0:00:03 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of
0:00:08 The Tim Ferriss Show, where it’s my job to interview world-class performers from every
0:00:12 imaginable discipline to tease out, you guessed it, the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on
0:00:18 that you can apply to your own lives. This time, we have a very special episode. This is always
0:00:23 a listener favorite, a recording with my close friend, Kevin Rose. Kevin Rose, for those who
0:00:30 don’t know, at Kevin Rose. Everywhere, he is indeed a world-class entrepreneur, serial founder,
0:00:37 investor in the smallest of seed rounds up to the largest of companies. And what we always do,
0:00:42 we trade our latest discoveries, our latest findings, what our friends have sent to us.
0:00:49 And I think it is one of our best. But first, just a few quick words from our sponsors who make this
0:00:56 show possible. I don’t know about you guys, but I have seen a lot of crazy stuff in the last few
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0:01:16 was generated with AI, and it looks photorealistic, basically. I mean, it would have cost hundreds of
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0:01:25 fingers. It’s crazy. So AI is changing everything. We know that. It is also changing the way startups
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0:05:20 Kevin, good to see you, sir. Tim Tim, always a pleasure. Good to be here.
0:05:26 So the ravages of childhood illness are ripping through your household at the moment.
0:05:29 I mean, it was one of those things where I hit you up this morning. I was like, yeah,
0:05:33 there’s a cold going around. Can we boot this podcast? You’re like, I have to have my colon
0:05:38 examined. And so we decided to do it today. So I feel pretty good though, actually, all things
0:05:38 considered.
0:05:40 Yes.
0:05:40 True story.
0:05:46 True story. We have all of the fun things to discuss in our advancing years, but you know,
0:05:51 one step at a time, one step at a time, by the way, I have a lot of pro tips for the
0:05:55 colonoscopy. If you haven’t already done one, let’s do it. I have done a colonoscopy before.
0:06:02 The reason that I am methodical about this is not to immediately start on a down note, but
0:06:08 a friend of mine ended up getting terminal colon cancer, which metastasized, I guess, prior to
0:06:15 that diagnosis to his liver. And so I have been very much on schedule with doing this type of
0:06:22 checkup, even though it’s inconvenient, even though it’s unpleasant, you got to do it. You
0:06:23 just have to do it.
0:06:29 Yeah. I had a friend who actually had a big, massive chunk of his colon removed because of
0:06:34 this. He had some cancer. So yeah, very important to stand on top of it. But I will say the drugs
0:06:39 they give you when you’re going in, propofol, propofol. Yeah. That’s just, that’s what Michael
0:06:42 Jackson died on. You know that? That’s what he died on.
0:06:46 Well, that’s why I want self-administer. No, you don’t self-administer that. But I will
0:06:52 say if you have a cool doc, and it’s typically the anesthesiologist that does this, they will
0:06:57 do what’s called the slow ramp, where rather than push it all in and give you that bulls
0:07:01 dose where it just knocks you out, they’ll let you just chill and ride it for about a minute
0:07:06 or so. And I can see why Michael Jackson was hooked on this shit. Like I did that with
0:07:12 them. I asked for the slow ramp when the last time I got it. Dude, you feel like you amazing
0:07:13 when they give you that stuff.
0:07:14 Yeah, it was crazy.
0:07:21 That sounds like an anti-sales pitch. I think if it’s likely that I will just remember the
0:07:25 bliss of that experience and want another bite of the apple, maybe I won’t ask for the slow
0:07:29 ramp. I’ll just say, hey, just blow dart in the back of the neck. Take me out as quickly
0:07:34 as possible. So that is, I think, where I’ll go with tomorrow’s lovely procedure.
0:07:39 I didn’t tell you this. The last time I did my colonoscopy, it’s always hard when there’s
0:07:45 a really attractive nurse in the room and they’re like, flip on your side. And you know what they’re
0:07:51 going to do. And it’s just like, I don’t really feel like this is the right crew.
0:07:52 The right setting.
0:07:58 Set and setting was not right for me there. But I went through with it. There’s nothing you
0:08:01 could do at that point. You just like flip on your side. Hopefully you don’t remember
0:08:05 anything and you don’t and you’re good. So that is okay. But anyway, Godspeed tomorrow,
0:08:06 Tim. Wish me the best.
0:08:12 Godspeed. Well, you’re also, the reason we were comparing notes for self-care and how that can
0:08:18 change over time is you said that you have a scan scheduled for this week, right?
0:08:24 Yeah. I have a Prunovo tomorrow. So full body MRI scan done. I’d mentioned this on a podcast we did a
0:08:30 while back, but they found basically a little tiny thing in my brain that could turn into a larger
0:08:36 vessel rupture. And so they have to keep tabs on it. So I go back once a year and it’s been stable.
0:08:41 It’s been totally stable for the last year and a half. So they’re like, yeah, you could have had this
0:08:45 your entire time. That’s part of the problem with getting these full body MRIs, right? Because you go in
0:08:52 there. And on the plus side, I’ve had a friend that found a tumor in his brain and he had it
0:08:57 removed. It was a golf ball. It was crazy. It was fine. And you catch that stuff early and it’s
0:09:02 amazing because it saves your life. And then on the downside, lots of false positives, like little
0:09:06 tiny cysts and things that are just been there your entire life. Or just positive positives, but
0:09:12 they’re small things that you can’t or won’t do anything about. So you just need to accept that you
0:09:16 have. Exactly. Like a brain aneurysm, which is what I have. And now I know that I have it.
0:09:23 One time. So there is that. Yeah. What are your suggestions for people psychologically if they’re
0:09:30 listening? And for instance, I think of my parents who have been by and large, especially one more than
0:09:38 the other, averse to getting comprehensive checkups in part because ignorance is bliss until it isn’t.
0:09:45 If it’s something serious, then you just accidentally signed your death warrant if you take it to an
0:09:51 extreme extent. But they are afraid of what they might find. What are your thoughts on this? My
0:09:58 thought is step number one, honestly, for me is just develop a baseline of scientific literacy. You
0:10:05 could listen to studying the studies or read that from Peter Uttia. There’s a book called Bad Science
0:10:10 I actually excerpted for The 4-Hour Body at one point just to give you an idea of what matters
0:10:16 and what doesn’t because a lot gets sensationalized in the news. And so you can train yourself to blow
0:10:24 things out of proportion. And once you realize just how inert and unimportant, for instance, I have a
0:10:28 number of, I don’t know if they’d be termed cysts or otherwise, but like one on my kidney and then one
0:10:37 in another place. And it’s not fun to see those things. But I suppose having done so much in terms
0:10:42 of medical checkups, blood draws and so on, there is also a conditioning over time where you become
0:10:48 less sensitive. But if you only do it once in a blue moon, you’re more prone to overreacting. Any other
0:10:48 thoughts on that?
0:10:53 Yeah, I think you nailed it where it’s like, for me, it’s an annual thing. So I’m just like
0:10:58 automatically going to do it no matter what. And once you get two or three of them under your belt,
0:11:03 you’re much better off. But I would say that, you know, one of the things that I’ve heard time and
0:11:07 time again is people don’t like going into MRIs because they put you in this little tiny tube.
0:11:11 And a lot of people have claustrophobia around that. And I know that you can watch Netflix on some
0:11:15 of them now and they got all these little displays, but it doesn’t help people. So I would say
0:11:20 there’s two things that I’ve seen that people have done to sidestep this. One is if you talk
0:11:24 to your doctor and you really do have a severe anxiety around claustrophobia, they’ll give you
0:11:27 some kind of benzo and just kind of chill you out for a little bit. And you can go in there and just,
0:11:32 and you’ll get through it. And the second thing is there’s another test called GRAIL. I don’t know
0:11:37 if you’ve ever done the GRAIL test, but my physician does that as well. Yeah. And it’s just a blood test
0:11:40 and it’s going to screen for a bunch of cancers as well. And so, you know, if you’re like, Hey,
0:11:44 no way with the MRI, I don’t want to know about the cyst, but I still want some cancer screening.
0:11:48 I think the GRAIL is probably the best to market for just general blood work, cancer screening.
0:11:52 All right. And should we move on from old man roll call?
0:11:54 Dying. Yeah, exactly.
0:11:56 From death.
0:12:01 From death. All right. I’ll kick us off with something that I think is pretty fun
0:12:08 that I certainly was not aware of. And it’s a documentary. So this is a documentary. It’s
0:12:14 called 32 sounds and people can check this out. If you’re going to watch it, watch it with a headset.
0:12:21 It could be in ear AirPods, something like that. But certainly if you have higher quality headphones,
0:12:26 I would use those. Here’s the description has 96% on rotten tomatoes.
0:12:32 32 sounds is an immersive feature documentary and profound sensory experience from Academy Award
0:12:38 nominated filmmaker, Sam Green, featuring original music by JD Sampson. The film explores the elemental
0:12:45 phenomenon of sound by weaving together 32 specific sound explorations into a cinematic meditation on the
0:12:50 power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around
0:12:58 us. It’s just a fundamentally different movie going or film watching, in this case, listening experience
0:13:04 than anything I’ve ever seen. So from that perspective, I thought it was worthwhile, very
0:13:12 worthwhile. And it will certainly lead you to, for a period of time afterwards, relate to the world of sound
0:13:18 and this ability that sometimes we take for granted, which under the hood is pretty bizarre or at the very
0:13:23 least amazing. So that’s a recommendation to get us out of deathland and into savoring lifeland.
0:13:28 So walk me through this as someone that hasn’t even seen a trailer for it. Are we talking like
0:13:32 sound bath action here? Like are we, are we seeing visuals on the screen? What is it?
0:13:37 You’re seeing visuals. There are points in the documentary, for instance, where they’ll prompt
0:13:45 you to close your eyes. If you are sighted, they don’t assume that everyone is. And it weaves the visual
0:13:57 and the auditory together along with background context from the filmmaker into a documentary that
0:14:02 is just unlike anything I’ve seen. So I, for that reason, thought I would throw it out there because
0:14:08 as you know, Kevin, and maybe we’ll talk about this, but we spent some time together. My first time with
0:14:17 Henry Shookman in New Mexico, we did a mini Zen retreat and you can really sharpen your awareness
0:14:25 broadly speaking by honing in on the specific, right? So you might do a session where you’re focused just
0:14:31 on breathing in and out and the sensation at the nostrils. For instance, you might also focus on
0:14:37 soundscape. And when we were sitting, we did a lot of focusing on soundscape, different types of sounds,
0:14:41 things that are intermittent, things that are one-off, things that are droning in the background.
0:14:49 And this documentary can be a tool in the toolkit. I just think it’s a nice way to jumpstart that type
0:14:52 or magnify the awareness that we already have.
0:14:57 This is one of those things where I don’t know about you, but I found myself drawn to more
0:15:04 kind of indie, weird documentary style stuff lately, just because there’s so much commercial shit out
0:15:08 there where I’m like, I don’t need another show. I don’t need more violence in my head.
0:15:13 I watched Flow not too long ago. I think we talked, we talked about that once before. That was fantastic
0:15:15 movie. You didn’t like it though, right?
0:15:22 I haven’t watched it yet. And I guess what I want to know is how long does it take for you to get
0:15:32 accustomed to the lo-fi aesthetic of that particular animation, right? Because it looks, I’m not even
0:15:38 sure how you would describe it, like a very polygonal, right? It’s very, if I’m getting the pronunciation
0:15:39 right, something like that.
0:15:40 Polygonal.
0:15:45 I think I’m getting that. Low poly. Yeah. Which polygon, polygonal. There we go. Something
0:15:50 like that. I’m getting too fancy for my own good. But how long does it take you to get accustomed
0:15:56 to? And if my memory serves me right, it’s from a filmmaker somewhere in like Hungary or Lithuania,
0:16:02 something like that. Animated film, all about animals. The visual, I guess, aesthetic, the look
0:16:06 is what kept me from watching it. So maybe you could just speak to that for a second.
0:16:16 Yeah. So it does have this very low poly kind of Nintendo type vibes to it where it’s like,
0:16:20 it’s not the PS5. It’s like, it’s kind of like a crappier version where you can see some of the
0:16:25 artifacts and, but there’s no speech at all. Like it’s just completely silent film. Well, not silent
0:16:31 as it sounds, but there’s no talking at all. And it’s kind of post-apocalyptic vibes. This cat is
0:16:37 trying to kind of make its way through this new world. It’s beautiful. I’d say about five minutes
0:16:41 of that weird, like, where am I? Why is this low poly? And then all of a sudden you feel
0:16:45 polyamorous. What is it when you get like used to something like that? Is it polyamorous?
0:16:53 Low polyamorous. Yeah. Yeah. So you get used to it, whether you like it or not, but it was Latvia
0:16:59 was where it came out of bed. It’s beautiful. Watch the documentary. Watch the trailer. It’s like a minute
0:17:04 and a half long. It’s absolutely stunning. It’s like this cat forms these relationships with these birds
0:17:09 and these dogs and they’re all trying to survive. And it’s 84 minutes of just good,
0:17:15 fun, low poly documentary. Is there a minimum required amount of enhancement before you watch
0:17:19 such a thing or were you watching a stone cold? Okay. Just make sure. Dude, I’m clean. I’m clean these
0:17:24 days. That’s something I want to talk about. I’m so clean right now. Let’s talk about clean. Cause
0:17:30 sometimes when I hear you say clean, that means that you’ve been clean for like 13, 14 hours. So
0:17:34 what are we talking here? Let’s hop right into it. 24 hours. No, I’m just kidding. And I’ll watch
0:17:38 flow tonight. I’ve been meaning to watch it and for whatever reason, I’ve kept pushing it. Don’t
0:17:43 really have a great excuse. So since I’ll be up all night, shitting my brains out, drinking these various
0:17:48 potions that the doctors prescribed me, I might as well try to watch something. So give you a, just real
0:17:55 quick on the flow movie, $3.5 million budget to create this. So it was like very scrappy. 36 million in
0:18:00 the box office, you know, was at the cans film festival. They premiered and it just won a bunch
0:18:04 of awards. So anyway, I highly recommend checking it out. I think you can stream it for free, but
0:18:11 yeah. On to, should we Kevin being clean? Yeah. Clean. Let’s do it. So dude, here’s the deal.
0:18:17 Okay. We’ve had this conversation a few times and you and I will get on a phone call and I’ll be like,
0:18:21 how are you doing? You’re like, Oh, dating’s hard. Cause you have to drink every night. And
0:18:25 you know, I’m like, life’s hard. So you have to drink every night. I’m like being married’s hard.
0:18:29 So you have to drink every night. You know? So it’s kind of like, you’re damned if you do,
0:18:34 you’re damned if you don’t. No, but all jokes aside, one of the things that I realized is that
0:18:39 earlier this year, I made this like very proud statement that I’m going to go 90 days without
0:18:44 drinks. And everybody says 90 days is where the magic happens, you know, this and that, you know,
0:18:51 classic Kevin bullshit where I fail after like a week. Right. And so I went close to a month.
0:18:54 I had a couple of little things where I was like, well, I got this event. I’m allowing myself to have
0:19:00 two or three drinks, whatever. So it was kind of cheating, but I did a month ish right around the
0:19:07 holidays. And then after I lost my house in the fire, I realized that there was this moment where
0:19:15 I just realized like what I’m doing is no longer serving me. And it’s really, I just didn’t feel
0:19:23 like drinking was the solution to anything. I wasn’t having the same joyous kind of fun with
0:19:31 friends type drinking. It was more out of habit and also continuous. So what I mean by that is like,
0:19:36 rather than I’ve never been the like, Oh damn it. I had six drinks last night. Like those were,
0:19:41 I mean, maybe a dignation or some stupid shit like that, but like outside of the random podcast once a
0:19:46 year, it was more a consistency thing. And then I got some really scary blood work back from my
0:19:50 doctor where I went and had my quarterly blood check and my liver enzymes were like one 50.
0:19:54 And which is just insane. They should be like under 20.
0:19:57 That’s like Barry Bonds and his peak level liver enzymes.
0:20:03 Right. Exactly. Like I should have been jacked as shit from juicing, but instead it was just me
0:20:08 hitting, you know, champagne or drinks like, you know, and I, the problems I would have two things.
0:20:13 One, my liver is just not what it used to be as I get older. And two, you know, the consistency,
0:20:18 like I said, two or three drinks, just like a lot of nights in a row. And it was really easy for my
0:20:22 wife and I to crack a bottle and just finish it together and just call it a night.
0:20:27 So long story short, I was like, I need to change something. And what I’m doing is not
0:20:32 working. And if I really want to go 90 days, I have to surround myself with people that
0:20:40 can help me here. Right. And so I have had now three friends that have done one version of a 12
0:20:45 step program. One, I think it’s actually been on your podcast before, but like I called them all up
0:20:50 and I said, Hey, I don’t think I can do 90 days by myself. Like I need some help. Like I need some
0:20:55 support here. What can I do? What tools do you have at your disposal that I can lean into for
0:21:00 support here? And they were super helpful. Each of them had a slightly different recommendation
0:21:06 and I pulled some of those tools and I started applying them to my everyday life. And now,
0:21:13 you know, as we speak, I’m 26 days, completely, perfectly sober, not a single drink. And it was
0:21:16 freaking hard, dude, to get here, but I’m feeling really good now.
0:21:21 Having known you a long time. And maybe if people are first time listeners, this is a remarkable
0:21:25 stretch. Oh my God. Yeah.
0:21:27 When was the last time you had 30 days, brother?
0:21:33 I’m actually close to 30 days right now. I had two days probably where I had some drinks in the last
0:21:37 almost 30 days. Really? So you’ve hit 30, you’re hitting 30 days.
0:21:42 We can talk about it. It is almost entirely because of the people around me.
0:21:43 Yes.
0:21:48 I mean, that’s it. Right. And I, so I have some follow-up questions for you, but what were the
0:21:56 tools or the things that you did, the things you tweaked that made it more successful this time around?
0:22:01 Well, it’s ongoing, but I will get to three months and I have no doubt about that at this point.
0:22:06 But I would say first and foremost is to reach out and connect with people that have done
0:22:13 some type of assisted programs. And there are multiple different types of like, you know,
0:22:21 12 step ish type programs that are out there. And I’d say that the first thing was that a friend of
0:22:26 mine said, Hey, listen, one of the things that the tenants of kind of AA that it works quite well
0:22:32 is it’s not about going 90 days. All it is, is about waking up that morning and saying,
0:22:39 not today. It’s about 24 hours. It’s always about 24 hours. It’s about the recommitment every single
0:22:44 morning to wake up and say, Hey, I can have a drink tomorrow, just not today. And then saying that over
0:22:50 and over and over again. And when you’re someone that went through COVID and I didn’t drink a lot.
0:22:55 And then all of a sudden I thought we were all going to die. So I drank a ton. And it’s this kind
0:23:02 of itchiness that appears at around week one and a half or so. This kind of like, there’s a saying
0:23:07 like a snake shedding its skin, like this kind of like withdrawal type thing that you have to go
0:23:12 through. That is very challenging. And it’s at that point that you have to realize you’re in the thick
0:23:16 of it. And I wasn’t having like DTs or anything crazy, you know?
0:23:19 What is that? Delirium tremens? You’re talking about shakes?
0:23:23 Yeah. Yeah. We get like shakes and stuff like that. Yeah. So this was more just like,
0:23:33 how do I get to a point where I can be comfortable in my own skin and sit here and be okay with just
0:23:39 being myself? And it’s a very weird thing to say, I wasn’t able to pull that off. And actually what
0:23:44 it is, is it’s phone calls to these people. What happens in a lot of these different programs,
0:23:47 and there’s two of them that I looked at specifically, is that one of the first things
0:23:52 that happens when you join these various programs is they surround you with like-minded people
0:23:57 and phone numbers, phone numbers of people to call. And you call them up and it’s not like,
0:24:00 hey, talk me off the ledge here. I’m sure for some people it is. But for me, it’s just like, hey,
0:24:05 help me get through this next half hour. And how should I be thinking about this? Right?
0:24:05 Yeah.
0:24:12 And so once you kind of build up enough of a runway here, and I’m finally at the point where
0:24:18 I feel really, really good in a way that I haven’t in a long time, and I don’t want to go back on that.
0:24:25 And so that support network, I think, is one of the strongest pillars of like a 12-step program is,
0:24:28 like you said, surrounding yourself with people that are just going to be there
0:24:32 to pick up the phone and have that conversation. And then it’s a bunch of hobbies to fill out the rest
0:24:38 the time. And it’s not just people to, like you said, talk you off the ledge, which may or may not
0:24:45 be the case, but people to whom you feel accountable also. Right? You just got on the phone and talked to
0:24:52 someone. And if you drink, chances are you’re going to have to talk to them. And you don’t want to be the
0:24:59 person who breaks rank, right? Or who doesn’t live up to your commitment. So that accountability is really
0:25:04 powerful. You’ve said there were two organizations that you took a look at. What were the two
0:25:07 organizations or groups?
0:25:13 I would just say use ChatGPT and type in 12-step programs, not drinking. You’re not supposed to
0:25:17 talk about these things when you go and check them out. It’s like Fight Club.
0:25:21 Wait, well, you’re not supposed to talk about them? Why not? Because I know people, for instance,
0:25:24 who have been like, yeah, I’m in Narcotics Anonymous or whatever.
0:25:29 Well, I’ll give an example. So Brad Pitt got a bunch of shit for saying he was an AA. If you’re
0:25:34 an AA, you’re not supposed to say you’re an AA. Oh, he got shit from AA people or people in AA.
0:25:39 Exactly. I would think that would be a good thing because he would draw attention to-
0:25:40 I would too.
0:25:43 A lifeline for people who are having trouble with alcohol. That’s interesting.
0:25:49 Right, exactly. Most of these organizations don’t want you chatting about them. And so it’s
0:25:51 really fascinating. Weird.
0:25:58 But not in a culty way. It sounds very culty-ish, but in reality, it’s just to protect who’s in them
0:26:03 and also not make it be about the organization if someone fails. Because if I were to go back and
0:26:06 say, hey, listen, I’m trying this thing out right now, or I tried this thing, or I went to two meetings
0:26:11 of this thing, and then later you hear, I only made it 45 days. You’re like, oh, that must suck as an
0:26:15 organization. And so it’s like you don’t associate yourself with any of these things because a lot of
0:26:20 people might see that as a failure and then never try it. So that’s one of the other things that they
0:26:20 say.
0:26:26 Okay. Well, I don’t want you to come under the wrath of the spider web of AA.
0:26:29 One thing that I can’t suggest is Lego.
0:26:31 Lego.
0:26:31 Lego.
0:26:37 If you’re not watching the video, I’m holding up a massive Japanese wave called the Great Wave
0:26:41 of Kanagawa, which is a wood block print that was done.
0:26:41 Yeah.
0:26:42 Hokusai.
0:26:47 It was the Edo period, I think, right? When he did these wood block prints. But I spent
0:26:55 three days making this with my oldest daughter, which is amazing. So much fun. So much fun.
0:27:01 Just a quick note on that particular piece. So it’s very easy to find. Most people have seen it.
0:27:07 A lot of people have seen it. If you just search Hokusai, H-O-K-U-S-A-I, Hokusai’s wave,
0:27:13 you’ll see this pop up. But if you search evolution of Hokusai’s wave, you get to see
0:27:20 over time, his prototyping and tweaking and changing of that particular wave until it landed
0:27:25 on what we now recognize as this timeless, iconic piece, which is quite cool. So people
0:27:26 can take a look at that.
0:27:32 It’s so cool. Yeah. His stuff is amazing. And the fact that Lego makes adult Legos now,
0:27:33 it’s so much fun.
0:27:37 Are they just bigger for larger hands? What makes them adult? Or they’re just,
0:27:40 instead of being the bat car, they’re Hokusai’s wave?
0:27:46 Well, the pieces are smaller, so they tend to look a lot more realistic. Like you could
0:27:51 hang this on the wall and actually be like art versus a Lego. And then they’re doing it
0:27:56 with like little mini bonsai trees. And I did with the bamboo shoots and like, they’re actually
0:28:00 pieces that you kind of want to have around your house. Oh, check this out. This one you’ll
0:28:04 like too. I haven’t done this one yet, but this is one that you can only find in Japan,
0:28:10 but I think you can find them on Amazon. This one’s called NanoBlocks. It’s like a Lego competitor.
0:28:16 Yeah. So these are really tiny little pieces. I bought this one when I was in Tokyo, but this
0:28:21 is a cherry blossom tree. And I can’t remember how many pieces this one is, but it’s like they
0:28:25 can be in the, in the thousands. Yeah. This one’s 990 pieces for this little tiny tree.
0:28:31 They’re fun to do, but it just gives you something. You know, I realized what I need
0:28:36 is a friend of mine actually said he took up golf with his wife and he was like, Hey, I took up golf
0:28:41 with her because all we did was drink or talk about our kids. It was one of two things. And you know,
0:28:45 you need to have something that you go and do in the evening, whether it be rock climbing or
0:28:50 some type of physical activity that is not that substance, you know?
