Please enjoy this transcript of another wide-ranging “Random Show” episode I recorded with my close friend Kevin Rose (digg.com)!
We cover dozens of topics: from the cutting edge of health tech to pro-tips for colonoscopies; AI; adventures in Japan and Taiwan seeking out perfect coffee and tea; tips for drinking less alcohol; powerful documentaries like 32 Sounds and books such as Awareness; the unexpected joys and therapeutic benefits of adult Lego; and much, much more.
Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the conversation on YouTube.
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Tim Ferriss: Kevin, good to see you, sir.
Kevin Rose: Tim, Tim, always a pleasure. Good to be here.
Tim Ferriss: So the ravages of childhood illness are ripping through your household at the moment?
Kevin Rose: Yeah. It was one of those things where I hit you up this morning, I was like, “Yeah, there’s a cold going around. Can we boot this podcast?” You’re like, “I have to have my colon examined.” And so we decided to do it today. So I feel pretty good though, actually. All things considered.
Tim Ferriss: Yes.
Kevin Rose: True story.
Tim Ferriss: True story. True story. We have all of the fun things to discuss in our advancing years, but one step at a time. One step at a time.
Kevin Rose: By the way, I have a lot of pro-tips for the colonoscopy if you haven’t already done one.
Tim Ferriss: Let’s do it. I have done a colonoscopy before.
Kevin Rose: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: The reason that I am methodical about this is, not to immediately start on a down note, but a friend of mine ended up getting terminal colon cancer which metastasized prior to that diagnosis to his liver.
And so I have been very much on schedule with doing this type of checkup. Even though it’s inconvenient, even though it’s unpleasant, you’ve got to do it. You just have to do it.
Kevin Rose: I had a friend who actually had a big massive chunk of his colon removed because of this. He had some cancer, so very important to stay on top.
But I will say the drugs they give you when you’re going in, the propofol? Propofol. Yeah, that shit, that’s what Michael Jackson died on. Do you know that? That’s what he died on.
Tim Ferriss: Wow. That’s why I won’t self administer.
Kevin Rose: No, you don’t self administer that. But I will say, if you have a cool doc, and it’s typically the anesthesiologist that does this, they will do what’s called the slow ramp, where rather than push it all in and give you that bull’s dose where it just knocks you out, they’ll let you just chill and ride it for about a minute or so.
And I can see why Michael Jackson was hooked on this shit. I did that with them. I asked for the slow ramp the last time I got it. Dude, you feel amazing when they give you that stuff. Yeah, that’s crazy.
Tim Ferriss: That sounds like an anti-sales pitch. I think if it’s likely that I will just remember the bliss of that experience and want another bite of the apple, maybe I won’t ask for the slow ramp.
I’ll just say, “Hey, just blow dart in the back of the neck. Take me out as quickly as possible.” So that is, I think, where I’ll go with tomorrow’s lovely procedure.
Kevin Rose: I didn’t tell you this, but the last time I did my colonoscopy — it’s always hard when there’s a really attractive nurse in the room and they’re like, “Flip on your side.” And you know what they’re going to do and it’s just like, I don’t really feel like this is the right crew.
Tim Ferriss: Right setting.
Kevin Rose: Set and setting was not right for me there, but there was — I went through with it. There’s nothing you could do with that point. You’re just flip on your side.
Hopefully, you don’t remember anything and you don’t and you’re good, so I was okay. But anyway, godspeed tomorrow, Tim. Wishing you the best.
Tim Ferriss: Godspeed. Well, the reason we were comparing notes for self-care and how that can change over time is you said that you have a scan scheduled for this week, right?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I have a Prenuvo tomorrow, so a full-body MRI scan done. I had mentioned this on a podcast we did a while back, but they found basically a little tiny thing in my brain that could turn into a larger vessel rupture and so they have to keep tabs on it.
So, I go back once a year and it’s been stable. It’s been totally stable for the last, call it a year and a half. So they’re like, “Yeah, you could have had this your entire time.” That’s part of the problem with getting these full-body MRIs, right?
Because you go in there and on the plus side, I’ve had a friend that found a tumor in his brain and he had it removed. It was the size of a golf ball, it was crazy. He was fine.
Tim Ferriss: Jesus.
Kevin Rose: And you catch that stuff early and it’s amazing because it saves your life and then on the downside, lots of false positives, right? Little tiny cysts and things that have just been there your entire life.
Tim Ferriss: Or just positive positives, but there’s small things that you can’t or won’t do anything about. So you just need to accept that you have.
Kevin Rose: Exactly. Like a brain aneurysm, which is what I have, and now I know that I have it.
Tim Ferriss: Fun times. So there is that.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Well, what are your suggestions for people psychologically if they’re listening and, for instance, I think of my parents who have been by and large, especially one more than the other, averse to getting comprehensive checkups in part because ignorance is bliss until it isn’t, right?
If it’s something serious, then you just accidentally signed your death warrant if you take it to an extreme extent. But they are afraid of what they might find. So what are your thoughts on this? My thought is step number one, honestly for me, is just develop a baseline of scientific literacy.
You could listen to studying the studies or read that from Peter Attia. There’s a book called Bad Science that I actually excerpted for The 4-Hour Body at one point, just to give you an idea of what matters and what doesn’t, because a lot gets sensationalized in the news.
And so you can train yourself to blow things out of proportion. And once you realize just how inert and unimportant, for instance, I have a number of, I don’t know if they’d be termed cysts or otherwise, but one on my kidney and then one in another place. And it’s not fun to see those things.
But I suppose having done so much in terms of medical checkups, blood draws and so on, there is also a conditioning over time where you become less sensitive. But if you only do it once in a blue moon, you’re more prone to overreacting. Any other thoughts on that?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I think you nailed it where it’s like, for me, it’s an annual thing, so I’m just automatically going to do it no matter what. And once you get two or three of them under your belt, you’re much better off.
But I would say that one of the things that I’ve heard time and time again is people don’t like going into MRIs because they put you in this little tiny tube. And a lot of people have claustrophobia around that. And I know that you can watch Netflix on some of them now and they’ve got all these little displays, but it doesn’t help people.
So I would say there’s two things that I’ve seen that people have done to sidestep this. One is if you talk to your doctor and you really do have a severe anxiety around claustrophobia, they’ll give you some kind of benzo and just chill you out for a little bit. And you can go in there and you’ll get through it.
And the second thing is there’s another test called GRAIL. I don’t know if you’ve ever done the GRAIL test, but my physician does that as well. And it’s just a blood test and it’s going to screen for a bunch of cancers as well.
And so if you’re like, “Hey, no way, with the MRI, I don’t want to know about the cyst, but I still want some cancer screening,” I think the GRAIL’s probably the best to market for just general blood work cancer screening.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Should we move on from old man roll call?
Kevin Rose: From dying? Yeah, exactly. From death.
Tim Ferriss: From death. All right, I’ll kick us off with something that I think is pretty fun that I certainly was not aware of, and it’s a documentary. So this is a documentary, it’s called 32 Sounds and people can check this out if you’re going to watch it, watch it with a headset.
It could be in-ear AirPods, something like that. But certainly, if you have higher quality headphones, I would use those. Here’s the description. It has 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
32 Sounds is an immersive feature documentary and profound sensory experience from Academy Award nominated filmmaker, Sam Green, featuring original music by J.D. Samson. The film explores the elemental phenomenon of sound by weaving together 32 specific sound explorations into a cinematic meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us.
It’s just a fundamentally different movie going — or film watching in this case — listening experience in anything I’ve ever seen. So from that perspective, I thought it was worthwhile, very worthwhile. And it will certainly lead you to, for a period of time afterwards, relate to the world of sound and this ability that sometimes we take for granted, which under the hood, is pretty bizarre or at the very least, amazing. So that’s a recommendation to get us out of death land and into savoring life land.
Kevin Rose: Walk me through this as someone that hasn’t even seen a trailer for it, are we talking sound bath action here? Are we seeing visuals on the screen? What is it?
Tim Ferriss: You’re seeing visuals. There are points in the documentary, for instance, where they’ll prompt you to close your eyes if you are sighted because they don’t assume that everyone is. And it weaves the visual and the auditory together along with background context from the filmmaker into a documentary that is just unlike anything I’ve seen.
Kevin Rose: That’s awesome.
Tim Ferriss: For that reason I thought I would throw it out there because as you know Kevin, and maybe we’ll talk about this, but we spent some time together. My first time with Henry Shukman in New Mexico, we did a mini Zen retreat. And you can really sharpen your awareness, broadly speaking, by [homing] in on the specific.
So you might do a session where you’re focused just on breathing in and out and the sensation at the nostrils, for instance, you might also focus on soundscape. And when we were sitting, we did a lot of focusing on soundscape, different types of sounds, things that are intermittent, things that are one off, things that are droning in the background.
This documentary can be a tool in the toolkit. I just think it’s a nice way to jumpstart that type or magnify the awareness that we already have.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, this is one of those things where, I don’t know about you, but I found myself drawn to more kind of indie, weird documentary style stuff lately just because there’s so much commercial shit out there where I’m like, I don’t need another show, I don’t need more violence in my head.
I watched Flow not too long ago. I think we talked about that once before. That was a fantastic movie. You didn’t like it though, right?
Tim Ferriss: I haven’t watched it yet.
Kevin Rose: Oh, shit.
Tim Ferriss: And I guess what I want to know is how long does it take for you to get accustomed to the sort of low-fi aesthetic of that particular animation? Right? Because it looks, I’m not even sure how you would describe it, very polygonal, right? If I’m getting the pronunciation right.
Kevin Rose: Polygonal. Low poly.
Tim Ferriss: I think I’m getting there. Low poly. Yeah, which polygon? Polygonal. There we go. Something like that. I’m getting too fancy for my own good. But how long does it take you to get accustomed to — and, if my memory serves me right, it’s from a filmmaker somewhere in Hungary or Lithuania, something like that. Animated film, all about animals, the visual aesthetic, the look is what kept me from watching it. So maybe you could just speak to that for a second.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. So it does have this very low poly kind of Nintendo-type vibes to it where it’s not the PS5, it’s like a crappier version where you can see some of the artifacts, but there’s no speech at all. It’s just a completely silent film.
Well, not silent. It has its sounds, but there’s no talking at all. And it’s kind of post-apocalyptic vibes. This cat is trying to make its way through this new world. It’s beautiful. I’d say about five minutes of that weird, “Where am I? Why is this low poly?” And then all of a sudden you feel you’re —
Tim Ferriss: Used to it.
Kevin Rose: Polyamorous. What is it when you get used to something like that? Is it polyamorous?
Tim Ferriss: Low polyamorous? Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Low polyamorous, yeah. So you get used to it whether you like it or not. But it was Latvia was where it was — it came out of —
Tim Ferriss: There we go. Sorry, Latvia.
Kevin Rose: It’s beautiful. Watch the trailer. It’s a minute and a half long. It’s absolutely stunning. It’s like this cat forms these relationships with these birds and these dogs and they’re all trying to survive. And it’s 84 minutes of just good, fun, low poly documentary.
Tim Ferriss: Is there a minimum required amount of enhancement before you watch such a thing? Or were you watching it stone-cold?
Kevin Rose: No.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, just making sure.
Kevin Rose: Dude, I’m clean. I’m clean these days. In fact, that’s something I want to talk about. I’m so clean right now.
Tim Ferriss: Let’s talk about clean, because sometimes when I hear you say clean, that means that you’ve been clean for 13, 14 hours. So what are we talking here? Let’s hop right into it.
Kevin Rose: 24 hours. No, I’m just kidding.
Tim Ferriss: I’ll watch it. And I’ll watch Flow tonight. I’ve been meaning to watch it and for whatever reason have kept pushing it. I don’t really have a great excuse. So since I’ll be up all night, shitting my brains out, drinking these various potions that the doctors prescribed me, I might as well try to watch something.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. So to give you, just real quick on the Flow movie, $3.5 million budget to create this. So it was very scrappy. 36 million in the box office and was at the Cannes Film Festival. They premiered and it just won a bunch of awards.
So anyway, I highly recommend checking it out. I think you can stream it for free. But anyway, onto — should we switch —
Tim Ferriss: Kevin being clean?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, clean. Let’s do it. So dude, here’s the deal. Okay. We’ve had this conversation a few times and you and I will get on a phone call and I’ll be like, “How you doing?” You’re like, “Oh, dating’s hard because you have to drink every night.”
