📄 Extracted Text (37,106 words)
[00:00:00] [Music]
[00:00:05] Tim Ferrris.
[00:00:06] >> Yes, sir.
[00:00:07] >> Welcome to the show, man.
[00:00:08] >> Thanks for having me. Great to be here.
[00:00:10] >> Thank you for coming.
[00:00:11] >> Absolutely. My pleasure.
[00:00:12] >> This is uh this a little surreal for me.
[00:00:15] So, it's uh very cool to meet you in
[00:00:17] person. Really, really cool. So, me and
[00:00:20] my entire team have been really pumped
[00:00:22] about this. So,
[00:00:24] >> awesome.
[00:00:24] >> Thank you.
[00:00:25] >> But um man, I want to kick it right off
[00:00:27] with an introduction here. So everybody
[00:00:29] gets an intro. Tim Ferrris, one of the
[00:00:32] most interesting people in the world.
[00:00:35] This could easily be a 4-hour
[00:00:37] introduction. Host of a monster podcast,
[00:00:40] The Tim Ferrris Show, with worldclass
[00:00:42] guests and over a billion downloads.
[00:00:45] Author of five number one New York Times
[00:00:47] and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, all
[00:00:50] aimed at helping people improve
[00:00:52] performance across many domains. A
[00:00:54] Princeton educated polyglot. You speak
[00:00:57] five languages to five different
[00:00:59] degrees. An early angel investor who
[00:01:01] wrote checks to Uber, Shopify, Twitter,
[00:01:04] and Dualingo before before most people
[00:01:08] knew what they were. An early advocate
[00:01:10] for psychedelic therapy and the
[00:01:13] philanthropist behind the Sassi
[00:01:15] Foundation, pushing boundaries of mental
[00:01:18] health treatment. You put real skin in
[00:01:20] the game. Did I say that right?
[00:01:23] >> Size, excuse me. the first American his
[00:01:26] first American in history to hold a
[00:01:28] Guinness book, a Guinness World Record,
[00:01:31] and tango spins. And uh Tim, I started a
[00:01:34] book myself. It's called The Never
[00:01:35] Ending Work Week. So
[00:01:38] just Yeah.
[00:01:39] >> Can send them as a We can sell them as a
[00:01:40] pair.
[00:01:41] >> Yeah.
[00:01:42] >> But uh um
[00:01:45] a common thing that I think that
[00:01:47] everybody sees in you is you are always
[00:01:50] early to the game, man. You are always
[00:01:53] ahead. And uh it's really cool to see.
[00:01:57] >> Thanks, man. Yeah, I just try to track
[00:01:59] what the weirdos are doing on the
[00:02:00] weekends with their free time.
[00:02:02] >> I mean, you were talking about hormones
[00:02:05] and cold plunge and all this stuff way
[00:02:07] way way before
[00:02:09] >> Yeah.
[00:02:10] >> all the influencers came out. So,
[00:02:13] >> yeah, it's been uh yes, the for our body
[00:02:16] was 2010, which meant I started writing
[00:02:18] in 2008. So, I remember having a first
[00:02:21] generation continuous glucose monitor.
[00:02:23] This was back when I basically had to
[00:02:24] fall off the back of a truck because
[00:02:25] Dexcom was only selling to type 1
[00:02:27] diabetics. And the older continuous
[00:02:30] glucose monitors basically had these
[00:02:33] prongs looked almost like something
[00:02:34] you'd use for a barbecue that you had to
[00:02:36] put under into your abdomen sideways and
[00:02:41] then you had this no smartphone beeper
[00:02:43] like device to track it. So unpleasant.
[00:02:46] So
[00:02:46] >> how long did you have that thing on?
[00:02:48] >> I remember reading the book. I feel like
[00:02:50] it was like 10, 15 years ago.
[00:02:52] >> It was a long time. 2010 is when it came
[00:02:54] out.
[00:02:55] >> Okay. So, it was
[00:02:55] >> So, I was using it. I was using the
[00:02:58] device quite a bit before that. Had to
[00:03:00] tape plastic over it to allow me to take
[00:03:03] showers. I probably had that in for a
[00:03:05] good month or so. It was It was enough
[00:03:08] time to make it worthwhile. I mean, more
[00:03:11] recently, I've done lots of tests with
[00:03:14] much more pleasant wearables and so on,
[00:03:17] but a lot of that holds up like the the
[00:03:20] durability of the stuff in that book,
[00:03:22] like there are a few tweaks I would
[00:03:23] make, but by and large, everything has
[00:03:26] more scientific support now.
[00:03:27] >> No kidding.
[00:03:29] >> Uh, and it's not super surprising. Like,
[00:03:31] sometimes people in the field get things
[00:03:33] wrong. But if you want to track, let's
[00:03:35] just say what is going to be more
[00:03:38] validated by exercise science and
[00:03:41] randomized control trials five years
[00:03:42] from now, it's like go talk to the
[00:03:43] coaches on the field, right? Actually
[00:03:45] see what the athletes are doing. The
[00:03:47] people who have huge incentives to win.
[00:03:49] >> Yeah.
[00:03:50] >> The people who are playing that game,
[00:03:51] like they're always going to be pushing
[00:03:53] the envelope and they might be trying
[00:03:55] nonsense. So you have to have some
[00:03:56] framework for separating nonsense from
[00:03:58] like plausible like this might be a
[00:04:00] thing. But if you do that, somebody
[00:04:03] wanted to write the equivalent of the
[00:04:05] four-hour body. Now it's like, yeah,
[00:04:06] just go to the front lines.
[00:04:08] >> Right on.
[00:04:08] >> Figure it out.
[00:04:09] >> Right on.
[00:04:11] >> Tim, I got a couple of gifts for you.
[00:04:13] Everybody gets a gift.
[00:04:14] >> All right.
[00:04:15] >> You ready?
[00:04:15] >> I'm ready.
[00:04:16] >> All right.
[00:04:16] >> All right. First gift.
[00:04:17] >> Everybody gets this.
[00:04:20] I doubt you'll eat them.
[00:04:21] >> But it's Vigilance League gummy bears.
[00:04:24] Made in the USA. Legal in all 50 states.
[00:04:28] Still to this day. I love gummy bears.
[00:04:31] >> Good.
[00:04:32] >> Yeah. Thank you.
[00:04:32] >> And then um you know I
[00:04:35] >> This will be next Saturday for me.
[00:04:36] >> I know you're I I think you love picking
[00:04:39] up new hobbies.
[00:04:40] >> I do.
[00:04:40] >> So I got you a little something. I got
[00:04:42] some buddies over at Sig Sauer. One of
[00:04:44] them's named Jason.
[00:04:46] >> Okay.
[00:04:46] >> He's a huge fan of yours.
[00:04:48] >> And so am I.
[00:04:49] >> Wow.
[00:04:49] >> So we thought we thought you might enjoy
[00:04:52] this.
[00:04:54] >> Yes.
[00:04:56] Amazing. You know, I was just going to
[00:04:59] sell my M&P45
[00:05:01] and this is the perfect replacement.
[00:05:04] >> Perfect.
[00:05:05] >> So, I am very excited about this.
[00:05:08] >> Hold it up. That's the uh Sig P211 GTO.
[00:05:13] It's a 2011 pistol. It's Sig's uh first
[00:05:16] attempt at the 2011. I think they did a
[00:05:18] fantastic job.
[00:05:19] >> Beautiful.
[00:05:19] >> And that's the uh new optic. So, maybe
[00:05:21] we can break that thing on uh on the
[00:05:23] break.
[00:05:24] >> Would love to.
[00:05:24] >> Cool. Let's do Thank you so much. And
[00:05:26] who is your friend?
[00:05:27] >> Jason.
[00:05:28] >> Jason.
[00:05:28] >> Yeah, he's over at sick.
[00:05:31] >> Got to learn learn how to use these
[00:05:33] professional mics.
[00:05:34] >> Thank you, Jason. I appreciate it, man.
[00:05:36] >> That's beautiful. Thank you.
[00:05:37] >> And then before we get too in the weeds
[00:05:39] with the interview, I have a Patreon
[00:05:40] account. It's a subscription account and
[00:05:42] uh we've turned it into one hell of a
[00:05:44] community. So, one of the things I do is
[00:05:46] um I offer them the opportunity to ask
[00:05:48] every single guest a question. So this
[00:05:51] is from Scott
[00:05:54] J. Batigoli.
[00:05:57] In the last 5 years, what new belief,
[00:05:59] behavior, or habit has most improved
[00:06:02] your life, and how would you relate it
[00:06:04] to the struggles of young men just
[00:06:06] starting out in life?
[00:06:10] >> Good question. Behavior, belief.
[00:06:16] I'm going to throw out a few. I'll give
[00:06:18] people a grabag. So I would say I'll
[00:06:21] start with the first thing that comes to
[00:06:22] mind which is
[00:06:25] on the physical side
[00:06:28] and I've really changed how I think
[00:06:30] about this after doing a lot of
[00:06:32] experimentation. Intermittent fasting,
[00:06:33] this is going to seem like a strange
[00:06:34] place to start. Intermittent fasting, so
[00:06:38] timerestricted eating where you're
[00:06:40] fasting. In my case, I'm fasting until 2
[00:06:42] or 3 p.m. every day more or less. and
[00:06:46] doing that for say even 3 months
[00:06:51] did a few things and end of one so your
[00:06:54] mileage may vary but there's a lot of
[00:06:56] good science around intermittent fasting
[00:07:00] uh Mark Madson is one scientist comes to
[00:07:02] mind and
[00:07:05] there are certain issues that I've
[00:07:07] always had with my blood work certain
[00:07:09] issues I've had with uh for instance
[00:07:12] fasting glucose insulin and and you can
[00:07:16] measure these things. If you're just
[00:07:17] doing blood tests, I would also I'm not
[00:07:18] a doctor. Don't play one on the
[00:07:20] internet. But consider asking your
[00:07:22] doctor about something called an oral
[00:07:23] glucose tolerance test.
[00:07:26] And
[00:07:28] no matter what I did, I could be vegan,
[00:07:30] I could be carnivore, I could be
[00:07:32] something in between, there were certain
[00:07:35] numbers that always looked bad. They
[00:07:37] would just not change. Seemed to come
[00:07:38] from buggy code DNA genetics.
[00:07:42] And a few months of intermittent fasting
[00:07:45] gave me the most immaculate
[00:07:48] corrections to those markers that I and
[00:07:51] my doctors have ever seen. I've been
[00:07:52] tracking no kid a very long time.
[00:07:55] >> Furthermore, and here's why it ties into
[00:07:58] more than just the physical because the
[00:07:59] mind and the body or at least let's just
[00:08:01] call it the brain and the body are
[00:08:02] really one interconnected super oranism,
[00:08:05] right?
[00:08:07] the mood swings, the dip in energy in
[00:08:10] the afternoon that often leads people to
[00:08:11] drink coffee, which then affects their
[00:08:13] sleep architecture, which then can
[00:08:15] create lack of sleep, depression, etc. I
[00:08:17] mean, all these things cascade.
[00:08:19] All of those ups and downs just vanish
[00:08:22] completely.
[00:08:24] And I think there's some good reasons
[00:08:26] for it. And part of the reason people
[00:08:27] feel sharper on GLP-1 agonists like the
[00:08:31] Ozmpics and MARA of the world is they're
[00:08:33] more ketoic. They're producing more
[00:08:34] ketones. So, the reason you want to fast
[00:08:36] for at least 16 hours is to deplete your
[00:08:39] liver of glycogen. And so, you get that
[00:08:41] metabolic switching into using ketones.
[00:08:44] And that's relevant to mental health
[00:08:46] because most people will experience a
[00:08:49] lot more mood stability. All right. So,
[00:08:51] that's the first thing. Intermittent
[00:08:52] fasting. If you want to talk about
[00:08:54] fasting, we can talk about it because
[00:08:55] I've done much more extreme versions of
[00:08:57] that. But intermittent fasting, I think,
[00:08:59] is pretty easy in the sense that you
[00:09:01] don't have to change what you eat.
[00:09:02] You're just changing when you eat. That
[00:09:04] makes it I think
[00:09:05] >> I know I don't I know that everybody
[00:09:07] does this.
[00:09:08] >> I've not looked into it just I don't
[00:09:10] know why just because I just [ __ ] do
[00:09:12] it every day because
[00:09:14] >> not because I'm trying to intermittent
[00:09:16] fast just because I don't have time.
[00:09:18] >> Yeah.
[00:09:19] >> But um
[00:09:20] >> so what what I mean what are the
[00:09:22] benefits of it?
[00:09:23] >> Yeah.
[00:09:24] >> So I'll I'll say a few things. The first
[00:09:25] is what you're discussing like
[00:09:27] intermittent fasting by default.
[00:09:29] >> Mhm.
[00:09:29] >> Is seems to be super common in former
[00:09:35] like tier one military. Like a lot of my
[00:09:38] friend almost all of my friends who are
[00:09:41] former SEALs or former Marine Force
[00:09:44] Recon, they're just like, "Oh yeah, I
[00:09:45] forgot to eat and I'm just going to eat
[00:09:46] at 5:00 p.m." Right? And and they're not
[00:09:48] affected by it. Which leads me to wonder
[00:09:50] like how much of it is cultivated in the
[00:09:54] course of being in service versus like
[00:09:56] part of what allowed you to make it
[00:09:58] through is that type of physiological
[00:10:00] resistance where you have like a certain
[00:10:02] degree of stability. I don't know. Uh so
[00:10:05] the benefits are and we're still so far
[00:10:08] from understanding these things well in
[00:10:11] part because it's very hard to get
[00:10:13] intermittent fasting you can do but
[00:10:14] doing extended fasting studies in humans
[00:10:16] is incredibly difficult for getting
[00:10:18] ethical approvals from IRB and so on
[00:10:21] >> but
[00:10:23] I'd say the simplest way of describing
[00:10:24] it is and we could certainly talk more
[00:10:27] about this but if you look at say my
[00:10:29] family and very common neurodeenerative
[00:10:33] disease
[00:10:34] It's not just tangles and plaques and so
[00:10:37] on that cause problems. It's metabolic
[00:10:39] dysfunction. So if you have chronically
[00:10:41] elevated insulin, glucose, etc. It's
[00:10:45] basically an amplifier for any possible
[00:10:48] problems and those compound over time as
[00:10:50] your body just accumulates garbage. This
[00:10:52] is a very simple way of putting it. But
[00:10:56] if you are developing the metabolic
[00:10:58] machinery for that switching I was
[00:11:00] talking about, your body gets better at
[00:11:02] things like autophagy, mphagy, sort of
[00:11:05] cellular self-cleaning.
[00:11:07] So your cleanup crew gets better, if
[00:11:10] that makes sense.
[00:11:11] >> It's a very simplistic way to put it,
[00:11:13] but I think it's a fair way to think
[00:11:14] about it. And that is part of the reason
[00:11:18] if you look at and I don't want to
[00:11:21] oversell this but you know fasting a
[00:11:24] sense is the oldest cure. If you look at
[00:11:26] animals if they get sick what do they
[00:11:28] do? At least mammals most like onullets
[00:11:31] like deer and so on they fast and
[00:11:34] >> if we get sick we don't want to eat.
[00:11:36] Their appetite's gone.
[00:11:37] >> Yeah. But then we'll we'll often force
[00:11:39] ourselves to eating by the clock. And I
[00:11:43] would say that the details do matter.
[00:11:45] Like that depletion of liver glycogen
[00:11:48] from at least the the reading and
[00:11:50] research I've done seems to matter a
[00:11:52] lot. So much like a ketogenic diet, if
[00:11:54] you do it halfway,
[00:11:57] you're actually not getting a lot of the
[00:12:00] benefits that that the protocol seems to
[00:12:03] offer. Um so I I would say that's one.
[00:12:07] Um I'll switch gears for a second. And
[00:12:09] I'm happy to come back to the
[00:12:09] intermittent fasting, but I would say in
[00:12:11] terms of beliefs and behaviors, I would
[00:12:14] say a focus on just to really zoom out,
[00:12:18] focus on investing in and I have very
[00:12:20] specific ways that I do this
[00:12:22] relationships.
[00:12:24] And the way that looks is if I do a past
[00:12:27] year review as I'm doing right now,
[00:12:30] looking back on the past year, and I
[00:12:32] look through my calendar week by week
[00:12:34] and identify the energy giving and
[00:12:38] energy draining activities, right? Where
[00:12:40] were the peak positive and where were
[00:12:41] the peak negative, but also what types
[00:12:43] of things in my calendar drained me
[00:12:45] versus energized me? And then creating a
[00:12:48] do more of column and a do less of
[00:12:50] column. It's very easy to do it on a
[00:12:51] single piece of paper. But the the the
[00:12:54] crux piece of that that I ignored for a
[00:12:56] long time was all right, if you have a
[00:12:59] parking lot and that parking lot has 5
[00:13:01] to 10 slots for your most important
[00:13:03] relationships, family, closest friends
[00:13:05] last year, did you spend as much time as
[00:13:08] you would like to with those people? If
[00:13:10] the answer is no, which it usually is,
[00:13:14] then I'm going to schedule time in
[00:13:17] advance, book and pay for things for the
[00:13:19] following year, calendar it before it
[00:13:21] gets crowded out immediately. And so
[00:13:23] that could be long weekends, could be
[00:13:25] group dinners, it could be, as I'm going
[00:13:27] to be doing soon, hosting friends, it
[00:13:30] could be time in Montana wilderness,
[00:13:33] which was a couple of months ago, but
[00:13:35] getting all that stuff on the calendar
[00:13:37] and creating some loss aversion by
[00:13:41] whenever possible, paying in advance.
[00:13:44] Doesn't have to be expensive,
[00:13:46] but creating
[00:13:48] a situation where it's very hard for you
[00:13:50] to cancel and get out of things. uh that
[00:13:54] I think is the
[00:13:57] facet of self-help in quotation marks it
[00:14:00] gets lost. If you focus on the self, the
[00:14:04] paradox of self-help is if you
[00:14:05] excessively focus on the self, it is
[00:14:08] almost inevitable that you're going to
[00:14:09] be miserable. like humans are not int
[00:14:11] the self-sufficiency
[00:14:14] sort of mantra of self-help if you
[00:14:18] combine it with like the rugged rugged
[00:14:20] individualism of the US which has a lot
[00:14:22] of upside but if you take both of those
[00:14:24] in excess people end up feeling very
[00:14:27] isolated and so the investing in
[00:14:29] relationships and I do mean investing
[00:14:31] like really blocking out that time in
[00:14:33] the last 5 years that's been that's been
[00:14:36] the single domino that tipped over
[00:14:38] changes everything
[00:14:40] Last thing, the third thing I'll mention
[00:14:41] and then I'll stop my TED talk is how
[00:14:45] many relationships do you manage?
[00:14:47] >> Not many. I really prefer
[00:14:50] very deep relationships over a broad
[00:14:55] network.
[00:14:56] >> I'm the same way. Yeah.
[00:14:57] >> How do you determine who you're going to
[00:15:00] spend your time with?
[00:15:02] >> I mean, I'm asking now I'm now I'm
[00:15:04] learning. Yeah.
[00:15:05] >> And so I am very curious. I mean, you
[00:15:08] have a huge name. You're a huge
[00:15:10] household name. You've been been around
[00:15:11] for a long time. A lot of people want to
[00:15:13] get to you. They want to talk to you.
[00:15:15] They want to pick your brain. They want
[00:15:16] something from you.
[00:15:17] >> Yeah.
[00:15:18] >> How do you how do you determine who
[00:15:20] you're going to give your time to?
[00:15:21] >> Yeah. I'd say there are there are
[00:15:23] different tiers. So, I do have let's
[00:15:27] just call it shallow is not the right
[00:15:30] word because that sounds very negative.
[00:15:32] I do have a wide network and I just set
[00:15:36] parameters around what is allowed and
[00:15:38] what isn't allowed uh in those
[00:15:41] relationships that might have more of a
[00:15:44] purely business context. But at the very
[00:15:47] top I would say I am giving the most
[00:15:51] time to people who are more than happy
[00:15:53] to call me on my [ __ ] Tell me my
[00:15:56] baby's ugly. whatever I might be
[00:15:58] precious about or really excited about,
[00:15:59] they're happy to tell me that it's a bad
[00:16:01] idea if it comes down to it. So, that is
[00:16:05] non-negotiable,
[00:16:06] right? Otherwise, right, if if someone's
[00:16:08] not willing to do that, raises a lot of
[00:16:11] questions about what motivations might
[00:16:12] be.
[00:16:13] >> Like, if if the emperor has no clothes,
[00:16:15] I want to know that I'm naked.
[00:16:17] >> Even though in the moment I might find
[00:16:19] it very annoying, right, if I'm really
[00:16:21] attached to something, but
[00:16:23] >> you need those people around you. So,
[00:16:26] what that means is they're very often
[00:16:27] old friends. These are people I've known
[00:16:28] for 15, 20 years, first met in sports
[00:16:31] competition or in school or something
[00:16:33] like that. Then I would say it's really
[00:16:36] simple. It's energy in versus energy out
[00:16:39] cuz there you might have somebody at a
[00:16:41] dinner party who's happy to tell you all
[00:16:42] your ideas are terrible, but that
[00:16:44] person's also terrible. Or maybe there's
[00:16:47] just something slightly off in your
[00:16:48] spider sense. Doesn't know what it is.
[00:16:50] can't put a finger on it, but for
[00:16:51] whatever reason, whenever you come away
[00:16:52] from them, you feel just 10% drained and
[00:16:56] you don't really want to have a second
[00:16:58] dinner with that person. I pay a lot of
[00:16:59] attention to that. I feel like language,
[00:17:02] analysis, spreadsheets, all helpful, but
[00:17:06] relative to our entire evolutionary
[00:17:09] apparatus, that's really new. So, I I
[00:17:12] pay a lot of attention to the millions
[00:17:14] of years of am of of animal sensitivity.
[00:17:19] If it if that's and I used to be I'm so
[00:17:24] I used to view emotion and
[00:17:28] intuition is basically kind of horseshit
[00:17:31] for lack of a better description. Like
[00:17:33] things that would always lead you
[00:17:34] astray. Therefore, you need structured
[00:17:36] thinking and so on which there's a place
[00:17:38] for. I'm not saying there isn't a place
[00:17:40] for it. But if I get a weird feeling
[00:17:43] around somebody like I pay a lot of
[00:17:45] attention to that even if on paper they
[00:17:47] should be
[00:17:48] >> You do pay attention to intuition. I
[00:17:50] thought you were okay.
[00:17:51] >> No no no I pay I pay more and more and
[00:17:54] more attention to it. But for decades I
[00:17:56] was just like yeah look like emotions
[00:17:59] are a liability. They can lead you
[00:18:00] astray. And in excess again in excess
[00:18:04] that's true. But I would say in terms of
[00:18:07] determining who I'm going to spend time
[00:18:09] with, it's like if that person calls
[00:18:11] you, do you want to pick up the phone or
[00:18:12] not? And if you're like, h like, um, not
[00:18:16] now, maybe I'll get back to them. Like
[00:18:18] that's not a small thing.
[00:18:20] >> Like some of my friends who are really
[00:18:21] good investors call it the beer test.
[00:18:23] And the beer test, it's really simple.
[00:18:26] It's like if if you're walking around
[00:18:27] like if you're walking outside at a mall
[00:18:29] and somebody a founder you invested in
[00:18:31] is walking the other way, are you going
[00:18:32] to do you going to do this or are you
[00:18:35] going to walk over and be like, "Hey
[00:18:36] man, so good to see you. Hey, we should
[00:18:37] grab a beer." Which one is it? Because
[00:18:40] with say startup investing and everybody
[00:18:42] should treat their relationship this
[00:18:43] way, but in startup investing, just to
[00:18:45] give a concrete example, it's like the
[00:18:46] biggest successes for me take 7 to 12
[00:18:49] years. That is longer than most
[00:18:51] marriages.
[00:18:53] And
[00:18:54] smart isn't good enough. Hardworking
[00:18:56] isn't good enough. You could have
[00:18:57] somebody with low integrity
[00:19:00] who's very smart and very hardworking.
[00:19:02] That is a dangerous person.
[00:19:03] >> Mhm.
[00:19:04] >> Right. So like the beer test, okay? Do
[00:19:07] they pass the beer test or not?
[00:19:09] >> Uh but it's even easier than that. It's
[00:19:12] like you go through your calendar and
[00:19:13] it's like, do you have a whole body yes
[00:19:14] to this person or not? And if the answer
[00:19:17] is yes, then
[00:19:20] not just the question of who you spend
[00:19:23] time with, but the question of what you
[00:19:24] do gets a lot easier. Because if one of
[00:19:26] those people invites me to do something,
[00:19:28] even if I think it's the most hair brand
[00:19:30] idiotic idea, I am default. Yes. Based
[00:19:34] on the who, not on the what.
[00:19:37] >> Um, so that that's like the very very
[00:19:40] top, right? Those that's the five to 10,
[00:19:42] maybe 15 parking spots. And then one
[00:19:45] level down, I would say
[00:19:48] broadly I'm looking for as much learning
[00:19:54] as possible and
[00:19:57] combined with sort of honesty and EQ. So
[00:20:00] if I can find those three things, the EQ
[00:20:02] is not trivial, right? Um then I will
[00:20:07] invest time in those people.
[00:20:10] >> Right on. But
[00:20:11] >> yeah,
[00:20:11] >> what do you It's easy to get squeezed.
[00:20:13] It's easy to get squeezed out of your
[00:20:14] own life.
[00:20:16] >> Yeah.
[00:20:16] >> Though it is. So, this has been
[00:20:18] fine-tuning over decades. Uh cuz
[00:20:21] otherwise it's just like email becomes
[00:20:23] everyone else's agenda for your life and
[00:20:26] your calendar evaporates. Boom. You're
[00:20:27] done. Which is why at the beginning of
[00:20:29] the year it's like block out that time
[00:20:31] with those close relationships. Book it.
[00:20:33] Invite people. So, you're going to look
[00:20:35] like an ass if you cancel. Like get
[00:20:37] things in motion so that ships out of
[00:20:40] the harbor.
[00:20:41] >> Yeah. And then and then you have
[00:20:43] defensible space in your calendar that
[00:20:46] you will defend. Yeah.
[00:20:50] You'd mentioned intuition, but where do
[00:20:52] you think intuition comes from?
[00:20:55] >> Oh man,
[00:20:58] I'm going to buy myself a little time to
[00:20:59] tap dance. Where do you think intuition
[00:21:01] comes from?
[00:21:08] >> I think it's a combination of
[00:21:12] something you're born with and
[00:21:16] the ability to self-reflect on on
[00:21:20] situations in your life to gain the
[00:21:22] experience.
[00:21:22] >> Mhm.
[00:21:26] So, it depends on on how into crazy down
[00:21:29] we want to go, but I'll I'll say that
[00:21:33] on at least one level,
[00:21:35] 100%
[00:21:37] am on the same page in the sense that
[00:21:39] it's pattern matching born of
[00:21:42] experience, right? So, that's that's one
[00:21:43] piece of what we might call intuition,
[00:21:46] >> very fast judgment based on pattern
[00:21:49] matching,
[00:21:51] pattern recognition.
[00:21:53] Then there's another piece of it that I
[00:21:56] think is,
[00:21:58] you know, along the lines of maybe the
[00:22:00] gift of fear, Gavin Debecker type stuff
[00:22:02] where there's an evolved sense, there's
[00:22:05] a sensitivity that perhaps you can't
[00:22:07] verbalize,
[00:22:11] maybe can't even justify. Maybe it runs
[00:22:13] counter to the conclusion you would come
[00:22:15] to analytically, but is just some
[00:22:18] gnawing feeling. I don't know how to
[00:22:21] explain that. I just I I think it's a
[00:22:22] byproduct probably of evolution. Then
[00:22:25] there's
[00:22:26] then I think there's there are other
[00:22:31] other ways we could think about
[00:22:32] intuition that I have a much harder time
[00:22:34] explaining. But
[00:22:36] like what like remote viewing? Uh well,
[00:22:39] we could yeah, remote viewing or uh you
[00:22:42] could look at
[00:22:44] people who seem to have and I recognize
[00:22:48] there are a hundred ways
[00:22:51] to
[00:22:53] put up a pretty good steelman argument
[00:22:55] against these things. But people who
[00:22:57] seem to have experiences of
[00:22:58] precognition, but we don't even have to
[00:23:00] get out into that territory. We could
[00:23:02] look at animal behavior. There's a great
[00:23:05] book I recommend to everyone. It's a
[00:23:07] beautiful book called of wolves and men
[00:23:10] >> about effectively the the history of
[00:23:14] wolves and men,
[00:23:16] but it dives into the biology
[00:23:20] of wolves, their mythological
[00:23:22] significance, how they're viewed by
[00:23:24] various indigenous cultures, and it
[00:23:26] redefined what was possible within
[00:23:28] non-fiction writing. It's by someone
[00:23:29] named Barry Lopez. Incredible writer. I
[00:23:33] I recommend this book to everyone. It's
[00:23:34] an older book. It's a few decades old.
[00:23:36] When that book came out, people in,
[00:23:38] let's just call it that category of book
[00:23:40] were like, "Oh,
[00:23:41] >> okay. There's kind of a before this book
[00:23:43] and then after
[00:23:44] >> because he's shown what is possible."
[00:23:48] And in that book, I think it was the
[00:23:51] Nunvut people, could be mispronouncing
[00:23:54] that, but he was talking about their
[00:23:56] observations of wolves and and hunting
[00:23:59] patterns and how also with modern
[00:24:01] technology and radio callers and so on,
[00:24:03] you'll see sort of let's just call it
[00:24:07] wolves traveling and then to intersect a
[00:24:10] herd of caribou, they'll turn perfectly
[00:24:13] from a 100 miles away and then
[00:24:16] intersect, right? Right? And so you
[00:24:18] could try to explain that through scent.
[00:24:21] You could, but it it it starts to fall
[00:24:23] apart pretty quickly, right? Uh or you
[00:24:26] look at
[00:24:28] let's just say kind of spontaneous
[00:24:30] coordination of starling or
[00:24:34] uh fish school behavior.
[00:24:36] >> Mhm.
[00:24:37] and
[00:24:39] sort of phenomena that are very
[00:24:42] difficult to explain
[00:24:46] mechanistically
[00:24:48] exist. They just they just do. And so
[00:24:52] you you don't even need to necessarily
[00:24:53] step into things that people some folks
[00:24:55] are going to get very hot and bothered
[00:24:57] about like remote viewing, which I do
[00:24:59] actually think is very interesting. But
[00:25:01] if you just look at animal behavior,
[00:25:04] what we might call instinct,
[00:25:07] uh, becomes very hard to pin down. Um,
[00:25:11] so that's a very fancy way of saying I'm
[00:25:13] not really sure, but whatever whatever
[00:25:15] the inputs might be, I just I have
[00:25:18] started I have paid more and more and
[00:25:21] more attention to it. I pay attention to
[00:25:23] it with everything, people, girlfriends,
[00:25:26] investing,
[00:25:27] >> right? Sometimes it's the flip side,
[00:25:29] right? You've had Toby of of Shopify on
[00:25:32] the show and it's like when I spent time
[00:25:34] with Toby and Harley, I got this sort of
[00:25:37] physiological quickening. I don't get it
[00:25:39] much. It's not like this happens all the
[00:25:41] time.
[00:25:43] Uh you do have to be careful about not
[00:25:44] fooling yourself, right? It's very easy
[00:25:47] to fool yourself and to look for
[00:25:50] evidence, confirmation, bias, etc. to
[00:25:52] support what we already believe. But in
[00:25:53] in cases like that, I was like, there
[00:25:55] was there was like a physiological
[00:25:57] quickening. And I had my analytical kind
[00:26:00] of hat on looking at Shopify as a
[00:26:04] business and stuff when they had like
[00:26:05] nine or 10 employees, but also just
[00:26:06] being around those guys. I was like, "Oh
[00:26:08] yeah, these are good horses to bet on."
[00:26:10] Really good horses to bet on.
[00:26:12] >> Um, so it's not just a warning system,
[00:26:15] right? It can also be a go signal. Um,
[00:26:18] but it it for people who may not
[00:26:22] find this to make any sense, I would say
[00:26:25] you can
[00:26:28] reaccess these things that you had as a
[00:26:30] kid. You can cultivate those
[00:26:32] sensitivities.