0:28:55 Yeah. The physical activity piece, I mean, I’ve always found super effective because you get
0:29:00 punished if you’re drinking too much. If you’re doing something that’s really physically intensive,
0:29:06 you mentioned this guy going to play golf with his wife. So my question for you, we can always cut
0:29:15 this too, but since it is about your surroundings and so on, is Daria also on board with the not
0:29:22 drinking or are you able to take that on yourself while she’s partaking? How is that working out?
0:29:29 Yeah. So she’s still drinking. And I would say that the one nice benefit is the been that she’s cut
0:29:37 back a lot just naturally, which was cool to see. So her consumption, she’s always kind of wanted to
0:29:43 cut back, but I don’t know how much of it is a result of seeing just my general energy levels going up.
0:29:47 And I feel a hell of a lot better. Oh, by the way, my liver enzymes are back down to like,
0:29:53 you know, low thirties, which is great. So I’m starting to see like my complexion and like all
0:29:56 these, these weird things are happening. They’re just getting better. Turns out not drinking is
0:30:03 actually good for you. But, uh, it’s one of those things where I think that is inspiring her to drink
0:30:07 less, which is fantastic, but she still drinks and it doesn’t bother me. It’s like, it is what it is.
0:30:12 It’s like, she’s, she has a hard time with certain things around the house when it comes to the kids
0:30:17 and noise levels and, and stuff that I think it’s easier for her to have a drink or two just to kind
0:30:21 of calm the nerves a little bit. But I think it’s already showing, you know, it’s wearing off on her
0:30:22 as well, which is great.
0:30:30 Nice. Well, I’m excited to see what happens at day 90. It seems like a huge difference now as you have
0:30:34 the phone a friend support system put in place.
0:30:40 Yeah. The phone a friend is huge, but also there is this group of people that get together and they
0:30:49 have a weekly zoom and I jump on that. And it’s a bunch of this one’s guys only as a bunch of guys
0:30:57 that don’t really want to be drinking. And it is a bonding moment to just talk about how these people
0:31:03 are showing up and to hear stories about people that are showing up as better dads in particular,
0:31:09 like really hits home with me. Not that I was showing up as a bad dad, but like when I think
0:31:15 about my father and how kind of, you know, some of the verbally abusive stuff and his wasn’t related
0:31:21 to alcohol, but just like dads showing up as the best versions of themselves means a lot to me.
0:31:27 Like it means a lot to be an awesome dad to my kids. And when I see these other dads that would
0:31:32 have otherwise been alcoholics in their home talking about how much they love their children and how
0:31:37 they have more patience for their kids now and patience for their partner because of the fact
0:31:43 that they’ve stopped drinking or severely cut back on drinking is just like, it’s a blessing just to
0:31:48 watch that unfold. And yeah, I’m seeing it in this large group of people that talk about these things,
0:31:48 you know?
0:31:53 Yeah. I’d be curious to know, we can also cut this, obviously we can cut whatever, but
0:31:59 it’s top of mind because I had Terry real on the podcast a couple of weeks ago and his first book,
0:32:05 which put him on the map is, I don’t want to talk about it, which is specifically focused on
0:32:12 male depression. And he talks about covert depression, meaning men have these common
0:32:20 modes of covering up depression, whether that be workaholism, alcoholism, sex addiction,
0:32:26 fill in the blank, right? Typically some type of kind of compulsive, busying or dulling
0:32:30 addiction. It could be drugs, I suppose. It could be cocaine. That’s not dulling, but
0:32:36 it’s quite a laundry list of things that he discusses as coping mechanisms for depression,
0:32:43 right? And I don’t think that substance abuse is always that. Some people just meet a molecule
0:32:51 that is really not a good fit from an addiction profile perspective. I do think that it could be
0:32:59 certainly a predisposition as simple as that. It’s like your body, your bloodline really shouldn’t
0:33:03 play with this molecule. But then there are other cases where there’s other stuff under the hood.
0:33:07 Do the people in your group talk about that at all? Does that come up?
0:33:13 Oh, 100%. Yeah, absolutely. I would say that if I had to guess, it’s the vast majority of it is
0:33:19 the under the hood stuff. It’s not addressing all of the childhood trauma or our kind of family of origin
0:33:25 stories, where and how we grew up. And there’s almost always a bit of that. So kind of as we
0:33:30 popcorn around the Zoom and talk about different things, one of the things that commonly comes up is
0:33:36 just not only how are you showing up today, but some of these little bits get exposed around these
0:33:43 traumas that were largely left unaddressed and so led to this kind of dependence or this escape that
0:33:50 alcohol can provide, which is just this dulling of my general ease, being able to sit there and be
0:33:54 comfortable in your own skin because of a lot of the things that occurred to you as a child and not even
0:33:59 knowing it. And so addressing that stuff, I think, is a big part of a lot of these different step
0:34:04 programs that are out there. They have different means and ways in which you can go and get that,
0:34:10 put pen to paper, get out a lot of those things and address them and put them out there to the world and
0:34:12 hopefully move on from them and heal from that.
0:34:14 Yeah, totally.
0:34:21 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:35:50 All right. So I just got back from the most travel I’ve done in quite a while, four to five weeks. I was in
0:35:58 Taiwan for a week, which was spectacular. And I’ll come back to that. Japan, as always, fascinating,
0:36:05 interesting, beautiful, frustrating, depending on which side of it you hit. We’ve talked about this
0:36:12 before, but it’s kind of like Japan is like 20 to 30% blade runner and like 70 to 80% DMV in terms of
0:36:20 like rules and paperwork and so on. But I love Japan. And then also spent a bit of time in the UAE,
0:36:28 actually in Abu Dhabi unexpectedly. So lots of travel updates. I will say for Taiwan, I had not
0:36:40 been back to Taiwan since 1999 or 2000. So 25 years. And I had had a very tough time when I studied
0:36:47 abroad in Beijing. I studied at two universities and this was 1996. And it was a very, very rough
0:36:51 experience at the time for a host of reasons. One was there was a lot of political tension between the
0:37:00 US and China. And I had my head shaved and looked like military, particularly back then I was a bit
0:37:09 bigger. And it was just not a particularly welcoming environment. Also, there were concerns about foreign
0:37:15 students affecting domestic students, Chinese students. So we were put in a foreign experts
0:37:21 dormitory. We were completely separate. So it was actually very hard to learn Chinese in the way that I
0:37:26 was hoping to learn Chinese. My Japanese got better because there are a lot of Japanese students in the
0:37:33 dormitory. And also met some great people who lived in Beijing. So it wasn’t exclusive, but I had a really
0:37:38 rough time. And when I got back to the US, basically decided to stop studying Mandarin. And a friend of mine
0:37:46 is a white guy born in the South of Japan. So he had perfect Japanese, Southern dialect. His English
0:37:51 was a little unusual because he sounded like a Japanese person who had learned to speak English
0:37:57 very well. This is a guy who looks like you or me. So there was something funky and really funny and
0:38:01 awesome about that. He also spoke Korean really well and spoke Chinese really well. And he said,
0:38:06 you have to at least go visit Taiwan before you lay down your pen and retire your Chinese.
0:38:13 And so I ended up spending about a month in Taiwan. And it just blew my mind, right? Because
0:38:19 without the cultural revolution in Taiwan, a lot of the older culture from China had been preserved.
0:38:24 Also native, sort of indigenous Taiwanese culture and cultures had been preserved.
0:38:33 very different from an interpersonal perspective. And just had the best time one could possibly imagine.
0:38:38 And in fairness, I have been back to mainland China in other places more recently. And it’s a very
0:38:44 different experience now. Although, once again, we’re back in tension city between the US and China.
0:38:52 But what I would say is, if you have the chance to go to Taiwan, you should take the chance. And this
0:38:59 might sound also, I don’t think it’s pessimistic. I think it’s inevitable that at some point, Taiwan
0:39:05 will be reabsorbed by mainland China, and it’s going to change really dramatically. Culturally,
0:39:11 linguistically, perhaps the ability to travel there will get more complicated. I don’t know how it’s
0:39:17 going to change, but it will change a lot. And that I could see happening within the next
0:39:23 few years. Very surprisingly to me, people on the ground, at least the Taiwanese locals I spent time
0:39:28 with, and I was with locals the whole time I was there. I wasn’t with any expats. They’re completely
0:39:35 unconcerned. They really don’t seem to be thinking much about this type of transition, either because
0:39:41 they think it’s not going to happen or because they view it, as I just said, somewhat as an inevitability.
0:39:45 So they’re like, yeah, it’ll change. Things will change, but so it goes. But there doesn’t seem to
0:39:52 be a lot of hand wringing and fretting about it, which was super surprising to me. I will say though,
0:39:57 if you want to visit a place that is really warm, where the people are really funny, where the food
0:40:06 is outstanding, and it almost feels like there’s a blended courtesy that you might recognize also from
0:40:10 Japan. And certainly Japan has a long history there. So there could be some of the influence.
0:40:17 Really, I encourage people to check out Taiwan and do it soon. And I want to give a shout out to a
0:40:25 restaurant there that two of the locals I know are involved with. And you’re going to love the name of
0:40:32 this restaurant. It is customized, although I’m pretty sure it predates Google. The name of this
0:40:36 restaurant is Really Good Seafood. That is the actual name.
0:40:40 I mean, it’s very descriptive. You know where you’re going to get.
0:40:47 Yeah, it’s very descriptive. Fantastic sculpture also, like bronze sculptures in this restaurant,
0:40:52 strangely enough. But really good seafood. Highly recommend people check it out. And you just can’t
0:41:00 go wrong in Taiwan. Try to get at least outside of Taipei for a short period of time. And there are
0:41:01 amazing hikes in the mountains.
0:41:06 Yeah, I was going to ask you, did you do any tea? Because obviously the oolongs out of Taiwan are just
0:41:07 absolutely stunning.
0:41:08 Yeah, they’re stunning.
0:41:09 Did you do any tea tours?
0:41:15 We drank a lot of tea. Did not do a tea tour. But actually, if you hold on for a second,
0:41:19 let me go grab some tea. I haven’t even unpacked. I literally got back yesterday. So hold on one
0:41:20 second. I’m going to go grab something.
0:41:21 Yeah.
0:41:28 All right. So I brought some tea back. And Taiwan has a lot of everything from a tea perspective.
0:41:35 But certainly what gets the most airtime is oolong tea. You really hear about oolong.
0:41:45 They have so many incredible teas. But this right here, cha cha te, which certainly is not Chinese,
0:41:53 but they have these incredible teas. And this one in particular was recommended, which is called
0:42:01 Oriental Beauty Oolong Tea. And there are a million different varieties. Certainly, if you spend time
0:42:08 there, I would say, do not miss out on the tea. If you think tea is boring, if you think tea doesn’t
0:42:17 really spark your interest, doesn’t capture you, I would suggest just going whole hog on as much tea
0:42:23 as you can. And get out in the mountains. I mean, even an hour outside of Taipei, you can go on these
0:42:32 walks in rainforests that are, to my eye, denser than the Amazon. I mean, it is so lush and so dense.
0:42:39 Waterfalls, rivers, monkeys, you just get to see it all. It is really incredible from a biodiversity
0:42:49 perspective. And I do think sadly, at least for ease of travel with Taiwan as it exists right now, the
0:42:57 window could be quite narrow for a lot of tourism. So I would say maybe things will change. Maybe they
0:43:03 won’t if and when the Big Red Dragon basically subsumes Taiwan. But I would say get there sooner rather
0:43:11 than later. You will not be disappointed. And certainly check out really good seafood. I have to
0:43:18 give a shout out to my friend’s restaurant. And then of course, going from Taiwan to Japan,
0:43:24 pretty easy transition. It’s a very short flight. I guess somewhere between three and four hours.
0:43:31 And instead of tea in Japan, just went on the rampage with coffee, actually, this time around.
0:43:37 And one of the main reasons for the trip was to visit my host family, who I stayed with when I was
0:43:43 15. I’m still very close to them. And so we were able to go out to this rambunctious local ramen joint
0:43:50 and just act like old times and catch up as if no time had passed. It’s just so nice to have those
0:43:56 deep relationships. And like everyone everywhere, they’re getting older, meaning my parents, my host
0:44:05 brothers, their kids. And it was wild to see my oldest host brother’s older boy is now 16. He’s taller
0:44:10 than I am. I remember seeing him when he was a baby, right? Because I went to my host brother’s wedding
0:44:18 prior to that. And he is the age that I was when I was in Japan, which is just so wild.
0:44:24 It’s so wild. And wanted to give a couple of recommendations for people if they want to try
0:44:30 a bunch of coffee. There are a million options out there, but I don’t know how to explain it.
0:44:37 And people are going to think this sounds really funny, but the latte at Glitch Coffee in Ginza,
0:44:44 for whatever reason, a number of people had it. And we were all like, what did they do with this
0:44:50 latte? I don’t know if it was how they blended it. Oh, dude, it’s Hokkaido milk, of course.
0:44:55 Well, no, no, no. Well, that’s the thing though, because we had like 20 different lattes,
0:45:01 but at Glitch in Ginza specifically, the way that they blended it and put the whole thing together
0:45:07 was so obscenely good. It is very small. It’s a pain in the ass to wait outside, especially if it’s
0:45:12 raining like it was when I was there. But I would highly recommend checking it out. But you’re right
0:45:19 that Hokkaido milk is famous throughout the world, certainly without all of Asia. And it’s just a
0:45:26 different thing. It just tastes so much better than the milk that I’ve had, at least here in the US.
0:45:32 And I’ll give one more, which is Sendai, Sendai Coffee. And people can check that out as well.
0:45:39 Very cute, different style. And there, I would suggest checking out, they have a few varieties of
0:45:46 Colombian coffee, Colombian Kindio, wine yeast, peach-infused honey. Now there’s no sweetener in
0:45:52 this, but all of these notes are super, super obvious. This stuff right here.
0:45:55 They really know their coffee, man. They really do.
0:45:57 Have you been to Coffee Mamea out there?
0:46:03 I was going to go to Coffee Mamea, but we did not end up going. So I’ve not been.
0:46:08 Okay. Mamea is by far my favorite in Tokyo. It is insanely legit. They have a couple of different
0:46:13 locations, but there is one that they have. They serve the coffee in wine snifters.
0:46:19 And, you know, it’s like $35 a cup. And they’re getting the world’s best geishas in there. And
0:46:22 they’re just like making this fantastic varietal of coffee.
0:46:25 Just for clarity, the geisha is the coffee, not the people.
0:46:28 That’s right. Have you tried any of the aged coffees in Tokyo?
0:46:33 I mean, I might have in the course of going to all these different places, but perhaps not.
0:46:38 Mamea, I wanted to go to check that out. It’s a whole production, right? Like if you go to the
0:46:44 one location where they give you the omakase, it’s like a whole three-hour trip. And I had just at
0:46:49 that point in the trip with the amount of time we had, I was like, number one, because tourism has
0:46:57 exploded. I mean, I have never seen even a quarter of the number of tourists in Japan that I saw this
0:47:02 last trip because the yen is weaker and a lot of people are coming in from all over, not just China,
0:47:09 but also Thailand and many other places. If you want to book a reservation, you need to do it far
0:47:14 in advance. For instance, you want to go to like Ghibli Museum. I used to be able to do that a week or
0:47:18 two in advance. Now you got to do it months in advance. Yeah. Last time I was out there, it was
0:47:22 just insane how many tourists are coming over. And I saw Craig Mott out there, which is fantastic.
0:47:27 He took me to a secret little coffee spot that I don’t want to blow up and ruin by mentioning on your
0:47:37 podcast. But it was fantastic. Another one, just Google L-A-M-B-R-E, Aged Coffee Beans, Tokyo.
0:47:42 And they have coffee beans that they’ve been sitting on for over 20 years. So they’ll serve you coffee
0:47:47 beans that are 20 or 30 years old. It’s a different experience altogether. When you get these kind of
0:47:53 like slightly fermented aged coffee beans, this little shop seats like eight people. It’s fantastic.
0:48:00 Highly recommend. So that was my sort of deal with jet lag plus enjoy Japan this time around,
0:48:03 which I hadn’t done. I’d done a lot of like we experienced it together, you know,
0:48:09 sake tastings and things like that. Didn’t want to go the alcohol route. I was very tempted to go to
0:48:11 Gen Yamamoto again, who’s incredible.
0:48:12 Gen’s best. Yeah.
0:48:17 But I didn’t want to do the booze. So I ended up doing the caffeine route and
0:48:22 absolutely loved it. It’s also a great way to explore. There’s a place I want to say,
0:48:29 look it up. I want to say it might be Nezu, Nezu Cafe, but it does not allow any photographs or
0:48:33 social media or laptops. And I just thought that was so fantastic.
0:48:36 There’s a handful of those out there. Did you go to Bear Pond Coffee out there at all?
0:48:37 No.
0:48:41 That’s a little bit further out. So Bear Pond’s amazing. There’s a guy there,
0:48:47 he does the angel stain. There’s one cup of coffee he makes like this really highly processed
0:48:54 over the top expresso, not processed, but like dense, dense, thick, rich expresso. And then they
0:48:58 have Hokkaido milk there as well. I think it’s some of the best. Oh, it’s just unbelievable.
0:49:00 But there’s no social media.
0:49:04 I have to stage an intervention. If you’re going to be a coffee nerd, you can’t say expresso.
0:49:05 So you got to say espresso.
0:49:08 Okay. Espresso.
0:49:11 Did I say ex-presso?
0:49:13 You said it twice. Yeah.
0:49:17 Okay. All right. Listen, cut that out, fucker.
0:49:20 It’s too good. It’s too good.
0:49:26 I have these sayings that like Daria always calls me out on where I say things where I think I pick
0:49:31 them up from my parents and there’s like three or four things that are completely like not even close
0:49:36 to the actual word. It was from my family and my upbringing. I think expresso was one of them.
0:49:44 Well, my mom, her mom as a joke would say certain words totally incorrectly. Like instead of horizon,
0:49:51 she would say the horizon. And then my uncle went into school to give a presentation when he was a little
0:49:59 kid and he said horizon and just got like laughed at a class. And then his mom was like, oh yeah,
0:50:02 no, I was totally wrong. I was just kidding. It’s like, oh, come on. Come on, mom.
0:50:08 Oh, I got to tell you before we move on, people should know if they don’t get a chance to go out
0:50:12 to Taiwan and something I desperately wanted to do. And I wholeheartedly agree. It seems that
0:50:18 sadly tensions are rising. So there is a small window, but a friend that I met in San Francisco,
0:50:22 have you ever been to that red blossom tea company in SF?
0:50:23 Yeah, I have.
0:50:29 So I think they are the best importer, domestic importer, at least in the United States of high
0:50:34 quality oolong tea. So if you cannot make it out, and I have no affiliation with them at all,
0:50:38 but if you can’t make it out to Taiwan, but you want to try some of these teas that Tim is talking
0:50:46 about, red blossom tea company, just Google them. The website has fantastic oolongs and they’re
0:50:48 reasonably priced. They’re pretty awesome.
0:50:53 Yeah. And also just to be clear, guys, this doesn’t need to be expensive. These coffees,
0:50:59 you might have to wait a little while or these teas, but they’re not going to cost necessarily. If you go
0:51:04 to a super fancy place, sure. But 99% of what I had is going to cost less than what you had at Starbucks.
0:51:06 Yeah. A hundred percent.
0:51:12 It’s not expensive. It is not outside of reach. All right, man, where should we move next?
0:51:16 Yeah. I mean, I definitely want to cover how you did on that meditation retreat. We can talk
0:51:18 about that at some point, but I can also talk about some tech stuff as well.
0:51:23 Why don’t we do a tech debrief? Then we can talk about the Zen retreat.
0:51:28 Yeah. So the tech debrief, I would say for me, the latest and greatest is that the new Whoop
0:51:33 finally came out, which is this little guy here on my wrist. It’s about, I think, 12% smaller.
0:51:42 Now I’m Aura’d, Whoop’d, and Apple Watch’d up all at the same time. The Whoop band, the reason I like it,
0:51:48 or I had historically liked it, is that it does not have a display on it. And so it’s not competing
0:51:53 with your time in any way. You kind of check the stats in the morning or at night or whatever you
0:51:59 may be. And they really maximized the hell out of this hardware because they had not updated the
0:52:03 device in like four years. So it was the same hardware, but they kept doing firmware updates
0:52:08 and the heart rate tracking got better. Everything was just continually getting better via these
0:52:13 firmware updates. This is the first new device in like four years. This one is called the MG,
0:52:19 which stands for medical grade. It does feel a lot smaller. And there’s some new features that I think
0:52:24 are worth mentioning that are pretty awesome. Some stuff that the Apple Watch doesn’t do. So this one
0:52:30 now has blood pressure monitoring as well. So you calibrate it with your cuff, which I did last night,
0:52:35 and then it’s going to give me insights throughout the week. It will kind of give you a range or a score
0:52:40 range. So it’s not going to give you exact cuff measurements, but it’ll generally let you know how
0:52:45 you’re doing, whether or not you want to pay more attention or not. So it’s in beta right now,
0:52:48 but it seems so far, it seems pretty good and pretty accurate. And granted, I’ve only had this
0:52:54 for a few days now. The VO2 max tracking is awesome. The zone training is great. It’s gotten better.
0:53:00 They have this feature called Whoop Age. The Whoop Age, I think is pretty cool because basically what it
0:53:05 does is it takes a look at a bunch of different metrics across the board. So you can think of this as
0:53:11 resting heart rate, sleep quality, heart rate variability, stress levels, which is getting through a
0:53:15 a couple of different algorithms that they have, your VO2 max, a slew of different things. And it
0:53:21 combines them all into this score. And it says, okay, how do we think you’re doing? Are you at an
0:53:27 accelerated aging pace right now? Are you flat? Or do we think you’re actually below average and that
0:53:33 you’re aging slower than most people, which is where you want to be. And so they give you this cool little
0:53:40 Whoop Age Insight, which is fun. I would say out of all the devices that I’ve played with and own,
0:53:44 the Whoop probably is the geekiest of them all. And then it gives you the most data points and the
0:53:48 most insights. And now they have this little AI agent you can have a conversation with. You can say,
0:53:53 hey, how did I do yesterday? Is there anything I should be paying attention to? And it’ll come back
0:53:58 and pull from your real-time data that’s on your phone. So I like it. It’s a little bit pricey,
0:54:05 but the one I have is $359 a year. And they do have some that are less expensive, but it’s early
0:54:09 days. I’ve only had it for a few days, but it’s something to pay attention to in terms of the
0:54:13 wearables out there, the track, everything as related to all the different metrics that you
0:54:19 can pull from. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to do this, but I’ve really been increasing the
0:54:25 frequency of my zone two training. And the way that I’ve typically calibrated that is with the talk
0:54:31 test sort of per Peter Atiyah, right? Keeping it simple, like you’re on a bike and you could hold
0:54:37 a conversation on the phone or with someone in full sentences, but you wouldn’t really want to,
0:54:42 right? That’s my understanding of the simple way to measure it. Now I’ve talked to other people
0:54:47 who are involved with like professional cycling teams and they’re like, well, actually you really
0:54:52 want to do A, B, C, D, and E to calibrate it, which sounds very complicated. And I’m probably not
0:54:59 going to do it. Have you had a chance to compare what the whoop says about zone two and something
0:55:05 like the talk test to see if they correspond? It’s a great question. And I think one that I’m
0:55:09 with you in that I want to get more zone two. I’m trying to get like a half hour in per day,
0:55:14 at least. And Atiyah really pushes for, you know, close to an hour or tries to get to an hour.
0:55:19 There’s an equation for this as well, which is like age divided by plus, you know, there’s like,
0:55:23 there’s a few of these out there that are like, how do you figure out what zone two is for you?
0:55:29 For me, this one is they’re using their own model. So they have their own model that they kind of give
0:55:33 you a range. But one of the things that I do like, cause I was messing around with this last night
0:55:40 is if you go in and you do a real legit VO2 max test where they’re actually hooking up to the full
0:55:44 gear, they’re putting it in the treadmill. You can plug that in and it will feed it into the model,
0:55:49 or you can manually define the zones as you see them. So you can go in there and type in what you
0:55:54 want your zones to be. And it will use that versus their own internal tool, which is quite nice. But
0:55:57 yeah, they’re using some type of model. I’m not sure which one they’re using.
0:56:03 Okay, cool. Yeah. Maybe I’ll compare them since I’m in Austin. So I have access to,
0:56:09 you know, the 10 squared facility and I can go in and I did a VO2 max test not too long ago with the
0:56:15 whole kit and caboodle, the Bain mask on and everything, which is very uncomfortable as a
0:56:22 first timer. So I’m curious to see what type of acclimating or practice effect there is on my next
0:56:29 VO2 max training. Even if my capacity hasn’t increased, do I get better results because I’m
0:56:34 just more comfortable with the gear and the settings and the cycling and so on? We’ll see.