And I’m like, “Life’s hard. So you have to drink every night.” I’m like, “Being married’s hard, you have to drink every night.” So it’s like you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.
No, but all jokes aside, one of the things that I realized is that earlier this year, I made this very proud statement that I’m going to go 90 days without drinks and everybody says 90 days is where the magic happens, this and that, classic Kevin bullshit where I fail after a week.
And so I went close to a month. I had a couple little things where I was like, well, I’ve got this event, I’m allowing myself to have two or three drinks, whatever. And so it was cheating, but I did a month ish.
Around the holidays and then after I lost my house in the fire, I realized that there was this moment where I just realized what I’m doing is no longer serving me. And it’s really, I just didn’t feel like drinking was the solution to anything.
I wasn’t having the same joyous kind of fun with friends type drinking. It was more out of habit and also continuous. So what I mean by that is rather than I’ve never been to like, oh it, I had six drinks last night. Those were, I mean, maybe a donation or some stupid shit like that.
But outside of the random podcast once a year, it was more a consistency thing. And then I got some really scary blood work back from my doctor where I went to have my quarterly blood check and my liver enzymes were 150, which is just insane. So that’s, it should be under 20.
Tim Ferriss: That’s like Barry Bonds’ peak level liver enzymes.
Kevin Rose: Right, exactly. I should have been jacked as from juicing, but instead, it was just me hitting champagne or drinks the problems. I would have two things. One, my liver is just not what it used to be as I get older. And two, the consistency, like I said, two or three drinks just a lot of nights in a row.
And it was really easy for my wife and I to crack a bottle and just finish it together and just call it a night. So long story short, I was like, I need to change something and what I’m doing is not working. And if I really want to go 90 days, I have to surround myself with people that can help me here.
And so I have had, now, three friends that have done one version of a 12-step program, one I think has actually been on your podcast before. But I called them all up and I said, “Hey, I don’t think I can do 90 days by myself. I need some help. I need some support here. What can I do? What tools do you have at your disposal that I can lean into for support here?”
And they were super helpful. Each of them had a slightly different recommendation and I pulled some of those tools and I started applying them to my everyday life. And now as we speak, I’m 26 days completely, perfectly sober. Not a single drink. And it was freaking hard, dude, to get here, but I’m feeling really good now.
Tim Ferriss: So having known you a long time, and maybe if people are first time listeners, this is a remarkable stretch for you.
Kevin Rose: Oh, my God. When was the last time you went 30 days, brother?
Tim Ferriss: I’m actually close to 30 days right now. I had two days probably where I had some drinks in the last almost 30 days actually.
Kevin Rose: Really? You’re hitting 30 days?
Tim Ferriss: We can talk about it. It is almost entirely because of the people around me and that’s it. So I have some follow up questions for you, but what were the tools or the things that you did, the things you tweaked that made it more successful this time around?
Kevin Rose: Well, it’s ongoing, but I will get to three months and I have no doubt about that at this point. But I would say first and foremost is to reach out and connect with people that have done some type of assisted programs.
There are multiple different types of 12-step ish type programs that are out there. And I’d say that the first thing was that a friend of mine said, “Hey, listen, one of the things that — the tenets of AA — that it works quite well — is it’s not about going 90 days.”
All it is about waking up that morning and saying, “Not today.” It’s about 24 hours. It’s always about 24 hours. It’s about the recommitment every single morning to wake up and say, “Hey, I could have a drink tomorrow, just not today.” And then saying that over and over and over again.
And when you’re someone that went through COVID and I didn’t drink a lot, and then all of a sudden, I thought we were all going to die, so I drank a ton. And it’s this itchiness that appears at around week one and a half or so. There’s a saying, a snake shedding its skin, this withdrawal type thing that you have to go through that is very challenging. And it’s at that point that you have to realize you’re in the thick of it. And I wasn’t having DTs or anything crazy.
Tim Ferriss: What was that? Delirium tremens, you’re talking about shakes?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, shakes and stuff like that. So this was more just like how do I get to a point where I can be comfortable in my own skin and sit here and be okay with just being myself? And it’s a very weird thing to say I wasn’t able to pull that off.
And actually, what it is is these phone calls to these people. What happens in a lot of these different programs, and there’s two of them that I looked at specifically, is that one of the first things that happens when you join these different various programs is they surround you with like-minded people and phone numbers, phone numbers of people to call.
And you call them up and it’s not like, “Hey, talk me out the ledge, here.” I’m sure for some people it is, but for me it’s just like, “Hey, help me get through this next half hour,” and “How should I be thinking about this?”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: And so once you build up enough of a runway here, and I’m finally at a point where I feel really, really good in a way that I haven’t in a long time, and I don’t want to go back on that.
And so that support network I think is one of the strongest pillars of a 12-step program is like you said, surrounding yourself with people that are just going to be there to pick up the phone and have that conversation. And then it’s a bunch of hobbies to fill out the rest of the time.
Tim Ferriss: And it’s not just people to, like you said, talk you off the ledge, which may or may not be the case, but people to whom you feel accountable also. You just got on the phone and talk to someone, and if you drink, chances are you’re going to have to talk to them.
And you don’t want to be the person who breaks rank or who doesn’t live up to your commitment. So that accountability is really powerful. You’ve said there were two organizations that you took a look at. What were the two organizations or groups?
Kevin Rose: I would just say use ChatGPT and type in, “12-step programs not drinking.” You’re not supposed to talk about these things —
Tim Ferriss: Oh, it’s like Fight Club.
Kevin Rose: — when you go and check them out.
Tim Ferriss: You’re not supposed to talk about them? Why not? I know people, for instance, who have been like, “Yeah, I’m in Narcotics Anonymous,” or whatever.
Kevin Rose: I’ll give you an example. So Brad Pitt got a bunch of shit for saying he was in AA. And if you’re in AA, you’re not supposed to say you’re in AA.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, he got from AA people or people in AA?
Kevin Rose: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: I feel like it’s a good thing because he would draw attention to —
Kevin Rose: I would too.
Tim Ferriss: — a lifeline for people who are having trouble with alcohol? That’s interesting.
Kevin Rose: Right, exactly. Exactly. So most of these organizations don’t want you chatting about them. And so it’s really fascinating.
Tim Ferriss: Weird.
Kevin Rose: But not in a culty way. It sounds very culty-ish, but in reality, it’s just to protect who’s in them and also not make it be about the organization if someone fails.
Because if I were to go back and say, “Hey, listen, I’m trying this thing out right now,” or “I tried this thing,” or “I went to two meetings of this thing,” and then later you hear, “I only made it 45 days,” you’re like, “Oh, that must suck as an organization.”
And so it’s like you don’t associate yourself with any of these things. A lot of people might see that as a failure and then never try it. So that’s one of the other things that they say.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Well, I don’t want you to come under the wrath of the spider web of AA.
Kevin Rose: One thing that I can suggest is LEGO.
Tim Ferriss: LEGO?
Kevin Rose: LEGO. If you’re not watching the video, I’m holding up a massive Japanese wave called “The Great Wave of Kanagawa,” which is a woodblock that was done.
Tim Ferriss: Hokusai?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, Hokusai from the, what was it, Edo period, I think, when he did these woodblock prints. But I spent three days making this with my oldest daughter, which is amazing. So much fun.
Tim Ferriss: So much fun. Just a quick note on that particular piece. So it’s very easy to find. Most people have seen it. A lot of people have seen it. If you just search “Hokusai, H-O-K-U-S-A-I, Hokusai’s wave,” you’ll see this pop up.
But if you search “evolution of Hokusai’s wave,” you get to see over time his prototyping and tweaking and changing of that particular wave until it landed on what we now recognize as this timeless, iconic piece, which is quite cool. So people can take a look at that if they’re interested.
Kevin Rose: It’s so cool. Yeah, his stuff’s amazing. And the fact that LEGO makes adult LEGOs now, it’s so much fun.
Tim Ferriss: Are they just bigger for larger hands? What makes them adult or they’re just instead of being the Batcar, they’re Hokusai’s wave?
Kevin Rose: Well, the pieces are smaller, so they tend to look a lot more realistic. You could hang this on the wall and actually see art versus a LEGO, and then they’re doing it with little mini bonsai trees, and I did with the bamboo shoots, and they’re actually pieces that you want to have around your house.
Oh, check this out. This one you’ll like too. I haven’t done this one yet, but this is one that you can only find in Japan, but I think you can find them on Amazon. This one’s called Nanoblocks. It’s like a LEGO competitor.
So these are really tiny little pieces, I bought this one when I was in Tokyo, but this is a cherry blossom tree, and I can’t remember how many pieces this one is, but it’s like they can be in the thousands. Yeah, this one’s 990 pieces for this little tiny tree. They’re fun to do, but it just gives you something.
I realize what I need is — a friend of mine actually said, he took up golf with his wife and he was like, “Hey, I took up golf with her because all we did was drink or talk about our kids. It was one of two things.” And you need to have something that you go and do in the evening, whether it be rock climbing or some type of physical activity that is not that substance.
Tim Ferriss: The physical activity piece, I’ve always found super effective because you get punished if you’re drinking too much, if you’re doing something that’s really physically intensive. You mentioned this guy going to play golf with his wife.
So my question for you, we can always cut this too, but since it is about your surroundings and so on, is Darya also on board with the not drinking or are you able to take that on yourself while she’s partaking? How is that working out?
Kevin Rose: So she’s still drinking, and I would say that the one nice benefit has been that she’s cut back a lot just naturally, which was cool to see. So her consumption, and she’s always wanted to cut back, but I don’t know how much of it is a result of seeing just my general energy levels going up and I feel a hell of a lot better.
Oh, by the way, my liver enzymes are back down to low thirties, which is great. So I’m starting to see my complexion and all these weird things that are happening that are just getting better, turns out not drinking is actually good for you.
But it’s one of those things where I think that is inspiring her to drink less, which is fantastic, but she still drinks and it doesn’t bother me. It is what it is. She has a hard time with certain things around the house when it comes to the kids and noise levels and stuff that I think it’s easier for her to have a drink or two just to calm the nerves a little bit. But I think it’s already showing, it’s wearing off on her as well, which is great.
Tim Ferriss: Nice. Well, I’m excited to see what happens at day 90. It seems like a huge difference now as you have the phone-a-friend support system put in place.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, the phone-a-friend is huge. But also, there is this group of people that get together and they have a weekly Zoom. And I jump on that and this one’s guys only. It’s a bunch of guys that don’t really want to be drinking, and it is a bonding moment to just talk about how these people are showing up.
And to hear stories about people that are showing up as better dads in particular really hits home with me. Not that I was showing up as a bad dad, but when I think about my father and some of the verbally abusive stuff and his wasn’t related to alcohol, but just dads showing up as the best versions of themselves means a lot to me.
It means a lot to be an awesome dad to my kids. And when I see these other dads that would’ve otherwise been alcoholics in their home, talking about how much they love their children and how they have more patience for their kids now, and patience for their partner because of the fact that they’ve stopped drinking or severely cut back on drinking is just like, it’s a blessing to watch that unfold. I’m seeing it in this large group of people that talk about these things.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I’d be curious to know, we can also cut this, obviously, we can cut whatever, but it’s top of mind because I had Terry Real on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, and his first book, which put him on the map is, I Don’t Want To Talk About It, which is —
Kevin Rose: Love that book.
Tim Ferriss: — specifically focused on male depression, and he talks about covert depression, meaning men have these common modes of covering up depression, whether that be workaholism, alcoholism, sex addiction, fill in the blank.
Typically, some type of compulsive busying or dulling addiction. It could be drugs, I suppose, that could be cocaine that’s not dulling, but it’s quite a laundry list of things that he discusses as coping mechanisms for depression.
And I don’t think that substance abuse is always that. Some people just meet a molecule that is really not a good fit from an addiction profile perspective. I do think that it could be certainly a predisposition as simple as that.
It’s like your body, your bloodline really shouldn’t play with this molecule. But then there are other cases where there’s other stuff under the hood. Do the people in your group talk about that at all? Does that come up?
