Okay.
0:24:25 So, the way that I think about it,
0:24:26 then, is I continue the story
0:24:27 and it’s like, okay,
0:24:28 so you rush back to your Airbnb
0:24:30 and you start calling people
0:24:31 or texting them,
0:24:32 telling you about what happened to you,
0:24:33 and you find out
0:24:34 that a bunch of your friends
0:24:35 have already become vampires.
0:24:37 So, then, you immediately
0:24:38 want to find out,
0:24:38 well, wait,
0:24:39 tell me about what it’s like.
0:24:41 Like, what’s it like to be a vampire?
0:24:41 Do you like it?
0:24:42 Should I do it?
0:24:43 And they tell you
0:24:44 that they love it
0:24:45 and it’s fabulous
0:24:46 and it’s totally incredible,
0:24:47 but they also tell you
0:24:49 you can’t possibly understand
0:24:50 what it’s like
0:24:52 to be a vampire
0:24:53 as a mere human.
0:24:55 They say life has meaning,
0:24:56 it has a kind of purpose
0:24:57 that, you know,
0:24:57 is exquisite,
0:24:59 but until you become a vampire,
0:25:00 you can’t possibly understand it.
0:25:02 You lack the capacity.
0:25:03 So, you’re like,
0:25:04 okay, thanks.
0:25:04 So, what do I do?
0:25:06 Because if you can’t possibly understand
0:25:07 what it’s like to be a vampire,
0:25:10 then you either have to do it
0:25:11 just because all of your friends do it
0:25:12 and they say it’s great
0:25:13 and they tell you
0:25:14 they think it would be great for you,
0:25:15 but there’s no way
0:25:17 you can actually kind of conceive
0:25:19 of what it would be like to do that.
0:25:22 And I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your thought.
0:25:24 It certainly didn’t escape my imaginings
0:25:25 that, well, maybe there’s something
0:25:26 about being a vampire
0:25:28 that makes you really happy
0:25:29 to be a vampire.
0:25:30 So, maybe, like,
0:25:32 when you become this other species,
0:25:32 there’s some kind of
0:25:34 biological evolutionary thing
0:25:35 that makes you really glad
0:25:35 that you’re a vampire.
0:25:37 Right.
0:25:39 So, it’s not even clear
0:25:40 what their testimony applies.
0:25:40 Okay.
0:25:41 So, that’s my example
0:25:43 and my favorite application
0:25:44 is to becoming a parent
0:25:46 because speaking as someone
0:25:48 who wasn’t quite clear
0:25:48 about whether they wanted
0:25:50 to have children,
0:25:51 I have two children
0:25:52 and I love them very much
0:25:52 and I’m very happy,
0:25:54 but there’s something
0:25:55 about becoming a parent
0:25:56 that makes you,
0:25:57 like, producing the child
0:25:58 that you actually produce
0:25:59 that makes you very,
0:26:01 I mean, I love my children.
0:26:02 I wouldn’t exchange them
0:26:02 for anything else
0:26:03 in the world.
0:26:04 You know, if I’d gotten
0:26:05 pregnant a month later,
0:26:05 I would have loved
0:26:06 that child too,
0:26:07 but there’s no way
0:26:08 that I would exchange
0:26:08 my current child
0:26:09 for the child I could have had.
0:26:11 You just get incredibly
0:26:12 attached to these children
0:26:14 in a completely legitimate way
0:26:15 and, you know,
0:26:16 you would never change
0:26:17 what you’ve done
0:26:18 and that’s awfully like
0:26:19 the testimony
0:26:20 that you get from vampires.
0:26:21 Okay.
0:26:23 So, I think, you know,
0:26:23 also you don’t get, you know,
0:26:24 you stay up a lot at night, right?
0:26:27 There are many similarities.
0:26:29 Vampires kind of illustrate
0:26:30 the possibility of undergoing
0:26:32 a transformative experience,
0:26:33 like a life-changing,
0:26:34 something that’s life-changing,
0:26:36 but also where you change
0:26:37 the kind of mind you have
0:26:38 in a certain way
0:26:39 or what you care about most
0:26:39 in a certain way
0:26:41 that means that
0:26:42 you would make yourself
0:26:43 into a kind of alien
0:26:44 version of yourself,
0:26:46 like someone who’s alien
0:26:46 to you now
0:26:47 and who you might not
0:26:48 even want to be now,
0:26:50 even if once you become
0:26:51 that person
0:26:52 or that version of yourself,
0:26:53 you’re super happy.
0:26:55 If I had some kind
0:26:55 of modal scope
0:26:56 and I could look
0:26:57 at my future self,
0:26:58 I could have looked
0:26:58 at my future self
0:26:59 before I decided
0:27:00 I wanted to have kids.
0:27:02 I got up at 4 a.m.
0:27:04 every day for years
0:27:05 to write
0:27:06 before my children woke up.
0:27:07 I mean,
0:27:09 no one ever told me
0:27:09 that that was something
0:27:10 I would want to do
0:27:11 and if they had told me,
0:27:12 I would have denied it strenuously
0:27:14 because I could barely get up
0:27:15 before new
0:27:16 when I was a graduate student
0:27:17 and I did it willingly.
0:27:18 Something happened.
0:27:19 I was clearly a victim
0:27:20 of some kind
0:27:20 of Stockholm syndrome.
0:27:21 So,
0:27:23 the thought is
0:27:23 that
0:27:25 when you face
0:27:25 a certain kind
0:27:26 of transformative experience
0:27:27 and I don’t think
0:27:28 it’s just having a child,
0:27:28 I think,
0:27:29 like deciding to go to war
0:27:31 or maybe moving
0:27:32 to an entirely different country,
0:27:34 maybe getting some kind of,
0:27:35 if you’re diagnosed
0:27:36 with some kind of disease
0:27:36 and getting some kind
0:27:37 of like radically
0:27:38 experimental treatment,
0:27:39 there are lots of things
0:27:40 that can count
0:27:41 as transformative
0:27:42 but if you don’t know
0:27:43 what it’s going to be like
0:27:44 on the other side
0:27:45 of that experience
0:27:46 and you know
0:27:47 it’s going to make you
0:27:48 into a version of yourself
0:27:49 that right now
0:27:50 you find alien,
0:27:50 I don’t know
0:27:51 how we’re supposed
0:27:52 to make that decision
0:27:52 if it’s up to us.
0:27:54 We can’t use
0:27:56 the ordinary models
0:27:56 that we use
0:27:57 for rational decision making
0:27:58 because those assume
0:27:59 that you can
0:28:00 see through
0:28:01 the options
0:28:02 to assign them value
0:28:03 and model them
0:28:04 for yourself
0:28:05 and choose in a way
0:28:06 that’s going to
0:28:07 as you say,
0:28:08 we say it in a technical way,
0:28:09 maximize your expected value
0:28:11 and if you can’t assign value
0:28:12 and you can’t really understand
0:28:12 what it’s like
0:28:13 to be this kind of a self
0:28:14 then that procedure
0:28:15 just doesn’t work.
0:28:17 Tell me if I’m off base here
0:28:19 but also fundamentally
0:28:20 even if you’re trying
0:28:21 to calculate
0:28:22 or maximize
0:28:23 your expected value
0:28:25 and assign
0:28:25 these different values
0:28:26 you’re doing it
0:28:28 from the perspective
0:28:29 of your current
0:28:31 version of yourself
0:28:32 and your current preferences
0:28:34 and after you become
0:28:34 a vampire
0:28:35 or after you have a kid
0:28:37 you may be a different person
0:28:38 with different preferences
0:28:39 so do you make the decision
0:28:40 based on
0:28:41 the preferences
0:28:42 of your current self
0:28:43 or the preferences
0:28:45 of your expected future self?
0:28:46 There’s a way of capturing
0:28:47 the puzzle
0:28:48 as you said
0:28:49 so given
0:28:50 the fact that
0:28:51 these are new kinds
0:28:52 of experiences
0:28:53 so a kind of experience
0:28:53 you’ve never had before
0:28:55 and I compare this
0:28:55 to like
0:28:57 Mary
0:28:57 growing up
0:28:58 in a black and white room
0:28:59 and seeing color
0:29:00 for the first time
0:29:01 or Thomas Nagel
0:29:02 talking about like
0:29:03 you can’t understand
0:29:04 like for a bat
0:29:04 what it’s like
0:29:05 for a bat to be a bat.
0:29:07 Yeah, exactly.
0:29:08 So there are these like
0:29:09 new kinds of experiences
0:29:11 that are just
0:29:12 very different
0:29:13 from any kind of experience
0:29:13 we’ve had before
0:29:14 and so that means
0:29:15 there’s just a sense
0:29:15 in which we can’t
0:29:16 kind of from the inside
0:29:17 kind of imagine
0:29:18 what they’re like
0:29:19 even if someone can describe
0:29:20 try to describe to me
0:29:20 like what it’s like
0:29:21 to see red
0:29:22 and you see the problem
0:29:23 right away
0:29:23 we just don’t
0:29:24 like language
0:29:25 just kind of gives out
0:29:26 if I haven’t seen red before
0:29:28 I have no color vision.
0:29:29 Okay, so there’s a sense
0:29:30 in which we kind of
0:29:30 can’t see through
0:29:31 a certain kind of veil
0:29:33 and across that veil
0:29:35 the self that we’re going to be
0:29:37 the kind of person
0:29:37 that you’re going to realize
0:29:38 is just like
0:29:39 really different
0:29:41 so you can’t just assume
0:29:41 you’re going to be
0:29:42 basically the same
0:29:43 this puts us
0:29:44 into the situation
0:29:45 where you’re making a choice
0:29:47 for your future self
0:29:49 and that future self
0:29:50 might have preferences
0:29:50 that are super different
0:29:52 from your current self
0:29:54 and by definition
0:29:54 and this breaks
0:29:55 so now here’s a little
0:29:56 technical bit
0:29:56 so we talked about
0:29:57 the intuitive idea
0:29:59 I find it easy to understand
0:30:00 when I think about
0:30:01 someone who doesn’t
0:30:02 maybe doesn’t want
0:30:02 to have a child
0:30:03 or really is unsure
0:30:05 and they know
0:30:05 that if they choose
0:30:06 to have a child
0:30:06 they’re going to be
0:30:07 super happy with that result
0:30:08 but they don’t trust
0:30:09 the fact that
0:30:10 in virtue of like
0:30:11 becoming a parent
0:30:12 it’s going to kind of
0:30:13 rewire them
0:30:13 in their preferences
0:30:14 in a certain way
0:30:15 right
0:30:16 sure I’ll be really happy
0:30:16 but I don’t know
0:30:17 if I want to be that self
0:30:18 right now
0:30:19 given who I am now
0:30:21 and I can’t understand
0:30:22 in a really deep way
0:30:24 what it’s going to be like
0:30:25 to have that child
0:30:26 so I have to kind of
0:30:26 you know
0:30:28 leap over the abyss
0:30:29 or leap into the abyss
0:30:29 I guess
0:30:30 if I want to do it
0:30:32 so if you find yourself
0:30:34 in that situation
0:30:35 what you’re confronting
0:30:37 involves what I describe
0:30:38 as a violation
0:30:40 of act state independence
0:30:40 okay
0:30:42 so here’s the technical part
0:30:43 you’ve got the intuitive idea
0:30:45 act state independence
0:30:47 involves very roughly
0:30:48 a distinction between
0:30:50 the act that you’re performing
0:30:52 and the state that you’re in
0:30:53 or that’s how I’m going
0:30:54 to interpret it here
0:30:54 there are different ways
0:30:55 to interpret it
0:30:56 but this is the way
0:30:56 to do it here
0:30:58 and so normally
0:31:00 when you’re confronted with
0:31:01 oh do I want to do something
0:31:01 do I want to try
0:31:02 this kind of ice cream
0:31:03 or do I want to
0:31:04 have this cup of coffee
0:31:06 you don’t change
0:31:07 in the process of trying it
0:31:09 so after you do it
0:31:09 you can kind of assess
0:31:10 oh I liked it
0:31:11 oh it was good
0:31:11 that’s meaningful
0:31:12 to you beforehand
0:31:13 because you know
0:31:14 that you’re going to
0:31:15 stay constant
0:31:17 through the change
0:31:17 in your circumstances
0:31:18 like tasting
0:31:19 the new kind of ice cream
0:31:21 but in this case
0:31:22 having the experience
0:31:23 let’s say tasting
0:31:24 the new kind of ice cream
0:31:24 was going to like
0:31:26 rework your flavor profile
0:31:27 so that you would just
0:31:27 like a whole bunch