0:56:37 We’ll find out. It’s going to be hard to tease that out.
0:56:41 The one thing I will say is that there is a great YouTuber that I like called the Quantified
0:56:48 Scientist. And what he does is he goes in and he takes every single wearable, at least mainstream
0:56:55 wearable that’s out there. And he has the hardcore, you know, VO2 max devices at his house. He has all
0:57:04 the ECG devices that measure sleep. And he’s basically a statistician and comes in and gives you the data
0:57:10 and says, how does this actually compare to the gold standard for these different measurements?
0:57:15 And so he has yet to do that on the new Whoop, but in the Oura Ring and the Apple Watch and the
0:57:20 Garmins and everything out there, he’ll actually put on the full VO2 max mask, like you’re saying,
0:57:24 and then compare them and say, this is the closest to the gold standard without having to wear the mask.
0:57:27 So Quantified Scientist is awesome.
0:57:31 For sleep, I guess it could be any number of things. It might be EEG if we’re talking about
0:57:33 brainwaves. The ECG is what it is.
0:57:34 Electrocardiogram.
0:57:36 That’s right.
0:57:36 Yeah.
0:57:42 Yeah. Sorry. This one does the ECG. If you like hold onto the side of it, it’ll tell me if I have any
0:57:45 AFib or anything like that as well on the new Whoop, which is great.
0:57:52 Yeah. All right. I’m doing a, literally getting another bike. Well, I should say bike. It’s more
0:57:59 of an ergometer this week because I love so much about this company, but the Peloton seat
0:58:07 is just completely breaking my cock. It’s so bad. And to like retrofit it or to try to modify it is
0:58:12 really, really challenging. So I think that in the interest of reproductive health, and I’m not
0:58:18 kidding about that actually. Like you can do with the wrong seat, you can actually do a lot of damage.
0:58:22 You’re like, I’m so massive. The seat is just absolutely just destroying my junk.
0:58:27 Well, when my, yeah, my elephant trunk, I need to wrap it around this pole in the front
0:58:29 to make sure.
0:58:31 Just loop it over the front bars. You’ll be fine.
0:58:38 Safety first. I’m serious that if people are doing a lot of cycling and they’re having any type
0:58:44 of sexual dysfunction or reproductive issues, it’s worth taking a look at the seat. Like this is
0:58:48 something that got flagged to me, fortunately in advance, because I was like, huh, as I was doing
0:58:54 some of my workouts, I noticed it seemed like almost a tingling or lack of circulation in one of my legs.
0:58:59 And I was like, that can’t be good. So as it stands, I’ll test the new device before I give it
0:59:04 any kind of endorsement, but I’m moving to another ergometer just so I can do that and have the ability
0:59:11 easily swap seats if need be. So I might have more on that. Should I hop in with some new
0:59:13 experiments or at least observations?
0:59:17 Yeah. Actually, let me give you one more quick one that I think is going to be fun for people
0:59:23 that a physician turned me on to that I have been using now when I travel, which is amazing. So
0:59:28 again, no affiliation with any of this stuff, but there, it was a Stanford scientist that came out
0:59:36 with this nasal spray called Profi, P-R-O-F-I and I bought it on Amazon. And so it’s essentially
0:59:41 this spray that it’s like this hydro gel that goes up into your nasal cavity and you spray one
0:59:50 per each side is in your nose. And it is like a gel that basically, if you just breathe in through
0:59:53 your nose, when you’re on a flight or you’re traveling or in, you’re in a big room of people,
0:59:58 it will trap and it holds all of the different viruses and bacteria that you’re inhaling
1:00:05 into this gel and destroys them at the gel level. And people are like getting less sick. They’re not
1:00:12 picking up the average cold when they’re in big rooms. They did a small study in a hospital setting
1:00:17 around COVID. I’ll find it. It wasn’t with this particular brand, but the same, it was, I think it
1:00:22 was another generic brand of the same type of gel. And they just showed that the odds of you getting COVID
1:00:27 or the flu were severely reduced for people that were using this gel inside of their nose.
1:00:32 So I was like, you know, it’s like 15 bucks or something. I was like, hell yes. And so I picked
1:00:36 it up and I’ve been using it when I travel and knock on wood, I’ve been doing a lot of travel like you
1:00:41 over the last few weeks, haven’t got sick at all. It was only when I didn’t do it at home when my kids
1:00:46 were sick that I ended up getting a cold. Anyway, it’s pretty awesome. It was developed over at Stanford
1:00:52 and recommend checking it out. Okay. So we’ll get a link to that. And actually for years now,
1:00:57 I don’t know if I ever told you this, for at least 10 years, when I’m about to go on any extended travel,
1:01:04 I will get a saline mist spray from CVS or Walgreens and just simply moisturize or hydrate inside my nasal
1:01:12 passages, which seems to make a big difference also for the purposes of just avoiding my nemesis,
1:01:17 which is sinus infections. If my nasal passages and my sinuses get dry, I’ve had issues with sinus
1:01:25 infections since I was a very, very little kid. And if I’m consistent with this type of nasal spray,
1:01:34 it seems to help. So maybe the next step up is the profi. Makes me think it’s, that’s a hell of a brand
1:01:45 name. Espresso. Espresso. I literally saw a sign in a coffee shop in Romania. This was in Brasov and
1:01:53 it said, dear Americans, espresso does not have an X in it. That’s amazing.
1:01:54 You’re not alone. I feel bad.
1:01:58 No, you’re not alone. You’re not alone. You’re not alone. Kind of makes sense. Express. You want to
1:02:05 be in the express land? Yeah, exactly. Thank you. I’ll share a couple of just rapid fire,
1:02:10 like Scooby snacks for people. And then I’ll talk about a recent experiment. So this is another one
1:02:18 from Japan and this is not very expensive, but if you can find it online, you might be able to find it
1:02:24 at something like a Nijia market or a Japanese market of some type. This is a dashi and it’s got dried
1:02:32 bonito and dried anchovies and dried flying fish and sweet kelp, all this stuff. It’s from a place
1:02:38 called Okume, which was established in 1871. And you can see here, it’s a little hard to see,
1:02:46 but the package basically looks like tea package. You have these individual sachets that are full of
1:02:50 this dashi and you put it into hot water so you can have it like tea in the morning.
1:02:56 Without making it a big production. And this is just their classic dashi. They have a million
1:03:05 different options, but man, I feel like a dose of dashi and broth a couple of times a week does a lot
1:03:10 to keep the doctor away. So this is going to be a very easy, I have tea so many times a day already
1:03:16 just to swap in one of these as part of the routine. We’ll make it more interesting. And also I think
1:03:22 could potentially do some really nice things for health. There’s a book that I read on my travels,
1:03:29 have been reading. I’ve read it at least 10 times. And every time I read it, particularly if I’ve taken
1:03:36 a break of two or three years where I say to myself, this is why I need to read the book more often. And
1:03:39 it’s this one. This is Awareness by Anthony DeMello.
1:03:44 Oh, I love that book. Fantastic book.
1:03:49 It’s such a good book and different things hit you at different times. I started reading this and
1:03:57 we’ll get to it in a second after our Zen retreat. It talks about a lot that overlaps, even though
1:04:04 Anthony DeMello was largely based, maybe entirely based in India, but he was a Jesuit priest,
1:04:14 also a psychotherapist. And the density, I would say, of insights per page on this is just incredible.
1:04:23 It’s effectively a cleaned up, organized version of his greatest hits given as lectures. And it’s very
1:04:30 easy to read. It’s very funny. It’s very short. It’s only about 170 pages. And once again, I’m reading
1:04:34 it and different things are popping out at different points in life. And I actually have
1:04:39 multiple hard copies that I’ve highlighted at different points. And the highlights are different
1:04:44 things. They’re really different. The passages that resonate at different points in time.
1:04:44 Oh, man.
1:04:53 Yeah. To anybody out there who, and it’s not exclusive to this, but if you suffer from anxiety
1:04:59 or depression, or if you just feel like you have a little too much edge, you’re running a little fast,
1:05:07 you feel a little over-committed, clogged, stuck at points, whatever it might be, this book is fast-acting
1:05:14 medicine. And it’s not a panacea, but it’s really complimentary for almost anything else that you would do
1:05:19 to help with the types of symptoms that I just described, which are really symptoms of modern living,
1:05:24 ultimately, especially for people in urban environments. And even if you’re not in an urban environment,
1:05:32 if you’ve got one of these phones, you are plugged into the anxiosphere, right? It’s like the world of anxiety
1:05:38 anxiety because that is how you keep clicking and that is how platforms continue to gather data they
1:05:44 can sell in one form or another. So Anthony DeMello, Awareness. Always recommend it. Haven’t read it
1:05:48 myself in a while and long overdue. So I did want to mention that.
1:05:53 Oh, man. Tim, thank you for reminding me about that book. I don’t have to keep coming back to this,
1:05:59 but when my house burned down, I lost all my books. And it’s funny, I forgot that that was one of my
1:06:03 favorites that I had on my bookshelf there. And like you, I know you do this as well. There’s like
1:06:07 three or four books I would buy like five copies of. And I just leave them at my house because when I have
1:06:11 a friend stop by, I’m like, oh, I need to give you this book, right? Like there’s ones that you absolutely
1:06:15 love so much that you just want to gift out because you just like feel like you should give as many people
1:06:21 as possible this book, right? This was one of those books. And I just ordered on Amazon. It’s 10 bucks
1:06:25 on Amazon in the US. It said you first bought this in 2019, probably via your recommendation.
1:06:29 But yeah, fantastic, fantastic book. Thank you. I just bought mine.
1:06:34 Yeah, for sure. And do you want to talk about, actually, let me give a couple of other
1:06:42 quick recommendations for folks. One is an oldie but goodie, much like awareness that I had not seen
1:06:48 in probably, I want to say 10 or 15 years. Now, who knows, maybe the brand was different back in the
1:06:57 day. But as a quick status update on my increasingly eclectic laundry list of injuries. So my right elbow
1:07:02 has been a problem for 20 plus years. It started with an accident in jujitsu. My arm got hyperextended,
1:07:09 pop, pop. And then over time, I’ve developed these tears in my extensors. So people think of tennis
1:07:15 elbow, right? So if you kind of pull your fingers up on your arm towards your face where you’re looking at
1:07:20 your fingernails, let’s just say you’re admiring a nice new manicure that you have.
1:07:25 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So if you’re just pulling your fingertips back towards your shoulder,
1:07:31 you’re using your extensors. And I have tears in both of those. It’s gotten bad enough that I had
1:07:36 to stop rock climbing. That was the first indication. When I started to get to, say,
1:07:43 five 11s in the gym when you’re crimping and starting to pull the knuckles back, I think I
1:07:49 basically grabbed the paper tear and ripped it further. So I had a point where I almost certainly
1:07:51 need surgery. And this is your right hand?
1:07:53 This is my dominant side, yeah.
1:07:55 Oh man, that’s extra brutal for you.
1:07:57 Yeah, it’s my dominant hand.
1:08:01 Yeah, you’re going to lose that one. That’s not the one you want to lose.
1:08:07 Yeah. So unfortunately, the surgery is pretty straightforward. I don’t know what you’re
1:08:12 thinking about, but I am not left-handed either.
1:08:14 The stranger.
1:08:26 Don’t underestimate the stranger. Oh, hello. If you get it, you get it. All right, let’s
1:08:32 move on. So I will probably need two to three months of rehab before I’m able to get back
1:08:38 to full force. And even now, for instance, using barbells for any kind of weight training
1:08:44 creates too much torque and tension at the elbow, and it really ends up being incredibly painful.
1:08:49 So I’m using a lot more dumbbells. The reason this is relevant is because of the back injury
1:08:53 and the back compression. I don’t really like putting barbells across my shoulders.
1:08:57 I won’t get into all the details, but I’m holding dumbbells for extended periods of time.
1:09:03 And normally that’s not a problem, but if you’re doing most of your leg workout by holding onto
1:09:07 kettlebells or holding onto dumbbells, the first thing that’s going to go is your grip, especially
1:09:13 because my right elbow is really compromised right now. And to use standard
1:09:20 basic lifting straps for dumbbells is really challenging. If anyone’s used these, you know
1:09:26 what I’m talking about, to sort of wrap the strap around multiple times and to get it into some
1:09:31 type of symmetrical position with both hands. So this thing right here is another option.
1:09:38 What I’m holding is called Versagrips, V-E-R-S-A grips, G-R-I-P-P-S. And it’s a lifting strap,
1:09:43 but really all you’re doing is folding it over once and then putting your hand on top of it.
1:09:50 So it’s a lifting strap that is much more amenable, much more straightforward to use pretty much for
1:09:56 everything, but particularly for dumbbells, which I’m going to be using not just to train,
1:10:01 to do prehab to get myself as strong as possible prior to surgery, but also post-surgery.
1:10:07 So I would say, if that’s of interest, you can check that out. I’ll give one more
1:10:13 rec and then we can move on. This is a book that people have almost certainly not seen before.
1:10:21 It’s called Everything is Its Own Reward by Paul Madonna. And it is a book of beautiful architectural
1:10:27 drawings. You might think to yourself, boring. Most of it is in the San Francisco area or San
1:10:34 Francisco Bay Area, but it’s the philosophical musings and the writing that Paul has in this book
1:10:42 that is so deeply fascinating and weird and thought-stirring to me. And I came across this
1:10:48 the first time in a hotel in the Bay Area. I was just sitting on the coffee shop and I was killing
1:10:51 time before doing something. I picked it up and I ended up sitting there and reading it for about
1:10:59 two hours. Completely forgot to have dinner. And I’ve once again, much like the 32 sounds documentary,
1:11:06 never quite come across a book like this. It is so strange. And I feel like the combination of 32
1:11:14 sounds, awareness, and this very, very weird, often funny, often profound, Everything is Its Own Reward
1:11:19 by Paul Madonna, which is definitely going to sell out on Amazon. So the race goes to the Swift,
1:11:25 create almost an extended psychedelic experience in the sense that things that you’re accustomed to
1:11:32 seeing, things that you think or do or hear on autopilot most of the time, because that’s the only
1:11:39 way you can survive is to have most things on autopilot. You see afresh as if you’re encountering
1:11:47 them for the first time after taking in a diet, it doesn’t have to be very long, even for a day or two
1:11:56 with some of these different books and documentaries and so on. It’s really just seeing, I don’t use this
1:12:03 word lightly, it’s more of a metaphor, but seeing the miracle in the everyday and makes me think of some
1:12:08 people who are really creative, who seem to have one foot in that zone all the time. For instance, I was
1:12:16 watching an NHK, which is like the BBC in Japan, mini series on the creative process of Hayao Miyazaki,
1:12:22 who’s the founder of Studio Ghibli, which has made pretty much every Japanese animated film most people have
1:12:29 heard of. So My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Ponyo, etc., etc. He’s sometimes called the Disney of Japan,
1:12:34 which is a description he does not like because he says, Walt Disney was a businessman, I’m just a
1:12:40 director, just a director, very Japanese. But in one of the episodes talking about his creative process,
1:12:49 he takes a video camera, this is an older docuseries, and tapes it, affixes it to the headrest of his
1:12:55 driver’s seat in his car because he says, I want to see what I’m seeing because effectively there’s
1:13:01 magic hiding in the ordinary. He’s like, that’s what you want to find. And I feel like all of these
1:13:11 tools help you to do that, which for me is deeply therapeutic, beautiful, stress-relieving in ways
1:13:15 that are hard for me to put words to. But you don’t need drugs to get there. These are all things that
1:13:21 can help recalibrate you just a few degrees to change your waking experience in that way.
1:13:25 Tim, one other thing I’ll say is that you had mentioned a book that immediately sold out before
1:13:33 called The Well of Being several episodes ago. And I’m actually rebuying it right now because it’s
1:13:36 back in stock. I just want to let people, that is now back in stock because it was going for several
1:13:42 hundred dollars a copy after you mentioned it and it sold out. So now it’s back for $35 again.
1:13:48 But that’s still one of your favorites. Yeah. It’s a great book. It’s outstanding. Yeah. That’s the
1:13:54 children’s book for adults. Yeah. Yeah. That is an outstanding book. I’m picking that up again as
1:13:58 well. And the book you mentioned and the book that I just mentioned are books that you really want in
1:14:04 hardcover if you can get them. That’s the intended medium for these two books, for sure.
1:14:08 One thing I’ll mention as a quick throw out there, not everyone can travel to Japan. We get that.
1:14:15 There are lots of artisanal Japanese goods that are absolutely phenomenal. A lot of websites that
1:14:21 import do so with very limited supply. And then also they mark them up like crazy. So you’ll find
1:14:24 some of these shops here, especially in LA, there’s some of these shops you go to and it’s just like,
1:14:30 things are just outrageously priced. One place I found that I really like that, yes, it is a little
1:14:38 premium, but is, I would say is one of the best curators of fine Japanese goods is a friend of mine
1:14:45 turned me on to this. Uh, it’s called POJ studio.com POJ. Yeah. You got to check this out. I think
1:14:51 you’ll really like it. So if you go to POJ studio and then click on shop at the top there and just go
1:14:57 bestsellers kind of like shop all or whatever. And then look at some of these pieces is everything from
1:15:04 like high end Japanese towels to incense to these beautiful tie dyed kind of door dividers,
1:15:14 like the hanging things. What was the name of the URL again? It’s POJ studio.com studio.com. Yeah.
1:15:19 In pursuit of perfection. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. They got all sorts of beautiful stuff.
1:15:26 Absolutely stunning. Imported Japanese kind of small production artists and stuff from little tiny
1:15:35 trays and containers to room dividers to throw pillows to you name it. If you like that vibe,
1:15:41 Oh, they have these beautiful hand hammered little singing bowls that you can use for meditation.
1:15:49 I got their Japanese Hinoki wood incense with smells amazing. Anyway, I think this is one of the best
1:15:55 importers of small artists and Japanese goods that’s out there. So I highly recommend checking out.
1:16:03 And also if you want to go low end or like mid tier, I mentioned Nijia market. They only have 12 stores
1:16:08 across the U S mostly in California and Hawaii, but you can find Japanese markets and you can also find
1:16:13 broadly speaking East Asian markets, right? If you find East Asian markets, whether that’s Chinese,
1:16:18 Taiwanese, Korean, fill in the blank, chances are they’re going to have a lot of Japanese goods.
1:16:25 And also they will have plenty of good stuff from their primary country in the sense that if it’s
1:16:29 Chinese on, let’s just say China, if it’s Vietnamese on, although I would put them in the Southeast Asian,
1:16:35 I guess, category, but Korean, et cetera, you can just find some amazing, amazing, amazing teas as an
1:16:40 example, because culturally that is such a part of the lived experience of those places.
1:16:45 Try it out. Walk through, pick up something you can’t read, make sure it doesn’t have any
1:16:47 allergens that are going to kill you and then give it a shot.
1:16:55 All right. So let’s talk about the Zen retreat in a second. I will tell you
1:17:01 one interesting hypothesis that I have related to something we’ve discussed once before,
1:17:09 which is accelerated TMS. So the compressed administration of basically a magnetic coil.
1:17:15 Oh, you bastard. There’s a squirrel on my squirrel proof bird feeder, just trying to go to town right
1:17:22 now. You rat bastard. I don’t think he’s going to succeed. He’s true. Oh, he is. Oh, you bastard.
1:17:27 Squirrel proof. My ass pan over. I got to see this. Can you pan the camera? It’s not going to work.
1:17:33 I’ll knock all my shit over. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you bastard. I think he’s been. No, no, he’s,
1:17:37 he’s really getting in there. All right. So I got distracted. Apparently accelerated TMS doesn’t help
1:17:43 with, with that kind of distraction. I’ve just never actually seen my bird feeder getting pillaged so
1:17:47 badly as it is right now by this squirrel. Nice work squirrel. I love this version of Tim. That’s
1:17:53 like bird feeding, hummingbird feeders, little anti-squirrel devices. Oh, he just got sent for
1:17:58 like a whirly gig spin though. So there’s, there’s something. You need to get a webcam out there.
1:18:05 I do only squirrels. All right. Accelerated TMS. I feel like the dog in up squirrel. Yeah, exactly.
1:18:10 Squirrel. So the accelerated TMS for people who are interested in learning more about this, I recommend
1:18:16 listening to my podcast with Nolan Williams, who’s a scientist out of Stanford, who’s the head of their
1:18:22 brain stimulation lab, but effectively different types of brain stimulation. In this case, transcranial
1:18:30 magnetic stimulation, particularly when applied in this condensed format. In this case, it’s 50 sessions
1:18:36 of brain stimulation. They’re about nine minutes long each. You’re doing 50 sessions in five days. So
1:18:43 you’re doing 10 hours a day, every hour on the hour you were having this brain stimulation. And in my case,
1:18:51 it’s for an anxio-somatic target. That just means it’s effectively to reduce symptoms of OCD
1:18:57 compulsive rumination. I don’t wash my hands or flip the light switches and not to judge anyone who does,
1:19:02 but it’s like my form of OCD, which I’ve been diagnosed with, and it’s not surprising at all,
1:19:08 is this repetitive perseveration, a loop of thoughts that even though I’m aware it’s unproductive,
1:19:14 even though I’m aware it’s unpleasant, I feel powerless to stop. That type of perseverating, which then of course
1:19:21 engenders anxiety and sometimes insomnia, etc. Of all of the things I’ve tried, and you and I spoke about
1:19:29 this, when I did my first five-day sequence of accelerated TMS, bizarrely, there was like a two-week
1:19:34 delayed onset. Nothing really seemed to happen for about two weeks. And then boom, for three to four weeks,
1:19:39 I had, let’s just call it complete remission of symptoms. Like all of that stuff just went away.
1:19:47 And nothing has approached that in terms of amplitude and especially durability of effect.
1:19:52 And that includes psychedelic therapies. But what’s interesting about this is after that five-day
1:19:58 treatment, I went back and I did a single-day booster, which did nothing. And then I did a three-day
1:20:03 booster, which also did nothing. Now, I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this publicly. Maybe I have,
1:20:08 maybe I haven’t. Part of the reason I wanted to do lower dosing was after my first five-day
1:20:15 sequence, I remember after a week or so, I was like, hey, doc, I can’t seem to ejaculate. Is that
1:20:22 a known problem? And needless to say, that did not help my anxiety. I was incapable of-
1:20:25 But you could still get the timber. You just couldn’t get the output.
1:20:31 Yeah. Couldn’t get the output. Okay. And then the doc was like, oh, interesting. We haven’t seen that
1:20:38 because this is still a very new treatment and particularly for anxiety and OCD. The depression
1:20:42 has been much better studied. But he said, yeah, it kind of makes sense if we’re whacking down your
1:20:49 sympathetic response. And he’s like, yeah, there’s this mnemonic in medical school, which is point and
1:20:54 shoot, meaning parasympathetic to get the erection and then sympathetic to have the ejaculation,
1:20:58 to have the orgasm. And he’s like, yeah, it makes sense. And I was like, okay,
1:21:02 and is this fixable or am I totally screwed forever? And he’s like, no, it should just return
1:21:09 to baseline. And it did. I have an addendum to that though. So I wanted to use lower dosing to avoid
1:21:16 that. One day did nothing. Three days did nothing also. And then I was like, what the hell is going on?
1:21:20 Okay, I guess I can do five days. You get nothing done for five days, right? Because you’re getting
1:21:25 your brain zapped every hour. And it basically feels like you did an all-nighter for the LSATs
1:21:28 10 times a day. I mean, you get very, very tired.
1:21:29 When you say zapped, does it hurt?
1:21:33 It doesn’t hurt at all. It feels like somebody lightly flicking the side of your head. It doesn’t
1:21:38 hurt. So it’s basically for nine minutes, it’s like there’s nothing. And then it’s like,
1:21:43 bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And then there’s a pause for, I’m just making this up.
1:21:49 Let’s just call it, I don’t know, 10 seconds, 15 seconds. And it’s a paddle that’s pushed against
1:21:56 your head. That’s it. I don’t find it painful at all. This is with a MagVenture or MagVenture’s
1:22:02 device. There are other devices that can have different types of effects, which have different
1:22:07 types of helmets and caps that are used and so on. It doesn’t hurt in this particular case.
1:22:12 So then I was chatting with the doctor before planning another round. And he was like, well,
1:22:18 it is pretty strange that three days did nothing. And I was like, okay. And we’re trying to brainstorm
1:22:25 strategy. And what I did is I went back in my calendar and looked at the preceding few weeks
1:22:29 before every one of these treatments. And for the first treatment, the five-day treatment,
1:22:36 I had had some psychedelic exposure. And I was like, interesting, because I’ve long assumed that there
1:22:40 could be some type of synergistic effect with these two things. And there are people who are
1:22:47 looking at this very closely right now. So this time around, the hypothesis is that actually the
1:22:53 improved neuroplasticity and who knows, maybe it’s even anti-inflammatory effects could be a million
1:22:58 different things from the psychedelic exposure worked synergistically with the five-day accelerated
1:23:04 TMS to produce the effect that I then witnessed and experienced, which was incredible, right?
