Black Holes, Denny’s Fist Fights, Japanese Handjob Culture & Microplastics - Rabbit Hole #4

Chris Williamson 0:00 Speaking of shiny heads.

Tim Ferriss 0:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:02 Tim, have you ever been to South Korea?

Tim Ferriss 0:04 Yes, I have.

Chris Williamson 0:04 Okay. Uh, would you like to go back?

Tim Ferriss 0:06 I would, yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:07 Uh, well, South Korean president calls for hair loss treatment to be covered by insurance, suggesting that government-funded looksmaxxing may increase the birth rate.

Tim Ferriss 0:15 They've tried-

Chris Williamson 0:15 His interesting proposal characterizes hair loss as, quote, "A matter of survival."

Tim Ferriss 0:20 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 0:21 How do you feel about that, Tim?

Tim Ferriss 0:23 I think that is not the right solution to the problem.

Chris Williamson 0:26 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 0:26 They have, they have tried a lot in South Korea. So I, I have spent time there. I would love to go back.

Chris Williamson 0:32 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 0:32 It is like-

Tim Urban 0:32 A topic that is often very distressful to people living with it.

Tim Ferriss 0:35 There you go.

Tim Urban 0:35 How do you feel?

Tim Ferriss 0:36 I, I am not distressed 'cause I shaved my head starting with wrestling at, like age 12, so I got used to it thankfully.

Chris Williamson 0:42 Oh, you upped it then?

Tim Ferriss 0:43 As soon as I saw the option to white knuckle or shave my head, I decided to shave my head. But the... I think the stickier part here is actually some systemic issues related to things like rent in South Korea, because they tried a stimulus of something like $2 billion to encourage procreation. Didn't work. And when you look at some of the issues in South Korea that are not obvious originally, because people point to idiocracy like comps where they're like, "Well, everybody's waiting later, they're getting more educated," da, da, da. But in South Korea, for instance, if you want to build a family, meaning you're gonna need a larger apartment, there are very straightforward things that are a problem. Like, your safety deposit for, or security deposit for the apartment is like 12 months' rent, and people can't afford it. So they're like, "I can't afford-"

Chris Williamson 1:37 That's an even dep-

Tim Ferriss 1:37 "... I can't af- I can't afford it"

Tim Urban 1:38 That's, that's so much, so, so many months' rent for a security deposit.

Tim Ferriss 1:42 It is. It is. And they're like, "I can't afford it, therefore I can't have kids."

Tim Urban 1:44 Who can, who can afford a year of rent if, if they're renting an apartment?

Tim Ferriss 1:46 Yeah. And I may be getting the months slightly wrong, but I talked to some Koreans and they're like, "No, it's like I wanna have a kid, and here are the reasons I can't."

Tim Urban 1:53 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:53 So I don't think fixing hair loss is gonna actually solve that type of problem.

Chris Williamson 1:56 Look, Tim, we're, we're playing in the margins here because we can't get into the housing problem.

Tim Ferriss 1:59 [laughs] Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:59 Okay? And the margins happen to be the top of the head. That's what matters most. The, the most interesting explanation I've heard for South Korea is K-pop. In order to become a K-pop star, you have to sign, uh, your agreement, your artist agreement says that you're not gonna be in a relationship while you're doing it.

Tim Ferriss 2:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:14 So they have created the most popular cultural export and import, I guess, or i- i- internal stars have-

Tim Ferriss 2:22 Hmm

Chris Williamson 2:22 ... no families, no kids. Think about what happens when you do that. Like it's just-

Tim Ferriss 2:25 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 2:25 ... so inversion. Easy as fuck. The only way you can become a K-pop star is if you've already got kids.

Tim Ferriss 2:30 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:32 That's the, that's how... That's my solution anyway. That's way more exciting than housing-

Tim Urban 2:34 Yeah, 'cause also these become, they become like-

Chris Williamson 2:35 ... 'cause housing's fucking dumb

Tim Urban 2:36 ... role models, and now these role models have no kids.

Tim Ferriss 2:38 Those kids don't need rooms. What are we talking about here?

Chris Williamson 2:40 Yeah, no, they can go on the road on the tour bus.

Tim Ferriss 2:43 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 2:43 Right? With the... Well, there was that guy in Georgia, so, uh, to try and fix the Ge-

Tim Ferriss 2:46 The country or the state?

Chris Williamson 2:48 Uh, the country of Georgia.

Tim Ferriss 2:49 Oh.

Chris Williamson 2:50 Uh, in an attempt to try and improve the birth rate there. It's very religious.

Tim Ferriss 2:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:53 I think it's very Roman Catholic. And there's a rock star bapt- uh, um, uh, uh, preacher guy, and he said, "I will personally baptize the third child of any family in the country." All of these families speed ran children to get to the third, and he's... It's had a meaningful increase in the birth rate because these families wanted this guy that was basically the, the most popular person on, i- in the entire country to, like do the, do the thing on the kid, so.

Tim Ferriss 3:20 Or you could just do what certain billionaires, like the CEO of Telegram, has done and say, "I will pay for IVF for as many women who would like to have my-"

Chris Williamson 3:29 Oh, he's sperm donating his way to-

Tim Ferriss 3:31 ... yeah, 100 plus.

Chris Williamson 3:33 The, well, does the-

Tim Urban 3:33 Yeah, he's a 2026 Genghis Khan.

Tim Ferriss 3:37 Yeah, yeah, he's doing it the nicer way.

Tim Urban 3:38 It's weird that most people-

Chris Williamson 3:39 International Genghis Khan

Tim Urban 3:39 ... don't do that, you know? We're so programmed to... It's like you're, it's like we're programmed for the instrumental part of it, like the sex.

Tim Ferriss 3:46 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 3:46 But like, not actually, the actual, like, evolutionary goal is not part of the programming.

Tim Ferriss 3:50 Right.

Chris Williamson 3:51 Hmm.

Tim Urban 3:52 And if it were, it would be insane. You'd have every rich person would be sperm, sperm donating.

Tim Ferriss 3:55 Yeah.

Tim Urban 3:55 It's crazy. It would be like all these scandals. It would be, be people with thousands of kids. It's-

Chris Williamson 4:00 More ideas guys than operations guys, I guess.

Tim Urban 4:03 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 4:03 You know, one of the, um... Have you seen the documentary of the guy who had 1,000 children?

Tim Urban 4:08 No.

Chris Williamson 4:08 So he started off as a sperm donor.

Tim Urban 4:10 This is, this is the doc- the doctor, or no?

Chris Williamson 4:11 Uh, no, it's not a doctor. It's just-

Tim Urban 4:12 'Cause there's one of those too

Chris Williamson 4:13 ... it- if you could search it, Jar, it's this big thick, like, um, Dutch looking guy, and he started off l- local sperm donating. But I think in the Netherlands, the limit's 20, and he just started going to different jurisdictions, like playing around with it in the Netherlands.

Tim Urban 4:27 I thought it was, was it, was it not a guy that switched out the sperm for his own?

Tim Ferriss 4:31 There was a doctor who did that.

Chris Williamson 4:31 He was a doctor.

Tim Ferriss 4:32 There's a documentary about that.

Tim Urban 4:33 Oh, so we've got two guys-

Chris Williamson 4:33 He's like the Harold Shipman of, of sperm

Tim Urban 4:35 ... we've got two guys trying to achieve the same thing but very different routes in.

Chris Williamson 4:38 Correct. Correct. And this guy, 'cause there's a limit in the Netherlands of, I think, of 20 children that you're allowed to do it, because they're then concerned of-

Tim Urban 4:45 Inbreeding

Chris Williamson 4:46 ... inbreeding that may happen, and this guy ranked it all the way up to 1,000. And then when he got banned from the Netherlands, he started going, I believe, to Kenya just to rack up the numbers.

Tim Urban 4:53 You're really gonna stand out in Kenya if you're-

Chris Williamson 4:55 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Urban 4:56 ... a guy from the Netherlands, aren't you?

Chris Williamson 4:57 Yeah. So this, this-

Tim Urban 4:57 Like when the kids, when the kids come out, you're really gonna know that that's not somebody from Kenya.

Chris Williamson 5:00 Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. There's a MrBeast of everything.

Tim Urban 5:02 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 5:03 When you have... Guy's gotta win, you know?

Tim Urban 5:07 But like when you have a, a guy like that, you really want him to be, have a really, really good DNA. You want him to be, like high IQ and good disposition and-

Chris Williamson 5:14 You want Formula One drivers to be doing this. We need Max Verstappen-

Tim Urban 5:17 Yeah

Chris Williamson 5:17 ... to be, like providing us with sperm.

Tim Urban 5:20 'Cause like you're, you're, you're having a meaningful effect on like the whole-

Chris Williamson 5:21 Hmm

Tim Urban 5:22 ... human gene pool when you do that, like especially like-

Chris Williamson 5:23 Yeah

Tim Urban 5:23 ... three or four generations later when there's 100,000 of your descendants in the world and they're procreating and...

Tim Ferriss 5:28 Well, what does the future look like if it's the progeny of billionaires plus the hyper-religious, right? [laughs] Like what does that mix look like? When you look at certain countries and birth rates by kind of subpopulation, say in certain places in the Middle East and stuff, and it's very much the hyper-religious, right? So what does that mean in 20 years' time?

Tim Urban 5:48 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 5:49 I don't know.

Tim Urban 5:49 It's also the really impoverished people who are in a, an environment where a lot of kids used to die, die in childbirth, but d- now they don't anymore.

Tim Ferriss 5:56 Hmm.

Tim Urban 5:56 But the, the, the adjustment of, of, uh, you know, fertility goes, goes, takes la- a lag generation, so you have this huge ballooning usually.

Tim Ferriss 6:04 Yeah.

Tim Urban 6:05 So that's also...

Tim Ferriss 6:06 Tim Urban, I wanna know what's on your mind, man. What have you been, what have you been- ... obsessed with. I mean, we'll get to pianos I'm sure, but maybe, maybe that's for later after a few toothpicks.

Tim Urban 6:16 I, I, uh, I'm, I'm very... When I'm writing a book, I'm just, like, in it and immersed in it.

Tim Ferriss 6:21 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 6:21 So I've been working on a book for three years. It's the story of everything, and it goes from the Big Bang to the end of the universe.

Tim Ferriss 6:26 You know, I've always wanted to say, I think you should be just a little more ambitious, you know?

Tim Urban 6:30 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 6:30 Reach for the brass ring.

Tim Urban 6:32 You know, it's, like, secretly kind of not as hard as it seems because you don't have to go that in-depth on anything.

Tim Ferriss 6:39 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 6:39 So it's little dips. It's like a kind of, like, 100 blog posts in, in one.

Tim Ferriss 6:42 You're like, "World War II, that was a bummer, but it worked out."

Tim Urban 6:45 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 6:45 No, no, no. So, so for example-

Tim Urban 6:47 One sentence [laughs] .

Tim Ferriss 6:48 One sentence.

Tim Urban 6:48 No, no, literally.

Tim Ferriss 6:49 [laughs]

Tim Urban 6:49 Like, so World, World War-

Tim Ferriss 6:49 Sorry, sorry Japan. We'll make it up to you.

Tim Urban 6:52 [laughs] I was like, what do I do? I have the world wars. I can't not mention them.

Tim Ferriss 6:55 Yeah.

Tim Urban 6:55 But, like, I, there's certain thi- I wanna focus on things that people are like, "I never knew that," or, like-

Tim Ferriss 6:59 Mm

Tim Urban 6:59 ... "That's so mind-blowing." Like, I'm not gonna go, I'm not gonna, we're not gonna go deep enough. Everyone knows the basics of World War II.

Tim Ferriss 7:05 Right.

Tim Urban 7:05 Right? So I decided instead I'm gonna make it, like, a two-page story that's gonna be an, an allegory, which is, um, a d- a brawl at Denny's.