Kevin Rose: A hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. I would say that if I had to guess, the vast majority of it is under-the-hood stuff. It’s not addressing all of the childhood trauma or our family of origin stories where and how we grew up, and there’s almost always a bit of that.
So as we popcorn around the Zoom and talk about different things, one of the things that commonly comes up is just not only how are you showing up today, but some of these little bits get exposed around these traumas that were largely left unaddressed and so led to this kind of dependence or this escape that alcohol can provide, which is just this dulling of my general ease, being able to sit there and be comfortable in your own skin because of a lot of the things that occurred to you as a child and not even knowing it.
And so addressing that stuff I think is a big part of a lot of these different step programs that are out there. They have different means and ways in which you can go and get that, put pen to paper, get out a lot of those things and address them and put them out there to the world, and hopefully, move on from them and heal from that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, totally. All right, so I just got back from the most travel I’ve done in quite a while, four to five weeks. I was in Taiwan for a week, which was spectacular, and I’ll come back to that. Japan, as always, fascinating, interesting, beautiful, frustrating, depending on which side of it you hit. We’ve talked about this before, but it’s kind of like Japan is like 20 to 30 percent Blade Runner and 70 to 80 percent DMV in terms of rules and paperwork, and so on. But I love Japan. And then also spent a bit of time in the UAE, actually in Abu Dhabi, unexpectedly. So lots of travel updates. I will say for Taiwan, I had not been back to Taiwan since 1999 or 2000. So 25 years. I had had a very tough time when I studied abroad in Beijing. I studied at two universities, and this was 1996. It was a very, very rough experience at the time for a host of reasons. One was there was a lot of political tension between the US and China. I had my head shaved and looked like military, particularly back then, and I was a bit bigger. And it was just not a particularly welcoming environment.
Also, there were concerns about foreign students affecting domestic students, Chinese students, so we were put in a foreign experts dormitory. We were completely separate. So it was actually very hard to learn Chinese in the way that I was hoping to learn Chinese. My Japanese got better because there were a lot of Japanese students in the dormitory and also met some great people who lived in Beijing.
So it wasn’t exclusive, but I had a really rough time and when I got back to the US, basically decided to stop studying Mandarin. And a friend of mine who is a white guy born in the south of Japan, so he had perfect Japanese southern dialect. His English was a little unusual because he sounded like a Japanese person who had learned to speak English very well. This is a guy who looks like you or me. So there was something funky and really funny and awesome about that.
He also spoke Korean really well and spoke Chinese really well, and he said, “You have to at least go visit Taiwan before you lay down your pen and retire your Chinese.” And so I ended up spending about a month in Taiwan and it just blew my mind, right, because without the cultural revolution in Taiwan, a lot of the older culture from China had been preserved. Also, native sort of indigenous Taiwanese culture and cultures have been preserved. Very different from a kind of interpersonal perspective and just had the best time one could possibly imagine.
And in fairness, I have been back to mainland China in other places more recently and it’s a very different experience now. Although once again, we’re back in tension city between the US and China. But what I would say is if you have the chance to go to Taiwan, you should take the chance. And this might sound also — I don’t think it’s pessimistic. I think it’s inevitable that at some point Taiwan will be reabsorbed by mainland China and it’s going to change really dramatically, culturally, linguistically. Perhaps the ability to travel there will get more complicated. I don’t know how it’s going to change, but it will change a lot and that I could see happening within the next few years.
Very surprisingly to me, people on the ground, at least the Taiwanese locals I spent time with, and I was with locals the whole time I was there. I wasn’t with any expats. They’re completely unconcerned. They really don’t seem to be thinking much about this type of transition either because they think it’s not going to happen or because they view it as I just said, somewhat as an inevitability. So they’re like, “Yeah, it’ll change. Things will change.” So it goes. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of hand wringing and fretting about it, which was super surprising to me.
I will say though, if you want to visit a place that is really warm where the people are really funny, where the food is outstanding and it almost feels like there’s a blended courtesy that you might recognize also from Japan, and certainly Japan has a long history there, so it could be some of the influence. Really I encourage people to check out Taiwan and do it soon, and I want to give a shout out to a restaurant there that two of the locals I know are involved with. You’re going to love the name of this restaurant. It is customized, although it predates — I’m pretty sure it predates Google. The name of this restaurant is Really Good Seafood. That is the actual name.
Kevin Rose: I mean, it’s very descriptive. You know what you’re going to get.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s very descriptive. Fantastic sculpture. Also like bronze sculptures in this restaurant strangely enough, but Really Good Seafood. Highly recommend people check it out and you just can’t go wrong in Taiwan. Try to get at least outside of Taipei for a short period of time, and there are amazing hikes in the mountains.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I was going to ask you, did you do any tea? Because obviously the oolongs out of Taiwan are just absolutely stunning.
Tim Ferriss: They’re stunning.
Kevin Rose: Did you do any tea tours?
Tim Ferriss: We drank a lot of tea. I did not do a tea tour, but actually if you hold on for a second, let me go grab some tea. I haven’t even unpacked. I literally got back yesterday. So hold on one second.
Kevin Rose: Oh, sweet.
Tim Ferriss: I’m going to go grab something.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: All right. So I brought some tea back and Taiwan has a lot of everything from a tea perspective, but certainly what gets the most airtime is oolong tea. You really hear about oolong. They have so many incredible teas, but this right here [foreign language 00:39:26] which certainly is not Chinese, but they have these incredible teas and this one in particular was recommended, which is called Oriental Beauty Oolong Tea. And there are a million different varieties. Certainly if you spend time there, I would say do not miss out on the tea.
If you think tea is boring, if you think tea doesn’t really spark your interest, doesn’t capture you, I would suggest just going whole hog on as much tea as you can. And get out in the mountains. I mean, even an hour outside of Taipei, you can go on these walks in rainforests that are to my eye denser than the Amazon. I mean, it is so lush and so dense. Waterfalls, rivers, monkeys. You just get to see it all. It is really incredible from a biodiversity perspective.
And I do think sadly, at least for ease of travel with Taiwan as it exists right now, the window could be quite narrow for a lot of tourism. So I would say maybe things will change, maybe they won’t. If and when the big red dragon basically subsumes Taiwan, but I would say get there. Get there sooner rather than later. You will not be disappointed and certainly check out Really Good Seafood. I have to give a shout-out —
Kevin Rose: Really Good Seafood.
Tim Ferriss: That’s the restaurant. And then of course going from Taiwan to Japan, pretty easy transition. It’s a very short flight and I guess somewhere between three and four hours. And instead of tea in Japan, just went on the rampage with coffee actually this time around. And one of the main reasons for the trip was to visit my host family, who I stayed with when I was 15. I’m still very close to them, and so we were able to go out to this rambunctious local ramen joint and just act like old times and catch up as if no time had passed. It’s just so nice to have those deep relationships. And like everyone everywhere, they’re getting older, meaning my parents, my host brothers, their kids. And it was wild to see my oldest host brother’s older boy is now 16. He’s taller than I am. I remember seeing him —
Kevin Rose: Oh, shit.
Tim Ferriss: — when he was a baby, right? Because I went to my host brother’s wedding prior to that. And he’s the age that I was when I was in Japan, which is just —
Kevin Rose: Oh, it’s wild.
Tim Ferriss: — so wild. It’s so wild. And wanted to give a couple of recommendations for people if they want to try a bunch of coffee. There are a million options out there, but I don’t know how to explain it, and people are going to think this sounds really funny, but the latte at Glitch Coffee in Ginza, for whatever reason, a number of people had it and we were all like, “What did they do with this latte?” I don’t know. I don’t know if it was how they blended it.
Kevin Rose: It’s the kind of milk, of course.
Tim Ferriss: Well, no, no, no. That’s the thing though, because we had 20 different lattes, but at Glitch in Ginza specifically, the way that they blended it was — and put the whole thing together was so obscenely good. It is very small. It’s a pain in the ass to wait outside, especially if it’s raining like it was when I was there. But I would highly recommend checking out. But you’re right that Hokkaido milk is famous throughout the world, certainly without all of Asia.
Kevin Rose: It’s just a different thing.
Tim Ferriss: It just tastes so much better than the milk that I’ve had, at least here in the US. And I’ll give one more, which is Sendai Koffee and people can check that out as well. Very cute. Different style. And there I would suggest checking out — they have a few varieties of Colombian coffee. Colombian Quindio, wine yeast, peach infused honey. Now, there’s no sweetener in this, but all of these notes are super, super obvious, this stuff right here. They really know their coffee man. They really do.
Kevin Rose: Have you been to Koffee Mameya out there?
Tim Ferriss: I was going to go to Koffee Mameya, but we did not end up going, so I’ve not been.
Kevin Rose: Okay. Mameya is by far my favorite in Tokyo. It is insanely legit. They have a couple of different locations, but there is one that they have that is they serve the coffee in wine snifters. It’s like $35 a cup and they get the world’s best Geishas in there, and they’re just making this fantastic varietal of coffee.
Tim Ferriss: Just for clarity, the Geisha is the coffee, not the people.
Kevin Rose: That’s right. Have you tried any of the aged coffees in Tokyo?
Tim Ferriss: I mean, I might have in the course of going to all these different places, but perhaps not Mameya. I wanted to go to check that out. It’s a whole production. If you go to the one location where they give you the omakase, it’s like a whole three-hour commitment. And just at that point in the trip with the amount of time we had, I was like, number one, because tourism has exploded, I mean, I have never seen even a quarter of the number of tourists in Japan that I saw this last trip because the yen is weaker and a lot of people are coming in from all over, not just China, but also Thailand and many other places.
If you want to book a reservation, you need to do it far in advance. For instance, you want to go to Ghibli Museum, you need to book — I used to be able to do that a week or two in advance. Now you got to do it months in advance.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. The last time I was out there, it was just insane how many tourists are coming over, and I saw Craig Mod out there, which is fantastic. He took me to a secret little coffee spot that I don’t want to blow up and ruin by mentioning on your podcast, but it was fantastic. Another one, just Google, L-A-M-B-R-E aged coffee beans Tokyo, and they have coffee beans that they’ve been sitting on for over 20 years. So they’ll serve you coffee beans that are 20 to 30 years old. It’s a different experience altogether when you get these kind of slightly fermented aged coffee beans. This little shop seats, like, eight people, is fantastic. Highly recommend.
Tim Ferriss: So that was my sort of deal with jet lag plus enjoy Japan this time around, which I hadn’t done. I had done a lot of like — well, we experienced it together, sake tastings and things like that. Didn’t want to go the alcohol route. I was very tempted to go to Gen Yamamoto again, who’s incredible.
Kevin Rose: Gen is the best.
Tim Ferriss: But I didn’t want to do the booze, so ended up doing the caffeine route and absolutely loved it. It was also a great way to explore. There’s a place, I want to say — let me look it up. I want to say it might be NEZUCAFÉ, but it does not allow any photographs or social media or laptops, and I just thought that was so fantastic.
Kevin Rose: There’s a handful of those out there. Did you go to Bear Pond Coffee out there at all?
Tim Ferriss: No.
Kevin Rose: That’s a little bit further out. So Bear Pond is amazing. There’s a guy there. He does the angel stain. There’s one cup of coffee he makes like this really highly processed over the top exspresso, not processed, but dense, dense, thick, rich exspresso. And then they have Hokkaido milk there as well. I think it’s some of the best. It’s just unbelievable. But there’s no social media.
Tim Ferriss: Kevin, I have to stage an intervention. If you’re going to be a coffee nerd, you can’t say “exspresso.” You’ve got to say “espresso.”
Kevin Rose: Okay, espresso. Did I say exspresso?
Tim Ferriss: You said it twice, yeah. Okay. All right.
Kevin Rose: Listen, cut that out, fucker.
Tim Ferriss: Look at you. It’s too good. It’s too good.
Kevin Rose: I have these sayings that — Darya always calls me out on where I say things where I think I picked them up from my parents, and there’s like three or four things that are completely not even close to the actual word. It was from my family, my upbringing. I think. Exspresso was one of them.
Tim Ferriss: Well, my mom, her mom, as a joke, would say certain words totally incorrectly. Like instead of horizon, she would say “the hor-eh-zon.” And then my uncle went into school to give a presentation when he was a little kid and he said “hor-eh-zon,” and just got laughed out of class. And then his mom was like, “Oh, yeah, no, that’s totally wrong. I was just kidding.” He was like, “Come on. Come on, Mom.”
