Please enjoy this transcript of the 500th episode of The Tim Ferriss Show! I am joined by Kevin Rose (@KevinRose)—technologist, serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, self-experimenter, and all-around wild and crazy guy—who was the first guest on the podcast nearly seven years ago. We were in San Francisco, sitting at this huge wooden table, and I remember being very nervous. I didn’t know what to expect, but if people liked the idea, I promised to do at least six total episodes.
600M+ downloads and hundreds of guests later, Kevin is taking the reins and interviewing me for episode #500!
Hard to believe it all started off as a lark. It’s arguably the biggest thing I’ve ever done, and without you all—my dear listeners—it wouldn’t be possible.
Thank you for allowing me to do this work. I love it. ?
Transcripts may contain a few typos. With some episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform.
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Kevin Rose: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Tim Ferriss show, episode 500. I am your host, Tim Ferriss. I am not Tim Ferriss. I’m Kevin Rose. Tim, thank you for having me, dude. I know I was your first guest on episode one, but I’m honored to be interviewing you for this episode.
Tim Ferriss: I am so thrilled and excited and wouldn’t have it any other way.
Kevin Rose: I appreciate that.
Tim Ferriss: So I am stoked to be reunited. We have some wine, I have this kind of like, Magnum bottle of white wine.
Kevin Rose: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Kevin worried that I had already polished off seven eighths of it, but I had — I’m in the jungle with an Italian. There’s more to that. But the table wine is courtesy of his house and he gave me just enough to — it looks kind of like horse urine in this —
Kevin Rose: That’s smart.
Tim Ferriss: But just enough to have fun without getting sloppy.
Kevin Rose: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: Because we have a history with wine.
Kevin Rose: You know what’s funny, I told Darya, I was like, “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m going to pour two glasses into my glass. And I don’t care if I’m texting you, do not bring the bottle back down. Like, do not do it.” So I actually — but I totally screwed up and I brought the bottle and it’s sitting next to me now.
Tim Ferriss: Nice.
Kevin Rose: But it was a good plan for as long as it lasted.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Dude, so you know, it’s funny. I remember you came to me and you said, “I think I want to do a podcast, and you’ve done podcasts before.” Because I had done like 300 episodes of Diggnation prior to you starting yours. And I remember, this is horrible, but it’s true. I remember just being like, “Tim, don’t do a podcast. It’s stupid.” I was trying to talk to you out of it. I feel so bad for that now, because you went and you did it and obviously it’s a massive success. So what do I know? But dude, 500.
Tim Ferriss: Well, you know, you must have given me some type of good advice. Or the bad advice wasn’t compelling enough.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And here we are. And I remember recording that first episode. We were in San Francisco. My first apartment I’d rented in San Francisco, and this huge wooden table. And I remember being really nervous. We had all sorts of gear. We had all sorts of fancy, you know, mixers and everything else. We had somebody helping. My hands are sweaty and I had a list of questions, a printout. And I remember in that first episode, number one, it was, per your description, TimTim TalkTalk.
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: Because we didn’t have a name. And then I remember asking you a question, which was, “If you could be a breakfast cereal, what would you be and why?” And you went, “Oh, it’s one of those interviews.” And I was like, “Never again will I ask that question.”
Kevin Rose: You had to test them out though. You know, not every question works. So you were new to the game.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It was good training. All right. So I saw you take a sip. So you’ve got your wine.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: This is just —
Kevin Rose: But you’re drinking the table wine.
Tim Ferriss: I’m drinking grocery table wine, Famiglia Cielo, C-I-E-L-O, from 1908, Pinot Grigio.
Kevin Rose: Out of your fancy water glass.
Tim Ferriss: And this is what this Italian family has been drinking. Out of my fancy, yeah, like 12-ounce water glass, since I don’t have any wine glasses.
Kevin Rose: I am doing the 2016 Napa Valley Reserve. It is a fantastic white wine, just a little Chardonnay. Good stuff.
Tim Ferriss: Congrats on being guest number 500, and congrats to a longstanding friendship, honestly.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, cheers to that, brother.
Tim Ferriss: It’s been lots of adventures. So cheers.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Cheers.
Tim Ferriss: Really nice to have continued to deepen and stay in touch over all these years.
Kevin Rose: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: And I feel like that is probably as sentimental as it’s going to get. And you seem to have lots of arrows in the quiver for questions.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I warned you.
Tim Ferriss: You gave me a lot of warnings via text message. And I have not reviewed anything. So.
Kevin Rose: Well, so this is the cool thing, is I was putting together a Google Doc and I was like, “Okay Tim, we’ll share the Google Doc, I’ll put some questions in there, and tell me what you think.” And he’s like, “Actually, I’d rather do this just sight unseen. Let’s just roll with it.” So I went out, you know, did a little Twitter post, you retweeted it. We’ve got a few hundred questions there. Also some of your good friends like Mr. Chris Sacca, who’s a mutual friend of ours, reached out and sent me some very colorful questions, if you will.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, fantastic.
Kevin Rose: So I’m kind of saving those for a little bit — well, actually I’m going to start with a Sacca one, but some of the more juicier ones are going to be peppered in a little bit later in the show. So this is fun. This is a good mix of serious and crazy. And yeah, it’s a smorgasbord of questions, if you will. Are you ready?
Tim Ferriss: A grab bag of podcasting delights. I’m ready.
Kevin Rose: Okay. So here we go. I’m actually going to lead off with a Sacca question because he sent so many good ones. He said, “What one thing do you eat that you’ve never wanted to admit to the 4-Hour Body tribe?”
Tim Ferriss: Oh, boy. Well, I will say the first thing that comes to mind, because it’s a recent example, is if I’ve had two or more glasses of wine and there is pizza within 30 feet of me, it’s game over. It’s completely game over. So I was having a bunch of pizza, and by a bunch I mean like six to 10 slices, just a few days ago. And this was at the tail end of a bottle of wine. And my friend, one of my friends I was with here said, “What would all of your readers of The 4-Hour Body say while you’re prohibiting them from eating carbs? Look at yourself!”
Kevin Rose: Nice.
Tim Ferriss: And so that’s the first thing that comes to mind. If there are any Tim Tams nearby, Tim Tams are this —
Kevin Rose: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: — cookie treat that I just think are delicious. They’re amazing. And there’s the Tim-Tam slam, which is when you dunk it into something like milk or any number of other things. Tim Tams are also dangerous territory. So those are the — pizza and Tim Tams.
Kevin Rose: You say 30 feet away. Do you mean that, like, your phone is 30 feet away and you order pizza and have it delivered to your house? Because that’s what I do. That’s my downfall.
Tim Ferriss: I’m eliminating the phone from this. If I walk, let’s just say pre-COVID times.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Had a few drinks. I’m walking down a street to get to wherever I’m going, and we pass a pizza joint. Or if it’s within, like, excusable rationalizing distance, like, “Oh, let’s just go over and take a look at the menu.” Right, if it’s a right turn and you have to go a quarter mile, I’m not going to do it. Because I’ll try to preserve some dignity. But if it’s within wandering distance, say, there’s a place called Home Slice on South Congress in Austin and it’s dangerously, dangerously close to the main kind of pedestrian area. So I would succumb.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Yeah. We’re in the same camp. If anything is within a couple of blocks of my house, it’s like game over. Like, that’s just going to happen all the time. All right. So next question. “Love the show. However, it seems that you’re constantly searching for the next big life hack, next product that will satisfy, etc. That would be exhausting and would lead to constant anxiety. My question, Tim, have you found peace outside of having things or knowing things?”
Tim Ferriss: That’s a damn fine question. Is this from the interwebs?
Kevin Rose: It is.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. My relationship to self-improvement or thinking about hacks and so on has changed over time. And you know, the word hack used to not have as much baggage as it now does. So I use that term effectively never, these days, because it’s just established such a, or taken on such a kind of a nasty negative overtone. But I’ll tell a story. I think this illustrates how I’m reorienting quite easily, and that is, I was spending time with an incredible, I want to say, psychiatrist. He’s also, I want to say, an ordained minister. I may be getting some of the details wrong here. Maybe it’s a masters of divinity, I don’t know. Named Bill Richards. And Bill Richards is well known also for being one of the most experienced let’s call it guides or facilitators above ground in the psychedelic world. So he’s facilitated hundreds of sessions, along with a woman named Mary Cosimano, who’s equally impressive in so many ways and just an incredible human being.
And I spent time with Bill. He supervised years and years of sessions, both pre-prohibition, meaning pre the Controlled Substances Act, and post. So he’s done all sorts of trainings all over the world. And there were two things that stood out from that conversation immediately. Number one, I asked him what books he could recommend for learning more about the process of guiding, the protocols they used, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah. And he said, “Well,” he said, “You know the problem with books.” And I was like, “What’s the problem with books?” And he said, “Too many words.” So that kind of gives you an idea of his personality. And then the second thing he said was related to doing the work. Because I said, “I’m not afraid to do the work.” And he said, “Well, you know, what’s so tricky about doing the work?” And I asked him what it was that was so tricky. And he said, “Well, there’s a very thin line between doing the work and just picking on yourself.”
So I think that, you know, self-improvement and how much it affects you positively or negatively, for me personally, depends a lot on the motivation behind it, right? Like, are you running away from something or are you running towards something? Are you finding problems with yourself, or problems in your life, just because you’ve been rewarded throughout your life as a problem solver? I think that’s true for me. It’s true for a lot of people. You’re just good at solving problems, so you get really good at finding problems.