Tim Ferriss 7:15 [laughs]

Tim Urban 7:15 Uh, 'cause I used to, I, 'cause I got hooked on YouTube spiral of brawls at Denny's. It's very entertaining. And so then that came to my mind. I was, like, hooked on one that week when I was writing this, and I was like, okay, so you've got, like, um, you know, you've got, uh, a bunch of tension in the room, and then finally, like, you know, Austria, Hungary goes over and just, like, you know, slaps Serbia guy in the face and then, and then, you know, a bunch of, you know, and then you have Russia and France kind of are like, you know, these big guys who are friends with the Serbia guy. You know, I just, so I just did this.

Tim Ferriss 7:40 Yeah [laughs] .

Tim Urban 7:41 And, a- and I don't know. I don't... A lot of the times I'm like, "Wee, I don't know if that's good. I don't know if people will like this. That's what I just did. I guess that's how we're doing the World Wars." And then I move on 'cause I have to move on.

Tim Ferriss 7:50 Allegory of Denny's.

Tim Urban 7:51 Yeah. 'Cause e- everything I have to think about, how do I get this in there in a way that's still fun and new-

Tim Ferriss 7:56 Mm

Tim Urban 7:56 ... and different. I don't want, I don't want you to feel like you're reading a textbook or an encyclopedia.

Tim Ferriss 8:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 8:00 I would love one-sentence historical event recaps. I think that would be a fucking wonderful idea.

Tim Ferriss 8:06 Just like fortune cookie history.

Chris Williamson 8:08 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 8:08 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 8:08 'Cause, uh, Barstool Sports, Dave Portnoy does the one bite pizza review.

Tim Ferriss 8:12 Right.

Chris Williamson 8:12 And this is just the historical equivalent.

Tim Ferriss 8:13 It's like that Elton John, uh, diary entry of-

Chris Williamson 8:16 Oh. Oh

Tim Ferriss 8:16 ... I think it's-

Chris Williamson 8:17 Oh, it's one of the-

Tim Ferriss 8:18 ... bought, bought a Rolls-Royce.

Chris Williamson 8:19 No, no, no, no, no, no.

Tim Ferriss 8:20 Phenomenal.

Chris Williamson 8:20 I mean, you taught, you taught me about this.

Tim Ferriss 8:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:21 It's the single, it's a single grade. That or the Hunter S. Thompson one which, like, tracked... I guess that wasn't a diary entry, that tracked what his daily routine was.

Tim Ferriss 8:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 8:29 Uh, woke up at 12:00 midday-

Tim Ferriss 8:31 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 8:31 ... uh, two cigarettes, cocaine, whiskey, cocaine-

Tim Ferriss 8:35 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 8:35 ... whiskey, MDMA, da, da, da, da, da. Um, but yeah.

Tim Ferriss 8:38 Oh, here it is. Got up, tidied the house, bought a Rolls-Royce, had dinner, wrote Candle in the Wind, had dinner with Ringo Starr.

Chris Williamson 8:47 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 8:47 That was one day.

Chris Williamson 8:49 [laughs] Bought a Rolls-Royce, wrote Candle in the Wind, had dinner with Ringo Starr.

Tim Ferriss 8:53 I wonder if tidying the house was meaningful to him. Was that, like, soothing therapy, or was that just buying time before he could justify-

Chris Williamson 9:01 The Rolls-Royce

Tim Ferriss 9:01 ... walking to the Rolls-Royce dealership?

Chris Williamson 9:03 Dealership opened.

Tim Ferriss 9:04 I will never know.

Tim Urban 9:05 It's also two dinners in there.

Tim Ferriss 9:07 That's true.

Chris Williamson 9:08 Oh, yeah. Look at that.

Tim Ferriss 9:08 I think, I think one of those is an error. I think the middle dinner didn't exist.

Tim Urban 9:11 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 9:11 We also use lunch and dinner-

Tim Ferriss 9:12 He's like a hobbit

Chris Williamson 9:12 ... we use lunch and dinner interchangeably-

Tim Ferriss 9:14 Interchangeably

Chris Williamson 9:14 ... in the UK.

Tim Ferriss 9:16 Uh-huh.

Tim Urban 9:16 It's very conf-

Chris Williamson 9:16 And then dinner is supper or something, right?

Tim Ferriss 9:17 You can throw that. You can throw tea in the mix as well, Tim.

Chris Williamson 9:20 Uh-huh.

Tim Ferriss 9:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:20 Okay.

Tim Ferriss 9:20 You can throw all sorts of different ones.

Chris Williamson 9:20 Tea is also, afters is also not bad.

Tim Ferriss 9:22 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:23 Afters is dessert.

Tim Ferriss 9:25 Completely, c- completely gets mixed up.

Tim Urban 9:27 I, I had to, so I, I also had to get s- so speaking in one sentence, I had to get from, you know, 'cause I'm going, I, I, I did, like, ancient Mesopotamia pretty thoroughly 'cause that's so, like, important. Um, and, like, you know, the first empire, which was the Akkadians, and you have Sargon the Great, the first emperor, and I did all that. And then I'm like, now I wanna get to, like, the Bronze Age collapse and that stuff, but there's 1,000 years in between. So I decided, again, I'm like, "What do I do?" So I just wrote a, I said, "I'm gonna do this in one sentence," and it ended up being a paragraph, a pretty long... It had to probably be a full page, but it's a one run-on sentence that goes through 2200 BC to 1200 BC. So you, you got, you know, it's a-

Chris Williamson 10:03 So you really speed run it.

Tim Urban 10:04 Well, but not usually. Sometimes then I would slow down and f- you know, spend 20 pages on, you know, the Bronze Age collapse or whatever. But, like, um, but, like, yeah, I think, I think one sentence-

Chris Williamson 10:13 Oh, you speed run Rome. You did a, you did Rome in a single sentence.

Tim Urban 10:15 R- no, Ro- Ro- Rome, Rome is later.

Chris Williamson 10:18 Separate treatment. Okay.

Tim Urban 10:19 Yeah, yeah. R- R- Rome I had to say a little bit more about, but, um, uh, but, you know, you can't, not gonna go through the whole-

Tim Ferriss 10:24 How did you choose this book project?

Tim Urban 10:26 Because, so I write blog posts about anything, and it's a great format. I-

Tim Ferriss 10:30 Now, just so people understand what we're talking about-

Tim Urban 10:32 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 10:32 ... 'cause I have more context than some people listening.

Tim Urban 10:34 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 10:34 How long are some of your blog posts?

Tim Urban 10:36 So the, the short ones are, like, 3,000 words, which is, like, I don't know, a, I don't know, 10, 10 minute read.

Tim Ferriss 10:41 10 pages.

Tim Urban 10:41 Yeah, something like that. Um, and then early on I was like, "I can't go over, you know, 2,000 words." And then I was like, "Okay, I can't go over 3,000, 4,000," and then it just kept going up. And then I did one that was, like, 8,000, but, like, it got some traffic, and I was like, people liked it. Okay. And then the next one I... And then I, so I just ke- had a problem where it was, like, one of these, uh, you know, it's like someone who keeps taking, like, you know, more drugs to get the same high. Like, so I would just start, like, then getting more thorough and more thorough, and by the end I was writing 40,000-word-

Tim Ferriss 11:05 That's-

Tim Urban 11:05 ... word count in full

Tim Ferriss 11:06 ... that's, that's a book for most-

Tim Urban 11:07 Yeah, that's it

Tim Ferriss 11:07 ... like, 50,000 words is a proper book.

Tim Urban 11:09 It's like 120, 150 pages, something like that. Um, and but, but s- but so I had this format where I can write any length blog post. So I'm like, why would I do a book? I'm wr- I write, I have a... And then I was like, okay, if I'm doing a book, it has to be a topic that I could never do as a blog post. Like, what's the ultimate topic that, like, is so big it has to be-

Tim Ferriss 11:25 History of everything [laughs] .

Tim Urban 11:26 So the answer was everything-

Tim Ferriss 11:27 [laughs]

Tim Urban 11:27 ... yeah, as a topic.

Tim Ferriss 11:28 Now, I, I'm just going to pat your back a little bit s- because I know you're not gonna do it yourself. One of your longer posts, is it fair to say, I hesitate to even call it a post, but man of the hour, right? SpaceX is on a lot of minds. I checked today. It's, like, 2.5 trillion market cap right now. So Elon liked your stuff so much that he gave you exclusive access to what?

Tim Urban 11:52 Yeah. So, um, he read my AI post-

Tim Ferriss 11:54 Mm

Tim Urban 11:54 ... and was like, "Hey, I like how this guy writes."

Tim Ferriss 11:55 This was Circle win.

Tim Urban 11:56 This is 2015, beginning of 2015.

Tim Ferriss 11:58 2015.

Tim Urban 11:59 So this is really early days with AI and with Elon, really.

Tim Ferriss 12:01 Yeah.

Tim Urban 12:02 I mean, a lot of, he was very, he was a huge deal, but s- a lot of people I told them my life, they didn't know who he was at that time.

Tim Ferriss 12:07 Yeah.

Tim Urban 12:07 And SpaceX was, some people knew about it, some people didn't. Um, and, uh, and basically he said You know how he, how he is. He's very like, uh, he, he likes to trust people and not, and be hands-off in, in a lot of those cases. So he would say, he said, um, "Would you like to write about Tesla or SpaceX ever?" And normally if someone's like, "You wanna write about my company?" I would say no. But like Tesla and SpaceX are s- as fascinating as any blog post could be, 'cause they're about such bigger things than a company, right?

Chris Williamson 12:35 Also with the access that you could get.

Tim Urban 12:37 So then he basically said, "You can talk to me as much as you want, and also any engineer you want, and they don't have to be media ready." But, and I said, 'cause I, I said to him, like, and then on my side, I was like, "I'll... I, I'm not like a journalist who's like the, you, you can't change anything." I'm like, "I'll send you the post at the end, and if there's something like some proprietary thing someone said that's not supposed to be in there, you can take it out." And they really almost took nothing out. It was like, it was like the, the, uh, the cost of like a Starlink sat- Starlink was an idea at that time. It was like they caught, you know, little things like, like the bandwidth of a Starlink satellite. Things like random numbers. There were like two or three of those. You can't put that in. Um, E- Elon had like criticized someone that later they were like, "Nah, we don't want that in there." I was like, "Okay, I'll take that out." Other than that, like they let the, let it go, and it was obviously I'm like a space nerd to be in SpaceX, you know, the factory in, um, in Hawthorne, and just looking at the rocket up close. I got to like sit in, in a Dragon and like talk to the-

Chris Williamson 13:29 This is, this is 2015, 2016.

Tim Urban 13:30 2015.

Chris Williamson 13:31 So early.

Tim Urban 13:31 They had never landed a rocket yet. That was the big thing at the time.

Chris Williamson 13:34 Wow.

Tim Urban 13:34 Can- no one has ever landed a rocket. SpaceX is trying to. People think they're crazy. Um, and I actually, I did one of these, 'cause they ha- they started broadcasting their launches, and I did the very, you know, it was like on one of the very first ones. Uh, they were like, "Do you wanna do one when we're trying to land a rocket?" I was like, "Sure." So I was like a guest broadcaster on the time when they landed for the first time.

Chris Williamson 13:51 That's so cool.

Tim Urban 13:51 So like the, the, the seven-year-old in me was like, "I can't believe this is real." It was like the, this, it was very exciting for me.

Chris Williamson 13:58 Yeah.

Tim Urban 13:58 Um, and then later I wrote a big, big post about Neuralink, which they'd launched the company alongside that post. So it was like, and then, and then the scariest thing ever was the whole company now is kind of waiting on me, and I am a procrastinator.

Chris Williamson 14:11 Oh, with Neuralink?

