Please enjoy this transcript of another hilarious edition of The Random Show. This time, I reunite with Kevin in L.A. to talk AI super assistants that run your life over text message, agentic shopping, beta-alanine for climbing endurance, walnuts and sperm quality, dream engineering and anesthesia dreams, boner pills, man makeup, The Dark Wizard, my upcoming book, a Jean-Claude Van Damme splits bet, and much more.
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Tim Ferriss: Kev Kev.
Kevin Rose: Tim Tim.
Tim Ferriss: Good to see you, man.
Kevin Rose: Dude, glad we’re doing this.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So fun to hang.
Kevin Rose: Back in L.A.
Tim Ferriss: Back in L.A. for a little bit, and it is a nice court of the world.
Kevin Rose: It’s not bad.
Tim Ferriss: Until the failed state implodes, it’s going to be lovely.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. We’ll enjoy it while we can.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So, you have lots that we can talk about.
Kevin Rose: Mm-hmm.
Tim Ferriss: I’ve got some things jotted down. Where should we start?
Kevin Rose: Let’s start with probably the most talked about thing these days, which is AI.
Tim Ferriss: All right.
Kevin Rose: And I know people are tired of hearing about all this AI stuff, but I think there’s been an inflection point in the last, I’d call it three weeks, that I am just really blown away by.
Tim Ferriss: All right.
Kevin Rose: AI has turned into something that I kind of saw it coming, but I didn’t think it would come this rapidly, which is it is replacing… So, when I first thought of AI, I thought, “Okay, we have this chatbot, we can launch it. We can ask questions of whatever like I got to repair this light switch. How do I do it?” That’s typical AI use case over the last, call it two years.
Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.
Kevin Rose: In the last call it month, there has been a release of a handful of AI assistants that are not your typical ChatGPT, Claude. They’re different. So, have you played with Instinct at all?
Tim Ferriss: I haven’t, but I know people are. Yeah.
Kevin Rose: You have heard about it?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. But you should provide some context for folks who don’t recognize it.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Well, so let’s start off. So, let me first put the… These are the people in the ring that are entering this new kind of era of personal assistant AI, which is I would say Instinct, Muse, which is a Meta product. And then you have Grok Bot, which is essentially Grok, which is Elon’s project. So, when Instinct dropped, someone sent me a text invite and was like, “Hey, you just got to sign up for this.” I’m like, “Oh, man, I don’t want another AI thing.” I already do this all day long. I’m using it for coding and all that stuff. I’m like, “Whatever.” So, the first thing that you notice is it’s not another app to download. It actually is iMessage. So, they have reverse engineered and they actually give you just a phone number to chat with.
Tim Ferriss: It’s closer to WeChat in China in a sense.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. So, I have this phone number. I texted. It was like, “Hey, auth your Google account.” And I know this is your nightmare from a privacy standpoint.” But it’s like, “Give us your Gmail, give us your Google Drive.”
Tim Ferriss: “Here’s a link.ru, just click here.”
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. It’s like rush inside or something. But I click through, I authed, I’m like, “Whatever, there’s some hype. I hear it happening. People are doing this.” I don’t have any nudes, but you probably do. I don’t know how much you keep all that stuff online. Probably not.
Tim Ferriss: What was this?
Kevin Rose: Your nudes. Do you keep it in Google Drive?
Tim Ferriss: I just post those to my Tumblr account.
Kevin Rose: Just your private Tumblr?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: In all seriousness though, do you lock down, do you have a separate offline storage for sensitive shit?
Tim Ferriss: I probably should.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, you should. We should talk about this off camera.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Kevin Rose: There’s just certain things that in my mind I’m always like, “Okay, what’s the blast radius of if something gets hacked?”
Tim Ferriss: Something.
Kevin Rose: What is out there?
Tim Ferriss: One more thing Kevin gives me to worry about.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. Okay. So, you auth in everything and the first thing I notice is that this bot texts me back and it’s like, “Hey, you missed this DocuSign from a couple of days ago.” And I was like, “Oh, shit. Well, that was kind of helpful.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: So, I went in there and did it. And then it’s proactively just watching everything and it learns by my responses, everything I’ve done prior, and it really understands what I care about and what I should pay attention to.
Tim Ferriss: And who manufactures Instinct?
Kevin Rose: It’s just a startup.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a self-named Instinct startup.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, it’s a startup. It went from zero to $10 billion in valuation in four months. It’s crazy.
Tim Ferriss: Sounds like a sign of the times.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Now, why would you trust a smaller company from a privacy and access perspective versus a larger-
Kevin Rose: Versus Muse from Meta or something?
Tim Ferriss: Exactly.
Kevin Rose: I trust Muse certainly more because it’s just going to be battle tested. Listen, I-
Tim Ferriss: They are used to the regulatory scrutiny. I mean, not that they’re always the best actors, but at same time, right?
Kevin Rose: Well, they also-
Tim Ferriss: Maybe more checks and balances.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. And they came out and they actually did a whole briefing on their security model around their private instance of-
Tim Ferriss: Who’s they?
Kevin Rose: Meta did.
Tim Ferriss: Meta.
Kevin Rose: With Muse. Yeah. So, Muse is a very similar product. It actually has an app. I think they’re adding a phone number and whatnot. And so, it’s wild. It’s wild in that this is something where I never though it would connect the dots in the way that it does. I’ll give you an example. I was doing an international flight and I was like, “Okay, I want to have a prescription for Gabapentin so I can get some sleep on the flight.” Right?
Tim Ferriss: Be careful with that with kids.
Kevin Rose: Okay. I know. Yes, be careful with it, whatever. So, I had a prescription coming in, it got called in to get filled and Instinct was like, “Hey, just so you know, your prescription’s ready. You should go pick it up. Leave by this time because your flight’s on time.”
Tim Ferriss: That’s very helpful.
Kevin Rose: “And if you want to grab it, go over here now, grab it then and then head to your airport.”
Tim Ferriss: Can I tell you something crazy?
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Just in terms of synchronicity. So, three months ago, I drafted a preface to the new book, this book on No that I’m writing, because there are many examples in the book around assistants. And some of the very early reader feedback, because I tested it with 100-plus people, was some of these seem like 1% of problems. And so, I wrote a preface, which was a letter from… It was called A Letter from the Future. And it basically talked about how in 2000, let’s call it 2007, 2008, I was using a Gen-1 Dexcom, which was like sticking barbecue tines under your skin.
Kevin Rose: I was with you. You got me on to that.
Tim Ferriss: You remember that.
Kevin Rose: The plunger. It was a plunger for people to know.
Tim Ferriss: It was so painful.
Kevin Rose: This is a continuous glucose monitor.
Tim Ferriss: Right.
Kevin Rose: And now you push a button, it’s like, “Ooh, tingly.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: And you get it in, you stick a plunger into your body.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. You basically had to stick two very long prongs under your abdominal skin.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Now it’s like a little peck on the cheek.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: It’s so much better, but at the time it was like, “Nobody’s going to use this.” And I was like, “Well, I don’t agree with that because the tech’s going to improve very quickly.”
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: And particularly once it went from this weird beeper device to smartphone, it was pretty clear that the adoption was going to be rapid and then get outside of type one diabetics, certainly type two, but then get to kind of healthy normies and worried well.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And on the assistant side, I was also pointing out back in the day, yes, it was a 1% problem, just like inbox overwhelm and everybody has six inboxes now. But in the case of assistants, it’s like, sure, it went from full-time in person to virtual assistant to digitally enhanced virtual assistant. And I was like, “By the time you read this, we will have AI assistants that can do 99% of what I’m describing.”
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And it already happened, which is-
Kevin Rose: Yeah. So, I’ve had it change flights for me.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: I’ve told that there’s a restaurant that’s like a hard reservation to get into.
Tim Ferriss: This is all Instinct.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. And I’ve told it, “Hey, there’s a hard reservation to get into.” And it’s like, “Hey, I can’t log in with your OpenTable, but it drops at this time every two weeks. But if you give me a link and it’s a secure vault,” and I gave it my OpenTable login. And then it snagged the reservation for me perfectly and adds my calendar. And then the cool thing is, if you have multiple friends with Instinct, you can friend your Instincts together. So, I said to a couple of my friends, there was one person I wanted to take to dinner and our Instincts became friends. And so I said, “Share the calendar invite and all the details.” And the Instincts just talk to each other and figure out the schedule, pick up. It’s magic.
Tim Ferriss: This is how Skynet autopopulates for all the Illuminati. By the way, they don’t exist people, but put them all in the same calendar invite to get them in the one spot so the drone swarm can strike them at once.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s going to be awesome.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I’m definitely going to use this. Everyone is going to be using this.
Kevin Rose: I mean, ChatGPT just announced Dots. That’s their version of it now. So, that’s come out.
Tim Ferriss: How do you think about your history, memory, context, if you’ve predominantly used something? Let’s just say this may or may not be true, but if you’ve predominantly used ChatGPT, would you be inclined to use Dots or would you be inclined to use something else? I don’t know if they’ve made it harder or impossible to export your data-
Kevin Rose: You can export memories and some of that, but they are, I mean, this is the wedge that they’re looking for. They want to have something that is uniquely theirs that isn’t just… What happening right now with the AI enthusiasts is that if there’s a new model that comes out, there’s zero loyalty.
Tim Ferriss: Right.
Kevin Rose: It’s like, “Oh, Claude’s better? I’ll go use Claude. Oh, ChatGPT’s better.” And people are jumping all over the place. This is finally becoming this durable storage of your life and your story and your history and all the things that you’re into. And that is going to be, I think, something where they’re going to lock that down.
Tim Ferriss: The agentic AIs, once you authorize all that shit, you don’t want to do that every time a new model drops somewhere else.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So, question for you. I saw a little news around this. Somebody, a friend of mine who’s keen on startups and investing, texted me about decisions, contrast in styles and business models between Amazon and Shopify. And this may have developed very, I’m sure it has developed very rapidly, but I think that Amazon blocked Meta’s agent in part because Amazon’s business model, I think it’s, I don’t want to hazard a number, it was texted to me, but they have sponsored placement, they have advertising. I mean, there are a lot of drivers that get circumvented, revenue drivers that get circumvented by agentic commerce.
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: So, they blocked it. And then 24 hours later, Shopify’s like, “We are open for business. Agents welcome.” How do you think that plays out?
Kevin Rose: So, this is actually, you’re hitting on a very fascinating trend, which is this idea where applications, destination websites, all those things go away. So, in a world where you say, “Hey, I just need some new towels for my house.” Rather than going on Amazon and searching for new towels or whatever it may be, or Shopify or whatever independent shop, you just ask ChatGPT. Now what Amazon is worried about is if they are top of funnel, if ChatGPT is the entry point, they can just be swapped out.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Right? So, it’s like, “Oh, you know what? Walmart has the same thing for $10 less.” And they just push that right into the feed. And so for them, they’re like, “Oh, shit, this was our moat because we were the destination. Everyone comes to Amazon.com, they shop there and now the AI is deciding and buying on their behalf.” So, brilliant by Shopify, but this is happening everywhere. So, I’ll give you another example. I just shot a podcast with Henry Shukman, our Zen Master friend, and I was like, “I don’t want to send this over to an editor. I’m just going to do it myself.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: And so Blackmagic is a maker of cameras and editing software.
Tim Ferriss: Great stuff.
Kevin Rose: They have great stuff. They have an editing package called DaVinci Resolve. And it’s like Premiere, Final Cut, any of these editing software suites that are out there. Well, what they did is they launched an MCP server, which essentially means that with one click, you can tie it to your AI. So, I drop in three camera shots, two pieces of audio, and I said, “Go make the podcast.” And I just said that, I told that to ChatGPT. It connected directly. I’m watching on the screen. It’s rearranging everything, editing it, doing all that stuff. Same thing happens with Photoshop now. Same thing happens with CAD software. You don’t need the software anymore. You just tell the AI. And essentially this could be headless. I would never need it to see Photoshop ever again.
I’m like, “Hey, just go bill me this book,” or whatever I want to do or remove the stain or whatever it is and it’s just done. It’s wild because you don’t need these destination sites like an Amazon anymore. You just talk to your clients. So, in some sense, all of these apps are up for grabs. It’s whoever’s going to play nicely with that point of entry. And that was always Google, right? But the thing about Google, it was always pushing you to the final destination. They weren’t doing the commerce themselves. And so now it’s going to be all in the one suite. So, you’ll never need to leave Claude or ChatGPT or whatever. It just does it for you. It’s so crazy.