0:31:28 of different things
0:31:29 after that
0:31:30 well that
0:31:31 changes the state
0:31:32 that you’re in
0:31:33 at the same time
0:31:33 and so your act
0:31:34 and your state
0:31:35 are not independent
0:31:37 and if you break that
0:31:38 that’s an axiom
0:31:40 for rational choice theory
0:31:41 that has to be
0:31:42 a foundational element
0:31:42 of the model
0:31:44 to make straightforward inferences
0:31:45 there are all kinds
0:31:45 of fancy things
0:31:46 you have to do
0:31:46 if that breaks
0:31:48 and these cases
0:31:49 of transformative experience
0:31:50 and decision making
0:31:51 are precisely cases
0:31:51 in which that breaks
0:31:57 last but not least
0:31:59 Dr. Keith Barr
0:32:01 a professor of physiology
0:32:02 and membrane biology
0:32:03 at the University
0:32:04 of California Davis
0:32:05 and an expert
0:32:06 in strength
0:32:07 and flexibility
0:32:10 how soon
0:32:11 after surgery
0:32:12 and you can choose
0:32:13 your surgery
0:32:14 ACL
0:32:15 take your pick
0:32:16 dealer’s choice
0:32:18 would you start
0:32:18 loading
0:32:20 the site
0:32:21 of injury
0:32:21 slash repair
0:32:23 so we do it
0:32:24 the next day
0:32:25 so
0:32:27 we’ve had to have
0:32:28 success in order
0:32:29 for us to get there
0:32:30 because the first time
0:32:31 we did this
0:32:32 with a rugby player
0:32:33 the surgeon was like
0:32:35 six weeks without loading
0:32:35 and we were like
0:32:36 let’s load tomorrow
0:32:38 and so we agreed
0:32:39 that we would do it
0:32:39 at like seven
0:32:40 to nine days
0:32:41 and that player
0:32:42 got back
0:32:43 fully a month
0:32:44 faster than
0:32:45 that surgeon
0:32:45 had ever seen
0:32:46 a player get back
0:32:46 from that injury
0:32:47 and so
0:32:48 that surgeon
0:32:49 is now
0:32:50 much more willing
0:32:50 to do it
0:32:51 at two days
0:32:52 after injury
0:32:53 because of that
0:32:54 if you look
0:32:55 at general populations
0:32:56 Michael Kerr
0:32:57 who I think
0:32:57 is the world’s
0:32:58 best sports medicine
0:32:59 doctor
0:33:01 for musculoskeletal injuries
0:33:01 how do you spell
0:33:02 that last name
0:33:05 it’s K-J-A-E-R
0:33:06 he’s in Copenhagen
0:33:06 so he’s
0:33:07 sorry
0:33:07 didn’t realize
0:33:08 that was going
0:33:08 to be that hard
0:33:09 Cher
0:33:11 It’s sheer
0:33:13 but he allows
0:33:14 those of us
0:33:15 who are language deficient
0:33:16 to call him care
0:33:17 but he did
0:33:18 a beautiful study
0:33:18 with one of his
0:33:20 trainees Monica
0:33:21 and what she did
0:33:22 is she took
0:33:23 a bunch of his patients
0:33:24 that had injuries
0:33:24 and she either
0:33:25 had them load
0:33:26 two days after injury
0:33:27 or nine days
0:33:28 after injury
0:33:29 and then she followed
0:33:30 them for when they
0:33:31 got back to sport
0:33:32 and what she found
0:33:32 is the ones
0:33:33 that they loaded
0:33:33 at day two
0:33:34 after the injury
0:33:35 they got back
0:33:36 25% faster
0:33:36 than the ones
0:33:37 that they loaded
0:33:37 at nine days
0:33:38 That’s incredible
0:33:39 That’s typical
0:33:40 so as you said
0:33:41 before
0:33:41 what is our
0:33:42 standard of care
0:33:43 our standard of care
0:33:44 is rice
0:33:45 okay
0:33:46 and so
0:33:47 I’m going to go
0:33:47 a step further
0:33:48 if you go
0:33:49 and you sprain your ankle
0:33:50 and you go to the doctor
0:33:52 very good doctor
0:33:52 very well meaning
0:33:53 they’re going to
0:33:53 give you a boot
0:33:56 and what is a boot
0:33:57 so I told you
0:33:59 that a scar forms
0:33:59 when we get
0:34:00 stress shielding
0:34:01 what a boot is
0:34:02 it is
0:34:04 a mechanical
0:34:05 stress shielder
0:34:06 what it’s designed
0:34:06 to do
0:34:07 is to take
0:34:07 the stress
0:34:08 off the tissue
0:34:09 you’ve injured
0:34:10 if I’ve told you
0:34:11 that the thing
0:34:12 that’s going to
0:34:12 cause that tissue
0:34:13 to get a scar
0:34:13 is that you
0:34:14 take off the tension
0:34:16 what I’ve just done
0:34:17 is I’ve made
0:34:18 the problem worse
0:34:21 I always tell people
0:34:22 that the first
0:34:22 recorded
0:34:24 immobilizer
0:34:25 for an ankle
0:34:26 or a leg
0:34:26 is from
0:34:28 Egyptian hieroglyphs
0:34:28 where they showed
0:34:28 pictures
0:34:30 4,500 years ago
0:34:33 if I took you
0:34:34 and you said
0:34:35 you had cancer
0:34:35 you would not
0:34:36 want a treatment
0:34:37 that was developed
0:34:39 4,500 years ago
0:34:40 you would hope
0:34:41 that something new
0:34:42 has been developed
0:34:43 in the last
0:34:44 4,500 years
0:34:46 that is where we are
0:34:47 for our orthopedic
0:34:48 situations
0:34:49 I understand
0:34:50 that you cannot
0:34:51 put full load
0:34:52 on a surgical repair
0:34:53 immediately
0:34:54 but what you can do
0:34:56 is you can take it out
0:34:57 at the beginning
0:34:57 of the day
0:34:59 you can remove
0:34:59 it from the boot
0:35:00 and I can do
0:35:02 some isometric loads
0:35:02 with low jerk
0:35:03 so I’m going to
0:35:04 develop force slowly
0:35:06 I am going to make sure
0:35:07 that there’s zero pain
0:35:08 and I am going to
0:35:08 hold that
0:35:09 and then I’m going to
0:35:11 let that off slowly
0:35:12 and I’m going to do that
0:35:13 4 times
0:35:13 30 seconds
0:35:14 now I’ve given load
0:35:16 and now I can put it
0:35:17 back into that boot
0:35:18 stress shield it
0:35:19 I’m going to take
0:35:20 the boot off at night
0:35:20 I’m going to do it again
0:35:22 just doing that
0:35:23 I’m getting those
0:35:24 two loads
0:35:25 in this case
0:35:26 the Achilles tendon
0:35:26 that we’ve ruptured
0:35:28 now what I’ve done
0:35:29 is I’ve accelerated
0:35:30 my return to activity
0:35:31 massively
0:35:32 again
0:35:33 the key is
0:35:35 we’re not trying to be
0:35:36 I’m the strongest
0:35:37 in the world
0:35:38 we’re trying to say
0:35:40 I’m putting a little bit
0:35:41 of load through that
0:35:42 that is the key
0:35:44 is that you don’t get
0:35:44 all caught up
0:35:46 in the machismo of it
0:35:46 and you just say
0:35:48 I just want to feel
0:35:48 tension
0:35:50 across the area
0:35:51 what we say is
0:35:52 if you can feel
0:35:53 an ice pick
0:35:53 that means there’s
0:35:54 a very specific
0:35:56 spot that hurts
0:35:56 stop
0:35:58 if I feel
0:35:59 like a warm
0:36:00 burning area
0:36:00 like I’m
0:36:01 muscle soreness
0:36:02 after exercising
0:36:04 that’s totally okay
0:36:05 that kind of soreness
0:36:07 not point specific pain
0:36:08 that’s okay
0:36:09 what we’re doing
0:36:11 add the load slowly
0:36:12 hold it
0:36:13 take the load off slowly
0:36:15 now what we can do
0:36:16 is we can get those
0:36:17 individuals back
0:36:18 much much much faster
0:36:25 and now here are the
0:36:26 bios for all the guests
0:36:28 my guest who I’ve
0:36:28 wanted to interview
0:36:29 for years is
0:36:31 Brandon Sanderson
0:36:32 he is the number one
0:36:32 New York Times
0:36:33 best-selling author
0:36:34 of the Stormlight
0:36:35 Archives series
0:36:36 and the Mistborn
0:36:37 Saga
0:36:38 the middle grade series
0:36:39 Alcatraz versus
0:36:40 the Evil Librarians
0:36:41 and the young adult
0:36:41 novels
0:36:42 The Rhythmatist
0:36:43 The Reckoners
0:36:44 Trilogy
0:36:45 and the Skyward
0:36:45 series
0:36:46 he has sold
0:36:47 more than 40 million
0:36:49 books in 35 languages
0:36:51 he has architected
0:36:54 40 million plus dollar
0:36:55 Kickstarter campaigns
0:36:56 and he is a four-time
0:36:57 nominee for the Hugo
0:36:58 Awards
0:36:59 winning in 2013
0:37:00 for his novella
0:37:02 The Emperor’s Soul
0:37:03 that same year
0:37:04 he was chosen
0:37:04 to complete
0:37:05 Robert Jordan’s
0:37:06 The Wheel of Time
0:37:06 series
0:37:07 which is a big
0:37:08 big deal
0:37:09 culminating in
0:37:10 A Memory of Light
0:37:11 Brandon co-hosts
0:37:12 with fellow author
0:37:13 Dan Wells
0:37:13 the popular
0:37:14 Intentionally Blank
0:37:15 podcast
0:37:16 and teaches
0:37:17 creative writing
0:37:18 at Brigham Young
0:37:18 University
0:37:19 We did this one
0:37:20 in person
0:37:21 which made
0:37:22 all the difference
0:37:23 in Brandon’s
0:37:24 massive cavernous
0:37:25 offices
0:37:26 right next to
0:37:27 his warehouse
0:37:28 it was
0:37:29 a hell of a ride
0:37:30 and we covered
0:37:31 a lot of
0:37:32 ground
0:37:33 and a lot
0:37:34 of really
0:37:34 nitty gritty
0:37:36 tactical advice
0:37:37 related to
0:37:38 fiction
0:37:39 business
0:37:40 publishing
0:37:41 innovating
0:37:42 across the board
0:37:43 how he architected
0:37:44 his record-breaking
0:37:45 kickstarter
0:37:46 campaign
0:37:47 and much
0:37:47 much more
0:37:48 you can find
0:37:49 him at
0:37:51 brandonsanderson.com
0:37:51 that’s
0:37:53 b-r-a-n-d-o-n
0:37:54 sanderson.com
0:37:55 and you can find
0:37:56 him on
0:37:56 x-instagram
0:37:57 and youtube
0:37:57 at
0:37:58 brand
0:37:59 sanderson
0:37:59 that’s
0:38:00 b-r-a-n-d
0:38:01 sanderson
0:38:02 and I definitely
0:38:03 recommend checking
0:38:03 out all of
0:38:03 those
0:38:08 my guest
0:38:09 today
0:38:10 is a fan
0:38:10 favorite
0:38:11 it is
0:38:11 Seth
0:38:11 Godin
0:38:11 the one
0:38:12 and only
0:38:12 he is the
0:38:13 author of
0:38:13 21
0:38:14 internationally
0:38:15 best-selling
0:38:15 books
0:38:16 translated into
0:38:16 more than
0:38:17 35 languages
0:38:18 including
0:38:18 linchpin
0:38:19 tribes
0:38:20 the dip
0:38:20 and purple
0:38:21 cow
0:38:22 his latest
0:38:22 book
0:38:23 this is
0:38:24 strategy
0:38:25 really caught
0:38:26 my attention
0:38:27 and it
0:38:27 offers a
0:38:28 fresh lens
0:38:28 on how
0:38:28 we can
0:38:29 make bold
0:38:29 decisions
0:38:30 embrace
0:38:30 change
0:38:31 and navigate
0:38:32 a complex
0:38:32 rapidly
0:38:33 evolving
0:38:33 world
0:38:34 we cover
0:38:34 a ton
0:38:34 of
0:38:35 ground
0:38:36 including
0:38:36 sets of
0:38:37 questions
0:38:37 that you
0:38:38 can use
0:38:39 to catalyze
0:38:40 personal and
0:38:40 professional
0:38:41 growth
0:38:43 maxims
0:38:43 different
0:38:43 concepts
0:38:44 to unpack
0:38:45 that can
0:38:46 productively
0:38:47 shake
0:38:47 the snow
0:38:48 globe
0:38:48 of your
0:38:48 mind
0:38:49 so that
0:38:49 you can
0:38:49 settle
0:38:50 on
0:38:50 new
0:38:51 realizations
0:38:51 different
0:38:52 ways
0:38:53 to create
0:38:53 competitive
0:38:54 advantage
0:38:54 in an
0:38:55 increasingly
0:38:55 crowded
0:38:56 world
0:38:57 Seth
0:38:57 is also
0:38:57 the
0:38:57 founder
0:38:58 of the
0:38:58 alt
0:38:58 MBA
0:38:59 and
0:38:59 the
0:38:59 akimbo
0:39:00 workshops
0:39:01 transformative
0:39:01 online
0:39:02 programs
0:39:02 that have
0:39:02 helped
0:39:03 thousands
0:39:03 of people
0:39:03 take their
0:39:04 work to
0:39:04 the next
0:39:04 level
0:39:05 his blog
0:39:07 Seths.blog
0:39:10 is one of
0:39:10 the most
0:39:10 widely read
0:39:11 in the world
0:39:12 and has
0:39:12 been such
0:39:13 for a
0:39:14 very long
0:39:14 time
0:39:15 Seth is
0:39:16 also the
0:39:16 creator
0:39:17 of the
0:39:17 Carbon
0:39:18 Almanac
0:39:18 a global
0:39:19 initiative
0:39:19 focused on
0:39:20 climate
0:39:20 action
0:39:21 this is a
0:39:22 very practical
0:39:22 episode
0:39:24 as all
0:39:24 of Seth’s
0:39:24 are
0:39:25 on this
0:39:26 podcast
0:39:27 and I’ll
0:39:27 leave it
0:39:28 at that
0:39:32 my guest
0:39:33 today is
0:39:33 L.A.