Tim Urban 14:12 Yeah. And like we're talking about how my posts always go longer. They thought it was gonna be like a 6,000-word post. This one was 40. And, um, El- Elon, by the way, I think this too, he was like, "It's so long, bro." And I was like, "This is how I am, dude. You, you, this is how... I don't, I don't know what to tell you. This, I can't not do it. There's so many... I can't talk about Neuralink without talking about other brain computer interface. I can't talk about those without talking about the brain."

Chris Williamson 14:29 And then I have to talk about evolution, and then I have to talk about the brain.

Tim Urban 14:32 Exactly. The brain, the nervous system. How did it evolve in the first place? You go b- we're at, we end up back in like the a- most ancient part of like origin of life. Um, but that's how I do it. And, and it was such a complicated story to tell 'cause it was, uh, the concept of a brain computer interface, but then the reason for it, which was like merging with AI and what the hell. So-

Chris Williamson 14:47 Mm

Tim Urban 14:48 ... it was long, but he sends out a, a, a tweet that was like, uh, like, uh, "We'll be launching in a week. A, you know, wait, but my post will be ready, like, in a week." And I was like, "No, it won't." [laughs]

Chris Williamson 15:00 [laughs]

Tim Urban 15:00 So scary. So I ended up, um, I ended up like furiously trying to finish and I finished in three weeks. And I was like, talk about, like, good external pressure.

Chris Williamson 15:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Urban 15:10 It's helpful to have, like, Elon Musk publicly putting pressure on you. So that was that. Uh, but yeah, and it's, it's just great because you get to, like, by, by writing that post-

Chris Williamson 15:20 Mm

Tim Urban 15:21 ... you end up just fully understanding, like, a whole industry you didn't understand before.

Chris Williamson 15:25 Yeah.

Tim Urban 15:25 Right? So it was, it was fun.

Chris Williamson 15:26 So amazing.

Tim Urban 15:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:27 Yeah, there are blog posts, and then there are blog posts.

Tim Urban 15:31 Right. Right, but yeah. So that's why a book had to be something even bigger than something like that. But-

Chris Williamson 15:34 You've got the, uh-

Tim Urban 15:35 Yeah

Chris Williamson 15:35 ... mo- most watched TED Talk of all time as well.

Tim Urban 15:38 Ah. Second most.

Chris Williamson 15:40 Oh, who beat you?

Tim Urban 15:41 Ken Robinson. Well, he, he was the first one-

Chris Williamson 15:43 Ah

Tim Urban 15:43 ... to post it, like back in twen- 2006. Mine was 2016, so he's got a decade on me, but I'm like, I think he has, like, 80 million, and I have, like, 78. And I'm like-

Chris Williamson 15:50 Okay

Tim Urban 15:51 ... "Come on, man. Like, just get to first. It's the most-"

Chris Williamson 15:53 Put some paid behind it. Just put some paid advertising behind it to just be like-

Tim Urban 15:55 I don't think that'll, I don't think that'll help.

Chris Williamson 15:57 I've got a guy.

Tim Urban 15:57 It's all YouTube algorithm.

Chris Williamson 15:58 He could, he could make it rip in Bangladesh.

Tim Urban 15:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:59 You could get that. [laughs]

Tim Urban 16:01 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:02 Yeah.

Tim Urban 16:02 You got one of those watch farms?

Chris Williamson 16:03 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you could do that. We could get that going.

Tim Urban 16:05 Just loads of people just learning how to not procrastinate.

Chris Williamson 16:06 You know, for, maybe for your Kindle version of your book or all your books, you just have... It's almost like signing up for Wi-Fi at the airport, like you have to watch an ad, but in this case, they have to watch your TED Talk.

Tim Urban 16:15 30 seconds. Just enough, just enough to trigger a play. That's all they need.

Chris Williamson 16:18 Out of, with the new book, let's say history's kind of like a stock market and everything's priced. I feel like World War II is very much, um, it's like Apple right now, right? Like, people talk about World War II. What parts of history from your research do you think is, like, way more fascinating than people give it credit?

Tim Urban 16:35 Oh, my God. Some, I mean, almost everything. I mean, everything once you dig in, you, you just-

Chris Williamson 16:40 Mm.

Tim Urban 16:40 S- I mean, I was just writing about the Black Hole Era. Do you know what that is? Like, uh, it's, I, I'm, I'm gonna get, like, I might, like, have an existential crisis if I talk about this, but... So basically, there's the, the Star Era goes on for like 100 trillion years or something like that. So that the last stars will be born around 100 trillion years from now, and then, like, 20 trillion years later, the last stars are, are gone, and then we're in the Degenerate Era, and there's just nothing except for little white dwarfs, and then that ends, and all that's left is black holes. And so how long is the Black Hole Era? 'Cause the black holes decay really, really slowly. Really slowly, but then some of them are gonna be huge. But there'll be a point at some point when the last black hole-

Chris Williamson 17:16 It's Hawking radiation, right?

Tim Urban 17:17 Hawking radiation, exactly. It's like the tiniest little, right around the edge, the antimatter, you know, whatever. Um, so I was like, h- how do I explain how long this is? It's 10 to the 106 years. Okay, so what does, how do you, what does that mean? How do you put that into context? And the way I thought about it is, okay, imagine if we make a timeline where every centimeter is a billion years. So, so far it's, uh, this is, this is how long we've got. Big Bang today, right? And it's, it's 13 centimeters. And now I was like, "So how long would this timeline have to be to, to, to get all the way to the end of the Black Hole Era?" And I said, "Okay, well, let's just actually get... I wanna, always wanna, like, actually do the calculation." So I was like, let's imagine this is a ribbon with a half a millimeter thickness, and it's one centimeter thi- uh, wide, and then e- every centimeter of it is, of length, is a billion years. So how long would it have to be? Turns out you'd have to, if you could pack, like, okay, if you imagine if you packed this room tightly with ribbon so it's just, like, this block, hard rock-

Chris Williamson 18:13 Yeah

Tim Urban 18:13 ... of r- of ribbon just packed as much as you possibly could in, you know, and every s- centimeter is a billion years. Okay, would that be enough time? No, you'd have to pack The entire observable universe to the brim with ribbon, and that would get you nowhere close. You'd have to have packs. And the final number I came to is 1.4 billion observable universes with this, this ribbon to have by the end of the last universe, you get to the end of the ribbon, that's the end of the Black Hole Era. So there's shit like that that I just-

Chris Williamson 18:41 I'm gonna put a wrinkle into it because after that, you still have quantum fluctuations.

Tim Urban 18:44 Oh, yeah. Oh, no, the Dark Era.

Chris Williamson 18:46 And that goes on, that goes on for even longer. So the five, the five stages of the uni- five ages of the universe, sorry, book from 1996 goes through this.

Tim Urban 18:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:53 They had to come up with their own numbering convention to be able to name it. They didn't use ribbon. Yours is much more inventive.

Tim Urban 18:57 Um, and-

Chris Williamson 18:58 Yours is way more nerdy

Tim Urban 18:58 ... the Dark Era, which just comes after the observable universe, uh, sorry, obs- after the Black Hole Er- Era is way more upsetting because now-

Chris Williamson 19:06 Mm-hmm

Tim Urban 19:06 ... imagine you have an entire... You wrote a book that con- that, that contains the history of the universe, right? And every page is an equal amount of time.

Chris Williamson 19:13 [laughs]

Tim Urban 19:13 You could pack, and it's like something like 16 of these, so a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion observable universes, but 16 trillions, um, to the brim with pages. And the, from the Big Bang to the end of the Black Hole Era, that whole thing with the ribbon I just talked about, is not even the first proton in the first atom of the first letter of the first word of the first page of the first book. So I get upset about this. [laughs] This is the kind of thing that when I think about it, then I'm, like, in bed, and I literally can't sleep, and I'm tossing and turning, and the next day my wife is like, "Why are you so tired?" And I'm like, "It's too, like, embarrassing to explain," but, like, I, I, I, I-

Chris Williamson 19:49 I'm having an existential crisis-

Tim Urban 19:50 Crisis

Chris Williamson 19:50 ... about how long the universe is gonna last

Tim Urban 19:52 ... because we won't be here, but that amount of time will pass, and that is weird. Like, no one should want eternal life.

Chris Williamson 19:58 There's a, an interesting theory about super advanced alien civilizations shutting down because toward the end of that era, you end up with an unbelievably cold universe, one that's significantly colder than ours now. Now, it's not much, but on the margins, this makes a big difference because almost all energy usage blows off heat, and if you were doing simulations, ancestor simulations, future simulations, if you had, if you'd gone into the metaverse and decided to make this your new place, it's way more efficient to do this the later that we go. So I'm gonna guess that you l- came across this too.

Tim Urban 20:28 It's one of the explanations for the Fermi paradox, which is the paradox that asks why have we not seen aliens when there's, should be s- lots of them out there. We should see something. There should be some that are far more advanced than us, so they, they should really be noticeable out there, building Dyson spheres and stuff. And there's many explanations. One of them is they're all hibernating because they've all figured this out, and they're going on this thing that will feel like a second to them, but they're just gonna go past a few, I don't know, whatever it is, 100, a few hundred billion years, and we're just in this era where it doesn't make sense for an advanced sp- species to be conscious, so they just are all hibernating.

Chris Williamson 20:59 It's like waiting for the ventilation guy to come and fit the AC before installing your new computer tower.

Tim Urban 21:04 Yeah. Mm. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 21:04 That's what, it's like it's gonna wait. It's getting too hot. It's gonna make the apartment too, too hot.

Tim Urban 21:08 Right.

Chris Williamson 21:08 We can just go chill. Let's go play pickleball for a while.

Tim Urban 21:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:09 He'll come in in a bit, and then once we, once he's done-

Tim Urban 21:11 Oh, it's hibernating. It'll just be like a blink. Okay, we're here.

Chris Williamson 21:13 Yeah.

Tim Urban 21:13 Now let's keep going.

Chris Williamson 21:14 Yeah.

Tim Urban 21:14 But to us, we're just like, "It's empty. No one's here."

Chris Williamson 21:16 Yeah. Fucking wild. It's really cool, dude. I got obsessed with that and supervoids, the Boötes Supervoid.

Tim Urban 21:23 Oh, God.

Chris Williamson 21:23 Now that, if you want an existential crisis-

Tim Urban 21:24 Another, ano- yes, another crisis.

Chris Williamson 21:26 Yeah. It's like a, so you should have a relatively uniform universe, right? A cosmic microwave background, but you don't. You have little fluctuations. This, even within little fluctuations, it should still broadly be pretty uniform, but it's not. There's these huge things called supervoids that are, like, millions of light-years across.

Tim Urban 21:45 Some, some of them are, the biggest ones are a billion light-years across.

Chris Williamson 21:47 Boötes one might be a billion light-years, a few billion light-years across, and it's almost entirely bereft of material for billions and billions of light-years. It's insane. It's so fucking-

Tim Urban 21:58 There are some theories that even we are in somewhat of a void potentially, like that there, that, that we're in a very uncrowded part of the, the observable universe perhaps.

Chris Williamson 22:07 Mm.

Tim Urban 22:07 Um, it's unclear, but... And of course, by the way, this, everything we're talking about, the voids, we see everything, that's all within the observable universe, which might be like a grain of sand compared to the Earth-sized full universe.

Chris Williamson 22:17 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 22:17 Like, this is just what we can see, and, like, uh, that also freaks me out.

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Tim Urban 23:37 Have you ever watched Power of Ten?

Chris Williamson 23:39 Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you watched Power of Ten? Maybe, Jared, you can get it on the screen on YouTube.

Tim Urban 23:42 What is it?