Tim Ferriss: What do you think Amazon does? Because Amazon does have huge advantages in terms of economies of scale, pricing, distribution, physical distribution of product, speed of delivery, et cetera. They still crush, last I checked, in most cases they crush everybody else.
Kevin Rose: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: But they don’t want to take whatever the hit is for all of these sponsored placements and everything else.
Kevin Rose: They’re going to have to.
Tim Ferriss: They’re going to have to.
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: So do you think they launch their own agent? If so, are they able to-
Kevin Rose: I mean, they already have their own AI.
Tim Ferriss: Are they able to compete?
Kevin Rose: I don’t think so.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Kevin Rose: Because you have on device, so Apple, Apple Intelligence, those models will get better. Don’t count Apple out. Give them three years, right? And probably not even that, a year and a half. That will be that domain. You have Gemini on Android, which is going to power all of Android. And then you have ChatGPT and Anthropic and probably a couple of others that will probably just be like, “Oh, I don’t prefer Coke to Pepsi.” You want your own AI. It’s better at certain things. And that will be the entry point for all of the internet, all of the applications, all of everything. Sponsor ad revenue on Amazon goes away largely because it’s going to be sales, most commerce will start to funnel. We saw this back in the 2000s. So, in the 2000s, it was like, okay, online versus offline commerce. It was like, of course everyone goes to Sears to buy their tools.
And then all of a sudden, oh, guess what? 10% of tools are being sold on Amazon now or online now. And all of a sudden a decade goes by and you’re seeing the vast majority of stuff that is just being purchased online. And that’s why Sears and JCPenneys and all these big retailers just go out of business. So, I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to see that transition happen once again, but it’s going to be through the front ends of AI interfaces. So, you’ll just be talking to your AI, you’ll be like, “Hey, I just need a refill of this. Can you have it here?” “Yeah, we got you covered with Walmart. They get to you in two hours.” Or, “Do you want to go with Amazon? It’s $2 cheaper, but it’ll be here tomorrow.” It’ll be those types of real life conversations that you’ll just be having with your AI agent. It’s a wild transition time.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been watching this, but I’ve actually been waiting to have this conversation. I mean, we’ll continue obviously chatting offline to figure out where to start. Well, maybe you can just tell everybody. So, it’s like if people are using, let’s just say if they’re already using Claude and-
Kevin Rose: Claude doesn’t have theirs out yet though.
Tim Ferriss: And ChatGPT.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: All right. And they’re like, “Well, look, if there’s an advantage to using Meta’s,” what is it called again?
Kevin Rose: Muse.
Tim Ferriss: Muse. “If there’s an advantage to using Muse, let me know. Maybe. If there’s an advantage to using Instinct, let me know, maybe.” How would you suggest somebody who is non-technical experiment with these things?
Kevin Rose: Well, if you have the ChatGPT app on your phone and you’re paying for it’s going to be there right now, I believe, for everyone. Instinct’s still invite-only. So they’re slowly rolling that out. So you’d have to know somebody and you can poke around online on Twitter or whatever and you’ll find somebody. And then Muse has been number one in the app store for the last couple of weeks. So, that one’s pretty easy to get and you can just sign up for it. So, I would say probably Muse and Grok is still behind. Their models aren’t the best. That one I would just sit on for a bit. It’s a little bit more technical. But yeah, you can just start right away and then just play with it because you’ll launch your little bot and then it gives you a phone number so you can actually call your bot. And so, listen to this, this is actually, I’m calling my agent right now on the phone. This is ChatGPT.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Hi, I’m Sabrina.
Kevin Rose: Hey, there. Good to hear from you.
Kevin Rose: I wanted a sexy voice. I wanted a sexy voice. Sorry. Can you tell me about the podcast that I’m shooting today?
Kevin Rose: Sure. Let me pull up what I’ve got on that. You’re recording with Tim Ferriss today. It’s 12:30 to 3:30, at [redacted].
Tim Ferriss: Could probably bleep some of that out. Your social security number is…
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. But I mean, I can just call this at any time. It doesn’t cost against your AI credits. So, you can be in the car and just be like, “Hey, can you move this for me?” Or, “Can you follow up with this email?” Or whatever it may be. It does everything.
Tim Ferriss: That’s amazing. All right. I need to mess with that.
Kevin Rose: It’s fun.
Tim Ferriss: It’s time for me to actually –
Kevin Rose: It is time. Step in. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Step into the arena. Amazing. All right. Call to action. I’m in.
Tim Ferriss: Should we talk about some other items on our random non-agenda? I wanted to bring back an oldie but goodie. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried this.
Kevin Rose: I’ve not.
Tim Ferriss: So, this is a bottle of tablets and this is something that I’ve played with for at least a decade, probably more.
Kevin Rose: Two tablets of erectile dysfunction. This is interesting.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s called beta-alanine. And the reason I started playing with this again, this is a dietary supplement, is I have, I think you know, been getting back into climbing.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Rock climbing, and have been training really seriously for about two months. It’s not very long, but I have coaches or I had coaches when I was on the East Coast and in Austin, but now I’m still traveling. So, that’ll get figured out. But I wanted to see what I could do to improve endurance because I think like many people, when you get on the wall, you’re going to use your arms too much. You’re going to end up in these locked off positions, meaning your arms are bent, and you’re going to flame out your forearms or other parts of your upper body. So, yes, you need to learn how to use your feet and I’m doing all of that, but I wanted to see if I could address some of the physical constraints.
And I didn’t want to use some of my normal standards like creatine, because creatine leads to water retention and weight gain. And the last thing I need at 180 pounds with these tiny little squirrel paws, with another limiter being finger strength obviously, to add weight. I didn’t want to add weight. It really adds an additional hurdle to progress. So, beta-alanine was something that I surfaced again and I wanted to see if it had ever been applied to climbing. And it turns out that there have been studies done specifically with elite climbers, and there’s not a lot, but randomized and double blinded, 15 elite climbers taking four grams a day for four weeks or placebo. And somewhat like creatine, depending on which protocol you use, they are large pills. This will be fun to watch.
Kevin Rose: Why?
Tim Ferriss: Kevin just had two.
Kevin Rose: What’s wrong with it?
Tim Ferriss: I’ll explain some-
Kevin Rose: Is this not beta-alanine?
Tim Ferriss: No, it is.
Kevin Rose: Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: I’ll explain some of the-
Kevin Rose: Side effects.
Tim Ferriss: … side effects in a moment. That’s hilarious. But let me give you the data first.
Kevin Rose: Jesus. I mean, I just thought it was what you said it was.
Tim Ferriss: When you’re with Tim, rule number one is you should never just swallow a bunch of pills from a bottle that he puts on the table. But here’s the upshot of it. So, with longer traverse, that means getting on a wall moving sideways-
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Right? There was in the intervention group with beta-alanine, after they had kind of saturated, it takes about two to three weeks to start seeing results if you’re going to see results. But 57% longer before falling versus 19% improvement with placebo and an additional 21 seconds of improvement beyond placebo, that is a ton.
Kevin Rose: It’s a ton.
Tim Ferriss: It is highly, highly statistically significant. And then looking at longer traverse, and by longer, this means one to two minutes. So the duration’s really important. One to two minutes, which on a say top roping, when you have a rope attached doing like a 35-foot wall, maybe that’s the duration, which I was doing. I wasn’t doing huge walls like 70 or something like that for indoor, but I was also doing top roping and also bouldering, which is a different thing. So, it doesn’t really help super short bouldering, that’s without ropes, but doing, let’s just say five to 10 moves to get to the top. Campus board didn’t really help any of that stuff. I won’t bother with defining that. But say longer traverse moves completed, there’s basically a four-move improvement in the placebo group just from training effect. And then in the beta-alanine group, it was 10 moves. And I have noticed a difference. It took a while and you can’t really separate out all of the elements that go into it because I am training, I’m doing isometrics, I’m doing collagen plus vitamin C before training.
So, collagen peptides from Momentous plus vitamin C, you don’t need very much. 500 milligrams or 1,000 milligrams. I think it was as low as 50 in the research. Boosts collagen production in the fingers.
Kevin Rose: What’s one scoop from them by the way because I take the same stuff. What’s a full scoop? Do you know?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t recall what’s on the label, but it’s like a scoop of that.
Kevin Rose: It’s a few grams, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Plus some vitamin C. And the type of collagen does matter. You kind of want hide if you can get it as opposed to bone just to avoid heavy metal and other contaminant issues. But the point being, I think this stuff has really helped to the extent that my coaches, it was almost by the clock. When I got to two and a half weeks of taking this, not before, they were like, “Whoa, what happened?” There seemed to be a phase shift where if I’m working on… And it did for me seem to translate to bouldering, which makes me wonder how much of it is the beta-alanine. But suffice to say, I’ve been very impressed and this is something where I’ve done testing before and after to try to track some of the improvements. So, it is a heavy lift though, because if I’m taking, in my case, not four grams, but 6.4 grams a day, roughly. I’m taking eight of these pills a day. It’s a lot.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And I would suggest, and this gets to the side effects, this is Thorne beta-alanine-SR, that means sustained release, to minimize, and I might be getting the pronunciation wrong on this, one side effect, which is called paresthesia. It just means body tingling, basically. It feels like.
Kevin Rose: Like niacin flush. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: It feels like a niacin flush or many parts of your body fell asleep like you had crossed your legs for too long and sat down.
Kevin Rose: What do they attribute this to? Is this a cognitive thing? Is it ATP? Is it enhancement? What’s the underlying mechanism of action?
Tim Ferriss: I’m actually not sure of… It’s carnosine. I believe it’s carnosine saturation, muscular carnosine saturation, but I am getting over my skis. So, people can look it up. But beta-alanine has quite a bit of published literature on it. I was just very surprised that there was actually a study that got funded for 15 elite climbers. Who even pays for that?
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I have no idea. Probably some-
Kevin Rose: Thorne.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Some supplement manufacturer, probably. So, that is one of the supplements. And since I brought it up in terms of, I had mentioned with the collagen and contaminants, just a quick public service announcement. If you’re taking say psyllium husks for fiber, very helpful for a lot of reasons. You don’t just need to be boomers like us with aging colons and rectums. It’s also very helpful for glycemic control. You can take it before meals and stuff like that. If you take any kind of fiber, you do want to add water. But the point is there are a lot of heavy metals and contaminants in most common brands of psyllium husks.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So, Yerba Prima, Y-E-R-B-A, or Organic India are two that I have looked at testing results for, and those are good. But one doctor joked to me, he’s like, “Yeah, you could go to, fill in the blank, major pharmacy chain and grab something off the shelf, but it’s going to be 2% fiber and 98% arsenic.” It was a joke. It’s not quite that bad.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: But the contamination actually is worth paying a lot of attention to, particularly if it’s something like this that you’d be taking on a daily basis.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I read another study recently that just was like, “Oh, shitty, this killed me.” And that is, you know those seaweed chips that you can get at the grocery stores, like the little flat papers?
Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.
Kevin Rose: So much microplastics in those because they’re pulling all that seaweed out of the ocean and they’re just filled with microplastics.
Tim Ferriss: You just can’t win.
Kevin Rose: You can’t win.
Tim Ferriss: You can’t win.
Kevin Rose: Okay. Speaking of supplements, you hate creatine.
Tim Ferriss: No, I don’t hate creatine. I love creatine. I just don’t find it to be the most helpful for climbing specifically.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, because it puts a few pounds of muscle on or whatever. Muscle water or whatever.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: It helps me lift more weight though.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, for sure.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. So, creatine, we’ve talked about this, I’m sure at least on… I mean, we’ve done what, like a couple of hundred Random Shows. I think we’ve talked about this, at least 10 of them, which is creatine can be your friend and sometimes not so much.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: If you overdo creatine, it is a problem with the GI. It can be.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Also, your airport… Oh God, yeah. Don’t do what Tim does. Well, I don’t do it anymore because I do learn I’m slow. But yeah, if you’re like, “Let me have a double espresso, some creatine and MCT oil on your way to the airport,” don’t do that because disaster pants potential is high.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I would say also because of some of the research, Rhonda Patrick has highlighted on the cognitive benefits.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, 10 grams a day.