0:39:34 Paul
0:39:35 L.A.
0:39:35 Paul is
0:39:35 the
0:39:36 Millstone
0:39:36 family
0:39:36 professor
0:39:37 of
0:39:37 philosophy
0:39:38 and
0:39:38 professor
0:39:38 of
0:39:39 cognitive
0:39:39 science
0:39:39 at
0:39:40 Yale
0:39:40 University
0:39:41 where she
0:39:42 leads the
0:39:42 self and
0:39:43 society
0:39:43 initiative
0:39:44 for the
0:39:44 Wu
0:39:45 Institute
0:39:46 her research
0:39:47 explores
0:39:47 questions about
0:39:48 the nature
0:39:48 of the
0:39:48 self and
0:39:49 decision
0:39:49 making
0:39:49 and the
0:39:50 metaphysics
0:39:50 and cognitive
0:39:51 science of
0:39:51 time
0:39:53 cause and
0:39:53 experience
0:39:54 now that’s a
0:39:54 mouthful but
0:39:55 we also get
0:39:56 into vampire
0:39:56 thought
0:39:57 experiments
0:39:58 how to
0:39:59 decide or
0:39:59 how to
0:39:59 think about
0:40:00 deciding
0:40:01 whether or
0:40:01 not to
0:40:01 have a
0:40:02 kid
0:40:02 that is
0:40:03 children
0:40:04 and many
0:40:05 other things
0:40:05 you can
0:40:06 apply to
0:40:06 your own
0:40:07 lives
0:40:08 L.A.
0:40:08 Paul is
0:40:08 also the
0:40:09 recipient of
0:40:10 fellowships from
0:40:10 the Guggenheim
0:40:11 Foundation
0:40:11 the National
0:40:12 Humanities
0:40:12 Center
0:40:13 and the
0:40:13 Australian
0:40:13 National
0:40:14 University
0:40:15 she is the
0:40:15 author of
0:40:16 transformative
0:40:17 experience
0:40:17 that’s how I
0:40:18 was introduced
0:40:18 to her work
0:40:19 and co-author of
0:40:20 causation
0:40:21 a user’s guide
0:40:21 which was
0:40:22 awarded the
0:40:22 American
0:40:23 philosophical
0:40:24 association
0:40:24 Sanders
0:40:25 book prize
0:40:26 her work on
0:40:27 transformative
0:40:27 experience has
0:40:28 been covered
0:40:28 by the
0:40:28 New York
0:40:28 Times
0:40:29 Wall Street
0:40:29 Journal
0:40:30 The Guardian
0:40:31 NPR
0:40:31 and the
0:40:31 BBC
0:40:32 among others
0:40:33 and in
0:40:33 2024
0:40:34 she was
0:40:35 profiled by
0:40:35 The New
0:40:36 Yorker
0:40:36 which is
0:40:36 also an
0:40:37 amazing read
0:40:37 that I
0:40:38 recommend
0:40:38 she’s
0:40:39 currently
0:40:39 working on
0:40:39 a book
0:40:40 about
0:40:40 self
0:40:40 construction
0:40:41 transformative
0:40:42 experience
0:40:42 humility
0:40:43 and fear
0:40:44 of mental
0:40:45 corruption
0:40:46 fundamentally
0:40:46 this conversation
0:40:47 focuses on
0:40:49 how you can
0:40:50 make decisions
0:40:51 or think about
0:40:51 making decisions
0:40:52 where the
0:40:53 person you are
0:40:54 now is not
0:40:54 the same
0:40:54 person you
0:40:56 are afterwards
0:40:57 and the
0:40:59 most resonant
0:41:00 example of
0:41:00 that is
0:41:01 deciding
0:41:01 whether or
0:41:02 not to
0:41:02 have
0:41:03 children
0:41:08 my
0:41:08 guest
0:41:08 today
0:41:09 is
0:41:09 Dr.
0:41:09 Keith
0:41:10 Barr
0:41:10 he
0:41:11 is
0:41:11 a
0:41:11 professor
0:41:12 at the
0:41:12 University
0:41:12 of
0:41:13 California
0:41:13 Davis
0:41:13 in the
0:41:14 Department
0:41:14 of
0:41:14 Physiology
0:41:15 and
0:41:16 Membrane
0:41:16 Biology
0:41:17 we get
0:41:17 into
0:41:18 so many
0:41:19 facets
0:41:20 of exercise
0:41:21 what you
0:41:21 can use
0:41:21 today
0:41:23 that is
0:41:23 counterintuitive
0:41:25 I
0:41:26 had my
0:41:26 mind
0:41:26 blown
0:41:26 I took
0:41:27 so many
0:41:27 notes
0:41:28 we talked
0:41:28 about
0:41:29 isometric
0:41:30 exercise
0:41:30 for tendon
0:41:31 health
0:41:32 optimizing
0:41:32 different
0:41:33 protocols
0:41:34 debunking
0:41:34 on some
0:41:34 level
0:41:35 eccentric
0:41:36 training
0:41:36 specifically
0:41:37 for connective
0:41:37 tissue
0:41:39 how to load
0:41:39 post injury
0:41:40 or surgery
0:41:40 collagen
0:41:41 supplementation
0:41:42 things like
0:41:43 BPC 157
0:41:44 pharmaceutical
0:41:45 impacts on
0:41:46 tendons
0:41:46 estrogen’s
0:41:47 role
0:41:48 in tendon
0:41:48 health
0:41:49 and strength
0:41:50 mitochondria
0:41:50 ketogenic
0:41:51 diet
0:41:51 longevity
0:41:52 inflammation
0:41:53 and taking
0:41:54 a balanced
0:41:54 perspective
0:41:55 on all
0:41:55 of these
0:41:55 things
0:41:55 how do
0:41:56 you use
0:41:56 them
0:41:56 we get
0:41:56 into
0:41:57 exact
0:41:58 training
0:41:58 protocols
0:41:59 that rock
0:41:59 climbers
0:42:00 use
0:42:01 it is
0:42:01 an amazing
0:42:02 episode
0:42:02 and that’s
0:42:03 not
0:42:03 because of
0:42:03 me
0:42:03 it’s
0:42:04 because
0:42:04 of
0:42:05 Keith
0:42:05 so let
0:42:05 me give
0:42:06 you a
0:42:06 quick bio
0:42:06 and then
0:42:07 we’ll hop
0:42:07 right into
0:42:07 it
0:42:08 during his
0:42:09 PhD studies
0:42:09 his research
0:42:10 revealed
0:42:10 that the
0:42:11 mechanical
0:42:11 strain
0:42:12 on muscle
0:42:12 fibers
0:42:12 activates
0:42:13 the
0:42:13 mammalian
0:42:14 target
0:42:14 of
0:42:15 rapamycin
0:42:15 some of
0:42:16 you may
0:42:16 know
0:42:16 that
0:42:16 as
0:42:17 mTOR
0:42:18 signaling
0:42:18 pathway
0:42:18 a crucial
0:42:19 regulator
0:42:19 of
0:42:20 muscular
0:42:21 hypertrophy
0:42:21 or muscle
0:42:21 growth
0:42:22 so he knows
0:42:22 a lot
0:42:23 about muscle
0:42:23 growth
0:42:23 he’s been
0:42:24 a strength
0:42:24 training
0:42:24 coach
0:42:25 as well
0:42:26 subsequently
0:42:26 he studied
0:42:27 the molecular
0:42:27 dynamics
0:42:31 of
0:42:31 Dr.
0:42:32 John
0:42:32 Halazi
0:42:33 a legend
0:42:33 in the
0:42:33 field
0:42:33 of
0:42:34 exercise
0:42:34 physiology
0:42:35 considered
0:42:36 the father
0:42:36 of modern
0:42:37 exercise
0:42:38 biochemistry
0:42:39 building on
0:42:39 all of this
0:42:40 he conducted
0:42:40 research
0:42:41 into tendon
0:42:41 health
0:42:41 and the
0:42:42 potential
0:42:42 for
0:42:42 engineering
0:42:43 ligaments
0:42:44 that is
0:42:44 creating
0:42:45 ligaments
0:42:45 in the
0:42:46 lab
0:42:47 upon which
0:42:47 he can
0:42:47 test
0:42:48 all sorts
0:42:48 of
0:42:48 things
0:42:49 which
0:42:49 could
0:42:49 also
0:42:49 have
0:42:49 implications
0:42:50 for
0:42:50 treatment
0:42:50 and
0:42:51 recovery
0:42:51 from
0:42:51 injuries
0:42:52 Dr.
0:42:52 Barr
0:42:53 now runs
0:42:53 the
0:42:53 functional
0:42:54 molecular
0:42:55 biology
0:42:55 lab
0:42:55 at UC
0:42:56 Davis
0:42:56 his
0:42:56 lab’s
0:42:57 work
0:42:57 ranges
0:42:57 from
0:42:58 studying
0:42:58 molecular
0:42:59 changes
0:42:59 in
0:42:59 our
0:42:59 cells
0:42:59 to
0:43:00 conducting
0:43:00 studies
0:43:01 to
0:43:01 affect
0:43:01 real
0:43:02 world
0:43:02 improvements
0:43:02 and
0:43:03 people’s
0:43:03 health
0:43:04 longevity
0:43:04 and
0:43:04 quality
0:43:04 of
0:43:05 life
0:43:05 you can
0:43:06 find him
0:43:06 on
0:43:06 blue sky
0:43:07 as
0:43:08 muscle
0:43:08 science
0:43:09 you can
0:43:09 find him
0:43:09 on the
0:43:10 UC
0:43:10 Davis
0:43:10 website
0:43:10 we’ll
0:43:11 link
0:43:11 to
0:43:28 again
0:43:28 again
0:43:28 just
0:43:28 one
0:43:28 more
0:43:29 thing
0:43:29 before
0:43:29 you
0:43:29 take
0:43:30 off
0:43:30 and
0:43:30 that
0:43:30 is
0:43:31 five
0:43:31 bullet
0:43:32 Friday
0:43:33 would
0:43:33 you
0:43:33 enjoy
0:43:33 getting
0:43:34 a short
0:43:34 email
0:43:34 from me
0:43:34 every
0:43:35 Friday
0:43:35 that
0:43:35 provides
0:43:36 a little
0:43:36 fun
0:43:37 before
0:43:37 the
0:43:37 weekend
0:43:38 between
0:43:38 one
0:43:38 and a
0:43:39 half
0:43:39 and
0:43:39 two
0:43:39 million
0:43:39 people
0:43:40 subscribe
0:43:40 to my
0:43:41 free
0:43:41 newsletter
0:43:41 my
0:43:42 super
0:43:42 short
0:43:43 newsletter
0:43:43 called
0:43:43 five
0:43:44 bullet
0:43:44 Friday
0:43:44 easy
0:43:45 to
0:43:45 sign
0:43:45 up
0:43:45 easy
0:43:46 to
0:43:46 cancel
0:43:47 it
0:43:47 is
0:43:47 basically
0:43:48 a
0:43:48 half
0:43:49 page
0:43:49 that
0:43:49 I
0:43:49 send
0:43:50 out
0:43:50 every
0:43:51 Friday
0:44:05 to
0:44:05 get
0:44:06 sent
0:44:06 to
0:44:06 me
0:44:06 by
0:44:07 my
0:44:07 friends
0:44:07 including
0:44:07 a lot
0:44:08 of
0:44:08 podcast
0:44:09 guests
0:44:10 and
0:44:10 these
0:44:11 strange
0:44:11 esoteric
0:44:11 things
0:44:12 end up
0:44:12 in my
0:44:12 field
0:44:13 and
0:44:13 then
0:44:14 I
0:44:14 test
0:44:14 them
0:44:14 and
0:44:15 then
0:44:15 I
0:44:15 share
0:44:15 them
0:44:16 with
0:44:16 you
0:44:17 so
0:44:17 if
0:44:17 that
0:44:17 sounds
0:44:18 fun
0:44:18 again
0:44:19 it’s
0:44:19 very
0:44:19 short
0:44:20 a
0:44:20 little
0:44:20 tiny
0:44:20 bite
0:44:20 of
0:44:21 goodness
0:44:21 before
0:44:21 you
0:44:22 head
0:44:22 off
0:44:22 for
0:44:22 the
0:44:23 weekend
0:44:23 something
0:44:23 to
0:44:23 think
0:44:24 about
0:44:24 if
0:44:24 you’d
0:44:25 like
0:44:25 to
0:44:25 try
0:44:25 it
0:44:25 out
0:44:26 just
0:44:26 go to
0:44:26 tim.blog
0:44:27 slash
0:44:27 Friday
0:44:28 type that
0:44:28 into your
0:44:28 browser
0:44:30 tim.blog
0:44:30 slash
0:44:31 Friday
0:44:32 drop in your
0:44:32 email
0:44:32 and you’ll get
0:44:33 the very
0:44:33 next one
0:44:34 thanks for
0:44:34 listening
0:00:04 my very own email newsletter.