1:23:10 If I could figure out how to replicate that, then I would do it, let’s just call it once a quarter,
1:23:17 once every four months, something like that. Why wouldn’t I do it? And I will say that it took the
1:23:24 edge off. And by that, I mean, I was less motivated to do a lot of types of work, maybe from tampening
1:23:29 down the sympathetic nervous system. But what I found for myself was number one, at this point in my life,
1:23:37 totally fine with it. And number two, I actually think it made me better at picking my targets and
1:23:46 not doing work for the sake of movement. Because I didn’t have the underlying anxiety that perhaps I
1:23:53 was subconsciously coping with by some type of frenetic activity or over committing to phone calls or work
1:24:00 or creative projects or exercise or who knows what it was. So that extra space that was created by not
1:24:10 having as much compulsive behavior across the board, I would say, is no discernible decrease over, say,
1:24:16 three to four months in my sort of creative output. Like, totally happy with it. I’m very curious to see
1:24:21 how accelerated TMS ends up being enabled or disabled, and I think it might depend on the dose,
1:24:26 with different types of pharmaceuticals. And there’s one that’s been studied called Cetraline,
1:24:32 with an S-E-T-R-A-L-I-N-E. People can find studies related to this. So that’s something I’m going to
1:24:36 be watching very closely. Now, I have an update on the, because I know you’re, you want to know about
1:24:37 my ejaculation, Kevin.
1:24:40 No, it’s always, it’s my first thing I ask you whenever we talk. Yeah.
1:24:49 Yeah, exactly. I don’t think it was the TMS. So I actually had a theory that I tested,
1:24:55 and it’s NF1, so take it with a huge grain of salt. But I thought it might be the Trazodome,
1:25:01 which some people use for sleep. And it’s interesting for sleep because it doesn’t seem
1:25:09 to disrupt sleep architecture as much as other drugs. However, one of the less common but known
1:25:15 side effects can be delayed ejaculation. And I was like, interesting. Well, let me take that
1:25:20 off the table. And I did take it off the table. And lo and behold, no issues.
1:25:22 So-
1:25:22 Back to two minutes.
1:25:25 Back to two minutes.
1:25:26 Boom.
1:25:28 Oh, God.
1:25:28 Yeah.
1:25:33 This never happens, I swear.
1:25:36 I was like, you normally have Trazodome for this.
1:25:45 But I thought that might be, if people are taking sleep medications, like you can end up
1:25:49 treating the wrong thing very easily or pulling levers, forgetting about certain medications
1:25:55 that you’re using where you haven’t taken a moment to look at side effects that are less
1:26:01 commonly reported, but nonetheless statistically significant. So not saying that was definitively
1:26:07 the cause because I couldn’t prove that. But so far, so good, I guess.
1:26:11 So after these treatments are the ones that were successful. Was there anything else that was a
1:26:14 positive? Like, were you sleeping better at night or no?
1:26:20 Well, for the three to four months that I mentioned, for sure, my sleep was so much better.
1:26:27 Now, is that because my rumination is less? Is it because I have maybe like someone taking a
1:26:31 Munjaro or something? Less compulsive behavior across the board. So I’m not drinking as much
1:26:39 caffeine as like a fixation? Maybe. I don’t know. But I did sleep much, much better. And I mean,
1:26:46 the quality of life difference before and after was hard to overstate. I mean, it’s really, really
1:26:54 incredible. I will say this time around, just like the first round of five days, if you were to ask me
1:26:59 right now, what difference has it made, I would say it hasn’t made a fucking one iota of difference.
1:27:05 I mean, I happen to be in the middle of a bunch of very stressful things related to family health
1:27:12 emergencies and various other kind of time-sensitive situations that I think would contribute to almost
1:27:20 anyone feeling quite anxious. But I am patient this time around because there was the delayed onset.
1:27:27 If it takes two weeks, it takes two weeks. So I’m just going to cross my fingers, not drink. That’s a
1:27:33 big part of the not drinking also was preparing for that. And then afterwards, wanting to ensure that
1:27:39 I’m giving my brain the best chance possible to adapt in the way that I want it to adapt.
1:27:47 So leaving out as many neurotoxins as possible seems like a good standard operating procedure,
1:27:53 at least for the next little while. And we’ll see, man. Fingers crossed. But I remain very,
1:27:59 very bullish on this technology. I really feel like for people who fit criteria that would exclude
1:28:04 them from psychedelic-assisted therapies, let’s say people with a history of schizophrenia or family
1:28:09 history of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, this treatment could be very, very interesting in addition
1:28:14 to especially combining it with some type of metabolic psychiatry, which I had Chris Palmer from
1:28:19 Harvard on to talk about a while back, use of whether it’s a ketogenic diet, exogenous ketones,
1:28:23 maybe some combination. I think there’s a lot of promise. I think there’s a lot of promise.
1:28:24 That’s awesome.
1:28:29 That’s where the foundation is going to be spending more time also in addition to the psychedelic stuff.
1:28:35 I’m curious when you think about how these are obviously very expensive treatments and you can’t
1:28:39 find them in every city. Are you seeing any application of this technology at the consumer level
1:28:44 that you have tried or you’ve heard good things about? I know it’s not the same, but Matt Walker,
1:28:50 you’ve had him on your podcast, sleep scientist that ran the Berkeley Sleep Lab. He had a device
1:28:56 called Somni, which I haven’t tried, which does transcranial electric stimulation 15 minutes before
1:29:00 you go to bed. It’s supposed to increase your deep sleep. So he’s involved in that product. So I’m
1:29:06 seeing more of these consumer brain stimulation devices pop up in the market. Anything worth playing
1:29:11 with here? Or is it just not that just like all kind of not proven out yet?
1:29:16 Not ready for prime time. Yeah. I can’t speak to Somni. Definitely people, if they’re interested in
1:29:21 unpacking sleep. I mean, why we sleep, I believe is the title of Matt’s book.
1:29:22 It’ll scare the shit out of you.
1:29:27 It’ll scare the shit out of you in, I think, a productive way. And then he and I spoke on the
1:29:34 podcast about things he might add to that or modify, update, et cetera. The consumer grade,
1:29:40 it’s timely that you should ask me that. So right before recording this podcast, I actually had an
1:29:46 investor deck presentation with a company that is working on something. So you and I should talk about
1:29:51 that separately. I think it’s very interesting. As a category, it is incredibly hard to make work,
1:29:59 both as a technology, so just scientifically, to show compelling cause and effect, I think,
1:30:06 is very difficult in this category. And from a business perspective, there are a number of
1:30:11 different reasons that it can be very, very challenging. But I do think there might be
1:30:17 some interesting tools on the horizon. What I will say is, as a general rule of thumb,
1:30:23 I can’t speak to Somni and Matt Walker is a credible scientist, so let’s exclude Somni from what I’m
1:30:32 going to say. But almost every at-home brain stimulation device, or let’s just for simplicity
1:30:39 sake, call it brain stimulation device, I’ve seen is at best a scam and at worst could do a fair amount
1:30:45 of damage. These tools, if they’re used incorrectly, TMS, let’s just say, transcranial magnetic stimulation,
1:30:50 if used incorrectly, can actually worsen. So exacerbate the conditions that you’re trying
1:30:56 to treat. You see people online, you see people on YouTube or on Reddit who are just going to-
1:30:58 Oh, with burn marks and shit too. Like they get burns.
1:31:05 Just DIYing this stuff. I would strongly advise against that. The brain is really, really,
1:31:11 really sensitive. You don’t want to fuck with it without some real bona fide creds behind the device
1:31:17 and instructions. So I would encourage people to, as a general rule, steer clear of anything that is
1:31:23 being sold direct to consumer. I’m sure there are some exceptions, but I would say for the most part,
1:31:30 this is not across the board, but for the most part, you’re dealing with fly-by-night operations,
1:31:37 and you should not trust the integrity of your brain to these devices. I’m sure there are exceptions,
1:31:41 but just as a general rule, I would say that. Separately, I would say that, for instance,
1:31:47 the therapy that I just paid for is very expensive because insurance doesn’t currently cover accelerated
1:31:53 TMS, or at least I’m not aware of insurance that will cover accelerated TMS. But I was texting with a
1:32:01 friend of mine who is seeing very good results for her PTSD, and it gets sort of comorbid with
1:32:06 depression and other things. So it’s hard to untangle all of that. But she is doing TMS conventionally,
1:32:13 which is less frequent, and her insurance is covering it. So I would say I’m optimistic that
1:32:18 there is a future where insurance, at least some insurance carriers, will cover accelerated TMS,
1:32:27 particularly when the, hopefully, cost-benefit is really made incredibly clear through patient
1:32:33 results because some of the stuff you see is incredible, right? Like 70% plus remission of
1:32:41 treatment-resistant depression after a week of treatment. These are the types of results that
1:32:46 rival or exceed some of these psychedelic-assisted therapies. And when we’re talking about these
1:32:52 intractable or very difficult to treat psychiatric conditions, these outcomes are really, really
1:32:59 notable. The data sets are super small for a lot of the applications of accelerated TMS, but I’m
1:33:06 supporting that through the foundation scientifically because I do feel like a lot of the issues we’re
1:33:16 facing, we’re facing because of effectively modern civilization. And I don’t foresee it getting any
1:33:22 easier. So I do think it’s important to try to support these technologies and interventions
1:33:30 so that hopefully they can reach some level of scale. And I’m skeptical that taking people for a six-hour
1:33:37 ride on a mind-bending psychedelic that takes them to the 17th dimension is scalable. I’m not even
1:33:44 convinced that it’s a good idea to do that with incredibly large numbers of patients. So that’s yet another
1:33:48 layer of why I am really supporting some of these other technologies.
1:33:58 It’s super exciting. I think we’re about to enter into a golden age of tech meets life sciences and see a whole slew of
1:34:04 different compounds and therapeutics that are just going to change the way that we live over the next five years. I didn’t tell
1:34:12 you this, but I did my whole genome sequencing. So not the 23andMe, but did the whole thing. You spend, you know, I think it’s about $700 now to get your full genome done.
1:34:15 It’s incredible how cheap it’s become, huh? Isn’t that nuts?
1:34:18 Yeah. Compared to back in the day.
1:34:22 Yeah. Back in the day was insane, right? It was like $20,000 or more or something just a few years ago.
1:34:23 Oh, I mean.
1:34:29 That was even if it was available, if you could find it. Yeah. Right. Because it was like really hard to even get someone to do it.
1:34:44 But anyway, long story short, I have had the most stubborn homocysteine, which is a biomarker that it’s not known to be causal, but it is oftentimes correlated with many different types of cancers and mainly heart disease.
1:34:51 And I have not, even with multiple physicians helping me out, I’ve never been able to get it back to healthy levels.
1:35:06 So I took my whole genome, dumped it into AI, and we worked out a playbook together on where we could find methyl doters to, and which methylated B vitamins I could give to help fix the broken cycle.
1:35:13 Because I have the MTHFR genetic mutation. It’s a very fancy way of saying one biomarker completely jacked up.
1:35:17 My dad died of heart disease. I don’t want to have heart disease. How can we fix this shit? Right?
1:35:22 So we worked through a way for me to supplement and start adding on supplements.
1:35:31 I’m eight weeks in, and for the first time, my homocysteine is at normal levels after many years of trying to figure this out.
1:35:38 And I was working through this process in tandem with my AI, which was crazy.
1:35:46 And it ended up being NAC was the thing that we had to add to the mix as a methyl donor to get it to work and hack around my MTHFR mutation.
1:35:55 Do you think any of that change in homocysteine could be a response to the cessation of drinking in the last, whatever it is, 27 days?
1:35:59 I’ve done drinking bouts of not drinking before and tested and still completely elevated.
1:36:01 So it had nothing to do with drinking.
1:36:15 I thought the same thing, but yeah, this is because the only thing I changed that I’ve added on now is we slowly started adding on B, methylated B vitamins, but it was the NAC that was the methyl donor that got me over the hurdle here and dropped it down dramatically.
1:36:18 So I’m way in the healthy zone now, which is nuts.
1:36:20 My physician is like, what the hell did you do?
1:36:22 And I’m like, talking to AI.
1:36:25 But I’m just saying this is one of many things.
1:36:37 We’ll have an announcement next time we do a podcast together where I just put 15 million in to a protein, this novel protein coming out of UCSF that is doing wonders around dementia and Alzheimer’s.
1:36:40 I did this via True Ventures where I’m a partner over there.
1:36:45 So I joined the board of this company and we’ve got some really interesting data coming out of that.
1:36:49 It’s just a very fun time to be alive at the intersection of AI and life sciences.
1:36:51 Yeah, it is.
1:37:02 And just for reference, so Craig Venter back in the day, I always fuck up that name because I want to throw an extra N in there, but he of Venter, Craig Venter.
1:37:12 So his personal genome sequencing, that was in 2007, and people can do more homework on this, but that cost $10 million, estimated to have cost $10 million.
1:37:13 Wow.
1:37:21 And you just look at where we are now, and you can imagine moving forward.
1:37:32 And actually, this ties into my visit to the UAE and to Abu Dhabi specifically, because what they can do and what they are doing with AI absolutely blew my mind.
1:37:39 I mean, they have, number one, I think it’s 70% of government services are administered through an app on smartphones.
1:37:43 And there are AI assistants that people interact with.
1:37:51 So for instance, if you’re driving, you want to report a pothole, you just take a photograph of it, it geotags it, deals with it, gets it to the right agency, and then off you go.
1:38:09 And I suppose looking kind of down the pike also with genomics, I think they’re going to be a global leader in genomics because of just how much data they have, not only from a full genome perspective, but from a behavioral perspective and centralized electronic medical record perspective.
1:38:18 Actually, very, very interested to see what they do specifically with life sciences and AI, because this intersection is going to be so fertile.
1:38:21 I mean, it’s just unreal.
1:38:24 If you look at AlphaFold and what AlphaFold has done.
1:38:24 Yes.
1:38:26 The new AlphaFold is amazing.
1:38:31 I mean, we’re looking at eclipsing decades of human work in incredibly short periods of time.
1:38:34 Have you done your full genome yet, Tim?
1:38:39 I did my full genome a million years ago with a startup that effectively went out of business.
1:38:42 So I should probably do it again just to boot that back up.
1:38:47 I did delete all my data on 23andMe because I was panicked that they would get bought by someone.
1:38:48 Which they did.
1:38:48 Just got announced.
1:38:49 Yeah.
1:38:52 So I was able to delete mine just in the nick of time.
1:39:01 But I saw a demo, this was years ago, of a company taking genome data and with a sufficiently large data set,
1:39:09 creating basically like a suspect sketch of the person’s face based on their genome data.
1:39:15 Like if they have photographs from multiple angles of these people, because this is what one of these companies was doing,
1:39:19 And they have the full genome sequenced.
1:39:20 And who knows?
1:39:22 Maybe this is science fiction.
1:39:23 They were peddling something in the future.
1:39:33 But I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t think you can anonymize your genetic data in the way that we would hope to be able to anonymize it.
1:39:34 Do you care though?
1:39:35 Do I care?
1:39:37 Are they really going to clone me?
1:39:38 Are they going to clone you?
1:39:42 I mean, they might make your Peloton seat fit better, like if they have the full picture.
1:39:46 But outside of that, you know, like what are they going to do with it?
1:39:51 Well, I mean, I run more on the hypervigilant side than you do, right?
1:39:52 Yeah, I know you do.
1:39:57 I would say for me, it’s not a question of why do you care?
1:40:02 It’s a question of like, what are the reasons to not have a tighter hold on it?
1:40:05 And if there are secure ways to share it, I’m all for it.
1:40:11 But for instance, I mean, the 23andMe thing, I’m not the only person who deleted their data for sure, right?
1:40:15 And I suppose my feeling is we don’t know what we don’t know.
1:40:17 I don’t know how this data might be used.
1:40:18 I really have no idea.
1:40:23 So I would prefer to have as much control of it as possible.
1:40:31 And also way back in 2010, when I was writing the 4-Hour Body, I guess it came out in 2010.
1:40:32 So I was writing it prior to that.
1:40:44 And I’m not sure if this conversation happened shortly thereafter, but it was with a very credible scientist who is at NASA at the time, working on all sorts of advanced physics and chemistry and so on.
1:40:55 And he was commenting on the fact that it was very foolish for a very well-known billionaire at the time to release their full genome data.
1:41:07 And he said, because if you wanted to develop a customized biological weapon to, say, walk up to that person in a crowd and blow a powder into their face at TED or wherever, he’s like, you could do that very, very easily.
1:41:11 He’s like, it’s actually not hard to design something like that.
1:41:12 So I was like, well…
1:41:13 Okay, now you’re freaking me out.
1:41:15 That is…
1:41:21 And I also don’t have the technical chops to call bullshit on something like that.
1:41:22 But it didn’t seem…
1:41:24 This guy didn’t have a tinfoil hat.
1:41:24 He had a real job.
1:41:26 He was producing really good work.
1:41:27 He was published.
1:41:31 And that conversation stuck with me.
1:41:32 That was around 2010.
1:41:34 Think about this.
1:41:44 If I have the resources and the power to build a custom gene-killing Tim Ferriss powder agent, I’m pretty sure I can hire someone just to walk up and shoot you.
1:41:46 You have the resources.
1:41:51 Like, you really don’t need to go that far to take somebody out with a custom, like…
1:41:52 Or, you know what?
1:41:57 The phlebotomist that leaves your house, I can just, like, pay them for a little dip of your juice and, like, go get it tested, right?
1:41:59 There are ways to do that.
1:42:06 I mean, but I guess what I’m saying is within 12 months, I mean, we’re going to have LLMs that are capable…
1:42:14 I mean, hopefully they have the safeguards in place of enabling your average Joe or Jane to create biological weapons from household items, right?
1:42:22 So, I’m just saying I’d prefer not to tempt fate as a public figure by keeping the reins too loose on that stuff.
1:42:24 Do you remember that LifeLock guy?
1:42:28 Remember that company LifeLock that he put his social security number on, like, a thing?
1:42:30 And he’s like, I’m totally secure.
1:42:32 And then he got all hacked and everything.
1:42:33 Yeah.
1:42:35 Because I did and he’s stolen and all this shit, you know?
1:42:36 Yeah.
1:42:37 It was amazing.
1:42:50 And I will also say that something happened to me a couple weeks ago that is, like, the flip side of the Cambrian explosion of discovery with the intersection of healthcare and AI.
1:43:04 And I’m not sure how humans cope with this, but in a sort of post-fact world where what you don’t touch and see with your own eyes in person is going to be a huge question mark.
1:43:12 And the reason I say that is, a few weeks ago, I started getting all of these DMs and texts and so on saying, hey, is this you?
1:43:14 I was like, hey, is what me?
1:43:24 And I clicked through and there was a video of me saying, sign up for X, Y, or Z and I’ll tell you the three stocks that are underpriced right now that’ll make you rich.
1:43:25 Basically, something like that.
1:43:27 And it was a video.
1:43:28 Your side hustle.
1:43:30 My side hustle, yeah.
1:43:36 And the video, I will say, was like 90% indistinguishable from me.
1:43:42 The background, clothing, facial hair, everything was dialed.
1:43:48 There were just a couple of max headroom movements for people who get the reference, like a couple of little glitches that raised questions.
1:43:50 But in 12 months, that’s not going to be there.
1:44:01 And I’m not sure, for instance, from a societal perspective, or let’s just say from a personal perspective, like, how will people know what is real Kevin versus fake Kevin?
1:44:06 Do you have to train your whole audience to use private, understand private and public keys?
1:44:07 Like, what do you actually do?
1:44:12 Dude, this is top of mind for me right now in a way that you would never believe.
1:44:12 Yes.
1:44:15 I mean, I’m working on this exact problem.
1:44:25 So, Alexis, the co-founder of Reddit, and I, you know, we mentioned this, we bought Digback, and we’re going to build a social platform for people to converse about a variety of different topics.
1:44:40 And top of mind is that in an agentic world where AI agents can be spun up for pennies because the cost is going to zero, and they can have conversations with you, they can convince you of things, they can do all these different, both good and bad things.
1:44:42 How are you going to know what’s real?
1:44:57 Just as a test, what I did recently is I took a model, I picked a pair of $6 headphones on Amazon, and I got all the details about the Amazon, and I said, sell this to me as if they will out-compete and outperform a $500 pair of headphones.
1:45:08 And it wrote this really detailed report about the craftsmanship and, like, how they were able to get this in for only $5, and it was super compelling and convincing.
1:45:11 And I was like, it’s game over.
1:45:15 Anything we read online can no longer be trusted, right?
1:45:28 And so there is a handful of people right now working on this exact problem, and we’re trying to figure out how we can know both who – guarantee that there’s a human on the other end of the keyboard, number one.
1:45:40 And number two, when you go out and you talk about something with authority, how can we have and prove that you actually have wisdom or authority that passes through to what you’re talking about?
1:45:50 So, for example, I don’t want to get too geeky, but for example, and to your point about this needs to be something average consumers can understand versus private and public keys and everything else.
1:45:54 But, like, you know, I’ve owned an Oura Ring for, you know, let’s call it five years now.
1:45:58 Now, I could go on any forum online and say, hey, I love my Oura Ring.
1:45:59 I’ve owned it for five years.
1:46:05 Now, that could be an LLM that’s providing you complete bullshit, or it can be actually someone that’s owned an Oura Ring for five years.
1:46:08 There are technologies out there.
1:46:09 They’re really geeky.
1:46:27 They’re called ZK proofs that can go out and they can work with service providers and say, we can guarantee with an algorithm and create a proof that this person is doing and saying what they’re claiming to say, which is that I’ve actually had a paying subscription for the last five years, right?
1:46:30 And we’re going to need to have these proofs.
1:46:38 Like, kind of a cheap way of thinking this is, like, sometimes you see these, like, trust pilot scores or whatever, or the Better Business Bureau scores.
1:46:41 Or there’s going to need to be that around everything that we talk about online.
1:46:57 So, including a Tim Ferriss’ verifiable checkbox that when I click on it, it will say, this was produced, created, published, and proven that it came directly from Tim Ferriss’ lips and not some AI-generated world.
1:46:58 That has to exist.
1:47:00 Otherwise, everything is lost online.
1:47:01 Yeah.
1:47:05 Well, keep up the hard work, folks working on that problem.
1:47:12 I literally was, I was spent a half day over at World, which is Sam Altman’s other startup around proving humanness.
1:47:15 And the way they do it is they actually scan your eyeball.
1:47:23 And I had my eyeball scanned, and, you know, now I have an ID, a world ID, that is proof that I am that human.
1:47:24 They don’t own that.
1:47:25 They don’t have a copy of that.
1:47:27 It lives on my device.
1:47:32 And it’s sharded and kept separate, so it only can be reconstructed by me.
1:47:40 But we’re entering into this really weird time where there is a trade-off between privacy and proving that it’s me.
1:47:43 And, ah, it’s going to be messy for a few years.
1:47:45 For a few years, yeah.
1:47:47 It’s going to be messy for a few hundred years.
1:47:49 It’s bad.
1:47:51 Sounds like Minority Report, the eye scans.
1:47:52 Yeah.
1:47:57 I’ve got a buddy right now that is a hardcore technologist that looks at these things and studies these things.
1:48:09 And he claims right now he believes that 30% of the internet’s traffic, whether it be people writing back to you on Twitter or, you know, any of these social networks, he thinks it’s all bots at this point.
1:48:17 And he has proof of some of them that will friend you up, create long-term relationships with you only to convince you of that one thing that they were trying to do.
1:48:20 And they spent six months building up rapport with you.
1:48:22 And it’s all BS, dude.
1:48:23 It’s all for pennies.
1:48:23 Oh, God.
1:48:24 It’s crazy.
1:48:27 Have you seen a great movie, Ex Machina?
1:48:28 Oh, of course.
1:48:29 Fantastic movie.
1:48:29 Oh, my.
1:48:30 So good.
1:48:31 So scary.
1:48:33 We got to go revisit that.
1:48:34 We also need to watch her again.
1:48:36 You know, I haven’t watched her.
1:48:37 Like, that’d be another one to watch again.
1:48:48 I mean, watching her, I remember watching that and feeling like it was further off than it actually is right now.
1:48:51 I’m just realizing, like, it’s basically here.
1:48:52 Right.
1:48:53 It’s basically right now.
1:48:54 Yeah.
1:49:08 Did you see that lawsuit that basically there was a bunch of guys that got together and did this lawsuit against OnlyFans saying that they were, they sued the platform because they found out that they were just talking to bots and not the actual models themselves.
1:49:09 Did you see this?
1:49:09 No.
1:49:13 So they’re suing these creators.
1:49:15 How much are you going to make from that, Kevin?
1:49:15 27 bucks?
1:49:17 But yeah, exactly.
1:49:19 Well, here’s the best part.