Tim Ferriss: I was taking 10 grams a day, but I started getting really wicked muscle cramps in my hands and my feet. And then I dialed it back to five, no cramps.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I’m at five right now.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I think that for my system at least, and I think Rhonda’s also observed this. I might not be getting that right, but I think she’s talked about it publicly also experienced cramping at 10 grams-plus per day.
Kevin Rose: So, I’ve had all kinds… My stomach is horrible with creatine. I have just historically-
Tim Ferriss: Your delicate flour with the stomach anyway.
Kevin Rose: Sometimes. Yeah. It depends on the thing, but sometimes I’m actually really good. It’s very confusing. But anyway, long story short, I was doing some research and I don’t know this brand at all, so take this with a grain of salt, but the technology is legit. I looked up the study that the technology they’re using to create a delayed release creatine.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Kevin Rose: And so this is the only one on the market. So if you look at these pills, they look wild. They have all these little tiny beads inside of them.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, it’s fancy.
Kevin Rose: And they-
Tim Ferriss: Looks like, I think it was Dexatrim back in the day.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, totally. Yeah. But I will tell you, this is the first one I’ve been able to take because of the delayed release and it does not mess up my stomach at all.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, that’s great.
Kevin Rose: It’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Well, yeah, you’re burying the lead here. Body Tech Elite, creatine beadlet. Oh, okay. Here’s the, I think, critical piece with NovaSpheres registered trademark.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. So, I did the research on what NovaSpheres [Ed. note: NovaQSpheres] are. And
Tim Ferriss: N-O-V-A-Spheres technology.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Look at that. Cool.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I mean, it’s just one of those things where like, listen, I have also, when I travel, I kind of flip brands all over the place, but lately I like the stuff from Momentous because of the quality checks they do. And I have their little travel satchels that I take with me and just mix them with some stuff. As long as I slow drink it over three hours, I’m fine. But this is the first time I’ve been like, “Okay, on the go, I can just chug five pills at once and no issues.” So, anyway, that one’s fun.
Tim Ferriss: Should we talk about sperm quality?
Kevin Rose: Let’s do it. Oh, that’s where I wanted to go next. How did you know? God.
Tim Ferriss: I got the request.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Kevin tried to anonymize it through YouTube live stream. And I was like, “Please talk about sperm quality.” I was like, “All right. I know it’s you, Kev Kev.”
Kevin Rose: Was this a question somebody wrote in?
Tim Ferriss: No. I’m kidding.
Kevin Rose: For yourself?
Tim Ferriss: So, I have long been fascinated with nuts, not in the testicle sense, although that’s probably true also. Just some of the benefits of consuming different types of nuts, like Brazil nuts.
Kevin Rose: Jesus. Literally fine. You’re talking about a ball sack the entire time you were saying that.
Tim Ferriss: Well, there is a double entendre here. So, I talked about, for instance, Brazil nuts and selenium, way back in the day. And of course you have to look at the funding sources and so on, but there’s a brand of nut butters. I’m sure they do other things called Artisana. And I don’t know why their raw almond butter is just better than every other brand. In terms of consistency, they somehow homogenize, that might be the right word, the oils so that you’re not dealing with the oil slick on the top and getting it all over your countertops and stuff. But I ended up just for shits and giggles buying their walnut butter because I had never had walnut butter and it has some cashews in it. And I’d like to have a family, ideally a couple of kids so it’s good as I age into my soon 50s, I’m like, I should keep the twins as healthy as possible. And I tend to think that if you optimize for fertility, you get a lot of other things right as downstream effects.
And the two ingredients are raw walnuts and raw cashews. I’m bringing this up because there are actually walnut specific studies. There was a 2012 randomized control trial in 117 healthy men aged 21 to 35, and they were randomized to either continue their normal diet or add 75 grams a day of walnuts. And it’s not impossible. 75 grams just to turn that into something people might recognize, it’s like 0.6 cups of chopped walnuts, like two and a half handfuls. It’s not that crazy. And the improvements in sperm vitality, motility and morphology all were statistically significant.
Kevin Rose: Wow. Just walnuts? Are there other healthy nuts?
Tim Ferriss: That’s the question. That’s the question. So generally speaking, nuts seem to be supportive of fertility. So in 2024, there was a meta analysis that showed that at least 60 grams per day, so that’s less than the 75 we talked about, so let’s call that two handfuls of nuts as an estimate, improved sperm motility, vitality and morphology, although it did not significantly improve sperm concentration. So of course be aware of the caloric density, right? If you’re just housing nuts all day-
Kevin Rose: [inaudible] calories.
Tim Ferriss: … you’ll have 6,000 calories of nuts is going to have other side effects. But I thought this was super fascinating and it only came about because I ended up loving this walnut butter and I was like, huh, I have read… Or actually not read, I had been told that consuming walnuts could improve testosterone and free testosterone. And I was like, let me fact check that. And I did not get back confirmation on that, but I got back these research results related to sperm quality. I was like, fantastic.
Kevin Rose: Because with Brazil nuts and the selenium side of things, it was a reduction in prostate cancer, right? There was some study that was done-
Tim Ferriss: I don’t recall. For me, the reason that I was looking at that with 4-Hour Body, and man, it’s crazy to think about how hard fact checking and research was back then compared to now. Oh my God. It’s like you kids have it good now. The ChatGPT and Claude and so on. It’s so much easier. You need to know how to interrogate the system. But the reason I was looking at that, and this is still relevant today, that looking at your micronutrient consumption and absorption matters. So if you have a copper deficiency or a selenium deficiency, that can be reflected in all sorts of issues with say sex hormones.
And I have friends, there’s actually multiple friends who had testosterone issues. They ended up, and I don’t know who the latest and greatest, I think it was SpectraCell back in the day, but I don’t know who the latest and greatest would be for options for testing. But they ended up just having three Brazil nuts a day and they’re like, “I feel like I’m on cocaine.” Their lived experience changed so dramatically. And sure, this isn’t randomized controlled. I don’t know if that was placebo or not, but I saw it enough times where I’m like, “Look, this seems to be low hanging fruit. Topsoil is depleted everywhere. You can be sure as shit that most vegetable matter you’re consuming is not as nutrient dense as you would like, probably.” So it’s just something to keep an eye on.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. And so people should also know that Brazil nuts, that nut, it receives its selenium from the soil itself. So it’s the uptake from the soil. I’ve seen this now at grocery stores. There’s Brazil nuts that aren’t even made in Brazil. So you have to make sure, it has to say product of Brazil on the back of the nuts. Is there a certain brand that you like when it comes to that or are you just checking for that on the label?
Tim Ferriss: I’m looking at, not really. I mean, I haven’t done the due diligence there. I’ve just been looking for organic because man, oh man, I really want to minimize pesticide consumption. I understand there are issues with the designation of organic to begin with, but I mean, this is just a general kind of meta principle, or it underscores a meta principle that I think about a lot, which is there’s the expression you are what you eat, but that’s not sufficient. You are what you eat ate.
So if you’re eating salmon, not all salmon is created equal. What is the salmon consuming? Similarly, this applies to vegetables. It applies to salad greens. Where was this grown? How was it grown? What were the nutrients that were absorbed or not absorbed, that were present or absent? And with tools that you have now, I mean, it’s a lot easier to try to do this type of due diligence.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Most people don’t know that non-wild salmon, they add dyes to make them look more pink, which is just insane.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. There’s a lot of this kind of stuff. And look, I mean, you don’t have to get every detail right, but there are little things here and there to pay attention to. And there are also lots of weasel words out there. When people say all natural, right? I mean, there are many terms that are just not defined in any meaningful way, so they can be used to confuse consumers. But look, point of the story is walnuts, perhaps good for your nuts.
Kevin Rose: I’m going to do it.
Tim Ferriss: And Artisana products are delicious, so why not try them out?
Should we just keep going on the food kick?
Kevin Rose: I have so many supplements and shit today. Supplement day. So this actually, I’ve been doing more gym time, which has been great. I’ve been trying to get a little lean, try to lift a little bit more weight. I’ve been trying to find a good source… I brought you this one.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, thanks.
Kevin Rose: A good source of protein.
Tim Ferriss: Can I try it?
Kevin Rose: Yeah. So I have no, by the way, none of the stuff we’ve talked about today-
Tim Ferriss: We have no affiliation with any of this stuff.
Kevin Rose: … no affiliation with any of this stuff. So this was one that I found largely because A2 protein. Are you familiar with A2 at all?
Tim Ferriss: So I am. I have not done my own homework on this, but I can tell you how I came across this, just so people understand what we’re talking about. You want to read the label here because you sent me a hilarious video of your refrigerator where you’re like, “I got a little bit of this, a little bit of this.”
Kevin Rose: It’s all protein.
Tim Ferriss: “Then we have some protein,” and there were like 40 of these in your refrigerator.
Kevin Rose: Well, I mean-
Tim Ferriss: Pioneer Pastures.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. So this is Pioneer Pastures. I mean, they literally sell it at Target and whatnot. A2 protein though was the only protein that cows would produce about a thousand or so years ago. They said 500,000 years ago, somewhere around there until this variant took over and it became non-A2 and it became a combination of A1 and A2. It’s a type of protein that comes from the casein, which is the slower digestion version of protein. Bodybuilders used to take casein at night before they would go to bed because of the-
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s like cottage cheese.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. But the thing about A2 and what’s so cool about it is that way less stomach discomfort. It is the natural, clean form of protein and it’s really hard to find. So I found this one drink, 160 calories, 30 grams of protein. It doesn’t need to be refrigerated until you open it.
Tim Ferriss: Lactose free.
Kevin Rose: Lactose free. And it tastes really good.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s pretty good.
Kevin Rose: It was two grams of sugar. I mean, I enjoy it. So for me, this is a great, I just want something first thing in the morning to, especially if I trained hard the day before, to get some protein in the body, take this with some coffee. It’s fantastic.
Tim Ferriss: The first time I saw this, this is the first time I’ve tried it actually, but first time I saw this was in the offices of Chris Williamson, the podcaster.
Kevin Rose: Oh, no way.
Tim Ferriss: Who is jacked AF. I mean, the guy is basically a bodybuilder. I mean, he’s very strong, very lean. And much like your refrigerator, there were like 30 of these sitting in a fridge at the offices.
Kevin Rose: That’s crazy.
Tim Ferriss: And that was the first time that I had someone describe to me the difference, I suppose, or the differentiator with A2 protein.
Kevin Rose: It doesn’t taste bad, right?
Tim Ferriss: No, it’s totally fine.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. There’s a lot of shitty tasting protein out there, so I was pleasantly pleased and totally surprised.
Tim Ferriss: There are a lot of protein products that are basically candy bars or junk food masquerading as health food.
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: So looking for the minimum effective dose of ingredients is helpful.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I mean, this has monk fruit in it, but it doesn’t have any of the other fake sweeteners or anything.
Tim Ferriss: Very, very few ingredients relative to… If you were to compare, not to throw them under the bus, because I will occasionally have them when I’m caught in a pinch, but if you were to compare the number of ingredients on this Pioneer Pastures with say Muscle Milk-
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Oh my God.
Tim Ferriss: … it’s like seven ingredients versus 40.
Kevin Rose: Dude, Muscle Milk was the gym shake during the ’90s, right? Everybody wanted Muscle Milk.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. Hey, when desperate times…
Kevin Rose: What was that pre-workout that everyone took that just got you cranked as shit? N.O. XPLODE?
Tim Ferriss: Oh, God, that stuff. Yeah. I mean, basically just bodybuilder crack. It was so strong. On the Muscle Milk, you might find this interesting. When I was training to compete, this is probably two years ago in archery. So I had my period of intense training and the reason I’m not doing as much of it anymore is because it’s just very isolating. It is a solo practice and you’re repeating the same thing over and over and over and over again. I do still love it, but I wanted to do something more social and just a little more physically engaging, like rock climbing, which I just love to no end to every aspect of it.
Kevin Rose: So fun.
Tim Ferriss: The reason that Muscle Milk is relevant to this story is that I wanted training nutrition that could not be broken by inconvenience on the road. So basically when I was doing my training sessions, which would be like three to four hours, and this is going to sound gross, but basically I would only consume stuff that I knew I could get at almost any gas station because I knew my competition was going to be in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Lancaster’s actually a beautiful town, but I didn’t know where the competition would be and I suspected it would be in the middle of nowhere and I would only have access to gas stations or some type of quick convenience store like a 7-Eleven. And that turned out to be the case, but I was comfortable with Muscle Milk, almonds, like roasted almonds of some type.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Every gas station had those. I like…
Tim Ferriss: And then zero calorie Monster energy.