[00:26:34] It just takes practice. And you can
[00:26:36] start by doing a past year review. Go
[00:26:37] through and be like, "All right, what
[00:26:38] gave me energy and what didn't?" That's
[00:26:40] usually pretty straightforward.
[00:26:42] >> And if it's if you're not sure, if
[00:26:43] you're like, "Uh, I'm not sure d's your
[00:26:46] answer, right?
[00:26:48] I don't know if anybody's seen the movie
[00:26:49] Ronin. Some really great chase scenes
[00:26:52] and so on with Robert Dairo, but there's
[00:26:53] a quote in there that I'm paraphrasing,
[00:26:55] but I'm pretty close. Like, when in
[00:26:57] doubt, there is no doubt.
[00:27:00] So, if you're heming and hawing, it's
[00:27:01] like, yeah, there's your answer. It's
[00:27:02] not a yes. That's not a whole body. Yes.
[00:27:04] >> Do you think we've lost intuition
[00:27:07] over time? The human the human species?
[00:27:10] I would say
[00:27:11] >> if you look at animals they all I can't
[00:27:13] think of anything that doesn't
[00:27:15] >> Yeah. I think I think that humans have
[00:27:19] in some ways
[00:27:21] understandably like obsoles
[00:27:25] intuition or allowed it to atrophy in
[00:27:28] the same way that if you become
[00:27:29] dependent on Google maps
[00:27:33] >> you no longer need to develop that
[00:27:37] faculty.
[00:27:38] >> Mhm.
[00:27:38] >> Right. If you look at for instance some
[00:27:40] of the literature that's been published
[00:27:42] recently looking at cognitive
[00:27:44] performance pre and post AI right or
[00:27:46] looking at rather
[00:27:48] degrees of AI usage or LLM usage and
[00:27:51] cognitive performance it's like yeah
[00:27:53] okay if you're relying on something
[00:27:56] you're using an exoskeleton for walking
[00:27:58] what's going to happen to your legs
[00:27:59] you're going to atrophy of course your
[00:28:00] body's really smart doesn't want to put
[00:28:02] calories and building into anything
[00:28:06] that's redundant right you take
[00:28:07] exogenous testosterone If you're getting
[00:28:09] injections, guess what? Your balls are
[00:28:10] going to turn into raisinets. Body's
[00:28:13] smart. It's not going to say, "Yeah,
[00:28:14] let's pump a bunch of hormones to the
[00:28:16] liic cells to produce testosterone." No,
[00:28:18] it's very, very, very smart. So, I'm
[00:28:21] very cautious of the technologies that I
[00:28:24] adopt. And actually, there's a great
[00:28:27] guy. If you've never talked to him, you
[00:28:28] should meet him. He's he's fascinating.
[00:28:30] Has a big Amish looking beard named
[00:28:32] Kevin Kelly. older guy,
[00:28:34] >> but he's a technologist who's one of the
[00:28:36] most incredibly accurate futurists I've
[00:28:40] ever met. Like his ability to predict
[00:28:41] things is off the charts. He's like the
[00:28:44] American technostraamus or something.
[00:28:47] >> Interesting. What's his name?
[00:28:48] >> Usually Kevin Kelly.
[00:28:49] >> Kevin Kelly.
[00:28:50] >> Yeah. He's in his 70s now. And
[00:28:54] he is, by the way, probably 10 to 20
[00:28:56] times more popular in China than he is
[00:28:58] in the US, which is a whole separate
[00:29:00] conversation, but they pay a lot of
[00:29:01] attention to him.
[00:29:03] Nonetheless, he has literally spent time
[00:29:06] with the Amish to study how they accept
[00:29:08] or reject technology.
[00:29:10] >> Really?
[00:29:10] >> Yeah. He was a founding editor of Wired
[00:29:12] magazine. You think that he just would
[00:29:14] adopt everything and let trial and error
[00:29:18] sort itself out in his own life, but no,
[00:29:20] he studies how the Amish evaluate
[00:29:23] technology. Because despite what some
[00:29:24] people might think, it's not like they
[00:29:26] don't actually use technology. They're
[00:29:28] very, very methodical about how they
[00:29:30] evaluate it. So
[00:29:33] that is the way I would think of any of
[00:29:35] this augmentation
[00:29:37] whether it's what people would consider
[00:29:39] no tropics and smart drugs or any type
[00:29:42] of enhancement which would include
[00:29:45] Google maps AI etc like right now for
[00:29:48] instance I write
[00:29:50] AI is LLMs are getting incredibly good
[00:29:53] at writing and I saw a piece recently I
[00:29:55] think it was in the New Yorker but a
[00:29:57] >> some like a Pulzer prize winner or some
[00:29:59] incredible writer
[00:30:02] tested an LLM and provided very educated
[00:30:07] test readers with sample pros and the
[00:30:10] vast majority couldn't tell the
[00:30:11] difference.
[00:30:11] >> No kidding. Yeah. Wow.
[00:30:13] >> Trained on uh his or her own writing.
[00:30:16] So, the temptation to use it is there
[00:30:18] and I'll use it for editing suggestions,
[00:30:20] but as soon as I use that as my primary
[00:30:24] mode of writing,
[00:30:26] it's just going to be too tempting. It's
[00:30:28] like digital heroin. And ultimately I
[00:30:32] may travel down that path. But the point
[00:30:34] is that I'm I'm being very cautious with
[00:30:36] it because I know that that certain
[00:30:39] faculties will atrophy.
[00:30:41] >> Wow.
[00:30:42] >> And I don't know what the consequences
[00:30:43] of that are because if those faculties
[00:30:45] start to atrophy
[00:30:47] >> and I'm not a lite like I use tons of
[00:30:49] technology. I invest in tons of
[00:30:50] technology on the cutting edge. But what
[00:30:54] are the secondary or tertiary effects of
[00:30:56] that? It's probably not just writing
[00:30:59] essays,
[00:31:00] right? There's probably a higher cost to
[00:31:02] be paid and I want I just want to have a
[00:31:03] better understanding what that cost.
[00:31:05] >> How will you find out what that unders I
[00:31:07] mean how will you find that?
[00:31:08] >> I'll probably hang out for a while at
[00:31:09] the periphery and see what people are
[00:31:12] finding, right? Talk to researchers. It
[00:31:16] is not hard to talk to researchers. Uh
[00:31:19] I'll also use, you know, I'll kind of
[00:31:21] use certain AI enabled tools to evaluate
[00:31:25] the AI itself. So there are like
[00:31:27] websites like consensus.app or open
[00:31:29] evidence. There are tools you can use
[00:31:31] that make it a lot easier to interrogate
[00:31:34] published scientific literature with
[00:31:36] just basic queries that kind of anyone
[00:31:39] would come up with or could come up
[00:31:40] with.
[00:31:41] >> So
[00:31:43] uh with certain things I like to be on
[00:31:46] the cutting edge. With other things like
[00:31:48] what we're talking about I really like
[00:31:49] to be on the dull edge. I don't want to
[00:31:51] be one of the first thousand monkeys
[00:31:53] shot into space with a
[00:31:56] I'm going to wait. You know, you want to
[00:31:58] colonize Mars? Great. I'll maybe I'll be
[00:32:01] I'll be I'll be two billionth in line.
[00:32:03] >> I'm right there with you.
[00:32:06] Go spend Go spend a month in Antarctica
[00:32:08] in the winter first and tell me how you
[00:32:09] like it. Yeah.
[00:32:10] >> Yeah. Yeah. I I am with you on that.
[00:32:16] >> I want to talk about a piece of gear you
[00:32:18] probably use more than anything else,
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[00:33:52] >> You know, I wanted to ask you, you know,
[00:33:55] it's the it's the it's new year, you
[00:33:58] know, we're about a week in to 2026 and
[00:34:00] so I wanted to ask you, I don't know
[00:34:03] about fear setting versus goal setting.
[00:34:06] >> Yeah.
[00:34:06] >> Yeah. So, I'd love to chat with you
[00:34:08] about that. What is it?
[00:34:09] >> Sure. Yeah. So fear setting
[00:34:12] is something that
[00:34:15] I
[00:34:18] effectively found through stoicism.
[00:34:22] So the philosophy of stoicism and uh
[00:34:26] people can certainly find a lot of of
[00:34:29] great books written contempor you know
[00:34:31] in a contemporary sense by Ryan
[00:34:33] Holidayiday the obstacle is the way. I
[00:34:35] actually produced the audio book for
[00:34:37] that book in the day. And one of his
[00:34:39] first early writings on stoicism was a
[00:34:42] blog post on my blog way back in the
[00:34:43] day.
[00:34:44] >> Uh and
[00:34:47] uh at that point we resonated on
[00:34:50] stoicism because I had been traveling
[00:34:53] almost always with a copy of letters
[00:34:55] from a stoic which are the moral letters
[00:34:58] to Lucille by Senica the Younger. Now,
[00:35:02] Senica the Younger, controversial
[00:35:03] character for a bunch of reasons, but
[00:35:06] very very very skilled writer and
[00:35:09] proponent of stoicism.
[00:35:12] And
[00:35:13] in effect, one of the practices that he
[00:35:16] would encourage is
[00:35:20] he had a number of them, but it was it
[00:35:22] was in effect defining your fears,
[00:35:24] thinking about the worst case scenario.
[00:35:26] So, there's a mental component to it.
[00:35:28] There was also a practiced component
[00:35:31] which would which would be and actually
[00:35:33] Kevin Kelly does this as well. So in in
[00:35:36] effect practicing the theor the thing
[00:35:38] that you most fear like poverty. So like
[00:35:40] Kevin Kelly this is a good example
[00:35:43] like he sometimes will go a week or two
[00:35:46] just as a practice like sleeping in his
[00:35:49] living room in a sleeping bag eating
[00:35:51] like rice and beans and instant coffee.
[00:35:54] And Kevin isn't really afraid of most
[00:35:57] things, but what you realize, and you
[00:35:59] realize this too if you go on a week-l
[00:36:01] long camping trip, you're like, "This is
[00:36:02] actually pretty sweet, right?
[00:36:04] >> I don't actually need that much."
[00:36:06] >> Simpler times,
[00:36:07] >> right?
[00:36:08] >> That's what I've noticed. And when you
[00:36:09] prove that to yourself,
[00:36:12] you recognize that the downside risk on
[00:36:14] a lot of what you might be considering,
[00:36:16] taking a new job, proposing or ending a
[00:36:19] relationship, whatever it might be that
[00:36:21] you're nervous about that you might be
[00:36:24] procrastinating or putting putting on
[00:36:27] pause has very limited downside. This
[00:36:30] the systematic way of doing that. I
[00:36:32] needed something a little more concrete
[00:36:36] for myself. Uh, I have been
[00:36:38] hypervigilant my whole life. I can there
[00:36:40] are good reasons for that that we can
[00:36:42] get into, but I've been very
[00:36:44] hypervigilant my whole life. Also have
[00:36:46] diagnosed OCD, which did not surprise
[00:36:48] any of my friends when it uh came about
[00:36:50] a couple years ago.
[00:36:53] They're like, "Yeah, well, you know, big
[00:36:55] surprise."
[00:36:55] >> Duh.
[00:36:56] >> Yeah. Yeah. Duh. Uh, I had the same
[00:36:58] response. But the the the point is that
[00:37:03] with generalized anxiety plus OCD, if
[00:37:06] you have that hypervigilance plus OCD,
[00:37:08] you ruminate
[00:37:10] or I'll keep it personal. Like I don't
[00:37:12] have the handwashing thing. I'm not
[00:37:13] flipping light switches, right? They're
[00:37:14] different manifestations of OCD, but I
[00:37:16] have these kind of endless ruminative
[00:37:19] loops and they tend to relate to
[00:37:22] imagining worst case scenarios. All
[00:37:24] right? And that can be really paralyzing
[00:37:27] if I want to bias towards action which I
[00:37:29] prefer to do right bias towards action
[00:37:31] instead of inaction.
[00:37:33] So what do you do? Well reading the
[00:37:36] stoicism and so on started to develop
[00:37:39] this approach fear setting I'll explain
[00:37:41] what it is. So the the what makes goal
[00:37:44] setting effective? What makes goal
[00:37:46] setting effective? There are different
[00:37:48] frameworks for this but you know like
[00:37:49] the smart framework like specific,
[00:37:51] measurable, achievable, right? With
[00:37:53] timelines and so on. Okay. Like there
[00:37:55] there there are better and worse ways of
[00:37:57] defining your goals to make them more
[00:38:00] likely to be achieved, right? If you
[00:38:02] have accountability and you have
[00:38:05] timelines, you have a deadline, you have
[00:38:06] deliverables, etc. All that makes goal
[00:38:10] achieving easier. All right. Well,
[00:38:12] what's fear setting? Fear setting, it's
[00:38:14] really simple. So, if if you have the
[00:38:16] thing that you're worried about, and
[00:38:17] this is what I still do to this day. I
[00:38:19] probably do it once a quarter. The thing
[00:38:21] you're nervous about could be
[00:38:26] starting your own business. Could be
[00:38:30] writing or finishing a book. Could be
[00:38:32] getting cancer.
[00:38:33] >> Yeah. Could be getting cancer, right? It
[00:38:35] could be getting older. could be uh one
[00:38:39] of your parents dying, could be whatever
[00:38:41] it might be.
[00:38:43] >> Uh and to be clear, fear setting doesn't
[00:38:46] doesn't automatically solve all of these
[00:38:48] things. But here's here's what it does.
[00:38:50] It defangs a lot of them so you can take
[00:38:52] action. Let me explain what I mean. So
[00:38:54] fear setting is super simple. Let's say
[00:38:55] the example is in my case, I'll give a
[00:38:57] real like one of the very first huge
[00:38:59] examples was Id started my own company.
[00:39:02] I was I was completely burned out around
[00:39:04] 2003
[00:39:06] 2004.
[00:39:08] Had been working seven days a week and I
[00:39:11] wanted to take four weeks off. All
[00:39:13] right. Running my own business. How do
[00:39:15] you do that? Right? I've created this
[00:39:17] monster. I'm running it. I have single
[00:39:20] point of failure. Me. And so all of
[00:39:24] these disasters came to mind. Right?
[00:39:27] So what did I do? I wrote them down. And
[00:39:30] there there's an alternative approach
[00:39:31] called morning pages which is slightly
[00:39:34] different but I'll I'll explain it.
[00:39:35] That's from Julia Cameron who wrote the
[00:39:37] artist's way. Really really incredible
[00:39:39] practice but I'll come back to that. So
[00:39:41] in fear setting like at the top I would
[00:39:44] put taking four weeks vacation. That's
[00:39:45] the thing I'm considering. Then in the
[00:39:47] in the first column just write down all
[00:39:50] of the things that are freaking you out
[00:39:53] that could go wrong in in as much detail
[00:39:56] as possible. Right? So I would write
[00:39:58] down
[00:39:59] I'm going to be overseas and I'm going
[00:40:01] to miss a letter from the IRS and then
[00:40:03] they're going to shut do this and this
[00:40:05] and I'm going to get audited and blah
[00:40:06] blah blah. Okay, write it down. Boom. I
[00:40:08] some miss IRS letter blah blah blah blah
[00:40:10] blah. All right, what's the next one?
[00:40:11] Next one is there's going to be some
[00:40:14] supply chain problem and like blah blah
[00:40:18] blah blah blah. Okay, write that down.
[00:40:20] All right, like the president at the
[00:40:23] fulfillment company is going to get sick
[00:40:27] and then boom, like orders aren't going
[00:40:29] to ship and there's going to be this
[00:40:30] huge disaster. Okay, write it down. And
[00:40:32] so you write down all these things like
[00:40:34] aim for volume, right? Like 10 to 20
[00:40:36] things.
[00:40:38] All right, that's column one. Then
[00:40:39] column two is what could I do to
[00:40:42] decrease the likelihood of this
[00:40:43] happening? Like anything I could do to
[00:40:45] try to prevent this. All right, great.
[00:40:46] So for the letter at the time, this is
[00:40:48] back in the day, keep in mind, early
[00:40:50] 2000s, but there still were services
[00:40:52] where you could have mail shipped, they
[00:40:55] would scan it, and they would email you
[00:40:57] >> PDFs. It's like, okay, well, let me test
[00:41:00] out one of those services. I could do
[00:41:01] that. Okay, what about supply chain? All
[00:41:04] right. With supply chain issues, there
[00:41:06] were a few there were a few components
[00:41:09] that I could basically stockpile in
[00:41:12] advance in case things were disrupted
[00:41:14] and that would reduce like 80% of the
[00:41:16] risk. Okay, I can do that. All right.
[00:41:18] And you go down the list and there's
[00:41:19] probably something you can do to
[00:41:21] decrease the risk of that happening. All
[00:41:22] right. So now you have two columns. All
[00:41:24] the worst things that could happen, the
[00:41:27] things you could do to decrease the
[00:41:28] likelihood of them happening. All right.
[00:41:29] Next column. Next column is if it
[00:41:31] happens, if that thing happens, what
[00:41:34] could you do for damage control? What
[00:41:37] could you do to possibly get back up on
[00:41:39] your feet? Right. So, it's like if you
[00:41:40] start a company and it fails, what could
[00:41:42] you get a bartending job?
[00:41:44] >> Could you
[00:41:44] >> So, you go through every contingency
[00:41:46] plan.
[00:41:46] >> Yeah. So, then it's like, what can you
[00:41:47] do to repair the situation just to get
[00:41:50] back to like
[00:41:52] life support, right? If needed, what can
[00:41:54] you do? There's always something you
[00:41:55] could do. So, you write that down. Okay.
[00:41:59] Then you you have to ask yourself two
[00:42:01] follow-up questions. All right, so if I
[00:42:03] did this thing I'm considering the four
[00:42:04] weeks of vacation.
[00:42:07] What are the payoffs and how durable are
[00:42:08] they? Right? Like what's the upside?
[00:42:11] I've talked about you know I've written
[00:42:12] down all the downside. What's the upside
[00:42:14] and what's the durability? Okay. Well,
[00:42:16] if I went on a four-week vacation and I
[00:42:18] figured out how to run my business and
[00:42:20] automate things, I would come back and
[00:42:22] all those systems would still exist.
[00:42:24] Like I would have taken myself out of
[00:42:26] the machine. I would no longer be the
[00:42:28] Wizard of Oz having to control
[00:42:30] everything. Like, well, I mean, that
[00:42:32] could last years in terms of benefits,
[00:42:34] right? Okay. Boom, boom, boom, you go
[00:42:35] down the list. What are all the
[00:42:36] benefits? How durable are they? And then
[00:42:40] you look at all the downsides and you're
[00:42:42] like, "All right, how temporary or
[00:42:45] durable are these? What is the real
[00:42:49] downside risk?" And I'll be done with
[00:42:51] this in just a minute or two, but it's
[00:42:52] important because people can do this.
[00:42:53] And I I gave a TED talk on this for
[00:42:54] people who want to really dig in, but
[00:42:58] the what you realize often is that the
[00:43:01] thing you're considering if it works is
[00:43:03] like a 7 to 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 in
[00:43:06] life-changing impact with durability.
[00:43:09] Like it lasts for a while.
[00:43:11] >> Mhm.
[00:43:12] >> And the things that you're scared of are
[00:43:14] like 2, three, four in temporary pain
[00:43:17] and they're either reversible or
[00:43:19] completely survivable. The last piece
[00:43:22] and this is new in the last I would say
[00:43:24] 15 years for me uh is
[00:43:28] on a separate piece of paper you write
[00:43:31] down status quo if I can just consider
[00:43:34] if I can just continue doing what I'm
[00:43:35] doing what is my life what are the costs
[00:43:38] right financially emotionally
[00:43:40] relationally
[00:43:42] in one year from now in three years from
[00:43:45] now in 10 years from now and you write
[00:43:48] that stuff down because we're very good
[00:43:50] at thinking about the risk of doing
[00:43:51] something, but we're not as trained to
[00:43:53] think about the risks of just continuing
[00:43:55] doing what we're doing, right? And so
[00:43:57] when I looked at that, I was like,
[00:44:00] I don't think I can make it 5 years,
[00:44:03] 10 years, forget it. My life's a
[00:44:05] complete utter disaster. It's like,
[00:44:06] okay, so now it's not a question of if,
[00:44:08] it's just a question of when.
[00:44:11] >> Okay. Now when I look at these two
[00:44:13] things, right, is doing this thing risky
[00:44:16] compared to status quo one, three, five
[00:44:20] years from now, it's like, oh, this
[00:44:21] thing that I thought was scary is much
[00:44:23] lower risk. And then you do it and like
[00:44:26] that is what kicked off all these
[00:44:29] adventures that led to the first book
[00:44:31] and like here we are. If I had not taken
[00:44:34] that vacation, I would not be sitting
[00:44:35] here.
[00:44:37] >> That's interesting.
[00:44:38] >> Yeah.
[00:44:39] >> How do you find the balance though? How
[00:44:40] do you find the balance? cuz I could
[00:44:42] see, you know, um people going,
[00:44:47] "Fuck, I'm going I'm going for 16 weeks
[00:44:50] of vacation, you know."
[00:44:51] >> Yeah. Well, I here's what I would say is
[00:44:53] that fear setting much like doing goal
[00:44:57] setting doesn't achieve your goal.
[00:44:58] >> It's almost daring yourself to do what
[00:45:00] you want to do.
[00:45:01] >> It's it's daring yourself. Here's what
[00:45:03] it is. It's daring yourself. What it's
[00:45:05] also saying is some of your fears will
[00:45:09] be wellounded. Mhm.
[00:45:11] >> Right.
[00:45:12] >> There's certain things that could be
[00:45:13] catastrophic, but it's like 1%. Like, do
[00:45:16] not let your fears put an emergency
[00:45:19] break on your life without
[00:45:20] cross-examining them.
[00:45:23] >> That's all it says is like most of your
[00:45:26] fears are these fantasms in the fog that
[00:45:30] are scary because it's like the
[00:45:31] boogeyman. The lights are out. You
[00:45:34] haven't looked at it clearly.
[00:45:35] >> As soon as you write it down,
[00:45:37] >> you realize, flip the light switches on.
[00:45:39] boogeyman's not there and then you can
[00:45:41] take action. But sure, there's certain
[00:45:43] things that are going to be scary no
[00:45:44] matter what, right? Losing a relative to
[00:45:47] Alzheimer's, right? Someone you love or
[00:45:51] suffering some horrible injury, right?
[00:45:54] These are all things that have real
[00:45:55] consequences, but your ability to
[00:45:58] survive and thrive, like your resilience
[00:46:01] is a lot greater than I think you
[00:46:04] realize in most cases.
[00:46:05] >> Mhm. And you have a track record. Like
[00:46:07] anyone who's made it this far, who's
[00:46:08] watching this right now, like you've
[00:46:10] survived a lot and you've figured out a
[00:46:11] lot even when plans went sideways. So
[00:46:14] the fear setting fundamentally is is is
[00:46:17] a tool that you can do in like an hour.
[00:46:20] Doesn't even take an hour.
[00:46:22] That takes the emergency break off.
[00:46:25] Doesn't matter how good your goal
[00:46:26] setting is if you've got the emergency
[00:46:28] break on. Um so that's that's I say the
[00:46:33] the principal purpose.
[00:46:35] >> That's very interesting.
[00:46:37] >> Mhm.
[00:46:37] >> You know you had mentioned earlier about
[00:46:40] your friend who practice being in
[00:46:42] poverty.
[00:46:42] >> Yeah. Yeah.
[00:46:43] >> And then found out this isn't so bad.
[00:46:47] >> It's a lot simpler. Sounds like you
[00:46:48] maybe have experienced that as well.
[00:46:50] >> Yeah. I do it every year. I do it every
[00:46:52] >> year.
[00:46:52] >> You do it every year.
[00:46:53] >> Oh yeah. I mean well part of the reason
[00:46:55] I do the fasting too. I might do like 7
[00:46:57] to 10 day fasts.
[00:46:59] Uh certainly try to live a very
[00:47:04] minimalist existence for you know weeks
[00:47:07] at a time throughout the year to remove
[00:47:12] the hadonic treadmill that we're all
[00:47:15] vulnerable to, right? It's like if you
[00:47:18] man if you live where we're sitting
[00:47:21] right in the United States, not for
[00:47:23] everyone, but broadly speaking, it's
[00:47:24] like if you were born here, my god, did
[00:47:27] you win the lottery, right?
[00:47:29] >> And you look at these comforts and
[00:47:34] amazing privileges
[00:47:36] >> and
[00:47:38] it's easy to believe that whatever your
[00:47:42] kind of latest level of comfort is that
[00:47:44] that is necessary for happiness. that is
[00:47:47] necessary for safety, that is necessary
[00:47:49] for fill in the blank. And by and large,
[00:47:53] it's just not. So, I really try to,
[00:47:57] you know, get out in the woods, get
[00:47:59] filthy, do something hard, experience
[00:48:01] some physical pain, not excessively so,
[00:48:04] but just like through training and so
[00:48:05] on, you're like, "Okay, yeah, little bit
[00:48:07] of pain, a little bit of fasting.
[00:48:09] >> Yeah,
[00:48:09] >> if I lost, you know, half half what I
[00:48:12] have, 75, 80, 90% of what I have, I'm
[00:48:14] fine.
[00:48:16] So, doesn't mean you just go to Vegas
[00:48:19] and put it all in black. It doesn't mean
[00:48:21] that. It means that a lot of these
[00:48:24] things you're considering, if they go
[00:48:26] totally wrong, and it's actually
[00:48:29] surprisingly hard to fail completely, if
[00:48:31] you're pretty smart and have some
[00:48:33] ability to improvise,
[00:48:37] completely survivable, right? Um, and
[00:48:41] for a lot of what I do, you just you you
[00:48:43] don't make it unless you have that
[00:48:49] unless you cultivate that view on
[00:48:51] things. And you can't be stupid and
[00:48:53] reckless, but it's like in startup
[00:48:54] investing, it's like 70 80% of those are
[00:48:56] going to go to zero even if you put
[00:48:58] seven to 10 years in, right? And so
[00:49:04] I I like startup investing as a metaphor
[00:49:07] for life because you don't need to get a
[00:49:11] lot of things right to have an amazing
[00:49:13] life, an incredible life. You don't need
[00:49:17] to get a lot of things right. You just
[00:49:19] need to get a few high leverage things
[00:49:21] right. Those 10 relationships,
[00:49:24] health.
[00:49:27] All right. Like if you get those two
[00:49:30] things right, guess what? Like I know a
[00:49:31] lot of billionaires, decad billionaires,
[00:49:34] you're going to have more than 90% of
[00:49:36] those guys in terms of durable wealth.
[00:49:39] What I would consider wealth. Oh yeah,
[00:49:41] if you just get those two things right,
[00:49:42] it's like sure, money's money is
[00:49:44] important to a point, right? I don't
[00:49:46] want to minimize that, but uh don't
[00:49:50] underestimate what you can do by getting
[00:49:52] a few things right. You can be wrong a
[00:49:55] lot of the time.
[00:49:57] I mean, I've been wrong tons, tons,
[00:49:59] tons, tons. It's a damn good point.
[00:50:00] >> Yeah,
[00:50:02] >> I love that. I love that
[00:50:05] fear setting.
[00:50:07] >> Yeah, I still I I I I am,
[00:50:11] you know, I'm not just the president,
[00:50:12] I'm a client, you know, hair club for
[00:50:13] men.
[00:50:15] >> You got a great haircut, I must say.
[00:50:17] >> Yeah, I use it. Uh yeah, we go to the
[00:50:19] same stylist.
[00:50:21] Uh I I still use this and because I
[00:50:24] promised it, I want to close one loop.
[00:50:26] Morning pages. Julia Cameron. This is
[00:50:29] even simpler. People can try this. Maybe
[00:50:32] this is the appetizer before fear
[00:50:34] setting every morning. That monkey mind
[00:50:36] with all the worries and things
[00:50:38] ricocheting around that might be
[00:50:40] producing anxiety or whatever it might
[00:50:42] be. Just vomit that onto a page
[00:50:45] longhand. Write for two to three pages.
[00:50:47] That's it. You don't have to do
[00:50:48] anything. You don't have to remember it.
[00:50:49] You don't have to go back to it. You
[00:50:50] don't have to solve anything. Just trap
[00:50:53] that monkey mind on paper so you can get
[00:50:54] on with your day. Do that for two to
[00:50:56] three pages a day. the arguably the most
[00:51:01] one of the most productive writers
[00:51:04] creators in Hollywood even though he
[00:51:06] lives in New York but Brian Copelman
[00:51:08] co-created Billions was was uh was
[00:51:12] behind Rounders along with his writing
[00:51:13] partner I mean the guy's super prolific
[00:51:16] and he does transendal meditation and
[00:51:18] morning pages every day
[00:51:21] uh we could talk about meditation
[00:51:23] separately but I recommended I won't
[00:51:26] mention him but like the right hand of a
[00:51:28] pretty well-known politician who
[00:51:29] basically is like the COO of everything
[00:51:32] that politician does which is
[00:51:36] incredible right in terms of just like
[00:51:37] track record endurance output and he did
[00:51:41] morning pages based on my recommendation
[00:51:44] which I got from Brian for 6 months and
[00:51:48] he wrote me back and he said this is the
[00:51:50] closest thing to a magical effect that
[00:51:52] I've ever found.
[00:51:53] >> Wow.
[00:51:54] >> Yeah.
[00:51:54] >> No [ __ ]
[00:51:55] >> So simple. So simple.
[00:51:58] And what does that have in common with
[00:52:00] fear setting? It's taking these kind of
[00:52:03] nebulous
[00:52:06] problems inside your head and putting it
[00:52:08] on paper. That's it. It's very simple,
[00:52:13] but consistently, right? It's not going
[00:52:16] to the gym once and then you're like, I
[00:52:17] guess I'm fit now. It's like, no, this
[00:52:19] is this is
[00:52:20] >> this is kind of like flossing your
[00:52:22] teeth. You don't necessarily have to do
[00:52:23] it every day. Although if you do morning
[00:52:25] pages for a week or two, it's shocking
[00:52:28] what effect it can have on your
[00:52:29] well-being and productivity. And then
[00:52:32] you you could view that as the flossing.
[00:52:34] And
[00:52:34] >> why do you think that works? I mean, I'm
[00:52:36] going to try this. I'm going to try.
[00:52:37] >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, you should.
[00:52:38] >> Why does it work?
[00:52:42] What would be the difference whether I
[00:52:43] think it
[00:52:44] >> I think the way it works this is this is
[00:52:47] my perspective on it is that this is
[00:52:52] part of the reason why writing is so
[00:52:53] helpful also in general is that it's
[00:52:58] incredibly difficult to cross-examine
[00:53:00] your own thoughts while you're thinking
[00:53:02] them. They're too fleeting moves too
[00:53:05] quickly. It's very hard to look at them
[00:53:10] dispassionately almost as an observer,
[00:53:13] right? It's like if you hang out with
[00:53:14] your friends and they've got problems,
[00:53:15] you're like, man, you can sort out their
[00:53:16] problems like that, right? And just like
[00:53:17] why don't you just do this, this, and
[00:53:18] this. You can see it so easily. But it's
[00:53:21] very hard for us to like look at
[00:53:22] ourselves in the same way, especially
[00:53:25] with with the speed of thought. So the
[00:53:28] simple act of freezing it on paper
[00:53:31] allows you to look at it for what it is.
[00:53:33] And nine times out of 10, you look at
[00:53:35] it, you're like, "Okay, that's kind of
[00:53:36] ridiculous." Or it's not ridiculous. But
[00:53:39] once you've put it on paper, I feel like
[00:53:40] subconsciously there's part of you
[00:53:42] that's like, "I rem I I have that
[00:53:44] written down. I don't need to remember
[00:53:46] or think about it."
[00:53:48] And
[00:53:50] whatever that tendency is, and some
[00:53:52] people more than others, certainly I
[00:53:53] have a lot of it, to kind of white
[00:53:55] knuckle grasp onto a thought
[00:53:57] >> so that it becomes this merrygoround.
[00:54:00] Writing it down just allows you to relax
[00:54:02] your grip and let it go. And if you can
[00:54:05] do that for a few hours, I mean in
[00:54:07] today's world, if you can single task
[00:54:09] and focus on one thing for a few hours
[00:54:10] without notifications, without getting
[00:54:12] distracted, without looping on some
[00:54:15] future anxiety or past depression or
[00:54:16] whatever it might be, if you can do that
[00:54:18] for a few hours, my god, like in the
[00:54:20] next few years, especially post AI,
[00:54:25] >> uh like you're going to have such an
[00:54:28] enormous competitive advantage. Huge.