Or are you doing it because there’s some joy in doing it? Right? So for instance, right now I’m trying to pick up a couple of different games. Like board games, chess, there are a number of things. And I find those really fun. So I’m improving my thinking and so on, looking at a game of complete information like chess, learning about classical games, and all this stuff. Legal’s mate, I think, is one that I learned yesterday, which is just gorgeous, with two knights. And I’m a novice, but I’m having so much fun doing it.
Versus, let’s just say, a contrast with that would be a therapy session that I had yesterday, where we got into all this childhood stuff and revisited a bunch of trauma. And I came out of the session feeling much worse than when I went into it. And it occurred to me that I think that we can feel like we’re doing a good thing sometimes when we’re suffering and grinding, but that does not by default mean that we’re doing something worthwhile or improving. And so after that session, I sort of committed to myself not to dredge up all of the pain from the past in the name of doing the work just because I can. So I feel like I have a very good relationship to hacks and all that stuff now. It doesn’t cause me stress. And in fact it never really has. But I think for a very long time, I looked for problems to solve because I was good at solving problems. And not all of those problems were worthwhile. And many of those problems were just masochistic. If that makes any sense.
Kevin Rose: It does. How do you apply this, though, to actual products? Like, for example, you know, you do the 5-Bullet Friday, your really famous newsletter. You’re finding all kinds of stuff. I imagine people are, they just send you free stuff. Like, if you have any kind of following, it’s very common on the internet. People want to try and send you things to check out.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Like, how do you not just accumulate a bunch of crap? Like, I find that every little object you own is some type of subconscious burden. You know, it’s just like just storing it is a burden.
Tim Ferriss: Totally. It’s just psychic drag. It’s like, imagine dragging all shit that around behind you in like a net. Right?
Kevin Rose: So what do you do? What do you do there? Because you must see and get so much stuff. Like, how do you clear that out? How do you not try out the latest project? Or product?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Number one is, I really don’t encourage people to send things to me. I mean, you know this, because for better or for worse, you’ve turned into my unpaid executive assistant. So you, people try to go through you. And I’m just like, “Nah, I’m good. I’m good for now.” And what I’ll very often do, number one, I have policies. So I try to make one decision that removes a thousand decisions. Right? So even in 2009, I was getting 30 to 40 books sent to me by publishers or authors per week. That’s impossible. Right? You can’t even begin to read those, let alone have your own life with your own priorities, if you bend to that type of incoming. So I initially just said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.” And they were all — but even saying no was exhausting, and took a lot of time when you start to have not 30, 40 a week, but several hundred a week.
And I then posted, for instance, a blog post, which is a general policy of not reading any new books in 2020, meaning any books published in 2020. I’ve extended that to 2021. I’m not reading any books published in 2021. So when someone asks me or asks someone on my team, they can say “Ah, sorry, Tim’s just not doing that. Check out tim.blog/newbooks.” And it depersonalizes it.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. You’ve got to just backdate your book, basically.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It depersonalizes it. So it makes it easier to say no. And it makes it easier for other people to receive no. The other thing, it’s like, if someone’s like, “Hey, let me send you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, free product, free fill-in-the-blank,” the first thing you’ve got to remember is, like, I remember somebody said once, and I can’t remember the attribution, but like free sex is the most expensive sex you’ll ever have. Right? That’s true for free books. That’s true for free product. It’s not free. There’s going to be, if you have an audience, there’s going to be a follow up. And sometimes it’s like, Oh, my God, 10 years later, I’ve had 73 emails from this person. Don’t open that door. So if someone says, “Hey, I’d love for you to try X,” if it’s a really close friend and I know they’re putting their reputation on the line and putting some skin in the game, right, they’re risking something, then maybe. But very rarely. If it’s a book or something else, I’m like, “You know what, I’ll buy it myself.” I will —
Kevin Rose: So how do you, around the purchasing side of it, like, how do you make a decision to actually buy something? Like, how do you prevent yourself from overspending on items? Like, is there anything that you use to be more minimal?
Tim Ferriss: Well, I know you’ve, you’ve had this snooze function, right, where you won’t allow yourself to make the 3:00 a.m. Amazon purchase. You have to hit snooze for 24 hours.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So this brings up questions related to some level of what people might consider success, right? So you end up in situations, and this is a very rarefied situation so I want to acknowledge that up front. Like, you and I are in very fortunate positions. But let’s say I get sent a bunch of shit. Somehow it gets sent to me. And it’s not useful to me, I’m not interested in it, but it could be very useful to someone else.
Let’s take an easy example. Someone sends me a bunch of schwag, right? Like sweatshirts and hats and so on. It’s like, I have more — I have enough clothing to last me forever. I don’t need any more t-shirts. None of it. The cheapest thing for me to do is to throw that out. Right? To literally throw it in the trash. Okay. Then there are karmically better things to do, like taking it to Goodwill, which is what I usually do. And then I’m paying an assistant $20, $30, $40 an hour to do that. Right? I could return something. This is another consideration, right? Like, am I actually going to return something if I don’t want it? The answer is likely no. So I really try to measure twice and cut once in those cases.
And I think I am disinclined to buy too many things right now. Although if you looked at my Amazon order history, that might sound ridiculous. But compared to, say, even a few years ago, I buy far fewer things. Because for me, the visual punishment of having a disordered kitchen table, of having a disordered house, is so irritating. I’m very visually sensitive. I’m kind of like Monk from the TV show in that way. I dislike that so much. And I dislike waste so much. This is particularly true of food. I’m very sensitive to food waste. That it’s sort of a self-correcting system in that way. I’ve become much more sensitive to clutter in the last few years.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. That makes sense. All right. Let’s move on to the next question. “Is there any advice you used, given to you or that you have given in the past, that wasn’t the best? Not trying to be a troublemaker, I’m just wondering how high performers know when to course correct., e.g. abandon faulty notions.” Does that make sense?
Tim Ferriss: That’s a very good — yeah, it does make sense. That’s a very good, and it’s a very important question, right? Because you always get advice from people who have done well. Or you see advice from people who’ve done well. And there’s a survivorship bias. Right? It’s like the Warren Buffett parable of sorts. Maybe it’s not a parable, maybe it’s a metaphor. I always mix up metaphor and analogy. In any case. Maybe it’s a simile. I could never keep those straight. But he talks about, if you take like 10,000 orangutans and they’re flipping quarters, eventually you’re going to end up with one orangutan who has flipped heads a hundred times. And then that orangutan is going to write books about how to flip quarters and beat the stock market. So there’s so much chance involved and there’s such a survivorship bias. Meaning you only see the advertisements for the mutual funds that survive in a magazine like Barron’s or whatever. It’s important to ask that question.
And I’m saying all of that to buy myself some time, because I know those must exist. I’ll give one. I’ll give one. I had an incredible aversion to any type of investment in publicly traded equities, in stocks, until just a few years ago. You know this. You’ve watched this, right?
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Were you telling people not to invest in stocks? Or was this something someone told you? So was it advice that you gave or advice that you received? Because that was —
Tim Ferriss: It was advice that I received from a few people I respect who were very uncomfortable in investing in publicly traded equities, because they felt like they could not directly impact the value of those companies. And these were startup investors. And that made a lot of sense to me at the time. And that logic still makes sense, right? Like, what am I going to do to increase the market cap and the price per share of Tesla? Right? Like, very, very little. I mean, I suppose my audience is large enough that maybe for a day I could register a blip maybe, but really not much.
And my thinking has become more nuanced. Right? Because the argument that I can’t have a substantial impact on the price per share, therefore I shouldn’t invest, it’s kind of two parts. Right? So the assumption that I can’t have a substantial impact on price per share, that’s valid. But does that there therefore lead to the conclusion I should not invest? I think there are other considerations. So thinking about timeline, right? So if I’m trying to invest in a company over six months, I have zero confidence, or very little confidence, unless there’s a huge drop for some reason that I think is unwarranted. But if it’s over a two, three year time horizon, and I don’t feel any pressure to trade, then I’ve become much more comfortable investing in a hand, excuse me, a handful, I’ve got the wine burps already after one glass. I feel much more comfortable investing in a handful of companies that I feel are kind of inevitable, unless they’re grossly mismanaged, like from a tech trend perspective, they’re kind of inevitably going to do decently well over a two to three year period.
Kevin Rose: How did you know when to course correct, though? That was actually a really interesting part of the guy’s question. It’s like, as a high performer, it’s easy to get really kind of into someone’s advice, especially if it comes from someone that’s like super vetted and you really believe in. When did you decide, like, this is bad advice, I need to change this?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. You’re good at this. You should interview people. So I think it was forced upon me, in a way, by COVID, in this particular instance. Because I was sitting in almost a, well, I shouldn’t say entirely cash, but largely in cash, like, let’s call it just for the sake of argument, 50 percent cash.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. It was so dumb.
Tim Ferriss: Well, maybe. Maybe.
Kevin Rose: Well I mean when you’re in all cash, you’re losing, just by inflation, you’re losing money. Just letting it sit there.
Tim Ferriss: Well, well we could debate —
Kevin Rose: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: We could fight over this one for a long time. I slept well at night for several years.
Kevin Rose: On a bed of cash.
Tim Ferriss: Because I had a huge — because I had a bed of cash. And I don’t think that should be underestimated. I don’t think a good investment is a good investment if it has really high returns, but you’re like sweating bullets with insomnia.
Kevin Rose: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: Right? And that’s a very personal thing. So for me, having a lot of reserves in cash helped me sleep. I don’t regret it. But when COVID hit, and right before COVID hit and there was the gigantic plummet, I knew there was going to be a plummet or I suspected with high conviction there was going to be a gigantic plummet. I was not savvy with options or credit default swaps. That was just not on the menu for me. But I thought there were going to be buying opportunities in many places. And so then the question was, well, I’ve been sitting on the sidelines. I said I would be back, even in 2015, right?