Kevin Rose: Well, I’ve got to tell you before we move on, people should know if they don’t get a chance to go out to Taiwan, and something I desperately wanted to do, and I wholeheartedly agree, it seems that sadly tensions are rising. So there is a small window, but a friend that I met in San Francisco, have you ever been to that Red Blossom Tea Company in SF?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: I think they are the best domestic importer, at least in the United States, of high quality oolong tea. So if you cannot make it out, and I have no affiliation with them at all, but if you can’t make it out to Taiwan, but you want to try some of these teas that Tim is talking about, Red Blossom Tea Company. Just Google them. The website has fantastic oolongs. And they’re reasonably priced. They’re pretty awesome.
Tim Ferriss: And also, just to be clear, guys, this doesn’t need to be expensive. These coffees, you might have to wait a little while, or these teas, but they’re not going to cost, necessarily. If you go to a super fancy place, sure, but 99 percent of what I had is going to cost less than what you had at Starbucks.
Kevin Rose: A hundred percent.
Tim Ferriss: It’s not expensive. It is not outside of reach. All right, man. Where should we move next?
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I mean, I definitely want to cover how you did on that meditation retreat. We can talk about that at some point, but I can also talk about some tech stuff as well.
Tim Ferriss: Why don’t we do a tech debrief and then we can talk about the Zen retreat.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, so the tech debrief, I would say for me, the latest and greatest is that the new WHOOP finally came out, which is this little guy here on my wrist. It’s about, I think 12 percent smaller. Now, I’m Oura’ed, WHOOPed and Apple Watched up all at the same time. So the WHOOP band, the reason I like it, or I had historically liked it is that it does not have a display on it. And so it’s not competing with your time in any way. You check the stats in the morning or at night or whatever you may be. And they really maximized the hell out of this hardware because they had not updated the device in four years, so it was the same hardware, but they kept doing firmware updates and the heart rate tracking got better. Everything was just continually getting better via these firmware updates.
This is the first new device in four years. This one is called the MG, which stands for medical grade. It does feel a lot smaller, and there’s some new features that I think are worth mentioning that are pretty awesome. Some stuff that the Apple Watch doesn’t do. So this one now has blood pressure monitoring as well. So you calibrate it with your cuff, which I did last night, and then it’s going to give me insights throughout the week. It will give you a range or a score range, so it’s not going to give you exact cuff measurements, but it’ll generally let you know how you’re doing, whether or not you want to pay more attention or not.
So it’s in beta right now, but it seems so far, it seems pretty good and pretty accurate. And granted, I’ve only had this for a few days now. The VO2 max tracking is awesome. The zone training is great. It’s gotten better. They have this feature called WHOOP Age. I think it is pretty cool because basically what it does is it takes a look at a bunch of different metrics across the board. So you can think of this as resting heart rate, sleep quality, heart rate variability, stress levels, which is getting through a couple of different algorithms that they have, your VO2 max, a slew of different things. And it combines them all into this score and it says, “Okay, how do we think you’re doing? Are you at an accelerated aging pace right now? Are you flat or do we think you’re actually below average in that you’re aging slower than most people, which is where you want to be?”
And so they give you this cool little WHOOP age insight, which is fun. I would say out of all the devices that I’ve played with and own, the WHOOP probably is the geekiest of them all. And then it gives you the most data points and the most insights. Now, they have this little AI agent that you can have a conversation with. You can say, “Hey, how did I do yesterday? Is there anything I should be paying attention to?” And it’ll come back and pull from your real-time data that’s on your phone. So I like it. It’s a little bit pricey. But the one I have is 359 a year, and they do have some that are less expensive, but it’s early days.
I’ve only had it for a few days, but it’s something to pay attention to in terms of the wearables out there that track everything as related to all the different metrics that you can pull from.
Tim Ferriss: I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to do this, but I’ve really been increasing the frequency of my Zone 2 training. And the way that I’ve typically calibrated that is with the talk test. Sort of Peter Attia, right? Keeping it simple like you’re on a bike and you could hold a conversation on the phone or with someone in full sentences, but you wouldn’t really want to, right? That’s my understanding of the simple way to measure it.
Now, I’ve talked to other people who are involved with professional cycling teams and they’re like, “Well, actually, you really want to do A, B, C, D and need to calibrate it,” which sounds very complicated, and I’m probably not going to do it. Have you had a chance to compare what the WHOOP says about Zone 2 and something like the talk test to see if they correspond?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, it’s a great question, and I think one that I’m with you and that I want to get more Zone 2, I’m trying to get a half hour in per day at least. Attia really pushes for close to an hour or tries to get to an hour. There’s an equation for this as well, which is age divided by plus. There’s a few of these out there that are like, how do you figure out what Zone 2 is for you?
For me, this one is they’re using their own model, so they have their own model that they kind of give you a range. But one of the things that I do like, because I was messing around with this last night is if you go in and you do a real legit VO2 max test where they’re actually hooking up to the full gear, they’re putting it in the treadmill, you can plug that in and it will feed it into the model, or you can manually define the zones as you see them.
So you can go in there and type in what you want your zones to be, and it will use that versus their own internal tool, which is quite nice. But they’re using some type of model. I’m not sure which one they’re using.
Tim Ferriss: Okay, cool. Maybe I’ll compare them since I’m in Austin, so I have access to the 10-squared facility. I can go in and I did a VO2 max test not too long ago with the whole kit and caboodle, the band mask on and everything, which is very uncomfortable as a first timer. So I’m curious to see what type of acclimating or practice effect there is on my next VO2 max training. Even if my capacity hasn’t increased, do I get better results because I’m just more comfortable with the gear and the settings, and the cycling and so on? We’ll see. We’ll find out. It’s going to be hard to tease that out.
Kevin Rose: The one thing I will say is that there is a great YouTuber that I like called The Quantified Scientist. And what he does is he goes in and he takes every single wearable, at least mainstream wearable that’s out there. He has the hardcore VO2 max devices at his house. He has all the ECG devices that measure sleep. And he’s basically a statistician and comes in and gives you the data that says, “How does this actually compare to the gold standard for these different measurements?” And he has yet to do that on the new WHOOP, but in the Oura Ring and the Apple Watch and the Garmins and everything out there, he’ll actually put on the full VO2 max mask, like you’re saying, and then compare them and say, “This is the closest to the gold standard without having to wear the mask.”
Tim Ferriss: That’s cool. I’m would love to check out.
Kevin Rose: The Quantified Scientist is awesome.
Tim Ferriss: For sleep, I guess it could be any number of things. It might be EEG if we’re talking about brainwaves. The ECG is —
Kevin Rose: That’s what it is, EEG.
Tim Ferriss: Electrocardiogram. That’s right, yeah.
Kevin Rose: This one does the ECG. If you hold onto the side of it’ll tell me if I have any AFib or anything like that as well on the new WHOOP, which is great.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. All right. I’m literally getting another bike. Well, I shouldn’t say bike. It’s more of an ergometer this week because — I love so much about this company, but the Peloton seat is just completely breaking my cock. It’s so bad. And to retrofit it or to try to modify it is really, really challenging. So I think that in the interest of reproductive health, and I’m not kidding about that, actually, you can do with the wrong seat with cycling, you can actually —
Kevin Rose: How are you flexing all this?
Tim Ferriss: — do a lot of damage. Well, because of my —
Kevin Rose: I’m so massive. The seat is just absolutely just destroying my junk.
Tim Ferriss: Well, my elephant trunk, I need to wrap it around this pole in the front to make sure.
Kevin Rose: Just loop it over the front bars. You’ll be fine.
Tim Ferriss: Safety first. But I’m serious that if people are doing a lot of cycling and they’re having any type of sexual dysfunction or reproductive issues, it’s worth taking a look at the seat. This is something that got flagged to me fortunately in advance because I was like, “Huh, as I was doing some of my workouts, I noticed it seemed like almost a tingling or lack of circulation in one of my legs. And I was like, “That can’t be good.” So as it stands, I’ll test the new device before I give it any kind of endorsement, but I’m moving to another ergometer just so I can do that. And have the ability to easily swap seats if need be. So I might have more on that. Should I hop in with some new experiments or at least observations?
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Actually, let me give you one more quick one that I think is going to be fun for people that a physician turned me on to that I have been using now when I travel, which is amazing. So again, no affiliation with any of this stuff, but it was a Stanford scientist that came out with this nasal spray called Profi, P-R-O-F-I, and I bought it on Amazon. And so it’s essentially this spray that, it’s like this hydrogel that goes up into your nasal cavity and you spray one per each side in your nose, and it is like a gel that basically if you just breathe in through your nose when you’re on a flight or you’re traveling or when you’re in a big room of people, it will trap and it holds all of the different viruses and bacteria that you’re inhaling into this gel and destroys them at the gel level.
And people are getting less sick. They’re not picking up the average cold when they’re in big rooms. They did a small study in a hospital setting around COVID. I’ll find it. It wasn’t with this particular brand, but I think it was another generic brand of the same type of gel. And they just showed that there was way — the odds of you getting COVID or the flu were severely reduced for people that were using this gel inside of their nose.
It’s like 15 bucks or something. I was like, “Hell, yes.” And so I picked it up. I’ve been using it when I travel and, knock on wood, I’ve been doing a lot of travel like you. Over the last few weeks, I haven’t got sick at all. It was only when I didn’t do it at home when my kids were sick that I ended up getting a cold. But anyway, it’s pretty awesome. It was developed over at Stanford and I recommend checking it out.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So we’ll get a link to that. And actually for years now, I don’t know if I ever told you this for at least 10 years when I’m about to go on any extended travel, I will get a saline mist spray from CVS or Walgreens and just simply moisturize or hydrate inside my nasal passages, which seems to make a big difference also for the purposes of just avoiding my nemesis, which is sinus infections. If my nasal passages and my sinuses get dry, I’ve had issues with sinus infections since I was a very, very little kid. And if I’m consistent with this type of nasal spray, it seems to help. So maybe the next step up is the Profi. That’s a hell of a brand name.
Kevin Rose: Exspresso!
Tim Ferriss: Exspresso! I literally saw a sign in a coffee shop in Romania. This was in Brasov, and it said, “Dear Americans, ‘espresso’ does not have an ‘X’ in it.” That’s amazing.
Kevin Rose: I’m not alone. I feel validated now.
Tim Ferriss: No, you’re not alone. You’re not alone. You’re not alone. Kind of makes sense, express. You want to be in the express lane? Exspresso, right?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. Thank you.
Tim Ferriss: I’ll share a couple of just rapid fire, like, Scooby snacks for people, and then I’ll talk about a recent experiment. So this is another one from Japan, and this is not very expensive, but if you can find it online, you might be able to find it at something like a Nijiya market or a Japanese market of some type. This is a dashi. And it’s got dried bonito and dried anchovies and dried flying fish and sweet kelp, all this stuff. It’s from a place called Okume, which was established in 1871. And you can see here, it’s a little hard to see, but the package basically looks like a tea package. You have these individual sachets that are full of this dashi and you put it into hot water so you can have it like tea in the morning.
Kevin Rose: Oh, I love that.
Tim Ferriss: Without making it a big production. And this is just their classic dashi. They have a million different options, but man, I feel like a dose of dashi and broth a couple times a week does a lot to keep the doctor away. So this is going to be a very easy — I have tea so many times a day already, just to swap in one of these as part of the routine will make it more interesting. And also I think could potentially do some really nice things for health.
There’s a book that I read on my travels have been reading. I’ve read it at least 10 times, and every time I read it, particularly if I’ve taken a break of two or three years where I say to myself, “This is why I need to read the book more often.” And it’s this one. This is Awareness by Anthony de Mello.
Kevin Rose: I love that book. Fantastic book.
Tim Ferriss: It’s such a good book and different things hit you at different times. I started reading this, and we’ll get to it in a second. After our Zen retreat, because it talks about a lot that overlaps, even though Anthony de Mello was largely based, maybe entirely based in India, but he was a Jesuit priest, also a psychotherapist. And the density, I would say, of insights per page on this is just incredible. It’s effectively a cleaned up, organized version of his greatest hits given as lectures.