1:49:22 The number one upvoted comment on that was like, you were talking to models.
1:49:24 You were just talking to large language models.
1:49:25 Like, it’s so true.
1:49:29 Oh, man.
1:49:30 Yeah.
1:49:32 Well, here goes nothing, right?
1:49:35 This is like the click, click, click going up on the roller coaster.
1:49:37 And it’s like, here we go.
1:49:51 And it’s, yeah, I came back from my travels realizing like, wow, I really think it will behoove me to just take a few weeks to a month and do a very deep dive on what I can do with these models.
1:50:04 Because a lot of what I saw traveling and just how prescient and invested and advanced certain places are, like Abu Dhabi, as an example, I was like, holy shit.
1:50:08 From a geopolitical perspective, this is going to be the haves and the have-nots, right?
1:50:09 Yeah.
1:50:13 And it’s like, okay, I guess I’ll keep brushing up on my archery skills.
1:50:17 That’s why I need the elbow surgery sooner rather than later.
1:50:26 Well, real quick before we wrap, dude, let’s touch on the meditation thing because that is like in the I need more of, which is getting off the computer and actually disconnecting.
1:50:27 You want to talk about your experience?
1:50:28 Let’s talk about it.
1:50:34 Let me give a quick update before we do that, like a quick commercial break, which is this guy.
1:50:37 So you remember this guy, Coyote, the game we talked about?
1:50:41 It hadn’t launched last time we were talking, or maybe it had just launched.
1:50:49 Now, so this game, Coyote, which is kind of like rock, paper, scissors on steroids in a group dynamic where you can help or sabotage other players.
1:50:56 The game has become one of the top-selling games at Walmart, where it is exclusively for a couple months.
1:50:59 It’s been one of the absolute top sellers.
1:51:10 It has produced two or three of the videos of gameplay, have become the most popular videos of all time from Exploding Kittens, which is the company I partnered with.
1:51:11 Oh my God, that’s amazing.
1:51:14 I mean, tens of millions of views of gameplay.
1:51:18 So it’s all to say, like, it’s going super, super well.
1:51:22 And there’s a lot more that I’m going to explore with this over the next couple months.
1:51:33 But so far, including people with younger kids, they’ve modified the rules a little bit, but you can, I have friends who played, I mean, Hutchins, our friend, Chris Hutchins played with his like four or five-year-old, I want to say.
1:51:37 He sent me a testimonial video from her, not for public use, but she is a big fan.
1:51:39 So you can play with younger kids.
1:51:43 And I would just say, couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out.
1:51:51 So many thanks to Alon Lee and the whole Exploding Kittens team for going on this two-year journey of working on this thing together.
1:51:57 So if people want to check that out, tim.blog.com slash coyote, and you can find the game at pretty much any Walmart or order it online.
1:51:58 Easy to find.
1:51:59 That’s awesome.
1:52:03 Dude, and thanks for giving it out to everyone that came out to the live Dignation at South by.
1:52:04 That was awesome for you to do.
1:52:07 Yeah, those are the first people to ever get their hands on one.
1:52:08 My pleasure.
1:52:11 Okay, Zen, getting offline.
1:52:12 Yes.
1:52:13 You want to kick us off?
1:52:14 Tell us what it looked like.
1:52:15 What was the format?
1:52:25 If you do a classic Zen retreat, at least in this lineage of Zen called Sambo Zen, which is the lineage that Henry Schuchman teaches, you’re in for it.
1:52:37 You’re in for a little bit of an ass kicking in that you get up at the crack of dawn, and you sit, and then you sit some more, and you do a tiny little walk, and then you sit some more, and then you have some mush in a bowl, and then you sit some more.
1:52:39 And you do that until about 8 p.m.
1:52:43 And then you do it all over again, completely silent for five to seven days.
1:52:46 I’ve done a couple of these five and seven dayers.
1:52:47 They’re no joke.
1:52:52 They’re meant to be kind of slightly demoralizing slash brutal.
1:52:57 They’re truly designed to break you down in a good way.
1:53:00 Break down the ego, break down your willingness to live.
1:53:03 They’re pretty hardcore.
1:53:06 But you’re working on Zen koans.
1:53:07 So you’re trying to crack a koan.
1:53:12 Tim has a great interview with Henry Schuchman on his podcast to check out all about koans.
1:53:14 But anyway, long story short, this was not that.
1:53:30 We said, hey, if we get together a small group of people, we can talk at night, have some dinners, really intimate, call it like seven, eight people, small, and get Henry and Valerie, which are both Zen masters, to come in and kind of instruct us during the day.
1:53:32 No early call times.
1:53:33 I think we got there around nine-ish.
1:53:35 That’s perfect.
1:53:36 Which is perfect.
1:53:44 You know, I got that morning coffee and ahead of time and had, you know, a great lunch and then afternoon sit and then we all went to a dinner at night.
1:53:47 So did that for what was three days and it was fantastic.
1:53:49 I loved it, but I’d love to hear what you got out of it.
1:53:51 I got a lot out of it.
1:54:01 And I think one upfront benefit was it was like a very warm bath re-entry to meditation retreat.
1:54:03 You had a tough go at your first one, right?
1:54:17 For people who want to deep dive into what happened in my first extended Vipassana silent retreat, which I made a lot harder by fasting for a very extended period of time and then also adding microdosing, neither of which I recommend if it’s your maiden voyage.
1:54:30 They can listen to my interview with Willoughby B. Britton, B-R-I-T-T-O-N, on some of the occasional adverse events with meditation, which are very, very similar to those of psychedelics, actually.
1:54:32 So if you want to check that out, you can check that out.
1:54:37 I also did a conversation with Dan Harris of 10% Happier where we got into this in some length.
1:54:51 Getting back on the horse and doing it in this way was very much a form of recovery for me, right?
1:55:06 Getting back to a point where I feel like there are forms of meditation I can engage with, specifically extended meditation, that don’t necessarily run the risk of the types of issues that I ran into in my first salad retreat.
1:55:18 Which, by the way, I’ve spent, let’s just say, a week in various jungles or mountains fasting before by myself, and the same types of issues crop up.
1:55:19 Your mind really gets going.
1:55:27 I think the fasting actually is the main culprit with increasing the intensity as much as it did, not the microdosing, but I’m sure they acted together.
1:55:43 This particular format, and I think the type of meditation with a mixture of silence and intermittent guidance from Henry, was not only just a less strained, less risky way to go about it.
1:55:56 I actually felt like it was very, very productive, and I know Henry and Valerie both commented on how it seemed that people made a lot of progress in a very short period of time in this smaller group.
1:56:01 It could have been a function of the smaller group, because if you have 40 people, there’s always going to be somebody coughing or farting or fidgeting or whatever.
1:56:08 In a smaller group, everyone’s on best behavior, and we’re also in a small group that was taking it very seriously.
1:56:13 But much like with anything else, density of practice matters.
1:56:22 And when you are sitting once a day, like I meditated earlier this morning, using the Way app, which we’re both involved with, that involves Henry.
1:56:25 I sat this morning, I’ll sit again later today.
1:56:33 But when you’re doing a few hours a day, you’re able to say to yourself, okay, in the next sit, I want to focus on this particular aspect.
1:56:46 And then if you have a very uncomfortable meditation session, or you’re just thinking about popcorn and cats the whole time, or something stupid, and you’re like, ah, fuck, I kind of failed that meditation.
1:56:50 You have another at-bat five minutes later, right?
1:57:01 And psychologically, you can develop a certain level of not just confidence, but also momentum that you can take back into your daily less intense practice.
1:57:05 So I found it really, really beneficial.
1:57:09 So thank you for putting so much time and energy into helping organize that.
1:57:11 And, you know, the group makes the difference.
1:57:14 This was just an outstanding group, very different perspectives.
1:57:19 Some people had never really meditated before, certainly never done meditation retreats.
1:57:23 For others like me, sort of intrepid people dipping their toe back in.
1:57:28 And I found it incredibly rewarding, and I would do it again, for sure.
1:57:30 That’s awesome.
1:57:43 Yeah, I had never done something with Henry that involved actually talking during the meditation, because it was always like, you get to sit with him in private interview once a day when you’re doing a silent retreat.
1:57:51 So you go back into a room, and then you get, you know, five minutes to talk about, were there any hurdles or obstacles that came up, and how might we address these?
1:57:53 That’s typically how you do it in Zen style.
1:57:58 So to address those at length in real time was awesome.
1:58:02 So, yeah, I mean, highly recommend trying to pick up a practice.
1:58:05 It is challenging for monkey minds like myself.
1:58:11 And, you know, after a few years, I’m just now starting to find my way.
1:58:17 I mean, ever since then, Tim, I’ve been doing close to pretty much 50 minutes a day since we got back from now, which has been fantastic.
1:58:19 It’s still a challenge.
1:58:25 You know, there’ll be days where your mind just goes off the rails, and you say, hey, that was today, so it goes.
1:58:27 You know, you can’t beat yourself up, I think, at the end of the day.
1:58:30 Yeah, I was busy with really good seafood.
1:58:32 Didn’t do as much meditating as I would like.
1:58:32 Yeah, really good seafood.
1:58:47 But I will give a shameless plug because the reason I got involved with The Way with Henry, this app that he has, is because most people are not going to have access to Henry directly in person.
1:58:47 Right?
1:58:49 That’s just not going to be feasible.
1:58:52 But, I mean, look, I can call Henry.
1:58:53 I can text Henry.
1:58:58 And 99% of the time, I just use the app, which should tell you something.
1:59:03 So, if you go to thewayapp.com slash Tim, you can get 30 free sessions.
1:59:07 And I’m pretty sure you don’t need to, at least in the beginning, you didn’t need to use your credit card.
1:59:14 So, you’re not in this, it’s not exactly a bait and switch, but this like boiling frog scenario is my understanding.
1:59:16 Last time I checked, still didn’t require a credit card.
1:59:19 So, 30 free sessions, you can try it out, thewayapp.com slash Tim.
1:59:22 And I will literally be doing that in another, like, two hours.
1:59:23 I’ll be doing another session.
1:59:26 Kev Kev, anything else you’d like to add?
1:59:28 No, I think that was great.
1:59:34 People should know we did not plan to have that be a sponsor or anything like that for The Way.
1:59:38 I know you have to say all that stuff, but also it’s just a fucking awesome app.
1:59:44 So, it’s like, that’s the nice thing about being able to pick your sponsors and pick people that you work with, you know?
1:59:46 I love that about podcasting.
1:59:50 You know, we started that Dignation podcast again with me and Alex, and I do that every three weeks now.
1:59:52 And we have all these sponsors coming.
1:59:55 And it is so nice to be able to say no.
1:59:58 You know, you’re like, no, I don’t want to do that because I don’t believe it.
2:00:01 So, it’s like awesome that you’re in that spot.
2:00:03 But I will leave you with one last bit.
2:00:04 Are we wrapping up?
2:00:06 Because I have one last quote of the day.
2:00:11 So, my quote for you all would be one that a friend of mine that gave up alcohol said to me.
2:00:14 And I don’t believe this originated with him, but I thought it was a great one.
2:00:21 Which is, I had my first drink for the same reason that I had my last.
2:00:23 And that is to be a grown-up.
2:00:24 It’s a good one.
2:00:25 It’s a good one.
2:00:27 It’s a good one.
2:00:27 Yeah.
2:00:28 Well, keep it up, KevKev.
2:00:29 I’m impressed.
2:00:31 I say that very sincerely.
2:00:33 That’s a very long stretch.
2:00:36 And it sounds like you’ve cleared a couple of hurdles.
2:00:37 You have the phone a friend option.
2:00:40 And I’m rooting for you, man.
2:00:41 I’m definitely rooting for you.
2:00:48 And having this conversation also reinforces that I think I’ll just continue with my current cadence.
2:00:50 Which is like, okay, maybe once or twice a month.
2:00:52 Special occasion only.
2:00:58 And outside of that, just really don’t feel the need to do it.
2:01:01 And also with everything else I’ve got going on, I recognize that.
2:01:03 I’ll give you another quote for booze.
2:01:08 And this was actually something that a dear friend said to me at one point.
2:01:09 And he likes to drink.
2:01:13 He said, drinking is borrowing happiness from tomorrow.
2:01:19 If you’re coping at night in some respect with alcohol, it’s not a free lunch.
2:01:20 You’re going to pay for it tomorrow.
2:01:22 And that’s also true with recreational ketamine use.
2:01:24 Don’t think that’s a get-out-of-jail-free card.
2:01:26 So don’t fuck around with that.
2:01:28 Kevin and I have talked about that ad nauseum before.
2:01:30 So we can leave that alone.
2:01:37 But for me, very inspiring to hear you talk about this stretch and everything that has improved.
2:01:38 So I’m going to keep going.
2:01:44 I got to say, the main thing for me, man, that was unexpected, without a doubt, is the mood boost.
2:01:51 In the last week, I’ve noticed that I’m just – I never considered myself depressed or anything like that.
2:01:53 I was a happy person, pretty good.
2:01:58 But I don’t take things as personally, which is weird.
2:02:03 For some reason, I’m just getting a little 10% lift in mood, which I’m loving.
2:02:04 I’ll take it all day long.
2:02:05 It’s great.
2:02:07 So last quote, last quote.
2:02:08 I got one more good one, too.
2:02:09 I love good quotes.
2:02:13 Discipline is the strongest form of self-love.
2:02:19 It’s ignoring what you want right now for a promise of a better future.
2:02:22 That’s along the same lines as your quote there.
2:02:23 Yeah, I dig it.
2:02:26 Was that from your last fortune cookie, or do you have a source for that?
2:02:27 I don’t know where I found that one.
2:02:29 Also, this one’s good, too.
2:02:31 Courage isn’t the absence of fear.
2:02:33 It’s the ability to take action despite it.
2:02:36 Yeah, I’ve got some difficult conversations coming up this week.
2:02:39 So that’s a good one to end on.
2:02:40 Yeah, yeah.
2:02:42 Talk for another time.
2:02:43 Yeah, I know.
2:02:44 Where is this going?
2:02:44 All right, brother.
2:02:45 Good seeing you as always.
2:02:46 All right, man.
2:02:47 Yeah.
2:02:48 Yeah, same to you, brother.
2:02:49 Also great to see you.
2:02:50 And actually, no, it’s not what you think it is.
2:02:53 It’s something else, but we’ll catch up offline.
2:02:57 Not the premature ejaculation stuff.
2:02:58 Okay, that’s good.
2:03:00 I need to up my level of Trazodone.
2:03:02 Yeah, no, it’s not that.
2:03:05 And that’s an amazing place to end an episode.
2:03:09 And for people who want links to everything we’ve discussed, we’ll link to the Accelerate
2:03:13 TMAS, to Nolan Williams, to the books, to 3D2 Sounds, to all the stuff that Kevin mentioned,
2:03:16 the Profi spray for your nasal gel needs.
2:03:17 Espresso.
2:03:20 My favorite Espresso machine.
2:03:23 Yeah, we’ll link to Kevin’s favorite Espresso machine.
2:03:26 You’ll be able to find that all at tim.blog slash podcast.
2:03:32 And until next time, be a little kinder than is necessary, not only to others, but to yourself.
2:03:33 Thanks for tuning in.
2:03:35 Hey guys, this is Tim again.
2:03:37 Just one more thing before you take off.
2:03:39 And that is Five Bullet Friday.
2:03:44 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before
2:03:45 the weekend?
2:03:50 Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short
2:03:51 newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
2:03:53 Easy to sign up.
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2:03:59 It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve
2:04:02 found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.
2:04:04 It’s kind of like my diary of cool things.
2:04:10 It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos,
2:04:15 all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of
2:04:21 podcasts, guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test
2:04:23 them and then I share them with you.
2:04:29 So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head
2:04:31 off for the weekend, something to think about.
2:04:36 If you’d like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser,
2:04:41 Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one.
2:04:42 Thanks for listening.
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2:06:58 I don’t know about you guys, but I have seen a lot of crazy stuff in the last few weeks.
2:07:04 I saw an AI-generated video, looks like a video, of an otter on a flight,
2:07:09 tapping away on a keyboard, having a stewardess ask him if you would like a drink,
2:07:10 and it goes on from there.
2:07:16 And this was generated with AI, and it looks photorealistic, basically.
2:07:20 I mean, it would have cost hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to do in the past,
2:07:23 taken forever, and now it’s, boom, snap of the fingers.
2:07:24 It’s crazy.
2:07:26 So AI is changing everything.
2:07:26 We know that.
2:07:30 It is also changing the way startups and small businesses operate.
2:07:32 Things are going to get crazier.
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0:00:43 It turns out that people are not reliable readers of body language.
0:00:48 Even trained TSA agents in the airport are barely better than chance,
0:00:51 which doesn’t give you a lot of confidence flying, but it’s true.
0:00:56 Another piece of common advice we get is try to put yourself in their shoes,
0:00:57 but that doesn’t work either.
0:01:02 Literally, the research shows there’s only one way that reliably allows mere mortals
0:01:05 to find out what other people think and feel a no.
0:01:08 Of course, that’s to ask them, but it’s so much easier said than done.
0:01:16 Maybe we shouldn’t do this because I may disappoint you in real life.
0:01:20 I have a feeling you’re going to surpass the bar.
0:01:25 Oh, he writes a pretty good book, but man, he sucks at asking questions.
0:01:27 You’re a professional question asker.
0:01:34 Yeah, I’m not exactly a lucrative question asker.
0:01:40 This is Guy Kawasaki, and this is another episode of the Remarkable People Podcast.
0:01:42 We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:01:48 And after reading the next guest book, I figured out that if you can ask good questions,
0:01:52 it’s a very important skill for being remarkable.
0:01:55 So the guest is Jeff Wetzler.
0:02:02 Now, he’s really a visionary leader in learning, really, and asking questions.
0:02:08 And he has written a book called Ask, which I love one word titles, right?
0:02:10 It’s like, what’s the book about?
0:02:11 Duh, it’s Ask.
0:02:16 He has spent decades, although he doesn’t look that old, helping organizations.
0:02:23 He even had a stint at Teach for America, which I think is just a great idea that kids after
0:02:28 they graduate serve one or two years teaching other younger students.
0:02:35 So I want you to get ready to rethink about how you listen and you ask and you lead and work
0:02:36 with those around you.
0:02:39 So welcome to the Remarkable People Podcast, Jeff.
0:02:40 Thank you, Guy.
0:02:41 It’s so great to be with you.
0:02:44 So let’s start with a very easy question.
0:02:53 And the easy question is, do you believe in the concept of this great white male purple cow,
0:03:01 black swan visionary who can intuit what people need or think what they need before they even
0:03:02 know it?
0:03:07 Which is to say that are there some people in the world, maybe people like Steve Jobs
0:03:11 or Elon Musk, who don’t need to ask questions because they’re so gifted?
0:03:19 I do believe that there are people who can take in signals and process those signals in very
0:03:22 interesting, insightful kinds of ways.
0:03:27 And, you know, across the spectrum, I think Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, other people have a lot
0:03:28 of talent at doing that.
0:03:30 Even they don’t always get it right.
0:03:33 And I think the rest of us are mere mortals.
0:03:39 And for us mere mortals, trying to guess, trying to go on our intuition, the research shows is
0:03:41 quite often pretty unreliable.
0:03:43 We end up with the wrong conclusion.
0:03:48 And sometimes we end up with the wrong conclusion, even or especially in relation to guessing what
0:03:53 the people who are closest to us in our lives actually know and think and feel, whether our
0:03:55 longtime spouse or our business partner or our colleague.
0:03:58 We get overconfident because we think, I’ve known them for years.
0:04:00 Of course, I know what they think, but we don’t get it right.
0:04:03 And why don’t we get it right?
0:04:09 Because you would think with that amount of exposure and the duration of exposure, we should
0:04:10 be able to get it right.
0:04:15 I mean, I think at the simplest level, we don’t get it right because we’re not them.
0:04:16 We’re us.
0:04:17 We see the world through our lens.
0:04:19 They have their own experience.
0:04:20 They are not a static person.
0:04:22 They’re changing all the time.
0:04:27 There’s really interesting research that shows that even the best advice that we often get
0:04:30 for how to do this doesn’t work.
0:04:34 So, for instance, one piece of advice we often get is try to read their body language.
0:04:39 If you can just read their body language, it turns out that people are not reliable readers
0:04:40 of body language.
0:04:45 Even trained TSA agents in the airport are barely better than chance, which doesn’t give
0:04:47 you a lot of confidence flying, but it’s true.
0:04:53 Another piece of common advice we get is try to put yourself in their shoes, but that doesn’t
0:04:54 work either.
0:04:59 Literally, the research shows there’s only one way that reliably allows mere mortals to
0:05:01 find out what other people think and feel a no.
0:05:04 Of course, that’s to ask them, but it’s so much easier said than done.
0:05:12 Wait, but Jeff, you just blew a hole into a lot of business writing about you have to develop
0:05:13 your skills of empathy.
0:05:15 Are you saying empathy is overrated?
0:05:21 Well, I’m not at all saying empathy is overrated, but I am saying that untested assumptions about
0:05:23 what’s going on for people can be dangerous for us.
0:05:28 So the idea of trying to imagine what they might go through, I think is super valuable.
0:05:30 If we say to ourselves, I’m imagining it.
0:05:32 And then what I’m imagining, I’m 100% sure is right.
0:05:33 That’s what’s dangerous.
0:05:37 We can imagine it to the point where we can actually have a conversation and ask them to
0:05:40 tell us more about what you’re going through and what’s that like.
0:05:41 And then we can, of course, connect emotionally.
0:05:45 I think that is the kind of empathy that is deep and powerful and valid.
0:05:49 But if it’s just, I’m guessing what you’re going through, I feel empathy for you.
0:05:50 It’s risky.
0:05:56 Is there a continuum where you have superficial empathy, where you’re guessing the next level
0:06:02 would be you actually watch people as they drive their minivan or as they open up a bottle
0:06:05 of pills and they can’t figure out how to open the bottle.
0:06:10 And then the third level is where you actually are the customer.
0:06:12 You are actually in the minivan.
0:06:14 You’re actually open the bottle.
0:06:16 So is that a spectrum that we can travel?
0:06:18 I love that spectrum.
0:06:23 And I think what I take from that is that the more information you have, the better your
0:06:24 empathy is going to be.
0:06:26 If you’re the actual user, you got all the information.
0:06:28 If you’re watching the user, you got some of the information.
0:06:31 If you’re sitting at a distance, you have less information.
0:06:35 And so the more you can get to actually getting the information that’s right, the more accurately
0:06:38 you’re going to actually have a chance of knowing what’s going on for the other person.
0:06:40 So I might borrow that little framework.
0:06:43 Feel free to rip me off.
0:06:43 I’ll be flattered.
0:06:44 I will credit you.
0:06:51 But let me in a rare moment of openness and transparency, I came across this concept from
0:06:53 a friend named Martin Lindstrom.
0:06:55 He wrote the book Biology, B-U-Y.
0:07:01 And he tells this story that he was retained by a pharmaceutical company because they wanted
0:07:07 to get closer to the customer, which that’s like a signal to McKenzie to charge them $5 million.
0:07:12 But anyway, so he had all the executives come in a room and they said, you know, we’re going
0:07:14 to get closer to our customers.
0:07:18 So he made them breathe through straws for a few minutes.
0:07:21 And at the end, he said, your customers have asthma.
0:07:24 That’s what it’s like to have asthma.
0:07:28 And I thought that was such a brilliant story.
0:07:29 Now I use that in my speeches.
0:07:32 I pass out straws in my speeches.
0:07:34 I think I read that story in your book as well.
0:07:38 And I literally took a straw and I tried it myself because I wanted to know.
0:07:41 I thought it was so brilliant and it’s really hard to breathe.
0:07:43 And so I love that example.
0:07:46 So now there’s going to be a run on straws.
0:07:46 That’s right.
0:07:47 That’s right.
0:07:53 So why is it that people don’t ask better questions?
0:07:58 I think most of us just assume we know how to ask questions.
0:08:00 You know, we’re born, we learn how to talk.
0:08:06 Most of us for a living, you know, talk, we make statements, we ask questions, we think
0:08:06 we know it.
0:08:09 So why would we even try to get better at it?
0:08:10 I think that’s a piece of it.
0:08:16 And I think the other piece of it is we often operate without the level of curiosity that we
0:08:16 would truly need.
0:08:20 We walk into situations, we size them up in split seconds.
0:08:23 We don’t even realize that we’re sizing the situation up.
0:08:25 We just think that’s reality of the way it is.
0:08:28 And so if I think I know what’s going on here, I know what your motive is.
0:08:29 I know what the right answer is.
0:08:31 I know what I’m trying to do here.
0:08:32 Why even bother asking a question?
0:08:35 It would be illogical to even ask a question if I’m certain.
0:08:40 And so we’ve got to figure out how to actually get ourselves more curious to open up the space
0:08:41 for more questions.