Now we have to be aware of the sunk cost fallacy — not the sunk cost fallacy, but the confirmation bias, and all of these various things where it’s like, if I publicly stated, like when there’s blood in the streets, I will be back and I will invest. I said that in 2015, when I, quote unquote, retired from startup investing. But I deeply believed it. I was like, I don’t, as Tim Ferriss, as the person who really understands very few aspects of investing with any competence, I don’t get a lot of fat pitches like this. And I was like, where am I going to put money? Like, I have all this money that I have claimed I’ve been waiting to do deploy. What the fuck am I going to do with it?
And I spoke with dozens of investors, not just two people I respected. And ultimately came to believe very deeply in a few positions. Whether or not COVID — whether the consequences, severe and also extended, of COVID on both the economy, on technology, on behavior, were acute or two, three years long, companies I felt would really benefit in either scenario. So I — and the liquidity profile of equities. Right? Like, you want to get out, you can get out. You might get kicked in the balls from a tax perspective, etc., but you have liquidity. Unlike a lot of the stuff that we do. Right? Like, you put money in and, like, you are in. Like, your chips are on the table for five to 10 years. We both have examples that are way past 10 years.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And so that would be an example. But the example, I think the example is interesting not because equities, not because the stock market, not because blah-blah-blah. It’s the process. Right? And I was lucky to have a forcing function. I will say — here’s another one. I have really relied on dietary interventions and exercise and so on for manipulating my blood markers. Right? My blood tests. For a long time. And if you look at my lipid profile, so my, let’s just say, my cardiac and lipid profile, genetically speaking, I have terrible, terrible, terrible software for a few things. It doesn’t matter if I’m vegan. I’ve tried that for a period of time just to see what it did for my blood. Doesn’t matter if I’m fasting, I’ve done tons of fasting, pure keto. Doesn’t matter if I eat all meat. I’ve tried all of these things and I’ve looked at the blood tests and my Apo B count and various other things are terrible. They’re so bad.
Kevin Rose: You and me both, man. Sucks.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s just like, look, my dad’s had a heart attack. My uncles have had strokes and cardiac issues. This is a — like, we just got dealt a really shitty hand from a cardiac perspective and I’ve never considered going on medication, like ezetimibe is the one I’m considering, long-term or indefinitely. But after doing a cardiac calcium scoring, which is zero currently, but also angiograms and all of these things that are more nuanced and provide more detail, I’ve kind of changed my tune. I think there is a point where the risk benefit ratio leads one to the conclusion that it makes sense. Right. And this is true with also like the vaccines, right? I think theater COVID vaccines make overwhelming sense for a very high percentage of the population. So those would be two examples.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. That’s great. Awesome.
All right. Another question. I’ll let you try and guess who this one is from, ends with ACCA. When was the last time a blood or urine sample was stored in your fridge?
Tim Ferriss: That’s a good one.
Kevin Rose: Was a time when you’d open up your fridge and it’s like a six pack of beer. There’s just urine everywhere.
Tim Ferriss: Yes. Urine, blood. Stool samples were the best with the biohazard marker on it. Yeah. You have to be very careful in the Ferriss household, but also you also really don’t want to take any supplements until you confirm that the label corresponds to what is actually in the bottle.
Kevin Rose: Dude, I remember when I went to your bathroom, I was in your house, I went to the bathroom one time and I don’t know if you had the cupboard open or some shit, and I look up, it’s like a freaking Walgreens, dude. You have thousands of supplements. I was like, “How does he take all this stuff?” I mean, it’s you just were accumulating over time.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s been accumulated over time. I also have dramatically reduced the number of supplements that I take, but — all right. So as far as blood and urine samples go, I haven’t stored any of that in the refrigerator for a long time. Now, doesn’t mean that I haven’t taken samples. So the last time I took, let’s see blood and urine samples, I mean, within the last two weeks or three weeks. Within the last three weeks. But I have realized during COVID that there is such a thing called mobile phlebotomy. So you can rather than going into Quest or one of these labs to have a draw performed or into your doctor’s office, there are in fact services or people who provide mobile blood draws. So you can set an appointment. You could even meet them outside. And literally it’s like, you wake up, you probably do not eat breakfast, but you wake up, you’re fasting and you have a blood draw within five to 10 minutes.
Kevin Rose: They’re actually not that expensive either. I had one happen here in Oregon and it was like 50 bucks to have it done, and it’s fantastic. Like especially during COVID dude, you don’t want to be around like 15 other people in a room.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s amazing. I have found it to be a godsend and really, really convenient mobile phlebotomist for people who are wondering how it’s spelled a phlebotomist is P-H-L — phlebotomist with a bunch of Es and Os and other Wheel of Fortune ingredients. All right.
Kevin Rose: All right. I will say though, that people wanted us to get — a lot of the comments was they get personal, like get into it. I will tell one little story, when I was leaving your house that one time, remember this is a long time ago? It’s like a decade ago or something. Like most friends, they say goodbye, give you a hug or whatever, fist bump, whatever. You’re like, “Have a good one,” and you hand me a bottle of beef liver pills. Do you remember this? I’m like–
Tim Ferriss: Oh, those are great. Yeah.
Kevin Rose: I’m like, “Okay, cool, friend, thanks for the beef liver.” You didn’t even tell me what to do with them. It’s like, “Hey, take some beef liver on your way out.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. That’s desiccated beef liver from grass fed cows in Argentina. I remember that. Yeah, I had a friend who was deficient in all sorts of things. I gave him those and he took them and he was like, I feel like I’m on crack. Like, I have so much energy that I cannot even begin to understand how tired I was for so long. So yes, the desiccated beef liver.
Kevin Rose: Do you remember what brand that was?
Tim Ferriss: Off-hand I don’t.
Kevin Rose: I don’t either.
Tim Ferriss: It’s on Amazon. I know that I ordered it on Amazon.
Kevin Rose: Nice. All right.
Tim Ferriss: Caveat emptor. Beware. Not all beef liver pills are created equal.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. You don’t want nasty hormone-injected beef liver pills. Like don’t —
Tim Ferriss: No. No.
Kevin Rose: All right. So going a little bit more sensitive. I wish we had some background music that we could play when this kicks in.
Tim Ferriss: I bet we can figure out some background music.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, that’s like a nice little —
Tim Ferriss: We’ll make it happen.
Kevin Rose: Sweet. You have the resources. How did you meet and fall in love with your girlfriend?
Tim Ferriss: Just a quick note from the editor in postproduction. This is Tim. I had to cut part of this one for privacy reasons. But I love you all very much. Now, back to our show…
Kevin Rose: That’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Which is a strong hand. Like that’s a good move. And I was very interested. So texted her. We had a drink. We met up and the rest is history.
Kevin Rose: That’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: That was quite a few years ago.
Kevin Rose: So let me ask you a question though, because I got to, your fans are going to want this. I have to do it. And I apologize, Tim. It says in the actual question “fall in love.” So when was the — like for me, we talked about when I met Darya at the bar, we talked about Zelda and she was a big Zelda fan. I was like, “Oh, my God, I could love this girl.” Was there something that jumped out during that first couple of dates where you’re just like, “This girl could be an amazing match for me?”
Tim Ferriss: Oh, it was — and again —
Kevin Rose: What were the traits? Was there anything that jumped out, like a common movie? Something she said that was funny? What was it that started to check those boxes for you?
Tim Ferriss: You know, it was none of that. It was none of the data points or things she said. Like, Oh, we have that in common. Oh, our values are aligned. It was more of a feeling. I felt very at ease with her. I felt like I didn’t need to have my defenses up. I felt like there were — I was very confident there were no ulterior motives.
Kevin Rose: That is the hugest thing for you, dude. That’s awesome.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I just felt very comfortable and she was so playful and funny and light, basically all the things I’m not most of the time, and she also gave me so much energy. You know what I’m talking about. That’s a big deal, right? There are people who drain your energy and there are people who give you energy and some people are maybe neutral, but I think over time as you interact with more people, as you get older, certainly as you develop an audience of any type, you become much more sensitive to that because you’re much more exposed to it. And she just gave me so much energy. I mean, it was such a net positive for my state of being and I think that drove it. And yes, we ended up having all of these values in common. Yes, we ended up having lots of priorities and interests in common, but that was secondary to the feeling.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. That’s so cool. One of the things that you and I have talked about privately a lot that I think is worth mentioning, you can always cut it out like you do. By the way, just so people know, you’ve cut out some shit out of previous podcasts. Don’t cut this out. I want to tell people —
Tim Ferriss: There are, now for some very good legal reasons in some cases, but yes, continue.
Kevin Rose: So I was just going to say that I love that she brought the anxiety level down for you, because one of the things that I know is, is tough for almost probably anybody that has some fame and fortune as you have, it’s like, there are so many people that would date you because you’re quote-unquote Tim Ferriss and there’s money and fame that goes along with that. Right. So you could go to L.A. and there’s any number of people I’m sure, that you could date because of those reasons, and because of that, I know you’ve had a pretty big wall. You put up a wall to protect yourself because that’s not what you want. You want someone long-term. You don’t want just like some rando. And it’s cool that she brought that down though. Like that’s a huge thing for you to find. I’m happy about that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’m happy about it too. Thrilled about it. It’s fucking weird. You know, having — meeting people who let’s just say eight times out of 10, have Googled your name beforehand. That’s fucking weird. It’s really, really strange. And you have to be very careful because, let’s not kid ourselves, there are a lot of sharks out there.