And it’s very easy to read. It’s very funny. It’s very short. It’s only about 170 pages. And once again, I’m reading it and different things are popping out at different points in life. I actually have multiple hard copies that I’ve highlighted at different points. And the highlights are different things. They’re really different. The passages that resonate at different points in time.
Kevin Rose: Oh, man.
Tim Ferriss: To anybody out there who — and it’s not exclusive to this, but if you suffer from anxiety or depression or if you just feel like you have a little too much edge, you’re running a little fast, you feel a little overcommitted, clogged and stuck at points, whatever it might be, this book is fast-acting medicine. And it’s not a panacea, but it’s really complimentary for almost anything else that you would do to help with the types of symptoms that I just described, which are really symptoms of modern living ultimately, especially for people in urban environments.
And even if you’re not in an urban environment, if you’ve got one of these phones, you are plugged into the anxiosphere, right? It’s like the world of anxiety because that is how you keep clicking, and that is how platforms continue to gather data. They can sell in one form or another. So Anthony de Mello, Awareness, always recommend it. I haven’t read it myself in a while and long overdue, so I did want to mention that.
Kevin Rose: Oh, man, Tim, thank you for reminding me about that book. I don’t want to have to keep coming back to this, but when my house burned down, I lost all my books. And it’s funny, I forgot that that was one of my favorites that I had on my bookshelf there. And like, you, I know you do this as well, there’s three or four books I would buy five copies of. And I’d just leave them at my house because when I have a friend stop by, I’m like, “Oh, I need to give you this book.” There’s ones that you absolutely love so much that you just want to gift out because you just feel like you should give as many people as possible this book. This was one of those books, and I just ordered it on Amazon. It’s 10 bucks on Amazon in the US, and it said, “You first bought this in 2019,” probably via your recommendation, but yeah, fantastic book. Thank you. I just bought mine.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure. Let me give a couple of other quick recommendations for folks. And one is an oldie but goodie, much like Awareness, that I had not seen in probably, I want to say 10 or 15 years now. Who knows? Maybe the brand was different back in the day.
But as a quick status update on my increasingly eclectic laundry list of injuries, so my right elbow has been a problem for 20-plus years. It started with an accident in jujitsu. My arm got hyperextended, pop, pop. And then over time, I’ve developed these tears in my extensors. So people think of tennis elbow. So if you pull your fingers up on your arm towards your face where you’re looking at your fingernails, let’s just say you’re admiring a nice new manicure that you have —
Kevin Rose: Like this.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So if you’re just pulling your fingertips back towards your shoulder, you’re using your extensors, and I have tears in both of those. It’s gotten bad enough that I had to stop rock climbing. That was the first indication. When I started to get to, say, five elevens in the gym when you’re crimping and starting to pull the knuckles back, I think I basically grabbed the paper tear and ripped it further. So I’m at a point where I almost certainly need surgery, and I’ve tried everything —
Kevin Rose: This is your right hand?
Tim Ferriss: This is my dominant side, yeah.
Kevin Rose: Oh, man, that’s extra brutal for you.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s my dominant hand.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, if you’re going to lose that one, that’s not the one you want to lose.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, so fortunately the surgery is pretty straightforward. I don’t know what you’re thinking about, but —
Kevin Rose: I am not left-handed either.
Tim Ferriss: The stranger, yeah, don’t underestimate the stranger. Oh, hello. Have you heard it before?
Kevin Rose: Never underestimate.
Tim Ferriss: If you get it, you get it. All right, let’s move on. So I will probably need two to three months of rehab before I’m able to get back to full force. And even now, for instance, using barbells for any kind of weight training creates too much torque and tension at the elbow, and it really ends up being incredibly painful. So I’m using a lot more dumbbells. The reason this is relevant is because of the back injury and the back compression, I don’t really like putting barbells across my shoulders. I won’t get into all the details, but I’m holding dumbbells for extended periods of time, and normally that’s not a problem. But if you’re doing most of your leg workout by holding onto kettlebells or holding onto dumbbells, the first thing that’s going to go is your grip, especially because my right elbow is really compromised right now.
And to use standard basic lifting straps for dumbbells is really challenging. If anyone’s used these, you know what I’m talking about. You wrap the strap around multiple times and to get it into some type of symmetrical position with both hands. So this thing right here is another option, and what I’m holding is called Versa Gripps, V-E-R-S-A Gripps, G-R-I-P-P-S, and it’s a lifting strap, but really all you’re doing is folding it over once and then putting your hand on top of it. So it’s a lifting strap that is much more amenable, much more straightforward to use, pretty much for everything, but particularly for dumbbells, which I’m going to be using not just to train to do prehab, to get myself as strong as possible prior to surgery, but also post-surgery. So I would say if that’s of interest, you can check that out. I’ll give one more rec, and then we can move on.
This is a book that people have almost certainly not seen before. It’s called Everything Is Its Own Reward by Paul Madonna, and it is a book of beautiful architectural drawings. You might think to yourself, “Boring.” Most of it is in the San Francisco area or San Francisco Bay area, but it’s the philosophical musings and the writing that Paul has in this book that is so deeply fascinating and weird and thought-stirring to me. And I came across this the first time in a hotel in the Bay Area. I was just sitting in a coffee shop, and I was killing time before doing something. I picked it up, and I ended up sitting there and reading it for about two hours. I completely forgot to have dinner.
And I’ve once again, much like the 32 Sounds documentary, never quite come across a book like this. It is so strange, and I feel like the combination of 32 Sounds, Awareness, and this very, very weird, often funny, often profound Everything Is Its Own Reward by Paul Madonna, which is definitely going to sell out on Amazon, so the race goes to the swift, create almost an extended psychedelic experience in the sense that things that you’re accustomed to seeing, things that you think or do or hear on autopilot most of the time, because that’s the only way you can survive is to have most things on autopilot, you see afresh as if you’re encountering them for the first time after taking in a diet, it doesn’t have to be very long, even for a day or two with some of these different books and documentaries and so on.
And so it’s really just, I don’t use this word lightly, it’s more of a metaphor, but seeing the miracle in the everyday. And it makes me think of some people who are really creative, who seem to have one foot in that zone all the time.
For instance, I was watching an NHK, which is the BBC in Japan, a miniseries on the creative process of Hayao Miyazaki, who’s the founder of Studio Ghibli, which has made pretty much every Japanese animated film most people have heard of. So My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Ponyo, etc, etc. He’s sometimes called the Disney of Japan, which is a description he does not like because he says, “Walt Disney was a businessman. I’m just a director.” Just a director, very Japanese.
But in one of the episodes talking about his creative process, he takes a video camera, this is an older docuseries, and tapes it, affixes it to the headrest of his driver’s seat in his car because he says, “I want to see what I’m seeing because effectively there’s magic hiding in the ordinary.” He’s like, “That’s what you want to find.” And I feel like all of these tools help you to do that, which for me is deeply therapeutic, beautiful, stress-relieving in ways that are hard for me to put words to, but you don’t need drugs to get there. These are all things that can help recalibrate you just a few degrees to change your waking experience in that way.
Kevin Rose: Tim, one other thing I’ll say is that you had mentioned a book that immediately sold out before called The Well of Being several episodes ago, and I’m actually re-buying it right now because it’s back in stock. I just want to let people know that it is now back in stock because it was going for several hundred dollars a copy after you mentioned it and it sold out. So now it’s back for $35 again, but that’s still one of your favorites, yeah?
Tim Ferriss: It’s a great book. It’s outstanding. Yeah, that’s the children’s book for adults. Yeah. That is an outstanding book.
Kevin Rose: I’m picking that up again as well.
Tim Ferriss: And the book you mentioned and the book that I just mentioned are books that you really want in hardcover, if you can get them. That’s the intended medium for these two books, for sure.
Kevin Rose: One thing I’ll mention as a quick throw out there, not everyone can travel to Japan. We get that. There are lots of artisanal Japanese goods that are absolutely phenomenal. A lot of websites that import do so with a very limited supply, and then also they mark them up like crazy. So you’ll find some of these shops here, especially in L.A., there’s some of these shops you go to and it’s just things are just outrageously priced. One place I have found that I really like that, yes, it is a little premium, but I would say is one of the best curators of fine Japanese goods is a friend of mine turned me on to this, it’s called pojstudio.com.
Tim Ferriss: P-O-J.
Kevin Rose: You’ve got to check this out. I think you’ll really like it. So if you go to Poj Studio and then click on shop at the top there and just go bestsellers, shop all, or whatever, and then look at some of these pieces. It’s everything from high-end Japanese towels to incense to these beautiful tie-dyed door dividers, the hanging things.
Tim Ferriss: What was the name of the URL again or how do you spell it?
Kevin Rose: It’s pojstudio.com.
Tim Ferriss: studio.com.
Tim Ferriss: They’ve got all sorts of beautiful stuff.
Kevin Rose: Absolutely stunning, imported Japanese, small production, artisan stuff from little tiny trays and containers to room dividers to throw pillows to you-name-it. If you like that vibe, oh, they have these beautiful hand-hammered little singing bowls that you can use for meditation. I got their Japanese Hinoki wood incense, which smells amazing. Anyway, I think this is one of the best importers of small artisan Japanese goods that’s out there, so I highly recommend checking it out.
Tim Ferriss: Also, if you want to go low-end or mid-tier, I mentioned Nijiya Market. They only have 12 stores across the US, mostly in California and Hawaii. But you can find Japanese markets, and you can also find, broadly speaking, East Asian markets. If you find East Asian markets, whether that’s Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, fill in the blank, chances are they’re going to have a lot of Japanese goods. And also they will have plenty of good stuff from their primary country in the sense that if it’s Chinese-owned, let’s just say China, if it’s Vietnamese-owned, although I would put them in the Southeast Asian, I guess, category, but Korean, etc. You can just find some amazing, amazing, amazing teas, as an example, because culturally, that is such a part of the lived experience of those places.
Try it out, walk through, pick up something you can’t read, make sure it doesn’t have any allergens that are going to kill you, and then give it a shot.
All right. So let’s talk about the Zen retreat in a second. I will tell you one interesting hypothesis that I have related to something we’ve discussed once before, which is accelerated TMS, so the compressed administration of basically a magnetic coil. Oh, you bastard. There’s a squirrel on my squirrel-proof bird feeder just trying to go to town right now. You rat bastard. I don’t think he’s going to succeed. Oh, he is. Oh, you bastard. Squirrel proof, my ass.
Kevin Rose: Wait, pan over. I’ve got to see this. Can you pan the camera?
Tim Ferriss: It’s not going to work. I’ll knock all shit my over. Oh, you bastard. I think he’s been — no, no, no, he’s really getting in there. All right, so I got distracted. Apparently accelerated TMS doesn’t help with that kind of distraction. I’ve just never actually seen my bird feeder getting pillaged so badly as it is right now by this squirrel. Nice work, squirrel.
Kevin Rose: I love this version of Tim. It’s bird feeding, hummingbird feeders, little anti-squirrel devices.
Tim Ferriss: He just got sent for a whirligig spin though, so there’s something.
Kevin Rose: You need to get a webcam out there, right?
Tim Ferriss: I do. Only squirrels. All right, accelerated TMS. I feel like the dog in Up. “Squirrel!”
Kevin Rose: Exactly. Squirrel.
Tim Ferriss: So the accelerated TMS, for people who are interested in learning more about this, I recommend listening to my podcast with Nolan Williams, who’s a scientist out of Stanford who’s the head of their brain stimulation lab. But effectively different types of brain stimulation, in this case, transcranial magnetic stimulation, particularly when applied in this condensed format, in this case it’s 50 sessions of brain stimulation, they’re about nine minutes long each. You’re doing 50 sessions in five days, so you’re doing 10 hours a day. Every hour on the hour you’re having this brain stimulation.
And in my case, it’s for an anxiosomatic target. That just means it’s effectively to reduce symptoms of OCD, compulsive rumination. I don’t wash my hands or flip the light switches, and not to judge anyone who does, but it’s like my form of OCD which I’ve been diagnosed with, and it’s not surprising at all, is this repetitive perseveration, a loop of thoughts that even though I’m aware it’s unproductive, even though I’m aware it’s unpleasant, I feel powerless to stop.