Chris Williamson 23:43 But it's, it... I, because as you give me that kind of conversation there, I start zooming out of myself, and I realize, oh, like I am essentially nothing. And the Power of Ten, it starts with people in a park, and it just zooms out by the power of 10, I think every three seconds. So it goes from them in the park, like zoomed in on their face, to above, to above, to above, and you realize how quickly it goes all the way out t- to the Earth just essentially being nothing. But then what's the most fascinating part of this video is they then zoom in. So then zooms in all the way... Yeah, it's that top one there. This is the nearest I've found to doing any psychedelic drugs without having to ingest anything.

Tim Urban 24:21 This is a staple of American schools. We watch this.

Chris Williamson 24:24 This was in school?

Tim Urban 24:25 Are you serious?

Chris Williamson 24:26 Oh, we all watched this.

Tim Urban 24:26 I never, I never saw this. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:27 This is how you ended up like how you ended up Tim, because this is-

Tim Urban 24:29 This is, no, this, this made a huge impression on me

Tim Ferriss 24:33 Our picture will center on the picnickers even after they've been lost to sight. 100 meters west is the city of Rhine in the Tennessee.

Tim Urban 24:38 It's nice that basically this is making those picnickers the center of the universe.

George Mack 24:42 Yeah.

Tim Urban 24:42 That's pretty fun

Tim Ferriss 24:42 Cars crowd a highway. Powerboats lie at their docks. The calm lake mirrors a old ship

Tim Urban 24:45 This, this must have been difficult to do without, uh, much computer technology

Tim Ferriss 24:49 This square is a kilometer wide, 1,000 meters.

George Mack 24:50 I know. I'm impressed.

Tim Ferriss 24:51 The distance a racing car can travel in 10 seconds

Tim Urban 24:53 Dude, fire up the autism engine. This is fucking great

Tim Ferriss 24:55 You see the great city on the lake shore.

George Mack 24:56 It's actually a beautiful, uh, like meditation technique to sit there and do this, and then start realizing how many other people out there have their own thoughts.

Tim Urban 25:03 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 25:03 We see first the rounded end of Lake Michigan, then the whole Great Lake. 10 of those feet-

25:05 Now, this is something that, um, I don't know if you guys recognize this name. So Ed Cook, who was a memory, competitive memory champion, he's, he's from your motherland. He's a Brit. And-

George Mack 25:18 Good man. That's where it's at

Tim Ferriss 25:19 ... then he trained, I think it was Jonah Lehrer in a, a book called Moonwalking with Einstein.

Tim Urban 25:24 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 25:24 So he took a layperson, in this case journalist, and trained him up to be memory champion in the US, where they have to memorize a shuffled deck of cards for time and things like this. There are various events, like kind of like a mental decathlon. But as a meditative tool, he does this zooming out.

George Mack 25:41 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 25:42 Right? And there's also a, a really [laughs] this is like the Brit roll call here, but I think Oliver Burkeman is also one of your countrymen.

George Mack 25:48 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 25:48 Wrote a great book-

George Mack 25:49 The man

Tim Ferriss 25:49 ... called 4,000 Weeks-

George Mack 25:51 Weeks, yeah

Tim Ferriss 25:52 ... which is tremendous. And one of the chapters is called Cosmic Insignificance Therapy. And it's some version of this. But that is partially why I wanted to ask you, like, to what extent do you find it helpful to think about this stuff? Where perhaps it puts problems in perspective versus overwhelming in its magnifi- magnification of your insignificance, right? Like-

George Mack 26:14 On that, there's a-

Tim Ferriss 26:15 Yeah

George Mack 26:15 ... there's a great cartoon, I think it's by Asher Perlman, and it's a guy saying, "Not only are, are your problems insignificant, you're insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe." So it's like this guy who's dealing with like nihilism.

Tim Ferriss 26:25 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 26:25 And then it's like the reframe is, "You also don't matter in the [laughs] , in the whole universe as well."

Tim Ferriss 26:29 Yeah.

George Mack 26:29 So you can have that effect that happens to people.

Tim Ferriss 26:32 Yeah. So I'm curious for you, Tim, like personally.

Tim Urban 26:35 Yeah, I mean, I, I, um, I, I, I think it does make me feel kind of cozy in a way. Like I, I, I think it makes me feel better because it makes me feel just like lucky to be conscious here for a second, as opposed to thinking like this is the baseline and oh my God, I'm gonna like die and that's gonna... I'm like, it's so cool that I, that for a moment in this universe, like my consciousness formed.

George Mack 27:00 It's so improbable, right?

Tim Urban 27:01 Yeah. And like this tiny little... Also ti- so again, we just talked about time is really scary. Space is really, right, crazy. And like you said, then goes down to the small.

George Mack 27:09 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 27:10 And like it's gets even smaller than it does big. And that's cool. I'm like a, you know, a, a, Feynman has this great quote, like, you know, "I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe." And it's like both of those, right?

George Mack 27:22 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 27:22 And it's like, uh, it, it does just make me feel like very lucky to be here. And then that, then, then, then it feels like I'm playing with house money a little bit.

George Mack 27:29 Mm.

Tim Urban 27:29 And then like suddenly death doesn't... I'm like, whatever, man. It's like I'm, this is so cool. Like it... And just like, I don't know, one, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I'm tickled by these thoughts. I find it like endlessly, like the dopamine hits I get from them. So to me it just, uh, it's a po- it's usually a positive. Um, I don't like reading about like the rise and fall of empires. You know, there's other parts of the book that I'm like, that's not a nice thought, because a lot of these empires-

George Mack 27:51 Feels a bit close to home

Tim Urban 27:52 ... at their peak they were really sure, or even on their way up or even on the early way down, they were just, they were, "This is it. We finally are here in the modern times."

George Mack 28:00 [laughs]

Tim Urban 28:00 "And we figured it out." And like those empires of the past, like they, they made mistakes that we won't make. And every single one had a catastrophic fall. I don't like that. Um-

George Mack 28:10 Yeah. Well, I was, was joking with Chris when we did an episode recently that as ev- I think we spoke about this as well, that as every empire falls, nobody announces that the empire has fallen.

Tim Urban 28:20 Mm.

George Mack 28:20 So it's obviously up for debate, but Rome, uh, most mainstream historians will say that Rome fell in about 476 AD. And it's almost because it's quite poetic because you have Romulus saw the rise of the Roman Empire. He was the first Roman emperor, and then young Romulus was disposed, and that was the end of the Roman Empire. But the next day there was no big announcement that the Roman Empire had fallen. So much so it go- you obviously have the split of the Roman Empire, um, I think in s- the 700s AD. Charlemagne is announced as the official Roman Emperor. So 300 years later, it was still going on. Voltaire said the empire that calls it- calls itself holy, Ro- Roman Empire is neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. He said that in 1700 AD. So the actual, when it came to everybody deciding that the Roman Empire had fallen, when it was officially announced, I think by Francis II, it was the mid-1700s. So I joke that the most powerful empire today, when it falls, there'll be people that still think it's go-

Tim Urban 29:20 Or maybe people-

George Mack 29:21 Which is, which is obviously-

Tim Urban 29:21 ... maybe people in 3000 will be like, "Well, of course the US Empire collapsed in 1994-"

George Mack 29:26 Yes

Tim Urban 29:26 "... uh, AD." And we'll be like, "Huh? What?" Uh- [laughs]

George Mack 29:28 It's like a punch drunk boxer that can't admit that he's failing.

Tim Urban 29:31 Yeah.

George Mack 29:31 Like, dude, your career's over. It's time to go. British Empire No. It's like, when did it happen? It happened, but when did it happen?

Tim Urban 29:44 Yeah.

Tim Urban 29:45 Uh, speaking of stuff that you learned in school, have you seen The Retro Codex? Have you seen this? Really, really cool website. So it's a website that teaches you things that you learned in school that are now disproven.

George Mack 29:58 [laughs]

Tim Urban 29:58 So you can go in and look at what year you graduated high school-

George Mack 30:02 Mm

Tim Urban 30:02 ... and it'll tell you what you learned in school and have now been disproven. Jared, can you pull this up for me? So, um, I put this in as 2000s, which would be for me and George. Uh, lightning never strikes the same place twice. Uh, lightning has struck several pl- places multiple times. Empire State Building is struck approximately 25 times a year. Uh, wearing red near a bull will cause it to charge. Bulls may not be able to distinguish the color red from other colors. What triggers the bull is movement and physical provocation, not color. The red cape is to conceal blood stains. Uh, goldfish have a three-second memory. Goldfish retain memories for weeks, months, and possibly years. George Washington had wooden teeth. He did wear dentures, but they were made of other materials such as tin, gold, and lead. Human teeth from enslaved individuals. That's a bit gnarly.

George Mack 30:45 Uh, you need to wait 20 to 30 minutes after you eat to swim or you'll get stomach cramps and drown. There's no clinical evidence for that. There's another one. Go a bit further down.

Tim Urban 30:52 Oh, I see.

George Mack 30:53 Oh, if you roll your eyes, they'll get stuck that way.

Tim Urban 30:55 You, your, your taught in school and folk wisdom checked on the top left. I was like, I don't recall getting... If you roll your eyes, they'll be stuck that way.

George Mack 31:00 Uh, go down a bit more. If you pee in the pool, everyone will know 'cause it'll turn water green.

Tim Urban 31:04 Huh, hot water washing hands is not-

George Mack 31:06 Go back up

Tim Urban 31:06 ... better than cold water. Yeah, right there. Interesting. I'm learning a few things.

George Mack 31:09 Water temperature has not been found to impact the antibacterial ef- efficacy of handwashing. Oh, I didn't even know that. After a person dies, their hair or fingernails can keep growing.

Tim Urban 31:18 Who, who, who thinks Earth is the only planet with water? I don't, I don't know about that.

George Mack 31:22 But i- in the 2000s-

Tim Urban 31:23 Uh-huh, maybe, yeah

George Mack 31:24 ... might you have thought that, 'cause Pluto being a planet would've been true when we went to high school.

Tim Urban 31:28 Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.

George Mack 31:29 Uh, brown sugar is healthier than white sugar. Yeah, I just thought it's, it's nice to fi-... And then obviously all of this stuff with the food pyramid, that's got turned literally upside down, so.

Tim Urban 31:38 Some of these will end up being overturned too, but yeah. Um-

George Mack 31:41 Oh, for sure.

Tim Urban 31:42 I, I think when I was thinking about, you know, the way kids are educated, I think that schools do something that I think in some cases it, like, state, at least they traditionally, that is, that is maybe the right thing to do, which is you teach the wrong story, the simple wrong story first, just to, like, let the concepts, and then later you start to build the nuance and you realize that the... But that's the kind of like, like Thanksgiving. I think it's, I, I think it's, I learned early on that Thanksgiving was this, like, wonderful thing, and the Pilgrims came and the, the Indians at the time, the Indians were like, and everyone was happy, and they had this nice feast and, uh, or, you know, just like Columbus discovered the New World. But I'm like, "Well, he didn't." But, like, and just, like, keep it, um, let, let the basic story simp- seep in, and then later you can be like, "Actually, like, th- this is, like, an allegory kind of for, uh, that, that represents, like, a much larger, more complicated, much nastier story often." And I think sometimes right now what they're doing is they're, you know, out of kind of, I don't know, you know, kind of political reasons or whatever, they're, they're, they're teaching kind of very, very, like, you know, um, uh, kind of a hardcore first story to really young kids right away that, um-

George Mack 32:47 Well, they're front-loading the gnarly version.

Tim Urban 32:49 Yeah, exactly, and maybe going too far even in that direction, um, when, uh... Like, I think, I th- I mean, I, this is a whole other can of worms, but I think that maybe I wanna-

George Mack 32:59 But, but the disguise on-

Tim Urban 33:00 But, like, I, I know, I think that, um, I do think Amer- American children should be taught first all these great, great things about America. They should learn that they're in this great country that's h- has complicated. They've, it's not been perfect, but they've done a lot of great things. Um, and it's this wonderful thing and patriotism and be really proud. And then later, later then you can learn a lot more nuance. Or it's the same reason that I think you shouldn't be teaching your kid, you know, that, like, you think your dad's a good person, but actually, you know he cheated when, in his 20s?