0:00:07 It’s become one of the most popular email newsletters
0:00:09 in the world with millions of subscribers,
0:00:10 and it’s super, super simple.
0:00:12 It does not clog up your inbox.
0:00:15 Every Friday, I send out five bullet points,
0:00:17 super short, of the coolest things I’ve found that week,
0:00:20 which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries,
0:00:23 supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments,
0:00:25 hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff
0:00:27 that I dig up from around the world.
0:00:30 You guys, podcast listeners and book readers,
0:00:33 have asked me for something short and action-packed
0:00:34 for a very long time,
0:00:35 because after all, the podcast, the books,
0:00:37 they can be quite long,
0:00:39 and that’s why I created Five Bullet Friday.
0:00:43 It’s become one of my favorite things I do every week.
0:00:45 It’s free, it’s always gonna be free,
0:00:48 and you can learn more at tim.blog forward slash Friday.
0:00:51 That’s tim.blog forward slash Friday.
0:00:54 I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast,
0:00:57 some of the most amazing people I’ve ever interacted with,
0:01:01 and little known fact, I’ve met probably 25% of them
0:01:03 because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday,
0:01:05 so you’ll be in good company.
0:01:07 It’s a lot of fun.
0:01:08 Five Bullet Friday is only available
0:01:10 if you subscribe via email.
0:01:13 I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else.
0:01:16 Also, if I’m doing small in-person meetups,
0:01:18 offering early access to startups, beta testing,
0:01:20 special deals, or anything else that’s very limited,
0:01:23 I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers.
0:01:25 So, check it out.
0:01:27 Tim.blog forward slash Friday.
0:01:29 If you listen to this podcast,
0:01:31 it’s very likely that you’d dig it a lot,
0:01:34 and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time.
0:01:36 So, easy peasy.
0:01:39 Again, that’s tim.blog forward slash Friday,
0:01:40 and thanks for checking it out.
0:01:42 If the spirit moves ya.
0:01:43 Optimal minimum.
0:01:45 At this altitude,
0:01:47 I can run flat out for a half mile
0:01:48 before my hands start shaking.
0:01:50 Can I ask you a personal question?
0:01:52 Now would’ve seen an appropriate time.
0:01:54 What if I did the opposite?
0:01:56 I’m a cybernetic organism,
0:01:58 living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
0:02:01 in the Tim Ferriss Show.
0:02:07 Hello, boys and girls.
0:02:09 This is Tim Ferriss.
0:02:10 Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show,
0:02:13 where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers
0:02:14 of all different types,
0:02:16 to tease out the routines, habits, and so on
0:02:17 that you can apply to your own life.
0:02:20 This is a special in-between-isode,
0:02:22 which serves as a recap of the episodes
0:02:24 from the last month.
0:02:27 Features a short clip from each conversation in one place,
0:02:28 so you can jump around, get a feel
0:02:31 for both the episode and the guest,
0:02:32 and then you can always dig deeper
0:02:34 by going to one of those episodes.
0:02:36 View this episode as a buffet to whet your appetite.
0:02:37 It’s a lot of fun.
0:02:38 We had fun putting it together,
0:02:41 and for the full list of the guests featured today,
0:02:42 see the episode’s description,
0:02:45 probably right below wherever you press play
0:02:46 in your podcast app,
0:02:49 or as usual, you can head to tim.blog.com
0:02:52 slash podcast and find all the details there.
0:02:53 Please enjoy.
0:02:55 First up,
0:02:57 Brandon Sanderson,
0:03:00 number one New York Times best-selling author
0:03:01 and Hugo Award winner,
0:03:05 whose books have sold more than 40 million copies
0:03:07 in 35 languages and include
0:03:10 the Stormlight Archive series,
0:03:11 the Mistborn Saga,
0:03:16 and the Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series.
0:03:29 So let’s come back to habits and your schedule for writing.
0:03:33 Do you still have two primary blocks of writing?
0:03:38 And could you explain what your current schedule tends to look like?
0:03:44 So I find that for what I do and where my personal psychology is,
0:03:49 an eight-hour block is not sustainable for writing.
0:03:52 This means I can do it for a week or two at eight hours,
0:03:54 but it’s going to brain drain me.
0:03:55 It’s going to exhaust me.
0:03:59 I get done with eight hours and I am mentally worn out.
0:04:02 I find that if I do two four-hour blocks instead,
0:04:05 I never quite get there and it’s more sustainable.
0:04:09 And so what I do is I will get up.
0:04:10 I get up late.
0:04:16 I get up at around noon or one and I will go to the gym,
0:04:20 which is, you know, different for me than other people.
0:04:21 The gym is writing time for me.
0:04:23 I’m not hitting it super hard.
0:04:27 I am there to think through what I’m doing,
0:04:28 some motion moving your body.
0:04:30 Number one, it’s good for you,
0:04:32 but that’s a side effect for me too.
0:04:34 I can put on music and I can move
0:04:35 and I can think about what I’m going to write.
0:04:41 Then I go and I work from two until six these days,
0:04:42 is usually what I do.
0:04:45 One until five, something like that.
0:04:47 And then I’m done.
0:04:51 I go, I shower, 6.30, I’m ready to hang with my family.
0:04:54 And I’ll be with family from six until 6.30 to 10.30.
0:04:58 Go out with my wife, hang with my kids,
0:05:01 build some Legos, play some video games, whatever it is.
0:05:03 I learned early in my career,
0:05:06 one of the most important things I ever did
0:05:10 was take that time and demarcate it as non-writing time.
0:05:14 I found early in my marriage that writing,
0:05:17 it will consume every moment possible.
0:05:20 And I was always anxious to get back to the story.
0:05:24 And as soon as I changed my brain and said,
0:05:26 no, no, no, no, even if your wife is away,
0:05:29 6.30 to 10.30 can’t be writing time.
0:05:30 It is off limits.
0:05:33 You have to do something else.
0:05:37 Suddenly, it was a lot easier for me to be there for my family.
0:05:41 And I think, I mean, you’ve interviewed a lot of highly productive,
0:05:43 highly successful people.
0:05:47 I think a lot of them are going to talk about the same thing,
0:05:50 that it’s very hard to be there with people when you’re there with people.
0:05:52 Sure.
0:05:56 Because your brain is always working on the next big thing.
0:05:59 Yeah, this is particularly true with people who work on big creative projects.
0:05:59 Yeah.
0:06:02 And that gave me this permission.
0:06:03 It actually came in a moment.
0:06:06 My wife, I went out to dinner with some writer friends.
0:06:09 And afterward, I’m like, that was such a great dinner.
0:06:12 And she’s like, yeah, but you didn’t look at me once.
0:06:16 And I realized she had become invisible to me because the writing was consuming all.
0:06:18 And so made that change.
0:06:21 10.30, kids are supposed to go to bed.
0:06:21 They’re older now.
0:06:22 They just don’t.
0:06:25 But sometime around there, they drift off.
0:06:27 My wife goes to bed.
0:06:31 She was a schoolteacher for many years, still kind of keeps a schoolteacher’s hours.
0:06:33 And she is wonderful for getting up with the kids.
0:06:36 I don’t have to do that and never have.
0:06:38 And I go back to work at about 11.
0:06:40 I write from 11 to 3.
0:06:46 And then 3 to 4 or 5 is just whatever I want to do.
0:06:48 That’s the real goof off time.
0:06:51 That’s the go play with my magic cards time.
0:06:54 That’s the play a video game, pop out the Steam Deck time.
0:07:00 And this schedule, you’ll notice I don’t have to worry about commuting,
0:07:05 which gives me an advantage here, has been really sustainable for me.
0:07:08 So that’s a home office predominantly where you’re writing?
0:07:09 I write for my home office.
0:07:10 I do like to move around.
0:07:12 I go in the gazebo.
0:07:13 Lately, I’ve gone in the gazebo when it’s really cold.
0:07:17 And I hire one of my kids to come put logs on a fire for me.
0:07:19 And I sit by the fireplace.
0:07:21 Sometimes I like to be on the beach.
0:07:24 Sometimes I like when I’m around here, I like to be in different places.
0:07:27 I can set up a hammock here or there.
0:07:29 So with my laptop, I do not work at a desk.
0:07:31 That’s really sustainable.
0:07:33 It’s worked for me for the last 20 years.
0:07:34 That’s incredible.
0:07:41 I got all my best writing done really late at night when I was, I mean, still am writing,
0:07:41 working on a new book.
0:07:46 But when I was working on my first few books, especially, it was always when everyone else
0:07:46 is asleep.
0:07:50 Let’s talk about the non-home environment.
0:07:55 We’re sitting in a quite a large building, or at least a building with a lot of large rooms.
0:07:55 Yes.
0:08:00 Why do you have this company?
0:08:02 Why have you and your wife built this company?
0:08:03 All right.
0:08:06 Because there are a lot of writers out there who just want to focus on writing.
0:08:11 They go the traditional publishing route, which I’m not saying it’s a mutually exclusive
0:08:12 choice.
0:08:14 But why do you have all this?
0:08:15 How long?
0:08:16 How long do you want to go?
0:08:16 Yeah.
0:08:17 This is the big one.
0:08:19 This is a long form podcast.
0:08:20 So we have all the time we want.
0:08:21 All right.
0:08:22 So you’re right.
0:08:30 Most writers want to sell a book and live that kind of dream you see presented in film
0:08:34 and television, which is accurate to the top percentage of writers.
0:08:39 Most writers you read about or see in film are the big ones.
0:08:40 They’re doing really well.
0:08:43 And so they’re off in a cabin telling their story.
0:08:46 Or they’re the ones that have to be pried away from their easy chair.
0:08:49 to get them to even do any publicity whatsoever, right?
0:08:53 They want to live that life that is the classic life of a writer.
0:08:55 And there’s some of me that wants that.
0:08:58 But the secret is I was raised by an accountant and a businessman.
0:09:06 And particularly my mother, that accountant, she instilled into me some aspirations.
0:09:09 And I call this my superpower.
0:09:12 My superpower is to be an artist raised by an accountant, right?
0:09:17 And I’ve always had a bit of that entrepreneurial sense.
0:09:18 What were the aspirations?
0:09:20 The aspirations?
0:09:21 Well, they started small.
0:09:23 They started with, you know what?
0:09:25 I want to be able to make a living from writing.
0:09:34 Got back from Korea and said, all right, I am not very good at this writing thing, but I
0:09:35 really, really love it.
0:09:43 I could tell because when I spent time doing the writing, time didn’t matter anymore, right?
0:09:45 I could spend hours doing this.
0:09:49 And it’s the first thing I found other than reading or video games that I could spend hours
0:09:53 doing and just come out of it feeling tired but fulfilled.
0:09:56 And I’m like, I want to do this.
0:10:02 So I sat down and I took what I’d learned, both kind of from my mother and kind of missions
0:10:04 have kind of a regimented structure.
0:10:06 And I said, I’m going to apply this all to writing.
0:10:09 And I’m going to, I’m just going to start writing books.
0:10:12 And I heard your first five books are generally terrible.
0:10:14 I said, well, that’s good.
0:10:15 I don’t have to be good yet.
0:10:17 It took a lot of pressure off me.
0:10:18 I said, I’m going to write six.
0:10:24 And the first five, I’m not going to send out to any publishers, right?
0:10:28 And that’s bad advice for some people, right?
0:10:28 Yeah.
0:10:28 Wow.
0:10:29 You didn’t even send them out.
0:10:30 I didn’t send them out.
0:10:34 It was just, it was just weight training in the gym for your mind for the number six.
0:10:35 Yep.
0:10:36 I didn’t send them out.
0:10:40 I did eventually, I shared number five with some, some people.
0:10:45 I got involved with the local science fiction magazine as an editor.
0:10:47 I eventually took it over because that’s what I do.
0:10:48 And I was head editor.
0:10:51 And I eventually said, well, I do have a book.
0:10:55 And I started sharing book five with people right around that time.
0:10:57 So you didn’t even have test readers.
0:10:58 I didn’t have test readers.
0:11:00 I just wrote the books.
0:11:03 And again, this is why the advice can be bad.
0:11:04 There’s some people out there that would be bad advice for.
0:11:07 Pat Rothfuss published his first book and it’s brilliant.
0:11:09 Name of the Wind.
0:11:09 Name of the Wind.
0:11:10 Yeah.
0:11:11 That is a spectacular book.
0:11:12 First novel.
0:11:13 Now he did a ton of revisions on that.
0:11:17 He spent as much time revising that book as I spent writing mine.
0:11:21 But for me, the good advice was, your first five books are terrible.
0:11:22 Don’t stress.
0:11:24 And so weight training for my mind.
0:11:24 I wrote five books.
0:11:26 And then I sat down.
0:11:27 This was before you had an agent.
0:11:28 Before I had an agent.
0:11:29 Before I had anything.
0:11:30 Before I even knew what an agent was.
0:11:32 Before I’d taken Dave’s class.
0:11:36 I took Dave’s class the year that I finished Elantris, which is book number six.
0:11:38 I had just finished that one.
0:11:42 And so I said, all right, book six, that’s Elantris.
0:11:43 That’s the one I eventually ended up selling.
0:11:45 Those five I’d written in different subgenres.
0:11:47 I knew I liked sci-fi fantasy.