So yeah, it’s been really nice, and her parents are amazing. I’ve spent a lot of time with her parents and she’s very down to earth. And by down to earth, I say that in the most complimentary way possible, right? By down to earth, it makes me think of, I think his name is Donald Knuth, K-N-U-T-H. But at some point he disavowed email. I think he was at IBM. I might be making that up. And he said, “Email is great for keeping on top of things.” He’s like, “But I don’t want to keep on top of things. I want to get to the bottom of things.” I’m paraphrasing here. The people who are down to earth from my perspective are like getting to the bottom of things. They’re aware of the tectonic plate level of things moving and their awareness is much more grounded, I use that word again, in what I would consider a truer reality than a lot of the people who are higher up in the stack of abstraction.
So there’s a computer science analogy here, but I won’t belabor that because I’ll just embarrass myself. The point being, I felt like she really had her feet on the ground and was paying attention to the important things. She had an awareness, including a self-awareness, perhaps principle, among all of those that led me to feel very comfortable, right? But when people are surfing the chop, when they’re on the surface and it’s like, whatever’s trending on Twitter is directing their attention for hours a day, even if they’re on some level at their core, really good people, it makes them a liability. Does that make sense? Because they’re so easily swayed to one channel or direction or meme or hashtag or movement or crisis. Like that’s a very unpredictable person.
That was on cue. That was good. I like that.
Kevin Rose: Phone’s ringing. I don’t know why — he called me twice. Sorry. You can push through. Keep going.
Tim Ferriss: No problem. Who was that? Was that your bail bonds?
Kevin Rose: It was Tony Conrad just freaking calling multiple times.
Tim Ferriss: Fucking Tony Conrad.
Kevin Rose: I know. Ruining the podcast.
Tim Ferriss: God damn it. Tony’s a good friend. So feel free to give him shit. If you guys actually want to, just as a side note, research a really good early stage investor who’s a good dude and really likes his coffee and he will tell you about Blue Bottle, so be prepared, you should check out Tony Conrad.
Kevin Rose: He’s a good guy.
Tim Ferriss: Also a partner at your firm. So it’s a colleague, a coworker.
Kevin Rose: He’s done some good deals. He’s got a great eye. Cool. So let’s move on to the next question. Name a mistake you made in one of your books that you wish you could take back. There has to be something. Don’t say, “Oh, I don’t know.”
Tim Ferriss: There’s got to be something. I mean, there are probably hundreds of them. My books are fucking long. I mean, you have so many opportunities.
Kevin Rose: I mean, The 4-Hour Body, there had to be something, like the consumption of horse urine or there was something in there that you had —
Tim Ferriss: Well, I mean, there was one mistake that I pulled out. So in the first addition to The 4-Hour Body, there was a whole chapter on extended breath holds and I realized that’s just too dangerous. People don’t understand the safety precautions you need to take for breath holds and it was yanked. So that chapter —
Kevin Rose: Did it actually make it to press?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it made it to press for one printing. That was a David Blaine chapter talking about how he trained me to hold my breath for like five minutes, and I realized that you just have to assume that 90 percent of the people out there aren’t going to read any of the safety cautionary tales, right? They’re not going to read the caveats. They’re not going to read the preamble. They’re going to skip straight to the how-to, and it’s very dangerous. So that was one that I definitely got rid of.
Kevin Rose: How about any of the science, because the science changes so fast. Is there anything you look back on and you’re like, “Oh, gosh, that’s just not accurate anymore?”
Tim Ferriss: Well, I will say there was a weight loss stack of supplements called PAGG, which was policosanol, probably mispronouncing that, but I’ve only read it, never heard it said, in fact, alpha-lipoic acid, garlic extract, like [inaudible 00:49:00] the most suspect or questionable of those is the first, policosanol. And there are some studies that came out of Cuba, but I’m like how much can you trust that if they’re exporting sugar cane and blah-blah-blah. So I would say if I were to put anything on the chopping block, it would probably be policosanol, and really the evidence for that from an N of one perspective was my own personal experience. There seemed to be some effect on cholesterol or lipid metabolism with policosanol that increased fat loss above and beyond that, which I was able to achieve with AGG. But that is not doubly blinded. That is not randomized. That’s not placebo-controlled. So [crosstalk 00:49:58].
Kevin Rose: The ALA is in there for fat loss, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So yeah, so alpha-lipoic acid is insulinomimetic, as I understand it. It imitates and produces some analogous effect to insulin to a lesser degree. So alpha-lipoic acid is interesting. If you overconsume it, it can cause all sorts of issues, which is true of a lot of things. Like if you overconsumed zinc, it can inhibit copper absorption. You have to be very careful with supplements, which is part of the reason why I have really reduced the number of supplements that I consume.
Kevin Rose: This is a great segue into that question actually. What do you consume these days in terms of supplements?
Tim Ferriss: Not much. I take zinc occasionally. I do find it to help sleep. I do find it to help lucid dream induction, which we’ve talked about before. I find zinc interesting also from an immune perspective, but if you overtake it or you take it too consistently, it can cause all sorts of issues. I take right now, B12 and L-methylfolate, Jarrow specifically, that is —
Kevin Rose: Your homocysteine levels or is that why?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, related to homocysteine. So that is dependent on my personal blood profile. So that doesn’t mean everyone listening to this should take that. And I also am taking right now cissus quadrangularis, which kind of has a funny tie into us actually, and also methylsulfonylmethane or MSM. I’m taking both of those because I’m nursing a wrist injury and I found them to be very helpful with joint injuries or connective tissue, ligament, tendon issues. So cissus quadrangularis is what I took during our trip to China. I took alpha-lipoic acid and cissus C-I-S-S-U-S quadrangularis, you’ll figure it out. I took those two together before every meal, because we were eating pounds of fucking rice every day, and I would be doing workouts in my skivvies with my backpack. You remember that? I’d be doing —
Kevin Rose: Once you see Tim Ferriss in his underwear doing air squats in front of your bed, you cannot unsee that shit.
Tim Ferriss: And you said something to the effect of like [crosstalk 00:52:45] —
Kevin Rose: I said, “Quit doing air squats in your fucking underwear.”
Tim Ferriss: Well, there was that for sure, and then there was also like, “We’re just getting fatter and fatter and you’re getting more and more ripped. What the fuck is going on?”
Kevin Rose: That’s right. That was the most confusing part because we were a week into the trip and Glenn and I are just fat as shit from all that rice and your six packs are popping out. It was crazy.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So I’m taking that stuff again, but not for the fat loss, for the potential joint assistance. Wrists are a huge pain in the ass. I jacked my wrist really badly and I want to get back into handstand practice. So I’m eager to get it figured out.
Kevin Rose: All right. Actually leading — I want to stay on that for one more quick topic. Someone was asking, how is your body these days? You talked about your wrist, but these are three questions real quick. Do you still practice 4-Hour Body? And what is your approach to longevity? So are there any practices that you’re doing now on the longevity side, kind of transitioning out of “I just need to put mass on,” but more on the “want to live longer?”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I would say those are probably inversely proportionate, right? The more you try to put mass on, the shorter you’re probably making your life, if you’re doing it over an extended period of time, at least. But I would say body, like I’m not in great shape right now. I’ve had a bunch of injuries, which just goes to show, I think it’s better to have a few extra percentage points of body fat and more strength than to be lean and sacrifice strength. I think right now I have sacrificed strength for a bunch of reasons. I’m in the jungle, I’m eating pretty poorly, and not getting much in terms of resistance training in. And so I would say body overall right now is pretty achy, and I’ll fix that. I have a high degree of confidence that I can fix it, so I’m not worried about it, which leads to the 4-Hour Body piece.
I still follow a surprising amount of what was in The 4-Hour Body. If anything, the vast majority of The 4-Hour Body that was viewed very skeptically, was received very poorly, has accrued an incredible amount of scientific support in the last 10 years, because I was published in 2010. So I am very proud of The 4-Hour Body. That was kind of the tip of the spear with a bunch of areas that has only received more support in the last 10 years. So I’m very happy with that. And I would say the general tenets still hold for sure. So from the perspective of slow cadence weightlifting, a la Occam’s protocol, I probably wouldn’t be eating the same food because I’m not trying to gain mass, but using that type of slow cadence or super slow protocol to add muscle mass while minimizing injury potential. Absolutely. I’ll be doing a bunch of that.
And then there’s a bunch of stuff from Tools of Titans. So let’s not forget that Tools of Titans was basically my update to 4-Hour Workweek, 4-Hour Body, and 4-Hour Chef simultaneously. And there’s a bunch of stuff in Tools of Titans related to say, glute medius training, related to gymnastic strength training and so on, AcroYoga that I view as really important component of what I do these days for physical longevity, meaning how old you feel, I think is how old your joints feel very often. And aside from that though, like with the longevity stuff, am I using Metformin? No. Am I using rapamycin? No. Would I consider it? Maybe at some point, but the most likely thing to kill me is heart disease. So really I can focus on so-called longevity drugs, but for me personally, those longevity drugs might take the form of something like an ezetimibe, probably not a statin due to the fact that I am a hyper absorber of cholesterol, not necessarily a hyper producer.
So you need to get really deliberate and surgical about how you approach medication. And none of this is medical advice, should not be construed as medical advice since who the fuck am I? But so talk to your GP. But I think the obsession — this is going to upset some people, but the obsession over longevity is often very misplaced. I looked at one point at the average lifespans of males in my family on both the paternal and maternal lines, and if they didn’t die really, really early, which they clearly didn’t ’cause they lasted long enough to procreate, but if they didn’t get wiped out by like typhoid fever at age 35 or something in the 1800s, pretty much all of them died at 85. They die around 85. Fucking everybody. And it doesn’t matter if it’s 20 years ago or 300 years ago.
Kevin Rose: 85 is a good run, dude. That’s not that bad.
Tim Ferriss: It’s not that bad. So as far as —
Kevin Rose: [crosstalk 00:58:23].