George Mack 33:29 [laughs]

Tim Urban 33:30 Like, you kn- you know that he, like, did, you know he got fired? Like, you don't do that. You start with the, "Dad's great."

George Mack 33:34 Yeah.

Tim Urban 33:34 Of course, then later in life when the kid's an adult, you start... I don't think this is partisan controversy anymore. You start to then say, uh, you know, "Dad," uh, you know, dad can say to you, you know, "Yeah, I, I'm not perfect. I did this and this," but, like, yeah, just like-

George Mack 33:46 You don't need to front-load anything

Tim Urban 33:47 ... kids are kids, and, like, it's a very different kind of person to teach.

George Mack 33:50 Mm.

Tim Urban 33:50 Well, also because, uh, I mean, I remember talking to a very close friend of mine who's got a bunch of kids. Wonderful guy, very successful in what he does, and I asked him what his parenting advice would be, and his first rule was you need to teach your kids to be optimists because action flows from optimism.

George Mack 34:08 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 34:08 And agency flows from optimism, right? And so what you're describing sort of creates a picture that you don't want to aspire to engage with-

George Mack 34:17 Yeah

Tim Urban 34:17 ... and seems antithetical to that.

George Mack 34:19 Or like two, you know, second, third, fourth graders just, "Hey, climate change, climate change, the, your future is destroyed." Like, why, why? Who thinks this is a good idea?

Tim Urban 34:26 Right.

George Mack 34:26 Take little, little kids.

Tim Urban 34:27 Well, and then the older generations are like, "Oh my God, these younger generations are so apathetic." And I'm like, "Yeah, okay-

George Mack 34:31 Yeah

Tim Urban 34:31 ... you're getting waterboarded-

George Mack 34:32 Who do you think told them?

Tim Urban 34:33 ... with [laughs] existential threat all day."

George Mack 34:35 Mm.

Tim Urban 34:35 Yeah.

George Mack 34:35 Totally.

Tim Urban 34:35 You would be too.

George Mack 34:36 I guess it makes sense that the younger you are, the more neuroplastic you are, right? And even, like, statements like that are quite reflexive. So if, if you go on, if I go on the news tomorrow and say, "It's, it's gonna be a sunny day," I have no impact on whether it's gonna be a sunny day. But a reflexive system is if I go on the news tomorrow and say, "There's going to be a bank run," I have an impact on whether there's going to be a bank run. And if you go in thinking America's a terrible country, that's gonna be quite a reflexive thing for your entire youth. I mean, it's quite funny listening to an Am- not that you were complaining, Tim, but an American talk about the lack of patriotism in their country.

Tim Urban 35:12 It's like us two Brits next to the... [laughs]

George Mack 35:13 It, it, yeah, it's kind of like Chris talking to me about, like, how he's frustrated with the size of his forearms right now. You know what I mean? Like, I'm like, "Okay, okay, I understand," but, uh, yeah, I think it's interesting f- for America to be going through that when you're still by far the tallest midget in the room.

Tim Urban 35:27 Right. Totally. And, and by the way, there's so, so much British history to be proud of.

George Mack 35:31 Oh, don't get me started, Tim.

Tim Urban 35:32 This, this negative lens where it's-

George Mack 35:33 Don't get me started, Tim. I, I, I declare, I, I said this to Chris previously, like, we are the most insecure in terms of internal reputation versus external. So if you travel anywhere else in the world, apart from a few places, they often, like, love the UK.

Tim Urban 35:49 Yeah.

George Mack 35:49 Um, but internally, they often criticize themselves the most. I'll never forget, a friend of mine, um, uh, came, uh, his sister came home one day and she said, "You know what?" She goes, "Britain is the racist country on Earth." And he paused for a second and he just said, "Compared to where?" She couldn't answer.

Tim Urban 36:09 [laughs] It's that line about capitalism. It's the worst system apart from all of the other ones.

George Mack 36:13 No. It's just a crazy distortion lens and it's so self-defeating and it's like this crazy...

Tim Urban 36:19 Yeah. Uh-

George Mack 36:20 Jack Butcher's got this great line. He says, "Unlearning is 100 times harder than learning." And if you're laying down those myelin sheaths-

Tim Urban 36:28 Mm

George Mack 36:28 ... in some kid who's five years old, six, seven, I don't know when you start to understand what climate is and what power structures look like, but-

Chris Williamson 36:38 Yeah. You're probably best starting off with generalized optimism and getting into specific pessimism or specific scrutiny-

Tim Urban 36:44 Yeah

Chris Williamson 36:44 ... as opposed to generalized scrutiny.

Tim Urban 36:46 That's high school, high school maybe, you know? Like, m- m- maybe a little middle school. Elementary school is just, it's just, yeah.

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Chris Williamson 37:45 Well, think about now the, uh, UK, it looks like... I don't know whether this is actually gonna happen. The UK is proposing a social media ban for under 16s, the same as Australia's had, and I haven't seen much of the fallout of this. I steered clear of X for the last couple of days, but I, I really struggle to see how this is a bad thing.

Tim Urban 38:04 To steal mine the other side, before you even get onto the 16-year-olds, it's also a you have to use identification now to use social media for anybody over the age as well.

Chris Williamson 38:12 Is that a bad idea?

Tim Urban 38:14 It's an interesting discussion.

Chris Williamson 38:16 I get... Everybody's got a con-

Tim Urban 38:17 I don't care whether-

Chris Williamson 38:18 Everyone's got a concern about digital safety. I, I, I understand that, but-

Tim Ferriss 38:22 Why have you abstained for the last few days from X?

Chris Williamson 38:26 Busy.

Tim Ferriss 38:26 Okay. Okay.

Chris Williamson 38:27 It wasn't a choice.

Tim Ferriss 38:28 [laughs] It was a... I was like, what was the catalyzing event?

Chris Williamson 38:30 It wasn't a choice. It was literally just busy.

Tim Ferriss 38:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:33 Uh-

Tim Urban 38:33 Touching grass.

Chris Williamson 38:34 Yeah, trying to.

Tim Urban 38:35 Pathetic, mate. Get a life.

Chris Williamson 38:36 Just really trying to. I was looking at photos of grass on X actually.

Tim Ferriss 38:38 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 38:39 It was, it was better. [laughs]

Tim Urban 38:40 He was too, he was too busy doom scrolling on TikTok was the actual thing that was happening.

Chris Williamson 38:43 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 38:43 A few bugs.

Chris Williamson 38:44 Yeah. Uh, but the Australia thing, um, you're right. What?

Tim Urban 38:50 I-

Chris Williamson 38:50 You're such a fucking techno optimist.

Tim Urban 38:52 Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on.

Chris Williamson 38:52 What? Come on.

Tim Urban 38:53 No, no, come, come, come.

Chris Williamson 38:53 No, you.

Tim Urban 38:54 Don't interrupt. Don't interrupt. As Winston Churchill said-

Chris Williamson 38:56 Can you stop interrupting my interruption? [laughs]

Tim Urban 38:57 Winston Churchill once said to Randolph, uh, Churchill, his son, at dinner, the best thing ever, which is like, "Can you stop interrupting my interruption?" [laughs]

Chris Williamson 39:04 [laughs]

Tim Urban 39:05 Go on. You go, you go for it.

Chris Williamson 39:07 I j- I just don't understand what the, what the counterargument is. I don't understand what... It, it's such anchoring bias because we developed the technology before we put the guardrails around it, and I think if you were to invent it today, having known the impact of social media, if it had been worked inside of a Faraday cage lab for a long time to look at what the impacts are, it would be like releasing cigarettes into the world knowing the impact of them. I mean, something... I imagine that kids were able to smoke 70 years ago or something. I don't know whether there was ever an age restriction on smoking. I, I imagine the same would be for alcohol, and you start to tick this up over time. The UK's introduced that, uh, lagging law for vapes now. So I think anybody born after 2010 will never be able to smoke, and the age just keeps tracking up.

Tim Urban 39:54 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 39:55 So it's if you were born, what, 2006 or earlier, you're allowed to, and it's never going to cha- You're never going to be able to smoke. That's just their, uh, attempt at you didn't learn to do it in the first instance-

Tim Urban 40:07 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 40:07 ... therefore we're gonna... You're never gonna need to do it in the future.

Tim Urban 40:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:09 But yeah, I mean, I, I, I'm, I'm in support of this, so I'm interested to hear what criticisms push back against it are, but I don't see any reason why it's a bad idea to put under 16s, uh, put a ban on. The smart ones that want to start a business and really need to learn the internet are going to be able to get around it, so they can still be entrepreneurial, and the ones that don't, I don't think they're going to miss out on much.

Tim Urban 40:29 What do you guys think?

Tim Ferriss 40:31 In terms of age verification and-

Chris Williamson 40:33 Is there an issue-

Tim Ferriss 40:34 ... identification

Chris Williamson 40:34 ... is there an, is there an issue stopping kids under 16 from going on social media?

Tim Ferriss 40:38 I would-

Chris Williamson 40:38 Would you be in support of it?

Tim Ferriss 40:39 I would be in support of curtailing or forbidding it, for sure, 100%.

Chris Williamson 40:43 100%.

Tim Ferriss 40:44 Yeah. I mean, spending time with Jonathan Haidt and so on, I, I, I just think the evidence is so compelling. Yeah, I would. I would for sure.

Chris Williamson 40:52 I wonder how much of an impact he's had.

Tim Ferriss 40:55 He has had-

Chris Williamson 40:55 Just Jonathan Haidt-

Tim Ferriss 40:56 He has

Chris Williamson 40:56 ... as a guy.

Tim Ferriss 40:57 He's had an impact with his small team on a s- with state by state legislation changes. They've been very effective for a, for a small crack team of researchers and people working in policy.

Tim Urban 41:07 He also, before... I mean, I, and my last book was about political polarization and wokeness and all of this, and he was... You know, I, the chapters ranged from kind of like evolutionary psychology to his, you know, political history to kind of modern, current stuff, and I had different kind of gurus for each chapter that were different thinkers that I would like, you know, be, be sourcing from, and he's the only one who was, who, who was one of those people in every chapter.

Chris Williamson 41:33 Yeah.

Tim Urban 41:33 Um, he, he's kind of a... You know, I, I don't agree with everything he says. Um, uh, he's a, he's a giant. Um, and this was before any of the anxious generation-

Chris Williamson 41:41 You ever met him in person?

Tim Urban 41:42 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:42 He's an actual giant.

Tim Urban 41:44 No, no.

Chris Williamson 41:44 No, he's very tall.

Tim Urban 41:45 Oh, he is?

Chris Williamson 41:46 Yeah.

Tim Urban 41:46 Oh, I don't, I don't remember that.

Chris Williamson 41:47 He's sat down.

Tim Ferriss 41:47 He's, he's tall compared to us, but he's not that tall.

Tim Urban 41:49 That's true. Yeah, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 41:50 But he... Yeah, for people, you mentioned Anxious Generation.

Chris Williamson 41:53 Yeah. Happiness Hypothesis.

Tim Urban 41:54 The Righteous Mind.

Tim Ferriss 41:55 His last name, yeah, H-A-I-D-T. And, uh-

Chris Williamson 41:58 Happiness Hypothesis is one of my favorite books of all time.

Tim Ferriss 42:01 Yeah. He's also just such a-

Tim Urban 42:02 Coddling of the American Mind

Tim Ferriss 42:03 ... such a sweet, sincere guy-

Tim Urban 42:04 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 42:05 ... also.