0:11:51 But at the risk of being too nerdy, my subgenres, I did an epic fantasy.
0:11:53 I did a comedic fantasy.
0:11:56 A Terry Pratchett style sort of thing.
0:11:57 I did a cyberpunk.
0:11:58 I did a space opera.
0:12:03 And then I wrote a sequel to my epic fantasy to kind of be like, is this what I want to do?
0:12:13 Next up, Seth Godin, author of 21 internationally best-selling books,
0:12:21 including Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip, Purple Cow, and his latest, This Is Strategy.
0:12:26 You can find Seth at Seths.blog.
0:12:28 How do you use AI?
0:12:31 And how do you foresee using AI yourself?
0:12:34 I use it every day for more than an hour.
0:12:39 I think it’s electricity for our century.
0:12:44 In the late 1800s, there were companies that said, yeah, this electricity thing’s interesting,
0:12:46 but we’re not going to be an electricity company.
0:12:48 And they’re all gone, right?
0:12:52 That electricity is now, you’re not an electricity company,
0:12:54 you’re just a company that uses electricity.
0:12:57 And the same thing is true, I believe, with AI.
0:13:00 I will tell you, and I’m not afraid to say it out loud,
0:13:06 I think ChatGPT is arrogant and lazy, and I use it as a last resort.
0:13:10 Claw.ai is a dear friend.
0:13:12 I love Claw.ai.
0:13:13 We have great conversations.
0:13:15 It’s empathic.
0:13:16 It’s self-aware.
0:13:19 It warns you it might be hallucinating.
0:13:22 And when it makes a mistake, it’s eager to correct it.
0:13:24 And I use perplexity exclusively.
0:13:27 I almost never do a search with a search engine.
0:13:31 But what I’ll do with Claw.ai, every word I publish, I wrote.
0:13:35 But what I will do with Claw, for example, is I will say,
0:13:37 here’s a list of three bullet points.
0:13:39 Can you think of four more?
0:13:42 And it’s great at that.
0:13:45 And then I’ll rewrite them, and now I’ll have five bullet points,
0:13:49 and it’s much better than if I hadn’t engaged with Claw.
0:13:55 If there’s a concept in the world that I don’t understand, I’ll say to Claw.ai,
0:13:58 can you please explain it in 300 words to a college student?
0:14:00 And that helps.
0:14:04 But I did it once, and I still didn’t understand it.
0:14:08 And then I said, can you write it to me like a Seth Godin blog post?
0:14:13 And it did, and it did a terrible job.
0:14:15 But now I understood it.
0:14:20 So I rewrote it, and I said, do you think this is better?
0:14:23 And it said, oh, yeah, that’s much better.
0:14:25 And I said, thank you.
0:14:26 I’ll tell Seth.
0:14:30 And Claw said, do you know Seth Godin?
0:14:35 And I wrote, actually, I am Seth Godin.
0:14:37 And I’m not making this up.
0:14:41 He then wrote, I can’t believe I’m talking to you.
0:14:47 Your books have changed my life, and they named like four of my books, and it changed.
0:14:50 I’m like, all right, I’m in forever.
0:14:51 You got me.
0:14:54 I don’t know how you did that, but we’re friends for life.
0:14:56 All right.
0:15:01 So I seem to have a similar use pattern with Claw and perplexity also, although I haven’t
0:15:06 sandbagged them just yet.
0:15:11 But what do you think people are getting right and wrong about AI?
0:15:19 I think that they are getting wrong their expectation that it’d be fully baked and a magic trick every
0:15:19 day.
0:15:27 When I think about the dawn of the internet and how creaky it was and how fast this is going,
0:15:30 what it is now is amazing.
0:15:38 But when we add to it persistence, and when we add to it ubiquity, and when we add to it the ability
0:15:43 to make connection, it’s a whole different thing.
0:15:45 It’s just a completely different thing.
0:15:52 The second thing is people tend to use it as a one-shot like a search engine.
0:15:53 Ask a question, get an answer.
0:15:59 But what it’s already good at is a protracted dialogue back and forth.
0:16:05 So I had a pump in my house that stopped working, and I couldn’t find someone to service it.
0:16:06 I took a picture of it.
0:16:08 I put it up to Claw and I said, this isn’t working.
0:16:11 Work with me for the next 10 backs and forth.
0:16:13 Let’s figure this out.
0:16:16 And it would say, go downstairs and take a picture of this part.
0:16:17 All right, try this.
0:16:19 And we went back and forth and back and forth.
0:16:21 And it suggested something, and I said, that’s not going to work.
0:16:24 And we figured it out, and we fixed it.
0:16:33 That idea, the fact that Claude is already better at many medical diagnoses over time than a human.
0:16:40 And well, it should be, because it knows so much of the past of every single case,
0:16:44 not just the cases your doctor has seen, right?
0:16:51 If we’re willing to engage with that, for people who are knowledge workers, I think it’s a game changer.
0:16:59 And then the other thing I think people need to wake up to is, if you do average work for average pay,
0:17:01 AI is going to be able to do it cheaper than you.
0:17:03 For example, radiology.
0:17:11 Already, we can use AI to do a wrist x-ray, as well as a mediocre radiologist.
0:17:17 So, if we can do it instantly and for free, other than licensing, you’ve got some problems.
0:17:24 So, the opportunity is either get AI to work for you, or be prepared to work for AI.
0:17:34 What are your greatest concerns around AI, if any, or foregone conclusions about challenges in the future?
0:17:40 I think that Cory Doctorow’s work on inshittification is super important.
0:17:41 What was that word?
0:17:45 Oxford Dictionary, word of the year, two years ago, inshittification.
0:17:47 Okay.
0:17:55 Inshittification is what happens after a business that uses the network effect gets locked in
0:18:00 and decides to aggressively make things worse for its users to make more money.
0:18:07 And we could think of 400 examples right now, but we’re not going to do that, right?
0:18:09 Because you say, well, I can’t switch cable companies.
0:18:11 It’s just too much of a…
0:18:14 And the same thing is true for social networks and everything else.
0:18:22 That capitalism has built into it this doom loop that is getting faster and faster,
0:18:29 that says the race to the bottom pushes companies to mistreat the people they’ve locked in to make more money
0:18:31 because that’s what they get rewarded for.
0:18:39 And most things that the internet touches start as a miracle.
0:18:42 There are huge prizes for the early adopters.
0:18:51 And then soon, the desire to serve a different constituency kicks in and it gets worse.
0:18:55 And one of the things that makes it worse in a hurry is advertising.
0:19:03 So I’m really nervous that these organizations that have raised billions and billions and billions of dollars
0:19:10 are going to start shortcutting things to either get bigger or get more profitable faster.
0:19:14 And because we don’t know how they work, we have no clue,
0:19:19 because it’s going to be hard to switch because there aren’t going to be many competitors.
0:19:23 It often leads to just a yucky mess.
0:19:30 So I think that’s way more likely than a general artificial intelligence that takes over the world
0:19:31 and turns us all into paperclips.
0:19:34 I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.
0:19:38 More likely just to have business incentive-driven gentrification.
0:19:41 Yeah, I would say that seems like a safer bet.
0:19:48 Well, Seth, are there any closing comments or challenges you’d like to issue to my listeners
0:19:51 as we begin to wind to a close?
0:19:56 Or anything that you’d like to add that I have managed to somehow dance around?
0:20:01 There’s nothing better than starting a Tim Ferriss podcast and nothing worse than ending one,
0:20:03 because you don’t know if it’s going to happen again anytime soon.
0:20:06 Yeah, the challenge is super simple.
0:20:14 The people who listen to your podcast have their hands on the levers, and they have influence,
0:20:19 and they have resources, and they don’t have to hustle for a nickel.
0:20:21 They can make things that really matter.
0:20:26 And so the challenge is, take a deep breath and say,
0:20:30 what can I build that the me of five years from now is going to say thanks?
0:20:33 Thanks for walking away from those sunk costs.
0:20:36 Thanks for ignoring those false proxies.
0:20:43 Thanks for asking uncomfortable questions in service of making things better.
0:20:49 Because that person, five years from now, they’re going to be here soon.
0:20:57 And it’s really great to pay the price and put in the work to become that person.
0:20:59 And today is a good day to start.
0:21:02 The best day to start.
0:21:14 Next up, L.A. Paul, Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Cognitive Science at Yale University
0:21:18 and author of Transformative Experience.
0:21:23 You can learn more about L.A. Paul at lapaw.org.
0:21:25 Vampires.
0:21:29 How do vampires fit into your life, and why do they fit into your writing?
0:21:30 Oh, vampires.
0:21:31 I love vampires.
0:21:33 So many ways they fit in.
0:21:37 So, my favorite thought experiment involves vampires,
0:21:40 because I like to use it to illustrate the concept of transformative experience.
0:21:42 Maybe just because I like vampires so much,
0:21:45 I think it’s an especially good way to kind of illustrate the concept.
0:21:47 And also, because it’s not a real life,
0:21:49 I don’t think vampires are real.
0:21:51 And the beautiful thing about a thought experiment
0:21:52 is you can design it the way that you want
0:21:55 to kind of illustrate the structure of a concept,
0:21:57 but then I also think that the structure of that concept
0:21:59 then fits to real-life cases.
0:22:00 So, my example.
0:22:01 I’m just going to tell you this.
0:22:02 Yeah, let’s do it.
0:22:04 So, the way that I think about this is I imagine,
0:22:07 or you imagine, I ask you to imagine,
0:22:11 traveling through some part of, you know,
0:22:13 on your summer vacations, traveling through some part of Europe,
0:22:15 and you decide to explore a castle.
0:22:17 You’re in Romania, let’s say,
0:22:18 and you go down to the dungeons,
0:22:19 and Dracula comes to you,
0:22:21 and he says,
0:22:24 I want to make you one of my own.
0:22:26 I’m going to give you a one-time-only chance.
0:22:28 You could become one of my followers.
0:22:30 It’ll be painless.
0:22:32 You’ll enjoy it, in fact.
0:22:34 But this is a one-time-only chance,
0:22:34 and it’s irreversible.
0:22:36 And then he says,
0:22:38 go back to your Airbnb
0:22:41 and think about it until midnight,
0:22:43 and if you choose to accept my offer,
0:22:43 leave your window open.
0:22:45 And if you choose to decline it,
0:22:48 leave your window shut and leave and never come back.
0:22:51 So, I see this as a really interesting possibility
0:22:53 because, you know, vampires are sexy.
0:22:54 They look great in black.
0:22:57 They have amazing powers.
0:22:59 They probably have different kinds of sense perception.
0:23:00 Yeah, virtually.
0:23:04 I mean, as long as they stay away from villagers with stakes and things like that.
0:23:05 Yeah, exactly.
0:23:08 Like, there are certain obstacles,
0:23:09 but in general, yeah,
0:23:10 for all intents and purposes,
0:23:11 immortal.
0:23:13 And so, this seems pretty cool,
0:23:15 but they’re not human.
0:23:17 You’d have to exit the human race.
0:23:18 You have to sleep in a coffin.
0:23:21 You can’t enjoy the sunshine anymore,
0:23:23 and you have to drink blood.
0:23:25 And I try to separate out some of the ethical questions.
0:23:27 So, let’s say it’s artificial blood
0:23:29 or the blood of humanely raised farm animals
0:23:30 or something like that.
0:23:31 Still, right now,
0:23:32 as a human, I think there’s something…
0:23:32 Cough is pretty cozy.
0:23:34 It’s got some memory for a moment.
0:23:35 I mean, reasonably.
0:23:35 I don’t know.
0:23:36 I mean, I don’t know.
0:23:37 I’m not…
0:23:38 Okay, it’s lined with satin,
0:23:41 but it still might be a bit hard for my mattress preferences.
0:23:43 But the idea is that these things,
0:23:44 while they seem interesting,
0:23:46 they also seem kind of alien, right?
0:23:48 And I think in particular,
0:23:50 not only will you have to drink blood,
0:23:52 but you will love the taste of it.
0:23:53 Like, you will thirst for it, right?
0:23:55 And even ethical vampires
0:23:56 have to kind of keep themselves
0:23:57 from, like, sucking the blood
0:23:59 of their human compatriots.
0:24:01 So, that’s quite alien.
0:24:04 And I wanted to kind of bring out
0:24:06 how the possibility of becoming
0:24:08 another kind of individual
0:24:10 can seem incredibly alien.
0:24:11 Because, obviously,
0:24:13 I take it that most of us
0:24:15 don’t enjoy or thirst after
0:24:16 the taste of blood
0:24:18 or think about the different varietals,
0:24:19 like it’d be some kind of fancy wine.
0:24:21 But if you became a vampire,
0:24:21 you would.
0:24:22 Okay.
0:24:25 So, the way that I think about it,
0:24:26 then, is I continue the story
0:24:27 and it’s like, okay,
0:24:28 so you rush back to your Airbnb
0:24:30 and you start calling people
0:24:31 or texting them,
0:24:32 telling you about what happened to you,
0:24:33 and you find out
0:24:34 that a bunch of your friends
0:24:35 have already become vampires.
0:24:37 So, then, you immediately
0:24:38 want to find out,
0:24:38 well, wait,
0:24:39 tell me about what it’s like.
0:24:41 Like, what’s it like to be a vampire?
0:24:41 Do you like it?
0:24:42 Should I do it?