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So as far as pulling straws, like I didn’t get the short straw. I didn’t get the short test straw. But in this striving for immortality, I’m glad there are people who are preoccupied by it and are spending time on it. All things equal, which is never the case, by the way, but all things equal, would I prefer to live to 120 versus 85? Yeah. Why not? Sure. But am I going to do caloric restriction every day so my testosterone falls to the floor and I lose all my muscle mass and I look like a fucking prisoner of war? No, I’m not going to do that.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about longevity per se or ultra-long lifespan. I do spend time thinking about what stupid mistakes I can prevent easily or what medications or supplements or interventions I can implement easily that will prevent me from dying earlier than I should, based on my genetic average.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, that’s the whole Peter Attia thing, which I think is beautiful. Just really digs into the family history and says what are the things you’re going to die from? And let’s prevent those from happening.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah, totally. It’s like the focus on the fundamentals. Focus on the basics.
Kevin Rose: Next question. Best movie to watch on mushrooms?
Tim Ferriss: That’s a good one. It depends a lot on the dose. It depends a lot on the dose. If you’re microdosing, you can handle one type of movie. If you’re on three grams of mushrooms, it’s very —
Kevin Rose: Just look at the wall.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Just fucking chill out and look at a flower, because it’s going to — three grams is actually navigable for a pretty decent percent of the population, but five, six grams, just lay down. Lay down. Just lay down and listen to some really cheesy spa music and fucking relax, because it’s going to be an interesting six hours.
But let’s just say hypothetically that someone has taken 600 milligrams, three to 600 milligrams of psilocybin mushrooms dried. I would say Spirited Away.
Kevin Rose: Oh, awesome.
Tim Ferriss: My favorite movie of all time. The animated movie Spirited Away will fucking blow your mind. And if that isn’t interesting, I think soundtrack is important to pay attention to. Do not watch something — even if it’s beautiful, like Baraka — if it has a weird, moody soundtrack. That may not be good for you. So I would say my predisposition would be something animated, like Lilo And Stitch or How To Train Your Dragon, something like that. If you try to get too fancy, if you’re like, “I’m going to watch a moody black and white French film,” you’re just asking to get fucking kicked in the nuts [crosstalk 01:01:33].
Kevin Rose: Yeah. When I was a kid, it was Pink Floyd: The Wall. That was not mushrooms. That was weed. So I think that’d be a little too intense for mushrooms.
Tim Ferriss: Different.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Different. Yeah. I would say pay attention to soundtrack. When in doubt, pay attention to soundtrack.
Kevin Rose: All right. Next question. What is something you have failed at but haven’t spoken of? People just want to know about your failures.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. They want all the lowlights.
Kevin Rose: Show us how you failed.
Tim Ferriss: Episode number 500, the lowlight reel. Let’s see, something I failed at, but haven’t talked about.
Kevin Rose: You did this series where you went and did a bunch of episodes and you hacked things really quickly, and you’re so good at consuming books and getting to the meat of what something is and figuring it out. There has to be something where you were just like, “I’m going to figure this out,” and you just fucking suck at it. Right?
Tim Ferriss: Well, I mean, honestly, episode one of The Tim Ferriss Experiment, when I did parkour, which was my insistence. I was like, “We’re going to do parkour first, episode one,” and I fucked myself up so badly. I mean, I had so many injuries, like elbow, wrist, knee. I tore three of my four quadriceps. These are your thigh muscles, front of the leg.
Kevin Rose: Oh, Jesus.
Tim Ferriss: Quadriceps, four. Right? I tore, severely tore three of them from impact from jumping off of stuff. It was a fucking disaster, an unmitigated disaster. And I don’t think I’ve talked about that much. And so I insisted with, in retrospect, the most idiotic reasoning ever that we would do parkour first. And what that meant was we had 13 episodes to film. We were filming every fucking week without a vacation for 13 weeks straight, and the first week I basically became a cripple. I fucking ruined myself. It was so bad. And so for weeks afterwards, I’m wearing medical grade compression pants, which take an hour to get on. It’s like, if you imagine, I’m not a 300-pound guy, but just imagine you’re like a 300-pound guy and you have elastic Gap Kids’ fucking long underwear that you have to get on. It takes forever. It takes so long.
And there are points — I’ve definitely not talked about this — where I was so fucked up after that parkour episode, and I’d be wearing these compression pants just to function, to hobble around like a pirate for whatever I was filming, episode two, three, four, and I would get so tired. And they took 45 minutes to get off. That may be an exaggeration, but they took fucking forever to get off. It’d be like an extra small wetsuit that you have to get off your legs. And I would be so tired that I’d be like I’d get it down to my mid-calf, and I’d be like, “Fuck it,” and I would just lay down on the bed with these compression pants around my ankles or my shins, unable to get them off. And I would just sleep. I would just sleep with these things around my ankles. So that’s one that comes to mind.
Kevin Rose: That’s a good one.
Tim Ferriss: There are many. Yeah. There are many. There are many, but that’s a colorful one.
Kevin Rose: That’s amazing. Okay. When it happens, what type of dad do you want to be?
Tim Ferriss: Oh, that’s a big one. When it happens, what kind of dad do I want to be?
Kevin Rose: You’ve got to leave this space gap in here when we have the episode.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’ll leave it.
Kevin Rose: He’s thinking, everybody! I’m watching.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like watching a dog trying to figure out a maze. I think I’ll go with the first two that come to mind. I just want to be really present and really engaged and loving, obviously. But I just want to really fucking pay attention and be engaged, because I know so many guys, including good friends of mine, who are just like, “Yeah, man, I fucking missed it.” They grew up so quickly, and you miss two years, it’s like missing 20 years. So I want to be really present and really engaged. And I think it’s, yeah, if I pay attention to that, I feel like all the tactical, sleep training versus the attachment versus whatever, I can figure that all out. But if you don’t have the prerequisite attention and awareness and engagement, then none of that, I mean, all that stuff is window dressing, I feel like.
Kevin Rose: When I think about being a father, I think about some of the attributes that my own dad had that were amazing. And I would certainly want to continue those on, and then other little tweaks I want to do, because that’s what we’re doing. We’re kind of pushing things forward.
What attributes would you say did you really enjoy from your father? And are there any little tweaks that you would make?
Tim Ferriss: I think my parents did a great job, considering the circumstances that we found ourselves in. Right? I mean, I think a lot like you. We didn’t have very much money. There was not a budget for new bikes and stuff like that. We made everything go a long way. Lots of TV dinners.
Kevin Rose: Lots of TV dinners. I was there, too.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, man. Yeah. God. There was the good, the bad, and the ugly with the TV dinners. Like those shitty brownies were so delicious. Those shitty, shitty brownies in the middle square at the top. Those were so good. And the fried chicken was good, but some of the TV dinners, not so great.
Kevin Rose: We did a lot of Dinty Moore beef stew in my house. That was very good.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, nice.
Kevin Rose: I love Dinty Moore.
Tim Ferriss: Nice. You know, and there were all these special moments, like some of the celebratory, like if something big happened and we had a celebratory dinner. We’d go to Red Lobster. I remember Red Lobster.
Kevin Rose: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: We’d have virgin daiquiris and immediately get brain freeze and then eat those fried mozzarella sticks, and they were so fucking good. So yeah, I feel like my parents did a really good job on a lot of levels. I will have the benefit of more time. So if I, in any way, say I don’t have time or I feel like I don’t have time, I just want to plant the seed now that that is utter horse shit. Right? We make time for the things that matter. And I’m in a much better position than my parents were financially.
Kevin Rose: Did your dad work a lot? Did he travel a lot or work a lot or what was —
Tim Ferriss: He didn’t travel a lot. My mom and dad worked a lot, and I’m good at working. You and I are both good at playing certain games, and it’s very challenging, for me at least, to sit on the sidelines or switch games when you’ve spent so much time getting good at certain games.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So yeah, that’s part of the reason I’m in the middle of nowhere right now is to just create a little bit of space and prevent myself from overcommitting to a bunch of new projects just because I have a void or a vacuum.
I’m excited about fatherhood, about being a parent.
Kevin Rose: I’m excited for you.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: It’s going to be a fun chapter.
Tim Ferriss: A long chapter, long chapter.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: The longest chapter.
Kevin Rose: Especially at our age, man. I just think the thing I think about is just like when our kids are 21, we’re going to be so old. It’s like going to be [crosstalk 01:10:05].
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, we’re going to be really old. You and I can go to the park with walkers together.
Kevin Rose: Exactly. All right. Next question from — I had to say the name, because this was a tweet from Han’s Conduit. So some guy’s using his business account to tweet us. This guy runs conduit, which is great. “Tim famously asks his guests about a message they would hypothetically plaster on a billboard. Will you ask him about his current message?” What would your current billboard message be?
Tim Ferriss: My message is still the same. It hasn’t changed much, and that is, and I’ve borrowed this from other people, but: you are the average of the five people you associate with most.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. That’s a good one.
Tim Ferriss: Whoever you spend a lot of time with, you are going to absorb and vice versa. They’re going to absorb you. So really be aware of that. Physically, emotionally, psychologically, financially, it’s so true. I’ve just seen it confirmed over and over and over and over again, for me and for other people.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. That’s a great one. I don’t think you can get better than that one. That’s great. Next question from Ryan. Hair transplant question, Mark. Would you do a hair transplant?
Tim Ferriss: No, not at this point. I think —
Kevin Rose: The technology has come a long way. Do not knock that right away, because it looks really good. I have a couple of friends that have done it. They’re not going to be named here, but it can look amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Look, I mean, here’s my perspective. There is one reason for me to get a hair transplant.