Chris Williamson 42:06 I think if you're going to talk about stuff like that, you... The po- potential for you to be right coded, if you want to be effective, you need to signal a lot of, um, uh, placids, peaceful, empathetic-

Tim Urban 42:19 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 42:19 ... understanding both sides-y energy because if you even begin to lean right and center, it immediately looks like you've sort of touched on something-

Tim Urban 42:27 So I, my friend and I argue about this because I have a friend who's very conservative. Um, and he's very smart. I... He changes my mind about things sometimes. Sometimes he's over the top, but he The he, the, he, he, the people he can't stand the most are kind of Jonathan Haidt, Coleman Hughes, these people who agree with, who are, who are I... You know, I argue to him, "These people are fighting the causes you care about, but they're doing it way more effectively than you would-

Chris Williamson 42:49 How did he say?

Tim Urban 42:50 ... because they're actually reaching center-left people. Um, and, and, and if you start immediately being like, you know, super tribal and super right-coded, um, you'll, you'll never reach any of them. And he just sees them as such. He calls them media kiss-ups. You know, these people just, they still wanna be, you know, they, they o- they, they need to, uh, they always need to make sure that the, that the polite society approves of them. And I'm, and I, I totally disagree with him, because I think that Jon Haidt is unbel- has done unbelievable impact against those kind of over-the-top left causes that he really doesn't like.

Chris Williamson 43:18 It's way more effective.

Tim Ferriss 43:19 Yeah. I don't-

Chris Williamson 43:20 Can I-

Tim Ferriss 43:20 Yeah, and I don't even view it, it's not a partisan issue, right? I mean, I would just, because Jonathan's so terrible at asking for money, I would say, as someone who plays with scientific funding and stuff like that, if people are looking for ways to kind of bend the arc of history and undo some of the wrongs and ills of social media and so on, I think funding some of what Jonathan is up to with very small sums of money has a hugely disproportionate impact.

Chris Williamson 43:46 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 43:46 Just coming back to your, what has he done with his small team. I just wanted to throw that out there.

Tim Urban 43:50 The ripple effects of being able to genuinely, you know, push the needle with changing policy with kids and social media is one of the m- biggest impacts you could make, I think, on the planet right now.

Tim Ferriss 44:00 Mm.

Tim Urban 44:00 For, and you won't, you won't even know they're, the effects of it, but 30 years from now, I mean,

Tim Urban 44:04 yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:04 Yeah. Sam, what have you brought from home? You've got a bag that's look-

Tim Ferriss 44:07 Yeah, I brought, I've just to dumb this conversation down a little bit, I brought a bunch of show-and-tell items. Um-

Chris Williamson 44:12 Oh, it's got adult show-and-tell. I like it. Fire up the autism engine.

Tim Urban 44:15 So [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 44:17 [laughs] So let's see. I'll, I'll s-

Chris Williamson 44:19 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 44:19 I'll start, I'll start with-

Tim Urban 44:21 You have a little engine that's your-

Tim Ferriss 44:22 I'll, I'll start with this. So this is called Byte.

Chris Williamson 44:26 Okay.

Tim Ferriss 44:27 And the subtitle's pretty simple. Oh, it's 124 bits, but it's bits as in little pieces of what look like candy. Mouthwash bits. And this was recommended to me by Dr. Tommy Wood, he's a neuroscientist, also a beast of an athlete, but a very credible scientist, very well-published. And he and I were having a conversation about different approaches for neuroprotection, hopefully mitigating the risk of neurodegenerative disease, and oral health is a really big one. And yes, you can brush your teeth, yes, you can use like a Waterpik or something like that, but xylitol is really, really compelling as an intervention. So you could chew xylitol gum, you could do this, that, and the other thing, but I found ultimately everything I read so compelling that I started using these, which he recommended [laughs] and these are really simple. You j- well, you're gonna need water-

Tim Urban 45:20 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 45:20 ... if you chew on it.

Chris Williamson 45:21 Oh.

Tim Ferriss 45:21 So you basically for travel, but also f- at home, rather than having mouthwash, you take one of these. I'll show what they look like. I mean, it literally just looks like a little piece of candy or like an aspirin.

Chris Williamson 45:31 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 45:31 And-

Tim Urban 45:32 Do we have water here?

Tim Ferriss 45:33 Well, I'm gonna have to spit it out. You can't swallow it.

Tim Urban 45:34 Ah.

Tim Ferriss 45:35 So-

Tim Urban 45:35 Uh-oh.

Tim Ferriss 45:35 Or you probably shouldn't swallow it. So you just, you chew on it, take like a couple tablespoons of water in your mouth, swish it around for 30, 60 seconds, then spit it out, and that's it. And you just do that o-

Chris Williamson 45:44 Why is that better than normal mou- mouthwash?

Tim Ferriss 45:47 Because of the xylitol content, along with a couple of other things. So for, as sort of antibacterial effects, and, uh, I know people, I'm not gonna mention th- this person by name, but MD, PhD, who had cavities, started using xylitol twice a day, and went back to the doctor, or the dentist rather, no cavities. [sniffs] And it's like, it's pretty interesting. That's N of one, of course. I don't know what's out there in the literature with respect to that. But found it interesting enough, and it's so lightweight as an intervention, that I was like, "Okay, I will, I will start doing that."

Chris Williamson 46:19 Are you-

Tim Ferriss 46:19 And-

Tim Urban 46:20 Anything that you can kind of just like have on your desk and just like pop one in and-

Tim Ferriss 46:25 Yeah

Tim Urban 46:25 ... you know, while you're... It's, it's, you'll do a lot more than something that's-

Tim Ferriss 46:27 Uh, yeah. I mean, my compliance with this, also with the amount of travel that I do, is, is-

Chris Williamson 46:31 Does it taste good?

Tim Ferriss 46:32 ... is really high. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just tastes like, kind of like candy.

Tim Urban 46:34 A friend of mine wanted me to get into organ meat, and I'm like, "I'm not, I'm not gonna grind organ meat into my smoothie. I'm sorry." He does this.

Tim Ferriss 46:40 That sounds gross.

Tim Urban 46:40 And then he got me these, he, these pills. Uh-

Tim Ferriss 46:43 Yeah.

Tim Urban 46:43 Oh, man. I'm gonna need-

Tim Ferriss 46:44 Desiccated liver?

Tim Urban 46:45 I need to, it's just-

Chris Williamson 46:46 Ancestral Supplements?

Tim Urban 46:46 Yes.

Chris Williamson 46:47 Yeah.

Tim Urban 46:47 Something like that. And it's, it's like, you take five or six in whatever a day, and I just, because it's on my desk and I just like see it there-

Tim Ferriss 46:52 It's easy

Tim Urban 46:52 ... I pop it in.

Tim Ferriss 46:53 It's easy.

Tim Urban 46:53 And I do it every day now. Now I have organ meat.

Tim Ferriss 46:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:55 This is, so I understand when people are designing their workspace, that you're supposed to keep it relatively undistracted. Like, if you're gonna be in creative flow mode, maybe you do want some newspaper cuttings and like some cool art on the wall. But for the most part, we're trying to lock in and not get distracted.

Tim Ferriss 47:08 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 47:08 And you're so right, having a, an environment that pushes you toward behaviors-

Tim Ferriss 47:12 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 47:12 ... that you want to do. Um, Shan Puri has a basketball on his desk, and he thinks better when he's tossing it. But I played ball sports as a kid. It's the same. My best ideas almost always come when I've got a tennis ball in my hands-

Tim Ferriss 47:24 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 47:24 ... or some sort of, and I'm just able to thr- I, I don't know what's going on. Maybe it just distracts the front of my brain a little bit.

Tim Ferriss 47:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 47:29 The other one is that Om lamp that me and you have got.

Tim Ferriss 47:32 Mm.

Chris Williamson 47:32 So this is a lamp around about this big, and there's a little stone on the top of it, and the stone is an FDA quality HRV sensor, and you just pick it up, hold it in your hand, and the light goes up and down, and there's sounds, and it's using an algorithm to maximize your heart rate variability. So it's resonance breathing that you can do in three-minute chunks.

Tim Urban 47:53 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 47:53 But the best thing is you can turn off all of the settings on it, and it vibrates. It's like haptic. It vibrates in your hand. Pick it up and hold it, and you can watch a movie. I've accum- I went and checked, because I talked about it on my newsletter this week. I've done 160 hours of resonance breathing in six months. Just this year I've done 160 hours, because I just grab it next to my... I've got one in my office, one, one here, one there. Grab it, and I just breathe in time with this vibrating thing. So if you're watching something with-

Tim Ferriss 48:17 It's just like subconscious

Chris Williamson 48:18 ... and you're just tracking it up and down, and it's m- it's adjusting based on what your heart rate is doing. It's linked in with the Wi-Fi, so it's link it once, never think about it again. The algorithm is cutting it, and all you do is you just grab this stone and hold it and breathe with it, and it vibrates. And there's one on my desk.

Tim Urban 48:33 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 48:33 So if I'm about to sit on a call where I need to be quiet for ages, I'll just grab it and have it.

Tim Urban 48:36 Mm.

Chris Williamson 48:37 I mean, I don't hold it too close, but you know what I mean.

Tim Urban 48:39 Uh, yeah, I have hundreds of fidget toys, uh, like of, of all different kinds, and I get like, I put s- I have a certain like dish on my desk that's, that these are the ones that are in the rotation right now. And I have all, the whole archive back there.

Chris Williamson 48:49 Where'd you get your fidget toys?

Tim Urban 48:50 Oh my God. Well, for Instagram ads is deadly for me.

Chris Williamson 48:52 I've been, yeah.

Tim Urban 48:52 It's, it's figured me out.

Chris Williamson 48:53 Ah.

Tim Urban 48:53 Yeah. Um, Spaks. The s- there's a S-P-A-K-S.com I think, um, is just that they have amazing like s- like Soft silicone covered magnets and like stretchy things. And, uh, I've Silly Putty and I've got these, you know, mechanical toys and, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's an important thing for me

Tim Ferriss 49:13 I, that's why these-

Tim Urban 49:13 If I don't have those, I'll bite my nails too

Tim Ferriss 49:15 ... that's why these, uh, toothpick things or an equivalent-

Tim Urban 49:17 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 49:18 ... for the Neutonic nootropics are g- just a bit of an oral fixation.

Tim Urban 49:21 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 49:22 If you're working away writing something, your business partner Josh, uh, because he's a real caffeine fiend, like ex-m- Muay Thai fighter, now a Brazilian jujitsu dude, like kinda hardcore guy, um, just started stacking them on a morning and got onto a call, I think it was with you, and he had six in his mouth-

Tim Urban 49:38 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 49:38 ... 'cause he'd never taken any of the old ones out. He just kept adding them in. So he looked like a, a camel that was chewing on a bit of straw, and he had all of these things poking out the front of his mouth.

Tim Urban 49:47 Yeah. I, I, I find that if you're ever, you know, I don't know if you're like me, but if I'm on a f- if I f- if I'm sitting at my desk and a friend calls me, and we're talking, and then I get really, like, animated. They, he's, I say something, I'm like, "Yes," and I wanna make this point, 100% I'm up and I'm walking, pacing, right? And I'll, even if I'm driving and I get home and I'm in a good phone call, I'll just keep dr- looping around, 'cause it's something about the movement. Um, and then so I think, "Well, why am I sitting at my desk when I'm writing?" Like, it's probably something about my mind really lights up. Like, it wants to physically move. It's all tied together. So, like, you know, I'll just do a standing desk with one of those rockers or a treadmill.

Tim Ferriss 50:20 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 50:20 You know, they have these, like, little rockers, and it's just kinda like, I don't know, it just keeps you moving. But I don't know. I just feel like, yeah, if I'm physically engaged-

Tim Ferriss 50:27 H- have you ever played with dictation, any AI dictation or anything as a way of brainstorming while walking? I've been doing that recently.

Tim Urban 50:34 I, I've done it for brainstorming, like outlines of posts.

Tim Ferriss 50:37 Yeah.