0:24:43 And they tell you
0:24:44 that they love it
0:24:45 and it’s fabulous
0:24:46 and it’s totally incredible,
0:24:47 but they also tell you
0:24:49 you can’t possibly understand
0:24:50 what it’s like
0:24:52 to be a vampire
0:24:53 as a mere human.
0:24:55 They say life has meaning,
0:24:56 it has a kind of purpose
0:24:57 that, you know,
0:24:57 is exquisite,
0:24:59 but until you become a vampire,
0:25:00 you can’t possibly understand it.
0:25:02 You lack the capacity.
0:25:03 So, you’re like,
0:25:04 okay, thanks.
0:25:04 So, what do I do?
0:25:06 Because if you can’t possibly understand
0:25:07 what it’s like to be a vampire,
0:25:10 then you either have to do it
0:25:11 just because all of your friends do it
0:25:12 and they say it’s great
0:25:13 and they tell you
0:25:14 they think it would be great for you,
0:25:15 but there’s no way
0:25:17 you can actually kind of conceive
0:25:19 of what it would be like to do that.
0:25:22 And I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your thought.
0:25:24 It certainly didn’t escape my imaginings
0:25:25 that, well, maybe there’s something
0:25:26 about being a vampire
0:25:28 that makes you really happy
0:25:29 to be a vampire.
0:25:30 So, maybe, like,
0:25:32 when you become this other species,
0:25:32 there’s some kind of
0:25:34 biological evolutionary thing
0:25:35 that makes you really glad
0:25:35 that you’re a vampire.
0:25:37 Right.
0:25:39 So, it’s not even clear
0:25:40 what their testimony applies.
0:25:40 Okay.
0:25:41 So, that’s my example
0:25:43 and my favorite application
0:25:44 is to becoming a parent
0:25:46 because speaking as someone
0:25:48 who wasn’t quite clear
0:25:48 about whether they wanted
0:25:50 to have children,
0:25:51 I have two children
0:25:52 and I love them very much
0:25:52 and I’m very happy,
0:25:54 but there’s something
0:25:55 about becoming a parent
0:25:56 that makes you,
0:25:57 like, producing the child
0:25:58 that you actually produce
0:25:59 that makes you very,
0:26:01 I mean, I love my children.
0:26:02 I wouldn’t exchange them
0:26:02 for anything else
0:26:03 in the world.
0:26:04 You know, if I’d gotten
0:26:05 pregnant a month later,
0:26:05 I would have loved
0:26:06 that child too,
0:26:07 but there’s no way
0:26:08 that I would exchange
0:26:08 my current child
0:26:09 for the child I could have had.
0:26:11 You just get incredibly
0:26:12 attached to these children
0:26:14 in a completely legitimate way
0:26:15 and, you know,
0:26:16 you would never change
0:26:17 what you’ve done
0:26:18 and that’s awfully like
0:26:19 the testimony
0:26:20 that you get from vampires.
0:26:21 Okay.
0:26:23 So, I think, you know,
0:26:23 also you don’t get, you know,
0:26:24 you stay up a lot at night, right?
0:26:27 There are many similarities.
0:26:29 Vampires kind of illustrate
0:26:30 the possibility of undergoing
0:26:32 a transformative experience,
0:26:33 like a life-changing,
0:26:34 something that’s life-changing,
0:26:36 but also where you change
0:26:37 the kind of mind you have
0:26:38 in a certain way
0:26:39 or what you care about most
0:26:39 in a certain way
0:26:41 that means that
0:26:42 you would make yourself
0:26:43 into a kind of alien
0:26:44 version of yourself,
0:26:46 like someone who’s alien
0:26:46 to you now
0:26:47 and who you might not
0:26:48 even want to be now,
0:26:50 even if once you become
0:26:51 that person
0:26:52 or that version of yourself,
0:26:53 you’re super happy.
0:26:55 If I had some kind
0:26:55 of modal scope
0:26:56 and I could look
0:26:57 at my future self,
0:26:58 I could have looked
0:26:58 at my future self
0:26:59 before I decided
0:27:00 I wanted to have kids.
0:27:02 I got up at 4 a.m.
0:27:04 every day for years
0:27:05 to write
0:27:06 before my children woke up.
0:27:07 I mean,
0:27:09 no one ever told me
0:27:09 that that was something
0:27:10 I would want to do
0:27:11 and if they had told me,
0:27:12 I would have denied it strenuously
0:27:14 because I could barely get up
0:27:15 before new
0:27:16 when I was a graduate student
0:27:17 and I did it willingly.
0:27:18 Something happened.
0:27:19 I was clearly a victim
0:27:20 of some kind
0:27:20 of Stockholm syndrome.
0:27:21 So,
0:27:23 the thought is
0:27:23 that
0:27:25 when you face
0:27:25 a certain kind
0:27:26 of transformative experience
0:27:27 and I don’t think
0:27:28 it’s just having a child,
0:27:28 I think,
0:27:29 like deciding to go to war
0:27:31 or maybe moving
0:27:32 to an entirely different country,
0:27:34 maybe getting some kind of,
0:27:35 if you’re diagnosed
0:27:36 with some kind of disease
0:27:36 and getting some kind
0:27:37 of like radically
0:27:38 experimental treatment,
0:27:39 there are lots of things
0:27:40 that can count
0:27:41 as transformative
0:27:42 but if you don’t know
0:27:43 what it’s going to be like
0:27:44 on the other side
0:27:45 of that experience
0:27:46 and you know
0:27:47 it’s going to make you
0:27:48 into a version of yourself
0:27:49 that right now
0:27:50 you find alien,
0:27:50 I don’t know
0:27:51 how we’re supposed
0:27:52 to make that decision
0:27:52 if it’s up to us.
0:27:54 We can’t use
0:27:56 the ordinary models
0:27:56 that we use
0:27:57 for rational decision making
0:27:58 because those assume
0:27:59 that you can
0:28:00 see through
0:28:01 the options
0:28:02 to assign them value
0:28:03 and model them
0:28:04 for yourself
0:28:05 and choose in a way
0:28:06 that’s going to
0:28:07 as you say,
0:28:08 we say it in a technical way,
0:28:09 maximize your expected value
0:28:11 and if you can’t assign value
0:28:12 and you can’t really understand
0:28:12 what it’s like
0:28:13 to be this kind of a self
0:28:14 then that procedure
0:28:15 just doesn’t work.
0:28:17 Tell me if I’m off base here
0:28:19 but also fundamentally
0:28:20 even if you’re trying
0:28:21 to calculate
0:28:22 or maximize
0:28:23 your expected value
0:28:25 and assign
0:28:25 these different values
0:28:26 you’re doing it
0:28:28 from the perspective
0:28:29 of your current
0:28:31 version of yourself
0:28:32 and your current preferences
0:28:34 and after you become
0:28:34 a vampire
0:28:35 or after you have a kid
0:28:37 you may be a different person
0:28:38 with different preferences
0:28:39 so do you make the decision
0:28:40 based on
0:28:41 the preferences
0:28:42 of your current self
0:28:43 or the preferences
0:28:45 of your expected future self?
0:28:46 There’s a way of capturing
0:28:47 the puzzle
0:28:48 as you said
0:28:49 so given
0:28:50 the fact that
0:28:51 these are new kinds
0:28:52 of experiences
0:28:53 so a kind of experience
0:28:53 you’ve never had before
0:28:55 and I compare this
0:28:55 to like
0:28:57 Mary
0:28:57 growing up
0:28:58 in a black and white room
0:28:59 and seeing color
0:29:00 for the first time
0:29:01 or Thomas Nagel
0:29:02 talking about like
0:29:03 you can’t understand
0:29:04 like for a bat
0:29:04 what it’s like
0:29:05 for a bat to be a bat.
0:29:07 Yeah, exactly.
0:29:08 So there are these like
0:29:09 new kinds of experiences
0:29:11 that are just
0:29:12 very different
0:29:13 from any kind of experience
0:29:13 we’ve had before
0:29:14 and so that means
0:29:15 there’s just a sense
0:29:15 in which we can’t
0:29:16 kind of from the inside
0:29:17 kind of imagine
0:29:18 what they’re like
0:29:19 even if someone can describe
0:29:20 try to describe to me
0:29:20 like what it’s like
0:29:21 to see red
0:29:22 and you see the problem
0:29:23 right away
0:29:23 we just don’t
0:29:24 like language
0:29:25 just kind of gives out
0:29:26 if I haven’t seen red before
0:29:28 I have no color vision.
0:29:29 Okay, so there’s a sense
0:29:30 in which we kind of
0:29:30 can’t see through
0:29:31 a certain kind of veil
0:29:33 and across that veil
0:29:35 the self that we’re going to be
0:29:37 the kind of person
0:29:37 that you’re going to realize
0:29:38 is just like
0:29:39 really different
0:29:41 so you can’t just assume
0:29:41 you’re going to be
0:29:42 basically the same
0:29:43 this puts us
0:29:44 into the situation
0:29:45 where you’re making a choice
0:29:47 for your future self
0:29:49 and that future self
0:29:50 might have preferences
0:29:50 that are super different
0:29:52 from your current self
0:29:54 and by definition
0:29:54 and this breaks
0:29:55 so now here’s a little
0:29:56 technical bit
0:29:56 so we talked about
0:29:57 the intuitive idea
0:29:59 I find it easy to understand
0:30:00 when I think about
0:30:01 someone who doesn’t
0:30:02 maybe doesn’t want
0:30:02 to have a child
0:30:03 or really is unsure
0:30:05 and they know
0:30:05 that if they choose
0:30:06 to have a child
0:30:06 they’re going to be
0:30:07 super happy with that result
0:30:08 but they don’t trust
0:30:09 the fact that
0:30:10 in virtue of like
0:30:11 becoming a parent
0:30:12 it’s going to kind of
0:30:13 rewire them
0:30:13 in their preferences
0:30:14 in a certain way
0:30:15 right
0:30:16 sure I’ll be really happy
0:30:16 but I don’t know
0:30:17 if I want to be that self
0:30:18 right now
0:30:19 given who I am now
0:30:21 and I can’t understand
0:30:22 in a really deep way
0:30:24 what it’s going to be like
0:30:25 to have that child
0:30:26 so I have to kind of
0:30:26 you know
0:30:28 leap over the abyss
0:30:29 or leap into the abyss
0:30:29 I guess
0:30:30 if I want to do it
0:30:32 so if you find yourself
0:30:34 in that situation
0:30:35 what you’re confronting
0:30:37 involves what I describe
0:30:38 as a violation
0:30:40 of act state independence
0:30:40 okay
0:30:42 so here’s the technical part
0:30:43 you’ve got the intuitive idea
0:30:45 act state independence
0:30:47 involves very roughly
0:30:48 a distinction between
0:30:50 the act that you’re performing
0:30:52 and the state that you’re in
0:30:53 or that’s how I’m going
0:30:54 to interpret it here
0:30:54 there are different ways
0:30:55 to interpret it
0:30:56 but this is the way
0:30:56 to do it here
0:30:58 and so normally
0:31:00 when you’re confronted with
0:31:01 oh do I want to do something
0:31:01 do I want to try
0:31:02 this kind of ice cream
0:31:03 or do I want to
0:31:04 have this cup of coffee
0:31:06 you don’t change
0:31:07 in the process of trying it
0:31:09 so after you do it
0:31:09 you can kind of assess
0:31:10 oh I liked it
0:31:11 oh it was good
0:31:11 that’s meaningful
0:31:12 to you beforehand
0:31:13 because you know
0:31:14 that you’re going to
0:31:15 stay constant
0:31:17 through the change
0:31:17 in your circumstances
0:31:18 like tasting
0:31:19 the new kind of ice cream
0:31:21 but in this case
0:31:22 having the experience
0:31:23 let’s say tasting
0:31:24 the new kind of ice cream
0:31:24 was going to like
0:31:26 rework your flavor profile
0:31:27 so that you would just
0:31:27 like a whole bunch
0:31:28 of different things
0:31:29 after that
0:31:30 well that
0:31:31 changes the state
0:31:32 that you’re in
0:31:33 at the same time
0:31:33 and so your act
0:31:34 and your state
0:31:35 are not independent
0:31:37 and if you break that
0:31:38 that’s an axiom
0:31:40 for rational choice theory