[00:54:31] >> Huge. Huge. Like potential advantage.
[00:54:36] >> Yeah.
[00:54:37] >> It's already a fascinating conversation.
[00:54:40] >> Love it.
[00:54:40] >> Yeah.
[00:54:41] >> Love it.
[00:54:41] >> Yeah. Yeah. It's just
[00:54:43] >> Let's get into your story a little bit.
[00:54:45] >> Yeah, sure.
[00:54:45] >> Where where did you grow up?
[00:54:47] >> I grew up on Long Island, so Eastern
[00:54:48] Long Island. Uh rat tail and all.
[00:54:51] >> A rat tail. Nice.
[00:54:53] >> I had a rat tail. I had some terrible
[00:54:54] haircuts growing up. um didn't realize
[00:54:57] it at the time, but grew up on eastern
[00:55:00] Long Island, way out by Montuk. So, uh
[00:55:03] people associate that with like rightly
[00:55:06] so, you know, hedge fund managers and
[00:55:09] out by the Hamptons, you know, like
[00:55:12] tennis with Steven Spielberg kind of
[00:55:13] thing, right? These hundred million
[00:55:14] dollar mansions. And that's part of it,
[00:55:16] but a lot like any
[00:55:20] any tourist town that has a lot of
[00:55:23] second or third or fourth or fifth homes
[00:55:25] like Nantucket or wherever, they're all
[00:55:27] over the place. You've got the people
[00:55:29] who come there on the weekends or for
[00:55:32] the summers and then you got the locals,
[00:55:33] right? So the local side, it's mostly
[00:55:36] people working in service industries,
[00:55:38] etc. You know, most of my friends
[00:55:41] fathers were like fishermen, carpenters,
[00:55:44] landscapers, that kind of thing.
[00:55:46] >> So, I grew up working in restaurants.
[00:55:49] Started started bus boying pretty early.
[00:55:52] Not even sure it was legal. Probably 14
[00:55:54] 14 or so. Uh I think everybody should
[00:55:57] work a service job. I think everybody
[00:55:59] should have to work a service job. Uh
[00:56:01] but uh that's where I grew up, Eastern
[00:56:03] Long Island. And uh school was not
[00:56:06] great. I mean, you don't really realize
[00:56:08] you have no reference point, right? Like
[00:56:09] whatever's in front of you is kind of
[00:56:10] your reality. School was not was was not
[00:56:13] good. So, eventually, uh, one of my I
[00:56:17] got really lucky, man. You just think
[00:56:18] about all these things that have to line
[00:56:20] up for either of us to be where we are
[00:56:22] and these
[00:56:24] these these sliding door moments. One
[00:56:27] friend, if I had been two years younger,
[00:56:29] two years older, this wouldn't have
[00:56:31] happened. But one guy managed to escape
[00:56:34] Long Island and his parents sent him to
[00:56:36] a school in New Hampshire, which was a
[00:56:37] private school. And he came back and he
[00:56:39] was like, "You have to leave this
[00:56:41] place." And I was like, "What are you
[00:56:42] talking about?" And then a math teacher
[00:56:44] was like, "He's right. You need to
[00:56:45] [ __ ] get out of here." I was like,
[00:56:47] "What?" And uh started looking into it
[00:56:51] and ultimately got some scholarships. My
[00:56:54] parents were very supportive. It was all
[00:56:55] my idea. Um like the whole extended
[00:56:57] family chipped in. I was able to uh
[00:57:00] transfer to a private school in New
[00:57:02] Hampshire and that was a huge lifecher
[00:57:06] and inflection point. I mean that's
[00:57:08] where suddenly instead of just being
[00:57:10] able to study Spanish, you could study
[00:57:12] anything, right? And that's how I ended
[00:57:13] up studying Japanese and class six days
[00:57:17] a week, right? Seated meal with coat and
[00:57:19] tie. I mean,
[00:57:21] >> wow.
[00:57:21] >> You had mandatory sports and then in
[00:57:24] some cases you had sixth period which is
[00:57:25] classes after sports. So, you'd finish
[00:57:27] school like whatever 6:00 p.m., go back
[00:57:30] to your room, like splash water on your
[00:57:31] face, get on a suit and tie, and then go
[00:57:33] to seated meal chapel in the morning,
[00:57:35] right? I mean, it the the workload, the
[00:57:37] intensity was unbelievable. I was
[00:57:42] accustomed to doing really well in
[00:57:43] school without having to try very hard.
[00:57:46] And suddenly, I was like barely keeping
[00:57:47] my head above water. And it was great
[00:57:49] for me. It was great for me. Uh it was
[00:57:53] really hard, but
[00:57:56] having a few male role models in
[00:57:58] particular who were like, "You can do
[00:57:59] it. Yeah, it's hard." Like, "Yeah, you
[00:58:02] can do it." And just like having to push
[00:58:04] through that initial sunburn
[00:58:07] like too much sun exposure in terms of
[00:58:09] stress.
[00:58:11] >> Uh what were you into as a kid?
[00:58:14] >> Uh I mean at that point I mean I was I
[00:58:16] was very interested even at that point I
[00:58:18] was very interested in neuroscience. So
[00:58:20] I wanted to be a neuroscientist
[00:58:22] uh cuz I'd seen my my grandmother
[00:58:24] disintegrate with Alzheimer's
[00:58:27] and I was also very interested just in
[00:58:29] learning in general and how you could
[00:58:32] accelerate learning from a very young
[00:58:34] age because
[00:58:37] it just seemed like there was a wide
[00:58:41] open field of possibility there that
[00:58:44] folks weren't exploring and we can dive
[00:58:47] into that. I was also a wrestler. That
[00:58:50] was the only sport I was ever any good
[00:58:52] at.
[00:58:52] >> Oh, really?
[00:58:53] >> Yeah. I was born premature. I was tiny,
[00:58:55] super hyperactive. And one of my mom's
[00:58:57] friends were like, "You got to put that
[00:58:58] boy in kid wrestling
[00:59:00] >> to tire him out." And because I was so
[00:59:03] puny, I just got the crap kicked out of
[00:59:04] me all the time until about sixth grade.
[00:59:07] And uh
[00:59:10] like team sports were out. I would just
[00:59:11] get massacred.
[00:59:13] >> Mhm. I mean, I wouldn't even go out to
[00:59:14] recess until probably like fourth or
[00:59:18] fifth grade because it was just it was
[00:59:20] just like being out in the prison yard.
[00:59:21] I' just get the crap kicked out of me.
[00:59:23] So, I would just stay inside safely near
[00:59:26] the teacher and read books mostly on
[00:59:28] marine biology. Um,
[00:59:31] >> because my parents, actually, this is
[00:59:32] something my parents did. I want to give
[00:59:34] them credit. We didn't have a lot of
[00:59:36] money, but my mom said, "If you want
[00:59:39] books, we always have budget for books."
[00:59:42] And so we would go to the bookstore and
[00:59:46] there were remainder tables, you know,
[00:59:47] these books that the bookstore is trying
[00:59:49] to get rid of and like that was the
[00:59:51] permissible real estate. It's like, all
[00:59:53] right, you get to choose from these
[00:59:54] books like 40, 60, 80% off and got a big
[01:00:00] hard coverver book called Fishes of the
[01:00:03] World and out on eastern Long Island.
[01:00:07] Maybe people don't know this, but lots
[01:00:09] of sharks lot and great white great
[01:00:11] whites and the crazy shark fisherman
[01:00:14] from Jaws who's actually based on a guy
[01:00:16] named Frank Mundus who is a
[01:00:18] >> no kid
[01:00:18] >> rod andreel shark hunter off of Montalk
[01:00:21] and so my mom took me to meet him. I was
[01:00:24] fascinated by sharks and um that is just
[01:00:30] a roundabout way of saying for a long
[01:00:32] time I I it was not safe for me to go
[01:00:35] into kind of like group sports. So my
[01:00:37] mom threw me into kid wrestling weight
[01:00:38] class, right? It's like puny kid versus
[01:00:40] puny kid. Perfect. And uh that stuck all
[01:00:44] the way up until the beginning of
[01:00:45] college. And so uh wrestling wrestling
[01:00:49] was
[01:00:51] the the center of my athletic life.
[01:00:53] >> Gotcha.
[01:00:54] >> Yeah. Just if you want to
[01:00:56] >> get good at suffer fest, wrestling is a
[01:00:59] good way to do it.
[01:00:59] >> I was a wrestler, too.
[01:01:01] >> Yeah.
[01:01:02] >> Very familiar. Also a puny.
[01:01:05] So yeah.
[01:01:06] >> Yeah. So, so I would say those are a few
[01:01:10] things that I was into. I was very
[01:01:11] interested in drawing. I think just
[01:01:13] genetically there's there's my
[01:01:15] grandfather was a sculptor seems to be
[01:01:18] something just in the bloodline for
[01:01:20] that. So I was always drawing. So I was
[01:01:22] I I I was I kind of had I guess three in
[01:01:25] tandem, right? The neuroscience and
[01:01:28] cognitive performance and stuff that was
[01:01:30] that was an interest. Um, and I thought,
[01:01:33] "Oh, man. It could be really interesting
[01:01:34] to be a scientist." And then there was
[01:01:36] the marine biology also, right? The
[01:01:38] intersection of science. Uh, but then
[01:01:41] there was comic book pencellor. I wanted
[01:01:42] to be a comic
[01:01:43] >> comic book pencellor.
[01:01:44] >> Yeah. Yeah. I still have all my comic
[01:01:46] books from when I was a kid. So, I
[01:01:48] wanted to be a comic book pencellor. But
[01:01:49] this was pre-Marvel Studios. Like before
[01:01:52] I mean, you were basically signing up
[01:01:53] for poverty if you were a comic book
[01:01:55] pencellor back in the day. Uh,
[01:01:57] nonetheless, still a lot of icons and
[01:02:01] idols to this day. I have so much
[01:02:02] respect for Jim Lee was one of my
[01:02:04] favorites. So, I still I still draw like
[01:02:08] I still I still get into it. But for a
[01:02:10] long time, I wanted to take that path.
[01:02:13] >> Right on.
[01:02:14] >> Yeah. So, that's those are some of the
[01:02:16] early stages. I mean,
[01:02:20] I have that
[01:02:23] I think it was in childhood,
[01:02:25] bipolar disorder,
[01:02:27] >> OCD, Russian.
[01:02:29] >> Mhm.
[01:02:30] >> How did you overcome those things? How
[01:02:31] did how did they how did they pop up on
[01:02:34] your radar?
[01:02:35] >> Yeah. You know, it's it was sort of the
[01:02:37] water that I swam in, right, in the
[01:02:39] sense that I didn't know life was any
[01:02:41] different for most people.
[01:02:43] >> Mhm. So a lot of bipolar, major
[01:02:46] depressive disorder, a lot of addiction
[01:02:48] in my family. So you've got, you know,
[01:02:51] alcohol induced cardiomyopathy
[01:02:54] on in one uncle. So he drank himself to
[01:02:56] death. Had early onset dementia. My aunt
[01:02:59] died of alcohol plus percoet. Um,
[01:03:03] >> pretty messy. So a lot of addiction and
[01:03:07] which I think is really and gabbor mate
[01:03:10] I think has the right framing on this.
[01:03:12] It's before we ask why the addiction, we
[01:03:14] should ask why the pain, right? And so I
[01:03:18] think a lot of that is undiagnosed
[01:03:21] psychiatric disorders, right? And
[01:03:26] uh so that was always part of my
[01:03:30] experience, right? This anxiety, this
[01:03:32] kind of OCD like dysregulation and
[01:03:34] rumination, worrying, hypervigilance.
[01:03:37] Um, I was also very badly abused as a
[01:03:39] kid, not by my parents, but um, that's
[01:03:42] we can get into that if you want, but
[01:03:44] that turned everything up.
[01:03:46] >> How were you abused?
[01:03:47] >> I was sexually abused by a babysitter's
[01:03:49] son, like weekly for a couple years.
[01:03:52] >> By a babysitter's son.
[01:03:54] >> Mhm.
[01:03:56] >> Yeah.
[01:03:57] >> How old?
[01:03:58] >> Two to two to four.
[01:04:00] >> Two to four years old.
[01:04:01] >> Yeah.
[01:04:03] So,
[01:04:03] >> do you remember it?
[01:04:04] >> Yeah, sadly.
[01:04:06] Yeah, be better if maybe better if I
[01:04:08] didn't. But um
[01:04:12] so you take you take like out of the box
[01:04:15] hardware that's already predisposed
[01:04:17] and then you add some type of traumatic
[01:04:22] event like that. It's not a great combo.
[01:04:26] And I would say that
[01:04:29] I was
[01:04:33] driven, right? and I wanted to get out
[01:04:34] of Long Island, etc., etc. Money issues
[01:04:38] were always kind of a a problem in the
[01:04:40] household. Like, that was always a
[01:04:42] conversation. So, I was like, "All
[01:04:43] right, I need to make money." So, there
[01:04:45] was like, "Get out of Long Island, be
[01:04:46] good at school, that's your ticket,
[01:04:48] right?" That was kind of the narrative
[01:04:49] in the household, which I think was
[01:04:51] actually a helpful narrative. It's like,
[01:04:52] "You got it. If you're good at school,
[01:04:53] you can write your tickets." It's like,
[01:04:54] "All right." So, I took all the rage. I
[01:04:58] was a very angry kid, very angry human,
[01:05:01] I would say, up until probably
[01:05:04] 2013
[01:05:07] 15 around.
[01:05:08] >> Wow. After the book, after your first
[01:05:10] book.
[01:05:10] >> Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I didn't
[01:05:13] start to deal with any of the trauma
[01:05:14] until probably 2015 in any meaningful
[01:05:17] way. Uh but the the the anger and the
[01:05:22] rage,
[01:05:24] even though it's not a clean fuel, I
[01:05:26] don't think it's a clean fuel. Like you
[01:05:28] do a lot of damage to the vessel, but
[01:05:31] it's a fuel, right? like it's a it's a
[01:05:33] propellant that I used. So I was just
[01:05:37] [ __ ] intense, super intense and took
[01:05:41] that experience and everything
[01:05:42] compartmentalized it and I was just like
[01:05:45] okay like no rearview mirror forward
[01:05:48] that's it and I think for
[01:05:52] that can work for a while you know it
[01:05:54] can work for decades in some cases
[01:05:57] ultimately I think if you want a
[01:06:00] semblance of peace and well-being you
[01:06:05] kind of have to pay the diaper
[01:06:07] >> and deal with it. And um I have been
[01:06:10] surprised. I mean look
[01:06:13] how many
[01:06:15] of the friends I have who are veterans
[01:06:20] who operate at a very high level came
[01:06:23] out ended up for any host of reasons
[01:06:26] doing say I gain or other psych
[01:06:29] psychedelic therapy who in the process
[01:06:32] of doing that realized that it wasn't
[01:06:35] principally say PTSD
[01:06:38] often some component of TBI but there
[01:06:40] was some type of trauma they didn't deal
[01:06:42] with. Super common. Super common. I
[01:06:45] would say 80% of the guys I know.
[01:06:47] >> Mhm.
[01:06:48] >> And um so it's it's it's it's really
[01:06:52] like the numbers are staggering. And the
[01:06:55] people who kind of survive as opposed to
[01:06:58] like self-destructing
[01:07:01] at least in the beginning I think are
[01:07:03] get really good at compartmentalizing
[01:07:05] right. But compartmentalizing, while it
[01:07:09] can help you with performance for
[01:07:11] relationships, for friends, for family,
[01:07:14] it doesn't work very well. You end up
[01:07:17] being emotionally cauterized.
[01:07:19] And you know, the armor that you develop
[01:07:21] to keep things out keeps a lot of things
[01:07:23] in and it keeps a lot of people out. So
[01:07:27] to answer your question though, things
[01:07:28] that ended up really having a positive
[01:07:31] impact
[01:07:32] would include
[01:07:35] psychedelic assisted therapies. So we
[01:07:36] can talk about that because they're not
[01:07:38] a panacea. They're not for everyone and
[01:07:40] there are real risks depending on the
[01:07:42] compound that is u
[01:07:46] in question.
[01:07:50] Brain stimulation like accelerated TMS.
[01:07:54] I literally just did another round of
[01:07:55] accelerated TMS two days ago, so we
[01:07:58] could talk about that. Very fresh. But
[01:08:00] different types of non-invasive brain
[01:08:02] stimulation. Incredibly interesting. So
[01:08:06] microchips over medicine in a sense. I
[01:08:09] think bio bioelectric medicine is is one
[01:08:12] field where I'm paying a lot of
[01:08:14] attention.
[01:08:14] >> Bio electric medicine.
[01:08:16] >> Yeah. Yeah. So, where can you use
[01:08:21] stimulation?
[01:08:23] Doesn't automatically have to be
[01:08:25] stimulation. It could be something more
[01:08:27] like ultrasound. How can you use
[01:08:29] non-invasive technologies or even an
[01:08:31] implant to say
[01:08:34] change how your brain is firing or to
[01:08:37] inhibit or excite a certain part of the
[01:08:39] brain or to stimulate the say vag nerve
[01:08:43] in some cases uh related to autoimmune
[01:08:47] dysfunction or rheumatoid arthritis for
[01:08:48] instance there's there was a piece on on
[01:08:50] the cover of the New York Times not too
[01:08:52] long ago about this
[01:08:54] how can you use
[01:08:56] electricity in effect to treat issues
[01:09:00] with fewer side effects than pills
[01:09:04] or injectables or IV or whatever it
[01:09:06] might be. Um, so the accelerated TMS
[01:09:09] specifically, uh, I think is very
[01:09:11] interesting. There's a protocol called
[01:09:12] the Saint protocol. It's been modified
[01:09:14] in a couple of different ways, but the
[01:09:17] primary or one of the best known
[01:09:19] researchers behind that unfortunately
[01:09:21] committed suicide. uh a few months ago a
[01:09:23] friend of mine Nolan Williams uh
[01:09:26] developed a lot of these approaches
[01:09:28] along with his team but you see in some
[01:09:32] cases after a week 70 80% remission of
[01:09:35] treatment resistant depression.
[01:09:36] >> Wow. Wow.
[01:09:38] >> With just as much if not more durability
[01:09:40] than psychedelic experiences.
[01:09:42] >> Wow. uh I have a lot of a lot of time
[01:09:46] on the research side also on the
[01:09:48] experiential side with psychedelic
[01:09:50] assisted therapies and have taken
[01:09:52] copious notes for well over a decade on
[01:09:56] everything and know a lot of the people
[01:09:59] who are at the top of that field and I
[01:10:01] would say that bioelectric medicine is
[01:10:03] just as interesting that has had a huge
[01:10:04] impact on my life uh very early days
[01:10:08] very early
[01:10:11] But that is certainly of interest. Uh
[01:10:14] and then I would say the
[01:10:18] therapies and tools like
[01:10:22] morning pages. It's so simple. Morning
[01:10:24] pages and fear setting. These are not
[01:10:26] small things guys. At least not for me.
[01:10:29] >> Mhm. like if your life is ruled by fear
[01:10:31] because what I realized is for me
[01:10:33] personally
[01:10:35] I mis in a sense I was mistreating
[01:10:38] myself by focusing on the depression and
[01:10:41] what I only realized in the last 5 years
[01:10:44] is that the depression was downstream of
[01:10:46] other things I had anxiety right which
[01:10:49] was maybe out of the box like I have
[01:10:51] family members who make my OCD look like
[01:10:54] amateur hour like they're so over the
[01:10:56] top
[01:10:58] when you combine that with hyper
[01:10:59] vigilance, like your life is ruled by
[01:11:02] fear and worry.
[01:11:06] And
[01:11:07] when you have that as one of your
[01:11:10] defaults,
[01:11:13] something like fear setting, something
[01:11:15] like morning pages is not a small thing.
[01:11:17] Like it is actually a very big deal. And
[01:11:20] when you start to look at
[01:11:22] psychedelic assisted therapies or
[01:11:24] frankly honestly off the rack regular
[01:11:28] anti-depressants like SSRIs or uh you
[01:11:32] know selective like SNRIs I mean there
[01:11:34] are many different types for some people
[01:11:36] those are a godsend right
[01:11:39] uh but when you start to combine some of
[01:11:42] these things with medical supervision
[01:11:45] with therapies right whether that's CBT
[01:11:48] there's one called DBT which I think is
[01:11:50] very interesting. Peter Tia, MD, is uh
[01:11:53] is a big proponent of DBT.
[01:11:56] It's it's the combination of things plus
[01:12:00] investing in relationships,
[01:12:03] right? Uh I think Tony Robbins said once
[01:12:07] I heard at one of his events, I've only
[01:12:09] been to two of his events. They're
[01:12:10] they're a bit too much stimulation for
[01:12:12] someone who's pretty introverted. It's a
[01:12:14] lot a lot of stimulation. But he was on
[01:12:16] stage and he said, "Yeah, I I I me me
[01:12:19] gets to be a really [ __ ] boring song
[01:12:20] after a while." And I was like, "That's
[01:12:23] the way to put it."
[01:12:26] And
[01:12:28] I think the best way to help the self is
[01:12:29] to escape the self sometimes. Not by
[01:12:33] doing coke, not by getting plastered
[01:12:35] every night, but by doing what we're
[01:12:38] evolved to do, which is spend time with
[01:12:40] other people,
[01:12:42] right? doing things, not just like
[01:12:44] sitting there in a circle like AA
[01:12:48] talking about all your worries and
[01:12:50] pains, even though AA is actually
[01:12:51] spectacular
[01:12:53] organization and format. It's incredibly
[01:12:55] impressive. But you don't necessarily
[01:12:57] have to do that. You can just be a bunch
[01:12:58] of dudes sitting around a fire not
[01:12:59] making eye contact, making fart jokes,
[01:13:02] and talking about hunting. Like, that's
[01:13:03] fine. That's actually incredibly
[01:13:04] therapeutic.
[01:13:06] It's like people process things in
[01:13:08] different ways. It doesn't have to be
[01:13:10] like not everyone has to do it the same
[01:13:11] way.
[01:13:11] >> Yeah.
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[01:15:52] So th those are a few thoughts, but
[01:15:54] yeah, I mean came very the almost killed
[01:15:57] myself in college. Had a date in the
[01:15:58] calendar, had a plan, knew exactly how I
[01:16:00] was going to do it to make it look like
[01:16:02] an accident. I mean,
[01:16:04] >> how are you going to do it?
[01:16:05] >> I I won't I won't mention it because
[01:16:08] it's too good and other people will copy
[01:16:10] it. It's it's I I I've never I've uh
[01:16:15] never wanted to discuss it because there
[01:16:18] are people who are probably watching
[01:16:19] this who are in pain and until I give
[01:16:21] them maybe a glimpse of how I got out, I
[01:16:25] wouldn't want to give them any
[01:16:26] blueprint. It's just too risky. I
[01:16:28] wouldn't want to feel the responsibility
[01:16:29] for that. But
[01:16:31] uh I got really really lucky. Once
[01:16:34] again, one of those sliding door
[01:16:35] moments. If it had been two or three
[01:16:37] years later, I wouldn't be here. The
[01:16:39] reason is I went to Firestone Library at
[01:16:42] Princeton where I went undergrad. Um,
[01:16:45] funny story, but my guidance counselor
[01:16:48] in high school was like, "You should
[01:16:49] definitely not apply to Princeton or any
[01:16:51] heart schools for that matter. We can
[01:16:52] talk about that if you want, but misline
[01:16:54] incentives." Anyway, got in and
[01:16:58] um was reserving a book on assisted
[01:17:01] suicide from Firestone Library, but
[01:17:04] someone else had already taken it out.
[01:17:06] some other student was reading it and
[01:17:09] I put in a request. So you put in a
[01:17:11] request with the library. What do they
[01:17:13] do at that point in time? They would
[01:17:15] mail you a postcard.
[01:17:17] But I was taking a year away from school
[01:17:20] at that point. Took a break from
[01:17:22] undergrad, which is what the what the
[01:17:25] school and what a lot of schools will
[01:17:26] encourage you to do if they think you're
[01:17:28] having if if you claim any mental duress
[01:17:30] because they don't want suicide on their
[01:17:31] watch on their campus, right? might not
[01:17:34] help you, but they don't want that as a
[01:17:38] blemish on their record, so to speak.
[01:17:41] So, the actual postcard got mailed to my
[01:17:44] parents at home. I'd forgotten to change
[01:17:47] my mailing address at the register's
[01:17:50] office. So, postcard goes to my parents
[01:17:52] house and it's like, "Congratulations,
[01:17:54] your book is now in on assisted suicide,
[01:17:56] whatever." Mom called me freaking out
[01:17:59] and I tap danced and I lied and I was
[01:18:01] like, "Oh, it's a friend at Ruters who
[01:18:03] couldn't get the book and I was just
[01:18:04] trying to help him out." D. But it
[01:18:06] snapped me, it broke the spell. It
[01:18:08] snapped me out of it because when you're
[01:18:09] in that much pain, you think nothing can
[01:18:12] fix it. You think you're fundamentally
[01:18:13] broken, that you're uniquely flawed.
[01:18:16] You become so I I I me me that all you
[01:18:20] want is the pain to stop. Anything can
[01:18:23] must be better than this. So, let me
[01:18:26] just close the curtain and turn the show
[01:18:28] off. And when my mom called, I realized,
[01:18:31] oh, if I do this, number one, now I
[01:18:34] can't make it look like an accident.
[01:18:36] Number two, even if I tried to make it
[01:18:38] look like an accident, doing what I had
[01:18:41] planned to do would have been like
[01:18:42] putting on a suicide bomber vest,
[01:18:45] walking into a room of all the people I
[01:18:46] care most about and detonating. Like,
[01:18:48] psychologically, emotionally, that would
[01:18:51] have been the impact. And so, I didn't
[01:18:54] do it. and
[01:18:56] quadrupled down on physical training,
[01:18:58] which is how I ended up doing the going
[01:19:00] to the nationals for uh Chinese
[01:19:02] kickboxing in the US. I was like, you
[01:19:05] know what? The only thing I know how to
[01:19:07] do that gets me out out of my head is
[01:19:10] train under imminent threat of being
[01:19:12] kicked or punched in the face. Like, I
[01:19:14] am not allowed to daydream under those
[01:19:16] circumstances. So, I'm just going to
[01:19:17] train hours a day. And that's what I
[01:19:20] ended up doing. And ultimately
[01:19:23] everything was fine. Like there was a
[01:19:25] there there were there were some reasons
[01:19:26] for me getting as deep into that hole as
[01:19:28] I did. Not all my fault. And much later,
[01:19:33] this is probably only 10 years ago, I
[01:19:35] wrote a post called some practical
[01:19:37] thoughts on suicide. And like if
[01:19:39] anyone's feeling really dark, like go
[01:19:42] read that post. Like it it has saved
[01:19:44] hundreds of lives. Uh and it doesn't
[01:19:47] sugarcoat anything. The reason I wrote
[01:19:49] that is I was at an event in San
[01:19:52] Francisco at the time being interviewed
[01:19:54] on stage. I got off and a couple people
[01:19:56] came over and there's a small circle
[01:19:57] around me. They wanted books signed and
[01:19:58] things like that. And this really nice
[01:20:01] guy, you know, dressed up in a suit and
[01:20:03] everything for the event gave me this
[01:20:06] book and he's like, "Oh yeah, I just
[01:20:07] wanted you to sign this for my brother."
[01:20:09] And I was like, "Sure, no problem. What
[01:20:10] would you like me to say to your
[01:20:11] brother?" And he just kind of froze. And
[01:20:12] it was like a weird
[01:20:15] um
[01:20:16] interaction. I couldn't quite figure it
[01:20:19] out, but I was like, you know what? I
[01:20:21] tell you what, let's chat afterwards.
[01:20:22] You can think about it for a bit. I'll
[01:20:23] sign it afterwards. And then I went on
[01:20:25] and interacted with everybody else. And
[01:20:27] then as I was walking back to the
[01:20:29] elevator to leave, he joined me and he
[01:20:32] was like, "Yeah, I'm really sorry I
[01:20:33] froze, but my brother killed himself."
[01:20:36] And my mom has kept his room exactly as
[01:20:38] it was. And he was such a huge fan of
[01:20:40] yours and I just wasn't sure what to put
[01:20:43] in the book and
[01:20:46] ended up signing the book. I gave it to
[01:20:47] him and he's like, "Have you ever
[01:20:48] thought about talking about anything
[01:20:49] related to mental health?" He's like,
[01:20:51] "Because my brother listened to you."
[01:20:54] And I was like, "Fuck."
[01:20:57] Okay. And it took me months. I was not
[01:21:00] committed to publishing it, but I spent
[01:21:04] months working on this piece, some
[01:21:06] practical thoughts on suicide. And then
[01:21:09] uh like my parents didn't really know,
[01:21:11] right? Because I'd lied.
[01:21:13] >> Family didn't know. Best friends didn't
[01:21:15] know.
[01:21:16] And um and I certainly like the
[01:21:24] two things that I would say I'm proudest
[01:21:25] of in terms of publishing
[01:21:29] probably if I had to pick two.
[01:21:34] If I had to pick two, it' be the blog
[01:21:36] post on suicide,
[01:21:38] right? some practical thoughts on
[01:21:40] suicide and then the podcast during
[01:21:42] COVID on the childhood abuse which also
[01:21:45] like parents didn't know about nobody
[01:21:47] knew about
[01:21:48] >> only parents didn't know about that
[01:21:51] >> nobody nobody knew cuz I didn't want
[01:21:54] them to blame their themselves I I had
[01:21:56] intended to like write a book after they
[01:21:57] passed away so they wouldn't blame
[01:21:59] themselves and then during co right this
[01:22:03] is early co people don't know what's
[01:22:04] coming like it's scary right like
[01:22:07] and
[01:22:12] and I was I was I remember I had flown
[01:22:16] to Costa Rica to have some optionality
[01:22:17] in terms of travel. I was like, "All
[01:22:19] right, let me figure out what's going on
[01:22:20] here." Like a friend of mine who works
[01:22:22] with a lot of hedge fund managers had
[01:22:23] given me a very early heads up on CO and
[01:22:25] I was like, "Oh, this is bad. This could
[01:22:27] be really bad. Let's try to preserve as
[01:22:30] much optionality as possible. We're
[01:22:32] leaving now." So I ended up in Costa
[01:22:34] Rica and we're sitting there having a
[01:22:36] meal and somehow this came up because
[01:22:39] she knew about it. There were two
[01:22:40] girlfriends like longterm long long-term
[01:22:42] girlfriends cuz as I was mentioning
[01:22:45] earlier when you're like cauterized and
[01:22:46] compartmentalized like there are a lot
[01:22:48] of relationship costs. So there's a that
[01:22:51] works up to a point and then you hit a
[01:22:53] wall and suddenly it doesn't work.
[01:22:55] >> And so with these girlfriends who are
[01:22:57] you know three, four, five, six years,
[01:22:59] right?
[01:23:01] There was a point where I shared with
[01:23:02] these two women specifically
[01:23:05] uh I guess it was three long-term
[01:23:07] girlfriends about the abuse and this
[01:23:10] this this one girlfriend
[01:23:13] I was talking about writing the book and
[01:23:15] she's like you know we're sitting in the
[01:23:16] middle of co she's like have you ever
[01:23:18] thought about how many people are going
[01:23:19] to die of natural or unnatural causes
[01:23:24] before you ever write that book like
[01:23:26] it's going to be 10 years 15 years she
[01:23:29] was like why don't you do podcast and I
[01:23:31] was like
[01:23:33] cuz I don't want to talk to my parents.
[01:23:34] I don't want to talk to my friends. Like
[01:23:37] it's too vulnerable. It's too
[01:23:39] vulnerable. But ultimately
[01:23:42] uh I had had a friend Debbie Milman
[01:23:45] amazing human being, incredible graphic
[01:23:47] artist, teacher. Uh Design Matters is
[01:23:50] her podcast been running even longer
[01:23:51] than mine. And when she came on my show,
[01:23:56] I had noticed in all my research she had
[01:23:58] never really talked about her family.
[01:23:59] And so I asked her before we started
[01:24:00] recording, I was like, "Would you be
[01:24:02] open to talking about your family at
[01:24:03] all? I've noticed a huge glaring
[01:24:05] omission." And she was like,
[01:24:09] "Maybe." She's like, "You can try it."