That type of perseverating, which then, of course, engenders anxiety and sometimes insomnia, etc. Of all of the things I’ve tried, and you and I spoke about this, when I did my first five-day sequence of accelerated TMS, bizarrely there was a two-week delayed onset. Nothing really seemed to happen for about two weeks. And then boom, for three to four weeks, I had, let’s just call it complete remission of symptoms. All of that stuff just went away, and nothing has approached that in terms of amplitude and especially durability of effect, and that includes psychedelic therapies. But what’s interesting about this is after that five-day treatment, I went back and I did a single-day booster, which did nothing. And then I did a three-day booster, which also did nothing. Now, I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this publicly. Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. Part of the reason I wanted to do lower dosing was after my first five-day sequence, I remember after a week or so I was like, “Hey, doc, I can’t seem to ejaculate. Is that a known problem?”
Kevin Rose: Oh, shit.
Tim Ferriss: And needless to say, that did not help my anxiety.
Kevin Rose: You could still get the timber, you just couldn’t get the output.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I couldn’t get the output. And then the doctor was like, “Oh, interesting. We haven’t seen that because this is still a very new treatment,” and particularly for anxiety and OCD, the depression has been much better studied. But he said, “It kind of makes sense if we’re whacking down your sympathetic response.” And he’s like, “There’s this mnemonic in medical school, which is point and shoot, meaning parasympathetic to get the erection, and then sympathetic to have the ejaculation, to have the orgasm.” And he’s like, “It makes sense.” And I was like, “Okay, and is this fixable, or am I totally screwed forever?” And he’s like, “No, it should just return to baseline.” And it did.
I have an addendum to that though. So I wanted to use lower dosing to avoid that. One day did nothing. Three days did nothing also. And then I was like, “What the hell is going on? I guess I can do five days.” You get nothing done for five days. You’re getting your brain zapped every hour, and it basically feels like you did an all-nighter for the LSATs 10 times a day. You get very, very tired.
Kevin Rose: When you say zapped, does it hurt?
Tim Ferriss: It doesn’t hurt at all. It feels like somebody lightly flicking the side of your head. It doesn’t hurt. So basically for nine minutes, it’s like there’s nothing, and then it’s like bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And then there’s a pause for, I’m just making this up, let’s just call it, I don’t know, 10 seconds, 15 seconds. Then bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And it’s a paddle that’s pushed against your head. That’s it. I don’t find it painful at all. This is with a MagVenture or MagVentures device. There are other devices that can have different types of effects, which have different types of helmets and caps that are used and so on. It doesn’t hurt in this particular case.
So then I was chatting with the doctor before planning another round. And he was like, “Well, it is pretty strange that three days did nothing.” And I was like, “Okay.” And we were trying to brainstorm strategy. And what I did is I went back in my calendar and looked at the preceding few weeks before every one of these treatments. And for the first treatment, the five-day treatment, I had had some psychedelic exposure. And I was like, interesting, because I’ve long assumed that there could be some type of synergistic effect with these two things. And there are people who are looking at this very closely right now.
So this time around ,the hypothesis is that actually the improved neuroplasticity, and who knows, maybe it’s even anti-inflammatory effects, could be a million different things, from the psychedelic exposure worked synergistically with the five-day accelerated TMS to produce the effect that I then witnessed and experienced, which was incredible. If I could figure out how to replicate that, then I would do it, let’s just call it once a quarter, once every four months, something like that. Why wouldn’t I do it? And I will say that it took the edge off, and by that I mean I was less motivated to do a lot of types of work, maybe from tampening down the sympathetic nervous system. But what I found for myself was number one, at this point in my life, totally fine with it. And number two, I actually think it made me better at picking my targets and not doing work for the sake of movement.
Because I didn’t have the underlying anxiety that perhaps I was subconsciously coping with by some type of frenetic activity or overcommitting to phone calls or work or creative projects or exercise or who knows what it was. So that extra space that was created by not having as much compulsive behavior across the board, I would say, is no discernible decrease over, say, three to four months in my creative output. Totally happy with it. And so I’m very curious to see how accelerated TMS ends up being enabled or disabled, and I think it might depend on the dose, with different types of pharmaceuticals. And there’s one that’s been studied called sertraline with an S, S-E-R-T-R-A-L-I-N-E. People can find studies related to this. So that’s something I’m going to be watching very closely. Now I have an update, because I know you want to know about my ejaculation, Kevin.
Kevin Rose: Always. It’s my first thing I ask you whenever we talk.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. I don’t think it was the TMS. So I actually had a theory that I tested, and it’s N of one, so take it with a huge grain of salt, but I thought it might be the trazodone, which some people use for sleep. And it’s interesting for sleep because it doesn’t seem to disrupt sleep architecture as much as other drugs. However, one of the less common but known side effects can be delayed ejaculation. And I was like, interesting. Well, let me take that off the table. And I did take it off the table, and lo and behold, no issues. So —
Kevin Rose: Back to two minutes.
Tim Ferriss: Back to two minutes!
Kevin Rose: Boom.
Tim Ferriss: “Oh God, this never happens, I swear.”
Kevin Rose: “We normally have trazodone for this but ahhhhh!”
Tim Ferriss: But I thought that might be, if people are taking sleep medications, you can end up treating the wrong thing very easily or pulling levers for getting about certain medications that you’re using, where you haven’t taken a moment to look at side effects that are less commonly reported, but nonetheless, statistically significant. So not saying that was definitively the cause because I couldn’t prove that, but so far, so good, I guess.
Kevin Rose: So after these treatments, or the ones that were successful, was there anything else that was a positive? Were you sleeping better at night, or no?
Tim Ferriss: Well, for the three to four months that I mentioned, for sure, my sleep was so much better. Now is that because my rumination is less? Is it because I have maybe someone taking a Mounjaro or something, less compulsive behavior across the board, so I’m not drinking as much caffeine as like a fixation? Maybe, I don’t know. But I did sleep much, much better, and the quality of life difference before and after was hard to overstate. It’s really, really incredible.
I will say this time around, just like the first round of five days, if you were to ask me right now what difference has it made, I would say it hasn’t made a fucking one iota of difference. I happen to be in the middle of a bunch of very stressful things related to family health emergencies and various other time-sensitive situations that I think would contribute to almost anyone feeling quite anxious. But I am patient this time around because there was the delayed onset. And if it takes two weeks, it takes two weeks, so I’m just going to cross my fingers, not drink. That’s a big part of the not drinking, also, was preparing for that.
And then afterwards wanting to ensure that I’m giving my brain the best chance possible to adapt in the way that I wanted to adapt. So leaving out as many neurotoxins as possible seems like a good standard operating procedure, at least for the next little while. And we’ll see, man, fingers crossed. But I remain very, very bullish on this technology. I really feel like for people who fit criteria that would exclude them from psychedelic-assisted therapies, let’s say people with a history of schizophrenia or family history of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, this treatment could be very, very interesting in addition to maybe especially combining it with some type of metabolic psychiatry, which I had Chris Palmer from Harvard on to talk about a while back. So use of whether it’s ketogenic diet, exogenous ketones, maybe some combination. I think there’s a lot of promise. I think there’s a lot of promise.
Kevin Rose: That’s awesome.
Tim Ferriss: That’s where the foundation is going to be spending more time also, in addition to the psychedelic stuff.
Kevin Rose: I’m curious, when you think about how these are obviously very expensive treatments, and you can’t find them in every city. Are you seeing any application of this technology at the consumer level that you have tried or you’ve heard good things about? I know it’s not the same, but Matt Walker, you’ve had him on your podcast, the sleep scientist that ran the Berkeley Sleep Lab, he had a device called Somnee, which I haven’t tried, which does transcranial electric stimulation 15 minutes before you go to bed, it’s supposed to increase your deep sleep. So he’s involved in that product. So I’m seeing more of these consumer brain stimulation devices pop up in the market. Anything worth playing with here, or is that just all not proven out yet?
Tim Ferriss: Not ready for prime time? Yeah, I can’t speak to Somnee. Definitely people, if they’re interested in unpacking sleep, Why We Sleep, I believe, is the title of Matt’s book, and then —
Kevin Rose: It’ll scare the shit out of you.
Tim Ferriss: It’ll scare the shit out of you in, I think, a productive way, and then he and I spoke on the podcast about things he might add to that or modify, update, etc. The consumer grade, it’s timely that you should ask me that. So right before recording this podcast, I actually had an investor deck presentation with a company that is working on something, so you and I should talk about that separately. I think it’s very interesting. As a category, it is incredibly hard to make work both as a technology, just scientifically. To show compelling cause and effect I think is very difficult in this category.
And from a business perspective, there are a number of different reasons that it can be very, very challenging. But I do think there might be some interesting tools on the horizon. What I will say is, as a general rule of thumb, and I can’t speak to Somnee, and Matt Walker is a credible scientist, so let’s exclude Somnee from what I’m going to say, but almost every at-home brain stimulation device, or let’s just for simplicity’s sake call it brain stimulation device, I’ve seen is that best a scam. And at worst could do a fair amount of damage. These tools, if they’re used incorrectly, TMS, let’s just say, transcranial magnetic stimulation, if used incorrectly, can actually worsen, so exacerbate the conditions that you’re trying to treat. So you see people online, you see people on YouTube or on Reddit who are just going nuts.
Kevin Rose: Oh, with burn marks and shit too. They get burns.
Tim Ferriss: Just DIYing this stuff, I would strongly advise against that. The brain is really, really, really sensitive. You don’t want to fuck with it without some real bonafide creds behind the device and instructions. So I would encourage people to, as a general rule, steer clear of anything that is being sold direct to consumer. I’m sure there are some exceptions, but I would say, for the most part, this is not across the board, but for the most part, you’re dealing with fly-by-night operations, and you should not trust the integrity of your brain to these devices. I’m sure there are exceptions, but just as a general rule, I would say that.
Separately, I would say that, for instance, the therapy that I just paid for is very expensive, because insurance doesn’t currently cover accelerated TMS, or at least I’m not aware of insurance that will cover accelerated TMS. But I was texting with a friend of mine who is seeing very good results for her PTSD, and it gets to the comorbid with depression and other things, so it’s hard to untangle all of that. But she is doing TMS conventionally, which is less frequent, and her insurance is covering it. So I would say I’m optimistic that there is a future where insurance, at least some insurance carriers, will cover accelerated TMS, particularly when the hopefully cost benefit is really made incredibly clear through patient results.
Because some of the stuff you see is incredible, like 70 percent plus remission of treatment-resistant depression after a week of treatment. These are the types of results that rival or exceed some of these psychedelic-assisted therapies. And when we’re talking about these intractable or very difficult-to-treat psychiatric conditions, these outcomes are really, really notable. The datasets are super small for a lot of the applications of accelerated TMS, but I’m supporting that through the foundation scientifically because I do feel like a lot of the issues we’re facing we’re facing because of effectively modern civilization, and I don’t foresee it getting any easier. So I do think it’s important to try to support these technologies and interventions, so that hopefully they can reach some level of scale. And I am skeptical that taking people for a six-hour ride on a mind-bending psychedelic that takes them to the 17th dimension is scalable. I’m not even convinced that it’s a good idea to do that with incredibly large numbers of patients. So that’s yet another layer of why I am really supporting some of these other technologies.
Kevin Rose: It’s super exciting. I think we’re about to enter into a golden age of tech meets life sciences and see a whole slew of different compounds and therapeutics that are just going to change the way that we live over the next five years. I didn’t tell you this, but I did my whole genome sequencing, so not the 23andMe, but I did the whole thing. You spend, I think it’s about $700 now to get your full genome done.
Tim Ferriss: It’s incredible how cheap it’s become, huh? Isn’t that nuts?
Kevin Rose: It’s crazy.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, compared to back in the day.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, back in the day, it was insane. It was $20,000 or more or something just a few years ago or something crazy. That was even if it was available, if you could find it. Yeah, right, it was really hard to even get someone to do it. But anyway, long story short, I have had the most stubborn homocysteine, which is a biomarker that it’s not known to be causal, but it is oftentimes correlated with many different types of cancers and mainly heart disease. And even with multiple physicians helping me out, I have never been able to get it back to healthy levels. So I took my whole genome, dumped it into AI, and we worked out a playbook together on where we could find methyl donors to and which methylated B vitamins I could give to help fix the broken cycle. Because I have the MTHFR genetic mutation. It’s a very fancy way of saying one biomarker completely jacked up. My dad died of heart disease. I don’t want to die of heart disease. How can we fix this shit?