Kevin Rose: By the way, if this is financial, I will pay for your hair transplant. I’m going to say that right now. I’m serious. I’m serious. I will pay for it right now. Go on the record.
Tim Ferriss: Do I need KevKev etched in the side, like Kid ‘n Play style? No?
Kevin Rose: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: Number one, I’m very fortunate to have a reasonably regular dome. So I don’t have a whole lot of moguls on my skull, and I don’t mind being bald. I really don’t mind it. And I think I led into it easily by starting to shave my head when I was 12, 13 and wrestling. So I’m accustomed to it. The second thing is I would get so much shit from people forever if I had some weave. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Hellboy, but there’s that one guy who has hair implants, and it just looks like Ken doll. I would get so much more shit than I currently do.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. It’s too late. You can’t go back.
Tim Ferriss: I would be disinclined. And then third, and I think I was saying this earlier and I cut myself off. It’s like why do guys care? I think 99 times out of 100, it’s because they want to be more attractive to women or get laid more often by having hair, period, full stop. I don’t care. I don’t care about that. I’m very, very happy with my girlfriend. We’re planning on having a family together. And if I couldn’t be with someone because I didn’t have hair, I don’t want to be with them in the first place. That’s a very charitable, easy layup yellow or red flag for any guy.
Kevin Rose: Oh, by the way, also —
Tim Ferriss: That’s —
Kevin Rose: You did the right thing. The wrong thing is leaving the sides on and just kind of going with the bald top.
Tim Ferriss: The power donut.
Kevin Rose: Right, exactly.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Look, there are a few people who can pull that off, like if you’re, what’s his name, Commander Picard or whatever of Star Trek. If you’re somebody that bad-ass, you can pull off the power donut. If you’re a hedge fund manager who just gives zero fucks and is a master of the universe and you’re just like, “Look, I can move global markets and decimate currencies with one twitch of my pinky finger,” great. Then keep the power donut. I do not have the confidence or the wherewithal or the skill set or the power to make that work for me.
Kevin Rose: It looks great. It’s nice and shiny right now. The light’s hitting in the right direction.
Tim Ferriss: Thank you.
Kevin Rose: It’s beautiful.
Tim Ferriss: Has a healthy sheen to it, like a dog coat.
Kevin Rose: It does. All right. Moving on to the next question. Your favorite episode and why. And I will say with the caveat that you can mention the one that you talked about that was really, really dear to you that you did a few episodes back. But I think outside of that particular episode around the abuse.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, favorite episode is I get this question quite a bit. It’s hard to give a favorite episode, because almost all of my episodes have some personal driver behind them. So the reason I do episodes varies so widely that there is objectively no one best. Even subjectively, there is no one best. It has everything to do with what my goals or challenges might be at any given point in time. I think I’m just going to riff.
Kevin Rose: Let me ask you two questions.
Tim Ferriss: I’m going to —
Kevin Rose: Hold on. Let me ask you two questions. I think we can hone this in a little bit. Favorite fan boy episode, meaning, “Oh, my God. I can’t believe I had this person in my podcast.” And then I’d also love to know — I know who it is. It’s Hugh Jackman, isn’t it? Am I right?
Tim Ferriss: Hugh Jackman is super high up. That was definitely a huge one. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the first gigantic fan boy episode. Jamie Foxx, another one. I mean, those three episodes are all so killer. They weren’t just fanboy encounters, but they were really strong episodes. Really, really strong episodes. So fanboy moments, there are a ton of them. I mean, I’ve spoken with so many people I never thought I would ever have any interaction with. Jerry Seinfeld. I mean, it’s a long list. It’s a long, long list, but certainly Hugh Jackman is way up there. Arnold Schwarzenegger, way up there. Jamie Fox and Jerry and so many others. Those are a few.
Kevin Rose: How about someone that just really surprised you, where you’re like, “Oh, I should have this person on.” And then you had them on you’re like, “God damn, that was a good episode.”
Tim Ferriss: There are so many, honestly.
Kevin Rose: It can be a couple of them. It doesn’t have to be one.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I love family episodes, but those are names that people automatically know. I mean, they’re household names, right? BJ Miller, who’s a hospice care physician. And I think the episode was titled something like BJ Miller, the man who’s helped a thousand plus people to die. Something like that. That episode had a huge impact on me. Still does. Then you have people like Mary Karr, who’s an author and very well-known memoir writer and teacher, who’s just incredible. That episode is pretty recent. Karr, K-A-RR. She was incredible. Let’s see here. Honestly, I mean, I have to mention again, but just there are certain episodes, like Jamie Foxx or Hugh Jackman, where you’re like, “Holy shit. I hope my equipment is working.”
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly.
Tim Ferriss: It’s so fucking good, and you’re like, “Oh, my God. If this fails, I will just have to throw myself out a window.”
Kevin Rose: I mean, when I interviewed Elon Musk on my show, I was like, “Please do not fail, hard drive,” because we were recording it.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally, totally.
Kevin Rose: It was great.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. There are those moments, for sure. What was it like for you to interview Elon?
Kevin Rose: He was —
Tim Ferriss: We’ve never talked about it.
Kevin Rose: I mean, he’s a really cool guy. He was super friendly, and I’ve met him a couple of times at various parties and stuff, and he’s always been really nice to me. I think he knew me from back in the Digg days when I created Digg. It was clear to me that it wasn’t just some, like he had heard of some stuff I had created, which was nice, because that gives you a little bit of an in and way to have a conversation. I loved it. I thought it was a lot of fun. I mean, I tried to ask him some questions that were just a little bit like not the ones that a standard reporter would ask. And so he had a good time.
Tim Ferriss: Like what?
Kevin Rose: We just talked about like, I always like to go really, really back to his childhood and some of the entrepreneurial kind of moments he had growing up and some of the things he was a fan of and some of the comic books he was into. Nobody talks about that, but he talks about his favorite comic books on my show. Stuff like that. So yeah, it was a really — we talked about SpaceX and some of the stuff that he was doing with Hyperloop before it was announced. Yeah, it was awesome.
Tim Ferriss: Nice.
Kevin Rose: Obviously he’s quite the icon these days. This was a couple of years ago.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. Tony Stark.
Kevin Rose: Totally, in the flesh. All right. Moving on to the next question. What do you think about all the recent government UFO footage? Is it real?
Tim Ferriss: Well, I don’t —
Kevin Rose: Do you believe in UFOs?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t know if it’s real, in the sense — I don’t know if the footage is real. I’ve read way too much about well-documented programs, like MKUltra with the CIA. And so, I mean, it’s very hard to know what is propaganda and what is not.
Kevin Rose: What is the MKUltra? What is that?
Tim Ferriss: This is the deliberate and non-consensual administration of LSD by the CIA as a possible truth serum or destabilizing agent and all sorts of craziness. And I’ve also looked very closely at the Stargate program, which was utilizing remote viewers or those considered to be remote viewers, remote perception and all this craziness. So are UFOs real? Fuck, I don’t know. I will say this. That’s a big question above my pay grade. I will say this, though, that there are a few places on Long Island that are fairly well-known by locals for having what some people consider UFO sightings. And when I was a kid on Long Island, I, and a whole car full of people, including a babysitter and some other people, all saw some weird object fly across the sky, hover for a period of time, bounce around, and then shoot off at speeds that made no sense.
So was that an illusion? Was it caused by some type of weather pattern? Like the lights of Marfa in Texas are supposedly created by some type of phenomenon that can be explained meteorologically. Was it that? Was it test flights with some type of aircraft being performed by the government, which are unknown, unannounced? Was it some type of aircraft from elsewhere? I mean, either way, it is an unidentified flying object. So do I believe in UFOs? Yeah, I believe in UFOs. Are they aliens? Fucked if I know. I have no idea, but I remain open to the possibility.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. All right. Let’s move on to the next question. This one’s a little bit harder than the last.
Tim Ferriss: All right.
Kevin Rose: Have you ever tried Viagra? If so, thoughts? I told you these were going to get intimate here.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, this is great. Yeah, this is great. So I have tried Viagra. I’ve tried everything. I mean, I’ve tried just about everything, minus heroin. And I actually had a really scary response to a small amount of Viagra, which was I got a shooting pain, like an ax pick in the brain pain from taking it, which has made me contra-indicated from taking — I don’t know if Viagra is a — What is it? A phosphodiesterase inhibitor of some type. But I have to be very careful with that stuff, because in a small percentage of the population, you can have these massively powerful adverse events.
Kevin Rose: Does that apply to all, like Cialis and stuff like that? Or is that just Viagra?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t know. I’m not sure. The fact of the matter is —
Kevin Rose: Did it work?
Tim Ferriss: Oh. Oh, the Viagra. Well, yeah, I mean, not to get too graphic here, but yeah, it was fucking fantastic. That stuff, why the hell do you think it’s so popular? It works as advertised. It’s like why do athletes use anabolic steroids? Because they fucking work, right? I mean, look, there are certain drugs that really deliver as advertised. You just have to be aware of the possible side effects.
Kevin Rose: I had a really weird experience with that stuff. That stuff is strange.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, well, hold on. You can’t let that hang. So what?
Kevin Rose: You know what? Well, I just feel like it’s, well, we’re a couple of glasses of wine in trying to ride that fine line. So I’m going to say this in a very PC way, the best I can at this moment in time.
Tim Ferriss: Don’t say it in a PC way. That’s so lame.
Kevin Rose: Here’s the deal. Okay. So when you take it, 30 minutes later it kicks in and you can tell by like you feel a flushness in your face. Did you get that? That kind of like tingly flushes in your face?