[01:24:11] And then if I'm open to it, we'll talk
[01:24:12] about it, but if not, then not. And we
[01:24:14] were friends.
[01:24:16] And we got into it. And she opened up
[01:24:20] for the first time really publicly about
[01:24:22] horrifying
[01:24:24] sexual abuse like throughout her entire
[01:24:26] childhood. And
[01:24:28] >> it's crazy how many kids go through this
[01:24:30] [ __ ]
[01:24:30] >> Yeah, it's awful. And I mean, the
[01:24:33] numbers are staggering. Like, it's
[01:24:34] really high.
[01:24:34] >> Oh, I know. 50% of the people that have
[01:24:37] been on here
[01:24:38] >> have talked about it.
[01:24:40] >> And then there's another percentage that
[01:24:41] won't that will that will talk about it,
[01:24:44] but not on camera.
[01:24:45] >> Yeah. So, it's it's pervasive. And so I
[01:24:49] asked Debbie if she would be open to
[01:24:52] having a conversation with me about how
[01:24:55] we've both tried to overcome or address
[01:25:00] this cuz she and I took very very very
[01:25:02] different paths and used very different
[01:25:04] tools. And so we recorded the
[01:25:06] conversation and I told her in advance I
[01:25:07] was like look Debbie I don't know if I'm
[01:25:09] going to ever publish this. She was like
[01:25:10] that's totally fine. And we recorded it
[01:25:13] eventually. I was just like,
[01:25:16] "All right, here goes nothing."
[01:25:18] And
[01:25:20] published that, stayed off of all social
[01:25:22] media. I was told my team, I was like,
[01:25:24] "I don't want to see any feedback unless
[01:25:26] it's from people I care about and it's
[01:25:28] positive feedback." I was like, "I'm too
[01:25:29] It's too raw. Like, I don't want to
[01:25:31] Internet's a nasty place, right? It's a
[01:25:34] It's a full contact sport where every
[01:25:36] [ __ ] village idiot has been given
[01:25:38] like a halbird and a mace, right? It's
[01:25:40] it's not pretty. So I was like, I'm
[01:25:42] staying off of everything.
[01:25:44] >> But the opposite happened, didn't it?
[01:25:46] >> Well, I ignored everything except the
[01:25:49] only people who could reach me were my
[01:25:51] close friends. So what happened? I would
[01:25:54] say
[01:25:55] somewhere between 25 and 35% of some of
[01:25:59] my oldest, closest friends reached out
[01:26:02] and left me the most heart-wrenching
[01:26:07] voice memos and voicemails you can
[01:26:09] imagine about their own abuse that
[01:26:11] they'd never told anyone about.
[01:26:14] [ __ ] horrible. Uh,
[01:26:17] I had anticipated bad behavior on the
[01:26:20] internet, so I stayed away. I did not
[01:26:22] expect such a high percentage of my
[01:26:25] really close friends to
[01:26:29] confine me. That was that was that was
[01:26:31] really hard. Um
[01:26:33] but I have a lot of for whatever reason
[01:26:36] capacity for like that
[01:26:40] with friends with people I care about. I
[01:26:41] have a lot of capacity for handling
[01:26:43] that. So uh [ __ ] man. How did it feel?
[01:26:50] It felt it felt the and I had to decide
[01:26:54] in advance what would what the what
[01:26:57] feeling would make it worth it, right?
[01:26:59] Because no outcome's guaranteed. You
[01:27:00] have no idea what's going to happen when
[01:27:01] this thing gets released into the wild.
[01:27:03] So, it was like it was an unbburdening
[01:27:04] for myself, right? Wasn't expecting
[01:27:09] apologies from anybody. I wasn't
[01:27:10] expecting a make good. I wasn't
[01:27:14] expecting
[01:27:16] any Harry Potter magic spell to do
[01:27:20] control- z undo on these experiences.
[01:27:23] I just I was exhausted by carrying the
[01:27:26] weight of that secret around.
[01:27:28] >> Mhm.
[01:27:29] >> And
[01:27:31] furthermore, I had had this um very
[01:27:34] skilled therapist tell me at one point
[01:27:37] um and maybe she just didn't realize
[01:27:39] that this would stick. I guess we very
[01:27:41] seldom realize these little things we
[01:27:43] might say that actually can make a big
[01:27:44] difference to people. She said, "Take
[01:27:46] take them take the pain and make it part
[01:27:48] of your medicine."
[01:27:50] And
[01:27:52] by taking my own experience
[01:27:55] and turning it into something hopefully
[01:27:57] that would help people, it gave it some
[01:28:00] redemption. It gave it some meaning. Am
[01:28:03] I glad it happened? No. Right. When
[01:28:05] people say it's like, "Well, it made me
[01:28:06] who I am." [ __ ] that. Like if I could
[01:28:08] remove that, I would remove it for sure.
[01:28:10] The amount of damage that's done is
[01:28:12] unbelievable.
[01:28:15] And it certainly contributed to the near
[01:28:16] suicide in retrospect, right? I thought
[01:28:19] I had 17 different problems, but when
[01:28:20] you look back hindsight 2020, it's like,
[01:28:23] oh yeah, all that stuff makes sense. It
[01:28:25] was one like it was like hardware like
[01:28:28] genetics plus trauma. Like is that
[01:28:30] >> Did you learn that through psychedelics?
[01:28:33] That's part I I would say it's one of
[01:28:34] the tools that made it very clear where
[01:28:37] I was able to see how these seemingly
[01:28:41] disconnected pieces of puzzle fit
[01:28:43] together perfectly.
[01:28:45] And
[01:28:47] um
[01:28:50] psychedelics are are are fascinating for
[01:28:52] a lot of reasons. Um, I've stepped
[01:28:56] outside of the public discussion of
[01:28:59] psychedelics largely in the last few
[01:29:01] years because, um, I've just been
[01:29:04] disgusted by all the infighting and
[01:29:05] humans being humans. Like there's
[01:29:09] humans just cannot resist
[01:29:12] soiling the nest, peeing in the pool,
[01:29:14] choose your metaphor. It's like all of
[01:29:16] the infighting and nonsense and politics
[01:29:19] and power grabbing that you see in any
[01:29:21] group of humans, you also see within the
[01:29:23] psychedelic ecosystem, right? So, anyone
[01:29:24] anyone who thinks you just need to put
[01:29:26] LSD in the water supply and we're going
[01:29:27] to have world peace, like I'm like, you
[01:29:29] should go to a psychedelic go to a
[01:29:31] psychedelic go to a psychedelic
[01:29:33] conference and see all the assholeery
[01:29:35] >> and [ __ ] of foot and trust me, I can
[01:29:38] assure you that that will not work. Um,
[01:29:41] and at the same time, I mean, some of
[01:29:44] the most beautiful, wonderful,
[01:29:47] inexplicable, and also painful
[01:29:49] experiences I've ever had have involved
[01:29:51] psychedelics.
[01:29:53] And uh, you do need to be very, very
[01:29:55] careful with them. I I really feel like
[01:29:57] as uh, one of my good friends who passed
[01:29:59] away due to cancer, but Roland Griffiths
[01:30:02] of John's Hopkins, he's he said in
[01:30:04] effect like you're using
[01:30:08] psychological nuclear power
[01:30:10] It's like it doesn't just bend one way,
[01:30:14] right? Like it's inducing a level of
[01:30:17] plasticity and suggestability and
[01:30:20] malleability,
[01:30:22] but how you shape that Play-Doh once
[01:30:24] it's heated up matters a lot. So, you
[01:30:27] can't just dose and run.
[01:30:29] >> It's like the experience does matter.
[01:30:31] Experience itself does matter. But the
[01:30:33] way I encourage people to think about it
[01:30:36] is number one, like treat it as if you
[01:30:38] were going in to have brain surgery.
[01:30:41] You're not going to find a shaman on
[01:30:43] Facebook for your brain surgery. So if
[01:30:47] your friend's like, "Bro, yeah, I got an
[01:30:48] awesome shaman who's coming in and like
[01:30:50] come sit this weekend." And it's like
[01:30:53] three days till the weekend. Like you
[01:30:54] would never do that if you were having
[01:30:56] your skull opened up. don't do it in my
[01:30:59] opinion without a lot of prep and
[01:31:01] consideration.
[01:31:03] >> So you have a very healthy respect. I
[01:31:05] have a very healthy respect because
[01:31:08] uh and this isn't scaremongering. It's
[01:31:10] just a fact of the matter. There's a lot
[01:31:11] of surv survivorship bias in the sense
[01:31:14] that in in
[01:31:17] you tend to especially up until a few
[01:31:21] years ago, you hear about all the
[01:31:23] amazing transformations.
[01:31:25] The people who get their psyche
[01:31:27] shattered and who have some type of
[01:31:31] persistent perceptual disorder,
[01:31:34] they're not necessarily showcasing that.
[01:31:36] They're not sharing it. They might be
[01:31:38] ashamed. They might get criticized by
[01:31:40] friends who are proilitizers for
[01:31:43] psychedelics who take their difficult
[01:31:47] experience as a risk to the quote
[01:31:49] unquote movement. Right? There's there
[01:31:50] are a lot of forces at work and dynamics
[01:31:53] at play that make it challenging for
[01:31:55] people who have hard experiences to get
[01:31:57] the help they need. But as someone who
[01:32:01] I mean I had a podcast in 2015 about
[01:32:04] Ibgain and Ibane in Mexico specifically
[01:32:08] and
[01:32:10] I've been around these things certainly
[01:32:12] not as long as many like there are
[01:32:14] facilitators who have tens of thousands
[01:32:17] of sessions under their belts over 40 50
[01:32:20] years. I mean these people know
[01:32:21] infinitely more than I do. And certainly
[01:32:22] ind indigenous practitioners are coming
[01:32:25] through practices handed down from
[01:32:28] generation to generation for hundreds of
[01:32:30] thousands of years. We haven't even
[01:32:32] begin to not beginning to scratch the
[01:32:34] surface there. But I've had enough time,
[01:32:36] I would say, as someone who's taken it
[01:32:38] very seriously and
[01:32:41] effectively had researching and
[01:32:44] experiencing and experimenting around
[01:32:45] psychedelics as my unpaid full-time job
[01:32:48] for 10 years to say that once I had a
[01:32:53] platform,
[01:32:55] the number of emails that come over the
[01:32:57] transom from people who have been
[01:32:59] destabilized is not trivial, right?
[01:33:02] >> No [ __ ]
[01:33:03] >> Yeah, it's not trivial. And you can you
[01:33:06] can
[01:33:09] you can mitigate some of the risks.
[01:33:11] There are better or I should say safer
[01:33:15] and less safe ways of approaching
[01:33:17] different psychedelics. And it depends
[01:33:19] on the compound, right? Like a
[01:33:20] psychedelic is not a psychedelic is not
[01:33:22] a psychedelic.
[01:33:23] >> Mhm. Like these are as different
[01:33:27] as completely separate classes of drugs
[01:33:30] in some cases in my opinions and even at
[01:33:32] different doses they behave very
[01:33:34] differently.
[01:33:36] So it's like 10 micrograms of LSD is
[01:33:38] very different than 200 micrograms of
[01:33:40] LSD as an example. But I I would just
[01:33:44] say that take it seriously, right? And
[01:33:46] if you're going to consider these tools,
[01:33:50] the way I put it with folks because a
[01:33:52] lot of friends come to me to discuss
[01:33:55] this is I say you should look at this as
[01:33:57] like you're having the neurosurgery
[01:34:00] example is a good one, but let's use
[01:34:03] perhaps a better comparison in some
[01:34:06] respects, which is you're about to have
[01:34:07] both knees or both hips replaced.
[01:34:10] Okay? So, you're going to do a lot of
[01:34:12] homework on who's going to do that
[01:34:13] surgery, and you're going to understand
[01:34:16] all the risks involved. You're going to
[01:34:18] understand the durability, right? You
[01:34:20] might need to get those hips replaced
[01:34:21] later again.
[01:34:23] And what are you going to do? You're
[01:34:24] going to do a lot of rehab.
[01:34:26] >> Mhm.
[01:34:27] >> It's like the surgery is the catalyst,
[01:34:30] but it's like if if you have both knees
[01:34:32] replaced and you don't do any rehab,
[01:34:35] that could have a worse outcome than not
[01:34:36] having surgery in the first place. Mhm.
[01:34:38] >> So what you do afterwards really matters
[01:34:41] and there's a lot of uh I think
[01:34:43] compelling research and a number of
[01:34:45] theories around this that I think
[01:34:49] I think are very credible from say Gul
[01:34:51] Dolan who is a researcher who I believe
[01:34:53] now is at UC Berkeley used to be at
[01:34:56] Hopkins who looked at MDMA extensively
[01:35:00] among octopuses also
[01:35:03] >> and how octopuses and how octopuses
[01:35:05] would which are very asocial or
[01:35:08] antisocial most of the time. But how
[01:35:10] even with a completely different nervous
[01:35:12] system, how they would dis display
[01:35:13] pro-social behavior just like humans on
[01:35:15] MDMA.
[01:35:16] >> Oh,
[01:35:17] >> really fascinating stuff.
[01:35:19] >> But what she is also looking at now is
[01:35:21] how you might use psychedelics to and I
[01:35:25] might be getting some of the details
[01:35:26] wrong, but I'm not that far off to say
[01:35:28] help stroke patients to redevelop motor
[01:35:31] control.
[01:35:33] Is there an application there? And
[01:35:36] the reason that she's looking at
[01:35:38] potential applications like that is that
[01:35:40] she believes certain psychedelics open a
[01:35:44] a reopen a critical period or a critical
[01:35:47] window. Much like if kids don't learn to
[01:35:49] say speak a language within a certain
[01:35:52] age range, right? It's much later to do
[01:35:54] later. There's a there's a critical
[01:35:55] developmental window for certain things.
[01:35:59] Can you reopen those windows using
[01:36:01] psychedelics? And it seems like the
[01:36:03] answer is yes. In which case, all of the
[01:36:06] advice that the old-timers have been
[01:36:08] giving about integrations for people who
[01:36:11] might be familiar with iawaska in a
[01:36:12] traditional context, the diets
[01:36:14] afterwards, abstaining from certain
[01:36:16] things
[01:36:17] for a few weeks. What does that sound a
[01:36:20] lot like? sounds a lot like what science
[01:36:22] is only beginning to scratch the surface
[01:36:24] of which is the reopening of these these
[01:36:27] critical periods or critical windows
[01:36:29] within which you can start to rewrite
[01:36:32] behaviors
[01:36:33] like before the concrete sets. So, I'm
[01:36:37] very, I would say,
[01:36:43] mind blown and impressed with what these
[01:36:46] compounds can do
[01:36:48] as part of a larger context of some type
[01:36:52] of therapy. There are a lot of different
[01:36:54] approaches to this. Mhm.
[01:36:56] >> Um, and the westernized version of like
[01:37:00] neo shamanic practices is very different
[01:37:02] from what they actually do in whether it
[01:37:05] be the Amazon or Africa or fill in the
[01:37:09] blank, right? Like the practices are
[01:37:11] very different or the Metexs in Mexico,
[01:37:13] etc. So, I would say I'm very impressed
[01:37:16] and I'm also very conservative. And the
[01:37:18] vast majority of people who come to me
[01:37:20] and they're like, "Yeah, yeah, I really
[01:37:21] want to do psychedelics." I talk them
[01:37:23] out of it, not into it
[01:37:25] >> really.
[01:37:26] >> Yeah. The vast majority I talk out of
[01:37:28] it. Um,
[01:37:31] which is not to say I think the the
[01:37:33] risks outweigh the benefits, but there
[01:37:35] there are certain people if you have
[01:37:36] family history of schizophrenia or
[01:37:38] borderline personality disorder, I do
[01:37:39] not recommend using these things, which
[01:37:42] is another reason why I'm so excited
[01:37:43] about the different types of brain
[01:37:46] stimulation or vag nerve stimulation
[01:37:49] because or this is another one actually
[01:37:51] that I'll throw out there, metabolic
[01:37:53] psychiatry using diet, the ketogenic
[01:37:56] diet specifically. There's a associate
[01:37:59] professor I think he's still an
[01:38:00] associate professor at Harvard named
[01:38:01] Chris Palmer
[01:38:03] who has looked at this very extensively
[01:38:05] for certain let's call it people aren't
[01:38:08] going to like this some folks but
[01:38:09] chaotic
[01:38:12] psychiatric disorders so let's just say
[01:38:14] there's a river and you can swim in the
[01:38:16] middle that's like complete normaly
[01:38:17] that's pretty much no one and then on
[01:38:19] one side you have hyper rigidity let's
[01:38:21] just say which is like OCD
[01:38:24] depression chronic anxiety anorexos
[01:38:28] which are all characterized in a sense
[01:38:30] by a certain looping and rigidity.
[01:38:33] Uh which is part of the reason why I
[01:38:35] think psychedelics are mysteriously
[01:38:38] effective for this constellation of
[01:38:42] seemingly different diagnosis, right?
[01:38:44] They're on this rigidity side. I think
[01:38:47] classical psychedelics can be very very
[01:38:49] helpful for that side of things. Then on
[01:38:51] the other side of the river, you've got,
[01:38:52] let's just call it, a more chaotic
[01:38:55] constellation of disorders, which would
[01:38:57] include schizophrenia, borderline
[01:39:00] personality disorder.
[01:39:02] On that side of the river, it would seem
[01:39:04] that something like metabolic psychiatry
[01:39:06] is very, very interesting. You see
[01:39:08] people who have been on dozens of
[01:39:10] medications and they're on the ketogenic
[01:39:11] diet for four weeks and then they get
[01:39:13] off of all of their medications.
[01:39:15] >> Are you serious?
[01:39:16] >> Yeah, it is shocking. Shocking. So like
[01:39:19] the three let's just call it current it
[01:39:22] could get replaced but pillars of the
[01:39:28] mental health like technology stool for
[01:39:31] me that are most interesting
[01:39:33] ketones and metabolic psychiatry
[01:39:36] brain stimulation or bioelectric
[01:39:38] medicine more broadly bioelectric
[01:39:41] medicine and then psychedelic assisted
[01:39:42] therapies but I'm tool agnostic like
[01:39:44] psychedelics at the time were most
[01:39:47] interesting most compelling because of
[01:39:48] some of the effects that you were seeing
[01:39:49] and the durability, right, with PTSD,
[01:39:54] with major depressive disorder, with
[01:39:57] alcoholism through like NYU addiction,
[01:40:00] which by the way is not new. We were
[01:40:01] doing this research with LSD in like the
[01:40:03] 50s.
[01:40:04] >> Were we really?
[01:40:04] >> Yeah. 50s and 60s. And then once Nixon
[01:40:08] signed it off into prohibition era, that
[01:40:11] all went away.
[01:40:12] >> And there were a lot of political
[01:40:14] motivations behind that. It was not
[01:40:15] there was there was not a scientific
[01:40:17] reason for that. was more politically
[01:40:18] motivated. But um the point being that
[01:40:25] I'm very excited about what the future
[01:40:27] holds for psychedelic assisted
[01:40:29] therapies. Um but I've been most
[01:40:32] interested in the science once it turns
[01:40:33] into like policy and politicking and
[01:40:36] grandstanding and befriending the right
[01:40:38] special interest groups.
[01:40:39] >> Yeah.
[01:40:40] >> It's not I have zero patience for that
[01:40:42] stuff. I just can't I have a lot of
[01:40:44] trouble with it. So I prefer to just
[01:40:46] deal with the scientists
[01:40:48] and the practitioners. Like I've been
[01:40:50] very heavily involved with uh groups
[01:40:52] like the uh Amazon conservation team and
[01:40:56] looking at indigenous land rights and
[01:40:58] really trying to the extent possible to
[01:41:01] support and reciprocate these groups who
[01:41:03] effectively gave the world these things
[01:41:06] that are now being medicalized. Right. I
[01:41:08] I do think that's important. Do think
[01:41:10] that's really important. Um especially
[01:41:13] since some of these folks operate in
[01:41:15] such hostile territories. I mean you've
[01:41:17] got like illegal mining interests,
[01:41:18] you've got uh logging, agriculture,
[01:41:22] narcos, like you know these folks are
[01:41:24] routinely assassinated indigenous
[01:41:26] leaders all over the place. You look at
[01:41:28] Brazil, you have Colombia, Mexico, it's
[01:41:30] it's a it's a very very tough world that
[01:41:35] they inhabit in a lot of ways.
[01:41:36] >> What got you interested in psychedelics
[01:41:38] to begin with? I've always been
[01:41:40] interested in altered states of
[01:41:43] consciousness ever since I was a little
[01:41:45] kid
[01:41:46] >> and
[01:41:48] I don't know exactly where that comes
[01:41:50] from. Uh I think it was just suspecting
[01:41:52] that there was on some level I think
[01:41:57] researchers like Donald Hoffman, he's a
[01:42:00] [ __ ] Bronco he could have on. But I
[01:42:03] there was always part of me that kind of
[01:42:05] suspected that this was what we're
[01:42:06] looking at here and experiencing like a
[01:42:08] a user interface. It's like a desktop on
[01:42:11] a computer where it's like, okay, we
[01:42:13] have these icons and so on that
[01:42:15] represent something, but that this is
[01:42:17] just a one interface, right? If we were
[01:42:20] a mantis shrimp or a different animal,
[01:42:24] like it wouldn't look or feel like this,
[01:42:26] >> right? So this is a reality but it's not
[01:42:30] the end all be all objective reality. I
[01:42:33] always just had that feeling. Uh and
[01:42:38] you can explore that f through through a
[01:42:40] purely scientific
[01:42:43] physicalist lens, right? You don't have
[01:42:46] to get out there. You you don't have to
[01:42:47] be running around the full moon swinging
[01:42:49] a dead cat over your head with a hawk
[01:42:51] wing, right? like you don't have to get
[01:42:53] into pure woo territory to qu to ask
[01:42:56] some questions about things. Uh, and
[01:42:58] then I would say later,
[01:43:01] uh, I was always interested in mythology
[01:43:04] and my my mom got me this crazy book. I
[01:43:07] think it was on the remainder table
[01:43:08] called a lyanthropy reader. And a
[01:43:11] lyanthropy reader was a historical
[01:43:14] collection of essays on
[01:43:17] the mythology and belief of
[01:43:20] shapeshifting,
[01:43:22] which you see in pretty much every
[01:43:24] culture, right? whether it's like
[01:43:28] North American plains Indians or Siberia
[01:43:31] or wherever right and there were
[01:43:33] chapters in there about uh the use of
[01:43:37] different plants so Mandre Belelladana
[01:43:43] Henbane etc by quote unquote witches or
[01:43:47] werewolves right who would basically go
[01:43:50] on these incredible psychotropic
[01:43:52] journeys and then come back with stories
[01:43:54] of shape shift
[01:43:56] which are still very common in the
[01:43:57] Amazon by the way, these this belief and
[01:44:00] these um these types of stories.
[01:44:04] Uh I mean they would they might call
[01:44:06] them skills or powers, right? I mean
[01:44:08] dieting certain plants is intended to
[01:44:10] help you with some of this stuff. So
[01:44:13] that opened the door to me asking like
[01:44:16] okay let's just assume for the time
[01:44:18] being that people cannot turn into
[01:44:20] animals but like
[01:44:22] the idea that you could ingest a plant
[01:44:24] or put on a salve that would so
[01:44:27] fundamentally change your consciousness
[01:44:29] that you would come back with complete
[01:44:30] belief that you had done it was also
[01:44:32] interesting to me.
[01:44:33] >> Right. So I then became this sort of
[01:44:36] intrepid,
[01:44:38] very amateur
[01:44:39] biochemist looking at how that might
[01:44:41] happen, right? And so you combine that
[01:44:43] then with the fear of Alzheimer's in my
[01:44:45] family and it just led me to really want
[01:44:48] to focus on brain function and
[01:44:53] a few things happened around the same
[01:44:55] time. Towards the end of high school, I
[01:44:58] read a book called Exploring the World
[01:45:01] of Lucid Dreaming by Steven Leberge.
[01:45:04] And
[01:45:06] still to this day, I think it is one of
[01:45:09] the most impressive books
[01:45:12] I have found
[01:45:14] uh for teaching a skill in a systematic
[01:45:16] way. And it teaches you how to induce
[01:45:19] lucidity in your dreams. And it's it's
[01:45:21] nothing
[01:45:23] mysterious. I shouldn't say that. It is
[01:45:26] it is provable within the confines of a
[01:45:29] laboratory
[01:45:30] that you can cultivate the ability to
[01:45:33] control your dreams and become conscious
[01:45:35] in your dreams. And and the way they
[01:45:37] demonstrate the way they demonstrated
[01:45:38] this is like got an EEG
[01:45:40] >> or other means of confirming that
[01:45:43] someone is in a sleep state and you
[01:45:47] devise in advance for instance eye
[01:45:49] movement. Like when you're asleep what
[01:45:50] happens? rapid eye movement, right? Your
[01:45:52] eye movement still correlates to what
[01:45:54] you're doing in a dream. So, you
[01:45:56] determine a in advance a sequence
[01:45:59] between experimenttor and subject where
[01:46:01] it's like morse code basically. It's
[01:46:03] like right, right, left, right, right,
[01:46:04] left, right, right, left, and then when
[01:46:06] the person's in the dream, they just
[01:46:08] perform that eye sequence.
[01:46:10] >> Are you kidding me?
[01:46:11] >> Yeah. So,
[01:46:13] as I started really once I got accepted
[01:46:16] to college, I was like, I can do
[01:46:18] whatever I want now. like he's just he's
[01:46:20] just basically wrestling. All I wanted
[01:46:22] to do was compete and go to nationals
[01:46:24] and do well and lucid dreaming. That was
[01:46:26] it. And uh with within pretty short
[01:46:30] order, I'd say within a month or so,
[01:46:32] some people come to it very naturally.
[01:46:34] Within a month or so, I could get to the
[01:46:35] point where I was inducing lucidity like
[01:46:36] once or twice a night. And
[01:46:40] that is a
[01:46:42] that is a bizarre experience when you
[01:46:45] get to the point where you can actually
[01:46:48] modify your dream at will or extend your
[01:46:51] dream in certain ways. And at first I'm
[01:46:55] going to tell everybody in advance what
[01:46:57] you're going to do. You might protest,
[01:46:59] but what everyone's going to do is
[01:47:00] they're going to do two things. They're
[01:47:02] going to fly as much as possible and
[01:47:04] they're going to [ __ ] as many people as
[01:47:05] possible. Those are the two things
[01:47:07] everyone's going to do. So then you'll
[01:47:08] like you'll fly around and [ __ ]
[01:47:10] everybody for a while and then you can
[01:47:13] and then and then you can start messing
[01:47:15] around in some really peculiar ways. So
[01:47:18] what I was doing at the time, one of my
[01:47:20] favorite wrestlers, just a phenom, John
[01:47:22] Smith from Oklahoma,
[01:47:25] famous for lowle attacks. Never met the
[01:47:27] guy, but I watched tons of video. So at
[01:47:30] night in my dreams I would have
[01:47:33] wrestling practice with John Smith
[01:47:35] >> and it and it improved my wrestling in
[01:47:38] real life.
[01:47:40] >> Uh so there are some really unexpected
[01:47:45] levers that you can pull and corners you
[01:47:48] can explore just through lucid dreaming.
[01:47:50] And it does take work. You have to train
[01:47:52] up to it. You have to have a very
[01:47:55] scheduled way to record dream content.
[01:47:59] Like it it is a practice. But that also
[01:48:02] kind of raised a lot of questions like
[01:48:05] huh okay well if I learned something 10
[01:48:08] years ago could I use lucid dreaming to
[01:48:09] go back and pull those books off the
[01:48:11] shelf? Is that possible?
[01:48:13] Maybe. Uh and then I would say very
[01:48:18] early college. So this would have been
[01:48:21] actually no it was it was still in high
[01:48:22] school in at the very end of high school
[01:48:26] I had my first experiences with
[01:48:27] psychedelics
[01:48:28] with mushrooms first and LSD and after
[01:48:33] that I was like oh
[01:48:36] okay
[01:48:38] I don't understand how my experience of
[01:48:40] time
[01:48:42] can be cut up into slices and rearranged
[01:48:44] in the way that I just experienced it
[01:48:46] last night
[01:48:47] >> that is
[01:48:49] that is
[01:48:51] it it doesn't really fit with my
[01:48:56] consensus experience of this reality. So
[01:49:02] what does that mean? I have no idea. But
[01:49:04] I'm interested in exploring what that
[01:49:06] might mean. So when I went to Princeton,
[01:49:08] I went to Princeton for a couple of
[01:49:10] reasons or I applied to Princeton early
[01:49:12] action which is like an exploding offer.
[01:49:14] In retrospect, I think I would have been
[01:49:16] much happier somewhere else. Princeton
[01:49:18] was a very difficult, stiff environment
[01:49:20] for me. But I went there because they
[01:49:22] had one of the best East Asian studies
[01:49:24] departments in the world. Really
[01:49:26] phenomenal
[01:49:28] uh Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.
[01:49:32] They had a very very strong psychology
[01:49:36] and neuroscience program. So like Danny
[01:49:38] Conaman was there. Uh there was a guy
[01:49:41] named Barry Jacobs who had done a bunch
[01:49:42] of research with LSD
[01:49:45] uh and did a lot of research also on the
[01:49:47] serotonin system involving cats and
[01:49:49] stuff because cats kind of sleep all the
[01:49:50] time. I really wanted to work in his
[01:49:53] lab. And then thirdly,
[01:49:56] uh there was something at the time I was
[01:49:59] very sad that it ended up getting wound
[01:50:01] down maybe a year after I got there, but
[01:50:03] there was something at Princeton called
[01:50:05] the the the pair lab. P E Princeton
[01:50:09] Engineering Anomalies Research
[01:50:11] Laboratory where uh I think I could be
[01:50:15] getting some of the details wrong, but
[01:50:16] I'm pretty at one point they had
[01:50:18] military funding or you know threeletter
[01:50:20] acronym funding. They also had money I
[01:50:22] want to say from like SRRI International
[01:50:26] to use
[01:50:28] sort of computational and quantitative
[01:50:30] measures to study things like
[01:50:33] telekinesis, remote viewing, etc. And
[01:50:37] literally that had been started by I
[01:50:39] want to say professor John J ahn I
[01:50:42] believe it was and somebody should fact
[01:50:45] check this but I'm getting pretty close
[01:50:46] I think he was the former dean of the
[01:50:50] engineering department or engineering
[01:50:52] quadrangle and one of his post not
[01:50:55] posttos but one of his grad students had
[01:50:57] looked at human influence on random
[01:51:00] number generators and he was like
[01:51:03] really he was like he's like like if you
[01:51:06] want to waste your time on this, it's
[01:51:07] not going to help you with anything.
[01:51:08] Like looks like a terrible idea to me.
[01:51:11] And then when all the data came back, he
[01:51:13] was like,
[01:51:16] >> "Okay." And ultimately became so
[01:51:18] interested that he spearheaded this
[01:51:21] engineering anomalies research
[01:51:22] laboratory.
[01:51:24] And I wanted to know what the hell they
[01:51:26] had figured out. I wanted to get a read
[01:51:28] on what they felt like they had figured
[01:51:30] out. And this is a I mean this is a
[01:51:34] high-end
[01:51:37] incredibly credible engineer, right?
[01:51:39] This isn't some rando. This is someone
[01:51:43] who was on the far side extreme skeptic
[01:51:47] end of things who ended up then
[01:51:50] spearheading this. You can still end up
[01:51:52] with beliefs that you want confirmation
[01:51:55] for. So again right the purpose of the
[01:51:57] scientific method which is really a
[01:51:59] framework for thinking is to pre is to
[01:52:01] prevent you from fooling yourself right
[01:52:06] um but all of those things came together
[01:52:11] to answer your question and I was like
[01:52:13] you know what I think that I think all
[01:52:14] of these things if for the moment we
[01:52:17] provisionally say that maybe some of
[01:52:19] those phenomena have something to them
[01:52:21] right in the anomalies research
[01:52:23] laboratory Okay. Even if you exclude
[01:52:26] that psychedelics, lucid dreaming,
[01:52:30] certain types of like religious
[01:52:31] experience that I'd read about, I was
[01:52:33] like the I feel like there's a
[01:52:35] possibility these are all touching like
[01:52:37] the hem of the same garment.
[01:52:39] >> Mhm.