Kevin Rose: Oh, God.
Tim Ferriss: I know, I know. With some taurine, right? But I got comfortable using the most commonly available stuff so that I felt like I had, and even if it’s only psychological, a competitive advantage. Oh, and unsweetened iced tea. That’s it. And in any case, that was my sidebar note on Muscle Milk.
Kevin Rose: You look at the ingredients now, I don’t know if it’s changed, but back in the day it was not healthy stuff.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And it’s like look, I mean…
Kevin Rose: Great name though.
Tim Ferriss: Great name. Also, as I continue to do intermittent fasting a few times a week, I don’t do it a ton because I’m actually trying to… I want to add some muscle mass and connective tissue strength and you just need nutrition for that.
Kevin Rose: Did you get that gripper by the way?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, look, I have grippers.
Kevin Rose: Did you get the one that our buddy sent us?
Tim Ferriss: No, I got a different adjustable gripper because my right arm is still recovering from the elbow surgery I had a year ago.
Kevin Rose: We should link that up in the show notes, that gripper that… That’s a really good one. The one I have.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. We’ll link to a couple of different grippers if people are interested. I’m going pretty light because I’m still strengthening the extensors in the right elbow that was repaired. But you want to hear about something crazy?
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: That I’ve been getting really into, and this is going to get into crazy town, but we like getting into crazy town a little bit. So dream engineering and anesthesia dreams. So I’ve been going down this rabbit hole related to dream engineering. So can you modify dream content? Can you, for instance, facilitate two-way communication between scientists and dreamers while they are dreaming? And this is a longstanding interest of mine. I first read Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by someone named Stephen LaBerge, the very, very beginning of high school and became very interested in lucid dreaming, which is just to define terms, where you train yourself, and there is a process for this, to induce lucidity while you’re dreaming.
That just means you become conscious of the fact that you are dreaming and with exercises, you can get to the point where you’re able to modify your own dream content. I used to, for instance, in high school when I was competing in wrestling, I would do additional training sessions at night in my dreams. I’m not making this up, and I felt like there was a direct translation to improve performance. Okay. But flash forward, I connected. I ended up getting introduced to Dr. Adam Haar Horowitz who took research out of MIT and Harvard to make dream engineering a reality. So he has a startup called Dust, D-U-S-T. In full disclosure, I am an investor in that.
Kevin Rose: What does it do?
Tim Ferriss: They’re going to be helping people to modify dream content to address things like PTSD.
Kevin Rose: Oh, no way.
Tim Ferriss: Now, that’s where the conversation started, and he knows that I have longstanding interest in psychedelic related therapies, but psychedelics have taken a backseat for me in the last handful of years because most people… I shouldn’t say most. Many people will not be able to take psychedelics for whether it’s health reasons, contraindications. They have psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia in their family that mean it would be ill-advised to take them. So I’ve been really focused, as you know, on neuromodulation, brain stimulation, and I still am super, super bullish.
Kevin Rose: How often are you doing that now?
Tim Ferriss: I’m going to be doing it again probably in the next month. I would say every three to four months. The update there, I did get involved with one company, and I thought very heavily about it, called Ampa Health, A-M-P-A Health. They have the smallest, most modular option on the market, very easy to use. I think they’re the company, if I had to bet on one, that’s going to get to the point where you can actually power something off of an iPhone. They’re doing some really, really interesting work. Just to touch on that, they’re doing one-day protocols now. So instead of five days off of work-
Kevin Rose: Oh, that’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: … costs 30 grand or something, you’re doing one day of treatment accelerated with this very small dose of antibiotic called D-cycloserine, which induces plasticity in the brain, much like certain psychedelics. So you basically let that dissolve in your mouth beforehand. And from, let’s say a one to 10 in severity, let’s say my OCD generalized anxiety, it’s at like an eight or nine, it has taken it to a zero or a one.
Kevin Rose: Holy shit.
Tim Ferriss: One day. Now it gets crazier though because you can also use it… People can check out Ampa Health. They think they need to-
Kevin Rose: Do they do it in L.A. as well or no? Where can you do this?
Tim Ferriss: They’re all over the country. I mean, what I’m hoping is that people who are already administering things like ketamine or who are offering CBT or whatever will just offer this as an add-on because most of the devices that are available now are the size of a refrigerator. You have to sign a quarter million dollar lease. This stuff is like three… The Ampa Health product for providers is like three grand a month. You can cancel any time. I think that’s still accurate and it can fit in the trunk of a car. It’s much easier to use. But what’s also amazing, and I did this recently when I was traveling, met a technician and did two hours of, I think it was stims every 30 minutes just for a handful of minutes each stimulation.
Kevin Rose: When you say stims… Okay, stimulations. Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Just for sleep.
Kevin Rose: Different target area of the brain then?
Tim Ferriss: In this case, it was the same target. It’s a target that they’re not talking about super publicly yet, but very easy for therapist, technicians to find.
Kevin Rose: How do they find it? Are they just measuring your head and shit looking like…
Tim Ferriss: It’s all based on really, really good science. They’re looking at overlapping networks that are identified by looking at data from deep brain stimulation, data from lesion research.
Kevin Rose: No, but I mean when they sit down with you, if you’re going to go into this place and they’re like, “Hey, I got to find this region in the brain.”
Tim Ferriss: So part of what makes how they do it interesting is they’re finding targets that are more uniform person to person. So certain places like the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, certain areas on the front of the skull or front of the brain, front of the head, are a little more variable. You have to be very precise. So they’re finding ways to make it very effective, very fast, and less likely to suffer from clinician error. Because if you really have to thread the needle, sometimes you get no effect. That happened to me when I was using earlier targets with other hardware. If they were off by a half a centimeter, nothing. And you just wasted a week and 30 grand. So expensive.
Kevin Rose: And no downside? Are you not getting headaches afterwards or anything weird?
Tim Ferriss: Mild headache. Mild headache for a day.
Kevin Rose: Does that not freak you out though? I mean, that’s the only reason I haven’t tried any of this stuff. I’m like, I don’t know. It’s like they’re just putting magnets in your brain and shit.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, just to bust your balls before I start recording, you’re talking about some drugs you’re experimenting with.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, but that’s just a good old time. Those are tried and true.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: You’ve done it too.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, look, I’m no stranger to pharm-
Kevin Rose: If you’re going to say it online, I’m going to say it.
Tim Ferriss: I’m no stranger to pharmacology. I’m just saying. In this particular case, I personally found the… I think the risk-benefit ratio is much more attractive for the general population than psychedelics, which is why I’m spending so much-
Kevin Rose: Interesting.
Tim Ferriss: … time looking at it. I think it is much, much, much more attractive. It’s faster. And frankly… Well, let me come back to these crazy stories of dream engineering and anesthesia dreams. So from the startup Dust, and people can check out the Ampa Health, I encourage them to check it out, but they’re all over the country now.
Kevin Rose: Is that the publicly traded company one or no?
Tim Ferriss: No, it’s private.
Kevin Rose: Okay, private.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So Dust does the dream engineering. And then he introduced me to some research out of Stanford. Here’s some of the headlines of pieces published by Stanford Medicine. Could Anesthesia Induced Dreams Wipe Away trauma? Another one. Could Anesthesia Dreams Be A More Palatable Psychedelic Therapy? All right. So what does this actually mean? Let me read some of this stuff. All right.
Kevin Rose: What dreams are they-
Tim Ferriss: Here’s the dream protocol.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, that’s what I want to know. What’s the protocol?
Tim Ferriss: I tried to convince, I was getting an endoscopy recently just to look at my throat. You got to do that stuff, the endoscopies, colonoscopies, and so on. And I was trying to convince this doctor I’d never met to do this for me, and he was like, “Yeah, I don’t think so.” But the dreaming protocol is five steps. “Number one, tell a patient they might dream under anesthesia. Number two, use propofol.”
Kevin Rose: Oh, this is great.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s very common.
Kevin Rose: Well, it’s what Michael Jackson died on.
Tim Ferriss: Michael Jackson used that plus six other things.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I have a great story about that, by the way.
Tim Ferriss: You should not DIY propofol, but using propofol as an anesthetic as the patient is emerging from anesthesia. So here’s the thing. If someone has surgery, they’re not changing the anesthesia delivered for the surgery. They’re basically using propofol to taper them out and tune them to a very particular dose, and let’s call it radio station, so they have pleasant dreams. But step number three is monitor brain activity, et cetera, with EEG. Ensure at least 10 minutes of quiet, undisturbed emergence. This is really important. If you don’t do that, then dream recall is shot, and then you have to ask them about dream recall.
But the point of this is that what they’re seeing, and this is not really super speculative. I mean, it is at the edges now, but they are seeing people with longstanding complex PTSD, they have one of these dreams where they taper out on propofol and they rehearse beforehand to basically imagine their traumatic event ending in a better way with some kind of resolution. Some of these people, 10 months later, still zero symptoms of complex PTSD.
Kevin Rose: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: They go from severe to zero. The reason I find this so interesting and other people find it interesting is that it underscores the possibility that, and I’ve thought this for a very long time, but the trip matters. Because in the world of psychedelic medicine and business right now, the name of the game, if you want to ramp up your market cap and have an exit for $2 billion or whatever, or launch something with an IPO and make tons of money is you say, okay, psychedelics, broadly speaking, a whole lot of them hit these serotonin type 2A receptors. Let’s create a drug that hits the same receptors, but that doesn’t cause the trip because the trip doesn’t matter. The trip is a side effect.
Kevin Rose: Same bullshit, but yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Well, what’s interesting is that I think it’s both, but just to be clear, you can hit the serotonin type 2A receptor with no trip, like an LSD variant, and it can be very effective for things like cluster headaches.
Kevin Rose: Sure.
Tim Ferriss: It does something.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, but I’m talking about the emotional release that comes from that.
Tim Ferriss: Sure. So I would say also some of these psychedelics, and not all of them are primarily hitting the type 2A receptor, but have potent anti-inflammatory effects at sub-perceptual doses. So also I think that could lead to anti-depression and stuff.
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: However, if dream engineering, like ala Dust, if they can dream engineer people to have fewer nightmares, which they can, and that has psychedelic-like outcomes, is it possible that even though there are millions of people for whom psychedelics will never be appropriate, like tripping balls for four to six hours, and there are shorter acting psychedelics and so on, methylone and so on, I get it, but there are plenty of people who will never be able to take psychedelics. Is it possible that every night you have an opportunity to harness something similar? And if so, who are the scientists who are going to figure out how to mold that and shape it and do the prep work? I think it’s all touching the same stuff.
Kevin Rose: Let me ask you a question. What does Dust do? Is it a coaching service? Because I have this app that, by the way, I have no affiliation with this, but you should check this out too, Tim. I think you’d really like it. Before I go to bed, there’s an app I use called Claria, C-L-A-R-I-A, and it is the best hypnosis app that I’ve found out there for a variety.
Tim Ferriss: Who makes Claria? I may have tried this.
Kevin Rose: You would recognize the scientists and the team behind it. It’s amazing. It’s expensive. It’s 150 a year, so it’s not cheap, but I found it to be a beautiful way to drift off to sleep, and I swear I feel better the next day. And there’s a variety of different topics. It could be anxiety, it can be whatever. But anyway, my point is, and my question about Dust is, okay, what is the thing? Could you sit there in this propofol kind of state coming out-
Tim Ferriss: So just to be clear, Dust isn’t doing anything with propofol. That’s totally separate.
Kevin Rose: Okay. Okay. So could you do this with hypnotherapy?
Tim Ferriss: That’s a great question. I don’t know the answer. I also, just to be on the safe side, I don’t know what they’re disclosing publicly. So people can check out the website and whatever it says, it says, but it’s something I’m keeping an eye on. But broadly speaking, that ended up being the wedge in the door for me to get back into doing a deep dive on basically dream shaping, which is 100% possible. And it’s already been demonstrated that you can have dreamers who achieve lucidity communicate with researchers while they are provably in an REM state by memorizing eye movement patterns in advance, like Morse code basically, like right, right, left, left, right, left, something like that to indicate I know that I’m dreaming and I’m telling you I’m dreaming. It’s fucking crazy.
Kevin Rose: Have you talked to Matt Walker about this?