Tim Urban 50:37 Talking through it, yeah. Um, but even better for me, if there's someone on the other end, especially someone I, like, respect. So this is my assistant Alicia, who's been working with me for 10 years. She knows exactly what I'm working on, and then she's like, you know, really tapped in obviously. So I will just sometimes say, "I'm stuck," and we'll do a call and she will basically say nothing, but her being there-

Tim Ferriss 50:56 Mm

Tim Urban 50:56 ... and me, and she'll, she will s- give feedback at the end sometimes, but that's not... She knows the game is, "He's gonna talk to me now, and he's gonna crack his own thing by the end of this conversate- this conversation."

Tim Ferriss 51:07 So you don't record them or you do?

Tim Urban 51:09 Um, I usually, what I'll do is in the, while I'm talking to her, I'll say a line and I'm like, "Yes," and I'll write it down. And I'm like, "Where the hell was that when I was thinking alone-"

Tim Ferriss 51:14 Yes. Yeah

Tim Urban 51:14 ... being that I wasn't talking to someone?

Tim Ferriss 51:16 Yeah.

George Mack 51:16 So what my weirdest new habit that I've done is I've tried to essentially give up all thought by the brain.

Tim Urban 51:23 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 51:24 That sounds, sounds hard.

George Mack 51:25 So let me explain. Let me ex- so-

Tim Urban 51:27 Lots of nitrous. [laughs]

George Mack 51:29 [laughs] Yeah. So most people, or my former self, existed in the kind of simmering six. So the, the middle kind of ambient rumination, rumination, rumination. And the, the big trend at the minute is the whole, like, looksmaxxing, just stop thinking, which I think's a bit ridiculous. I think what you actually want is a barbell. So you want, sometimes you do the looksmaxxing mode, and then sometimes you're doing the Einstein maxxing mode, but that bit in the middle disappears. So for me, I, I stopped thinking with my brain. I only, about, what I mean by thinking, by the way, is if it's like, oh, Tim's got denim jeans on, that's a thought that's okay. But if as soon as I get into a, "Well, I've got this thing tomorrow. You gotta do the thing tomorrow," and it's replaying the thing tomorrow, it's doing the thing about tomorrow, it's doing the thing. If I catch that going more than two or three loops, it's okay. I can either think with my hands, so write it down. And Ralph Waldo Emerson described it as when you would write rather than think in your head, you go from being drunk to sobering up.

Tim Urban 52:28 Mm.

George Mack 52:28 'Cause even the, the working memory that we have in our head is what, like seven plus or minus two. I'm probably at the five mark. So you, that's one of the reasons why you loop. You almost... I got advised once by, uh, a cognitive behavioral therapist who said you would never do, like, even a moderate equation in your head, yet we will do the most complex life decisions just there for years, ruminating, ruminating, ruminating. And it's an example of where the 10,000-hour rule actually doesn't work. If anything, you get worse and worse and worse. So either think with my hands as y- or as you mentioned then, think with your mouth or think with your feet.

Tim Urban 53:00 Yeah.

George Mack 53:00 So as you're walking. So as soon as I get in one of those loops, I'm like, it has to be no brain, hands, mouth, feet.

Tim Urban 53:07 Mm-hmm. I like that.

Tim Ferriss 53:08 Mm.

Tim Urban 53:08 I like, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 53:09 The, uh, story you just told resonated 'cause when I was totally stuck on my first book for months, like could not figure out how to crack this really important section, and hired a woman who worked as a ghostwriter, but I wasn't gonna use her that way, to interview me on a phone call.

Tim Urban 53:27 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 53:28 And effectively just ended up talking and cracked it by the end of the conversation, and I was like, oh, I just needed to get out of-

Tim Urban 53:35 And like, what is it? So your brain-

Tim Ferriss 53:36 ... this, like, self-referential musing

Tim Urban 53:37 ... there's a part of your brain that is capable of this thing, and for some reason, when you weren't talking and you're thinking, it's just not, you're not accessing it. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 53:45 Yeah.

Tim Urban 53:45 Like, it's strange, but it, it's-

Tim Ferriss 53:47 It's really wild.

Tim Urban 53:48 Yeah.

George Mack 53:49 Well, it'll, I assume if I had to think about it from a neuroscience perspective, you're probably using more of your default mode network as you're ruminating.

Tim Ferriss 53:54 Mm.

George Mack 53:55 As you're moving your lips, as you're moving your hands, you're activating a different part of the brain. And in, in through that activity, it's almost like you're just releasing the taps.

Tim Ferriss 54:03 You must know from, like, Kelly Starrett's stuff and just the way that the human body and brain works, why is it that we want to locomote as soon as we start thinking about something deeply or we have that conversation? 'Cause it's the same for me. If I get on a good call, like even if I d- I now have a habit that if somebody just rings and I've got nothing to do, I'll get up and go for a walk because hooray, it's good to get steps in. But there's other times where you start to get really animated and you just find yourself walking. Like, what is it about the act of walking that makes thinking easier? I'm not sure. I, I don't know. I mean, Kelly Starrett, people should look up, uh, Becoming the Supple Leopard. He's a very famous PT, performance coach.

Tim Urban 54:37 Death Found.

Tim Ferriss 54:38 Really knows what... If you've ever used like a lacrosse ball to loosen up or like distraction with a band or something like that, he popularized a lot of that stuff. The couch stretch-

Tim Urban 54:48 Mm

Tim Ferriss 54:48 ... named by Kelly, et cetera. So he's worth looking up. I don't know. There are people who do really well sitting still. Uh, my fidget fix is like Japanese/East Asian, like pen spinning.

Tim Urban 55:00 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 55:00 That's a whole thing. Um, so the people can find like a 20-year-old YouTube video of me showing like the basics-

Tim Urban 55:06 Oh, wow

Tim Ferriss 55:06 ... of this, but I'll just sit there doing different types of spinning with a pen. That's my move. Pacing also.

Tim Urban 55:13 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 55:13 Huge pacer. For me, I think it could be

55:18 I'm just speculating here, but occupying a part of your mind that is, for instance, like the monkey mind, right?

Tim Urban 55:25 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 55:25 I think this is part of the reason why flow states often include some kinesthetic component, right? Whether it's music-

Tim Urban 55:33 Mm

Tim Ferriss 55:33 ... playing violin or something like that, surfing, whatever it might be. Uh, w- I think that there is an occupying of certain cognitive faculties or looping mechanisms that is aided with physical movement, but that's just-

Tim Urban 55:47 It's like when my t- my 15-month-old is annoying me and I'm trying to do something, I'll just, like, hand her something to occupy her, and then she's like, "Uh."

Tim Ferriss 55:56 Yeah.

Tim Urban 55:56 It's like a little, like, there's like a 15-month-old-

Tim Ferriss 55:57 Yeah

Tim Urban 55:57 ... in my head that's like, "Ah, a-" And I'm like, "Shut up."

Tim Ferriss 56:00 Yeah.

Tim Urban 56:01 And I just give something, and then it's like-

Chris Williamson 56:02 Fiddle the fidget spinner.

Tim Urban 56:03 Yeah.

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Chris Williamson 57:00 Question for you, Tim.

Tim Urban 57:01 Yeah. Question.

Chris Williamson 57:02 As you was talking earlier about the treadmills and all the fidget spinner-

Tim Urban 57:05 Yeah

Chris Williamson 57:05 ... devices and the Instagram ads and you're buying stuff, I had, like, a... I was thinking in my head of if you was born 10 years ago-

Tim Ferriss 57:13 Did you say if you was born?

Chris Williamson 57:15 [laughs] If... Sorry, if you were born.

Tim Urban 57:17 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 57:17 Again, British English coming out.

Tim Ferriss 57:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:19 That's not really Australian.

Tim Urban 57:19 I liked it.

Chris Williamson 57:20 I'm Australian.

Tim Ferriss 57:20 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Tim Urban 57:21 British people talk so much more cool than we do.

Chris Williamson 57:23 If you was born around about 10 years ago-

Tim Ferriss 57:26 Yeah

Chris Williamson 57:26 ... listen here, listen here, mate

Tim Urban 57:27 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 57:28 Would you have been, like, diagnosed with ADHD?

Tim Urban 57:31 Yeah, this is, like, the age-old question in my mind is, do I have AD... Am I a classic example of it or not? And, like, I guess, I don't know. Um, I wonder if I were born, yes, in that age, whether I would've been, like, medicated because I was a class clown and... But I did well in school, and it was never hard for me to, like... I always assume, think of, like, real ADHD as, like, you're sitting during a test and you're just like, you can't focus on the test and you need extra time. That was... Once I had the adrenaline, like, oh shit, I was like, I could focus really well. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what I'm gonna-

Tim Ferriss 57:58 Do you get calmer with stimulants? Are there certain stimulants where you end up, like, actually calming down and focusing, or do you get agitated with stimulants or something-

Tim Urban 58:08 For me, what it is is, like, there's, like, a perfectionism that is, is... I- if, if once I s- it's I can't transition. I'm awful at transitioning. I will procrastinate from starting work for hours, and once I get, have to-

Chris Williamson 58:20 Mm

Tim Urban 58:20 ... start, once I'm in it, now I'll get going and then someone will interrupt. I'll be like... And, and I'll miss dinner because I just wanna keep working.

Chris Williamson 58:26 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 58:26 So it's like, it's, it's, it's this weird, like, I, I'm very, a, a- and a lot of inertia for whatever I'm doing, and that to me is a huge thing, is just, like, uh, there's no adult around making me start work, and I grew up with that as a crutch always. I had to go to class. I had to finish this. I had to... And now there's no one, so I will just self-defeat for hours and waste a good part of the day.

Chris Williamson 58:46 Mm.

Tim Urban 58:46 And then finally... So that's why when, again, another thing I do with my, with Alicia is, uh-

Chris Williamson 58:52 Alicia's your sister

Tim Urban 58:52 ... yes. I will share my screen with her at, like, 10:00 AM, and she's-

Chris Williamson 58:59 You gotta be very care-

Tim Urban 58:59 ... working on her-

Chris Williamson 59:00 You gotta be very careful with that depending on how your day goes.

Tim Urban 59:02 Yeah. You have spaces.

Chris Williamson 59:04 [laughs]

Tim Urban 59:04 You go to a safe space. Um, and, and she, uh, m- is wor- working on her own thing. I don't know when she's looking at my screen and when she's not. She's probably not usually, but she might be, and so I'm not gonna procrastinate in front of someone. That's mortifying. So-

Chris Williamson 59:16 Create a p- you've created a digital panopticon.

Tim Urban 59:18 Yeah. It's, it's great.

Tim Ferriss 59:19 There are services that allow you to do this. They'll pair you with someone else-

Tim Urban 59:22 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 59:22 ... and you work at the same-

Tim Urban 59:23 Like a co-working, digital co-working. Yeah

Tim Ferriss 59:23 ... and you work at the same time. I can't recall what that name is.

Tim Urban 59:25 But it has to be someone that really knows, like, a s- if I'm on a certain research page, they might not know, is he procrastinating? He's not. She'll be like, "That's not relevant. What are you doing?" You know? Or like, "You're going too far." So-

Tim Ferriss 59:34 Will she actually police you?

Tim Urban 59:36 Um, she, she usually, she's very, like-

Tim Ferriss 59:38 Tim, no Pornhub until 2:00 PM. [laughs]

Tim Urban 59:40 Yeah. She, uh, she will say something about that. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 59:43 [laughs]

Tim Urban 59:43 That, that, well, no.

Chris Williamson 59:45 I can't accept. It's just World

Chris Williamson 59:47 War II. I tell you what, uh, I've got two things. Uh, number one, I mean, we've discussed this earlier. I'm always trying to, um, create new vocabulary for myself. I feel it activates a, a certain part of the brain. Do you remember my favorite word that I, uh, invented five, six years ago that you love?