0:31:41 that has to be
0:31:42 a foundational element
0:31:42 of the model
0:31:44 to make straightforward inferences
0:31:45 there are all kinds
0:31:45 of fancy things
0:31:46 you have to do
0:31:46 if that breaks
0:31:48 and these cases
0:31:49 of transformative experience
0:31:50 and decision making
0:31:51 are precisely cases
0:31:51 in which that breaks
0:31:57 last but not least
0:31:59 Dr. Keith Barr
0:32:01 a professor of physiology
0:32:02 and membrane biology
0:32:03 at the University
0:32:04 of California Davis
0:32:05 and an expert
0:32:06 in strength
0:32:07 and flexibility
0:32:10 how soon
0:32:11 after surgery
0:32:12 and you can choose
0:32:13 your surgery
0:32:14 ACL
0:32:15 take your pick
0:32:16 dealer’s choice
0:32:18 would you start
0:32:18 loading
0:32:20 the site
0:32:21 of injury
0:32:21 slash repair
0:32:23 so we do it
0:32:24 the next day
0:32:25 so
0:32:27 we’ve had to have
0:32:28 success in order
0:32:29 for us to get there
0:32:30 because the first time
0:32:31 we did this
0:32:32 with a rugby player
0:32:33 the surgeon was like
0:32:35 six weeks without loading
0:32:35 and we were like
0:32:36 let’s load tomorrow
0:32:38 and so we agreed
0:32:39 that we would do it
0:32:39 at like seven
0:32:40 to nine days
0:32:41 and that player
0:32:42 got back
0:32:43 fully a month
0:32:44 faster than
0:32:45 that surgeon
0:32:45 had ever seen
0:32:46 a player get back
0:32:46 from that injury
0:32:47 and so
0:32:48 that surgeon
0:32:49 is now
0:32:50 much more willing
0:32:50 to do it
0:32:51 at two days
0:32:52 after injury
0:32:53 because of that
0:32:54 if you look
0:32:55 at general populations
0:32:56 Michael Kerr
0:32:57 who I think
0:32:57 is the world’s
0:32:58 best sports medicine
0:32:59 doctor
0:33:01 for musculoskeletal injuries
0:33:01 how do you spell
0:33:02 that last name
0:33:05 it’s K-J-A-E-R
0:33:06 he’s in Copenhagen
0:33:06 so he’s
0:33:07 sorry
0:33:07 didn’t realize
0:33:08 that was going
0:33:08 to be that hard
0:33:09 Cher
0:33:11 It’s sheer
0:33:13 but he allows
0:33:14 those of us
0:33:15 who are language deficient
0:33:16 to call him care
0:33:17 but he did
0:33:18 a beautiful study
0:33:18 with one of his
0:33:20 trainees Monica
0:33:21 and what she did
0:33:22 is she took
0:33:23 a bunch of his patients
0:33:24 that had injuries
0:33:24 and she either
0:33:25 had them load
0:33:26 two days after injury
0:33:27 or nine days
0:33:28 after injury
0:33:29 and then she followed
0:33:30 them for when they
0:33:31 got back to sport
0:33:32 and what she found
0:33:32 is the ones
0:33:33 that they loaded
0:33:33 at day two
0:33:34 after the injury
0:33:35 they got back
0:33:36 25% faster
0:33:36 than the ones
0:33:37 that they loaded
0:33:37 at nine days
0:33:38 That’s incredible
0:33:39 That’s typical
0:33:40 so as you said
0:33:41 before
0:33:41 what is our
0:33:42 standard of care
0:33:43 our standard of care
0:33:44 is rice
0:33:45 okay
0:33:46 and so
0:33:47 I’m going to go
0:33:47 a step further
0:33:48 if you go
0:33:49 and you sprain your ankle
0:33:50 and you go to the doctor
0:33:52 very good doctor
0:33:52 very well meaning
0:33:53 they’re going to
0:33:53 give you a boot
0:33:56 and what is a boot
0:33:57 so I told you
0:33:59 that a scar forms
0:33:59 when we get
0:34:00 stress shielding
0:34:01 what a boot is
0:34:02 it is
0:34:04 a mechanical
0:34:05 stress shielder
0:34:06 what it’s designed
0:34:06 to do
0:34:07 is to take
0:34:07 the stress
0:34:08 off the tissue
0:34:09 you’ve injured
0:34:10 if I’ve told you
0:34:11 that the thing
0:34:12 that’s going to
0:34:12 cause that tissue
0:34:13 to get a scar
0:34:13 is that you
0:34:14 take off the tension
0:34:16 what I’ve just done
0:34:17 is I’ve made
0:34:18 the problem worse
0:34:21 I always tell people
0:34:22 that the first
0:34:22 recorded
0:34:24 immobilizer
0:34:25 for an ankle
0:34:26 or a leg
0:34:26 is from
0:34:28 Egyptian hieroglyphs
0:34:28 where they showed
0:34:28 pictures
0:34:30 4,500 years ago
0:34:33 if I took you
0:34:34 and you said
0:34:35 you had cancer
0:34:35 you would not
0:34:36 want a treatment
0:34:37 that was developed
0:34:39 4,500 years ago
0:34:40 you would hope
0:34:41 that something new
0:34:42 has been developed
0:34:43 in the last
0:34:44 4,500 years
0:34:46 that is where we are
0:34:47 for our orthopedic
0:34:48 situations
0:34:49 I understand
0:34:50 that you cannot
0:34:51 put full load
0:34:52 on a surgical repair
0:34:53 immediately
0:34:54 but what you can do
0:34:56 is you can take it out
0:34:57 at the beginning
0:34:57 of the day
0:34:59 you can remove
0:34:59 it from the boot
0:35:00 and I can do
0:35:02 some isometric loads
0:35:02 with low jerk
0:35:03 so I’m going to
0:35:04 develop force slowly
0:35:06 I am going to make sure
0:35:07 that there’s zero pain
0:35:08 and I am going to
0:35:08 hold that
0:35:09 and then I’m going to
0:35:11 let that off slowly
0:35:12 and I’m going to do that
0:35:13 4 times
0:35:13 30 seconds
0:35:14 now I’ve given load
0:35:16 and now I can put it
0:35:17 back into that boot
0:35:18 stress shield it
0:35:19 I’m going to take
0:35:20 the boot off at night
0:35:20 I’m going to do it again
0:35:22 just doing that
0:35:23 I’m getting those
0:35:24 two loads
0:35:25 in this case
0:35:26 the Achilles tendon
0:35:26 that we’ve ruptured
0:35:28 now what I’ve done
0:35:29 is I’ve accelerated
0:35:30 my return to activity
0:35:31 massively
0:35:32 again
0:35:33 the key is
0:35:35 we’re not trying to be
0:35:36 I’m the strongest
0:35:37 in the world
0:35:38 we’re trying to say
0:35:40 I’m putting a little bit
0:35:41 of load through that
0:35:42 that is the key
0:35:44 is that you don’t get
0:35:44 all caught up
0:35:46 in the machismo of it
0:35:46 and you just say
0:35:48 I just want to feel
0:35:48 tension
0:35:50 across the area
0:35:51 what we say is
0:35:52 if you can feel
0:35:53 an ice pick
0:35:53 that means there’s
0:35:54 a very specific
0:35:56 spot that hurts
0:35:56 stop
0:35:58 if I feel
0:35:59 like a warm
0:36:00 burning area
0:36:00 like I’m
0:36:01 muscle soreness
0:36:02 after exercising
0:36:04 that’s totally okay
0:36:05 that kind of soreness
0:36:07 not point specific pain
0:36:08 that’s okay
0:36:09 what we’re doing
0:36:11 add the load slowly
0:36:12 hold it
0:36:13 take the load off slowly
0:36:15 now what we can do
0:36:16 is we can get those
0:36:17 individuals back
0:36:18 much much much faster
0:36:25 and now here are the
0:36:26 bios for all the guests
0:36:28 my guest who I’ve
0:36:28 wanted to interview
0:36:29 for years is
0:36:31 Brandon Sanderson
0:36:32 he is the number one
0:36:32 New York Times
0:36:33 best-selling author
0:36:34 of the Stormlight
0:36:35 Archives series
0:36:36 and the Mistborn
0:36:37 Saga
0:36:38 the middle grade series
0:36:39 Alcatraz versus
0:36:40 the Evil Librarians
0:36:41 and the young adult
0:36:41 novels
0:36:42 The Rhythmatist
0:36:43 The Reckoners
0:36:44 Trilogy
0:36:45 and the Skyward
0:36:45 series
0:36:46 he has sold
0:36:47 more than 40 million
0:36:49 books in 35 languages
0:36:51 he has architected
0:36:54 40 million plus dollar
0:36:55 Kickstarter campaigns
0:36:56 and he is a four-time
0:36:57 nominee for the Hugo
0:36:58 Awards
0:36:59 winning in 2013
0:37:00 for his novella
0:37:02 The Emperor’s Soul
0:37:03 that same year
0:37:04 he was chosen
0:37:04 to complete
0:37:05 Robert Jordan’s
0:37:06 The Wheel of Time
0:37:06 series
0:37:07 which is a big
0:37:08 big deal
0:37:09 culminating in
0:37:10 A Memory of Light
0:37:11 Brandon co-hosts
0:37:12 with fellow author
0:37:13 Dan Wells
0:37:13 the popular
0:37:14 Intentionally Blank
0:37:15 podcast
0:37:16 and teaches
0:37:17 creative writing
0:37:18 at Brigham Young
0:37:18 University
0:37:19 We did this one
0:37:20 in person
0:37:21 which made
0:37:22 all the difference
0:37:23 in Brandon’s
0:37:24 massive cavernous
0:37:25 offices
0:37:26 right next to
0:37:27 his warehouse
0:37:28 it was
0:37:29 a hell of a ride
0:37:30 and we covered
0:37:31 a lot of
0:37:32 ground
0:37:33 and a lot
0:37:34 of really
0:37:34 nitty gritty
0:37:36 tactical advice
0:37:37 related to
0:37:38 fiction
0:37:39 business
0:37:40 publishing
0:37:41 innovating
0:37:42 across the board
0:37:43 how he architected
0:37:44 his record-breaking
0:37:45 kickstarter
0:37:46 campaign
0:37:47 and much
0:37:47 much more
0:37:48 you can find
0:37:49 him at
0:37:51 brandonsanderson.com
0:37:51 that’s
0:37:53 b-r-a-n-d-o-n
0:37:54 sanderson.com
0:37:55 and you can find
0:37:56 him on
0:37:56 x-instagram
0:37:57 and youtube
0:37:57 at
0:37:58 brand
0:37:59 sanderson
0:37:59 that’s
0:38:00 b-r-a-n-d
0:38:01 sanderson
0:38:02 and I definitely
0:38:03 recommend checking
0:38:03 out all of
0:38:03 those
0:38:08 my guest
0:38:09 today
0:38:10 is a fan
0:38:10 favorite
0:38:11 it is
0:38:11 Seth
0:38:11 Godin
0:38:11 the one
0:38:12 and only
0:38:12 he is the
0:38:13 author of
0:38:13 21
0:38:14 internationally
0:38:15 best-selling
0:38:15 books
0:38:16 translated into
0:38:16 more than
0:38:17 35 languages
0:38:18 including
0:38:18 linchpin
0:38:19 tribes
0:38:20 the dip
0:38:20 and purple
0:38:21 cow
0:38:22 his latest
0:38:22 book
0:38:23 this is
0:38:24 strategy
0:38:25 really caught
0:38:26 my attention
0:38:27 and it
0:38:27 offers a
0:38:28 fresh lens
0:38:28 on how
0:38:28 we can
0:38:29 make bold
0:38:29 decisions
0:38:30 embrace
0:38:30 change
0:38:31 and navigate
0:38:32 a complex
0:38:32 rapidly
0:38:33 evolving
0:38:33 world
0:38:34 we cover
0:38:34 a ton
0:38:34 of
0:38:35 ground
0:38:36 including
0:38:36 sets of
0:38:37 questions
0:38:37 that you
0:38:38 can use
0:38:39 to catalyze
0:38:40 personal and
0:38:40 professional
0:38:41 growth
0:38:43 maxims
0:38:43 different
0:38:43 concepts
0:38:44 to unpack
0:38:45 that can
0:38:46 productively
0:38:47 shake
0:38:47 the snow
0:38:48 globe
0:38:48 of your
0:38:48 mind
0:38:49 so that
0:38:49 you can
0:38:49 settle
0:38:50 on
0:38:50 new
0:38:51 realizations
0:38:51 different
0:38:52 ways
0:38:53 to create
0:38:53 competitive
0:38:54 advantage
0:38:54 in an
0:38:55 increasingly
0:38:55 crowded
0:38:56 world
0:38:57 Seth
0:38:57 is also
0:38:57 the
0:38:57 founder
0:38:58 of the
0:38:58 alt
0:38:58 MBA
0:38:59 and
0:38:59 the
0:38:59 akimbo
0:39:00 workshops
0:39:01 transformative
0:39:01 online
0:39:02 programs
0:39:02 that have
0:39:02 helped
0:39:03 thousands
0:39:03 of people
0:39:03 take their
0:39:04 work to
0:39:04 the next
0:39:04 level
0:39:05 his blog
0:39:07 Seths.blog
0:39:10 is one of
0:39:10 the most
0:39:10 widely read
0:39:11 in the world
0:39:12 and has
0:39:12 been such
0:39:13 for a
0:39:14 very long
0:39:14 time
0:39:15 Seth is
0:39:16 also the
0:39:16 creator
0:39:17 of the
0:39:17 Carbon
0:39:18 Almanac
0:39:18 a global
0:39:19 initiative
0:39:19 focused on
0:39:20 climate
0:39:20 action
0:39:21 this is a
0:39:22 very practical
0:39:22 episode
0:39:24 as all
0:39:24 of Seth’s
0:39:24 are
0:39:25 on this
0:39:26 podcast
0:39:27 and I’ll
0:39:27 leave it
0:39:28 at that
0:39:32 my guest
0:39:33 today is
0:39:33 L.A.
0:39:34 Paul
0:39:35 L.A.