Tim Ferriss: I got a flushness in my schwanz. I don’t know. Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Okay. So what happens next is things elevate. And when they do so, it’s like blowing a blue balloon to 12 when it should be at a 10. And you reach down — no, no. When you reach down, it feels like it’s another dude’s thing, because it’s like it’s way bigger than you’re used to. Right? Because the knob has gone to a 12, so it’s just confusing. That’s all. But it does make you — you’re a dragon slayer for a couple of hours, at least. There’s no — you’d agree with that, though, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I would. I think dragon slaying on Viagra is definitely going to have to make it into the headline of this episode.
Kevin Rose: It is a weird thing. It is definitely a weird thing. I bought mine in Mexico, of all places. This is like —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you’ve got to be careful.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. You’ve got to be careful. Who knows if it was like an amplified dose or something, but yeah, kind of insane.
Tim Ferriss: It could have been Clorox. Who knows?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. All right. Any other 4-Hour books in the future?
Tim Ferriss: None planned. I have retired.
Kevin Rose: Are you done? You’re done with the 4-Hour?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I think so.
Kevin Rose: That’s fair. That’s fair. Rest in peace, 4-Hour. The 4-Hour thing was, it was fun for me.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Oh, it was great fun for you.
Kevin Rose: Remember I sent you texts of like there was a 4-Hour laundry cleaner in SF and I would always —
Tim Ferriss: I do. I do 4-Hour laundry.
Kevin Rose: I’d walk by and take photos of it and send it to Tim. So good.
Tim Ferriss: That was like Van Ness or something.
Kevin Rose: That’s right.
Tim Ferriss: I remember that. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, no, thank you for your service, 4-Hour, I think I’m done. It’s retired as a jersey, framed on the wall.
Kevin Rose: Nice.
Tim Ferriss: What a beautiful chapter. And it was a chapter.
Kevin Rose: That was a good chapter. Good couple of chapters.
Tim Ferriss: It was.
Kevin Rose: All right. So what will you be doing at age 50 and 60? What was the actual question?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. [crosstalk 01:27:26].
Kevin Rose: Of just retirement. I don’t know why they pick those years, but let’s just say later in life, what does Tim-Tim look like 20, 30 years from now?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. You know, retirement, I don’t think that’s a thing.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I just sort of enjoy getting amongst it too much. I can’t imagine just sitting around doing sudoku all day watching Wheel of Fortune or something, I just don’t think that’s going to be me. So 50 or 60, I mean, let’s see, it’s not that far off 50. I’m 43. How old are you right now?
Kevin Rose: 43.
Tim Ferriss: Fucking amen.
Kevin Rose: 44 this month.
Tim Ferriss: It’s seven years away.
Kevin Rose: I know, it’s crazy.
Tim Ferriss: One turning of the locusts and we’re 50. So 50, I mean, let’s just say I have a six- or seven-year-old kid at that point, I will probably be increasingly cantankerous and salty. I will be increasingly uninterested in social consensus or social media or — [crosstalk 01:28:39].
Kevin Rose: I mean, I feel like that’s you to an A.
Tim Ferriss: Popularity.
Kevin Rose: I don’t think that’s — [crosstalk 01:28:41].
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I think it’ll just be like Tim plus. It’ll be like Tim-Tim plus.
Kevin Rose: Love it.
Tim Ferriss: I think there’s a good chance that I will be spending more months of the year with the family in and surrounded by nature, less time in urban environments. From an athletic perspective, I would anticipate to still be doing things like AcroYoga, skiing, probably weight training at least once per week, I think that will become more and more and more important. Still, I will be paying deep attention to and supporting psychedelic research and other aspects of that type of medicine work. It’s hard for me to envision a huge change aside from focus on family, which I think will be a gigantic shift, but I would hope not to have to contend with any major medical emergencies or crises in my family, but TBD, I mean, 60, if I’m 60, that could be at the point where my parents one or both pass, which will be a huge transition. I don’t know how that’ll affect me. It’s impossible to predict for me, I just don’t know. I don’t even have a point of reference.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, let’s move on to the next question. We’ve got a couple more left and then we can wrap things up. And I do have some extra bonus ones if you want to keep going, but — [crosstalk 01:30:22].
Tim Ferriss: Bonus. Let’s do it. I’m all for bonus.
Kevin Rose: Let’s just do the last sake or a quick sake one. What’s your “Holy shit, today sucked” drink or drug of choice? That’s some sake.
Tim Ferriss: That’s a great one. Well, it depends on at what time of the day I determine that the day has already sucked — [crosstalk 01:30:51].
Kevin Rose: 6:00 p.m.
Tim Ferriss: If it’s — well, hold on. So, if I wake up and I’m just getting fucking haymakers for the first two hours of the day, and I’m like, “Wow, today is already sucking donkey dick; this is terrible,” then I might just fucking call it and have a day of mushrooms and walk through the forest and just be like, “I’m done, tap, I am complete.” So, that’s one, I would say otherwise, the one that is ill-advised for me is drinking copious amounts of caffeine, right? And having just four, five, six cups of coffee, which on the way up feels so good and you get so manic and you forget all your worries and then the coin flips and you just feel like an anxious down. So that’s a mixed blessing for sure. I would say a gin and soda, like a Hendrick’s and soda or a Casa Dragones, like a tequila and soda at dusk.
So these days, I’ve got 05:30 kind of happy hour like, “You know what? I’m not going to try to squeak this out and grind for another hour, hour and a half. Nope, I’m going to call this one at 04:30, 05:00” if it’s really brutal. If you’re just like, “Why? If I’m still in the game, I’m just limping along with the ball getting crushed by 500-pound linebackers, what am I doing this for? This is pointless.” Then I’d say gin and soda or tequila and soda. [crosstalk 01:32:40]
Kevin Rose: What was the gin that you gifted me? The Botanist? I think you were giving those out of one year for around the holidays. Was it Botanist?
Tim Ferriss: Oh, it could have been Botanist, yeah, I love gin. [crosstalk 01:32:48].
Kevin Rose: You were into one gin, gin’s the best. It’s so much more interesting than vodka, right? The botanicals in there and it’s a fantastic beverage.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I love clean tequila. I love interesting gin. And there’s something called sotol, S-O-T-O-L, which is found in Texas, which is also quite interesting. It’s for people who need maybe a comparison, it might be somewhere between tequila and mezcal.
Kevin Rose: Oh, so a little more smokey, then?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a — [crosstalk 01:33:31].
Kevin Rose: But not as hardcore?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. There’s a brand I think called Desert Door which makes some really nice sotol, it’s pretty hard to get. I also find that quite interesting, but if you drink enough of that to get plastered, you are going to feel it for sure the next day.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Oh, bad hangover type? Is that what’s going on?
Tim Ferriss: It’s got that smoky element, right? Same with mezcal. I mean, I feel like a donkey’s kicked me in the forehead if I have too much — [crosstalk 01:34:03].
Kevin Rose: Like ashtray mouth the next morning, like you’re just like, “Ugh.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Like, oh, who had a campfire in my mouth?
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: That one.
Kevin Rose: So you mentioned Dragones, I think it’s important not to skip over that one, a fantastic tequila.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And also fantastically expensive tequila.
Kevin Rose: They actually make a less expensive version now. A couple of them.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, they do? Nice. Okay.
Kevin Rose: Which is great.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, Casa Dragones, the house of the dragon, makes some really nice stuff. And I was introduced to that, a pretty funny story, so I was first exposed that, am I making you seasick with this camera? This camera keeps going out of focus. [crosstalk 01:34:45].
Kevin Rose: A little bit.
Tim Ferriss: I think I’m going out of focus. It’s zooming in and out.
Kevin Rose: I’m like, if I drink that much, like you just keep going.
Tim Ferriss: Right. It’s like the cinematographer imitation of being drunk. Oh, my God, it’s making me seasick just looking at my own image go in and out of focus. But in any case, Casa Dragones I was first exposed to when I spent time with a friend of mine, who’s a former Navy SEAL and he and a bunch of guys were doing weapons training and shooting range practice with all sorts of like AR platform handgun, sidearm, you name it, all sorts of stuff. And their ritual was to then go back to the house, disassemble all the guns, and clean all the guns while they’re all sipping Casa Dragones.
Kevin Rose: Oh, my God. Do you mean just disassemble all the way down to bare metal or what are you talking about? Just cleaning them — [crosstalk 01:35:39].
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, cleaning them. But in some cases disassembling the hand guns and so on. And they’re doing this very safely, but we were just sitting around with a bunch of hyper masculine dudes who are real professionals, I don’t know what I’m doing, but cleaning guns, drinking sipping tequila, right? No mixes, no cocktails, just drinking sipping tequila and it was amazing. It was a great experience and a really great group of guys. And I had that and I had always had the association with tequila that it gave you a nasty hangover. And I drank so much of this tequila, woke up the next day and I felt like a million bucks. I was like, how is that even possible? So — [crosstalk 01:36:25].
Kevin Rose: Did you read about it? Do you know what the deal is? It’s been filtered 12 times, the Dragones.
Tim Ferriss: Well, there you go. You know more than I do.
Kevin Rose: No, it’s a super ultra filtered, it’s the cleanest of the clean, that’s why it’s so expensive. It’s fantastic.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So, if you feel like getting a nice gift for somebody or for yourself, that’s one option.
Kevin Rose: All right. Two more questions. Does anything make you feel old or does anything make you feel young?
Tim Ferriss: What makes me feel old would be aching joints. So, elbow that I’ve had elbow surgery on, the wrist that I’ve jacked up. I injured my lower back recently in a stupid accident. Joint pain makes me feel old.
Kevin Rose: Same, dude. It sucks.
Tim Ferriss: For sure. For sure. Muscular pain I can deal with, but joint pain makes me feel old. Makes me feel young. Riding bicycles and riding my girlfriend, those two.