Tim Ferriss: I haven’t. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Matt about this stuff yet.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. So Matt used to run the, for people that don’t know, he wrote the Why We Sleep book and also used to run the Berkeley Sleep Lab for a long time.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah.
Kevin Rose: He’s still very active.
Tim Ferriss: He’s in Dallas now, has a huge lab, is doing lots of good work. He and I on the sleep front have mostly talked about the DORA class of drugs.
Kevin Rose: I still have a ton of that, by the way.
Tim Ferriss: Oh yeah. I’m using something called Quviviq instead of Belsomra now.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And talk to your doctor, guys. This is not stuff to-
Kevin Rose: Well, they can’t get it without the doctor anyway.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, who knows though, if they’re buying stuff online from Mexico or whatever. Just don’t screw around with any of this stuff without talking to your doctor. But the point of that, for people who maybe haven’t heard anything about this, Matt Walker has a good podcast episode on this. It’s probably six to nine months old at this point about the DORA, like Dora the Explorer, D-O-R-A, class of drugs that’s dual orexin receptor antagonist drugs. There’s some evidence to suggest it might be helpful for people with family histories of Alzheimer’s and things like that for-
Kevin Rose: Didn’t they do a spinal tap and saw the-
Tim Ferriss: … the beta amyloid clearances on.
Kevin Rose: … It produced amyloid clearance or health amyloid clearance?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Not just in animals, but they’ve looked at human data. So for me, honestly, even though it might be speculative at this point, because no one’s proven that it prevents Alzheimer’s, I’m like, “You know what? That shit is so scary.” And I’ve seen relatives just disintegrate. I’m like, “Eh, since I’m APOE3/4, I’m genetically predisposed. Let me just be on the safe side.”
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I bring it with me. I’m actually going to Japan soon, and that’s when I use it. I’m like, “I’d rather do that than some type of these other class of sleep drugs that have been shown to do all kinds of horrible things, including cancers and you name it. They look like on paper so far to be the safer class of sleep drugs.
Tim Ferriss: They’re pretty interesting.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, there’s some other drugs that seem not to affect sleep architecture horribly, like the Ambiens of the world. Trazodone might be a decent choice, but for a host of reasons, I wanted to… It just seemed to make sense to me to look at the DORAs. All right. What else you got?
Kevin Rose: Okay. I’m going to do rapid fire.
Tim Ferriss: Let’s do it.
Kevin Rose: I got a few things. First of all, have you ever seen these before?
Tim Ferriss: Plum Flower Curing Pills?
Kevin Rose: Yes. Plum Flower Curing Pills, my friends.
Tim Ferriss: No. Economy size.
Kevin Rose: Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, this gets better and better.
Kevin Rose: I had a buddy that was like… He’s like, “Kevin, you don’t understand. I was actually in Paris and I had a little bit of a stomach. Oh man, my stomach’s a little bit off, blah, blah.” And he goes, “I was about to get food poisoning. I felt it coming on.” I think it was oysters or something he had. He goes like, “I took two of these. It’s from a Chinese practitioner.” And he goes, “I dodged a bullet.” Every time, and let’s just call it once every eight weeks where you’re like, “Ooh, my stomach’s a little sideways.” I take one of these little packets and it freaking works. Dude, I’m telling you, I know it sounds crazy. And so before the podcast-
Tim Ferriss: Is it just laced with tons of antibiotics?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. No, before the podcast, I wanted to look it up because it’s a traditional Chinese medicine and I can’t pronounce any of the shit in it. It’s a bunch of wild… It’s like 15 different Chinese herbs.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, this is unlike the A2 protein. This has like 27 different ingredients in the size two font.
Kevin Rose: I’m telling you, these little packets are like 50 cents a piece on Amazon. You can buy them in a smaller thing.
Tim Ferriss: I just love that they’re called curing pills.
Kevin Rose: They work, dude. You know what they work with really? Is if you had too much to eat and you’re like, “Oh, I’m bloated. I just feel bloated.” Just take one little packet. Take a couple with you to go.
Tim Ferriss: I’m good.
Kevin Rose: I’m 10% owner in the company.
Tim Ferriss: I’m like, “What? Executive chairman, Kevin Rose, what is this?
Kevin Rose: Exactly. My picture’s on the outside of the box.
Tim Ferriss: How did he get to Shanghai?
Kevin Rose: This thing, a rapid fire, Airofit.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, I’ve got one of those in my bag actually.
Kevin Rose: In your bag? What the fuck? On you right now?
Tim Ferriss: Well, I don’t have it right now, but it’s in my backpack.
Kevin Rose: So tell people about it.
Tim Ferriss: I was not able to get the app to work very well.
Kevin Rose: I got it working.
Tim Ferriss: You did? Was it a pain in the balls?
Kevin Rose: It was a little bit of a pain. So you can get the one without the smart technology in it, but this will also work if you just don’t even use the app.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Okay.
Kevin Rose: So for people that don’t know, this device right here-
Tim Ferriss: I should just use it without the app because it’s been… Basically, I downloaded the app and then they’re like, “Oh, you want any utility out of this app at all? Pay $79 a month,” or whatever. And I was like, ugh, I’m not going to do that.
Kevin Rose: You just ask ChatGPT for a training protocol. There’s two knobs on here on each side of this thing that adjust the resistance on inhale and exhale. So you put this thing in your mouth like this.
Tim Ferriss: This is to train your respiratory muscles.
Kevin Rose: That’s difficult for me to do. They showed after eight weeks a 30% increase in lung capacity when you train with this thing, which is just insane.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. The respiratory muscle training devices are really cool. I had Bas Rutten, this UFC, but also prior to that, in Japan, MMA legend on, and he’s done this stuff basically daily for multiple years. There’s good data to suggest reductions in lower back pain, all of these different issues if you improve the strengthening of the muscles that aid in respiration.
Kevin Rose: That’s wild. Do you got the same model, the same type?
Tim Ferriss: I have a white one that’s got Bluetooth and all this fancy technology that I think I do not need.
Kevin Rose: When did you buy it?
Tim Ferriss: I bought it probably a year ago.
Kevin Rose: Okay. I don’t know why this had the latest firmware on it and it works fine. I haven’t had any issues with the connectivity, but I did have one before my house burned down and it was always having issues connecting. I don’t know what model.
Tim Ferriss: Maybe I need a new one, but Airofit, please improve your app if you haven’t in the last year because I found it to be incredibly difficult. Plus, your baseline of programming for somebody who’s bought a device should be decent. But I do have one in my bag at home, so I will just use ChatGPT or Claude to help me figure out a Bluetooth-free option for training.
Kevin Rose: What I’ve been doing with it is ruck backpack, 6% incline on the treadmill.
Tim Ferriss: That sounds comfortable.
Kevin Rose: With this in my mouth, and it’s really helped.
Tim Ferriss: I’m guessing the people on the treadmills next to you just clear out, huh?
Kevin Rose: It’s at my house. I’m not doing this in public. It’s ridiculous. Okay. The last one I have is about man makeup, but we can get to that.
Tim Ferriss: Let’s come back to man makeup. I’ll give another bit of science that I think is pretty fascinating to watch. This was sent to me by an oncologist who specializes in, on one level, cancers around the eye. I had a scare. I might have told you about this, I’m not sure. It’s still a little bit of a scare, but there was a nevus found at the back of my eye, which is like a large freckle. And that can develop into cancer.
Kevin Rose: Oh, shit.
Tim Ferriss: The good news is they can get rid of it. The bad news is you lose your eye. So this is something I’ve tracked first every three months, then every six months. It hasn’t changed in size, but really came to admire-
Kevin Rose: How’d you find this by the way? Eye exam?
Tim Ferriss: Eye exam, but with retinal scanning, with advanced imaging. Certainly, I was happy to find it, but I mean very scary to find because you don’t know if it’s been there for 20 years or if it’s been there for a month and it’s growing.
Kevin Rose: This is my brain aneurysm. I had a little tiny brain aneurysm that was like one millimeter or whatever.
Tim Ferriss: So you found that with a biograph or Prenuvo or something?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, Prenuvo, I did. They’re like, “Okay, well we have to watch this and it could explode if it gets too big.” Then after two years they’re like, “Oh, you probably just had this since you were born.” I’m like, “Oh, shit. Okay.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. So she occasionally will send me science that she finds interesting. This one, I mean this is probably not the description of the study itself, I think I went to the lay person’s interpretation of it, but the headline here, which I put in my newsletter, Five Bullet Friday, check it out. Tim.blog/Friday, but Brain Stimulating Contact Lenses Match Prozac in Depression Study. All right. So this isn’t an animal model, but let me read the synopsis.
“Material scientists have developed a wearable drug-free contact lens capable of treating depression by delivering mild electrical signals through the retina.”
Kevin Rose: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: “The study demonstrates that these specialized lenses are as effective as fluoxetine,” that’s the active ingredient Prozac, “at reducing behavioral, neural and physiological signs of depression in mice.” Mice are not just little furry humans, so just keep that in mind. “This technology leverages the eye’s anatomical connection to the brain to stimulate mood-regulating circuits non-invasively.”
So that is pretty fascinating.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Imagine if… Now I don’t know mechanistically what it’s actually doing with the stimulation. Is it affecting vagal tone? Is it affecting something else? Who knows? I haven’t done the deep dive on it yet, but imagine this is where bioelectric medicine, whether it’s different types of stimulation for increasing vagal tone. There are a lot of bullshit devices out there, folks. So just beware. I’m not aware of any one commercially available that is not prescription that is credible. But you talk to like Michael Levin of Tufts, will we more and more be able to use electricity instead of pills to treat conditions?
I think that that will be the case. In fact, you look at say anesthesia, anesthesia is one of those things where we’re like, “Yeah, it’s just anesthesia.” Anesthesia, when you start scratching the surface, is so incredibly strange.
Kevin Rose: They really don’t know how it works, right?
Tim Ferriss: There are many anesthetics people have no idea how they work. I mean a few things. If you look at Michael Pollan’s new book, he talks about how anesthesia is effective on plants, even though they have obviously completely different nervous systems slash I should say more anatomy. But it would seem… I mean, how should I get into this without making a mess of things? There are some hints of quantum effects of anesthesia, but putting that aside, because I’m not credible enough to talk about that at length, some of these anesthetics are inert. They shouldn’t do anything.
So what is happening? It would seem that it might be physics and not chemistry. It’s not within the realm of chemists say, “Oh, it’s binding to this receptor and doing A, B, or C,” even though they might observe effects that mimic those things, that it’s somehow affecting bioelectrical fields. That’s the limit of the extent of my cursory understanding, but it’s just fascinating. There’s so many things like this that we take for granted that we think are understood by the “experts”, and we have no idea what the mechanism of action is.
Tim Ferriss: There are many examples like that.
Kevin Rose: But isn’t that crazy?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: It’s something we just take granted. We’re like “Yeah, let’s pop two of those.” We have no idea how it works. What the fuck?
Tim Ferriss: There are a lot of those. I think for a while that was true of modafinil. There are many, many, many, many drugs.
Kevin Rose: Oh, do you take tadalafil?
Tim Ferriss: Tadalafil?
Kevin Rose: Tadalafil.
Tim Ferriss: Whatever that is, the Cialis?
Kevin Rose: Cialis, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Boner pills.
Kevin Rose: Do you take it?
Tim Ferriss: No, I don’t.
Kevin Rose: You don’t?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t because I know there’s supposed to be maybe plausible cognitive benefits and so on. I get-
Kevin Rose: Low dose. I just do a little halfer.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I get, and this is not actually that uncommon, I get horrible back pain.
Kevin Rose: Oh, back pain. Weird.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s not super common, but in a percentage of people, it’s reported in the literature.
Kevin Rose: How about with the other ones?
Tim Ferriss: Horrible back pain.
Kevin Rose: What about the other ones? Like Viagra?
Tim Ferriss: Like what?
Kevin Rose: Viagra.
Tim Ferriss: Viagra, it’s similar. Back pain.
Kevin Rose: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: What’s the deal? Do people know why the back pain? They don’t know?
Tim Ferriss: Oh, they do. Yeah. I mean, they’re like-
Kevin Rose: Does it work?
Tim Ferriss: There are different types of phosphodiesterase, PDE inhibitors. I think I’m getting this right. I’m going to have to fact check this before this gets published. Basically, I want to say it’s like PDE5 or something like that.