0:39:35 Paul is
0:39:35 the
0:39:36 Millstone
0:39:36 family
0:39:36 professor
0:39:37 of
0:39:37 philosophy
0:39:38 and
0:39:38 professor
0:39:38 of
0:39:39 cognitive
0:39:39 science
0:39:39 at
0:39:40 Yale
0:39:40 University
0:39:41 where she
0:39:42 leads the
0:39:42 self and
0:39:43 society
0:39:43 initiative
0:39:44 for the
0:39:44 Wu
0:39:45 Institute
0:39:46 her research
0:39:47 explores
0:39:47 questions about
0:39:48 the nature
0:39:48 of the
0:39:48 self and
0:39:49 decision
0:39:49 making
0:39:49 and the
0:39:50 metaphysics
0:39:50 and cognitive
0:39:51 science of
0:39:51 time
0:39:53 cause and
0:39:53 experience
0:39:54 now that’s a
0:39:54 mouthful but
0:39:55 we also get
0:39:56 into vampire
0:39:56 thought
0:39:57 experiments
0:39:58 how to
0:39:59 decide or
0:39:59 how to
0:39:59 think about
0:40:00 deciding
0:40:01 whether or
0:40:01 not to
0:40:01 have a
0:40:02 kid
0:40:02 that is
0:40:03 children
0:40:04 and many
0:40:05 other things
0:40:05 you can
0:40:06 apply to
0:40:06 your own
0:40:07 lives
0:40:08 L.A.
0:40:08 Paul is
0:40:08 also the
0:40:09 recipient of
0:40:10 fellowships from
0:40:10 the Guggenheim
0:40:11 Foundation
0:40:11 the National
0:40:12 Humanities
0:40:12 Center
0:40:13 and the
0:40:13 Australian
0:40:13 National
0:40:14 University
0:40:15 she is the
0:40:15 author of
0:40:16 transformative
0:40:17 experience
0:40:17 that’s how I
0:40:18 was introduced
0:40:18 to her work
0:40:19 and co-author of
0:40:20 causation
0:40:21 a user’s guide
0:40:21 which was
0:40:22 awarded the
0:40:22 American
0:40:23 philosophical
0:40:24 association
0:40:24 Sanders
0:40:25 book prize
0:40:26 her work on
0:40:27 transformative
0:40:27 experience has
0:40:28 been covered
0:40:28 by the
0:40:28 New York
0:40:28 Times
0:40:29 Wall Street
0:40:29 Journal
0:40:30 The Guardian
0:40:31 NPR
0:40:31 and the
0:40:31 BBC
0:40:32 among others
0:40:33 and in
0:40:33 2024
0:40:34 she was
0:40:35 profiled by
0:40:35 The New
0:40:36 Yorker
0:40:36 which is
0:40:36 also an
0:40:37 amazing read
0:40:37 that I
0:40:38 recommend
0:40:38 she’s
0:40:39 currently
0:40:39 working on
0:40:39 a book
0:40:40 about
0:40:40 self
0:40:40 construction
0:40:41 transformative
0:40:42 experience
0:40:42 humility
0:40:43 and fear
0:40:44 of mental
0:40:45 corruption
0:40:46 fundamentally
0:40:46 this conversation
0:40:47 focuses on
0:40:49 how you can
0:40:50 make decisions
0:40:51 or think about
0:40:51 making decisions
0:40:52 where the
0:40:53 person you are
0:40:54 now is not
0:40:54 the same
0:40:54 person you
0:40:56 are afterwards
0:40:57 and the
0:40:59 most resonant
0:41:00 example of
0:41:00 that is
0:41:01 deciding
0:41:01 whether or
0:41:02 not to
0:41:02 have
0:41:03 children
0:41:08 my
0:41:08 guest
0:41:08 today
0:41:09 is
0:41:09 Dr.
0:41:09 Keith
0:41:10 Barr
0:41:10 he
0:41:11 is
0:41:11 a
0:41:11 professor
0:41:12 at the
0:41:12 University
0:41:12 of
0:41:13 California
0:41:13 Davis
0:41:13 in the
0:41:14 Department
0:41:14 of
0:41:14 Physiology
0:41:15 and
0:41:16 Membrane
0:41:16 Biology
0:41:17 we get
0:41:17 into
0:41:18 so many
0:41:19 facets
0:41:20 of exercise
0:41:21 what you
0:41:21 can use
0:41:21 today
0:41:23 that is
0:41:23 counterintuitive
0:41:25 I
0:41:26 had my
0:41:26 mind
0:41:26 blown
0:41:26 I took
0:41:27 so many
0:41:27 notes
0:41:28 we talked
0:41:28 about
0:41:29 isometric
0:41:30 exercise
0:41:30 for tendon
0:41:31 health
0:41:32 optimizing
0:41:32 different
0:41:33 protocols
0:41:34 debunking
0:41:34 on some
0:41:34 level
0:41:35 eccentric
0:41:36 training
0:41:36 specifically
0:41:37 for connective
0:41:37 tissue
0:41:39 how to load
0:41:39 post injury
0:41:40 or surgery
0:41:40 collagen
0:41:41 supplementation
0:41:42 things like
0:41:43 BPC 157
0:41:44 pharmaceutical
0:41:45 impacts on
0:41:46 tendons
0:41:46 estrogen’s
0:41:47 role
0:41:48 in tendon
0:41:48 health
0:41:49 and strength
0:41:50 mitochondria
0:41:50 ketogenic
0:41:51 diet
0:41:51 longevity
0:41:52 inflammation
0:41:53 and taking
0:41:54 a balanced
0:41:54 perspective
0:41:55 on all
0:41:55 of these
0:41:55 things
0:41:55 how do
0:41:56 you use
0:41:56 them
0:41:56 we get
0:41:56 into
0:41:57 exact
0:41:58 training
0:41:58 protocols
0:41:59 that rock
0:41:59 climbers
0:42:00 use
0:42:01 it is
0:42:01 an amazing
0:42:02 episode
0:42:02 and that’s
0:42:03 not
0:42:03 because of
0:42:03 me
0:42:03 it’s
0:42:04 because
0:42:04 of
0:42:05 Keith
0:42:05 so let
0:42:05 me give
0:42:06 you a
0:42:06 quick bio
0:42:06 and then
0:42:07 we’ll hop
0:42:07 right into
0:42:07 it
0:42:08 during his
0:42:09 PhD studies
0:42:09 his research
0:42:10 revealed
0:42:10 that the
0:42:11 mechanical
0:42:11 strain
0:42:12 on muscle
0:42:12 fibers
0:42:12 activates
0:42:13 the
0:42:13 mammalian
0:42:14 target
0:42:14 of
0:42:15 rapamycin
0:42:15 some of
0:42:16 you may
0:42:16 know
0:42:16 that
0:42:16 as
0:42:17 mTOR
0:42:18 signaling
0:42:18 pathway
0:42:18 a crucial
0:42:19 regulator
0:42:19 of
0:42:20 muscular
0:42:21 hypertrophy
0:42:21 or muscle
0:42:21 growth
0:42:22 so he knows
0:42:22 a lot
0:42:23 about muscle
0:42:23 growth
0:42:23 he’s been
0:42:24 a strength
0:42:24 training
0:42:24 coach
0:42:25 as well
0:42:26 subsequently
0:42:26 he studied
0:42:27 the molecular
0:42:27 dynamics
0:42:31 of
0:42:31 Dr.
0:42:32 John
0:42:32 Halazi
0:42:33 a legend
0:42:33 in the
0:42:33 field
0:42:33 of
0:42:34 exercise
0:42:34 physiology
0:42:35 considered
0:42:36 the father
0:42:36 of modern
0:42:37 exercise
0:42:38 biochemistry
0:42:39 building on
0:42:39 all of this
0:42:40 he conducted
0:42:40 research
0:42:41 into tendon
0:42:41 health
0:42:41 and the
0:42:42 potential
0:42:42 for
0:42:42 engineering
0:42:43 ligaments
0:42:44 that is
0:42:44 creating
0:42:45 ligaments
0:42:45 in the
0:42:46 lab
0:42:47 upon which
0:42:47 he can
0:42:47 test
0:42:48 all sorts
0:42:48 of
0:42:48 things
0:42:49 which
0:42:49 could
0:42:49 also
0:42:49 have
0:42:49 implications
0:42:50 for
0:42:50 treatment
0:42:50 and
0:42:51 recovery
0:42:51 from
0:42:51 injuries
0:42:52 Dr.
0:42:52 Barr
0:42:53 now runs
0:42:53 the
0:42:53 functional
0:42:54 molecular
0:42:55 biology
0:42:55 lab
0:42:55 at UC
0:42:56 Davis
0:42:56 his
0:42:56 lab’s
0:42:57 work
0:42:57 ranges
0:42:57 from
0:42:58 studying
0:42:58 molecular
0:42:59 changes
0:42:59 in
0:42:59 our
0:42:59 cells
0:42:59 to
0:43:00 conducting
0:43:00 studies
0:43:01 to
0:43:01 affect
0:43:01 real
0:43:02 world
0:43:02 improvements
0:43:02 and
0:43:03 people’s
0:43:03 health
0:43:04 longevity
0:43:04 and
0:43:04 quality
0:43:04 of
0:43:05 life
0:43:05 you can
0:43:06 find him
0:43:06 on
0:43:06 blue sky
0:43:07 as
0:43:08 muscle
0:43:08 science
0:43:09 you can
0:43:09 find him
0:43:09 on the
0:43:10 UC
0:43:10 Davis
0:43:10 website
0:43:10 we’ll
0:43:11 link
0:43:11 to
0:43:28 again
0:43:28 again
0:43:28 just
0:43:28 one
0:43:28 more
0:43:29 thing
0:43:29 before
0:43:29 you
0:43:29 take
0:43:30 off
0:43:30 and
0:43:30 that
0:43:30 is
0:43:31 five
0:43:31 bullet
0:43:32 Friday
0:43:33 would
0:43:33 you
0:43:33 enjoy
0:43:33 getting
0:43:34 a short
0:43:34 email
0:43:34 from me
0:43:34 every
0:43:35 Friday
0:43:35 that
0:43:35 provides
0:43:36 a little
0:43:36 fun
0:43:37 before
0:43:37 the
0:43:37 weekend
0:43:38 between
0:43:38 one
0:43:38 and a
0:43:39 half
0:43:39 and
0:43:39 two
0:43:39 million
0:43:39 people
0:43:40 subscribe
0:43:40 to my
0:43:41 free
0:43:41 newsletter
0:43:41 my
0:43:42 super
0:43:42 short
0:43:43 newsletter
0:43:43 called
0:43:43 five
0:43:44 bullet
0:43:44 Friday
0:43:44 easy
0:43:45 to
0:43:45 sign
0:43:45 up
0:43:45 easy
0:43:46 to
0:43:46 cancel
0:43:47 it
0:43:47 is
0:43:47 basically
0:43:48 a
0:43:48 half
0:43:49 page
0:43:49 that
0:43:49 I
0:43:49 send
0:43:50 out
0:43:50 every
0:43:51 Friday
0:44:05 to
0:44:05 get
0:44:06 sent
0:44:06 to
0:44:06 me
0:44:06 by
0:44:07 my
0:44:07 friends
0:44:07 including
0:44:07 a lot
0:44:08 of
0:44:08 podcast
0:44:09 guests
0:44:10 and
0:44:10 these
0:44:11 strange
0:44:11 esoteric
0:44:11 things
0:44:12 end up
0:44:12 in my
0:44:12 field
0:44:13 and
0:44:13 then
0:44:14 I
0:44:14 test
0:44:14 them
0:44:14 and
0:44:15 then
0:44:15 I
0:44:15 share
0:44:15 them
0:44:16 with
0:44:16 you
0:44:17 so
0:44:17 if
0:44:17 that
0:44:17 sounds
0:44:18 fun
0:44:18 again
0:44:19 it’s
0:44:19 very
0:44:19 short
0:44:20 a
0:44:20 little
0:44:20 tiny
0:44:20 bite
0:44:20 of
0:44:21 goodness
0:44:21 before
0:44:21 you
0:44:22 head
0:44:22 off
0:44:22 for
0:44:22 the
0:44:23 weekend
0:44:23 something
0:44:23 to
0:44:23 think
0:44:24 about
0:44:24 if
0:44:24 you’d
0:44:25 like
0:44:25 to
0:44:25 try
0:44:25 it
0:44:25 out
0:44:26 just
0:44:26 go to
0:44:26 tim.blog
0:44:27 slash
0:44:27 Friday
0:44:28 type that
0:44:28 into your
0:44:28 browser
0:44:30 tim.blog
0:44:30 slash
0:44:31 Friday
0:44:32 drop in your
0:44:32 email
0:44:32 and you’ll get
0:44:33 the very
0:44:33 next one
0:44:34 thanks for
0:44:34 listening
This is a special inbetweenisode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can easily jump around to get a feel for the episode and guest.
Based on your feedback, this format has been tweaked and improved since the first recap episode. For instance, listeners suggested that the bios for each guest can slow the momentum, so we moved all the bios to the end.
See it as a teaser. Something to whet your appetite. If you like what you hear, you can of course find the full episodes at tim.blog/podcast.
Please enjoy!
This episode is brought to you by 5-Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter.
Timestamps:
Brandon Sanderson: 03:24
Seth Godin: 12:08
L.A. Paul: 21:08
Dr. Keith Baar: 31:53
Full episode titles:
#792: Seth Godin on Playing the Right Game and Strategy as a Superpower
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.