[01:52:40] >> And perhaps that's all internally
[01:52:43] generated. Maybe it's like a temporal
[01:52:45] lobe epilepsy kind of seizure. Like when
[01:52:47] you look back at a lot of scripture,
[01:52:48] it's like, hm, that sounds a lot like
[01:52:50] seizure.
[01:52:52] But does that invalidate it? I don't
[01:52:54] know. Like some of the most creative
[01:52:55] people we've ever known have also had
[01:52:58] something very similar. So it's like,
[01:53:00] all right, all of it meant like I want
[01:53:03] to know what the hell is going on in
[01:53:05] here,
[01:53:06] >> if that is even possible.
[01:53:08] >> How do you even study it?
[01:53:10] >> It's like three pounds of fat sitting in
[01:53:12] this skull. What do you even do to study
[01:53:15] that? So, I mean, all of those things,
[01:53:20] uh, I would say catalyzed it. Then
[01:53:23] went went pretty hard in the paint with
[01:53:25] all of that for a while and then, uh,
[01:53:29] since I had no certainly no training, my
[01:53:31] friends and I had no training in how to
[01:53:33] structure psychedelic experiences. And I
[01:53:35] had a terrifying experience of coming
[01:53:37] out of a mushroom psychedelic experience
[01:53:40] in the middle of the night because my
[01:53:42] [ __ ] friends, so the three of us, had
[01:53:45] wandered off on some like hike and I was
[01:53:48] left alone in a house and I started
[01:53:49] looping cuz I was on a very I'm sure we
[01:53:52] weren't even measuring doses at the
[01:53:54] time, but I'm sure it was in retrospect
[01:53:56] I would say it was probably like six to
[01:53:57] eight grams of dried sllosy mushrooms,
[01:54:00] which is a lot for people who don't
[01:54:02] know. And so I was looping, looping,
[01:54:04] looping. Wandered over to my parents
[01:54:06] house. My and my friends were like, "You
[01:54:08] definitely didn't go over there." And
[01:54:08] then the next day my mom's like, "Big
[01:54:10] night, huh?" And I was like, "What do
[01:54:11] you mean?" So that was already a
[01:54:13] problem, right? I'm tripping my balls
[01:54:15] off sitting on like the kitchen floor
[01:54:16] with my parents. Like that's bad enough.
[01:54:18] But when I was walking back to this
[01:54:21] other house where I was staying with my
[01:54:22] friends, uh, I came out of my trip in
[01:54:27] pitch blackness, walking in the middle
[01:54:28] of the road, and almost got hit by an
[01:54:30] oncoming car. like the headlights coming
[01:54:33] at me is what woke me up. And then I
[01:54:34] like jumped out of the way and I was
[01:54:36] like, "Okay,
[01:54:39] we're done." And I stopped and the only
[01:54:42] reason I got back into it, the interest
[01:54:44] always persisted and the other things,
[01:54:46] the lucid dreaming, the neuroscience,
[01:54:48] the interest, all of that continued. But
[01:54:50] I was like, psychedelics, that's
[01:54:52] >> off piece. Mhm.
[01:54:54] >> Uh and then in 201
[01:54:58] 12, probably 2012, my girlfriend at the
[01:55:02] time
[01:55:03] went on retreat to Peru
[01:55:06] and did three nights of IASA and came
[01:55:09] back and was just a different person.
[01:55:12] And I was like,
[01:55:14] okay.
[01:55:15] >> Mhm.
[01:55:15] >> That's interesting. And she said, you
[01:55:17] really need to do this. And I was like,
[01:55:18] I don't think so. And she said, "It's 20
[01:55:20] years of therapy in two or three
[01:55:22] nights."
[01:55:24] And I was like, "Damn, you know me too
[01:55:25] well. That's a pretty good pitch."
[01:55:27] And I was like, "Okay." And I keep in
[01:55:30] mind, this is before I unpacked all the
[01:55:32] trauma stuff, but she was aware of it.
[01:55:34] And I was just white knuckling with my
[01:55:38] compartmentalization. I was like, "No,
[01:55:39] I'm fine. I'm fine." And then just
[01:55:40] basically around 2012 just like you know
[01:55:44] the re-entry from outer space like the
[01:55:47] front of the halls getting red hot and I
[01:55:48] was like oh okay I'm at risk of blowing
[01:55:50] apart here and two things simultaneously
[01:55:54] happened. One a friend of mine very one
[01:55:57] of the most successful photo extreme
[01:55:59] photographers in the world said you need
[01:56:02] to try some type of meditation. He's
[01:56:04] like go pay someone and do
[01:56:05] transcendental meditation. And I was
[01:56:07] like, "Uh, really? I'm going to pay like
[01:56:09] whatever it is, 500 bucks, 1,500 bucks
[01:56:11] to have some guy give me a mantra and I
[01:56:13] have to give him flowers. Are you
[01:56:14] [ __ ] kidding me?" And he's like, "You
[01:56:16] can afford it." I was just like, and
[01:56:18] he's like, "Really?" He's like, "Look at
[01:56:19] yourself." And I was like, "All right,
[01:56:20] fine." So, I started doing TM, which was
[01:56:23] actually an incredibly good investment,
[01:56:25] and the money matters. Why? Because you
[01:56:27] don't want to lose that money, and you
[01:56:30] have the accountability, so you're
[01:56:31] actually going to do it.
[01:56:34] Secondly, I started thinking about a
[01:56:36] re-entry into the playing field of
[01:56:39] psychedelics. And I was like, "All
[01:56:40] right, if I'm going to do it now that I
[01:56:42] know how to read research properly and I
[01:56:46] have access, I was living in the Bay
[01:56:47] Area. I'm like, I am in the epicenter in
[01:56:50] North America for exploring this type of
[01:56:53] thing. I'm going to do it in a really
[01:56:55] conservative stepbystep
[01:56:58] buildup leading to but not committed to
[01:57:02] potentially Iawaska. And so just thought
[01:57:05] about how to structure it safely, you
[01:57:09] know, interviewed for lack of a better
[01:57:11] term, like was hiring for a job,
[01:57:13] different facilitators, had people help
[01:57:15] me with the vetting, got reference
[01:57:17] checks. Like I, you know, I really went
[01:57:19] over the top because that experience in
[01:57:20] the middle of the street had rightfully
[01:57:23] scared the hell out of me. Like I could
[01:57:24] have very easily been hit by a car.
[01:57:26] >> Mhm.
[01:57:26] >> And it's like bad things do happen. Like
[01:57:29] people jump out of windows. Like
[01:57:31] >> I hate to say it, but like those things
[01:57:32] do happen.
[01:57:33] >> So I wanted as many safeguards as
[01:57:36] possible. And so that was sort of
[01:57:38] starting in let's call it
[01:57:41] 2011 2012 was the re-entry onto the
[01:57:45] playing field.
[01:57:47] >> Right on, man. Yeah, but being much more
[01:57:50] much more methodical about the whole
[01:57:52] thing.
[01:57:54] >> Are you a Christian?
[01:57:55] >> I I would I wouldn't identify as
[01:57:58] anything from a organized religion. Um I
[01:58:02] >> was asking you brought up scripture a
[01:58:03] couple times.
[01:58:04] >> Oh yeah. Well, I mean I think scripture
[01:58:05] I think doesn't matter if you're
[01:58:07] religious or not. I think you should
[01:58:08] read scripture. Um I think there are
[01:58:11] different ways to approach it but uh I
[01:58:14] mean if something is sort of the one of
[01:58:17] the foundations of western civilization
[01:58:20] it's like yeah maybe you should get
[01:58:21] familiar with it right like if you
[01:58:23] haven't read the constitution maybe you
[01:58:24] should read the constitution too
[01:58:26] >> it's like these are you know
[01:58:28] constitution's a much shorter read so
[01:58:30] maybe start there uh but uh
[01:58:33] >> what do you think when what do you think
[01:58:34] happens when we die
[01:58:37] >> uh what do I think happens when we die I
[01:58:39] I find it increasingly difficult to
[01:58:42] believe that
[01:58:44] we simply have a machine that gets
[01:58:46] turned off. So
[01:58:49] I think that's informed by some of the
[01:58:51] experiences on psychedelics.
[01:58:53] And I recognize I could take and I think
[01:58:56] it's important if you have a strong
[01:58:57] belief,
[01:59:00] I think it's really important that you
[01:59:02] try to attack that belief with the
[01:59:05] strongest possible version of a critic's
[01:59:08] arguments. Right? I really think that's
[01:59:10] important. If you want to become a
[01:59:11] better thinker and a better human, I
[01:59:12] think that's important. So, I recognize
[01:59:15] that I could also make a bunch of
[01:59:17] arguments for why it should just be
[01:59:19] lights out. Uh,
[01:59:22] but if I'm looking at
[01:59:26] some of the documentation around
[01:59:29] near-death experiences, if I'm looking
[01:59:31] at like the sort of
[01:59:37] CCTV like view from above where people
[01:59:40] are able to confirm things that
[01:59:42] happened, where objects were placed,
[01:59:44] what people said while they were
[01:59:46] clinically dead. It's hard to explain
[01:59:48] that with like hypoxia and
[01:59:52] death rattle spasms in the brain and
[01:59:54] erratic neuronal firing.
[01:59:57] >> Seems pretty hard to explain and there's
[01:59:58] enough of there there's enough in terms
[02:00:01] of documented cases where at the very
[02:00:04] least
[02:00:05] it raises some interesting questions. So
[02:00:08] what do I think happens when you die? I
[02:00:10] I mean the the best placeholder that I
[02:00:12] have is that consciousness is
[02:00:16] fundamental just like matter. I'm not
[02:00:19] even convinced time is fundamental, but
[02:00:24] yeah, Carlo Realli, I think his name is
[02:00:26] like there's there's some really
[02:00:27] interesting writing from physicists on
[02:00:29] time. Like it's it's not as static
[02:00:32] uniform constant as as one might like to
[02:00:34] think. But if consciousness on some
[02:00:37] level is fundamental kind of Max Plank
[02:00:39] style, then I think when you die, it's
[02:00:42] like a drop return to the ocean.
[02:00:45] >> You think what? I think that your
[02:00:47] consciousness is like what we experience
[02:00:50] as sort of a skin encapsulated ego that
[02:00:53] we associate with our self and all of
[02:00:55] that can dissolve and go away on
[02:00:56] psychedelics,
[02:00:58] >> right? And you become you have the
[02:01:00] experience of something you might call
[02:01:03] consciousness without
[02:01:04] >> collective consciousness. Is that what
[02:01:05] you're saying?
[02:01:06] >> What was that?
[02:01:06] >> A some type of a collective
[02:01:08] consciousness.
[02:01:08] >> Something like that. Yeah. Where it's
[02:01:10] like Yeah. Okay. You're a drop of water
[02:01:13] and you just get returned to the ocean.
[02:01:15] What does that subjectively mean? No
[02:01:17] idea, right? I mean, what's it like?
[02:01:20] What's it like a few months before
[02:01:23] you're born? Like, I don't know.
[02:01:25] >> I don't know, right? What is that like?
[02:01:27] Not the slightest clue, but you know,
[02:01:30] I've had conversations with people like
[02:01:32] the incredible biologist, also computer
[02:01:34] scientist,
[02:01:36] and you talked to this guy, Michael Lean
[02:01:38] out of Tufts,
[02:01:41] who is on the cutting edge of of more
[02:01:44] things than I can even list off at this
[02:01:46] point. But if you're looking at the
[02:01:49] development of a human from embryo, I
[02:01:52] know I'm getting seemingly a little off
[02:01:54] off track, but I don't think so. like
[02:01:58] the the development of consciousness
[02:02:00] which we kind of need to define but
[02:02:01] let's just let's just think of it as
[02:02:05] having an identity of me an I that is
[02:02:08] separate from the outside and maybe
[02:02:10] you're aware that you're aware right
[02:02:12] which might distinguish humans from
[02:02:14] other species in some way okay well when
[02:02:16] does that happen right is there just a
[02:02:19] point in the process where it's like
[02:02:20] Frankenstein
[02:02:23] galvanizing it's like lights on and
[02:02:25] suddenly or is it does it actually exist
[02:02:29] at a at a cellular or subcellular level
[02:02:33] and it just scales up to what we
[02:02:35] experience kind of like a beehive.
[02:02:38] I tend to lean towards the ladder,
[02:02:40] right? And I think Michael Leven would
[02:02:43] lean towards the ladder like very good
[02:02:44] scientists. These aren't people running
[02:02:46] around at Elin with tinfoil hats on. I
[02:02:48] love Elsen, by the way. No smack to I've
[02:02:50] been there before. But it's like these
[02:02:51] are people who have some of the most
[02:02:54] analytical, critically minded
[02:02:58] brains in the scientific field.
[02:03:01] >> Um, and these are these are open
[02:03:03] questions. So,
[02:03:05] uh,
[02:03:07] what do you think happens when you die?
[02:03:09] >> Well, I mean, I'm a Christian, so I
[02:03:11] think you die and you either go up or
[02:03:14] down.
[02:03:14] >> Yeah.
[02:03:15] >> Um, but
[02:03:17] >> but I don't know. I mean, when I did
[02:03:18] psychedelics, I did I mean, I was uh I
[02:03:21] don't know if I would say I was an
[02:03:22] atheist. I wasn't an atheist.
[02:03:24] >> Yeah.
[02:03:24] >> I I believed in something. I just wasn't
[02:03:27] sure. Actually, I I don't know. I don't
[02:03:29] even know how to explain. I didn't I
[02:03:31] didn't think about it. Yeah.
[02:03:32] >> You know, and um I didn't think about it
[02:03:35] until I did IEN
[02:03:39] >> and 5 DMT.
[02:03:41] >> Climb the Mount Everest of psychedelics.
[02:03:42] >> Yeah. And then um
[02:03:43] >> I want to go skiing. Okay, I'll do
[02:03:44] without oxygen down Everest. Let's go.
[02:03:46] >> Yeah. And then and then we did, you
[02:03:49] know, 5 MEO after that, which is a death
[02:03:51] experience. And um it did made me
[02:03:54] realize, oh, there's definitely
[02:03:57] something after all of this.
[02:03:58] >> Yeah.
[02:03:59] >> And uh and so
[02:04:03] that's where I landed.
[02:04:04] >> Yeah. It's so I I would say I was for a
[02:04:08] period of time like a for lack of a
[02:04:10] better descriptor like a militant
[02:04:12] atheist. Um one of my friends I was not
[02:04:14] raised religious. The school I went to,
[02:04:16] the private school was uh Episcopal, so
[02:04:19] nominally Christian, had chapel every
[02:04:22] morning outside of one or two days, but
[02:04:25] that was really for like roll call and
[02:04:27] announcements. And you could go to
[02:04:28] religious service, and I would
[02:04:29] occasionally actually go to religious
[02:04:31] service.
[02:04:32] >> Uh,
[02:04:34] but
[02:04:36] a friend of mine a few years out of
[02:04:38] college was getting divorced and he
[02:04:41] joined a church that was very, very,
[02:04:43] very extreme. And for I would say a
[02:04:48] weaponized version of religion like very
[02:04:51] extreme.
[02:04:52] >> Mhm.
[02:04:53] >> And I was incredibly worried for him.
[02:04:56] But he was very very very is very very
[02:04:59] very smart.
[02:05:01] >> And so he had done all this reading. He
[02:05:04] had kind of prepared himself for every
[02:05:05] possible counterargument. And I was like
[02:05:07] well I got to stock up on some materials
[02:05:11] here. So I bought all these books and
[02:05:14] like Burch and Russell and this this and
[02:05:15] this and we would have these long
[02:05:19] debates and I'm trying to kind of
[02:05:22] prevent him from being weaponized in
[02:05:24] this church cuz he was like the air
[02:05:27] apparent like got a really smart guy,
[02:05:29] very intense, super aggressive in
[02:05:31] everything he did. And I was very
[02:05:33] concerned but ultimately realized that
[02:05:36] at that point in time he he had no
[02:05:39] safety net. He was going through this
[02:05:40] horrible divorce. His life was falling
[02:05:42] apart. His family was having all these
[02:05:44] problems. U meaning his family of of
[02:05:46] origin.
[02:05:48] And I was like, I think if if this gets
[02:05:52] taken away, I'm not even convinced I can
[02:05:53] take it away, but if I were to be able
[02:05:55] to take it away, then what?
[02:05:59] And I was like, I'm not willing to I
[02:06:00] would rather him roll the dice with this
[02:06:04] particular church than have on my
[02:06:07] conscience that he killed himself or
[02:06:09] >> something horrible happened.
[02:06:11] >> But from that point forward, I had this
[02:06:13] really bad taste in my mouth. And so I
[02:06:16] had really strong conviction around
[02:06:19] >> not necessarily atheism, but like hyper
[02:06:21] skepticism, which I think I still have
[02:06:23] and it served me well. But
[02:06:27] after
[02:06:28] some of these psychedelic experiences
[02:06:30] and also just frankly after spending
[02:06:32] time with some of these indigenous
[02:06:34] groups with the recognition that like
[02:06:39] some of these groups also use what we
[02:06:41] might consider like stage magic, right?
[02:06:42] Like there are performances that a
[02:06:46] mentalist or someone could potentially
[02:06:48] try to replicate, right? Just like
[02:06:50] someone can mimic remote viewing, right?
[02:06:53] Like there are people who have done
[02:06:54] this. There's a great documentary called
[02:06:56] Honest Liar that people should watch. U
[02:06:59] but
[02:07:01] I've just seen too many things now and
[02:07:03] experienced too many things. Not
[02:07:05] entirely on drugs, dead sober a lot of
[02:07:08] time where I'm like there's just more to
[02:07:10] the story and we've never known the
[02:07:13] whole story. Like there's we are very
[02:07:16] very very early
[02:07:18] >> in neuroscience and psychiatry, right?
[02:07:21] Like it's like surgery 500 years ago.
[02:07:23] >> Yeah.
[02:07:24] >> So
[02:07:26] >> I mean the reason I was the reason I had
[02:07:28] asked you that is I was I was going to
[02:07:30] follow that up with you know what do you
[02:07:31] think?
[02:07:33] Are you
[02:07:35] are you solely into the science of
[02:07:39] psychedelics or is there potentially
[02:07:42] some type of spiritual component?
[02:07:44] >> Oh there's a huge spiritual component. I
[02:07:46] just don't usually talk about it because
[02:07:48] I've got so much I want to do on the
[02:07:49] scientific and policy side that if I
[02:07:52] sort of show my full hand, then people
[02:07:53] are going to be like, "Oh, that guy's a
[02:07:54] wackadoodle."
[02:07:57] So, I haven't I don't usually talk about
[02:07:59] the the stuff that I can't really defend
[02:08:03] with like randomized control trials. I
[02:08:05] don't talk too much about typically, but
[02:08:08] there's a huge spiritual component.
[02:08:10] >> Mhm.
[02:08:11] >> I don't love that word spiritual, but I
[02:08:13] don't know a better replacement.
[02:08:14] >> I don't know.
[02:08:15] >> Yeah. I don't know a better replacement,
[02:08:16] but
[02:08:18] I think that if what you're looking for
[02:08:22] is relief from something like
[02:08:24] depression, OCD,
[02:08:27] GAD, generalized anxiety disorder, I
[02:08:29] think the brain stimulation is
[02:08:31] incredibly compelling and that the
[02:08:33] effects with a successful treatment and
[02:08:38] there are some really there are some new
[02:08:40] approaches to that which make it really
[02:08:41] interesting like single day stimulation
[02:08:45] a few minutes per hour for 10 hours
[02:08:47] straight predosing with a drug called
[02:08:49] descloeran. That's it. Like that's the
[02:08:51] treatment one day. Um and you might have
[02:08:54] durability for 3 to 12 months. Like
[02:08:57] anxiety from 10 to one.
[02:08:59] >> Wow. Wow.
[02:09:01] >> Like they're not I can't say that for I
[02:09:03] can't say that reliably for any
[02:09:04] psychedelic.
[02:09:06] Um, so if you're looking for relief from
[02:09:08] those symptoms
[02:09:10] functioning in in this world,
[02:09:14] I think there are a lot of tools in the
[02:09:16] toolkit, which is good news, right?
[02:09:17] Metabolic psychiatry would be another
[02:09:18] example.
[02:09:21] If you're looking to
[02:09:24] tangibly
[02:09:25] touch something that feels timeless,
[02:09:29] whatever that is, right? even if it's
[02:09:32] just a hallucination.
[02:09:35] But if you're looking to touch something
[02:09:36] timeless and lose your fear of death,
[02:09:40] I think a lot of human suffering is
[02:09:41] wrapped around
[02:09:44] being, as far as we know, the only
[02:09:45] species that is aware of its own pending
[02:09:48] death, right?
[02:09:51] I don't think you get there through
[02:09:52] brain stimulation. Uh I do think you can
[02:09:56] get there through psychedelics.
[02:09:58] Um but we start getting into
[02:10:02] >> Are you saying take away fear of death?
[02:10:04] >> Yeah.
[02:10:05] >> Do you fear death?
[02:10:06] >> No. I fear certain declines to death.
[02:10:10] But actual death, no. I do not. Do I
[02:10:14] fear something like neurodeenerative
[02:10:16] disease? Yes, I do. But death, like,
[02:10:21] nah. I mean, I I think that
[02:10:26] you can get more out of life if you
[02:10:29] assume that you were going to die around
[02:10:31] the age of your grandparents,
[02:10:33] great-grandparents, great great
[02:10:34] grandparents. And if I look back at my
[02:10:37] family, 85 for men,
[02:10:40] >> more or less, right? It's like, okay,
[02:10:42] great. We have antibiotics. Cool. In
[02:10:45] mortality way down, great.
[02:10:48] But there's not a whole lot we've found
[02:10:51] that really extends life a lot. We could
[02:10:55] talk about some things I find
[02:10:56] interesting like sure rapamy might be
[02:10:58] interesting for people who have
[02:11:00] metabolic dysfunction and don't exercise
[02:11:01] much. Metformin may be interesting.
[02:11:04] Intermittent fasting and so on. Sure.
[02:11:06] Okay. I think there might be benefits,
[02:11:08] but they're all question marks in
[02:11:10] humans.
[02:11:11] And
[02:11:13] if you just assume you're going to die
[02:11:15] at 85, I think you make more potentially
[02:11:18] make better use of your time. Then if
[02:11:20] you're pleasantly surprised, great.
[02:11:22] Scientists come up with some like
[02:11:24] injectable cloth or gene therapy related
[02:11:27] to cloth, which is a really interesting
[02:11:28] protein. Fantastic. All right, great.
[02:11:31] You can avail yourself of that when it
[02:11:32] comes out. But until then,
[02:11:36] read on the shortness of life by Senica
[02:11:39] and it's like make every minute count
[02:11:40] cuz uh I think you can do a lot to
[02:11:42] extend your health span like how long
[02:11:46] you can function at a high level and I
[02:11:49] think certainly you have a copy of
[02:11:50] Outlive by Peter on your shelf. I would
[02:11:54] recommend people check that out. Oh
[02:11:55] yeah,
[02:11:55] >> Peter is
[02:11:58] >> he is a he is a credible
[02:12:02] >> former scientist and physician who
[02:12:07] really pays attention to the details and
[02:12:09] does not sell hype. If anything, he
[02:12:12] undersells certain things which I
[02:12:14] appreciate. So I do think there there
[02:12:17] are ways and Peter's a better resource
[02:12:20] for that, but he's also my doctor. So
[02:12:22] >> nice. Um we I've known him since 2008.
[02:12:26] Uh so yeah, make the most of your time,
[02:12:29] but like when your clock is up, your
[02:12:30] clock just might be up.
[02:12:32] >> Yeah.
[02:12:33] >> Yeah.
[02:12:33] >> Well, Tim, let's take a quick break.
[02:12:35] When we come back, I'd like to dive into
[02:12:37] uh conception of time.
[02:12:39] >> Let's do it. Yeah.
[02:12:40] >> Perfect.
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[02:14:58] All right, Tim, we're back from the
[02:14:59] break.
[02:15:01] Getting ready to move into perception of
[02:15:04] time. We were having a a mini
[02:15:07] conversation about I think I cut you off
[02:15:09] at breakfast cuz I was like, "Oh [ __ ]
[02:15:10] we got to talk about this on." So, I
[02:15:13] mean it is it's a fast it's a I mean I
[02:15:15] think about it all the time. A lot of
[02:15:17] the things that we've discussed already
[02:15:19] today I've been thinking about a lot. Uh
[02:15:21] especially the slowing down thing
[02:15:24] >> or not the slowing down thing, the the
[02:15:26] simplification, pretending that you're
[02:15:29] in poverty and then realizing, oh [ __ ]
[02:15:32] >> I can survive.
[02:15:33] >> This is nice.
[02:15:34] >> Yeah. Yeah.
[02:15:35] >> It's nice not having [ __ ] to do. It's
[02:15:36] nice not having an agenda. It's nice not
[02:15:39] being in the [ __ ] grind all the time.
[02:15:41] >> Yep. And uh but it's interesting. As
[02:15:44] nice as it is, we for some reason refuse
[02:15:47] to pull ourselves out of it.
[02:15:50] >> Yeah. I think that um
[02:15:53] most of us, if we're attempting to have
[02:15:58] healthy social fabric, live within the
[02:16:01] context of a society or a culture, and
[02:16:02] there are certain norms, there are
[02:16:04] certain expectations, there's certain
[02:16:05] rewards,
[02:16:07] >> and
[02:16:10] it's very difficult. and also probably
[02:16:12] undesirable to operate completely
[02:16:14] monastically outside of all of that. But
[02:16:18] what that means is at every turn, every
[02:16:21] moment, you will have temptation to do
[02:16:24] something that is probably not serving
[02:16:26] your long-term interest.
[02:16:27] >> You know, I mean, you're you are 100%
[02:16:31] agree with that. You're a welltraveled
[02:16:33] guy.
[02:16:34] >> I'm a welltraveled guy. I am very
[02:16:36] curious.
[02:16:38] Let's say there's a happiness scale.
[02:16:41] >> Yep. Where does the US lie compared to a
[02:16:44] lot of the other places that you've
[02:16:45] been?
[02:16:48] >> And then I'll share my
[02:16:49] >> Yeah. So, I would say
[02:16:54] in the last I'll back up and just say in
[02:16:56] the last
[02:16:58] 10 years in particular, I've been
[02:17:01] exploring a lot of the US. It is a huge
[02:17:04] country with so much diversity and I
[02:17:08] don't don't mean diversity in the DEI
[02:17:10] sense. I mean diversity in the cultural
[02:17:13] sense where if we take culture to be a
[02:17:15] shared set of beliefs and behavior. It's
[02:17:18] like going to Louisiana versus going to
[02:17:21] Upper Peninsula Michigan versus going to
[02:17:24] Maine.
[02:17:26] They might as well be different
[02:17:27] countries. Sure, we ostensibly have the
[02:17:30] same language, but they're really really
[02:17:31] different. So I think the
[02:17:35] the default baseline of happiness that I
[02:17:38] observe
[02:17:39] throughout the US varies quite a lot. Um
[02:17:44] but I would say if we're looking at
[02:17:46] countries I don't know if I'm going to
[02:17:47] get myself into hot water with some
[02:17:49] folks but this is just what I've
[02:17:50] observed. I would say that
[02:17:54] where you have rich social fabric and
[02:18:00] human interactions
[02:18:02] combined with some sense of safety.
[02:18:05] There are different types of safety you
[02:18:06] could have. That could be physical
[02:18:07] safety. That could be a social net of
[02:18:11] some type with healthcare as would be
[02:18:12] the case say in a Denmark for instance.
[02:18:18] Those things combined
[02:18:21] which offer a certain level of
[02:18:22] predictability. Not predictability
[02:18:24] across the board but
[02:18:27] I'm not sure how heavily to weight
[02:18:30] various polls
[02:18:32] and happiness reports but you might have
[02:18:35] say for instance a few years ago you had
[02:18:38] Singapore which is fascinating little
[02:18:41] country right a little postage stamp but
[02:18:43] like from swamp to what it's become is
[02:18:46] fascinating. So, Kwan Yu and so on.
[02:18:48] Nonetheless, like highly structured,
[02:18:50] quite strict, predictable, but
[02:18:53] purportedly a high level of
[02:18:55] self-reported happiness. Okay. Then you
[02:18:57] take that and you compare it to say a
[02:18:59] Denmark
[02:19:01] and you could point out a lot of
[02:19:04] differences.
[02:19:06] But if you talk to Danes about why they
[02:19:10] might rank highly on these happiness
[02:19:14] report cards, you'll get some serious
[02:19:16] responses uh mostly around like the
[02:19:19] social safety net. frankly specifically
[02:19:22] as it relates to healthcare I would say
[02:19:24] and physical safety so they don't have
[02:19:28] to worry about their kids running around
[02:19:29] outside etc. Uh, I did have one friend
[02:19:33] because you might guess from the size of
[02:19:34] my head, I've got some Scandinavian
[02:19:36] jeans. So, one of my Danish friends
[02:19:38] who's like I said, "Why are you guys so
[02:19:41] happy on these reports?" And he goes,
[02:19:42] "Low expectations."
[02:19:44] >> So, now I think there's actually
[02:19:46] something deeply profound about that in
[02:19:49] a way. If happiness,
[02:19:50] >> low expectations. Well, if happiness is
[02:19:54] if happiness is, and I'm not the first
[02:19:57] person to come up with this, but reality
[02:19:58] minus expectations, it's like, well, you
[02:20:01] can work on both of those, right?
[02:20:03] >> What do you expect? What do you feel
[02:20:05] entitled to versus your reality? And you
[02:20:08] can you can work on either side if that
[02:20:11] is in fact.
[02:20:12] >> Do you think entitlement is the same as
[02:20:15] high expect? I mean,
[02:20:16] >> they're not the same. They're not the
[02:20:17] same. Okay.
[02:20:18] >> I would say that entitlement is a ex a
[02:20:22] perverted type of high expectations
[02:20:27] in excess. Uh so there's
[02:20:31] there kind of different windows through
[02:20:34] which you can look at high expectations.
[02:20:35] I have high expectations. Look, if like
[02:20:37] someone's working on my team, if I'm
[02:20:39] working with someone, if I'm in a
[02:20:41] relationship, like I have high
[02:20:42] expectations of myself and I have high
[02:20:43] expectations of pretty much everyone
[02:20:45] around me.
[02:20:46] >> Mhm.
[02:20:47] uh in terms of let's just call it in the
[02:20:49] professional context like certain core
[02:20:52] tenants commitment to excellence
[02:20:55] shipping and meeting deadlines right
[02:20:57] certain things that are non-negotiable
[02:21:00] uh when you feel like you should have a
[02:21:02] b and c I deserve e and f I think that's
[02:21:06] where you get into murkier waters
[02:21:09] >> uh but uh then if you look at like at
[02:21:12] Costa Rica right which was also in the
[02:21:15] report that I looked at top
[02:21:18] What do they have? Very rich social
[02:21:20] environments, right? Whether it's
[02:21:22] extended family or walkable
[02:21:25] neighborhoods, etc. You can find a lot
[02:21:27] of these things in the US, maybe minus
[02:21:29] the healthcare piece, but you can find a
[02:21:32] lot of those elements in the US. So, the
[02:21:33] way you might
[02:21:35] interact with people in say Indiana or
[02:21:40] Boulder is very different from how
[02:21:42] you're going to interact with people on
[02:21:43] like the Upper East Side, right? I
[02:21:45] wouldn't say the happiness seems very
[02:21:47] high on the free side. Would not say
[02:21:49] that. Um so what's your what's been your
[02:21:52] experience
[02:21:54] >> with with happiness and travel in the
[02:21:56] world?
[02:21:56] >> Happiness in other places. I mean some
[02:21:57] of the happiest people I've ever met
[02:21:59] have been two come to mind. Um
[02:22:02] Ethiopians in the in the Tigra area
[02:22:05] which is like I don't think you can even
[02:22:07] travel there right now. Dirt poor in
[02:22:10] villages and Shangan people in South
[02:22:12] Africa also. I mean not quite as
[02:22:15] destitute but very rough situation
[02:22:17] displaced people. Um
[02:22:20] >> I would say and this is just my
[02:22:22] perception you know what I mean? So
[02:22:25] >> um
[02:22:28] minus the war torn countries that I've
[02:22:31] been to. I've been to a lot of third
[02:22:32] world you know countries and extreme
[02:22:36] poverty.
[02:22:37] And I really I have to say that I I
[02:22:40] think that the countries in poverty seem
[02:22:44] to be more happy
[02:22:45] >> Yeah.