Kevin Rose: So Huberman was talking about there’s potential benefit both on the cognitive side and also obviously the blood pressure side as well. It brings down your blood pressure a little bit and you don’t have to take much of this stuff. You can just take a little half of it.
Tim Ferriss: A little nibs.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I’m just on so many things. I’m trying to-
Kevin Rose: But they work for you. Even though it hurts your lower back, you’re like a Superman.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, sure. I mean, I’ll have a huge boner but look like a UFC fighter roundhouse kicked me in the kidney. Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Oh, because your kidneys, it pops out, like your back flares?
Tim Ferriss: No, it doesn’t pop out, but my low back hurts so much that I’m like, I can’t sit. I can’t stand.
Kevin Rose: I felt like your back muscles got hard or something and you got bulges on your kidneys now.
Tim Ferriss: No. No, I’m just saying it’s hard to enjoy the boner if you’re crippled with low back pain.
Kevin Rose: That’s fair. That’s fair. I got to tell, for people that have never tried these, I don’t need these… But no, but hold on. This is The Random Show. We’re supposed to be able to talk about this stuff.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah, sure.
Kevin Rose: When you try them for the first time, it is the weirdest shit.
Tim Ferriss: Well, I mean, look-
Kevin Rose: Because you reach down and it’s not you. Because you’re like, “Whoa, how large?”
Tim Ferriss: This is where you have to be careful with augmentation, right?
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Because it’s like, for instance, if your eyes are going a little bit and then you wear glasses and you’re just like, “Holy, this is a different world.” How do you go back to black and white?
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: You know what I mean? This is another reason why, sure, technically people might be able to use all of these peptides, and testosterone, and GH, and all these things and then just get off because you have post psychotherapy or whatever. But psychologically, people can get so addicted to the results because they are obvious if these things are used correctly. So it’s kind of like similarly with, this extends back to the AI conversation. It’s like, man, the siren song, the temptation to use AI for almost everything is so strong. I’m working on this new book right now and it’s like, I am not using it to write for me because if I do that, I’m done. It’s good. It’s too good.
Kevin Rose: Well, there’s even-
Tim Ferriss: I’m using it for version control. If somebody provides edits, I’m like, compare this to this and give me a graphic overview so I can print it out and look at it in color. It can do some tremendous things, but if you want to retain a function, a cognitive ability, be very careful about what you outsource.
Kevin Rose: Well, let me throw this out there for people that aren’t aware of it because most people won’t be. In the world of AI, what they do sometimes is they put these elegant pieces of code that kind of sit on top of the AI that makes it turbocharge the AI to do special things. They’re called harnesses. There is a new harness that came out recently just for writers.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, God.
Kevin Rose: And so if you thought Claude or ChatGPT was really good at helping you write, wait until you throw this harness on top of it. There’s a company called Every out there and they had released a package for coders called Compound Engineering. You can just type in every compound engineering writer harness and it’ll show you the right one. You just install it into your ChatGPT or Claude and it will write the book for you. It’s going to be insane.
Yeah, you’re done.
Tim Ferriss: Well, I don’t know if I’m done. I mean, I don’t think so because I mean, you’ve talked about this online and I think we’ve texted a little bit about it, but it’s like, what’s the moat? Reputation.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, it is reputation.
Tim Ferriss: Right. So I don’t think I’m dead.
Kevin Rose: No, no, no.
Tim Ferriss: I think books are harder and harder to sell as a viable format of the media.
Kevin Rose: Well, it’s funny, when Tim was writing these books back in the early days, because I first met you when-
Tim Ferriss: 2008.
Kevin Rose: I met the day your first book came out, The 4-Hour Workweek, came out at the party. Then you would tell me, “Hey, I’m working on this book,” and you would want to keep everything hush-hush. You wouldn’t want to tell anybody because you were like, “Okay, someone can front run me with this idea, with the ideas that I have in here if any of this leaks out.” You were super guarded. That is more of the reality these days. I mean, if someone were to find out the next book you’re writing on and got a leaked copy of it, they can rewrite the entire thing and have it out in like 48 hours, published and printed.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, the defense is-
Kevin Rose: No, I know there’s still the moat of you.
Tim Ferriss: Well, I’m just saying that is why if you are writing about the realm of ideas, that is going to be a hard game to play. If you are writing about lived experience, like I did X, Y, and Z, then I think you have more defensibility. But I think, I’m not sure we talked about this, but I’ve just kind of come down to deciding that I’d rather write now. I’m also still half pregnant with this book. It’s like 80% of the way there.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. You’ve been working on this one for a long time.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I have. I mean, it’s taken… In a way, honestly, I’ve been waiting for the technology to catch up so that I could make the point that I wanted to make, which is, look guys, this is not a 1% problem. This is a 99% problem. And the tools are also available to 99%. I was like, if I published this five years ago, people would be like, “Oh, cry me a river. Tim Ferriss has too much inbound.” But now I’m like, how many… I’m like, “Okay, you’ve got what? You’ve got iMessage, WhatsApp, two email addresses, DMs.”
Kevin Rose: Slack channels, it’s like all of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Everybody’s fucking drowning. Everybody’s drowning. But I couldn’t have made that argument as well six years ago. As you know, robots are so good at imitating humans. Although I do test… My team will test things if I’m like if this is 100% AI written, it’s automatic X. It’s automatic archive. Coming back to… I would just rather write a book for 10,000 people than do short form videos for 10 million who forget it 10 seconds later.
Kevin Rose: Right, right, right.
Tim Ferriss: I want to share one piece of long form for people who can still digest it, which is hopefully many of you. This is a speech and I read the transcript. It is exceptional. It’s called Personal Renewal. It’s by John Gardner, G-A-R-D-N-E-R. I have no idea how I found this thing. It was delivered to McKinsey and Company in November 1990. How did I find this? I have no idea. But it is full of gems. You can find an audio version. Just search Personal Renewal, John Gardner, that’s G-A-R-D-N-E-R. It’s really about personal renewal, continual learning throughout life. It’s really, really good, but it does require a little bit of foreplay to get to the gems.
Here’s a really good one, and I’m quoting from the piece here. “Remember I mentioned earlier the myth that learning is for young people. I want to give you some examples. In a piece I wrote for Reader’s Digest just not long ago, I gave what seemed to me particularly interesting, true example of renewal. The man in question was 53 years old. Most of his adult life had been a losing struggle against debt and misfortune. In military service, he received a battlefield injury that denied him the use of his left arm, and he was seized and held in captivity for five years. Later, he held two government jobs succeeding at neither.”
“At 53, he was in prison, and not for the first time. There in prison, he decided to write a book driven by Heaven knows what motive, boredom, the hope of gain, emotional release, creative impulse, who can say? The book turned out to be one of the greatest ever written, a book that has enthralled the world for over 350 years. The prisoner was Cervantes, the book Don Quixote.”
Kevin Rose: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: What a fucking crazy story.
Kevin Rose: Holy shit.
Tim Ferriss: There are many examples like this. Personal Renewal by John Gardner, just maybe print it out, single task, get away from notifications. I’ve read this one a few times now and I just get something from it every time.
Kevin Rose: That’s amazing. Man makeup.
Tim Ferriss: Man makeup.
Kevin Rose: Do you wear makeup?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t wear makeup.
Kevin Rose: Never?
Tim Ferriss: Never.
Kevin Rose: On your TV show?
Tim Ferriss: My TV show? You mean when I was on actual TV?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, look, they’ve got makeup people who want to de-gloss my head. They’ll use oil patches and stuff.
Kevin Rose: On your podcast, you don’t do any little touch-ups?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t. I probably should, but I don’t.
Kevin Rose: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, no touch-ups.
Kevin Rose: So I was on a podcast a month ago, and I looked like hell. I had just flown into the city.
Tim Ferriss: You’re like Al Pacino after a bender.
Kevin Rose: No, seriously. I had just flown into the city and I slept like shit for some reason because I was at altitude where I was at, and I went on the screen. I get rosacea sometimes in my cheeks and stuff, and I just looked like shit. I was like, “Fuck, I need to do something in case…” Sorry, you can bleep that. I need to do something in case I just go on camera.
Tim Ferriss: Wait, what did we just bleep?
Kevin Rose: The F word.
Tim Ferriss: Come on. You had 30 of those the last episode.
Kevin Rose: Okay. So I went in to the store… Okay. I’m going to say I went to Sephora. I went to fucking Sephora. I’d never been in that shit before ever in my life. And it was all ladies. I went in there and I didn’t want makeup. I was just like, “Hey, do you have something for when your cheeks get extra red, like rosacea and stuff like that? Is there anything you can get?”
Tim Ferriss: You’re like, “When I’m putting on my little black dress and my high heels.”
Kevin Rose: Exactly. I was decked out to the nines.
Tim Ferriss: Gus it up.
Kevin Rose: Okay. Gussied up. This is a horrible name for a product, but it’s Dr. Jart. It has something called Cicapair, which is, get this, it’s green. Okay? I’m like, “Why is it green?” It’s color when mixed with red will even out the tone.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a complimentary color.
Kevin Rose: And it’s SPF.
Tim Ferriss: Christmas neutralizer.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, so watch this. We can’t get a Zoom here. There’s little dots right here. Now hold on. Watch the difference now. Hold on. I need a mirror or something.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a lot. Is it a lot?
Kevin Rose: Okay, watch. I’m going to just rub it in.
Tim Ferriss: All right. How are you doing? This is like an infomercial. You’re doing the one side. I love it. In comparison.
Kevin Rose: If we look now, do you notice how much less red it is in the other side? And it’s SPF too.
Tim Ferriss: I don’t.
Kevin Rose: You don’t?
Tim Ferriss: But it looks very well-moisturized.
Kevin Rose: It is very well-moisturized. It’s got an SPF. Anyway, my only point is that-
Tim Ferriss: Dr. Jart’s Cicapair, C-I-C-A-P-A-I-R, soothing color connecting treatment.
Kevin Rose: The reason why I bring this up is because I know a lot of people have rosacea, and it’s a shitty thing. For me, it’s like spicy foods or something, and you get extra red cheeks and all that. Let me tell the truth. I wanted something, this is like matte, so if you’re on camera or whatever, it won’t let you down.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you don’t look like you-
Kevin Rose: And it’s SPF.
Tim Ferriss: … took a bath in olive oil.
Kevin Rose: I feel for people that have problems that they don’t know how to fix. I was like, okay, rosacea a lot of people have. I might as well talk about it on the show.
Tim Ferriss: You look like you have fewer crow’s feet than I recall. Have you been doing Vampire?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I do Vampire facials and I do OneSkin.
Tim Ferriss: Vampire facials is PRP.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, PRP where they draw your blood.
Tim Ferriss: Still haven’t tried it. How often do you do that?
Kevin Rose: Oh, dude. I do it twice a year.
Tim Ferriss: Twice a year.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. So they draw your blood. It’s the only reason… I mean, I still have wrinkles. If I scrunch up, you can still see them on the side, but it’s way better. They draw your blood, they spin it, they take out the platelet-rich plasma, and then they rub it on… Well, first they microneedle your face. This is going to sound like a lot, but there was a discount package. They microneedle your face and then they rub it in. Then I swear after two weeks, the wrinkles just go away.
Tim Ferriss: Do you look like you got in a street fight for a couple of days?
Kevin Rose: You’re a little red. Yeah, that’s why you get this stuff. You’re a little red, and it works wonderful. And then OneSkin with the peptides is awesome. Again, I did put a small angel check into OneSkin because it worked so well for me, but that’s it.
Tim Ferriss: Man makeup. I want to mention two other things that I have really been enjoying, finding thought-provoking at least. One is a miniseries. I’m curious if you’ve seen it. It’s a four-part miniseries called The Dark Wizard. Have you seen this?
Kevin Rose: No.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So The Dark Wizard, which was first recommended to me by Andrew Huberman and then a couple of other folks recommended it, it’s about this wild, brilliant, but totally tormented artist and athlete named Dean Potter. Dean Potter, way back in the day, I’m going to get the timing wrong, but I want to say early ’90s, sometime in the ’90s, he was on the cover of Outside Magazine, and this guy’s story was so captivating to me that I kept that issue of Outside Magazine with this black and white photo of him. Very handsome-looking guy, super athletic, and he pioneered all these new approaches to rock climbing.
He also was one of the main, I would say, proselytizers of slack lining and then high lining, which is doing a slack line over a canyon. Just the scariest stuff.