0:08:47 But couldn’t you make a case that it’s part of evolution that we had to make split second
0:08:47 questions?
0:08:48 A hundred percent.
0:08:48 Right?
0:08:53 If the saber tooth is chasing you, you don’t ask, are you trying to kill me or not?
0:08:54 I mean, you get up.
0:08:58 Even today, let’s say that you’re in a room and you’re starting to smell smoke.
0:09:01 You don’t think to yourself, I wonder if someone’s cooking.
0:09:04 I wonder if, you know, you just get the hell out of there or you put out the fire.
0:09:11 And so this mechanism of walking into a situation that has a lot going on, zeroing in on what’s
0:09:15 the one thing, quickly making meaning of it, quickly drawing a conclusion, quickly saying
0:09:21 what’s the action I need to take is a very adaptive thing for high urgency, emergency kinds of situations.
0:09:23 I’m sure that’s why it evolved in that way.
0:09:27 The problem is that much of the time we’re in complex situations.
0:09:29 We’re in fast moving situations.
0:09:32 We’re in ambiguous situations where the first thing that we jump to may not be the right
0:09:35 thing, where somebody else might see something different.
0:09:39 And if we still operate in that same, you know, there’s the tiger mode, that’s when
0:09:40 we get ourselves into trouble.
0:09:43 So how can people learn to be curious then?
0:09:44 Okay.
0:09:48 So this is what I’ve been studying and it’s been just a fascinating journey.
0:09:52 There’s what I would call a few different gateways into curiosity.
0:09:59 One of the most powerful gateways is to actually slow down our thinking so we can recognize the
0:10:00 narrative that we’ve just drawn.
0:10:04 So if I, let’s say that I’m walking into a situation, somebody says, I really don’t think
0:10:05 we should make that change.
0:10:11 My saber tooth tiger brain, my lizard brain might say they’re being resistant.
0:10:15 And the fact that they’re being resistant is because they are trying to thwart me as a leader.
0:10:18 And the fact that they’re trying to thwart me as a leader means I need to get them off
0:10:18 the team.
0:10:23 Just as an example, that process can happen in less than a second outside of my own awareness.
0:10:26 But if I can begin to realize this is how our brains work.
0:10:28 I’m starting to construct the story.
0:10:29 I’m selecting a small bit of data.
0:10:31 I’m making it mean something quickly.
0:10:36 I can begin to inject what I call curiosity sparks into that story.
0:10:38 I can say, all right, what else might be going on here?
0:10:40 What’s another way to look at the situation?
0:10:42 What might they be overlooking?
0:10:46 And that’s essentially a way of loosening the grip that our story has on us.
0:10:51 Not to say we’re wrong, but to make room for more possibilities going on.
0:10:58 But I would suspect that 99% of people listening to this would say, yeah, that’s true for most
0:10:59 people, but not me.
0:11:01 I am perceptive.
0:11:02 I really know what to do.
0:11:06 I would say, if that’s you, then you really need to learn.
0:11:10 You really need to listen to this because every single one of us is human.
0:11:12 We all have that evolution behind us.
0:11:13 We all have to do that.
0:11:17 And generally, what I tend to say is, if you’re getting all the results you want in your life
0:11:20 and in your work and in your relationships, maybe you don’t change anything.
0:11:25 But chances are, every single one of us has areas where we can actually be making better
0:11:28 decisions, where we can prevent errors, where we can grow fast, where we can deepen relationships.
0:11:32 And that’s the motivation to say, what can I learn from this other person?
0:11:34 I will say, it’s not easy to do.
0:11:36 Sometimes curiosity is a team sport.
0:11:41 And it can be helpful to say, and I say this to my own business partner a lot, I’m really
0:11:42 worked up about this person.
0:11:44 I think this person’s not being a team player.
0:11:45 I think X, Y, Z.
0:11:48 And he’ll say to me, maybe take a little of your own curiosity medicine here.
0:11:50 Let’s slow this down a little bit.
0:11:53 And so sometimes we’re so in our own story that we don’t see it.
0:11:57 So using colleagues, friends, mentors who are willing to challenge us a little can be
0:11:59 a great way to make space for curiosity.
0:12:05 It also turns out I’ve discovered in writing the book, and increasingly so, that friend can
0:12:07 be your favorite AI chatbot too.
0:12:13 You can take your rant about your least favorite politician or your enemy or whatever.
0:12:16 You just dump it in and you say, how could anyone like this person?
0:12:19 How could I, you know, and then you just write at the end, what might I be missing?
0:12:25 And in the privacy of your own desk, your office, your phone, whatever, you get back some very
0:12:29 interesting considerations, not to say that your story is 100% wrong, but to say, here’s
0:12:31 some other ways to understand what’s going on.
0:12:34 And those other ways of looking at it can give you some degrees of freedom to ask new questions,
0:12:35 to learn more things.
0:12:36 Okay.
0:12:40 I’m typing Elon Musk into chat GPT right now.
0:12:43 And add, what might I be missing?
0:12:43 What else?
0:12:45 That was another way to look at this.
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0:13:49 You built a case about slowing things down, using AI, getting your friends and colleagues
0:13:51 to push back on you.
0:13:55 But the next question is, who do we ask questions of?
0:13:58 Because there’s a lot of people around me.
0:14:00 How do I pick who to ask?
0:14:00 Yeah.
0:14:05 Well, so first of all, I’ll say, a lot of people say to me, it’s great to ask questions, but
0:14:08 there’s a lot of people that I have no interest in asking questions to.
0:14:10 I have no need to ask them questions.
0:14:12 I just completely disagree with what they have to say.
0:14:18 I think that they’re even dangerous, and my contention is there is something important
0:14:19 and interesting to learn from every single person.
0:14:24 If you’re talking to your enemy, someone that you actually think is quite dangerous, the thing
0:14:27 you need to learn from them is what’s their next move going to be so that you can figure
0:14:28 out what to do about that move.
0:14:33 If you’re talking to someone that you deeply disagree with, the thing that you need to do
0:14:35 is understand where did they get to their views in case you want to influence them.
0:14:42 And it’s a very well-documented phenomenon in social science that you’re actually more influential
0:14:46 at influencing someone else if you know where they’re coming from, if you demonstrate curiosity
0:14:46 to them.
0:14:51 They even perceive you as more reasonable, more likable, and more influential just by asking
0:14:52 them questions.
0:14:56 So even if you don’t care about learning from anything, from anyone, just by asking them
0:14:58 questions and learning, you’re going to influence them better.
0:15:03 But chances are there’s going to be something in there that’s also going to be interesting and
0:15:04 important to you as well.
0:15:09 So that’s why you can learn something from an Uber driver with a flag that is…
0:15:11 Exactly.
0:15:11 Exactly.
0:15:14 You watch the TED Talk, I take it.
0:15:16 Or maybe read the epilogue of the book.
0:15:17 It’s both.
0:15:17 It’s in both.
0:15:18 Yeah.
0:15:23 You think this is the kind of podcast where the producer hands the Wikipedia entry to the
0:15:25 podcaster and says, OK, have at it, bro.
0:15:27 You did your homework.
0:15:28 I did my homework.
0:15:29 Absolutely.
0:15:36 So now, as the Japanese say, we have a word for this, as a maven, as a maven in asking
0:15:38 questions, what do you think of polling?
0:15:40 Because talk about asking.
0:15:41 Polling is asking.
0:15:44 I would say that anything is better than not asking.
0:15:49 And so if you’re doing a survey, if you’re doing polling, that’s good.
0:15:50 That’s better than the alternative.
0:15:53 But it’s only going to get you the surface level.
0:15:55 It’s going to get you, I like this person.
0:15:56 I don’t like this person.
0:15:58 I would buy this product again.
0:15:59 I wouldn’t buy this product again.
0:16:00 That’s really good to know.
0:16:01 You could start to do that.
0:16:05 But I would say to me, the poll is just the door that you have to open.
0:16:06 And then you have to walk through the door.
0:16:10 And walking through the door then requires, I think, a level of dialogue of like, how come?
0:16:12 Tell me the story why.
0:16:13 What would make it better?
0:16:16 What would have to be true for you to actually change it?
0:16:21 So there’s all kinds of deeper things that I think surveys and polls are less good at getting to.
0:16:23 But they can be the opening for you to go deeper with someone.
0:16:24 All right.
0:16:29 So why don’t you just give me like the methodology for optimal asking?
0:16:31 You gave us optimal curiosity.
0:16:36 Just go down to the Jeff Wessler checklist for optimal asking.
0:16:39 I will just give you the kind of at the high level what I call the ask approach.
0:16:52 This is the five strategies or the five steps that essentially gives you the greatest possible chance of finding out the things that other people think and feel and know that they are likely to not tell you otherwise, but that you might otherwise need to know.
0:16:53 And we can talk more about that.
0:16:57 But at the highest level, number one, I call choose curiosity.
0:16:58 And we’ve been talking a bit about this.
0:17:04 But basically, nothing else I would say matters if you’re not genuinely curious to learn from the other person.
0:17:06 It will just seem like a gimmick or a technique.
0:17:06 It will not be authentic.
0:17:17 On the other hand, if you’re genuinely curious, if you really want to understand someone, you will radiate an energy that they can tell you’re interested, that makes them more likely to want to actually share with you.
0:17:22 And I don’t look at curiosity as a trait that some people lack and other people have.
0:17:26 I look at it as a choice, as a decision that’s always available to us.
0:17:27 So we can talk more about that.
0:17:29 But that’s number one, choose curiosity.
0:17:34 Number two is a recognition that let’s say even I am wanting to learn from you.
0:17:35 I am curious.
0:17:44 If you don’t feel safe to tell me your truth, especially if it’s a hard truth, and this is where a lot of Amy Edmondson’s research comes in, I’m not going to learn from you.
0:17:46 I learned this the hard way as an operating leader.
0:17:48 You mentioned I was an executive at Teach for America.
0:17:52 I came in from the business world, and I figured if I have a question for someone, they’re going to tell me.
0:17:54 If they’re struggling, they’re going to let me know.
0:17:59 And I quickly learned, especially as I was working across many different lines of difference, people were intimidated.
0:18:01 They didn’t actually feel safe.
0:18:02 And I’m thinking, it’s just me.
0:18:03 I’m here to help.
0:18:06 And they’re thinking, this guy could fire me.
0:18:07 Why would I tell him the truth?
0:18:11 And we had some near collisions because of people not telling me the actual truth.
0:18:19 So Make It Safe is all about lowering those barriers, making it more comfortable, easy, and appealing for people to share with you their real truth.
0:18:20 And we can get into what that looks like.
0:18:24 Number three is called pose quality questions.
0:18:26 This is the heart of the ask approach.
0:18:30 This is basically to say not everything that has a question mark is a quality question.
0:18:35 My definition of a quality question is simply a question that really lets you learn something from someone else.
0:18:39 And I distinguish between crummy questions versus quality questions.
0:18:42 And in the book, and we can talk more, I share a set of strategies.
0:18:44 And it’s not like there’s 50 or 100.
0:18:51 If you can learn maybe a 10 or a dozen strategies, you will radically expand your repertoire of what you can actually learn from someone else.
0:18:52 So that’s posing quality questions.
0:18:57 Wait, before you go on to number four, give me an example of a crummy question.
0:18:58 Isn’t that right?
0:19:04 That’s one of my favorite crummy questions, because people will say something and they’ll be like, right, right?
0:19:07 They may genuinely want to know, do you agree with them?
0:19:12 But when you say it like that, it makes it much harder, especially if they don’t feel safe to tell you.
0:19:15 I’ll give you another one that I talk a lot about with groups.
0:19:16 I did this yesterday.
0:19:19 Just to question this, does that make sense?
0:19:23 So you give someone some instruction or some explanation.
0:19:24 Does that make sense?
0:19:27 And a lot of most people in the room say, I ask that question all the time.
0:19:29 But it’s a crummy question for a couple of reasons.
0:19:33 One is it can make someone feel stupid if they don’t understand it.
0:19:35 Two is when someone says, does that make sense?
0:19:39 Are they asking, do you agree with them or do you understand what they say?
0:19:40 So if you ask, does that make sense?
0:19:46 And someone nods, you have no idea if they’re just nodding because they agree, but they understand, but they disagree or the other way around.
0:19:53 You can very easily redesign that question to make it higher quality by saying something like, so what’s your reaction to that?
0:19:54 How does that land with you?
0:19:55 What does that make you think?
0:19:56 How does that sit with you?
0:20:04 Any of those are questions that are much more likely to help you understand the other person’s thinking about your own thinking.
0:20:11 So if they disagree, if they see gaps, you’re far more likely to be able to do that because it makes room for what the fancy term is disconfirming data.
0:20:15 It lets disconfirming data come into you so that you can then have a conversation about it.
0:20:20 Hey, Madison, do I ever ask you if something makes sense?
0:20:22 Um, yeah, sometimes.
0:20:28 Oh, that’s a lesson there.
0:20:31 Be careful what you ask on a podcast recording.
0:20:36 But anyway, I’ll tell you, I think it’s so common.
0:20:36 We all do.
0:20:40 When I first learned to redesign that question to say, what’s your reaction?
0:20:46 I was a new manager and I had just given somebody a set of instructions for what I was hoping that he would do.
0:20:47 And I remembered it myself.
0:20:48 Just ask him.
0:20:50 And so I said, what are your reactions to that?
0:20:59 And he got quiet for a minute and then he said, if you really want to know my true reaction, I’m completely demoralized by what you just asked me to do.
0:21:00 And I was just like that.
0:21:02 I was flabbergasted because I thought we were good.
0:21:08 But he said, what I discovered is he had a whole different set of information about what our clients needed and were asking for than I did.
0:21:15 And so what I asked him made no sense to him to do based on the information he had within the span of about five to seven minutes.
0:21:16 We cleared it all up.
0:21:17 We got back on the same page.
0:21:22 But had I not taken that literally the three seconds to ask the question, what’s your reaction to this?
0:21:25 He would have gone either done the wrong thing or just not done it.
0:21:26 He would have resented me.
0:21:27 Our relationship would have suffered.
0:21:29 We wouldn’t have served the client well.
0:21:31 And so people say, I don’t have time to ask questions.
0:21:33 And I say, it doesn’t take long.
0:21:39 Just, you know, three seconds to ask a question and you can save yourself weeks and I think a lot of heartache and money too.
0:21:44 I think that I will add to my Macintosh a keyboard macro.
0:21:50 So I just type like something like Z reaction and it’ll spit out the whole sentence.
0:21:52 What’s your reaction?
0:21:52 So I love that.
0:21:54 I can ask that all the time.
0:21:55 Okay.
0:21:58 Madison, get ready to always tell me your reaction.
0:21:59 I’m ready.
0:22:00 Sorry, Madison.
0:22:03 Okay.
0:22:05 So I think we’re on number four now.
0:22:07 Number four is called listen to learn.
0:22:13 And basically, once you ask a question, it’s, it all comes down to, do you hear the answer?
0:22:17 How well do you actually listen to what someone has to say?
0:22:25 And a lot of times we’re listening to look smart, listening to prove a point, listening to get someone to do something, listening to look like we’re listening.
0:22:27 None of that is listening to learn.
0:22:35 Listening to learn is like truly taking a vigorous interest in what someone else has to say so that you can actually get to the essence of what they’re talking about.
0:22:40 It’s listening, not just for the information, but also for the emotions and also for the actions.
0:22:47 And when I talk to groups, I say to them, I say to people like, give me on average, what percent of people that you talk to you think is a good listener?
0:22:54 On average, people say it’s about 10 or 15% of people that they, but many polls think that the vast majority of us think we’re good listeners.
0:23:00 So, there’s a massive gap between how good we think we are as a listener versus how we’re actually experienced as a listener.
0:23:04 But there’s some very simple things that we can do to increase our listening.
0:23:06 Should I give you an example or two?
0:23:10 Yeah, that’s why I have you on the podcast.
0:23:11 All right, I’ll go there.
0:23:13 That makes sense to me.
0:23:20 Yeah, so for the book, I interviewed professional listeners, including journalists and also including psychotherapists.
0:23:22 Psychotherapists sit there and they listen all day long.
0:23:30 And one of the things I discovered is that psychotherapists universally experience this phenomenon called the doorknob moment.
0:23:31 Have you heard of this?
0:23:52 So, if there’s a session that is 50 minutes long, what happens quite often is that someone will sit there, have the therapy, have the conversation, and then at the very last second, at minute 49 and 59 seconds, right when they’re standing up, their hand is on the door, they’re about to leave the room, only then is when they actually say the real thing that’s going on.
0:23:58 And it’s like, that’s when they say, I’m thinking about leaving my spouse or, you know, whatever the thing is that’s going on.
0:24:01 And these therapists, they’re like, why didn’t they tell me this during the whole session?
0:24:02 We could have talked about it.
0:24:03 And they have all kinds of theories.
0:24:10 Sometimes they think, well, maybe they were working up the courage, or maybe they were waiting to see how I reacted, or maybe they were just getting their thoughts straight.
0:24:14 One of them recently said to me, I think they do it because they want me to think about them all week.
0:24:16 So, they just say it’s the last thing, hoping that I’ll think about them.
0:24:23 But the takeaway is that you can’t assume that when you ask a question and someone answers it, you’re getting the most important thing they have to say.
0:24:30 Often, the most important thing they have to say is two or three layers back, and it’s not the thing that comes out when you ask them.
0:24:33 And yet, many of us will ask a question, and then we’ll say, okay, I got my answer.
0:24:37 Now, next question, or I’m moving on, and we miss the actual real thing.
0:24:44 So, there’s a listening technique that I just call pull the thread, which is if you just pull it a little bit more and say, that’s interesting, can you elaborate on that?
0:24:46 Can you say a little bit more about that?
0:24:46 Tell me more.
0:24:48 What else?
0:24:54 Any of those things are just ways to increase the likelihood that the real thing is going to come out when you ask someone the question.
0:25:00 Sometimes, I will even say to my own team, if we’re having a conversation or I’m asking them for ideas, I’ll say, what else?
0:25:01 And what else?
0:25:04 And then I’ll even say to them, I’m going to keep asking you, what else?
0:25:06 Until you tell me, that’s it.
0:25:09 Because the ideas keep getting better and better each time I say, what else?
0:25:11 That’s one of the strategies, pull the thread.
0:25:16 And what happens if you pull the thread at the 50th minute or the 59th minute?
0:25:20 If you’re in a psychotherapy session, you can’t because it’s over.
0:25:22 And so, that’s the thing.
0:25:24 It’s like by not doing that, they’ve missed the chance.
0:25:26 But we don’t have that constraint usually.
0:25:27 Usually, we’re still in the conversation.
0:25:29 We can continue to do that in a conversation.
0:25:30 So, that’s one.
0:25:38 The other one I would just share with you that I would say is, if there’s nothing else that anybody who listens to this episode remembers for this entire episode, it would be this thing.
0:25:40 It’s just called tellback and test.
0:25:49 And so, when you’re talking to someone and they answer your questions, before you give your response or before you ask the next question, just simply say, I think this is what I heard you say.
0:25:49 Let me just check.
0:25:50 Did I get that right?
0:25:52 Or here’s what I think I’m getting from you.
0:25:53 How close is that?
0:25:54 Whatever it is.
0:26:06 It’s very rare that we do it, but research shows that it is actually one of the biggest distinguishers of high-performing teams versus low-performing teams, the degree to which they just check if they understood what each other said.
0:26:07 It’s sort of the magic move.
0:26:09 It has many benefits.
0:26:12 The first and most important, of course, is simply you get better information.
0:26:15 So, when I do this, half the time when I say to someone, let me just check.
0:26:16 I think this is what you’re saying.
0:26:17 Is that right?
0:26:20 They will say, kind of, but that’s not exactly what I meant.
0:26:23 Or that is what I said, but now that you tell me, this is what I really think.
0:26:25 I just get better information.
0:26:26 It saves a lot of time.
0:26:29 It also just changes up the tempo of the conversation.
0:26:32 So, let’s say we’re having some kind of an argument or whatever.
0:26:34 It’s like a ping-pong match or a counterpoint.
0:26:39 If I just stop and say, before I react to you, guy, I just want to check if I understood where you’re coming from.
0:26:40 Is this what you mean?
0:26:41 Is this what you’re saying?
0:26:42 It just slows it down.
0:26:44 It gives us a chance both to breathe.
0:26:49 But I think the most important benefit is that it also sends you the message, I care about you.
0:26:58 I care about you enough to take my own time, my own words, my own breath to check if I understand where you’re coming from, what’s important to you.
0:27:00 And that changes everything as well.
0:27:04 So, like the magic move, the power move, just check your understanding.
0:27:05 Tell back and test.
0:27:07 Man, I don’t know if I can get to number five.
0:27:11 Okay, number five, I will tell you, is my favorite of them all.
0:27:16 And the reason why it’s my favorite is because it’s called Reflect and Reconnect.
0:27:20 And as you said at the beginning in your kind introduction, my passion in life is learning.
0:27:23 And I believe that reflection is how we learn.
0:27:30 Reflection is how we convert our experiences into takeaways or insights and our insights into actions.
0:27:38 I think reflection is the difference between somebody having 20 years of experience doing something versus having one year of experience 20 times over.
0:27:39 It’s how well they reflect.
0:27:43 And I think that reflection often gets a bad rap.
0:27:44 People think, I don’t know how to reflect.
0:27:47 I don’t have time to go on a meditation retreat.
0:27:49 I would have to, you know, start whatever, going into the hills.
0:27:51 But reflection can be very simple.
0:27:55 So, I have a method I suggest that I just call sift it and turn it.
0:27:59 But sift it is just to say, let’s say someone told you 30 things in the course of a conversation.
0:28:02 Just sift it and say, you know, take a second.
0:28:04 What were the three or four most important things I took away from that person?
0:28:06 And I can release some of the other stuff.
0:28:09 In fact, some of the stuff that people tell us, we don’t need to take it.
0:28:10 Maybe it’s not even healthy for us to take it.
0:28:11 So, sift it.
0:28:15 And often it can be helpful to sift it with a friend or a colleague so you’re not sifting out the wrong stuff.
0:28:18 And then just turn it over in your mind three times.
0:28:23 The first time, I would say, is turning it over to see how does this affect my story about the situation?
0:28:25 Maybe it gives me a new piece of information.
0:28:28 Maybe it shows me a wrong assumption I was making or whatever it is.
0:28:30 How does it affect my story?
0:28:33 The second time you turn it is to say, based on that, what steps should I take?
0:28:35 Maybe I want to apologize.
0:28:36 Maybe I want to double down.
0:28:38 Maybe I want to make a right turn with it.
0:28:39 But just ask yourself.
0:28:44 And then the third is the deepest turn, which is there anything that I learned here that affects my own stuff?
0:28:51 Like maybe it revealed to me that I have a bias or a way of being or some deeper held assumption that this just kind of questioned a little bit.
0:28:54 So, sift it and turn it for your story, your steps and your stuff.
0:28:57 And then the reconnect part is the closing the loop.
0:29:02 It’s basically to say this whole ask approach is not just about me taking things away from myself.
0:29:06 It’s about connecting back to the other person and saying, thank you for taking the time.
0:29:08 Thank you for taking the risk if it felt risky.
0:29:10 And by the way, here’s what I learned from you.
0:29:12 And here’s what I’m going to go do with what I learned from you.
0:29:16 And is there something different than you were hoping or additional you were hoping I would learn from you?
0:29:21 And that act of closing the loop, I was just literally with a group of executives yesterday.
0:29:27 And they said, our whole organization is cynical because we ask them for so many suggestions and then they have no idea what we do with these suggestions.
0:29:28 And so, they say, what’s the point?
0:29:32 But closing the loop lets people know they didn’t waste their time.
0:29:35 They’re powerful because they’ve influenced you.
0:29:39 And I think it just deepens the connection so that they’re going to want to share and you’re going to want to share more together over time.
0:29:41 I’m exhausted already.
0:29:49 You’re changing my entire conversational style, my God.
0:29:51 Well, there you know what?
0:29:52 You just reflected back.
0:29:53 You reconnected back to me.
0:29:54 You told me something.
0:29:56 Some impact that it had on you.
0:30:05 Can I ask you, do you value either, even if it’s performative, people taking notes?
0:30:13 I think that whatever people need to do to make sure they get the right takeaways is valuable.
0:30:20 Nowadays, more often, I am using an AI note taker, whether it’s on my phone, if it’s in person or online.
0:30:21 If it’s on Zoom, I can use any number of them.
0:30:27 And for me, that’s a way that I can actually just fully stay present with the person but know that I’m going to still have the takeaways.
0:30:36 But if someone doesn’t have that or if that’s their style, I think that’s great as long as they’re not so buried in their notes so they’re not able to make some eye contact and look across time.
0:30:40 But if it helps you to make sure you’re getting the right takeaways, I think that can be valuable.
0:30:50 So are you saying that I could take a transcript of a conversation, put it into an LLM and ask it, what are the takeaways?
0:30:51 How should I reconnect?