[02:22:45] >> than we are here at the US who have
[02:22:49] literally every [ __ ] thing we can
[02:22:51] think of at the
[02:22:52] >> Yeah. our fingertips.
[02:22:54] >> All right. So, if I'm going to armchair
[02:22:56] quarterback this, which why not since
[02:22:58] I'm sitting in an armchair, uh I would
[02:23:00] say I think that having
[02:23:03] everything is part of
[02:23:06] the recipe
[02:23:08] for dissatisfaction, right? You start
[02:23:10] fearing having those things taken away.
[02:23:12] I do think your level of entitlement
[02:23:14] goes up. And there's a great book by
[02:23:18] Sebastian Younger called Tribe. I really
[02:23:21] recommend everyone read this. I mean,
[02:23:23] Sebastian has been through some [ __ ]
[02:23:25] >> That's about That's about That's about
[02:23:28] PTSD. And he wrote a book on PTSD. I
[02:23:32] don't know if it's called Tribe. I I
[02:23:34] know who this is.
[02:23:34] >> Yeah, Tribe. Sebastian Younger.
[02:23:36] >> It's about veterans, I believe.
[02:23:37] >> Uh it includes a lot of discussion of
[02:23:39] veterans. U tribe really talks about
[02:23:42] social cohesion. But if you look at for
[02:23:46] instance I think the example there there
[02:23:49] are a number of examples he gave but
[02:23:51] looking at World War II bombing in the
[02:23:53] UK and how di admittances to hospitals
[02:23:59] now there number of different ways you
[02:24:00] could explain this but effectively the
[02:24:03] incidence of mental illness suicide etc
[02:24:06] all seem to plummet while the city's
[02:24:09] being bombed. What's going on there? And
[02:24:12] you see a similar pattern in other
[02:24:14] places. Well, I think that when you have
[02:24:18] seemingly everything,
[02:24:21] you by default almost necessarily
[02:24:24] can easily end up majoring in minor
[02:24:27] things, right? Because you don't have
[02:24:29] any major problem to deal with. But
[02:24:32] humans love having problems and solving
[02:24:35] problems, right? In order to solve
[02:24:36] problems, you have to have problems. So,
[02:24:37] I think humans are problem solving
[02:24:40] machines. But the the dark side of that
[02:24:42] is you can become a problem seeking
[02:24:44] machine, problem creating machine. So
[02:24:46] these small things take on the
[02:24:48] proportion of something big, right? It's
[02:24:49] kind of like I'm sure a lot of people
[02:24:51] had the experience where it's just like
[02:24:53] there's there's some old cat lady in the
[02:24:56] neighborhood who's part of the HOA and
[02:24:58] man is she just a pain in the balls.
[02:25:01] Like she's just like every okay so and
[02:25:03] so didn't put out the recycling bin. So
[02:25:05] and so didn't whatever. It's because she
[02:25:07] doesn't have anything else to do that is
[02:25:09] bigger, right? that is kind of forcing
[02:25:10] her hand. So if you're really way up on
[02:25:13] Maslo's hierarchy of needs, I think it's
[02:25:16] easy to become more sensitive to slight
[02:25:20] turbulence in life, which is also part
[02:25:23] of the reason for practicing not just
[02:25:25] minimalism, not just necessarily
[02:25:27] poverty, but like subjecting yourself to
[02:25:31] shared privation, right? Like like the
[02:25:34] things I do with friends are definitely
[02:25:35] type two fun, maybe type three fun,
[02:25:38] right? It's like, sure, okay, we might
[02:25:40] do like a ski touring trip.
[02:25:42] >> Mhm.
[02:25:43] >> That's mostly suffering. It's It's like,
[02:25:45] yeah, you're going to spend an hour and
[02:25:47] a half going up the hill for six turns
[02:25:48] down. Like, if you just want to ski,
[02:25:50] that's a terrible way to do it. Uh, but
[02:25:54] you get through that experience. You're
[02:25:55] stuck in a snowstorm. It's white out.
[02:25:57] I'm not, by the way, suggesting that
[02:25:59] everyone do this. There are there are
[02:26:00] scaled down versions of it, but
[02:26:02] >> it creates a bond.
[02:26:03] >> It creates a bond. It creates a bond
[02:26:05] because you have overcome some type of
[02:26:07] adversity.
[02:26:08] >> Yeah. Exactly. So in a world or in a an
[02:26:12] environment that doesn't offer you those
[02:26:14] things. And by the way, there are lots
[02:26:15] of reasons why you would want a more
[02:26:18] comfortable experience. I'm not saying
[02:26:20] go move to Sierra Leone, right?
[02:26:22] So, I'm incredibly grateful for just the
[02:26:27] number of of miracles effectively that
[02:26:32] ended up with me being born here, having
[02:26:35] opportunities, etc. Right? Hugely beyond
[02:26:38] grateful. I do not take it for granted.
[02:26:40] And I do think that in the absence of
[02:26:44] real environmental stressors, we are
[02:26:46] built to overcome and adapt to stress.
[02:26:49] And there's a book called The Comfort
[02:26:51] Crisis, I believe, that that really
[02:26:52] delves into this, but it's like there is
[02:26:54] a great argument to be made for
[02:26:56] engineering certain stress into your
[02:26:58] life, including physical stress. Um, and
[02:27:04] >> I think veterans are uh amazing at that.
[02:27:07] >> Yeah. Yeah.
[02:27:07] >> I'm amazing at that. So
[02:27:10] >> yeah, I should say also,
[02:27:13] I mean, you know, obviously
[02:27:17] multitudes more veterans than I do, but
[02:27:20] a couple of my best friends are vets.
[02:27:21] And I think that
[02:27:23] if you don't very explicitly,
[02:27:27] consciously engineer
[02:27:29] suffering,
[02:27:31] it sounds strange to put it that way,
[02:27:32] but it really is like adversity,
[02:27:34] suffering, stress into your life.
[02:27:37] There is, I think, an innate push to
[02:27:43] manifest it subconsciously while while
[02:27:46] it seeps through the edges. And that
[02:27:47] might take the form of slowb burn
[02:27:50] workcoholism, right? It might take the
[02:27:53] form of certain types of self-sabotage.
[02:27:56] It might take the form of blowups and
[02:27:58] arguments with your wife. It might take
[02:27:59] the form of fill in the blank. And
[02:28:03] I have just found it so incredibly, and
[02:28:06] I've seen this too in a lot of my
[02:28:08] listeners and readers over decades, like
[02:28:12] when you engineer in periods of stress,
[02:28:16] some of those other things just resolve
[02:28:18] themselves
[02:28:19] uh in a in an unexpected way. It's not
[02:28:22] always the case. I mean, you still need
[02:28:24] to be able to talk to your wife, but uh
[02:28:27] but it's like if you're a working dog,
[02:28:29] like you need a job, right? Can't be a
[02:28:32] border collie stuck behind a laptop all
[02:28:34] day. You're going to go crazy, start
[02:28:35] chewing on the couch.
[02:28:37] >> Are you happy? I I feel like I am the
[02:28:41] happiest. I We could definitely pull
[02:28:43] apart that term and what it means, but I
[02:28:45] would say I am the most at peace.
[02:28:49] That's that's more my goal than
[02:28:51] happiness, I would say. Uh, you're
[02:28:53] reluctant to say that you're happy.
[02:28:55] >> Well, I feel like I'm reluctant to say
[02:28:56] happy because
[02:28:59] I'm such a stickler. This could be the
[02:29:01] OCD kicking in, but for terms, right?
[02:29:03] When people are like, I just want to be
[02:29:04] successful, I'm like, let's talk about
[02:29:06] that.
[02:29:06] >> Mhm.
[02:29:08] >> Very carefully, right? When people get
[02:29:10] into fights about God, I'm like, you
[02:29:12] guys talking about the same thing? Like,
[02:29:14] let's make sure we're talking about the
[02:29:15] same thing. Uh, I am very happy right
[02:29:18] now. I have great relationships. I have
[02:29:22] you know taken care of people I care
[02:29:24] about doing meaningful work very happy
[02:29:27] but I think happiness comes and goes so
[02:29:30] looking for a steady state of smiles I
[02:29:34] think is a fool's errand because you're
[02:29:35] going to be disappointed and if we come
[02:29:39] back to the sort of let's say long-term
[02:29:42] durable happiness is uh reality minus
[02:29:46] expectations if my expectation is I'm
[02:29:48] never going to have hard days I'm never
[02:29:50] going have moments of self-loathing then
[02:29:53] in the long term I think I'm
[02:29:55] handicapping my peace of mind. Does that
[02:29:58] make any sense? If for instance right I
[02:30:00] can give a lot of examples of this. If
[02:30:02] you're trying to learn a language which
[02:30:03] I think I think people can become let's
[02:30:06] just say native English speakers
[02:30:07] conversationally fluent in a bunch of
[02:30:09] languages in like 8 to 12 weeks if
[02:30:10] they're really dedicated themselves.
[02:30:12] There's no magic trick involved. Like
[02:30:13] there's a very methodical way to do it.
[02:30:15] >> I mean look at the Defense Language
[02:30:16] Institute in Monterey. like the stuff
[02:30:18] they can do is incredible
[02:30:20] >> with language instruction.
[02:30:22] >> They're very interested in bioelectric
[02:30:23] medicine, too, by the way.
[02:30:24] >> Uh potentially is an augment. But
[02:30:28] if you're going to learn a language, if
[02:30:30] you expect your progress to look like
[02:30:31] this, right, weight training, same
[02:30:34] thing. Doesn't skill acquisition, it's
[02:30:37] going to be lumpy, right? You're going
[02:30:38] to have predictable setbacks. It's like,
[02:30:41] okay, you memorized 100 phrases,
[02:30:43] fantastic. Or 100 words. man, you're
[02:30:45] going to be making rocketlike progress.
[02:30:48] But as soon as you start introducing a
[02:30:49] little more complicated grammar, which
[02:30:50] you need to do to make it for the long
[02:30:53] game, you're going to feel like you're
[02:30:54] getting worse, right?
[02:30:56] >> Your ability to juggle those balls, is
[02:30:59] going to take time for adaptation, and
[02:31:01] you're going to get worse. Boom, boom,
[02:31:02] boom, and then up and then down, and
[02:31:03] then maybe there's more of a plateau.
[02:31:05] And if you know these in advance, you
[02:31:07] can kind of plan for them, right? in the
[02:31:10] service of the long-term goal of being
[02:31:13] fluent in the language. But if you have
[02:31:15] a teacher who's trying to do the right
[02:31:17] thing and they tell you everything's
[02:31:18] going to be great, you know, just one
[02:31:20] step in front of the other,
[02:31:23] you know, slow and steady wins the race
[02:31:25] and you expect it to be this linear
[02:31:26] progression, you're going to get crushed
[02:31:27] as soon as you suffer a setback.
[02:31:30] >> And I feel like psychologically,
[02:31:33] uh, this is where stoism is is such an
[02:31:35] incredible arrow in the quiver. It's
[02:31:38] just expecting people to be like Marcus
[02:31:41] Aurelius meditations like effectively
[02:31:43] like when you go out like expect people
[02:31:44] to be insolent and rude. Expect people
[02:31:47] to disappoint you. Expect A, B, and C.
[02:31:51] And it's a there's a thin line between
[02:31:53] that and just being
[02:31:55] pessimistic or nihilistic, right?
[02:31:59] >> But I think you're just talking about
[02:32:01] drive,
[02:32:04] personal drive.
[02:32:05] >> There's Yeah. I mean, if if it was easy
[02:32:08] and the incline was like this
[02:32:10] >> Yeah.
[02:32:11] >> said it a thousand times,
[02:32:13] >> everybody would [ __ ] do it.
[02:32:14] >> Yeah. Well,
[02:32:15] >> then you hit a setback
[02:32:17] >> and 75% of the people [ __ ] quit.
[02:32:20] >> Yeah.
[02:32:21] >> You know what I mean?
[02:32:22] >> Yeah.
[02:32:22] >> But the drive keeps the 25% going.
[02:32:24] >> Totally. And I think that there's
[02:32:27] there's just like baseline drive. It's
[02:32:29] like, okay, what kind of engine do you
[02:32:30] have? And then there's
[02:32:33] how do you drive the car? And it's
[02:32:35] almost like rally racing. Like I did a
[02:32:37] little bit of training in rally racing,
[02:32:39] which is incredibly dangerous, but also
[02:32:41] >> No [ __ ]
[02:32:42] >> Yeah.
[02:32:42] >> The whole team here is going to the
[02:32:44] >> Where did you go to rally racing school?
[02:32:46] >> I went to New Hampshire,
[02:32:48] >> dude.
[02:32:49] >> Yeah.
[02:32:50] >> You went to O'Neal?
[02:32:51] >> I went to O'Neal.
[02:32:51] >> [ __ ] awesome. I went to O'Neal.
[02:32:53] >> He's great. He's amazing. That school.
[02:32:55] >> Hilarious. So, yeah. So, I went to
[02:32:57] O'Neal, as you know. Pretty pretty risky
[02:33:01] endeavor. What do you do? Okay. What
[02:33:03] does that look like? Well, you have a
[02:33:04] navigator in the case of your own life.
[02:33:05] Like, you are both the driver and the
[02:33:07] navigator.
[02:33:09] And are you going to take a rally course
[02:33:11] race at high speed without studying the
[02:33:13] course? [ __ ] no. You need to know if
[02:33:15] it's like right three or right one,
[02:33:18] right? Or you're going to hit a tree
[02:33:20] because you need to plan for all of
[02:33:24] these subtleties of the course in
[02:33:26] advance. So, all I'm saying is there if
[02:33:29] you have this drive, which is like the
[02:33:31] base engine, right?
[02:33:33] Some of some people I think are just
[02:33:35] born with a huge engine, right? Like
[02:33:37] they're born in a Ferrari.
[02:33:40] Uh other people might be born in like a
[02:33:42] Miata, but guess what? It's like I've
[02:33:45] seen pro drivers in a Miata smoke people
[02:33:47] in McLarens on a driving course.
[02:33:49] >> Mhm. Mhm.
[02:33:50] >> Why? They know the course. They've
[02:33:53] trained. They know
[02:33:54] >> fundamentals.
[02:33:55] >> Yeah. And similarly like I don't think
[02:33:59] in some ways I think I have certain
[02:34:01] advantages but I do not have like a huge
[02:34:04] psychological buffer. Some people have
[02:34:06] incredible inbuilt I really think
[02:34:10] psychological resilience like they have
[02:34:12] a lot of margin of safety. I don't have
[02:34:13] that right. I do not have the batteries
[02:34:17] and infinite endurance of some serial
[02:34:20] entrepreneurs I've seen or professional
[02:34:21] athletes. Right. It's just like they
[02:34:23] have different like Kobe Bryant or uh I
[02:34:26] mean you could look Travis Kalanic Uber
[02:34:28] or whatever like just like different
[02:34:29] batteries. These guys are coming to the
[02:34:32] table with a different engine. But you
[02:34:35] can give yourself a competitive
[02:34:37] advantage if you know the track. So for
[02:34:40] me with anything it's like know the
[02:34:42] track. What does that look like? What
[02:34:44] does that mean? Well, kind of apply it
[02:34:45] knows like it's identifying in advance
[02:34:48] if you're learning anything, doing
[02:34:49] anything, like where am I going to be
[02:34:51] most likely to quit? What are the
[02:34:53] failure points? Why do other people
[02:34:55] quit? When do they quit? And then if you
[02:34:57] know in advance, like, okay, it's very
[02:34:59] likely 3 months into this that I'm going
[02:35:01] to hit like a crisis of meaning and I'm
[02:35:03] going to plateau and I'm going to be
[02:35:04] tempted to quit. If you know that in
[02:35:06] advance, when you hit it, your little
[02:35:07] engine is enough to get you past that
[02:35:10] plateau.
[02:35:12] >> So, I just I think about that a lot,
[02:35:14] right? It's like if people aren't
[02:35:15] following, why do so many people quit
[02:35:16] diets? Why do so many people make New
[02:35:18] Year's resolutions and then by February
[02:35:20] 1, they're long gone. Smoke, exhaust in
[02:35:23] the rearview mirror. It's like part of
[02:35:25] it is they have these very optimistic,
[02:35:29] well-intentioned visions of what they're
[02:35:30] going to do where they go to the gym
[02:35:33] three times a week. It never gets
[02:35:34] interrupted. They don't they never take
[02:35:37] need to make a phone call. They never
[02:35:39] get into an argument about who's going
[02:35:40] to watch the kids.
[02:35:42] And
[02:35:44] as a result they don't have any type of
[02:35:47] safety net on that plan. Um so I would
[02:35:51] say you know these are some of the ways
[02:35:54] that uh that I think about it. I know
[02:35:56] there's a lot there but
[02:35:58] >> well I mean one thing you said about
[02:35:59] happiness is um I think you said this I
[02:36:03] know this high expectations can be a a
[02:36:08] roadblock.
[02:36:09] >> Yeah it's a double. You said you have
[02:36:12] exceedingly high expectations.
[02:36:14] >> So, I'm curious.
[02:36:15] >> Yeah.
[02:36:15] >> How did you overcome those high
[02:36:17] expectations to find happiness?
[02:36:21] >> Uh,
[02:36:21] >> I struggle with this.
[02:36:23] >> Yeah. I mean, I struggle with that.
[02:36:24] >> I have extremely high expectations.
[02:36:27] >> Yeah. I I've struggled with my whole
[02:36:28] life. I think I have found certain
[02:36:32] approaches and tools that have helped me
[02:36:35] to use the double-edged sword without
[02:36:37] holding the blade as a handle. Right.
[02:36:41] And I expect, here's the other thing. I
[02:36:43] expect this will always be a challenge.
[02:36:45] So, I'm not going to beat the [ __ ] out
[02:36:47] of myself if I don't eradicate it like
[02:36:50] polio once and forever, right? It's
[02:36:52] like, right, it's like this is this is
[02:36:56] part, I think, of my hard wiring. I
[02:36:58] really do. This is not not to belabor
[02:37:01] the dog.
[02:37:02] >> You wouldn't be where you are without
[02:37:04] high expectations, though, either.
[02:37:05] >> Yeah. Right. And you know, I I think
[02:37:09] that I'm at a point also where it's like
[02:37:12] the incremental dollar or whatever, the
[02:37:14] incremental media mention is not worth
[02:37:17] as much as the incremental
[02:37:21] hour or even 15 minutes with someone I
[02:37:23] deeply care about. And those are very
[02:37:27] mastering. Sounds strange to say this,
[02:37:29] but
[02:37:31] becoming good at
[02:37:34] those two sides of the track are very
[02:37:35] different things. They require different
[02:37:37] skill set. So for me, I would say the
[02:37:39] first of all,
[02:37:42] I think high expectations can be great.
[02:37:45] I think it can be amazing. And um you
[02:37:50] know, while I guess archaeologous way
[02:37:52] back in the day, right, we do not rise
[02:37:53] to the level of our hopes, we fall to
[02:37:55] the level of our training. Like I think
[02:37:56] that's a real thing. So hope alone is
[02:37:58] not enough. Expectations alone is not
[02:38:00] enough. But uh
[02:38:04] I would say that for me
[02:38:07] what realizing that what you do matters
[02:38:10] a lot more than how you do any one thing
[02:38:12] is critical. What do I mean by that? So
[02:38:15] what you do versus how you do seems kind
[02:38:18] of strange. In other words, you can get
[02:38:21] really really good at high having high
[02:38:24] expectations for things that don't
[02:38:25] matter very much and being perfectionist
[02:38:28] about little things,
[02:38:31] >> but that doesn't really move the needle
[02:38:34] for you or other people.
[02:38:35] >> You can spend your whole life focusing
[02:38:37] on little things. I think that's going
[02:38:38] to become the default for mo most of
[02:38:40] humankind in the next few years with AI.
[02:38:44] Like the idea that we're all going to
[02:38:46] have this incredible leisure class with
[02:38:47] tons of free time, complete nonsense.
[02:38:49] It's never happened with any technology.
[02:38:50] >> It's gonna get worse. The parents are
[02:38:52] coming out. Yeah.
[02:38:53] >> So, so I would say that
[02:38:58] >> there's a book called the 8020 principle
[02:38:59] by Richard Kosh K.
[02:39:02] Read that. It comes back to what I
[02:39:06] mentioned earlier, which is you really
[02:39:07] don't have to get a lot of things right
[02:39:08] to have an amazing life. So, I used to
[02:39:10] overoptimize. I would attempt to
[02:39:13] optimize almost everything because I
[02:39:14] felt like I had the bandwidth to do it.
[02:39:16] Maybe I did, but that can make you an
[02:39:20] insufferable son of a [ __ ] Not just to
[02:39:22] other people, but to yourself,
[02:39:25] right?
[02:39:26] >> Mhm. Uh because if you have
[02:39:29] unreasonable, unhelpful expectations in
[02:39:32] environments that you cannot control,
[02:39:34] interpersonal relationships, your
[02:39:36] girlfriend or wife or husband or
[02:39:38] whatever, your kids,
[02:39:40] um you're going to drive not only
[02:39:42] yourself, but the people around you
[02:39:43] completely insane. So,
[02:39:47] you know, when I sat down here, you
[02:39:49] might remember this. There was a little
[02:39:51] piece of paper stuck in here from a
[02:39:53] prior guest, the serenity prayer,
[02:39:55] >> and I folded it up and I was like, "Oh,
[02:39:57] I like the serenity prayer." And I put
[02:39:58] it in my pocket.
[02:40:00] >> Serenity prayer is stoicism,
[02:40:02] right? Being able to, you know, separate
[02:40:06] things you can control versus things you
[02:40:08] can't control and then the wisdom
[02:40:10] hopefully and experience to be able to
[02:40:11] tell the difference. And
[02:40:15] I've realized that being incredibly
[02:40:17] forgiving while knowing your
[02:40:18] non-negotiables upfront with
[02:40:19] interpersonal relationships
[02:40:22] is for me at least so far like the path
[02:40:24] to intimacy and longevity and happiness
[02:40:28] and peace. And then with other types of
[02:40:33] compartment I shouldn't say
[02:40:34] compartmentalized silos in my life.
[02:40:36] Let's just say maybe it's writing a
[02:40:37] book, having like unforgivably high
[02:40:41] standards but with a deadline so that
[02:40:44] I'm not allowed to procrastinate forever
[02:40:46] because if I don't have a boss and I
[02:40:47] don't
[02:40:49] that perfectionism can turn into
[02:40:52] permanent
[02:40:53] >> meaning you're not shipping anything.
[02:40:55] >> Yeah. So, uh, I still apply super high
[02:40:59] standards for myself with certain
[02:41:02] non-negotiables related to physical
[02:41:04] training or to
[02:41:07] building a cultivating and developing
[02:41:10] conditioning a mental reserve, right? To
[02:41:13] hopefully stave off things like
[02:41:15] neurodeenerative disease. Those are all
[02:41:18] non-negotiable. But with human
[02:41:20] interactions, I think I have really
[02:41:25] learned through [ __ ] it up over and
[02:41:27] over and over again.
[02:41:31] Uh, I mean, really, it's just like, God,
[02:41:33] I look back at some of my past
[02:41:35] girlfriends, I'm like, God bless you,
[02:41:36] you saints. Like, God, I was such a pain
[02:41:40] in the ass. And I was so convinced I was
[02:41:43] right. So convinced I was right about so
[02:41:46] much. And guess what? It doesn't matter.
[02:41:47] Maybe I was right, but I really
[02:41:50] encourage people to check out there's an
[02:41:52] amazing therapist who is brutal, but
[02:41:56] decades of experience and I don't agree
[02:41:58] with him on everything, but Terry Real
[02:42:00] is his name. He's got to be one of the
[02:42:03] highest paid couples therapists in the
[02:42:05] world. He has to be.
[02:42:08] But he has a number of books. There's an
[02:42:10] audio book. It doesn't even have a print
[02:42:11] version called Fierce Intimacy that I
[02:42:14] really recommend people listen to. So
[02:42:16] they have a toolkit for communicating in
[02:42:19] intimate relationships because I don't
[02:42:20] think men and women were ever meant to
[02:42:22] spend as much time together as they do
[02:42:23] now.
[02:42:24] >> That's a very unnatural situation. I
[02:42:26] think
[02:42:28] >> and as a result we need tools that we
[02:42:31] did not historically need
[02:42:33] >> and I think Terry is very good at
[02:42:34] providing a toolkit for modern
[02:42:36] relationships. But one of his tenets is
[02:42:39] like there's no place for objective
[02:42:41] reality in most relationship disputes.
[02:42:44] And he gives this example of like
[02:42:46] husband and wife go out to dinner.
[02:42:48] Waiter comes over to take the order.
[02:42:50] Waiter leaves and the husband's like,
[02:42:52] "Honey, you don't have to yell." And
[02:42:53] she's like, "What? I wasn't yelling."
[02:42:54] And he's like, "No, you were yelling."
[02:42:56] And then so it turns into one of these
[02:42:58] things, right? It starts to spiral out
[02:42:59] and now their date has turned into a
[02:43:02] heated debate where people are getting
[02:43:04] ramped up. And the point Terry makes is
[02:43:08] he's like, "The husband could say like,
[02:43:09] "Honey, I knew you were going to say
[02:43:11] that." So actually I hired a team of
[02:43:14] professional aiologists and recording
[02:43:16] artists. They have miked our table and
[02:43:19] everything around us and based on this
[02:43:22] decibel level you were in fact yelling
[02:43:25] like you think that's going to help
[02:43:26] things.
[02:43:27] >> I don't probably not.
[02:43:28] >> I don't think so.
[02:43:30] So once you I think
[02:43:35] even as a test an experiment ask
[02:43:38] yourself all right well if if objective
[02:43:40] reality doesn't exist in most conflicts
[02:43:43] and your only job especially as a male
[02:43:46] is to try to understand your partner's
[02:43:48] position I think men are particularly
[02:43:51] pigheaded about this women can be pretty
[02:43:53] bad too but I think men are much worse
[02:43:56] and to really understand why they feel
[02:43:59] the way they do. What if done
[02:44:01] differently would have changed anything?
[02:44:03] It's like, man, so many of the problems
[02:44:05] just go away.
[02:44:06] >> Yeah.
[02:44:06] >> It's kind of like meditating where it's
[02:44:08] like, don't fix anything. Just like
[02:44:10] actually don't try to fix anything. Just
[02:44:12] sit there and develop more awareness and
[02:44:14] they're like, oh, all these problems go
[02:44:15] away. Oh, my friend's chronic pain went
[02:44:17] away. What's going on? Who cares about
[02:44:20] the mechanism? is like going from
[02:44:22] problem solving, right, which is closely
[02:44:24] related to problem seeking
[02:44:27] to
[02:44:29] understanding someone's inner experience
[02:44:31] as opposed to trying to like validate
[02:44:33] your objective reality
[02:44:36] might sound a little squishy, but like
[02:44:38] listen to Terry Real gives you a lot of
[02:44:39] practical tools and language you can
[02:44:41] use. That is a a huge part of life as
[02:44:45] I've already talked about that I've I've
[02:44:47] revamped my entire way I think about my
[02:44:48] calendar, the entire way I commit time,
[02:44:51] defend time, say no to things around
[02:44:55] these most important life-giving energy
[02:44:58] giving relationships.
[02:45:00] And that means how you navigate those,
[02:45:03] how you interact with people, how you
[02:45:05] cultivate your EQ,
[02:45:08] how you feel what someone is saying, not
[02:45:09] just listen to what they're saying.
[02:45:11] preparing to offer them some words of
[02:45:13] condolence. Maybe that's not what they
[02:45:14] need. Um, like bearing witness to that
[02:45:18] person in a true felt sense is it's like
[02:45:22] if my 20-year-old self could hear me
[02:45:24] saying this, like would have vomited in
[02:45:25] his mouth. But it's like at that time I
[02:45:27] was a bull in a china shop. I was
[02:45:30] leaving just a wake of collateral damage
[02:45:32] in my relationships. Not because I was
[02:45:34] abusive, like was not abusive. I saw
[02:45:36] enough of that. Didn't want to, you
[02:45:38] know, no thanks. But I wasn't available,
[02:45:42] right? I was I was very very concerned
[02:45:44] with being right.
[02:45:46] And I think if you're instead, even in
[02:45:49] the case of work, like dedicated to what
[02:45:53] you put out in the world, but it's
[02:45:55] someone else's idea or if you just want
[02:45:57] if they need to believe it's their idea,
[02:45:59] fine. Sure, why not? Could just be
[02:46:03] getting older and softening around the
[02:46:04] edges. I don't know. Not as much piss
[02:46:05] and vinegar. talked about saying no to
[02:46:08] certain things, but I want to go there,
[02:46:09] too. But first, I'm about 45 minutes
[02:46:13] ago, we were going to talk about uh the
[02:46:15] perception of time, how fast it goes.
[02:46:17] >> Yeah, these are all tied together also.
[02:46:20] >> Sounds like you've done a lot of
[02:46:21] thinking about that. I've
[02:46:22] >> done a lot of thinking, done a lot of
[02:46:26] what I call it flight time
[02:46:29] in different states, too, which can
[02:46:30] stress test a lot of the subjective
[02:46:32] experiences we have around time.
[02:46:37] I would encourage it can be hard. You
[02:46:39] can watch his TED not TED talks. You can
[02:46:41] watch his YouTube videos and so on uh
[02:46:43] before digesting videos, but Carlo Ralli
[02:46:46] is a physicist. I believe he's most
[02:46:49] focused on quantum gravity and he has
[02:46:52] some really thoughtprovoking writing on
[02:46:54] time. Uh I think one of his books is
[02:46:57] called the order of things.
[02:47:00] But
[02:47:03] you realize pretty quickly that even
[02:47:05] within the halls of
[02:47:09] quantum physics and mathematics like t
[02:47:12] time is not this straightforward thing,
[02:47:14] right? Like a clock at your head runs at
[02:47:16] a different speed than a clock at your
[02:47:18] foot.
[02:47:19] And
[02:47:21] um
[02:47:23] when you start to look at these
[02:47:24] fundamental equations, I'd say maybe
[02:47:26] especially quantum gravity, um time
[02:47:30] becomes this very slippery thing, right?
[02:47:32] Like it's kind of like money. Like money
[02:47:34] is real in practice, but it's actually
[02:47:36] an abstraction.
[02:47:37] >> Mhm.
[02:47:37] >> Right. Like you can use it, but it's
[02:47:39] it's really an abstraction. If you think
[02:47:41] about like the there's a book called the
[02:47:43] the biography of a dollar about the
[02:47:45] history of money, which is worth
[02:47:46] reading. like it's a very useful
[02:47:48] abstraction, but it's an it's an
[02:47:49] abstraction.
[02:47:51] And
[02:47:53] so you can you can certainly just from a
[02:47:56] secular scientific perspective from
[02:47:58] credible sources like Carlo read enough
[02:48:02] where you start to scratch your head and
[02:48:04] you're like, okay, well, wait a second.
[02:48:06] Okay,
[02:48:08] does that mean that in certain
[02:48:09] experiments like A comes before B, but B
[02:48:13] also comes before A until they're
[02:48:15] observed? like, okay, that's strange.
[02:48:18] Um, and you is it possible that time is
[02:48:22] actually more like a book? And sure,
[02:48:24] we're on page 237, but like all the
[02:48:27] pages are already there. We just happen
[02:48:29] to be in the middle. Like, is that
[02:48:32] actually something that
[02:48:34] >> interesting
[02:48:35] >> could be defensible? In which case,
[02:48:37] let's just say, right? And again, I I'm
[02:48:40] very careful with this stuff, but if
[02:48:42] that were the case, then is something
[02:48:44] like pre-cognition that crazy? Uh I
[02:48:48] don't know. I don't know. Is it even
[02:48:51] precognition or is it just cognition?
[02:48:55] Uh and uh look, I I've I've spent a lot
[02:48:59] of time around magicians and
[02:49:01] illusionists and people who are
[02:49:03] incredible at mentalism because I don't
[02:49:05] want to fool myself, right? I want to
[02:49:06] know if you wanted to fake this, how
[02:49:08] would you do it? If you want to try to
[02:49:10] replicate these phenomena and fool an
[02:49:12] audience, how would you do it? Um, but
[02:49:15] there's still like a flickering of a
[02:49:17] sliver of some examples that are pretty
[02:49:20] interesting along that raise more
[02:49:22] questions than they answer. Same with
[02:49:24] UAPs and stuff, right? Uh,
[02:49:27] so, uh, you can really bring this down
[02:49:31] to Earth, though. It's like, "All right,
[02:49:32] sure. I could read about quantum
[02:49:34] gravity, but what does that mean for
[02:49:35] me?" It's like, "Well, we've all had the
[02:49:37] experience of
[02:49:39] a day that seems to last forever." Or
[02:49:42] you go on a trip and you're like, "Wow,
[02:49:45] did we really only get here 2 or 3 days
[02:49:47] ago? Man, it feels like it's been 2
[02:49:49] weeks." We've also had the experience of
[02:49:52] saying, "Holy [ __ ] where did 2025 go?"