So we worked through a way for me to supplement and start adding on supplements. I’m eight weeks in, and for the first time, my homocysteine is at normal levels after many years of trying to figure this out. And I was working through this process in tandem with my AI, which was crazy. And it ended up being NAC was the thing that we had to add to the mix as a methyl donor to get it to work and hack around my MTHFR mutation.
Tim Ferriss: Do you think any of that change in homocysteine could be a response to the cessation of drinking in the last whatever it is? 27 days?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I’ve done drinking, bouts of not drinking before and tested and still completely elevated. So, it had nothing to do with drinking. I thought the same thing. But yeah, because the only thing I changed that I’ve added on now is, well, we slowly started adding on different methylated B vitamins, but it was the NAC that was the methyl donor that got me over the hurdle here and dropped it down dramatically.
So I’m way in the healthy zone now, which is not, my physician is like, “What the hell did you do?” And I’m like, “Talking to AI.” But I’m just saying, this is one of many things. We will have an announcement next time we do a podcast together, where I just put 15 million into a protein, this novel protein coming out of the UCSF that is doing wonders around dementia and Alzheimer’s. I did this via True Ventures, where I’m a partner over there. And so I joined the board of this company and we’ve got some really interesting data coming out of that. It’s just a very fun time to be alive at the intersection of AI and life sciences.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it is. And just for reference, so Craig Venter, back in the day, his personal genome sequencing, that was in 2007. And people can do more homework on this, but that cost 10 million, estimated to have cost 10 million.
Kevin Rose: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: And you just look at where we are now, and you can imagine moving forward, and actually, this ties into my visit to the UAE and to Abu Dhabi specifically because what they can do and what they are doing with AI absolutely blew my mind. They have, number one, I think it’s 70 percent of government services are administered through an app on smartphones and there are AI assistance that people interact with. So, for instance, if you’re driving, you want to report a pothole, you just take a photograph of it, it geotags it, deals with it, gets it to the right agency, and then off you go. And I suppose looking down the pike also with genomics, I think they’re going to be a global leader in genomics because of just how much data they have, not only from a full genome perspective, but from a behavioral perspective and centralized electronic medical record perspective. Actually very, very interested to see what they do specifically with life sciences and AI because this intersection is going to be so fertile. It’s just unreal, if you look at AlphaFold and what AlphaFold has done.
Kevin Rose: Yes. The new AlphaFold’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: We’re looking at eclipsing decades of human work in incredibly short periods of time.
Kevin Rose: So, have you done your full genome yet, Tim?
Tim Ferriss: I did my full genome a million years ago with a startup that effectively went out of business. So, I should probably do it again just to boot that back up. I did delete all my data on 23andMe, because I was panicked that they would get bought by someone.
Kevin Rose: Which they did. Just got announced.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So, I was able to delete mine just in the nick of time, but I saw a demo, this was years ago, of a company taking genome data and with a sufficiently large data set, creating basically like a suspect sketch of the person’s face based on their genome data. If they have photographs from multiple angles of these people, because this is what one of these companies was doing, and they have the full genome sequenced and who knows, maybe this is science fiction, they are peddling —
Kevin Rose: This is crazy.
Tim Ferriss: — something in the future. But I guess what I’m saying is I don’t think you can anonymize your genetic data in the way that we would hope to be able to anonymize it.
Kevin Rose: Do you care though?
Tim Ferriss: Do I care?
Kevin Rose: Are they really going to clone me? Are they going to clone you? They might make your Peloton seat fit better if they have the full picture, but outside of that, what are they going to do with it?
Tim Ferriss: Well, I run more on the hypervigilant side than you do, right?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I know you do.
Tim Ferriss: I would say, for me, it’s not a question of why do you care? It’s a question of what are the reasons to not have a tighter hold on it? And if there are secure ways to share it, I’m all for it. But for instance, the 23andMe thing, I’m not the only person who deleted their data for sure. And I suppose my feeling is we don’t know what we don’t know. I don’t know how this data might be used. I really have no idea. So, I would prefer to have as much control of it as possible. And also, way back in 2010 when I was writing The 4-Hour Body, I guess it came out in 2010, so I was writing it prior to that, and I’m not sure if this conversation happened shortly thereafter, but it was with a very credible scientist who is at NASA at the time working on all sorts of advanced like physics and chemistry and so on, and he was commenting on the fact that it was very foolish for very well-known billionaire at the time to release their full genome data.
And he said, because if you wanted to develop a customized biological weapon to say, walk up to that person in a crowd and blow powder into their face at TED or wherever, he’s like, you could do that very, very easily. He’s like, it’s actually not hard to design something like that. So I was like, “Well — “
Kevin Rose: Okay, now, you’re freaking me out. That is —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And I also don’t have the technical chops to call bullshit on something like that, but it didn’t seem, this guy didn’t have a tinfoil hat. He had a real job. He was producing really good work, he was published, and that conversation stuck with me. That was around 2010.
Kevin Rose: Think about this. If I have the resources and the power to build a custom gene killing Tim Ferriss powder agent, I’m pretty sure I can hire someone just to walk up and shoot you. You have the resources. You really don’t need to go that far to take somebody out with a custom —
Or you know what, the phlebotomist that leaves your house, I can just pay them for a little dip of your juice and go get it tested, right?
Tim Ferriss: There are ways to do that, but I guess what I’m saying is, within 12 months, we’re going to have LLMs that are capable — hopefully, they have the safeguards in place — of enabling your average Joe or Jane to create biological weapons from household items. So I’m just saying I’d prefer not to tempt fate as a public figure by keeping the reins too loose on that stuff.
Kevin Rose: Do you remember that LifeLock guy? You remember that company LifeLock that he —
Tim Ferriss: I do, yeah.
Kevin Rose: — put Social Security number on a thing and he’s like, “I’m totally secure.” And then he got all hacked and everything. Identity stolen and all this shit.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, oops.
Kevin Rose: Amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Oops. And I will also say that something happened to me a couple of weeks ago that is the flip side of the Cambrian explosion of discovery with the intersection of healthcare and AI. I really am not sure how humans cope with this, but in a post-fact world where what you don’t touch and see with your own eyes in person is going to be a huge question mark and the reason I say that is a few weeks ago, I started getting all of these DMs and texts and so on saying, “Hey, is this you?” I was like, “Hey, is what me?” And I clicked through and there was a video of me selling or saying, “Sign up for X, Y, or Z, and I’ll tell you the three stocks that are underpriced right now that’ll make you rich.” Basically, something like that.
Kevin Rose: Your side hustle.
Tim Ferriss: My side hustle, yeah. The video I will say was like 90 percent indistinguishable from me. The background, clothing, facial hair, everything was dialed. There were just a couple of Max Headroom movements for people who get the reference, a couple of little glitches that raise questions, but in 12 months, that’s not going to be there. And I’m not sure, for instance, from a societal perspective, or let’s just say from a personal perspective, how will people know what is real Kevin versus fake Kevin.
Do you have to train your whole audience to understand private and public keys? What do you actually do?
Kevin Rose: Dude, this is top of mind for me right now in a way that you would never believe. Yes. I’m working on this exact problem. So, Alexis, the co-founder of Reddit, and I, we mentioned this, we bought Digg back and we’re bringing back a, going to build a social platform for people to converse about a variety of different topics. And top of mind is that in an agentic world, where AI agents can be spun up for pennies because the cost is going to zero and they can have conversations with you, they can convince you of things, they can do all these different, both good and bad things, how are you going to know what’s real? Just as a test, what I did recently is I took a model, I picked a pair of $6 headphones on Amazon and I got all the details about the Amazon and I said, “Sell this to me as if they will outcompete and outperform a $500 pair of headphones.”
And it wrote this really detailed report about the craftsmanship and how they were able to get this in for only $5 and it was super compelling and convincing, and I was like, it’s game over. Anything we read online can no longer be trusted. And so there is a handful of people right now working on this exact problem, and we’re trying to figure out how we can know both who guarantee that there’s a human on the other end of the keyboard, number one. And number two, when you go out and you talk about something with authority, how can we have — and prove — that you actually have wisdom or authority that passes through to what you’re talking about. So, for example, I don’t want to get too geeky, but for example, and to your point about this needs to be something average consumers can understand versus private and public keys and everything else, but I’ve owned an Oura Ring for, let’s call it five years now.
Now, I could go on any forum online and say, “Hey, I love my Oura Ring. I’ve owned it for five years.” Now, that could be an LLM that’s providing you complete bullshit, or it can be actually someone that’s owned an Oura Ring for five years. There are technologies out there, they’re really geeky. They’re called ZK proofs that can go out and they can work with service providers and say, we can guarantee with an algorithm and create a proof that this person is doing and saying what they said, what they’re claiming to say, which is that I’ve actually had a paying subscription for the last five years and we’re going to need to have these proofs. A cheap way of thinking this is like sometimes, you see these trust pilot scores or whatever, or the Better Business Bureau scores or there’s going to need to be that around everything that we talk about online.
So, including a Tim Ferriss verifiable checkbox that when I click on it, it will say, “This was produced, created, published, and proven that it came directly from Tim Ferriss’ lips and not some AI-generated world.” That has to exist. Otherwise, everything is lost online.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, well, keep up the hard work, folks working on that problem.
Kevin Rose: I literally, I spent a half day over at World, which is Sam Altman’s other startup around proving humanhood or proving humanness. And the way they do it is they actually scan your eyeball and I had my eyeball scanned and now, I have an ID, a World ID that is proof that I am that human and they don’t own that. They don’t have a copy of that. It lives on my device and it’s sharded and kept separate, so it only can be reconstructed by me. But we’re entering into this really weird time, where there is a trade-off between privacy and proving that it’s me and ah, it’s going to be messy for a few years.
Tim Ferriss: For a few years. Yeah, it’s going to be messy for a few hundred years. It’s bad. Sounds like Minority Report, the eye scans. Yeah. It has to be something like that.
Kevin Rose: I’ve got a buddy right now that is a hardcore technologist that looks at these things and studies these things, and he claims right now, he believes that 30 percent of the Internet’s traffic, whether it be people writing back to you on Twitter or any of these social numbers, he thinks it’s all bots at this point, and he has proof of some of them that will friend you up, create long-term relationships with you, only to convince you of that one thing that they were trying to do that they spent six months building up rapport with you. And it’s all BS, dude. It’s all for pennies. It’s crazy.
Tim Ferriss: Have you seen — great movie — Ex Machina?
Kevin Rose: Oh, of course. Fantastically.
Tim Ferriss: So good. It’s so scary.
Kevin Rose: We’ve got to go revisit that. We also need to watch Her again. I haven’t watched Her — that’d be another one to watch again.
Tim Ferriss: Watching Her, I remember watching that and feeling like it was further off than it actually is right now. I’m just realizing like it’s basically here.
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: It’s basically right now.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Did you see that lawsuit that basically there was a bunch of guys that got together and did this lawsuit against OnlyFans saying that they sued the platform because they found out that they were just talking to bots and not the actual models themselves? Did you see this?
Tim Ferriss: No.
Kevin Rose: So, they’re suing these creators.
Tim Ferriss: How much are you going to make from that, Kevin? 27 bucks?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. Here’s the best part. The number one upvoted comment on that was like, “You were talking to models — you were just talking to large language models.” So true.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, man. Yeah. Well, here goes nothing, right? This is like the click, click, click going up on the roller coaster.
Kevin Rose: I know.
Tim Ferriss: And it’s like, here we go. And I came back from my travels realizing, wow, I really think it will behoove me to just take a few weeks to a month and do a very deep dive on what I can do with these models. Because a lot of what I saw traveling and just how prescient and invested and advanced certain places are, like Abu Dhabi as an example, I was like, holy shit, from a geopolitical perspective, this is going to be the haves and the have-nots, right?
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And it’s like, okay, I guess I’ll keep brushing up on my archery skills. It’s why I need to the elbow surgery sooner rather than later.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Well, real quick, before we wrap, dude, let’s touch on the meditation thing because that is what I need more of, which is getting off the computer and actually disconnecting. You want to talk about your experience?
Tim Ferriss: Let’s talk about it. Let me give a quick update before we do that, like a commercial break, which is this guy. So, you remember this guy, Coyote, the game that we talked about?