0:30:53 It can use it as a coach.
0:30:54 You can do that.
0:30:56 In fact, there’s some really fun things you can do.
0:30:57 For example, you can take that transcript.
0:31:04 You can say to AI, what are some questions I didn’t ask in this conversation that I might have asked?
0:31:09 Or what are a few follow-up questions that I could ask in my follow-up email or in the next question?
0:31:11 So it can actually help you generate questions.
0:31:15 But the other really fun thing that you can do with a transcript to help you practice listening,
0:31:20 I mentioned very briefly earlier that you can listen for content, emotion, and action.
0:31:22 So content is the information that someone’s saying.
0:31:25 Emotion is what are the feelings that they were expressing or displaying.
0:31:29 And actions are what are the behaviors that they were doing in the conversation.
0:31:32 You can literally take a transcript and ask it to help you listen for those three things.
0:31:38 So you can say at a content level, what were the most important facts and arguments that were being made?
0:31:40 At an emotion level, what were they expressing and displaying?
0:31:43 At an action level, what behaviors were they doing in that conversation?
0:31:46 And you can check it against your own listening to that.
0:31:52 And in a way, it can really help you to train your brain to not just listen.
0:31:54 Because most of us just listen through one of those three channels.
0:31:58 For me, I default to content and I can sometimes miss the emotion or the action.
0:32:02 But if I can do that, I can start to train my brain to be listening for those other two things too.
0:32:05 Let’s get a little more granular here.
0:32:10 So are there differences when you’re talking to women versus men?
0:32:13 Are there differences when you’re talking to old versus young?
0:32:17 The five things were generic across all human beings, right?
0:32:22 Do you have to change things up for old, young, gender, stuff like that?
0:32:26 I will say I do believe that they are generalizably applicable.
0:32:37 But there is some interesting research about the ways in which lines of difference can exacerbate some of the challenges that the ask approach is trying to solve.
0:32:43 So the biggest problem that the ask approach is trying to deal with is people not telling us the real truth.
0:32:46 Is people actually knowing and feeling and thinking things that they don’t have any bad things.
0:32:48 They could be ideas too, but just not telling us.
0:32:59 There is a phenomenon called protective hesitation that someone named David Thomas, who was a researcher at Harvard Business School, is now the president of Morehouse College.
0:33:10 He coined the term and it basically refers to the idea that women and people of color are less likely to get honest, direct developmental feedback than other people.
0:33:26 It’s because their colleagues, their bosses and mentors are engaging in this protective hesitation, which means that they are both trying to protect the women and people of color from getting feedback or input that might be biased or that might perpetuate some kind of oppression.
0:33:29 But they’re also protecting themselves from getting accused of that as well.
0:33:33 And so for both of those reasons, they’re not learning as much.
0:33:40 And so that can be especially important situation in which to be using some of these ask methods.
0:33:50 And then the other thing that is well documented is that psychological safety can go down across any lines of difference, whether that’s a cultural difference, power difference, gender difference, race difference, etc.
0:33:55 And so those are the ways in which I would say that kind of dynamics of difference play into this.
0:33:58 Are there telltale signs?
0:33:59 I’m listening to this.
0:34:00 I’m using I generally.
0:34:13 People are listening to this and they’re saying, can you just give me some tells that obviously I should figure out that I am a lousy question asker.
0:34:16 You know, how can I self-diagnose?
0:34:17 Definitely.
0:34:18 There’s a few.
0:34:30 I would say if you look at any conversation, you could take a transcript from AI or you could just listen to a conversation and you could literally plot out the ratio between two things, statements and questions.
0:34:36 You can divide everything into statements and questions and you can look at the ratio of statements to questions in a conversation.
0:34:47 If your ratio is a lot of statements and very few questions, overall, you are a lousy asker because you’re just not asking many people that question.
0:34:51 Now, of course, if you’re being interviewed or you’re giving a lecture, then that’s one thing.
0:34:58 But generally speaking, in conversations, if your ratio is very heavily tilted towards statements and very low towards questions, you’re off.
0:35:14 I will tell you that at least mentally, I try to achieve a ratio of my talk to the guest talk at 90, 10, 90, 10 being 90% Jeff, 10% me in my podcast.
0:35:15 I’ve seen that in your episodes.
0:35:16 Yeah.
0:35:20 And I think the way that you get that done is by asking questions.
0:35:28 And so if your ratio is flipped the other way, or if your ratio of statements to questions is the other, you’ve got some improvement to do.
0:35:29 I would say that’s one.
0:35:30 I’ll just give you two others.
0:35:46 If you’re a leader and you’re not getting critical feedback from the people around you, chances are you’re not asking the right questions or you’re not asking the right questions in the right ways because the people around you undoubtedly have observations and feedback and ideas of what you could be doing better.
0:35:49 So if you’re not hearing that, that’s something that you should take notice of.
0:36:05 And then the third thing I’ll just say is if your questions generally start with words like do or don’t, would or wouldn’t, is or isn’t, chances are you’re going to be getting surface level answers because you’re getting yes, no answers.
0:36:09 Versus if your questions are starting with what, how come, those are going to be open.
0:36:11 Those are going to give you richer information.
0:36:19 So if I’m a manager, can I paraphrase what you just said, which is to say that.
0:36:19 I love this.
0:36:20 Yeah.
0:36:21 You’re a fast learner.
0:36:25 No news is bad news.
0:36:27 No news is bad news.
0:36:29 And by the way, that’s not just true if you’re a manager.
0:36:44 That’s also true, let’s say, if you have any kind of professional service, if you’re a client, if you’ve got clients and your client is not giving you critical feedback, if you’re a startup founder and your investors are not giving you critical feedback, it really goes 360 degrees around.
0:36:49 If you’re only getting affirming feedback, chances are you’re not asking the right questions in the right ways.
0:36:54 You heard Madison say that I often ask her if something made sense.
0:37:00 But I also heard that you have a relationship with Madison because I observed it where she’s also willing to tell you a little bit more.
0:37:01 And I think that’s probably healthy.
0:37:07 There is no question that Madison is willing to tell me negative things.
0:37:08 Yes, that’s a real deal.
0:37:11 So you’re doing something right.
0:37:14 Up next on Remarkable People.
0:37:25 One of the things that he truly did well is that he would just spend a ton of time going all around the state, having conversations with people, listening to people, asking them what’s on your mind.
0:37:30 And I think it really informed his policies in a much more grounded kind of way.
0:37:39 Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners.
0:37:43 It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for you.
0:37:48 If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate, and review it.
0:37:51 Even better, forward it to a friend.
0:37:54 A big mahalo to you for doing this.
0:37:58 You’re listening to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:38:04 Much of our discussion has been focusing on asking the right questions.
0:38:07 So now we also have to answer the question.
0:38:09 So how do I optimize my answers?
0:38:17 I would say to optimize your answers, you want to be speaking directly to the question as opposed to speaking around the question.
0:38:24 If you receive what I would call a crummy question, so let’s say someone just asks you a surface level, do you believe X or Y or whatever?
0:38:28 Sometimes you can go further than just giving the surface answer.
0:38:33 And sometimes you can also say to them, but this is my simple answer, but is there a deeper part of your question?
0:38:35 Or is there a question behind the question?
0:38:40 Sometimes people will ask you questions that are really them trying to get you to agree with them.
0:38:42 And then you can say, I’ll share my thoughts, but I’m curious.
0:38:44 It sounds like you might have a view on this.
0:38:45 What are your views on these questions?
0:38:55 And so I often say to people from the perspective of answering, even if someone doesn’t come at you with a quality question, you can help make their question better in those kinds of ways.
0:38:58 And that will get a better answer out of you, too.
0:39:08 Is there a Jeff Wetzler Hall of Fame that you say, this person really knows how to ask questions?
0:39:09 It could be a journalist.
0:39:11 It could be a broadcaster.
0:39:12 It could be a CEO.
0:39:14 It could be, I don’t know, Oprah Winfrey.
0:39:15 Do you have a Hall of Fame?
0:39:18 I have different people in different categories.
0:39:20 So for the book, one category was CEOs.
0:39:23 And I tried to interview iconic CEOs.
0:39:29 And the reason I did is because CEOs are notorious for getting lied to.
0:39:36 People tend to tell CEOs what they think the CEO wants to hear, what they think is going to make themselves look good, what they think is going to get their agenda through.
0:39:44 And so I said to CEOs, and this included people like Bill George of Medtronic or Irene Rosenfeld, who ran Kraft for a while.
0:39:50 I said to them, how did you get the truth out of people, especially several layers away from you?
0:39:53 And I’ll never forget, there was one common theme.
0:40:07 They basically said, if I want to get the truth out of someone, I’m not, especially someone junior, I’m never going to bring them to my office and make them sit across the intimidating CEO desk from me and assume that they’re going to tell me the truth.
0:40:11 Irene Rosenfeld from Kraft basically said, I’m going to go to the cafeteria.
0:40:12 We’re going to have lunch together.
0:40:16 Bill George said, I’m going to do a ride along and we’re going to take a walk, whatever it is.
0:40:24 And there was no single answer other than what makes them feel safest, what makes them feel most comfortable.
0:40:25 And so it was so interesting to me.
0:40:28 And this is why I would name both of them as heroes, for example.
0:40:30 It’s not even about the questions yet.
0:40:35 It’s about the setting that they create, the safety that they create for people to then open up.
0:40:45 And then when you have that right tone and that right setting for connection, it takes a little pressure off of do you have the perfectly worded question because you’ve got the level of safety there.
0:40:46 And I know you have kids.
0:40:52 I have a teenage daughter and I find that this applies to my relationship with my daughter as well.
0:40:56 When she comes home from school and I say to her, how was school?
0:40:58 I get stonewalled.
0:40:59 I get absolutely nothing.
0:41:02 When I say to her at dinner, what did you learn today?
0:41:02 Nothing.
0:41:07 If I want to actually get the truth out of my daughter, I have to stay up until 11 p.m.
0:41:12 When she’s done with her homework and she’s done talking to her friends and she wants to hang out with me in her room.
0:41:15 And at that hour, my body wishes that I was asleep.
0:41:18 But if I want something from her, that’s the setting.
0:41:24 And so that’s what I learned, actually, from these question heroes is that it’s about the other person and you’ve got to go to where they feel most comfortable.
0:41:26 And then you’re going to learn what you want to learn.
0:41:29 OK, so that’s the category of CEO.
0:41:33 But how about the category of journalist or TV personality?
0:41:36 So in the category of journalists, I will name two heroes here.
0:41:38 One is Jenny Anderson.
0:41:40 She is an award-winning business journalist.
0:41:42 She actually also just wrote a great book that came out.
0:41:49 And what she said to me is that when she does an interview, she usually asks the person that she’s interviewing for permission to record the interview.
0:41:52 And then she will go back and listen to the recording.
0:41:56 And she’ll listen to it two or three or four times, literally the same recording.
0:42:03 And she said, every single time I listen to it, I hear something completely different than I heard the first time.
0:42:06 And I think to myself, she is a professional listener.
0:42:09 And she’s not getting the most important stuff the first time.
0:42:11 She takes her two or three or four times.
0:42:12 The rest of us barely ever do that.
0:42:14 We just have our conversation and we move on.
0:42:20 But to me, she’s a hero for just recognizing the limits of her listening and all of our listening and to go back.
0:42:23 And then the other journalist I’ll just mention is Amanda Ripley.
0:42:27 She recently came out with a book called High Conflict, which is a great book.
0:42:34 And what I learned from her is the way that she creates safety when she does journalism stories with people who have different backgrounds than her.
0:42:37 She’ll basically say, look, I know I’m from the East Coast.
0:42:39 I know my life is different than yours in many different things.
0:42:40 I’m truly ignorant.
0:42:43 And I would love for you to help me to understand what I might be missing.
0:42:48 And so she just confesses that in a way that’s completely disarming to people and also creates that safety as well.
0:42:54 OK, so now the last category I’m going to ask you is about politicians.
0:42:58 Is there any politician you respect for asking questions?
0:43:01 So I don’t know if you know who Deval Patrick is.
0:43:04 He was the governor of Massachusetts a couple of terms ago.
0:43:16 And one of the things that he truly did well is that he would just spend a ton of time going all around the state, having conversations with people, listening to people, asking them what’s on your mind.
0:43:21 And I think it really informed his policies in a much more grounded kind of way.
0:43:23 That’s a short list of politicians.
0:43:29 It doesn’t get a lot longer on that category, although I’m sure that there are many that I’m not aware of, too.
0:43:32 Yeah, I’m sure.
0:43:38 Do you have any favorites on your end that you think are role models of great questions or listening, whether politicians or any other categories?
0:43:40 Jeff, I’m from Silicon Valley.
0:43:46 In Silicon Valley, we don’t have to ask questions because we’re omniscient and omnipotent.
0:43:47 Have you not learned that?
0:43:48 Oh, that’s true.
0:43:49 I completely forgot.
0:43:53 Think of my history.
0:43:54 I work for Apple.
0:43:56 Okay, enough said.
0:43:58 End of discussion.
0:44:00 Did that make sense?
0:44:03 Perfect sense.
0:44:06 All right.
0:44:08 So three more questions.
0:44:17 First of all, because I know in your book, the whole book is about asking questions, but at the end, you drove it home by asking about mastery.
0:44:22 So question number one is how do you master asking questions?
0:44:32 Yeah, I would say that the way that you master it is really no different than how you would master any other important skill.
0:44:39 And it starts with recognizing the limits of where you are right now, recognizing where you might not be as good at it.
0:44:51 So for example, paying attention to what is my ratio of questions to statements and if I start to see that ratio is often, then I get a little insight or starting to actually look at or audit the kinds of questions that I’m asking.
0:44:56 And in the book that we see high quality questions versus karma questions, I start to see that I’m asking karma questions.
0:44:58 So some of it just starts with awareness.
0:45:01 And the fancy term for that is conscious incompetence.
0:45:06 It’s recognizing is becoming more conscious of the ways that I’m incompetent in this.
0:45:09 And then the thing to do is just to start to pick it off little by little.
0:45:13 So maybe you want to start by learning how to better ask for people’s reactions instead of saying, does that make sense?
0:45:16 You just start to force yourself to say that.
0:45:19 You might even write it down on a card and have that card in front of you.
0:45:21 You might even tell other people, hey, I’m trying a new kind of question.
0:45:27 And then you practice that enough times that you start to see how to make it your own and that it starts to become fluid.
0:45:30 Then maybe you want to go to the next cycle and you say, all right, now I’m going to try to become a little bit better listener.
0:45:32 Let me start by practicing pulling the thread.
0:45:36 And you just do that over and over again for each of the different chunks that you want to do.
0:45:39 And that’s how you start to build your repertoire.
0:45:41 And then what I say is you’ve got to level up.
0:45:43 It’s one thing to do that in low-stakes situations.
0:45:46 Then you say, what’s the next higher-stakes situation I can do that in?
0:45:48 And you don’t start in the high-stakes situations.
0:45:51 But once you’ve gotten better, you try that again and again and again.
0:45:53 And that’s how it starts to become more of a superpower.
0:45:57 And that’s when I’m consciously competent.
0:45:58 That’s right.
0:46:02 And you want to get to the place where you’re unconsciously competent.
0:46:05 To the point where you don’t even have to think about it anymore.
0:46:07 It just comes naturally to you because it’s built into your repertoire.
0:46:11 And are we getting Malcolm Gladwell-ish?
0:46:14 It’s like 10,000 hours of this and, you know.
0:46:18 Yes, but it has to be 10,000 hours of actually the right practice.
0:46:19 It’s not just 10,000 hours of practice.
0:46:26 It’s 10,000 hours of practice, watching how it went, feedback, tweaking it, adjusting it, leveling up, those kinds of things.
0:46:30 I have surfed for about 10,000 hours and I’m not getting any better.
0:46:35 I have a feeling you’re probably a lot better than when you started, though.
0:46:38 That’s not hard to say, but yeah.
0:46:39 Okay.
0:46:45 So how do I teach other people to become masters of asking questions?
0:46:45 Yeah.
0:46:51 So the easy answer is the best way to teach it is to role model it yourself.
0:47:04 So the more that if you’re a leader, the more that the people on your team are seeing you admit that you don’t know something, ask a follow-up question, shut up and listen instead of just taking over the meeting and telling them what to do.
0:47:10 Any number of those things, that sends a super powerful message to people about what you value.
0:47:12 They will imitate your behavior.
0:47:18 You can also, of course, actually put people in situations where they’re being taught this kind of stuff as well.
0:47:21 You can call people out to reward that.
0:47:27 So not just rewarding, hey, you hate your sales goals, but also, hey, you asked the best question that we haven’t thought about yet.
0:47:28 That pushed our thinking.
0:47:31 And so what you actually elevate, you can even hire for it.
0:47:38 I remember in my first job out of college, I worked for a company called Monitor Group that literally was hiring for a proclivity to do this stuff.
0:47:45 And after they made me do a whole performance task and presentation in front of a group of people, somebody sat me down and they gave me a bunch of critical feedback.
0:47:50 And I thought they were giving me this feedback to tell me why they were about to not give me the job.
0:47:52 And I said, so does that mean I don’t get the job?
0:47:57 But really what they were trying to do is they were trying to see, was I going to be defensive or curious about the feedback?
0:48:01 Was I going to try to like push back on it or was I going to say, that’s interesting?
0:48:01 How come?
0:48:02 And tell me more.
0:48:04 And so you can literally build this into your hiring practices, too.
0:48:06 All right.
0:48:15 And the final and most important question about master is how do I help my kids become master question askers?
0:48:16 Yes.
0:48:18 Maybe we should interview your daughter.
0:48:18 You should.
0:48:23 You could interview my daughter or my son who is actually now working out at Silicon Valley as well.
0:48:30 But first of all, the thing to say is that kids are born curious and by age four, they’re asking between 25 and 50 questions per hour.
0:48:34 And parents of young kids nod and they say, absolutely, that’s what they’re doing.
0:48:39 What’s fascinating is that those same exact kids in school ask two questions per hour.
0:48:43 And so there’s something very different going on when they’re not constrained.
0:48:48 I think it’s because schools basically have a model where we tell kids sit down and shut up and give me the right answer.
0:48:50 Stop asking so many questions.
0:48:59 And I was talking to a group two weeks ago and somebody said to me, when I was a kid, my parents were so sick of my questions, they offered to buy me an ice cream cone if I would stop asking so many questions.
0:49:05 So the thing I would say to parents, if you want curious kids, is don’t beat the curiosity out of them.
0:49:08 When they ask the questions, take the questions.
0:49:10 Give them honest answers to those questions.
0:49:12 Admit to them when you don’t know the answer to the question.
0:49:14 And say, that’s really interesting.
0:49:15 Let’s go find out together.
0:49:16 What could that be?
0:49:20 The way in which you respond to their questions will send a lot of messages.
0:49:27 One of the exercises I do with groups is I say to people, stand up if as a kid someone discouraged you from asking a question.
0:49:30 Yesterday, 80% of the people in the room stood up.
0:49:31 Usually it’s about half the room.
0:49:36 But just the amount of things that we do to tell kids, stop asking questions, to me is tragic.
0:49:41 And so if you’re a parent and you want your kids to be curious, encourage those questions.
0:49:42 Fuel that fire.
0:49:46 I have to say, Jeff, that we have interviewed about 260 people.
0:49:52 And probably this episode, I feel the most convicted in doing things wrong.
0:49:55 I feel like I owe you an apology.
0:50:00 I look at this as a turning point opportunity.
0:50:04 I appreciate your learning spirit to the whole thing as well.
0:50:07 And especially because I’ve learned so much from you and your book and your episodes over time.
0:50:15 I hope I didn’t shatter any delusions you had about my competence by coming on my podcast.
0:50:16 Not at all.
0:50:20 All right, Jeff.
0:50:23 Thank you so much for being on Remarkable People.
0:50:24 I’m serious.
0:50:27 I got a lot of thinking to do after this episode.
0:50:31 From now on, when I meet people, Jeff, I’m going to say, hi, my name is Guy Kaosaki.
0:50:31 What’s your name?
0:50:35 And they’re going to say, and then my next question is going to be, what’s your reaction?
0:50:37 What’s your reaction to that?
0:50:42 Thank you for having me on for such a great conversation and also for listening so seriously
0:50:44 and taking it all in as well.
0:50:44 It means a lot.
0:50:51 And everybody out there, if you want to be a better manager, leader, or parent, you definitely
0:50:53 need to pick up this book.
0:50:55 It’s called Ask by Jeff Wetzler.
0:50:58 So thank you for being on this podcast, Jeff, obviously.
0:50:58 Thank you.
0:51:04 Thank you, Madison, for dealing with my incompetence as a question asker.
0:51:11 And thank you, Tessa Neismar, for the research you did on Jeff and also to the sound design
0:51:14 team, which is going to turn this into just a great sounding podcast.
0:51:17 That’s Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez.
0:51:18 And so that’s it.
0:51:21 That’s today’s episode of Remarkable People.
0:51:31 This is Remarkable People.

0:00:06 What’s up, y’all? It’s Kenny Beach, and we are currently watching the best playoff basketball since I can’t even remember when.
0:00:09 This is what we’ve been waiting for all season long.
0:00:20 And on my show, Small Ball, I’ll be breaking down the series matchups, major performances, in-game coaching decisions, and game strategy, and so much more for the most exciting time of the NBA calendar.
0:00:24 New episodes through the playoffs available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:27 Subscribe to Small Ball with Kenny Beach, so you don’t miss a thing.
0:00:32 Welcome to Office Hours with Prof. G.
0:00:40 Today we’re continuing our special three-part series, Prof. G. on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today.
0:00:44 What a thrill. Let’s bust right into it.
0:00:48 Okay, what do we have here? Our first question comes from Dom on Instagram.
0:00:49 He asks,
0:00:54 More and more companies are taking political stances as part of their branding.
0:01:04 Growing up, I was told that businesses should never talk about religion or politics in order to stay out of trouble and not segment customers.
0:01:06 Does this hurt companies in the long run?
0:01:10 Do you think it is smart that businesses are moving in this direction?
0:01:13 This is going to require some nuance.
0:01:16 So I’ve served on a bunch of public company boards, seven.
0:01:17 I’m kind of a big deal.
0:01:18 Kind of a big deal.
0:01:21 And probably 24 private company boards.
0:01:26 And my general view on political statements is that it’s mostly virtue signaling from the CEO.
0:01:33 It likes to get in front, especially about three or four years ago, maybe five years ago, get in front of a younger workforce and talk about all this woke nonsense.
0:01:36 Because why it was nonsense is because they didn’t believe it themselves.
0:01:39 They were just trying to score, like, acquire virtue.
0:01:45 Like, I don’t have enough Gulf Streams or shares or options here, so I want to capture social status.
0:01:47 I think that’s actually a pretty decent criticism of the Democratic Party.
0:01:58 Instead of focusing on the material and emotional well-being of consumers, they want to pretend that they’re grabbing virtue rather than actually getting any fucking thing done at the ground level in terms of what actually impacts people.
0:02:04 So I generally think it’s a good idea to stay out of politics.
0:02:07 I try to separate the person from the politics.
0:02:15 I live just south of Palm Beach, and a lot of my friends are Republicans, and I just think they’re batshit crazy.
0:02:19 I just don’t understand how they can tolerate some of this nonsense.
0:02:23 But at the same time, I also recognize they’re thoughtful, nice people, and I enjoy their friendship.
0:02:31 So I try to ignore it when they put out a reel saying, oh, finally, the truth that these food products cause autism.
0:02:33 And I want to write, dude, didn’t we go to college together?
0:02:35 Are you really that fucking stupid?
0:02:37 Because I know that will damage the friendship.
0:02:39 So I try to separate that.
0:02:41 I also try to separate the company from politics.
0:02:42 Now, Prop2 doesn’t do that.
0:02:44 You know, we’re a media company.
0:02:45 We’re a small company.
0:02:52 We are highly political because a lot of what we do is putting out thought leadership, opinion, et cetera.
0:02:58 And still, we would probably be a bigger company if I just focused on business and tech rather than taking political stance.
0:03:00 But at this point in my life, I get to do whatever the fuck I want.
0:03:01 See above.
0:03:01 I’m going to talk about.
0:03:08 My favorite is when people say in my newsletter, they write, oh, get back to talking about business or things you know.
0:03:11 Basically, I got a lot of like stay in your lane.
0:03:12 Well, you know what my lane is?
0:03:14 Whatever the fuck I want to talk about.
0:03:15 And I’ve earned that.
0:03:16 And I’m finally there.
0:03:21 Anyways, anywho, for most big public companies, you do want to avoid politics.
0:03:25 Now, having said that, occasionally an opportunity comes along.
0:03:29 Race relations in the U.S. were capturing a lot of attention.
0:03:40 Colin Kaepernick was a great quarterback, two-thirds of Nike’s customer base under the age of 30, not kind of on board with how race relations were going in the United States.