Kevin Rose: With the big long poles and shit, right?
Tim Ferriss: No poles.
Kevin Rose: No poles.
Tim Ferriss: Just hands.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And then he ended up wanting to push the boundaries of free soloing. But the problem is, as he roughly stated it was, well, when you’re free soloing, you always have to climb well within your limits. And he’s like, “I want to push my limits.” So he started doing something called free basing where he was combining free soloing with base jumping.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I’ve heard that people do this.
Tim Ferriss: And this four part series is insane and it’s incredibly well produced. All of this archival footage, drawings and notes from Dean’s personal journals all woven together. And there’s a lot of darkness. He struggled with a lot, many inner demons and depression. And on the flip side, he was just this absolute genius on so many different levels. So I found it to be a really, really thought-provoking watch. I actually binged. I started one at… I think each is an hour long, roughly an hour long. And I started one at 11:00 PM and my lady fell asleep in 20 minutes. It wasn’t really her jam and it was bedtime anyway. And I binged the entire series.
Kevin Rose: Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: I stayed up until three in the morning watching this stuff. I just couldn’t stop watching it.
Kevin Rose: Oh, shit, that’s a strong recommendation. I’m going to check that out.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It ties into a lot of current interests and also old demons of my own. So it brought up a lot for me and many people have enjoyed it. So The Dark Wizard, that was his nickname. And then there’s a book that people might not expect I would bring up. This is not a new book. This is a book by Studs Terkel. Talk about a good name. T-E-R-K-E-L, Studs Terkel. He won the Pulitzer Prize at one point, I think, for Working [Ed. note: Terkel won the Pulitzer Prize for The Good War.]. I might be getting the title wrong. But the book that I was introduced to is called Hard Times: An Illustrated Oral History of the Great Depression. And it was introduced to me by a Brit of all things, a great guy named Ed Cooke, who I’m not sure if you know Ed Cooke.
Kevin Rose: I know Ed Cooke, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Total lunatic.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Awesome guy. One of the best and most famous memory competitors, formerly world champion of mastery of memory.
Kevin Rose: Super good person. I love that. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And he’s very good at coaching people to get incredibly good at memory competition. There was an entire book written about this called Moonwalking with Einstein. And he has a startup called MindMax, which is a learning app if people want to check it out. But this book, Hard Times: An Illustrated Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel contains many dozens of vignettes and profiles of people who went through the depression from the most destitute to the rich who lost everything to the jingle writers who actually had the most incredible explosion of creativity during that period. And they’re very bite-sized profiles.
The stories are told both in their own words and in the words of Studs who’s trying to convey different perspectives on everything from these different vantage points. And it is a page turner. It’s so well written and it fleshes out the depression into something very real and complex. It’s not just like one mom with her hungry kids sitting on a doorstep looking for Lorne. There’s so many different angles to it. And I just feel like it’s one of the better and most unique depictions of history that I’ve ever come across.
Kevin Rose: That’s awesome. Is there Audible on that or no?
Tim Ferriss: I wouldn’t be surprised if there is. Hard Times, it’s very, very well written. And Ed told me, he’s like, “Hard Times is good, but if you like that, Working is incredible.” And Working, as I understand it, is kind of like Dirty Jobs before Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, but looking at all these different professions across the United States. But Hard Times is the one that I’ve been cracking. So if I have 15 minutes and I’m just killing time waiting for something, I’ll pull it up on my Kindle and I’ll read that because you’ll get through one or two profiles.
Kevin Rose: So I’ve been doing this in the sauna where I put on an audiobook and it’s my way to just crank through something. And I did something very similar, speaking of new books, and I’ve been trying to push myself in new directions of things I would normally never listen to. What is something that would never be on my radar and just give me a whole new perspective on what people are consuming media wise? And so my friend, Brit, she was like, “Hey, I’ve got a recommendation for you. There’s this whole genre of books that are big.” Apparently women in their mid 30s into their 40s love the genre. Have you heard of Fairy Porn?
Tim Ferriss: No. I don’t know what Fairy Porn is. Is this, what is it called? The Fourth Wing?
Kevin Rose: This is called A Court of Thorn and Roses. Have you heard of that book?
Tim Ferriss: No. No.
Kevin Rose: Okay. So I’m like, “Okay, I’ll buy it.” And I download it on Audible. It’s damn good.
Tim Ferriss: Is it like dime store romance novels with Fabio?
Kevin Rose: No, no, no, it’s more sophisticated than that.
Tim Ferriss: That’s what they all say.
Kevin Rose: I never thought I would be listening to this shit.
Tim Ferriss: How many times does the word throbbing come up?
Kevin Rose: So far, maybe twice.
Tim Ferriss: Manhood? Times four.
Kevin Rose: No, but what’s different than the old, when you go to the grocery store, you see the dudes with the chiseled abs and everything, is they actually are taking these very sophisticated, almost like it’s fantasy. It’s like well written fantasy. And then there’s a little bit of thrown in there that everyone’s like, “Ooh, he did that.” I would never listen to this shit ever. But I will say it’s interesting because they had, it was only 30,000 five star reviews.
Tim Ferriss: Wow.
Kevin Rose: I’m like, “How is this a genre I’ve just never heard of?”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s a lot. That is a lot.
Kevin Rose: So I’m trying to force myself to say, okay, once or twice a year, pick a genre that’s just-
Tim Ferriss: That’s great.
Kevin Rose: … completely different than you would ever expose yourself to and go deep. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that with any…
Tim Ferriss: I do this all the time just to find things that I would never read. Hard Times is a good example where I was just like, “Ed, give me a book that I would never find.” And he was like, “I got one for you.” So I did bring up the Fourth Wing because this is one that was everywhere. I’m sure it has 100,000.
Kevin Rose: Let me see if you have a picture of it.
Tim Ferriss: I’m sure it has 100,000 reviews on… It’s like that.
Kevin Rose: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: And basically I saw, again, early to mid, maybe 30 to 40 year old women all over the place reading this book, and they seem to be business women. And I was like, “What is going on?”
Kevin Rose: Yeah, the personal recommendation like this is professional.
Tim Ferriss: Why are they reading fantasy? Something doesn’t add up here.
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: And then not to diminish it, I’m sure they’re great books, but it’s like dragon porn. It’s like there is a porn aspect to the whole thing.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, there has to be.
Tim Ferriss: And what some people may not know, and I think I’m getting this right.
Kevin Rose: It’s not like porn. It’s not porn. It’s a romance. Well, I mean, yeah, there’s sex, but porn is very different. That’s not, but yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, look, it depends on what we’re talking about, but yeah. It’s not like gang bangs every five pages, but there’s still some pretty explicit stuff. What people may not realize, I am almost 100% sure I’m getting this right, but I’m not going to fact check it now on my phone. Do you know how Fifty Shades of Grey started?
Kevin Rose: No.
Tim Ferriss: It was fan fiction. It was Twilight series fan fiction. So somebody was writing an extension of within the Twilight world, her own fiction, super sexualized, and that turned into Fifty Shades of Grey.
Kevin Rose: Oh, wild.
Tim Ferriss: Isn’t that crazy?
Kevin Rose: That is insane.
Tim Ferriss: It is something like that. It may not be Twilight specifically, but it was fan fiction, fantasy that then got converted into its own franchise in the form of Fifty Shades of Grey.
Kevin Rose: Have you ever read that book?
Tim Ferriss: I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do the writing. I tried.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I never read it.
Tim Ferriss: All due respect to the author, I could not digest the prose, but what it demonstrated to me was the power of a simple premise. It’s just like you have… I mean, people are probably familiar with the series, but it’s like you have this whatever it is, what’s his name? Christian Grey, this billionaire rich guy with a sex dungeon and super explicit. And I remember a number of different pieces of coverage described it as mommy porn, for what that’s worth. But it impressed me. I tried to get through the prose, I couldn’t do it, but the power of a simple premise, it’s like how visceral and simple is your premise and concede. And honestly, that’s where, for instance, my third book, 4-Hour Chef, that’s where it failed. It tried to do too much. It was like three books in one. It was not a simple premise. It was very complicated.
Kevin Rose: Why do you see that failed? Because I felt like it was well received.
Tim Ferriss: It was well received. I mean, it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It sold 120,000 copies the first week, but that was a function of my diehard audience who would take me at my word that it’s worth reading. But if you went blind, unfamiliar with me at all, to the say Amazon page, it tried to do too much. And I think this is true with presentations. If I’m talking to someone who’s going, for instance, I was just coaching someone who’s going on 60 minutes and they wanted to talk about messaging. Or if I’m talking to somebody who’s got a TED Talk coming up and they’re asking for advice, my advice is always the same. I didn’t come up with this.
Somebody else gave it to me, which is presentations fail from too much information, not too little information. And I think that’s true with books too. It’s like, does this conjure a simple image in someone’s head immediately? And that is not easy to do while being differentiated. So Fifty Shades of Grey nailed it, completely nailed it. And that has turned this thing into a global phenomenon. Whereas this third book, which I’m still very proud of, I think it’s a great book, but it’s really three or four books combined into one. And to try to convey that to anyone in a paragraph is next to impossible.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I mean, the same applies to so much in life though. I mean, even on the product side, of all the products that I’ve built over the years, it is… I watch entrepreneurs going to launch new consumer products or whatever it may be. The ones that boil the ocean and throw in every single feature and they’re like, “Oh, but wouldn’t it be great if it had this?” I’m like, “Yeah, maybe, someday.” But can you really distill down this idea to that one concept so that when you’re in that, I used to call it the crowded bar conversation, not the elevator pitch, but the crowded bar. If you want to say in two sentences what your thing does, can you get it out there where they say, “Oh yeah, I’ll go check that out?” Oftentimes you can’t do it. The battle is cutting features out. This is what Steve Jobs was so good at. It’s like he could have added App Store on day one for the iPhone, but it was like he didn’t. He was like, “It’s going to do these 10 things really well and then slowly build on that base.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, if the V1 iPhone could get away with no copy paste, remember that?
Kevin Rose: Oh yeah, that’s right.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like, bro, talk about minimalist.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, so true.
Tim Ferriss: And this is also part of the reason why, frankly, the book that I’m working on right now has taken so long, because I’m like, “It’s not ready just yet,” because the way that I try to explain it in the crowded bar test, there are ways I could probably do market analysis to get more comfortable or to confirm or disconfirm this concern maybe. But if I talk to say some of our friends who are super busy and I tell them it’s a book on saying no and focusing in a world of noise. How do you create systems for that? They’re like, “Fuck, I need that right now. Please send me the draft today. I don’t care if it’s rough.”
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: But for nine out of 10 people who are not one of our friends or one of the podcast guests who have been on, when I tell them that, I do not see the slight eye-opening and lean in. I don’t see it. They’re like, “Oh, interesting.” And I’m like, “Hmm.”
Kevin Rose: Is it because most people are looking for more things to say yes to because they don’t have the opportunity to…
Tim Ferriss: Well, this is what I’m working on deducing. Is it the title? Maybe it’s the title. So I was just playing around with that yesterday. Is it the description where the promise is unclear? Is it the fact that it sounds perhaps negative instead of affirming, saying no versus something else? Because a third of the book actually is how to pick the one or two things that change everything to say yes to. So it’s like, “Maybe the book positioning should be more focused on that.” It would require a very heavy lift on revamping a bunch of the positioning in the book or explanatory stuff in the book. But I am trying to learn from past mistakes. I don’t think this book tries to do too much. I don’t think that’s a problem. And everybody who actually reads it, a test reader, they’re like, “I was never bored. I would gift this book to my friends more than any of your other books.”
Kevin Rose: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: So it’s working, but if people go to the Amazon page and the title and the description don’t work, it doesn’t matter, you’re dead. Right?
Kevin Rose: Mm-hmm.
Tim Ferriss: So that Fifty Shades of Grey genius, I want to get that right, which is part of the reason why I’m like, “I don’t need to publish a book. I didn’t take an advance,” which has its own drawbacks. I don’t have a gun to the head. I don’t have accountability to a publisher, which actually can be a bad thing because we have 20 different things we’re doing at any given time. It’s very easy to be like, “Eh, I’ll just push it off another six months. It’s fine.” And that’s actually not a great thing when it comes to writing books. So TPD, but that’ll get figured out. I feel pretty confident in that. My aim is to have the book done in the next eight weeks.