Kevin Rose: Jesus, that’s going to get aired. This question is not going to make it in.
Tim Ferriss: It’ll make it. It’ll make it. Oh, it was great. Yeah. [crosstalk 01:37:42] Those two things keep me young.
Kevin Rose: All right. This is the last question. And it’s more serious when I wanted to end with this one, because I do want you to take it seriously. We don’t know how much time we have left and I’m curious when you die, what do you ultimately want to be remembered for? 4-Hour Chef, or…?
Tim Ferriss: The stupid meme videos that I text Kevin twice a week. Let me think about that. I don’t think any of us are remembered for that long. I think that kind of over focusing on legacy can warp and contort a lot of thinking about life and what you pursue. I think it can lead you to pursue things for prestige. And I think prestige, approval, guilt, shame are all really bad reasons for doing things oftentimes. And as we were talking earlier about parenting and what kind of father I want to be and I was talking about awareness and engagement being these prerequisites for other things. You can try the tactical stuff, but if you lack that base level, that foundation, the rest of it doesn’t really matter. I think that in the last 10 years especially, five years especially, last five months in particular, I’ve realized that without hope, the rest of it just doesn’t really matter, right?
So you can give someone the prescription, the how to you should do this, you should do that, but without some level of hope and hope to me has a slightly different feeling to it than optimism, I think optimism can be a part of hope, but that hope is broader, without some element of hope a lot of that other stuff just doesn’t matter and gets washed away. So I would like to be, I used to say, when people would ask me, what would you want to be remembered for on your gravestone? I was like, well, as a sort of creator of master students who are better than himself, right? That was an answer that I had. And I think now it would be as a purveyor and provider of hope, someone who’s providing hope to people who feel hopeless and not in a misleading, not in a Pollyanna-ish, not in a naive way. I’m providing hope because I am a test subject, right? I’m a guinea pig.
I’m someone who’s suffered from severe, extended, repeated bouts of depression who is on the front lines trying to encourage the testing and research of things like psilocybin and others that show incredible promise for these so-called intractable, untreatable psychiatric conditions, whether that’s depression or MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for complex treatment resistant PTSD, right? Post traumatic stress disorder or opioid use disorder, anorexia these things that have really found no home from which they can be treated effectively. That’d be one example, one dimension to it. So I would say as a seeker, as a fellow needer and hopefully spreader of hope, that’s what I would want.
Kevin Rose: I got to tell you I think that a lot of people would agree with this statement and that everything that you’ve done, I mean, when I first met you was that your book launch party for The 4-Hour Workweek and then later The 4-Hour Body, those have all been about hope. They’ve been about how can I improve myself? And how can I live and do things on my own time and by my own design? And you’d live a healthier lifestyle and then now taking it to the more philanthropic side of things and working on mental health, this is the easy thing for you to accomplish because you’ve already done it. Your career has been all about hope so I think you inspire a lot of people for that reason, so that’s great.
Tim Ferriss: Thanks man.
Kevin Rose: No, it’s something to look up to. I know you and I talk about this and we have a slightly different take on philanthropy in that, I’ve done bits and pieces of it, my take, and it could be the wrong one, but I’m in the prime of my earning career and I think that I want to get a little bit more resources so that I can do bigger impact things long term, but you’re definitely an inspiration for me on that front. And certainly something that I want to eventually imitate and figure out how to do is have a bigger impact in that way. So thank you for all that you’ve done on that and dude, it’s been awesome that you’d even share this space with me for episode 500. So thank you for that as well.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Thanks Kev-Kev. Yeah. I want to give some additional thanks to my girlfriend so that I don’t have my last mention of her in the same answer with the bicycle, which is when I was considering what to do about sharing my experiences with abuse as a kid I told her about the plans for the book, the possible book, which would be years off in the future and the possibility of then doing a podcast, maybe as a stop-gap measure, or even a replacement for doing the book, because it would be sooner. And she just made the point that if you looked at the discrepancy between those two, let’s say a podcast coming out in a few months and a book coming out four or five years later, that there would be and there are many people who would die by natural causes, take their own lives, be it suicide or otherwise not ever have access to the book who would benefit from the podcast.
And I think that there’s compounding wealth and resources and you can make many compelling arguments for if and when to jump into the fray to try to address problems based on compound interest and so on. I would just offer to people who are thinking about this for themselves, that there are certain problems that compound also, and there are certain problems, certain subsets of populations and so on who are more easily reached more easily addressed, more easily helped now than they will be in a year or two years because the problems compound at a faster rate than your capital. So that’s one perspective that I would offer not to say that everybody should immediately jump into the fray and use as much as they can afford to affect change in the world. I don’t think that’s true for everyone. I think that’s absolutely not the case for everyone, but for me, at least with some of these mental health conditions and having the ability to set precedent right.
To create the first center in the world dedicated to psychedelic research, to create the first center in the US dedicated to psychedelic research and consciousness research, offered me a rare window and opportunity to tip the first domino in a way that I knew would then trigger and unlock all sorts of other developments, right? So I was able to put in say a million dollars with the expectation that it would generate 10 or a hundred million dollars in impact. So I do think that you got to pick your time, you got to pick your target, you really want to be surgical with this stuff and very thoughtful. And there are some times just like with startups, right? There are some times when you’re like, Oh, damn, there’s that one window, right? That door opens a crack and that’s your shot. You have a real opportunity to make an impact and for me, I just felt that way in the last few years, but I’m excited to see what you do too, man.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it, because there was this little tipping point that happened where all of a sudden there was a window to create some research around psychedelic use, because if the government had totally locked this thing down, like let’s say we were in some country that was just clamped down on both the federal and state level, it would be probably pissing away money at that point, right? Because you wouldn’t even be able to fund research, but you found a window, the momentum was going in the right direction and now we’re seeing benefits from that in terms of it being legalized like in Oregon and other places where this could be real therapy is going into people in the next year or so, which is really cool.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah, it’s moved a lot faster than I ever could have hoped. And there are going to be challenges, there are going to be setbacks, there are going to be messes, there are going to be players in the arena with less than pure motives, which is to be expected and that’s all part of the game. So — [crosstalk 01:48:07].
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Well, the last thing I want to say is, and I’d be curious to know how you were able to do this in yourself, is that one of the things that I want to push more forward, especially given that I have a couple daughters, and I think that more men should be vulnerable people able to talk about, like you’ve talked about suicide and depression and child abuse and all these really tough, sensitive topics. And I’ve certainly talked about couples therapy and the abuse my father gave my mom and things like that. We need to encourage more of that. And I just want to say thanks to you, you’ve helped me be more open with myself and my audience about those things and I think starting that conversation, oh, if Tim can talk about it, I can too. It’s such an important thing that we all needed to do.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, thanks Kevin. Thanks man. That really means a lot.
Kevin Rose: It’s the truth though, dude, it really is. It helps me when you talk about this stuff, I can talk about it. And I know that’s the same with so many other people. So, anyway. B.
Tim Ferriss: Thanks, brother.
Kevin Rose: Cheers to you, brother. Congratulations on 500, wishing you to 500 more or a thousand more. When do you hang it up by the way, how many of you think you got left in you?
Tim Ferriss: I have no plans to hang it up at this point. This is joyful for me, it’s fun for me and if it stops being fun it’s either time to hang it up or more likely it’s time for me to change something. And I’ve just succumbed to some temptation that I need to fix, right? Like for this episode, let’s take this episode as an example, number 500, right? I could’ve done like lessons learned over 500 episodes and done like a monologue, right?
Kevin Rose: Instead, you get Viagra questions.
Tim Ferriss: Which is more fun. It’s more fun for me. It’s more fun. It gives me more energy. It gives me more pleasure, this is a good time. And like you said, you don’t know how much time you have left. Nobody does. And so it’s if you’re not having fun, at least in my life, chances are, it’s my fault. Fucking fix it, you know? And if the choices you’re making your default choices or the way things are set up aren’t working, change it, experiment, try something else. So for me, the way that I used to do six episodes a month with the podcast, I cut back to four on average. And I used to handle, say, sponsorships and this, that, and the other thing a certain way and then I changed it because it was starting to feel like an obligation and I was starting to procrastinate and not look forward to it.
So, this is, I think, a game of iteration and what might give me joy today might not give me joy tomorrow and things change, they evolve over time, but I love doing the podcast. So yeah, wouldn’t surprise me if I do another 500, another 1,000 And then take a look and reassess —
Kevin Rose: I think that really, it doesn’t really matter where you are in life, because I remember when I was not being in VC and doing these things, I left Olive Garden, which had good tips and unlimited breadsticks, to work at Computer City for less pay. But you know what? I was a hell of a lot happier when I was working in a Computer City than I was at Olive Garden. So it’s like, you’ve just got to do it. You’ve got to change it up if it’s not working.
Tim Ferriss: Switch it up. You’ve got to switch it up, man. And it’s so good to see you. I miss you brother, would love to see you in person sometime soon.
Kevin Rose: Me too. Let’s get these shots in the arms and make it happen.
Tim Ferriss: That’s exactly right. And to everybody listening, I love you guys. I really so deeply appreciate everybody listening. It gives me the opportunity to play, gives me the opportunity to push, to challenge myself also to try to do things I don’t think I can do with respect to this podcast to wrangle people I think can’t be wrangled and also just as important to shoot the shit and talk about Viagra with people like Kevin. So, I really, really appreciate everyone who tunes into this podcast. And I know this has been a loosey goosey banter filled episode, but this is what I wanted to do. And ultimately the only way I’ll keep doing this is if I have some fun along the way.
Kevin Rose: Thanks for having me, Tim. That was awesome.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, brother, I’ll see you soon.
The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.
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