[02:49:55] >> Mhm.
[02:49:56] >> My god. Like, did the frame rate change?
[02:49:59] Like, what happened? It seems like that
[02:50:01] was just a commercial break. It was
[02:50:02] 2024. There was a commercial break. And
[02:50:03] now it's 2026. What happened?
[02:50:06] And
[02:50:08] you know, I was just in Silicon Valley
[02:50:09] for a few weeks. Hadn't been back in
[02:50:11] like 8 years. Uh, and just wanted to
[02:50:14] kick around, check it out. It's having a
[02:50:16] real renaissance at the moment because
[02:50:17] of AI. Very exciting.
[02:50:20] And have a lot of old friends there.
[02:50:24] And
[02:50:25] folks have probably seen this in the
[02:50:27] news, but a lot of billionaires are
[02:50:30] preoccupied with living forever. Right
[02:50:34] now, rich people have always been
[02:50:35] obsessed with living forever.
[02:50:37] Uh, and some of them are funding very
[02:50:39] interesting research, okay? But the goal
[02:50:42] is extending biological lifespan.
[02:50:46] So far, I think there are some things
[02:50:48] that are interesting,
[02:50:50] but certainly not definitive. Nothing is
[02:50:52] conclusive yet in humans.
[02:50:56] People have been trying to find the
[02:50:57] founding youth for a long time and every
[02:50:59] generation somebody seems to have the
[02:51:01] answer. And so far they've all been
[02:51:03] wrong. Right? But what if that example
[02:51:08] that I mentioned where you experience
[02:51:11] two or three days and it feels like two
[02:51:12] or three weeks. What if you could
[02:51:16] increase the number of experiences like
[02:51:18] that? So, the way I've been thinking
[02:51:20] about it is you have biological
[02:51:22] lifespan. Uh, I'm very skeptical that
[02:51:25] we're going to be able to extend that
[02:51:26] meaningfully, at least before you and I
[02:51:28] kick the bucket.
[02:51:31] Very, very skeptical. So, all right.
[02:51:33] Well, if I make it to 85,
[02:51:36] sure, there are certain things I can do.
[02:51:37] I'm not going to eat ho Hos all day.
[02:51:38] Fine. U, but could I increase instead of
[02:51:43] my biological age, what about increasing
[02:51:44] my experiential age? Right? So, if
[02:51:47] someone's preoccupied, they're anxious,
[02:51:49] they're depressed, right? When they're
[02:51:52] having dinner, they're thinking about
[02:51:54] what they're doing after dinner. After
[02:51:56] dinner, they're thinking about the work
[02:51:57] they're doing the next morning. That's
[02:51:59] how your weeks feel like days. But what
[02:52:01] if you can make your days feel more like
[02:52:02] weeks? All right. Well, let's look at
[02:52:04] some of those experiences,
[02:52:06] right? Whether it's like a trip where
[02:52:09] things have a lot of novelty. Okay.
[02:52:12] Novelty may be interesting. What else
[02:52:15] could be
[02:52:17] uh duress stress? Like if I put somebody
[02:52:20] on a stationary bike and I'm like, "All
[02:52:21] right, you're going to do a Norwegian
[02:52:22] 4x4. What does that mean?" It's four
[02:52:24] minutes of sprinting. Like minute one,
[02:52:26] hard. Minute two, oh wow, this sucks.
[02:52:29] Minute three, I don't think I can make
[02:52:30] it. Minute four, like I'm being chased
[02:52:32] by wolves and I'm going to die. And
[02:52:33] you're going to do four rounds of that.
[02:52:36] Those
[02:52:38] those four sets of four minute sprints
[02:52:41] effectively are going to feel a lot
[02:52:43] longer. Mhm.
[02:52:44] >> Okay. So, I do think there's a certain
[02:52:45] element of stressor.
[02:52:48] Okay. What else?
[02:52:50] >> Well, it's like I I don't hunt often,
[02:52:52] but I hunt maybe like once or twice a
[02:52:54] year. Okay. What's happening? You're
[02:52:56] waking up in the dark, right?
[02:53:01] Probably depending on what you're doing.
[02:53:03] If you're at high altitude, I mean, for
[02:53:04] me, high altitude. If you're whatever,
[02:53:06] 11,000 ft and it's the middle of the
[02:53:09] day, haven't had any luck, what are you
[02:53:11] going to do? You're probably going to
[02:53:12] eat some junk food, which is like
[02:53:14] hunting's largely an excuse just to eat
[02:53:16] eat a bunch of energy gels and garbage
[02:53:17] that you have. Okay, sure. So, you eat
[02:53:19] your your granola bars that you
[02:53:20] shouldn't have. That's fine. And then
[02:53:22] you're going to take a nap. All right.
[02:53:24] Then you wake up. So, these breaks that
[02:53:26] are basically separate chapters of
[02:53:28] daylight, I think also make a big
[02:53:30] difference. And if you're going to like
[02:53:31] Italy for a few days, what are you
[02:53:33] doing? You're generally going to be
[02:53:34] making the most of that day and you're
[02:53:37] going to have these kind of breaks, but
[02:53:38] you're also on vacation. Might take a
[02:53:40] nap. What else is happening? Lots of
[02:53:42] location switching, also true in
[02:53:45] something like hunting or hiking or ski
[02:53:47] touring. There seems to be something
[02:53:50] related to context switching that
[02:53:53] increases the frame rate. So that your
[02:53:56] experience is more it's closer to
[02:53:59] slow-mo than than the reverse like fast
[02:54:02] forward. So I do think there are ways
[02:54:05] that you can begin to do your past year
[02:54:08] review. look at experiences that felt
[02:54:11] like a lot more than they were. I had an
[02:54:13] experience like this in Japan recently.
[02:54:14] So, a number of my friends, it's been a
[02:54:16] dream of theirs since I was 15 and went
[02:54:17] there as an exchange student. They've
[02:54:18] always wanted to go to Japan with me,
[02:54:20] but uh some of them have tighter
[02:54:23] financial situations than other. No way.
[02:54:25] All right. So, how do I spend money?
[02:54:26] It's like I'm going to take those guys
[02:54:27] to Japan, like cover everything. They
[02:54:29] have to have a little skin in the game.
[02:54:30] So, it's like, all right, we're all
[02:54:31] going to get there. You have to get
[02:54:33] there, but then once we get there, I'm
[02:54:34] going to pay for everything. And there
[02:54:36] was one day on that trip where all of us
[02:54:38] were like today felt like 7 days and our
[02:54:42] minds were blown. Like the amount of
[02:54:44] time dilation versus like time
[02:54:46] constriction, time dilation was so
[02:54:48] extreme. It was like we sat at dinner,
[02:54:50] had a couple beers, we're just like what
[02:54:53] just happened, right? So like do a
[02:54:55] little dissection of those experiences.
[02:54:57] And I really feel like if you're able to
[02:55:00] turn days into the feeling of weeks
[02:55:02] enough in a given year, it's like your
[02:55:05] experiential lifespan
[02:55:07] >> could go from if you're a preoccupied
[02:55:09] person who dies at 85, maybe you live
[02:55:12] 40, 50 of those years, maybe you get to
[02:55:16] 120 experientially.
[02:55:19] And I challenge anyone. It's like if I
[02:55:23] put an eye shade on you and give you
[02:55:24] some psychedelics, tell me if tell me
[02:55:27] that feels the same as the four to six
[02:55:28] hours you spent the day before.
[02:55:31] It's not
[02:55:32] >> never does.
[02:55:32] >> It's going to feel like a lifetime.
[02:55:34] Okay. But I certainly don't want to do
[02:55:38] psychedelics every day.
[02:55:39] >> And then you don't want it. Well, I
[02:55:40] don't I never want it to end.
[02:55:43] >> Yeah. Well, this is Yeah. I mean, that's
[02:55:44] a whole separate conversation, right?
[02:55:47] when navigating or putting yourself into
[02:55:50] these spaces, uh, you know, what
[02:55:54] safeguards and intentions do you have
[02:55:55] around it? Because there are times when
[02:55:57] it's like, wow. I think for me at least
[02:56:00] that feeling
[02:56:02] and this this might sound strange but
[02:56:05] I'm just like oh yeah this is probably
[02:56:07] what it feels like to be dead on some
[02:56:09] level when there's there's no there is
[02:56:12] an observer there is an experiencer but
[02:56:14] there's no space there's no time there's
[02:56:17] no Tim I'm like yeah it wouldn't totally
[02:56:21] shock me if it's something like this and
[02:56:23] in some of those experiences like you
[02:56:25] experienced 5 m DMT depending on the
[02:56:28] experience but it's Like if you think
[02:56:29] back like could if it gets abstract
[02:56:31] enough where you feel like you're
[02:56:33] looking at machine code, could you
[02:56:35] recall playbyplay what happened? Like
[02:56:38] no, no way. Okay. Can you recall what
[02:56:40] happened a month before you were born?
[02:56:42] Like nope. Maybe something like that.
[02:56:44] Who knows, right? And and there are lots
[02:56:47] of I would say I mean have you heard
[02:56:50] about we just talked about this with
[02:56:51] this um with Chase Hughes I think I was
[02:56:54] talking about this where um have you
[02:56:58] heard about this guy I think it wasn't 5
[02:57:02] m what's another what's another
[02:57:04] psychedelic
[02:57:05] >> oh there are lots DMT NMT
[02:57:08] >> no it's I can't remember the name of it
[02:57:10] >> I was 2CB LSD
[02:57:11] >> no it's it's it's something like the 5
[02:57:13] MO experience I can't remember the name
[02:57:15] of But any and it may have been five but
[02:57:18] this but he did it and he had
[02:57:20] experienced an entire life
[02:57:25] kids child all of it.
[02:57:27] >> Mhm.
[02:57:28] >> Like
[02:57:31] 70 years maybe. I don't you know had hit
[02:57:33] had a 70 year experience from child to
[02:57:38] getting married having kids
[02:57:40] >> probably. I don't you know what I mean?
[02:57:42] Yeah. an entire
[02:57:44] lifespan.
[02:57:45] >> Mhm.
[02:57:46] >> And then comes out of it and misses it
[02:57:49] was like 15 minutes and then misses
[02:57:53] where he just came from that he thinks
[02:57:56] he experienced 70 years.
[02:57:57] >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, we've been
[02:58:00] talking about lucid dreaming and time
[02:58:02] dilation, all this. It's part of the
[02:58:03] reason why like Inception, love that
[02:58:05] movie.
[02:58:07] By the way, Christopher Nolan, when he
[02:58:09] was a student way back in the day, take
[02:58:11] a quick sidebar here, would wake up
[02:58:15] early in the morning. He would work all
[02:58:16] through the night and he'd wake up early
[02:58:18] in the morning to get free food. There
[02:58:20] was like a free breakfast at school or
[02:58:21] whatever. So, he would like work all
[02:58:23] night, wake up, have breakfast, and then
[02:58:24] go back to sleep. And what did he start
[02:58:26] getting good at? Lucid dreaming.
[02:58:29] >> Cuz that is unbeknownst to him. It's one
[02:58:30] of the techniques where you basically
[02:58:32] take a break at like four and a half
[02:58:34] hours of sleep, stay up for like 20
[02:58:35] minutes, go back to bed. That's what he
[02:58:37] was doing accidentally. So yeah,
[02:58:40] Christopher Nolan, if you're listening,
[02:58:41] I want to talk to you about a lot of
[02:58:43] things. But the uh there are some very
[02:58:47] very very very strange reports of things
[02:58:49] on psychedelics. There are also some
[02:58:50] very strange reports. If you want to
[02:58:53] look at
[02:58:56] what has been done at UVA, professor, I
[02:58:59] think his last name is Grayson
[02:59:01] has one of the best databases in terms
[02:59:04] of documented near-death experiences and
[02:59:06] he's very clinical. Um
[02:59:10] if you look at that in the same also at
[02:59:14] UVA they've looked at and I recognize
[02:59:16] how easy it is to poke holes in these
[02:59:18] things but there are again out of maybe
[02:59:20] a hundred quote unquote documented
[02:59:22] examples there there might be like one
[02:59:25] or two where you're like that is
[02:59:27] incredibly hard to explain. Some of the
[02:59:29] others you' be like, "Okay, sure." If
[02:59:31] you had a team, David Blaine's
[02:59:34] David Blaine is an illusionist team,
[02:59:35] like they could, yeah, okay, cool. They
[02:59:36] could maybe come up with 99 of these.
[02:59:38] Okay, sure. But that one, I'm not so
[02:59:40] sure. And you have stories of
[02:59:46] reincarnation
[02:59:48] that are specific to children in India
[02:59:52] and other places where they'll like
[02:59:54] recount this whole life. This is a like
[02:59:57] little kid
[02:59:58] >> and they're like, "Yeah, I had such and
[02:59:59] such village and I was this old and my
[03:00:00] wife is this name and this and this."
[03:00:02] And then they go over and like lo and
[03:00:03] behold, like this is not actually
[03:00:05] infrequent like this. Okay, now people
[03:00:09] could also be making this [ __ ] up,
[03:00:11] right? I recognize this. A lot of people
[03:00:12] send me the telepathy tapes and all this
[03:00:14] stuff. And I'm like, people also want to
[03:00:17] believe there's more than this because
[03:00:18] guess what? The real world is a suffer
[03:00:20] factory.
[03:00:22] And it's very it's very comforting to
[03:00:25] believe that there's wonder and awe and
[03:00:28] some type of salve for that that's just
[03:00:30] beyond our reach even though we can feel
[03:00:32] it's there. I recognize that parents
[03:00:34] might lie. They might train their kid to
[03:00:36] lie. Blah blah blah blah blah. Okay. But
[03:00:39] on psychedelics, man, you see some you
[03:00:42] if you get enough reps, right? And I say
[03:00:44] enough reps because I really like I
[03:00:48] not to get on like a high horse, but
[03:00:50] it's like when people do psychedelics
[03:00:52] once or twice and then they become
[03:00:53] proitizers. I'm like stop. You have gone
[03:00:58] skiing twice. You didn't have a
[03:01:00] catastrophic accident and now you're
[03:01:01] teaching the world how to ski. I was
[03:01:03] like don't do that. I was like and it's
[03:01:06] like cuz skiing on ice in New England is
[03:01:09] different from skiing in forgiving
[03:01:10] champagne powder in Utah. By the way,
[03:01:12] it's like if you're on a groomer, that's
[03:01:14] different from the moguls. If you're
[03:01:16] back country with avalanche risk, that's
[03:01:18] a different thing. And it's like if you
[03:01:20] start to get more reps, like you're
[03:01:21] going to have accidents and then you're
[03:01:23] going to realize the different species
[03:01:24] of accidents and so on and so on and so
[03:01:26] on, right? So, when you have enough
[03:01:28] repetition, when you have enough flight
[03:01:29] time, to put it another way, in enough
[03:01:32] environments, you just start to see
[03:01:34] really, really strange things. Um,
[03:01:37] I mean, I know I I don't want to dox
[03:01:40] him, but like this is a friend of a
[03:01:42] friend. Like, this is not a game of
[03:01:44] telephone. This is a direct friend of
[03:01:46] one of my best friends. Had an
[03:01:48] experience with an NDMT. So, if it if it
[03:01:51] lasted 15 minutes, chances are it was 5
[03:01:54] MODMT or DMT. It's kind of it's a bit
[03:01:57] confusing because the the
[03:01:59] phenomenological experiences, right? The
[03:02:01] subjective experiences are very
[03:02:02] different with NNDMT, which is also what
[03:02:05] people experience through Iwasa or 5 AOD
[03:02:08] DMT. They're very different
[03:02:11] uh in terms of their effects. But if
[03:02:13] it's 15 minutes, it's probably one of
[03:02:14] the two. But this particular guy had
[03:02:16] this experience with with NDMT.
[03:02:21] feels like he gets this huge download
[03:02:24] related to physics and production of
[03:02:30] uh I'm trying to protect this guy.
[03:02:32] Something related to physics at like the
[03:02:34] very outer bounds of physics.
[03:02:35] >> This guy has no no history in physics
[03:02:38] whatsoever.
[03:02:39] >> Uh seems really destabilized after the
[03:02:42] event.
[03:02:43] >> Disappears. Won't talk to his friends.
[03:02:45] It's just like online trying to watch
[03:02:48] YouTube videos about physics. write down
[03:02:51] what he supposedly downloaded, blah blah
[03:02:54] blah blah blah. Fast forward like two or
[03:02:57] three years, the guy's a co-author on a
[03:02:59] peer-reviewed public
[03:03:01] at like the cutting edge of physics,
[03:03:04] >> all based on the [ __ ] that he
[03:03:07] saw.
[03:03:08] >> How [ __ ] wild is that?
[03:03:09] >> On an experience.
[03:03:11] >> And what do you talk that up as?
[03:03:18] >> I have no idea. I have no idea. It's
[03:03:20] It's But when you when you see that or
[03:03:23] you see someone
[03:03:26] like spontaneously singing in a language
[03:03:29] they don't speak, you're like, "Okay."
[03:03:34] Uh, and there are also non-drugrelated
[03:03:36] examples of like I think it's called
[03:03:39] something like immediate savant
[03:03:41] syndrome. Like someone jumps into a
[03:03:43] pool, hits their head, they wake up and
[03:03:44] they can play the piano.
[03:03:46] Like
[03:03:48] what is going on here? Like the and
[03:03:50] that's not
[03:03:51] >> that is not out on the fring conspiracy
[03:03:53] theory. Like there are multiple
[03:03:54] documented cases of this.
[03:03:56] >> What is going on? I don't know. I mean
[03:03:59] it would certainly seem to imply that
[03:04:02] not all of our
[03:04:05] perception, access
[03:04:07] or experience to reality is mediated by
[03:04:11] something local. I I I mean
[03:04:15] like it's
[03:04:16] >> although maybe it is although maybe it
[03:04:17] is. I mean I mean there are people
[03:04:20] within the exploration of psychedelics
[03:04:23] uh who think of the uh the mind more
[03:04:27] like a receiver right so it's like yeah
[03:04:29] you can damage the brain
[03:04:31] >> and cause tremendous dysfunction right
[03:04:34] you can do that for sure
[03:04:36] >> but maybe that's not because the brain
[03:04:38] itself is generating something much like
[03:04:40] a television screen like the television
[03:04:42] screen isn't generating the images
[03:04:44] you're watching it's a receiver of some
[03:04:48] at least back in the day for those
[03:04:49] people who are old enough.
[03:04:51] And
[03:04:53] at the same time, you have documented
[03:04:56] cases of people with minimal brain
[03:04:58] volume, right? Like their brains should
[03:05:00] not function and yet they have average
[03:05:02] IQ
[03:05:05] and we don't really have, as far as I
[03:05:08] know, a good explanatory frame framework
[03:05:10] for allowing that to be possible.
[03:05:13] >> So I I I don't know. I mean, this is
[03:05:15] part of the reason why
[03:05:18] like my my position is always
[03:05:23] kind of impossible until pro proven
[03:05:25] otherwise, but I'm open-minded about it.
[03:05:27] And that's why I've poured so I mean
[03:05:29] millions of dollars into science, right?
[03:05:32] Because I'm like I want to better
[03:05:35] understand this. I recognize as Richard
[03:05:38] Fineman, Nobel Prize winning physicist
[03:05:40] said like it is important not to fool
[03:05:42] yourself and you are the most you're the
[03:05:44] easiest person to fool, right? Like when
[03:05:46] you want something to be true, even if
[03:05:48] it's 1%.
[03:05:49] >> Experimental bias and everything, it's
[03:05:51] real.
[03:05:51] >> Convince yourself that it's Yeah.
[03:05:53] >> Yeah. You can just or just look for
[03:05:54] evidence that something is real. Um,
[03:05:58] which is why I I I do value the
[03:06:01] scientific method and see and have you
[03:06:05] seen Carl Popper and all falsification
[03:06:07] all that stuff is so so critical for us
[03:06:09] to have arrived where we are right like
[03:06:12] western medicine is the greatest healing
[03:06:14] system that has ever been devised.
[03:06:16] Period. Full stop. But is it the full
[03:06:18] picture? No. Like 50, you know, any MD I
[03:06:21] think this is an ongoing joke, but it's
[03:06:23] it's kind of like 50% of what we know is
[03:06:26] wrong. we just don't know which 50%.
[03:06:28] >> Like that that's like a accepted sort of
[03:06:31] joke within medicine and science.
[03:06:34] >> Yeah,
[03:06:34] >> that's always been true. So,
[03:06:36] >> um I mean just as much research as
[03:06:38] you've done into psychedelics, you were
[03:06:39] talking about downloading machine code.
[03:06:42] Have you
[03:06:42] >> if you read about the laser, the ones
[03:06:46] and zeros inside the laser?
[03:06:50] >> I looked at that. So, I haven't
[03:06:51] experienced it, but there was a I want
[03:06:54] to say he was like a
[03:06:57] laser crystalallography expert or
[03:06:58] someone who explained it just purely
[03:07:00] through optics and like how that could
[03:07:03] be the case even if you're not on drugs.
[03:07:05] So, I think there might be a a a purely
[03:07:08] mechanical explanation for this for for
[03:07:10] people who don't know. I did watch this
[03:07:12] cuz it got sent to me. You would
[03:07:14] imagine, right? You can imagine all my
[03:07:15] friends were like, "Bro,
[03:07:18] same here." And so I got this video and
[03:07:20] I was one of those and so there's this
[03:07:22] guy
[03:07:23] >> who looks shockingly similar to Lionel
[03:07:26] Messi. I don't know if I'm the only
[03:07:27] person. I was just like what is Lionel
[03:07:29] Messi in the psychedelic game now?
[03:07:31] Anyway, uh and he would would use DMT
[03:07:37] probably still and then
[03:07:40] direct this laser at a wall and get in a
[03:07:42] certain position and basically had this
[03:07:45] and he had people who could replicate
[03:07:47] this, right? they would see the same
[03:07:48] thing or claim to see the same thing
[03:07:50] which looked like some type of matrix
[03:07:53] like code.
[03:07:54] >> Mhm.
[03:07:55] >> And he had drawn them out and
[03:07:56] everything. Um, there was I went down
[03:07:59] the rabbit hole in this cuz I was
[03:08:00] getting asked about it so much and I
[03:08:02] found a very long what appeared to be
[03:08:04] defensible
[03:08:06] engineering explanation for how that's
[03:08:08] how that's how that is a a
[03:08:12] explainable phenomenon without needing
[03:08:15] access to matrix code. Uh so who knows
[03:08:20] maybe uh but I would say
[03:08:24] even without that like it's just
[03:08:29] stuff is weird stuff is really weird and
[03:08:32] I mean you don't have to go very far. Uh
[03:08:35] trying to remember his name Fabritzio
[03:08:37] Benadetti maybe. Uh,
[03:08:40] I think that Ashley, no it's not Ashley
[03:08:43] Vance. There's another author. But read
[03:08:45] any book written by a credible scientist
[03:08:47] or science journalist about the placebo
[03:08:49] effect.
[03:08:52] >> All right.
[03:08:52] >> And
[03:08:55] I if if that is not one of the weirdest
[03:09:00] >> collections of verifiable
[03:09:03] data you've ever seen. I mean, you look
[03:09:05] at any given study with an intervention
[03:09:06] like a drug or whatever. You look at the
[03:09:08] supplemental materials, like there's
[03:09:10] there's almost always going to be
[03:09:12] someone in the control arm with a
[03:09:13] placebo who showed just as much effect,
[03:09:17] >> man.
[03:09:18] >> With nothing with nothing, whether it's
[03:09:20] a surgery, whether it's a powerful drug,
[03:09:24] psychedelic even. And so there are a few
[03:09:27] questions that come to mind, right?
[03:09:28] Well,
[03:09:30] these are just normal people. They're
[03:09:32] not biochemists. They couldn't tell you
[03:09:34] how psychedelics act on the brain. So,
[03:09:36] it's not like they're
[03:09:39] rolling their eyes back and going in and
[03:09:43] trying to
[03:09:46] affect certain enzymes or whatever. They
[03:09:48] have no idea. And yet they are reporting
[03:09:52] the same not just effect but magnitude
[03:09:55] of effect as matches the other people.
[03:09:58] What the hell is going on? I don't know.
[03:10:00] I have no idea. But like the you don't
[03:10:03] have to go very far to get into
[03:10:07] really terrain incognito
[03:10:10] like unknown there be dragons un uh
[03:10:14] waters. It's actually very easy. You
[03:10:15] don't you don't have to get out into
[03:10:17] remote viewing or whatever. Even though
[03:10:18] again I'm very like interested in that
[03:10:20] stuff but it's like just look at the
[03:10:23] placebo effect which gets understandably
[03:10:27] right because people are trying to
[03:10:28] assess something.
[03:10:29] >> Mhm. And that is the intervention in
[03:10:32] some of the RCTs that I fund, let's just
[03:10:35] say. But the fact that there are
[03:10:39] commonly people who produce the same
[03:10:42] effect, same magnitude of effect with a
[03:10:45] sugar pill or placebo or a sham surgery
[03:10:49] is incredibly strange. Yeah, it is super
[03:10:54] super strange. Um, so I will say
[03:11:00] not to be the broken record citing
[03:11:02] Richard Fineman and the it's easy to
[03:11:04] fool yourself, but it is easy to fool
[03:11:05] yourself. So it is a challenge to be
[03:11:10] to attempt to be radically open-minded
[03:11:12] while also being suitably skeptical,
[03:11:16] right? Because there are a lot of
[03:11:18] conseal
[03:11:20] people out there. Um
[03:11:23] there's a lot of bad science out there.
[03:11:26] There's a lot of pseudocience. Like God
[03:11:27] saved you if you're getting all your
[03:11:28] health advice from Instagram. Uh and uh
[03:11:33] so it's it's a challenge to navigate. I
[03:11:35] I do there's there's something for Peter
[03:11:37] Tia actually. He did a series of blog
[03:11:38] posts called studying the studies. And I
[03:11:41] also put out uh a blog post related to
[03:11:43] Peter about scientific literacy. And I
[03:11:47] would say one of the best investments
[03:11:48] you can make for your life and for the
[03:11:50] people you love or care about is to just
[03:11:54] invest like a week. And now you can use
[03:11:56] AI to make this easy. There's a company
[03:11:58] I actually invested in called Obo.
[03:12:01] Ob.com. They'll create a course for you
[03:12:03] and it's just like teach me how to read
[03:12:06] science. Boom. And like spend a week,
[03:12:09] hour or two a night doing that and that
[03:12:11] will pay dividends for decades. It will
[03:12:14] help you sift
[03:12:17] the signal from the noise. Um anyway,
[03:12:20] but yeah, the weird stuff is
[03:12:22] interesting. Um it's probably the
[03:12:25] understatement of the year.
[03:12:26] >> You had brought up
[03:12:29] you were going with the power of know.
[03:12:31] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[03:12:33] >> Yeah. The power there. I mean I feel
[03:12:36] like so I started
[03:12:40] at the behest of my friends and some of
[03:12:43] my audience
[03:12:44] um started working on a book about
[03:12:47] saying no that's it like six years ago
[03:12:51] and I started doing that because people
[03:12:54] just kept asking me for help a lot of my
[03:12:58] friends even very successful ones and
[03:13:02] over I'd say probably a decade
[03:13:04] I was using Evernote, um, which I was
[03:13:07] the first adviser for. Didn't quite pan
[03:13:09] out as I had hoped, but still pretty
[03:13:10] interesting tool. Anyway, every time I
[03:13:13] got a rejection from somebody that I
[03:13:15] thought was really artful that left me
[03:13:17] feeling neutral or better about the
[03:13:19] person than worse, I'll be like, "Oo,
[03:13:21] that's good. I'm going to steal that."
[03:13:23] So, I'd like copy and paste it. So, I
[03:13:25] had this swipe file, which is just a
[03:13:27] term that some people use for like I
[03:13:29] used to do it for advertising. Like
[03:13:30] whenever I bought something, I would
[03:13:31] save the advertisement, put it into a
[03:13:32] three- ring binder so that I would think
[03:13:35] about how this convinced me to buy
[03:13:38] something and then I would use that for
[03:13:39] designing my own ads. Right? So similar,
[03:13:41] I had a swipe file. I had hundreds of
[03:13:44] these examples of polite declines I
[03:13:46] called them
[03:13:48] and thought they're really useful,
[03:13:50] really incredibly useful. Copy and
[03:13:51] paste, make your own. So I was putting
[03:13:54] together this book and then it just
[03:13:56] became too hard cuz I thought a lot of
[03:13:58] my friends were going to help and they
[03:13:59] were like, "Me? I'm terrible at this.
[03:14:00] You need to write the whole book
[03:14:01] yourself. And I was like, "Oh, okay."
[03:14:04] So, I stopped. I sheld it. I gave up.
[03:14:06] Returned the advance. The biggest
[03:14:07] advance I ever got in my life. Returned
[03:14:09] it. It's like real money. Returned it. I
[03:14:12] was like, "I'm sorry. I can't do it."
[03:14:13] And shelved it. And then over the last
[03:14:16] handful of years as I've watched people
[03:14:19] to fray watched people start to fray at
[03:14:22] the edges because back in the day it was
[03:14:25] one inbox. Then it was two or three
[03:14:28] inboxes. Then it was like, "Oh man, all
[03:14:30] right. Well, I'm just going to tell the
[03:14:31] people I really care about to text me."
[03:14:34] Uh-oh. All right. So then it's text, and
[03:14:36] then it's text plus Google Voice. Then
[03:14:38] it's text plus Google Voice plus signal
[03:14:41] plus Telegram. And you see where this is
[03:14:43] going, right? And then it's like social
[03:14:44] media DMs and all of a sudden you're
[03:14:47] [ __ ]
[03:14:49] And uh it's not just the interruption or
[03:14:53] the burden of those messages. It's the
[03:14:56] temptation to triage,
[03:14:59] right? It's like you you're spending all
[03:15:01] your time triaging injuries as opposed
[03:15:03] to actually getting up and marching
[03:15:04] where you're supposed to march. So,
[03:15:08] I want to write a book about how to say
[03:15:10] no because there are tons of books on
[03:15:12] how to say yes. And I just don't feel
[03:15:16] like writing another book about how to
[03:15:18] say yes is very helpful. Although, when
[03:15:20] you start to look at how to say no, it
[03:15:22] very quickly becomes
[03:15:25] an exploration of how to say yes to a
[03:15:28] few things and how to say no to
[03:15:29] everything else.
[03:15:31] And
[03:15:34] uh still working on the book. It's long
[03:15:37] AF. It's like 750 to 800 pages now. Um,
[03:15:42] but uh
[03:15:45] have if if if people might want to check
[03:15:48] it out. I mean, they can get a bunch of
[03:15:49] free chapters. I don't know when the
[03:15:50] full thing is going to be published, but
[03:15:51] they can if they go to tim.blog/notebook
[03:15:54] and it'll be o tim.blog. It's not a
[03:15:56] typo. Notebook. Bunch of free chapters
[03:15:59] people can get which will help them cuz
[03:16:00] I've had proof readers read this thing
[03:16:03] and I I kind of put it on a shelf. Well,
[03:16:04] it's done.
[03:16:06] >> It's close to done. But here's the
[03:16:07] thing. A book is like a marathon where
[03:16:10] it's like you get to mile 20. You're
[03:16:12] like, "Congratulations." Or 20 mile, you
[03:16:15] know, 22 and you're like, "Wow, you're
[03:16:17] almost done. Congratulations. You only
[03:16:18] have 50% left." Like that last getting
[03:16:22] back to like the high
[03:16:23] >> Mhm.
[03:16:24] >> expectations.
[03:16:25] >> Oh, okay.
[03:16:26] >> Right. Like that last polish, it's like
[03:16:29] Yeah. to make the sculpture out of clay
[03:16:31] as a rough model. Yeah. I'll do that in
[03:16:32] an afternoon. I create the finished
[03:16:34] piece in full scale to put in a museum
[03:16:38] like Yeah. Okay. Gotcha.