0:03:46 Anyone who was upset about them embracing Colin Kaepernick, who burnt their Nikes, had to go out and buy their first pair of Nikes.
0:03:48 It was a very smart move.
0:03:58 They probably alienated somewhere between 5% and 10% of their TAM to embolden or entrench or inspire 90% of their addressable market.
0:03:59 That’s a really good tradeoff.
0:04:01 We are in that moment right now.
0:04:09 And essentially, I think that things have gotten so out of control where we’re rounding up people with the wrong tattoo, doing really stupid shit around tariffs.
0:04:14 It’s going to do nothing but elegantly reduce our prosperity, put thousands of small businesses out of business.
0:04:20 Doge, which was nothing but literally like, okay, how stupid can you be?
0:04:21 We’re going to cut $2 trillion.
0:04:23 No, I meant $150 million.
0:04:24 No, I meant $60 billion.
0:04:27 No, I meant less than the subsidies to Tesla.
0:04:39 I mean, that has been handled so poorly, so poorly that Americans are so fed up that the biggest commercial opportunity in a decade, and I said this last week and I’ll say it again.
0:04:57 I said it in the last office hours and I’ll say it again, is to come out not against Trump so much, but to come out in favor of American values of decency, of competition, of being thoughtful around our economic policy, of embracing our great immigrant population, PhD students, of rule of law, of due process.
0:05:00 All the things that we’ve come to expect are American.
0:05:05 That company, that company will register a torrent of new business.
0:05:10 I mean, for God’s sakes, this guy is flailing, literally flailing.
0:05:14 This is the biggest commercial opportunity in the last decade.
0:05:24 In sum, with rare exception though, let me finish where I started, you generally want to avoid politics because you are likely going to alienate 50% of the population.
0:05:29 Having said that, on a risk-adjusted basis, this is a calculated risk worth taking.
0:05:32 Our next question comes from Instagram.
0:05:34 Ambreen asks,
0:05:49 Each year we pick sort of a strategic imperative.
0:05:53 I think it’s important to have one thing that you’re like, this is the one box we have to check this year.
0:05:58 Because I think being an effective leader is not deciding what to do, it’s deciding what not to do.
0:06:00 And that is, you only have so much wood.
0:06:03 So I think it’s important every year to say, this is our strategic imperative.
0:06:04 We’ve got to check this box.
0:06:13 For 2025, the strategic imperative for Prop G Media is to get much better and dramatically increase our video views.
0:06:23 What I found just fascinating and kind of blew my mind was that the primary channel of distribution for podcasts right now is not Apple, it’s not Spotify, it’s YouTube.
0:06:33 20% of the listens of this program right now will be listened to on a television or watched on a television, which isn’t a good idea.
0:06:36 All of a sudden I get very self-conscious because listen to my voice.
0:06:38 My voice, ooh, hello, dreamy.
0:06:40 I’m handsome, handsome voice.
0:06:41 Brad Pitt of voices.
0:06:44 Face, for those of you watching on TV, not so much.
0:06:45 Not so much.
0:06:48 See above, lost virginity when he was 19.
0:06:55 Anyways, so my skills play well to audio, but here’s the bottom line.
0:06:57 Podcasts are moving towards video.
0:07:04 Podcasts are essentially becoming TV shows with strong audio components where you can just listen to the audio.
0:07:09 If you look at, I think the next Joe Rogan is a kid named Steve Bartlett.
0:07:16 When I moved to London two and a half years ago, the first thing I did was drive to the studio in Ipswich or Norwich or whatever the cool part of town is.
0:07:20 And he had this incredible studio with eight people, cameras everywhere.
0:07:26 And I’m like, this is like Charlie Rose, but much more deft production quality.
0:07:28 And he was basically doing a TV show.
0:07:33 And if you’ll notice, in the last two and a half years, Stephen has busted into the top 10.
0:07:36 He used to be in the top 10 in the UK, and now he’s in the top 10 globally.
0:07:38 I think he’s probably going to be the biggest podcaster in the world.
0:07:49 And if you look at the top 100 podcasts of the 1.6 million that are out there and the 600,000 that put out content every week, the top 100, there’s been huge churn.
0:07:53 50 new entrants into the top 100, 50 have dropped out.
0:07:56 And what is the arbiter of who has churned in and churned out?
0:07:58 It’s their video game.
0:08:07 So we have spent a lot of time trying to think about, we hired a kid named Billy Bennett who used to work for us, who’s now, was at CNN and is now working with us, just focusing on video.
0:08:13 We have a full-time tech guy, our tech guy, Drew, who’s sort of our head of engineering and has known us for about 15 years.
0:08:20 The woman who runs my business, Catherine Dillon, is a creative at heart and edits and thinks about video.
0:08:27 The hard part is that the thing that played to my strengths in terms of video from a personal standpoint is I’m on the road about 150 days a year.
0:08:31 So my studio was basically a dop kit that I could set up.
0:08:31 I didn’t even have a ring light.
0:08:36 I would just try and find a nice part of the hotel room I was staying in and do a reasonable job of video.
0:08:38 And that’s no longer going to cut it.
0:08:48 So we’ve spent a bunch of money on studios that we’re replicating in the different places I spent a lot of time in, specifically New York, Florida, and London.
0:08:50 But I’m not sure that’s enough.
0:08:58 So we’re trying to be really thoughtful about marketing, pushing people to our videos, using more sound effects, usually using more visual effects.
0:09:03 The fastest growing part of our franchise or our portfolio, if you will, is Prop G Markets.
0:09:08 And that’s because it is tailor-made for graphic overlays because we talk a lot about stocks in the market.
0:09:12 And Ed’s in the same place so they can create better production values.
0:09:22 In sum, the assumption we made was that the new arbiter of who moves up in the world of podcasting and who moves out is going to be how strong your video game is.
0:09:26 Now, your question is what would happen if that changed?
0:09:27 I don’t know.
0:09:32 I guess we just have to pivot and be agile and try and figure out what that next thing is.
0:09:35 I think the next thing, YouTube is the new channel.
0:09:44 I believe that in 2026, and I’m already starting to think about a strategy here, that the new arbiter of success in podcasting is not going to be Spotify.
0:09:46 It’s not going to be Apple.
0:09:47 It’ll still be YouTube.
0:09:55 But more than anything, or the new player, if you will, that creates the difference between numbering number 300 and number 30 is the following, Reddit.
0:10:01 I think Reddit is literally out of central casting in terms of its niche domains.
0:10:12 It’s the viscosity of how they become a platform for taking pieces of podcasts and threading them into different comments on Reddit.
0:10:17 I think Reddit is going to be the new platform that kind of picks winners and losers.
0:10:24 A possible second to that on 26 is going to be Netflix, who’s decided to get into the game.
0:10:41 And Netflix just has, with 350 million consumers, with custody of 350 million home screens, if they decide that they want to distribute Mel Robbins’ podcast or Raging Moderates, that podcast will immediately shoot into the top 20 of podcasts globally.
0:10:45 So they have so much custody of the consumer that they perhaps could be the new arbiter.
0:10:52 In sum, I’m trying to think about not only what’s in front of our face, but think around the corner and make bets accordingly.
0:10:53 But I think about this stuff a lot.
0:10:56 So in sum, you’ve got to make a bet.
0:11:10 You’ve got to have a strategic imperative and hold people accountable and invest additional resources in that imperative such that you can give people the resources to move against or act against what you think is important and where the puck is headed.
0:11:15 And also think about, you know, looking beyond the second corner.
0:11:18 So what’s the corner we’re moving towards or where’s the puck going?
0:11:19 Video, hands down.
0:11:21 Where do we think it might be headed?
0:11:23 Reddit and possibly Netflix.
0:11:24 Thanks for the question.
0:11:27 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
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0:12:55 I started my career in big agencies back in the early aughts when the internet was young.
0:13:01 However, even then we were talking about how the media was splintering and how it was getting harder to get noticed.
0:13:03 As you know, the trend has gone into overdrive.
0:13:14 Audience attention is splintered across endless platforms and micro-communities, and trust is shifting, from institutions to individuals, from brands to influencers.
0:13:16 I keep coming back to this question.
0:13:21 How does the humble media planner or marketer even navigate this reality?
0:13:26 The age of the all-powerful, monolithic brand feels like it’s fading fast.
0:13:33 And now, resonance doesn’t come from one big message, but from a thousand fragments finding the right ears.
0:13:35 Yeah, I agree.
0:13:48 So, it used to be, if you think about it, not that long ago, you could capture a third of America in about four nights, because two-thirds of America was watching one of three channels five hours a day.
0:13:52 Now, that media landscape has fragmented just wildly.
0:13:55 And not only that, the costs have gone way up.
0:14:01 So, we didn’t realize how inexpensive broadcast advertising was, how cheap it was.
0:14:15 You could capture, essentially, a 30-second spot on the Academy Awards 30 years ago was about a fifth of the price, and it reached three times as many people as it does today.
0:14:21 So, it was 15 times, you have 15 times the ROI, and yet people still do it.
0:14:22 We didn’t realize how cheap it was.
0:14:39 So, the fact that media was so inexpensive from, like, 1945 to 1995, maybe in 2000, created an ecosystem where the algorithm for creating shareholder value was to have a mediocre truck, salty snack, sugary drink, shoe, or car.
0:14:59 Build an OK slash shitty car, the K car, or out of Detroit, and wrap it in amazing brand codes of tough like a rock or apple pie, whatever it might be, or find soap, then craft it with OK materials or ingredients, and then talk about European elegance.
0:15:06 Create a shitty beer and convince people that if they drink this beer, they’re going to be hot and have a six-pack and be more attractive to potential mates.
0:15:17 And you could infuse these incredible brand codes really inexpensively using some creative agency of guys who wore black and gave you awards if you spent enough money on their ad campaign and can every year.
0:15:19 That ship has sailed.
0:15:22 That dog just doesn’t hunt anymore.
0:15:27 Because now we have these weapons of mass diligence that say, OK, and this is the example I always use.
0:15:30 I usually used to stay at the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton, or the Mandarin Oriental.
0:15:32 One, because someone else was paying.
0:15:34 I was usually there speaking or with a client.
0:15:35 And two, they always deliver an eight.
0:15:41 But the reality is the Mandarin Oriental in Istanbul is just not where I want to stay.
0:15:47 The core associations of these hotel brands meant that they delivered, you know, always an eight.
0:15:54 But then my social graph, TripAdvisor, friends, Weapons of Mass Diligence, Google, OpenAI.
0:15:57 I go to OpenAI now and say, I’m going to South by Southwest in Austin.
0:16:01 I’m in the midst of a midlife crisis, and I want to hang out with younger, cooler people.
0:16:04 And it literally comes back with stay at the Austin proper.
0:16:05 Boom.
0:16:06 I don’t need the brand.
0:16:07 I’ve never heard of the brand.
0:16:11 I just know that I trust these weapons of mass diligence more than the brand.
0:16:13 So what do you have?
0:16:17 You have people trying to figure out how to gain these algorithms in search.
0:16:21 You have influencers, the rise of the influencer generation, the rise of Instagram.
0:16:24 Do you know how much influence Instagram now has?
0:16:30 Also, at the end of the day, and this sounds very passé, the era of Don Draper is just over.
0:16:34 The sun has passed midday on the bullshit of thinking you’re going to have a mediocre product
0:16:35 and a great brand.
0:16:37 Now the product is the brand.
0:16:39 And that sounds very passé, but it’s true.
0:16:43 The companies that have developed the most market capitalization over the last 20 years
0:16:45 have really been victories, not in brand, but in supply chain.
0:16:50 Amazon, Alibaba, Netflix’s supply chain.
0:16:54 They went direct to consumer with DVDs by mail, and then they went direct to consumer using
0:16:54 broadband.
0:16:55 How much money?
0:16:58 What do the most valuable companies in the world have in common?
0:17:00 They don’t spend a lot of money on advertising.
0:17:00 Why?
0:17:02 Because they’ve put all their money into the product.
0:17:05 And oftentimes, it’s not just about the product.
0:17:08 It’s how you deliver it and discover it, i.e. supply chain.
0:17:09 So what do you do if you’re a marketer?
0:17:17 You think about, okay, where’s my core customer finding and doing diligence on my product?
0:17:20 Sometimes the best CMO comes back and says, folks, I got to be honest.
0:17:24 We should put all our money into innovation around digital to unlock new features with our
0:17:24 product.
0:17:27 Tesla doesn’t spend a lot of money on advertising.
0:17:31 And the bottom line is, their brand has gone way down because Elon Musk is an enormous
0:17:35 asshole, but also because the product has gotten really stale, right?
0:17:40 So consumers can find the best product now using these weapons of mass diligence.
0:17:43 So whatever you’re going to see, you’re going to see reallocation of capital out of traditional
0:17:49 marketing into supply chain, into influencers, into social, and into product itself.
0:17:51 And this is hand-to-hand combat.
0:17:53 There’s no single platform.
0:17:58 If you wanted to bet on any two platforms, I don’t know, you’d probably bet on TikTok
0:18:00 and Instagram and also maybe YouTube.
0:18:02 I mean, there’s a cumulative effect here, right?
0:18:06 You got to kind of do it all, but you want to have influencers.
0:18:07 You want to have evangelists.
0:18:12 You want to over-serve a core customer base such that there’s word of mouth and they absolutely
0:18:13 fall in love with your product.
0:18:18 I used to use Norelco or Braun or these shitty brands to clip my head.
0:18:23 And then I found this clipper from a former East German factory that used to make propellers
0:18:26 from Messerschmitts and they make this incredible clipper.
0:18:29 And I went online and I found out where it was and I ordered them and they’re more expensive,
0:18:30 which is a pricing signal.
0:18:35 But you can now find the best product or discover it online.
0:18:40 So look, I’m not sure I’m saying anything revolutionary here, but the CMO that’s like the second
0:18:44 lieutenant in Vietnam that gets shot in the forehead within six to 18 months is the one
0:18:48 that comes in and wants to do the brand identity and hire a big agency and talk about traditional
0:18:48 media.
0:18:50 Boss, that ship has sailed.
0:18:56 This is hand-to-hand combat that is a combination of a better product with digital unlocks, huge
0:19:00 supply chain investments if you have access to cheap capital, and then trying to identify
0:19:04 evangelists slash influencers who can weaponize these platforms to your advantage.
0:19:06 That was a mouthful.
0:19:08 Thanks for the question.
0:19:10 That’s all for this episode.
0:19:13 If you’d like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours of
0:19:14 propertymedia.com.
0:19:16 That’s officehours of propertymedia.com.
0:19:21 Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit,
0:19:23 and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode.
0:19:34 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
0:19:35 Our intern is Dan Shallon.
0:19:38 Drew Burrows is our technical director.
0:19:41 Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:19:45 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn.
0:19:51 And please follow our Prop G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday
0:19:52 and Thursday.

0:00:01 There’s a reason I love today’s conversation.
0:00:05 It is with the founder of a platform that we probably all use called LinkedIn.
0:00:09 And the guy that made that platform is Reid Hoffman.
0:00:13 The reality of running a small business is that switching off is never really an option.
0:00:18 Even when you try, the ideas, the excitement and all the responsibility is always there.
0:00:22 And because you’re always switched on, it’s only fair that your hiring partner should be too.
0:00:27 LinkedIn Jobs, who are the sponsor of this moments episode, has been that hiring partner for me
0:00:30 and for years because it’s always working away in the background.
0:00:37 My team can post our jobs for free, share them with our networks and reach top talent all in the same place.
0:00:39 So let’s get into today’s conversation.
0:00:45 On all these great people you’ve worked with, specifically, you know, during that PayPal period of your life.
0:00:50 One of the things I was reflecting on is they’re all independently successful people,
0:00:52 but they’re all very different people.
0:00:56 And that in and of itself is evidence that there’s not one version of success.
0:00:58 There’s many different types of success.
0:01:01 Presumably, there’s many different types of entrepreneur, leader.
0:01:02 Yes.
0:01:07 Give me a flavor of the different types of entrepreneurs you’ve worked with.
0:01:10 And what, you know, because I sat with Walter Isaacson.
0:01:12 And he talked to me about Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, et cetera.
0:01:15 And he was like, Steve’s really great at hiring people.
0:01:19 Elon’s not as good at the people team building part, but he’s better at this part.
0:01:20 Yes.
0:01:24 So no entrepreneur wins at every game.
0:01:33 Generally speaking, as an entrepreneur, you should try to play the games that you have a massive competitive edge on.
0:01:35 Same thing is true.
0:01:41 So some people, for example, like take Anil Busri at Workday, right?
0:01:47 He is thoughtful, intentionally cultural building, very professional.
0:01:50 So it’s a HR product for work.
0:01:54 His contrarian idea was going to the cloud and that people were going to do cloud software.
0:02:06 For the first, I think it was 500 people that Workday hired, he would always do a cultural interview at the end to make sure that the first 500 people all kind of shared cultural things.
0:02:12 So once you get through all the competence and all the rest of the stuff, he would make sure that was a fit.
0:02:14 And that’s part of how you get cultural coherence.
0:02:16 That’s like one example, right?
0:02:28 Another example, Elon is the, like, I have a big idea and I convinced myself 100% that it’s absolutely going to be the case.
0:02:30 Like, I am going to settle Mars.
0:02:35 We’re going to terraform Mars in our lifetimes, which is, no, it’s impossible.
0:02:44 No human being on the planet, including Elon, is going to do that within Elon’s lifetime, right?
0:02:47 Like, I’m going to go all in.
0:02:49 I’m going to work really hard.
0:02:50 I’m going to be technologically sophisticated.
0:02:55 I’m going to work against the odds, right, in order to make that work.
0:03:02 That’s a, you know, Anil, very professional, understands the workplace mark.
0:03:06 Elon, like, I think I was like the second person he pitched SpaceX to.
0:03:12 And his pitch, though, to my defense was, I’m going to send a turtle to Mars.
0:03:14 And I’m like, that’s not a business.
0:03:19 And you’re competing with national governments and, like, Russian subsidized rocket programs and so forth.
0:03:20 This is not a good equity.
0:03:21 I was wrong.
0:03:21 He was right.
0:03:25 But it’s not a good equity, you know, kind of play.
0:03:26 He pitched it to you as an investor?
0:03:27 Yes.
0:03:28 Yeah.
0:03:31 At what point was SpaceX at when he pitched it?
0:03:33 That was before he started it.
0:03:33 So it was an idea.
0:03:34 Yes.
0:03:36 And I’m going to send a turtle to Mars.
0:03:41 And then it became, I’m going to send a gelatinous cube with plant seeds in it to Mars because they’ll grow.
0:03:43 I’ll be the first person who will send life to Mars.
0:03:45 And you’re like, well, okay.
0:03:46 Right.
0:03:49 What did you think genuinely when he said that to you?
0:03:52 I thought he’d gone off his rocker.
0:03:52 Really?
0:03:53 Well, yeah.
0:03:54 Of course you would.
0:03:54 Yeah.
0:03:56 Like, someone’s, my friend said that to me.
0:03:58 I think I’d make a couple of calls just to check in.
0:03:58 Do you know what I mean?
0:04:00 Like, is Elon doing okay?
0:04:02 He’s just told me about this turtle.
0:04:03 Yes.
0:04:04 It’s like, that’s not a business.
0:04:13 Has your opinion of him changed over time in terms of his potential and ability as an entrepreneur?
0:04:14 No, no.
0:04:16 I’ve always thought of him as one of the world’s great entrepreneurs.
0:04:18 Always?
0:04:19 Yeah.
0:04:21 All the way back to PayPal days.
0:04:21 Really?
0:04:21 Yeah.
0:04:26 No, look, he has done repetitively amazing things.
0:04:29 Now, he pitches everything with the same level of certainty.
0:04:30 Right?
0:04:33 Like, you know, I have this idea for online banking.
0:04:35 I have this idea for boring tunnels under cities.
0:04:39 I have this idea for creating a pneumatic tube for Hyperloop.
0:04:48 All of them, he has the same level of, I am 1,000% right that this is, like, guaranteed to be part of the future.
0:04:49 Right?
0:04:52 And I, you know, and I may be the unique person to make it happen.
0:04:52 Right?
0:04:54 So, you have to have some discernment.
0:04:59 But he’s, his, you know, on-base batting is pretty good.
0:05:00 Right?
0:05:01 For such major ideas.
0:05:03 But it’s not 100%.
0:05:03 Yeah.
0:05:05 People kind of excuse that, though.
0:05:06 Of course.
0:05:06 If you get…
0:05:09 If you get one that’s big, that’s fine.
0:05:10 Right?
0:05:10 Yeah.
0:05:14 On the hiring side, has he been, is he up there with the best?
0:05:18 Or is he not a direct hirer of people like Steve Jobs was?
0:05:22 He hires well.
0:05:26 Matter of fact, you can’t be a great entrepreneur and not ultimately hire well.
0:05:32 I think some people are better hirers.
0:05:40 Some people also have, like, are the kind of people that people would work for forever.
0:05:47 Elon tends to burn people out a lot.
0:05:51 Like, there’s lots of burnt-out people in his wake.
0:05:56 And when you go and talk to those people, what you hear is, some people say, that was
0:05:58 the best work experience ever, and I never want to work for him again.
0:06:02 And other people say, that was the worst work experience ever, and I never want to work for
0:06:02 him again.
0:06:05 So, they’re all, I never want to work for him again.
0:06:06 Right?
0:06:09 So, you know, as kind of a dynamic.
0:06:11 Because he basically looks at them as disposable parts.
0:06:14 And, you know, go as hard as you can.
0:06:15 Right?
0:06:16 And then afterwards, you’re out.
0:06:17 Don’t care.
0:06:19 Because he goes so hard.
0:06:26 Yeah, he goes hard, but he also thinks, your only relevance to me is, can you help me with
0:06:26 my mission?
0:06:30 And after you’re done, after you can no longer help me with my mission, you’re not relevant
0:06:30 to me anymore.
0:06:34 What do you think of that approach?
0:06:35 That’s not my approach.
0:06:37 LinkedIn mirrors my approach.
0:06:44 Like, literally, I am referenceable by every entrepreneur that I’ve ever worked with, right,
0:06:49 as a board member and as an investor, right, who, you know, even ones that I’ve, like,
0:06:50 fired his CEO and so forth.
0:06:54 Those people will say, he was really good to work with on these things.
0:06:56 They may also have some critical things.
0:06:57 There’s no problem with that.
0:06:57 Right?
0:07:03 But, like, literally, like, when I’m pitching an entrepreneur, I just, like, call anyone that
0:07:04 I’ve worked with.
0:07:06 Right?
0:07:13 Because I try to work with people in a way that even when we’re at a difficult moment
0:07:17 because I disagree with them intensely about how well they’re doing or what they’re doing
0:07:21 or something else, that I’m doing it in a collaborative, constructive way.
0:07:32 And so my goal is to work with people, like, anyone I want to work with, Brian Chesky, you
0:07:33 know, Mark Pincus, et cetera.
0:07:39 I want to be able to work with them for, you know, the rest of our lives.
0:07:46 What’s interesting is I think these strategies fundamentally come down to what you think
0:07:48 matters in life the most.
0:07:54 Because you could optimize, even you could optimize more for building more companies or something
0:07:56 at the expense of something else.
0:07:57 And it’s a trade-off of something else.
0:07:58 Like, you could go harder.
0:07:58 Yes.
0:08:00 But there’s a trade-off happening here.
0:08:05 And we often, because Elon’s done these crazy things like the cars and the Neuralinks and
0:08:09 there’s tunnels and now the AI and the X and the spaceships and stuff.
0:08:10 We go, oh my God, that’s so amazing.
0:08:11 And I do that as well as an entrepreneur.
0:08:13 I go, fuck, no, one person can do that much.
0:08:15 But we almost never talk about the trade-off.
0:08:16 Yes.
0:08:16 Yep.
0:08:17 You’re 100% right.
0:08:21 And it’s so, this goes back to the point about self-awareness.
0:08:26 It’s like, it’s so tempting for the brain to go, oh my God, I want that.
0:08:27 That’s what I want.
0:08:29 Because you’re not seeing the trade-off.
0:08:30 You’re not seeing the darkness.
0:08:31 That is 100% correct.
0:08:33 And look, I respect it.
0:08:39 I understand the burn people out, like treat them as disposable assets that when they burn
0:08:40 out, you just jettison them.
0:08:46 And you can be very, Elon’s not the only entrepreneur who is very successful doing that, right?
0:08:55 But for example, on the other side, like if you go to Mark Zuckerberg and you talk to the
0:08:56 people who work for him, they’re like, that was great.
0:08:58 That was the best working experience of my life.
0:08:59 Of course I work for them again.
0:09:00 Interesting.
0:09:04 I hope you found today’s conversation helpful and insightful.
0:09:08 If you’re ready to join two and a half million other small businesses already using LinkedIn
0:09:12 for hiring, head over to linkedin.com slash D-O-A-C now.
0:09:17 That’s linkedin.com slash D-O-A-C to find your next exceptional hire.