Kevin Rose: Oh, wow. And so when you go from that to no publisher, how do you think about printing? How do you think about distribution? Are you going to do author’s equity or these other independent…
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I’m leaning towards author’s equity. I’m a small investor in that company. I mean, not enough to…
Kevin Rose: People should know that’s James Clear’s from Atomic Habits.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, James Clear’s one of the largest investors. I mean, talk about a phenomenon, man. Holy shit. What is it? 25, 30 million copies sold. Nobody does that. In prescriptive nonfiction, nobody does that. I mean, James is a non-recurring phenomenon. Very nice guy, very smart guy. And he’s one of the largest investors in Authors Equity. Great team at Authors Equity. So I’m leaning towards doing something with them. I don’t know what the exact form will take. Do I do all formats? Do I do some formats? I’m not overly worried about that. I was just chatting with them the other day just to figure out what are the actual lead times if we’re going to do the dead tree format in addition to other things. I’ve thought about only doing Kindle and Audible, but I feel like this book… Here’s a hot take.
Kevin Rose: Feels like a giftable book.
Tim Ferriss: Well, it’s a giftable book, but here’s the other hot take, is the more this become… I’m holding up my iPhone. The more these become a digital leash that is feeding you 24/7 distraction, the more I want to have a format that forces people to single task. And the only option for that right now, I suppose you could do it on a Kindle if people are using an actual Kindle device that is not internet connected for distraction, but print is a great way to single task.
Kevin Rose: Oh, I know.
Tim Ferriss: And this is a workbook. This is not a passive spectator book. If you put in the work, if you put four hours of work into this book, it should save you.
Kevin Rose: I hope it’s four.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. If you put four, let’s call it five. If you put five hours of work, inflation. If you put five hours of work into this book, it should save you 100 hours in the next year, if you’re a busy person, without question. And it just goes up from there. So we’ll see. But the goal is to be done in the next eight weeks.
Kevin Rose: What is the lead time, just out of curiosity, for someone looking to make an actual physical book? Is it three months, five months?
Tim Ferriss: It depends a lot on who you’re talking to. Some publishers…
Kevin Rose: Yeah. How big the first run is, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And the size doesn’t matter as much as you might think if it’s a simple page layout, black and white or two color. I would say it’s still pretty slow. But there’s a lot that goes into it. If you’re going to get a polished book and you’re not just self-pubbing whatever comes off your laptop, if you’re going to have copy editors and professional layout and so on, there are things that make that easier. I’m sure AI could do a lot of page layout at this point. I’m sure people are developing harnesses that’ll help with that specifically. But if you’re looking to have… And I’m not sure how relevant this is to me at this point, honestly, in terms of retail distribution. I don’t know how much it matters in terms of market share at this point. Things are changing so quickly and have been changing so quickly. But if you really want the full traditional experience, I would say from what you consider finished book, but there’s still people who are going to do copy editing and everything else, probably a year.
Kevin Rose: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, maybe more.
Kevin Rose: Holy shit, that’s slow.
Tim Ferriss: Now, there are cases where you can do a crash book where it’s like, okay, let’s just say… I mean, this is maybe not a lovely example, but it’s like Princess Diana dies, publisher wants to be first out of the gate. Can they get a book printed and out the door in three months? Yeah, they can. If they make it the top priority and everything else goes to the back of the line, yeah. If in most cases, if their primary distribution is in the US and they have printers in the US, a lot of publishers print overseas. So those are all factors that go into it. And part of me is like, “Man, once I’m done with this, I want to out ASAP. I don’t want to wait for a year.” So what does that mean? Do I not do print? Do I do some small print run?
Kevin Rose: It might be interesting to just do one print run ever.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Do I do publish on demand? You can get out the door quickly with POD and the quality has gone up a lot.
Kevin Rose: But the collectibility of a single run of 10,000 could be really interesting.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, yeah, I could do that. I mean, who knows? Maybe I do that and then I’m like, “Hey, if you want the book, you can either get a hard copy now and there are 10,000 copies, or you can get it in a year or you can get a different format.”
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Right?
Kevin Rose: That’s cool.
Tim Ferriss: So I get excited about it. It’s a strong book. I feel very, very good about it. I mean, I wouldn’t put it out otherwise. I cut it from, I think it was 870 pages down to 350. That is a lot of cutting.
Kevin Rose: Holy shit.
Tim Ferriss: That’s a lot of cutting. So everything that is in the book right now has been rated by test readers and proofreaders, multiple test readers as an eight, nine or 10 out of 10 in quality. Everything that remains is kind of cream of the crop.
Kevin Rose: That’s awesome.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it should be strong.
Kevin Rose: I’m excited to check it out.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, we’ll see. Anything else we should talk about?
Kevin Rose: No, I think I’m good. I think I covered everything I wanted to cover. You know what? I’ll send out some of those invites. I can get more of those instinct invites. Kevinrose.com newsletter over there, sign up and I will send a bunch out when this goes live.
Tim Ferriss: Sweet. And then just to add to the dueling email newsletters.
Kevin Rose: You already mentioned yours earlier, bitch.
Tim Ferriss: I know I’m doing tim.blog/friday. I don’t even know if I’m pointing to the right camera.
Kevin Rose: No, your newsletter is great.
Tim Ferriss: 5-Bullet Friday.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, there’s five bullets. The kevinrose.com newsletter is slightly longer, a little bit more information dense, probably more takeaways there. So just kevinrose.com.
Tim Ferriss: Also includes a free nude.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Include one foot picture of every new subscriber.
Tim Ferriss: Please join my OnlyFans. I’m going to make one more recommendation, which is, I’m not going to say anti-AI, but it’s nice counterbalance. I don’t know if he wants credits. I’m not going to mention our friend who sent this to us, but there is a short article called “Please Use AI” by someone called Shawn Smucker, S-M-U-C-K-E-R, “Please Use AI.” And it’s a beautiful piece about preserving the beauty and integrity of human interaction and why you should not always strive for optimizing efficiency with LLMs and computers. So check it out. “Please Use AI” by Shawn, that’s S-H-A-W-N, Smucker. It’s really, really good. I’ve been sending that to different friends of mine. Because I put it in the newsletter not too long ago, maybe two months ago, and I mentioned that the “Please Use AI” piece reminds me of a Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers, passage that is about telling his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope.
So this is Kurt Vonnegut, wrote Breakfast of Champions and tons of other classics. So this is Kurt. She says, “Well, you’re not a poor man. Why don’t you go online and buy 100 envelopes and put them in the closet?” And so I pretend not to hear her and go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I’m going to meet a lot of people and see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by and I give them the thumbs up and ask them what kind of dog that is. And I don’t know. The moral of the story is we’re here on Earth to fart around and don’t let anybody tell you different. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. What the computer people don’t realize or they don’t care is we’re dancing animals. So check out “Please Use AI” by Shawn Smucker.
Kevin Rose: I love that.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a good one.
Kevin Rose: I’m actually very, very, very bullish on this idea that AI will make almost everything that we need to do in terms of the tactical day-to-day stuff just almost handled to the extent to where we can get together in person, in real life, hang out, hopefully have more leisure time. I think there will… Like with everything, we’ve seen them as alcohol in the last decade. Alcohol consumption’s at an all time low right now. There’s always a pendulum that swings back the other way.
Tim Ferriss: You got the ketamine going the other direction, but yeah.
Kevin Rose: No doubt. But we see this, social media, oh, now it’s bad for us. People are wanting less of that.
Tim Ferriss: Now, here’s something I didn’t think of. Could the decline in alcohol consumption actually be reflective of people sitting at home and not socializing outside?
Kevin Rose: That, I don’t know, I love alcohol.
Tim Ferriss: Do you know what I mean though?
Kevin Rose: I have no idea.
Tim Ferriss: But you know what I’m talking about, right?
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: It could actually correlate to people spending more time at home on their computers and their phones. What I would say is with the AI stuff, I hope it results in people having more in-person interactions. I do think that people are going to feel the poison. The dose makes the poison. I think they’ll feel that it’s not good for them in a very visceral, deep way that has not perhaps been as obvious in the last five years minus AI. And I’m not the first person to observe this, it’s like if interacting with a digital companion is easier than interacting with your actual partner, if they’re always supportive and saying the right things and they’re not getting dysregulated and freaking out like all humans do.
If kids find their customized LLM a better parent easier to deal with because it eliminates some of the messiness of unpredictable human interactions, what are the consequences of that? The leisure time, I hope that’s true. I have not ever… There have been so many technologies with that promise, the industrial revolution, we can go through a long list and I have not yet seen it. I don’t know anyone who’s like, “I used AI to free up a bunch of free time that I’m now using for kite boarding and knitting.” They’re like, “I was doing two projects, but now I can do 10 projects.” Or…
Kevin Rose: Something always fills the gap, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Something’s always going to fill the gap and you have to be very selective about what’s going to fill that gap. But I will say for me, the daily grind of email and a lot of those other things, now that I have these and it’s going to be like, “Hey Kevin, you need to pay attention to this.” I don’t have to check all the other spam and all the other crap that’s coming in there. It has freed up time. Now, am I using it to AI code then? Yes, I am. I’m going right back in. But in theory, I could be doing woodworking or some other thing.
Tim Ferriss: The woodworking.
Kevin Rose: Japanese woodworking.
Tim Ferriss: The woodworking comes up every nine months.
Kevin Rose: I love Japanese woodworking. You know Japanese joinery is amazing.
Tim Ferriss: I know. Your Japanese woodworking is like my Jean-Claude Van Damme splits. I’m like, someday.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly.
Tim Ferriss: I’m going to get there.
Kevin Rose: Oh, no doubt.
Tim Ferriss: Someday between two chairs, I’m going to be doing splits. It’s like, “Yeah, we’ll see with those hips.” Not getting any younger.
Kevin Rose: Should we have a competition?
Tim Ferriss: For which one?
Kevin Rose: Who can do the splits first.
Tim Ferriss: I thought it was going to be if you can get to Japanese woodworking before I get to the splits.
Kevin Rose: No, no, no, I’ve been going to StretchLab. I’ve been having people stretch me out. I’ll be able to do the splits and then Van Damme split within six months.
Tim Ferriss: Within six months.
Kevin Rose: Oh, 100%.
Tim Ferriss: How much you want to bet?
Kevin Rose: I’ll put some Zcash on that. How much do you… You want to do $500 a charity?
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Kevin Rose: Charity of my choice.
Tim Ferriss: Well, hold on. First of all, this is just a bet about whether Kevin does something in six months.
Kevin Rose: The splits?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: So I’m out of the picture.
Kevin Rose: Why are you out of the picture?
Tim Ferriss: Well, I’m just saying. You’re…
Kevin Rose: Oh, you don’t want to do the splits?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t care that much about it, frankly.
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: But if you’re saying you’re going to get to Jean-Claude Van Damme splits in six months, I’m like, “I will take the other side of that bet.”
Kevin Rose: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: 500 bucks a charity?
Kevin Rose: To charity. A charity of your choice or mine. So either Brainstem or Zen Meditation is where it’s going.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. Yeah. Something apolitical, not bullshit.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So, just for clarity, you’re saying you’re going to be able to do Jean-Claude Van Damme split between two chairs in six months.
Kevin Rose: Okay. So just as a reminder, just so I have this correct, one leg on one chair, the other on the other chair, hovering in the air.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s a straight…
Kevin Rose: Do I have to be a full straight line?
Tim Ferriss: I mean, you can have like…
Kevin Rose: Like an inch and a half.
Tim Ferriss: Sure, inch and a half.
Kevin Rose: Okay. Okay.
Tim Ferriss: You’re going to do that in six months.
Kevin Rose: But do I have to hold myself up? Is that hard to do? I don’t know.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you have to be stupidly strong and you’re adductors. Otherwise, it just tears your legs out like chicken legs. Yeah.
Kevin Rose: We’re going to do this live on the podcast. I’m going to rip my groin and I’ll be in a wheelchair for six months for 500 bucks. [inaudible].
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, sure. On that note, folks, another random show. Kev Kev, great to see you.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And we’ll put stuff in the show notes. God knows. Sorry to my post-production team-
Kevin Rose: Lots of supplements.
Tim Ferriss: … for all the things that you’re going to need to put in, but tim.blog/podcast for people who want to check it out.
Kevin Rose: Kevinrose.com. It’s a great newsletter.
Tim Ferriss: There you go. All right. Thanks for tuning in, guys. See you.
Kevin Rose: See you.
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