[03:16:39] >> So, it's going to it's going to last
[03:16:42] the to polish the book's going to take
[03:16:44] at least two or three.
[03:16:45] >> So, what's going to be in it other than
[03:16:47] nice ways to tell people to
[03:16:49] >> Oh, there's a lot more to it because
[03:16:50] that doesn't do the job. That doesn't do
[03:16:52] the job. Uh, right. Because I could tell
[03:16:53] you, okay, and Martha Beck, who's like
[03:16:55] one of the an amazing woman, was like
[03:16:58] Oprah's life coach and all this stuff.
[03:16:59] incredible lady in her own right for a
[03:17:01] lot of different reasons.
[03:17:03] And you know, she turned me down for
[03:17:05] something and she was like, "Sorry, I
[03:17:06] can't make it due to life Tetris." And
[03:17:08] I'm like, "Oh, that's very short. You
[03:17:10] don't you're not giving them something
[03:17:11] that they can negotiate against." I'm
[03:17:13] like, "Great." I'm like, "Life Tetris.
[03:17:14] I'm definitely going to use that."
[03:17:15] Simple, to the point.
[03:17:18] But I when you give people templates,
[03:17:21] what I and I realized this with the
[03:17:22] 4-hour body because I was writing 4-hour
[03:17:24] body. Everything in there works. It's
[03:17:26] been tested with hundreds of people. now
[03:17:28] thousands, tens of thousands of people.
[03:17:30] And I had very busy CEOs of companies I
[03:17:33] was working with who'd be like, "Hey, I
[03:17:35] don't have time to read a long book.
[03:17:36] Like, give me the index card. Tell me
[03:17:37] what to do and I'll do it."
[03:17:38] >> Mhm.
[03:17:39] >> And I did. Success rate 0%. Why? Because
[03:17:44] if you give people the prescription, but
[03:17:47] you don't help them change their
[03:17:49] behavior, which also goes down to
[03:17:51] changing their beliefs, it's just not
[03:17:54] going to stick. It won't be durable. So
[03:17:56] for instance, if you don't say no
[03:17:58] because the story is I'm too nice for
[03:18:00] that. I'm a kind person. I'm generous. I
[03:18:03] like helping people. Okay, that can be
[03:18:05] true. But that can also be a
[03:18:07] justification for saying yes to way too
[03:18:08] many things and being a martyr. Right?
[03:18:11] If your answer is, well, must be nice
[03:18:12] for you. I'm not successful enough yet.
[03:18:15] Okay, we can start to tease that apart,
[03:18:19] but I know people who have hundreds of
[03:18:21] millions of dollars who still say that.
[03:18:25] So, part of the reason this book has
[03:18:26] taken so long and it comes down to we're
[03:18:30] talking about like the drive and
[03:18:32] predicting the bumps in the road and
[03:18:34] using the engine to the bet your
[03:18:35] capacity. Just having an index card,
[03:18:38] which is kind of what the internet
[03:18:40] largely does. Not everyone, but they're
[03:18:42] like, "Here are the three tricks to
[03:18:44] mastering crypto tomorrow before the
[03:18:46] crash, you know, whatever." And uh I
[03:18:48] mean, look, I'm interested in a lot of
[03:18:51] things. Not to malign crypto like I've
[03:18:53] been interested in a long time. But the
[03:18:54] the the point is if if your goal is like
[03:18:58] durable behavioral change which also
[03:19:00] comes back to the psychedelics, right?
[03:19:02] Like you need frameworks and you need to
[03:19:05] be able to put your beliefs which are
[03:19:07] like your underpinning philosophical
[03:19:10] guide rails under some degree of
[03:19:12] scrutiny. And if you don't update those,
[03:19:14] right, like if your story, for instance,
[03:19:16] in the in the realm of physical fitness
[03:19:18] is, well, I'm good at my job. I'm a good
[03:19:21] father, but like, you know, my whole
[03:19:23] family has big bones and I'm just it's
[03:19:25] just the way it is, right? You accept
[03:19:26] that partial completeness, right? and
[03:19:29] you're like really type A and
[03:19:33] like problem fixing oriented in a
[03:19:36] positive way in other areas of your
[03:19:37] life, but there's this one that you
[03:19:39] don't touch because that's just the way
[03:19:41] things are. If you don't fix that,
[03:19:45] no number of books on strength training,
[03:19:48] no number of gym memberships is going to
[03:19:50] fix it. Um, so a lot of it is unpacking
[03:19:57] and this also like everything kind of
[03:19:58] ties together, right? The fear setting,
[03:19:59] right? It's like, okay, you don't want
[03:20:00] to say no. Why? Okay, you're worried
[03:20:03] that person's going to [ __ ] talk you to
[03:20:04] somebody you care about. Okay, you're
[03:20:06] worried they won't send you
[03:20:07] opportunities anymore, right? They sent
[03:20:08] you one, but it's really a bad fit.
[03:20:11] Doesn't align with your priorities.
[03:20:12] You're worried they're not going to send
[03:20:13] you an opportunity in the future. Okay.
[03:20:16] Uh, you're worried that you will become
[03:20:18] irrelevant, right? Like that's another
[03:20:20] dangerous catchphrase like staying
[03:20:22] relevant.
[03:20:24] That's a that's a that's a very u
[03:20:27] pitfall laden path. Okay. So then it's
[03:20:29] like so what and then what and what's
[03:20:32] the worst thing that happens? Right? So
[03:20:34] it's kind of a unstructured approach to
[03:20:36] fear setting. But when you start to
[03:20:39] really unpack it and instead of saying
[03:20:42] all right you're going to go to the gym
[03:20:43] five days a week for the rest of your
[03:20:44] life. It's like okay you're going to go
[03:20:45] twice a week. You're going to do less
[03:20:47] than you think you can do, but for two
[03:20:49] weeks you're going to go on a no diet
[03:20:52] and you're just going to copy paste one
[03:20:53] of these three templates and you have an
[03:20:55] assignment which is like you're going to
[03:20:57] do it three times in the next week or
[03:21:00] your buddy gives a hundred bucks to your
[03:21:02] most hated politician and your name.
[03:21:06] Okay, now we have structure, right?
[03:21:09] >> Now we have structure. And I ended up in
[03:21:13] the last, I guess, year or so
[03:21:16] collaborating with a friend of mine,
[03:21:17] Neil Strauss, who wrote The Game
[03:21:18] Emergencies. He's written like 10 New
[03:21:20] York Times bestsellers. Terrible at
[03:21:21] saying no. He was pressuring me to write
[03:21:23] this book. And I was like, we were both
[03:21:24] kind of drunk at the time. And I was
[03:21:26] like, Neil, he was at a busting my balls
[03:21:28] at a table. I was single at the time and
[03:21:30] he's kind of like embarrassing me a
[03:21:31] bunch in front of these women. And I'm
[03:21:32] just like, Neil, if you're such a hot
[03:21:34] shot, I see what you're doing. You're
[03:21:35] doing this lame power play in front of
[03:21:37] these girls trying to impress him. I was
[03:21:38] like, which is not totally true, but I
[03:21:41] was just like, "All right, you want you
[03:21:42] want you want to spar? Let's go." And I
[03:21:44] was like, "If you want to write this
[03:21:45] book, if you want to read this book so
[03:21:46] badly, why don't you help me finish it?
[03:21:48] Get off the bench." And he was like, and
[03:21:50] then the next day when we both sobered
[03:21:52] up, he's like, "Hey, if you're serious,
[03:21:53] like, let's talk." And so he became kind
[03:21:55] of like the student and I would have him
[03:21:59] test these things. And then like 50% of
[03:22:01] the time he'd [ __ ] it up. He'd fumble
[03:22:03] it. He'd create some mess. Uh, but what
[03:22:06] ended up happen or he wouldn't do the
[03:22:07] homework. you would not do the homework.
[03:22:08] And I was like, "Oh, this book doesn't
[03:22:10] work. Okay, well, I need to make this
[03:22:12] book work. So, how do I make it work for
[03:22:13] this guy? If I can make it work for this
[03:22:14] guy, it'll work for other people." And
[03:22:16] then started testing it with a private
[03:22:19] community of about 100 people also and
[03:22:22] ultimately got it to the point where
[03:22:23] it's like that guy is different now.
[03:22:27] Like after a year working together, like
[03:22:29] his life, how he interacts, he still
[03:22:31] sends me texts to this day. He's like,
[03:22:32] "You would not believe what just
[03:22:33] happened. It is a different life." Like
[03:22:36] before you have the shield of no and
[03:22:39] after you have the shield of no wielded
[03:22:41] artfully they are two different
[03:22:42] experiences of life. And this also if
[03:22:46] you want more time dilation right if you
[03:22:48] want more experiential lifespan you want
[03:22:50] more intimacy you cannot do that if you
[03:22:53] have a porous mesh through which
[03:22:55] everyone else's agenda filters to you
[03:22:57] >> that you feel morally obligated for
[03:22:59] reasons that are unclear
[03:23:01] >> to say yes.
[03:23:02] >> Do you say no more than you say yes?
[03:23:04] >> Oh yeah. Yeah. I have to I have to on a
[03:23:07] lot of levels. And if I if I if I if I
[03:23:09] give you sort of a sterile example be
[03:23:11] like in the world of startup investing,
[03:23:13] if I don't say no to 80 90% or more of
[03:23:16] what comes my way, I run out of money,
[03:23:19] right? I have to play it like a smart
[03:23:21] blackjack player. It's like, okay, like
[03:23:23] yeah, I can try to learn how to count
[03:23:24] cards and I know you're not supposed to
[03:23:26] do that, but sort of like bringing down
[03:23:28] the house or the movie 21. It's like,
[03:23:30] okay, like you can try to like get
[03:23:32] better at it and then you need to know
[03:23:33] when you have a hot hand. You need to
[03:23:34] know when the deck is in the right
[03:23:36] place. You need to know your statistics,
[03:23:38] but you're not going to bet on you're
[03:23:39] not going to bet heavy on every hand.
[03:23:41] You'll run out of bankroll. So, in the
[03:23:44] startup investing, it's just an
[03:23:45] existential imperative, right? You have
[03:23:47] to say no to those things. So, you have
[03:23:48] to have rules. And what are those rules
[03:23:51] grounded? And they're grounded in
[03:23:52] certain principles. And then what are
[03:23:54] those grounded? They're grounded in
[03:23:55] certain beliefs. And I'll give you an
[03:23:56] example of a belief. And the one belief
[03:23:58] would be there are plenty of
[03:24:00] opportunities. You can wait for a fat
[03:24:02] pitch. Mhm.
[03:24:03] >> along the lines of Warren Buffett.
[03:24:05] >> Mhm.
[03:24:07] >> But if you've been taught and
[03:24:09] conditioned yourself to have this fear
[03:24:10] of missing out,
[03:24:13] >> game is lost.
[03:24:14] >> Mhm.
[03:24:14] >> It's lost at the belief level before you
[03:24:17] ever get to the principles, before you
[03:24:18] get to the strategies, before you get to
[03:24:20] to the tactics. So, a lot of it is
[03:24:23] solved with fear setting.
[03:24:25] >> How do you pick your investments? I
[03:24:27] mean, you were early on what, Facebook,
[03:24:29] Shopif, a whole bunch of companies.
[03:24:32] >> Yeah. Facebook, Twitter, Shopify,
[03:24:33] Duolingo,
[03:24:35] uh Clear, the biometric security
[03:24:38] company, and all the airports,
[03:24:40] uh, Alibaba, like a whole bunch.
[03:24:42] >> Wow.
[03:24:43] >> Yeah. Uh,
[03:24:45] >> so, how am I early? Uh,
[03:24:49] >> were you seeking them out or they see
[03:24:51] they sold?
[03:24:52] >> Both. So, uh there there are a few
[03:24:53] things that I think are
[03:24:56] maybe uh
[03:24:58] copy and pasteable and then some things
[03:25:00] that are are probably not as copy and
[03:25:02] pasteable. Um the things that I think
[03:25:05] are copy and pasteable and there's a
[03:25:08] book coming out soon by a legendary
[03:25:10] venture capitalist named Bill Gurley
[03:25:12] called Running Down a Dream I believe is
[03:25:14] the title of the book which really makes
[03:25:16] this point well. But going to the ep
[03:25:18] epicenter of the action matters. It
[03:25:22] really matters in real life. So, me
[03:25:26] packing up after college with my piece
[03:25:29] of [ __ ] handme-down Plymouth Voyager
[03:25:31] minivan, like so beaten up, like
[03:25:34] hundreds of thousands of miles. Like,
[03:25:36] the back seats got stolen out of a
[03:25:39] parking lot when I first got to the Bay
[03:25:41] Area. I mean, you know, my my my got
[03:25:44] ruthlessly made fun of by my co-workers,
[03:25:46] but it's like I picked up and I was
[03:25:48] like, I am going west to Silicon Valley.
[03:25:52] to make my riches. And that didn't
[03:25:55] happen quickly. But what it did do is it
[03:25:58] put me in the very center of the pinball
[03:26:00] machine where I could bump into things.
[03:26:02] >> Mhm.
[03:26:03] >> And I could bump into things by
[03:26:05] volunteering. Like you don't have no you
[03:26:07] don't have any network. Get creative.
[03:26:10] What do you have? You have time. Okay.
[03:26:13] You've got endurance, right? You're
[03:26:14] young in that case, right? What are your
[03:26:17] advantages? You always have advantages.
[03:26:19] All right. Well, like design something
[03:26:21] around your advantages. So in my case, I
[03:26:23] volunteered for a number of startup
[03:26:26] nonprofits like the Silicon Valley
[03:26:29] Association of Startup Entrepreneurs,
[03:26:31] the Indis Entrepreneur, which Sriram
[03:26:33] would know, past guest, really nice,
[03:26:36] brilliant guy. The Indis entrepreneur
[03:26:39] almost wholly focused on the in the
[03:26:43] Indian diaspora and entrepreneurship
[03:26:45] around that, right? And like the the
[03:26:48] numbers of of amazing entrepreneurs who
[03:26:51] come out of India who have chosen to
[03:26:53] come to the US just unbelievable,
[03:26:56] >> right? I'm not Indian as you might have
[03:26:58] guessed, but I would go there and I'll
[03:27:00] be like, "Hey, I'll do anything. I'll
[03:27:02] fill water. I'll punch tickets. I'll
[03:27:05] rearrange chairs. I just want to be in
[03:27:07] the room with these speakers, right?"
[03:27:10] And as a volunteer, if you do more than
[03:27:12] someone asks you to do, you're going to
[03:27:15] get noticed by the people running the
[03:27:16] event. You don't have to do very much,
[03:27:19] but I would just do a lot more than they
[03:27:21] asked me to do. And eventually they're
[03:27:22] like, "Hey, do you want to help organize
[03:27:23] one of these events?" Like, "We're not
[03:27:24] getting paid. We have a day job." Like,
[03:27:26] "Do you want to help?" I'm like, "Can I
[03:27:28] I I would love to." Uh, but really what
[03:27:31] I like to do is at least organize the
[03:27:32] speakers. They're like, "Sure."
[03:27:34] So now I get to reach out to people way
[03:27:36] above my pay grade who ended up in some
[03:27:39] cases being long-term relationships. I
[03:27:41] mean Jack Canfield, the co-creator of
[03:27:43] Chicken Soup for the Soul, who I met
[03:27:45] through a nonprofit by volunteering and
[03:27:47] doing a little bit extra. He later years
[03:27:50] later introduced me to my book agent who
[03:27:53] after whatever 30 plus rejections sold
[03:27:56] the 4-hour work week and I just had Jack
[03:28:00] Canfield on my podcast like a few weeks
[03:28:02] ago. uh whatever it is like 24 years
[03:28:06] later, right? All from volunteering and
[03:28:09] doing a little bit more than anybody
[03:28:11] asked. Um so the network matters.
[03:28:15] >> Exceed the expectations.
[03:28:17] >> Yeah. Exceed the expectations and be in
[03:28:18] the center of the action. So it's like
[03:28:19] if you're really serious,
[03:28:22] um there are other people who have said
[03:28:23] this. Scott Galloway I think puts it
[03:28:25] really well. It's like it's it's better
[03:28:26] to be average at something in the center
[03:28:30] like fashion in New York. comedy in LA
[03:28:33] or New York, whatever. We can give a lot
[03:28:36] of examples. Then to be great in a tiny
[03:28:38] town in the middle of nowhere
[03:28:40] >> and
[03:28:42] so putting myself in the middle is
[03:28:44] important and I I could give very
[03:28:46] concrete examples of that. That's
[03:28:47] something people can model, right? Not
[03:28:49] everyone, but some people can. You can
[03:28:51] also do it in virtual space and places
[03:28:52] like subreddits and so on. But so that
[03:28:55] that's one. The second is,
[03:28:58] and this is harder to model, of course,
[03:29:00] but the 4-hour work week when it had its
[03:29:04] explosion in 2007. I very deliberately
[03:29:08] targeted very tech-savvy, initially
[03:29:12] males, say between the age of like 25
[03:29:14] and 35 in Silicon Valley and then New
[03:29:19] York. And then that bled out to both
[03:29:20] genders, no problem. That was an easy
[03:29:22] hop. And then it began hopping to other
[03:29:24] cities like LA and Chicago. But I wanted
[03:29:27] to focus on people who could broadcast
[03:29:28] the message most effectively. And that's
[03:29:32] relevant because the success of the book
[03:29:35] especially targeted at startups is what
[03:29:38] led to for instance being in the
[03:29:40] switchbox in Silicon Valley. I started
[03:29:42] going to events like Railscom related to
[03:29:45] Ruby on Rails. I'm not a programmer but
[03:29:48] there who did I meet? I met Toby of
[03:29:53] Shopify when they had like 8 to 10
[03:29:55] employees and he had read the book and
[03:29:58] that was a context for a conversation
[03:30:01] and then ended up becoming you know
[03:30:04] their first I believe adviser and
[03:30:08] so that's an example I do think that you
[03:30:10] can engineer that type of thing just by
[03:30:14] cultivating a network which by the way
[03:30:17] just like my friendships is like a few
[03:30:19] people very deep, not a scattershot
[03:30:23] collection of business cards. I don't
[03:30:26] think that works
[03:30:27] >> very well at all. And it comes off as
[03:30:29] what it is, which is transactional and
[03:30:30] superficial. Um because here's the
[03:30:33] secret. The secret is if if you are f if
[03:30:36] you develop true friendship
[03:30:39] with someone you love like a brother or
[03:30:42] sister or could who could become one of
[03:30:45] your true long-term friends and they
[03:30:47] happen to be an A player at something. A
[03:30:49] players in one domain tend to know A
[03:30:51] players in a lot of domains. You don't
[03:30:53] need to know everybody,
[03:30:55] >> right?
[03:30:56] >> You really don't. Um, okay. So, there's
[03:30:59] that. I'm trying to answer this question
[03:31:01] in in the least longwinded way I can,
[03:31:03] but it's it's it's it's nuanced. So, in
[03:31:06] terms of selection, so then I start
[03:31:08] seeing startups, but I don't have very
[03:31:10] much money at the time. Got a little
[03:31:13] bit. And I had fantasized about going to
[03:31:16] Stanford Business School for a lot of
[03:31:18] reasons. So I was like, I would have
[03:31:19] been so much happier at Stanford than
[03:31:20] Princeton, which I think is probably
[03:31:21] true. And it's gorgeous. It's got like
[03:31:23] Palm Drive. It's an amazing campus and
[03:31:26] it's completely integrated with venture
[03:31:28] capital and startups, right? They have
[03:31:30] real operators to teach at that school.
[03:31:32] So I went through the application
[03:31:34] process twice and then for one reason or
[03:31:36] another, I was like, I just can't do it.
[03:31:38] I just don't want to be back in school.
[03:31:40] And then I was helping a friend of mine,
[03:31:44] Mike Maples Jr., who who was a super
[03:31:46] angel. He was a very good angel
[03:31:47] investor. I had met him through one of
[03:31:49] my professors at school just by asking.
[03:31:52] A lot of people don't get what they want
[03:31:53] because they don't ask for it. And uh he
[03:31:56] wanted to lose some weight. So I was
[03:31:58] this is well before the 4-hour body. So
[03:31:59] I was helping him get in shape. And I
[03:32:01] was like, "Hey, do you mind if we just
[03:32:03] like after the workouts or whatever?
[03:32:04] Like we can trade information on that."
[03:32:06] He also wanted to know about PR and
[03:32:07] launch for the 4-hour work week. So we I
[03:32:09] would I would share all that and I'd
[03:32:11] say, "Can you just explain the deals
[03:32:12] you're doing? Like how are you choosing
[03:32:14] them? Why yes, why no? And eventually at
[03:32:18] one point I was like, "Hey, I'm willing
[03:32:21] to put skin in the game and I can be
[03:32:23] really cheap labor. Like, is there any
[03:32:25] chance I could invest small amounts
[03:32:26] along with you into some of these
[03:32:28] startups
[03:32:30] and help them with go to market
[03:32:32] strategy, whatever." And he's like, "I
[03:32:33] can ask." And what I decided to do was
[03:32:36] rather than go to graduate school, I
[03:32:37] would take the cost that I would have
[03:32:38] paid out of pocket, sunk cost. So, I
[03:32:41] think Stanford Business School is like
[03:32:43] 60K for two years. 60K, 60K, 120. And I
[03:32:47] was like, "All right, I'm going to make
[03:32:48] the Tim Ferrris fund." I put it in air
[03:32:51] quotes because it's not a real fund, but
[03:32:53] I'm going to spend I'm going to plan on
[03:32:54] spending 120K over two years in small
[03:32:56] checks.
[03:32:58] I assume the money is all going to zero,
[03:33:01] but what I'm optimizing for is skills
[03:33:04] and relationships.
[03:33:05] >> Mhm.
[03:33:06] >> Just like business school.
[03:33:07] >> Mhm.
[03:33:08] >> And that's how it started. Then there's
[03:33:10] a question of what do you say yes to?
[03:33:11] What do you say no to? I only said yes
[03:33:13] to things where
[03:33:16] the ones that worked out. I made a lot
[03:33:18] of mistakes, but the ones that worked
[03:33:19] out which then became
[03:33:22] rules for me were can I be a power user
[03:33:25] of this product myself. Does it solve a
[03:33:28] problem or help me achieve a goal
[03:33:31] personally? Right? Even if I weren't
[03:33:32] involved, would I use this? And by
[03:33:35] extension then that means through the
[03:33:37] books I built the blog back when blogs
[03:33:39] were huge. Some blogs are still huge but
[03:33:41] like my blog is one of the most popular
[03:33:42] in the world. I was like okay can I help
[03:33:45] them through the blog? Now that would be
[03:33:46] podcast social media but can I actually
[03:33:48] help them directly to increase the value
[03:33:50] of the company and therefore the value
[03:33:51] of my equity. Okay. Um, and ideally,
[03:33:56] ideally, this doesn't always work, but
[03:33:58] is it a premium product so that there is
[03:34:01] more room for error, more margin of
[03:34:03] safety? I do not want to be in a race to
[03:34:06] the bottom
[03:34:08] situation where the company is suddenly
[03:34:12] commoditized and they're competing on
[03:34:13] price and just get pressed down.
[03:34:16] Um, and that's about it. And then the
[03:34:18] price has to be right also. Uh, and
[03:34:23] just to address this also,
[03:34:27] 2008 when I really started, that was a
[03:34:30] great time. That was a great time to be
[03:34:32] investing. That was a great time to be
[03:34:34] investing. And it was not a crowded
[03:34:36] playing field because it was in the
[03:34:37] middle of what people might consider
[03:34:38] a.com depression.
[03:34:40] >> So, the fair weather entrepreneurs, the
[03:34:42] fair weather
[03:34:44] venture capitalists and angels, they had
[03:34:46] all run for the hills. They were like,
[03:34:48] "Screw this. I'm going back to
[03:34:49] investment banking or consulting or
[03:34:50] whatever, right? This is this is this is
[03:34:53] too risky, right? IPO market's dead.
[03:34:55] Like uh but
[03:34:58] um it's harder now. It is harder now,
[03:35:02] especially right now with the froth
[03:35:05] around AI which has contagion into other
[03:35:07] things making them even great companies
[03:35:09] if they're too expensive, it's a bad
[03:35:11] investment. M
[03:35:12] >> uh depending the the specifics matter
[03:35:15] but uh I do think people can use a lot
[03:35:19] of what I'm talking about investing in
[03:35:21] what you know something you would use
[03:35:23] like it applies to I hesitate to say
[03:35:26] people should do any stock picking
[03:35:28] because that's a dangerous game I think
[03:35:29] most people including myself I put I do
[03:35:31] a lot of passive lowcost index investing
[03:35:34] I think that's the right move for a lot
[03:35:36] of people but
[03:35:38] uh if you just look at how you spend
[03:35:41] what you're spending more money on now
[03:35:43] than 3 years ago, where you're trying to
[03:35:45] cobble together solutions for something
[03:35:47] that doesn't exist. Like just looking at
[03:35:49] your own personal behavior can inform
[03:35:50] how you think about investing. And I'm
[03:35:52] not a registered investment advisor or
[03:35:55] anything. I'm not giving investment
[03:35:56] advice, but it's like if you stray
[03:35:58] outside of what you know, you will
[03:36:00] probably get your face ripped off.
[03:36:03] >> Yeah,
[03:36:05] good advice.
[03:36:06] >> Rule number one, don't lose your money.
[03:36:07] Don't run out of bankroll.
[03:36:11] Damn good point.
[03:36:12] >> Yeah.
[03:36:13] >> Damn good point.
[03:36:14] >> Yeah.
[03:36:15] >> Well, Tim, it's a fascinating interview.
[03:36:19] I got one question left.
[03:36:20] >> Sure.
[03:36:21] >> You have three people you'd like to see
[03:36:23] on the show. Who would they be?
[03:36:25] >> On your show or my show?
[03:36:26] >> On my show.
[03:36:29] >> Three people. Who would I like to see?
[03:36:32] >> I should start asking that question. I'm
[03:36:34] tucking that away in my swipe file.
[03:36:40] I would say
[03:36:44] someone who is genuinely part of
[03:36:49] some mystic tradition.
[03:36:53] >> Um, who has never been on a podcast,
[03:36:56] but who is a good communicator. And you
[03:36:59] know, we talked very early on about
[03:37:02] scripture and you were like scripture
[03:37:04] like uh if you look at the Christian
[03:37:08] mystics, you look at say Sufism within
[03:37:11] Islam, you look at you know Cababala and
[03:37:14] so on within Judaism, it's like when you
[03:37:17] start to read even the poetry produced
[03:37:19] by all three, they seem very very
[03:37:22] similar. and having someone on who could
[03:37:27] speak intelligently
[03:37:30] and they need to be good with words to
[03:37:32] do this but to describe their firsthand
[03:37:36] experience of the divine I think would
[03:37:39] be a service to listeners. So that would
[03:37:43] be one um love that idea. Yeah, I'd say
[03:37:48] second. I'm trying to really go off menu
[03:37:50] here.
[03:37:55] So, you've covered a lot of ground I
[03:37:56] enjoy already uh with a lot of your
[03:37:58] interviews.
[03:38:00] I would say
[03:38:05] probably dealer's choice, meaning you're
[03:38:07] the dealer, but old traditions, like
[03:38:10] really old traditions, um, who have not
[03:38:13] been exposed or picked over by a lot of
[03:38:15] other podcasts. And that could be just
[03:38:18] about anything cuz my my approach to,
[03:38:20] you know, whether it's investing,
[03:38:22] explorations, it's kind of a barbell
[03:38:24] approach like Nasim Taleb's investing,
[03:38:26] right? like super super safe or super
[03:38:28] super speculative is how I do things.
[03:38:30] I'm not saying everybody should do that.
[03:38:32] But also with respect to my own
[03:38:33] intellectual exploration and scientific
[03:38:36] exploration, I'm like I'm typically
[03:38:38] cutting edge or I'm looking at things
[03:38:40] that have been around for hundreds or
[03:38:42] thousands of years that are durable
[03:38:46] and
[03:38:47] I think exploring
[03:38:50] the really old stuff is interesting. So
[03:38:52] the mystics are kind of one example of
[03:38:54] that, right? This has just been a
[03:38:55] consistent feature of humanity for
[03:38:57] millennia.
[03:38:59] >> Might be something there. I don't know.
[03:39:01] I think there is. Uh, so I would say
[03:39:06] uh this is this is getting very close to
[03:39:09] the same territory, but you could
[03:39:11] interview
[03:39:15] like and you'd have to pick them very
[03:39:17] carefully, but give you an example like
[03:39:20] a Greek Greek Orthodox
[03:39:24] church singer
[03:39:25] >> who knows a lot about droning
[03:39:28] and uh or a musicologist who can speak
[03:39:31] to I recommend one. He's a wild card. U
[03:39:35] I'll I'll say it off off camera just
[03:39:39] just so you can do your due diligence,
[03:39:40] but someone who for instance has
[03:39:42] knowledge of historic use
[03:39:45] cross-culturally of harmonics or
[03:39:48] overtones
[03:39:50] for
[03:39:52] religious experience and altered states.
[03:39:55] >> That would be interesting. who could who
[03:39:56] could speak not just to the
[03:39:59] the cultural context but also to like
[03:40:03] what we actually know from a musicology
[03:40:06] perspective from potentially uh
[03:40:09] neuroscientific perspective.
[03:40:11] >> Very interesting.
[03:40:12] >> There's some like you do not need drugs
[03:40:15] to have some shockingly alarming altered
[03:40:19] states of consciousness. Uh music has
[03:40:22] been one major tool in toolkit for a
[03:40:25] long time. Yeah.
[03:40:26] >> Um, so that could be interesting. Uh,
[03:40:29] and then number three, who's lucky
[03:40:32] number three? I would say a physicist
[03:40:34] focused on time. Not just a science
[03:40:37] communicator. There are physicists who
[03:40:40] have certain credentials who are
[03:40:41] primarily science communicators, but
[03:40:43] like a working physicist,
[03:40:45] somebody who's still an operator,
[03:40:47] >> okay,
[03:40:47] >> who's kind of at the forefront of
[03:40:51] work that involves consideration of time
[03:40:53] fundamentally.
[03:40:55] I think would be
[03:40:57] squirly enough to be fun for you and
[03:41:01] mindbending for listeners because
[03:41:05] it's weird. It's very strange.
[03:41:07] >> Fascinating topics.
[03:41:09] >> Yeah, I think all three and because
[03:41:12] at the at the at the very end of the
[03:41:14] day, it's like what can we be certain
[03:41:15] of, right? Like how do we know we're not
[03:41:17] a brain in a jar in a simulation, right?
[03:41:20] What can we actually know is true? And I
[03:41:22] think one of the few things we can know
[03:41:24] is true is that we're aware of the fact
[03:41:26] that we are aware
[03:41:29] and therefore
[03:41:33] maybe it makes sense to really put that
[03:41:34] under a microscope try to understand it
[03:41:36] which mindfulness and meditation
[03:41:39] practice has done for millennia as well.
[03:41:43] Uh so that would be if I had to pick a
[03:41:44] fourth just to round out the dinner
[03:41:46] table. Uh someone who has a lot of
[03:41:51] experience. I've known one guy in
[03:41:52] particular, Henry Shookman, um, who I've
[03:41:55] ended up doing some collaborations with
[03:41:56] because he just blew me away. But, um,
[03:41:59] who's specifically a Zen practitioner,
[03:42:01] which is like layering weird on top of
[03:42:04] weird, uh,
[03:42:07] but in ways that are, uh,
[03:42:10] oddly productive, like coons and so on.
[03:42:13] What a strange thing. Uh, so I'll leave
[03:42:17] it at that, but those would be those
[03:42:19] would be uh four I'd put around the
[03:42:21] table.
[03:42:22] >> Thank you. Thank you.
[03:42:24] >> You have a fascinating way of thinking
[03:42:26] about things. I really enjoyed this. So,
[03:42:28] thank you for coming.
[03:42:29] >> Thanks for having me, man. I really,
[03:42:30] really had a great time. Thanks for the
[03:42:32] gifts, also.
[03:42:33] >> My pleasure. Let's go break that thing
[03:42:35] in.
[03:42:35] >> Let's do it. Cheers. Thanks.
[03:42:42] [Music]
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[03:42:51] Shawn Ryan Show from, if you get
[03:42:53] anything out of this at all, anything,
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