Kevin Rose: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: It hadn’t launched last time we were talking, or maybe it had just launched now. So, this game Coyote, which is like rock-paper-scissors on steroids in a group dynamic where you can help or sabotage other players. The game has become one of the top-selling games at Walmart where it is exclusively for a couple months. It’s been one of the absolute top sellers. It has produced — two or three of the videos of gameplay have become the most popular videos of all time from Exploding Kittens, which is the company I partnered with.
Kevin Rose: Oh, my God. That’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Tens of millions of views of gameplay. So it’s all to say it’s going super, super well, and there’s a lot more that I’m going to explore with this over the next couple months. But so far, including people with younger kids, they’ve modified the rules a little bit. But I have friends who played, Hutchins, our friend, Chris Hutchins played with his four- or five-year-old, I want to say. He sent me a testimonial video from her, not for public use, but she was a big fan. So, you can play with younger kids and I would just say couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out. So, many thanks to Elan Lee and the whole Exploding Kittens team for going on this two-year journey of working on this thing together. So, if people want to check that out, tim.blog/coyote and you can find the game at pretty much any Walmart or order it online. Easy to find.
Kevin Rose: That’s awesome. Thanks for giving it out to everyone that came out to the live Diggnation at South By. That was awesome for you to do.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, those are the first people to ever get their hands on one. My pleasure. Okay, Zen, getting offline.
Kevin Rose: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: You want to kick us off? Tell us what it looked like. What was the format?
Kevin Rose: So, if you do a classic Zen retreat, at least in this lineage of Zen called Sanbo Zen, which is the lineage that Henry Shukman teaches, you’re in for it. You’re in for a little bit of an ass-kicking in that you get up at the crack of dawn and you sit and then you sit some more and you do a tiny little walk, and then you sit some more and then you have some mush in a bowl and then you sit some more. And you do that until about 8:00 p.m. at night and you do it all over again, completely silent, for five to seven days. I’ve done a couple of these five and seven dayers. They’re no joke. They’re meant to be slightly demoralizing/brutal. They’re truly designed to break you down in a good way, break down the ego, break down your willingness to live.
They’re pretty hardcore, but you’re working on Zen koans, so you’re trying to crack a koan. Tim has a great interview with Henry Shukman on his podcast. Check it out, all about koans. But anyway, long story short, this was not that. We said, hey, if we get together a small group of people, we can talk at night, have some dinners, really intimate, call it seven, eight people, small, and get Henry and Valerie, which are both Zen masters, to come in and instruct us during the day. No early call times. I think we got there around 9:00-ish.
Tim Ferriss: That’s perfect.
Kevin Rose: Which was perfect. Got that morning coffee in ahead of time and had a great lunch and then the afternoon sit, and then we all went to a dinner at night. So, did that for what was it? Three days. And it was fantastic. I loved it, but I’d love to hear what you got out of it.
Tim Ferriss: I got a lot out of it, and I think one upfront benefit was it was a very warm bath reentry to meditation retreat.
Kevin Rose: You had a tough go, your first one, right?
Tim Ferriss: So, for people who want to deep dive into what happened in my first extended Vipassana silent retreat, which I made a lot harder by fasting for a very extended period of time, and then also adding microdosing, neither of which I recommend, if it’s your maiden voyage, they can listen to my interview with Willoughby B. Britton, B-R-I-T-T-O-N, on some of the occasional adverse events with meditation, which are very, very similar to those of psychedelics actually. So, if you want to check that out, you can check that out. I also did a conversation with Dan Harris of 10% Happier, where we got into this in some length. But putting that aside, because the end result was basically complete nervous breakdown, getting back on the horse and doing it in this way was very much a form of recovery for me.
Getting back to a point where I feel like there are forms of meditation I can engage with, specifically extended meditation that don’t necessarily run the risk of the types of issues that I ran into on my first silent retreat, which by the way, I’ve spent, let’s just say a week in various jungles or mountains, fasting before by myself, and the same types of issues crop up, your mind really gets going. I think the fasting actually is the main culprit with increasing the intensity as much as it did, not the microdosing, but I’m sure they acted together. This particular format, and I think the type of meditation with a mixture of silence and intermittent guidance from Henry was not only just a less strained, less risky way to go about it. I actually felt like it was very, very productive. And I know Henry and Valerie both commented on how it seemed that people made a lot of progress in a very short period of time in this smaller group.
It could have been a function of the smaller group because if you have 40 people, there’s always going to be somebody coughing or farting or fidgeting or whatever in a smaller group, everyone’s on best behavior. And we’re also in a small group that was taking it very seriously. But much like with anything else, density of practice matters. And when you are sitting once a day, like I meditated earlier this morning, using The Way app, which we’re both involved with, that involves Henry, I sat this morning, I’ll sit again later today, but when you’re doing a few hours a day, you’re able to say to yourself, “Okay, in the next sit, I want to focus on this particular aspect.” And then if you have a very uncomfortable meditation session, or you’re just thinking about popcorn and cats the whole time, or something stupid and you’re like, “Ah fuck, I failed that meditation.” You have another at bat five minutes later, right?
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: And psychologically, you can develop a certain level of not just confidence, but also momentum that you can take back into your daily less intense practice. So, I found it really, really beneficial. So, thank you for putting so much time and energy into helping organize that and the group makes the difference. This was just an outstanding group, very different perspectives. Some people had never really meditated before, certainly never done meditation retreats, for others like me, intrepid people dipping their toe back in. And I found it incredibly rewarding and I would do it again, for sure.
Kevin Rose: That’s awesome. Yeah, same. I had never done something with Henry that involved actually talking during the meditation because it was always like you get to sit with him in private interview once a day when you’re doing a silent retreat. So, either you go back into a room and then you get five minutes to talk about were there any hurdles or obstacles that came up and how might we address these? That’s typically how you do it on Zen style. So, to address those at length in real time was awesome. Yeah, I highly recommend trying to pick up a practice. It is challenging for monkey minds like myself, and after a few years, I’m just now starting to find my way. Ever since then, Tim, I’ve been doing close to pretty much 50 minutes a day since we got back from that, which has been fantastic. But it’s still a challenge. There’ll be days where your mind just goes off the rails and you say, “Hey, that was today.” So, it goes, you can’t beat yourself up, I think, at the end of the day.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. I was busy with really good seafood, didn’t do as much meditating as I would like.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, love a good seafood.
Tim Ferriss: But I will give a shameless plug because the reason I got involved with The Way with Henry, this app that he has is because most people are not going to have access to Henry directly in person. That’s just not going to be feasible. But I get, look, I can call Henry, I can text Henry and 99 percent of the time, I just use the app, which should tell you something. So, if you go to thewayapp.com/tim, you can get 30 free sessions. And I’m pretty sure you don’t need to, at least in the beginning, you didn’t need to use your credit card, so you’re not in this, it’s not exactly a bait and switch, but this boiling frogs scenario is my understanding. Last time I checked, still didn’t require a credit card. So, 30 free sessions, you can try it out, thewayapp.com/tim, and I’ll literally be doing that in another two hours. I’ll be doing another session.
KevKev, anything else you’d like to add?
Kevin Rose: No, I think that was great. People should know we did not plan to have that be a sponsor or anything like that for The Way, I know you have to say all that stuff, but also, it’s just a fucking awesome map. So that’s the nice thing about being able to pick your sponsors and pick people that you work with. I love that. I love that about podcasting.
We started that Diggnation podcast again with me and Alex and I do that every three weeks now, and we have all these sponsors coming and it is so nice to be able to say no. You’re like, “No, I don’t want to do that because I don’t believe in it.” So it’s awesome that you’re in that spot. But anyway, I will leave you with one last bit of, we wrap up because I have one last —
Tim Ferriss: Let’s do it.
Kevin Rose: — quote of the day. So, my quote for you all would be one that a friend of mine that gave up alcohol said to me, and I don’t believe this originated with him, but I thought it was a great one, which is, “I had my first drink for the same reason that I had my last and that is to be a grown up.”
Tim Ferriss: It’s a good one.
Kevin Rose: It’s a good one.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a good one. Yeah. Well, keep it up, KevKev. I’m impressed. I say that very sincerely. That’s a very long stretch. And it sounds like you’ve cleared a couple of hurdles. You have the phone a friend option, and —
Kevin Rose: Oh, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I’m rooting for you, man. I’m definitely rooting for you and having this conversation also reinforces that. I think I’ll just continue with my current cadence, which is like, okay, maybe once or twice a month, special occasion only. And outside of that, just really don’t feel the need to do it. And also with everything else I’ve got going on, I recognize that. I’ll give you another quote for booze. And this was actually something that a dear friend said to me at one point, and he likes to drink. He said, “Drinking is borrowing happiness from tomorrow.” And if you’re coping at night, in some respect with alcohol, it’s not a free lunch. You’re going to pay for it tomorrow. And that’s also true with recreational ketamine use. Don’t think that’s a get out of jail free card. So don’t fuck around with that. Kevin and I have talked about that ad nauseam before, so we can leave that alone. But for me, very inspiring to hear you talk about this stretch and everything that has improved. So I’m going to keep going.
Kevin Rose: I’ve got to say the main thing for me, man, that was unexpected without a doubt, is the mood boost. In the last week, I’ve noticed that I’m just, I never considered myself depressed or anything like that. Always happy person, pretty good. But I don’t take things as personally, which is, it is weird. For some reason, I’m just getting a little 10 percent little like lifting mood, which I’m loving. I’ll take it all day long. It’s great. So, last quote, last quote. I’ve got one more good one, too. I love good quotes. Okay. “Discipline is the strongest form of self-love. It’s ignoring what you want right now for a promise of a better future.” That’s along the same lines as your quote there.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I dig it. Was that from your last fortune cookie, or do you have a source for that one?
Kevin Rose: I don’t know where I found that one. Also, this one’s good, too. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the ability to take action despite it. That’s a good one, too.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’ve got some difficult conversations coming up this week, so that’s a good one. Good one to end on. Yeah. Talk for another time.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I know this is going. All right, brother. Continue as always.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. Same to you, brother. Also, great to see you. And actually, no, it’s not what you think it is. It’s something else, but we’ll catch up offline and —
Kevin Rose: Not the premature ejaculation stuff together. Okay. It’s good.
Tim Ferriss: I need my level of trazodone. Yeah, no, it’s not that. And that’s an amazing place to end an episode. And for people who want links to everything we’ve discussed, we’ll link to the accelerated TMS, to Nolan Williams, to the books, to 32 Sounds, to all the stuff that Kevin mentioned, the Profi spray for your nasal gel needs.
Kevin Rose: Exspresso.
Tim Ferriss: Exspresso.
Kevin Rose: My favorite exspresso machine.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. We’ll link to Kevin’s favorite exspresso machine. You’ll be able to find that all at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, be a little kinder than is necessary, not only to others, but to yourself. Thanks for tuning in.
Comment Rules: Remember what Fonzie was like? Cool. That's how we're gonna be — cool. Critical is fine, but if you're rude, we'll delete your stuff. Please do not put your URL in the comment text and please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name, as the latter comes off like spam. Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation! (Thanks to Brian Oberkirch for the inspiration.)
Loved this Random Show, Tim. Hearing you mention your travels to Taiwan made me smile—that’s home for me. ReallyGood Seafood is a solid choice!
After years in tech (Taiwan, Houston, Austin, SF) and biomedical research at UC Berkeley, I returned to Taiwan to build something that fuses health, culture, and energy optimization.
One overlooked gem here: Antrodia cinnamomea—we call it Forest Ruby. It’s a rare mushroom that grows on Cinnamomum kanehirae tree, and has been dubbed the “King of Mushrooms” for its potent triterpenoids, polysaccharides, and SOD—think immune resilience, liver protection, and cellular antioxidant support.
We developed a extracted mushroom coffee using 5-year vintage Forest Ruby. It recently won 2025 Brain Health Innovation Award and was a cultural gift at the Paris Cultural Olympics.
This isn’t in the U.S. market yet—and I’ve been very selective about who to explore it with. You’ve long championed the fusion of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge tools. If you were to help introduce something like this, how would you shape the story?
Thanks again for sharing so generously,
Scarlett
Big yes to everything you said here.