Tim Urban 1:00:02 Fly dripping?

Chris Williamson 1:00:03 Yeah, fly dripping. So I was, I was once stood at a, a toilet, and you know men do this where they piss around the seat? And I was like, "W- what's the word for that?" Is it-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:12 Wait, piss around the seat? What do you mean?

Chris Williamson 1:00:14 Yes. You know when somebody urinates on the toilet seat?

Tim Ferriss 1:00:17 I, I-

Tim Urban 1:00:18 Have you ever seen this?

Tim Ferriss 1:00:18 ... I usually try to avoid this.

Chris Williamson 1:00:19 Well, exact- well, yeah, ex- we-

Tim Urban 1:00:20 Public toilets, there's a bit of, like, backsplash-

Chris Williamson 1:00:21 Public toilets you may see it, right?

Tim Urban 1:00:22 ... going on sometimes.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:23 Um, so I kinda came up with the term fly dripping for that. And what's useful about beginning to create your own language is, I mean, I have to talk about the benefits of language as I'm using language, is that-

Tim Urban 1:00:33 Interesting this is the first word that you developed

Chris Williamson 1:00:35 ... that's the first word that I developed, or terms as a whole. So one of the things that worked with the high agency piece that I did, or even just having that language, meant that I had a name for essentially an idea that people already knew or that I already knew, but it compressed, like, 5,000 words into two words.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:53 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:53 And then I was like, hold on. I don't have a term for that.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:57 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:57 Well, that's quite meta. I don't have a term for that. And then Scott Alexander had this term called an idea handle. So an idea handle you can kind of pick up ideas by, like, coining terms. So the two ones I've been trying to coin last week, um, are the following. So number one, Casha's law.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:14 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 1:01:15 Like the artist Casha?

Chris Williamson 1:01:16 Casha's law is whenever you're creating art

George Mack 1:01:18 Try not to use any modern references because it may come back to bite you in the ass. So the, uh, the artist Kesha. I love, I love, by the way-

Tim Urban 1:01:25 Formerly known as

George Mack 1:01:26 ... this, this may not be the best podcast in the world, but we have the highest range. We've gone from black holes to-

Tim Urban 1:01:30 [laughs]

George Mack 1:01:30 ... Kesha. [laughs] Say what you want about the quality, but you can't knock the range. Um, Kesha, her number one song was, started with, "Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy."

Tim Urban 1:01:43 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:43 Ah.

George Mack 1:01:44 So that's tough now. So what she did... So like, what do you do? If your whole-

Tim Urban 1:01:48 She had to retcon her own song.

George Mack 1:01:49 Yeah, so, so what she did was, "Wake up in the morning feeling like me." Flopped. So now-

Tim Urban 1:01:56 When did she do that?

George Mack 1:01:56 So, um, quite recently in terms of the rebrand around the whole P. Diddy escapades. Now she's come out and done, "Wake up in the morning, fuck P. Diddy," which is a little bit better, but she still has-

Tim Urban 1:02:08 Doesn't really fit the story

George Mack 1:02:09 ... but ultimately if you, if you put a P. Diddy bottleneck in there [laughs] -

Tim Urban 1:02:11 Where is the comma in that sentence?

George Mack 1:02:13 I know.

Tim Urban 1:02:13 "Wake up in the morning," comma-

George Mack 1:02:15 K- Kesha's law

Tim Urban 1:02:15 ... "fuck P. Diddy."

George Mack 1:02:16 Kesha's law. So whenever you're creating things, you've got to avoid modern things.

Tim Urban 1:02:19 [laughs]

George Mack 1:02:20 Yeah. Another law I've tried to create recently, I was watching, I don't know if you guys have seen the new Michael Jackson documentary on Netflix.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:28 No.

George Mack 1:02:28 And there's a scene in there-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:30 There's only so much Neverland I can handle.

George Mack 1:02:31 Yeah. [laughs] Yes, yeah. I forgot, I forgot, Tim. Sorry to bring it up.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:34 Yeah.

George Mack 1:02:34 You can walk out if you need to.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:36 Yeah.

George Mack 1:02:36 Um, there's a scene in there that's explained some stuff that we've discussed of Kesha. Imagine you have an axis, like, here. So you have, um, essentially being an awful person or crimes that you might be able to commit, and I'm not even going to discuss Michael's ones just yet, and then you have talent. So as you go, as- the talent can essentially get out of that axis, and MJ's-

Tim Urban 1:03:00 Louis C.K. People are like, "He's too funny. It's fine."

George Mack 1:03:02 Kind of.

Tim Urban 1:03:02 Yeah.

George Mack 1:03:02 Well, MJ-

Tim Urban 1:03:03 Yeah

George Mack 1:03:03 ... and there's something about music that, like, for example, no offense to you, Chris, I think you're a lovely podcaster, okay? But if you started noncing, right, if you became, like, a-

Tim Urban 1:03:14 I'm not talented enough to get away with noncing

George Mack 1:03:15 ... you- nobody's like, nobody is like going, "That whole-"

Tim Urban 1:03:18 Yeah, but that, that whole episode

George Mack 1:03:19 ... "but that's our nosy pod-"

Tim Urban 1:03:19 Yeah.

George Mack 1:03:20 You know what I mean? Like, people... But music, so this is the crazy thing. So Michael is in the defense for this pedophilia charge, and there's the, um, the guy who did a documentary on him, and they're showing the documentary. So it's where Michael's kind of got his hand around a child, and they're, like, talking about the child, talking about how he didn't want to go into Michael's bed. But Michael, uh, asked him to come into his bed. So they're playing the whole documentary as proof of potentially his crimes. But within the documentary, it plays some of his music. So what's interesting, you have both the defense, um, the judge, the jury, and even the defense said when they played Billie Jean-

Tim Ferriss 1:04:01 Yeah

George Mack 1:04:02 ... he saw himself doing that. He saw the judge-

Tim Ferriss 1:04:04 Mm.

Tim Urban 1:04:04 Yeah

George Mack 1:04:04 ... nodding his head. I was like, wow.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:07 Mm.

George Mack 1:04:08 MJ's law. You could be... The defense could hear your music and still bob their head.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:13 Mm.

Tim Urban 1:04:13 Yeah, you're still gi- you're giving them, like, actual, like, pleasurable dopamine hits, and that makes that disendearing.

George Mack 1:04:19 Yes.

Tim Urban 1:04:19 There's some- we, we talk about this a lot, uh, of people that are in the pop culture, thinkers, speakers, artists, whatever. How- who is it that's got the largest bank account that they could withdraw from before they go into, like-

George Mack 1:04:34 Bill Cosby-

Tim Ferriss 1:04:35 Like social credit

Tim Urban 1:04:36 ... was probably number one.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:37 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:04:38 And, and he, he... If- if you'd asked me before all the, the Bill Cosby scandal came out, um, I would've been like, Bill Cosby's the number one, like, like, least likely to be canceled person.

George Mack 1:04:49 Wow.

Tim Urban 1:04:49 And it turns out what he did was so bad-

George Mack 1:04:51 Yep

Tim Urban 1:04:52 ... that it, that-

George Mack 1:04:52 Bill Cosby's law

Tim Urban 1:04:53 ... if, if you're gonna, you know, like, actually, like, roofie dozens and dozens of, like, young women that you're, uh, promising, like, career breaks to, that is so bad that, like, even Bill Cosby, that you can't even, you know.

George Mack 1:05:06 Correct. But you didn't, you didn't have a [singing]

Tim Urban 1:05:09 Yeah.

George Mack 1:05:09 I think that's it.

Tim Urban 1:05:09 That's true. If Bill Cosby had released a banger.

George Mack 1:05:11 I think music weirdly, like-

Tim Urban 1:05:13 Yeah, maybe

George Mack 1:05:14 ... it's almost comedy before music seems to destroy the human brain more than comedy.

Tim Urban 1:05:19 Yeah.

George Mack 1:05:19 So for example, if you really dislike a comedian or they've done something awful, you can almost not find them funny, which is why I use the example then if Chris was in court, again, I'm not planting these rumors, but if Chris was in court for doing something horrific, and they pulled up his 4K set with Matthew McConaughey, it doesn't do anything. But there's something about music.

Tim Urban 1:05:33 Someone really funny, I think it does-

George Mack 1:05:34 Chapter two

Tim Urban 1:05:35 ... have some of the same effects.

George Mack 1:05:36 With Williamson

Tim Urban 1:05:36 Like-

George Mack 1:05:36 But not to the level

Tim Urban 1:05:37 ... not to the level. Now, an- another example would be, and this doesn't work for the whole population, but political tribalism is, like, this just powerful drug that just makes brains crazy. And so if your political tribe, you're really tri- if you're a really politically tribal person, and the person that you are that is, you know, part of your team, you'll forgive, like, anything. And you can see this with a lot of famous politicians today. You can, like, uh... And it's, uh, I, I think that the, the people of the, that tribe, or you can see with, like, you know, other kinds of tribalism, like, there are many people who re- Jussie Smollett is innocent. He was... And there's every bit of evidence, but, like, because it get- taps into a really tribal thing-

George Mack 1:06:20 Mm-hmm

Tim Urban 1:06:21 ... the people that see him as, like, on our side and the people criticizing him are the bad guys, like, there's nothing that could make them turn on him.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:27 Could I workshop a new word with you guys right now?

Tim Urban 1:06:30 Shoot, shoot.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:30 All right. I've been struggling with this because I like doing the same thing. I like these, the invention of words, right?

Tim Urban 1:06:38 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:38 And so, like, I'll, I'll give two examples of ones that, that I'm, I'm proud of rightly or wrongly. One is a, a word teledultery. So teledultery is when you and your partner have watched a show together, and then someone separately watches more episodes without you.

Tim Urban 1:06:54 Oh, that's good.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:56 Good.

George Mack 1:06:56 Television adultery.

Tim Urban 1:06:57 It's exactly what it feels like.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:58 Yeah. Teledultery.

Tim Urban 1:06:59 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:59 You're like, "How could you?" Right?

Tim Urban 1:07:00 Yeah. And then, uh, the oth- the newer one, which is like, ah, it's not quite as good, but I like it, there's something there, is hallucinatives, like the first generations n- to assume that LLM responses are fact, to do no cross-checking.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:14 Huh.

Tim Urban 1:07:15 Hallucinatives, right? It's like, ah, it's not bad. I mean, it's not as good as tele-adultery.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:19 Tele-adultery is gonna stick in the lexicon.

Tim Urban 1:07:21 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:21 That one I put up, this is like probably 10 years ago on Twitter, so-

Tim Urban 1:07:24 Money

Tim Ferriss 1:07:24 ... back when it was Twitter, so w- so we'll see. I stake- I-

Tim Urban 1:07:26 Better than fly dripping.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:27 I s- I stake-

Tim Urban 1:07:28 Fucking.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:28 Fly dripping's not bad. Um-

Tim Urban 1:07:30 What are we talking about?

Tim Ferriss 1:07:30 The, the one-

Tim Urban 1:07:30 It's just such a niche issue.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:32 Oh, [laughs] so the, so the ho-

Tim Urban 1:07:33 It's such an-

Tim Ferriss 1:07:34 The, the one I want the-

Chris Williamson 1:07:35 I'll take you to McDonald's-

Tim Ferriss 1:07:36 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:07:36 ... in northwest England.

Tim Urban 1:07:37 That's the Denny’s if you do the fight scene.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:38 Start niche. Start niche. The, the one that I've been trying to figure out is, and this, maybe I'm the only one, I don't think I am, where everyone is so overwhelmed with notifications and bullshit on their phones that at least most of my friends have do not disturb on. So they'll be like, "Sure man, call me." And then you call them, and it goes straight to voicemail. And they're like, "No problem, I'll call you straight back." They call you back, and it goes straight to voicemail. So it's this like do not disturb death loop.

Tim Urban 1:08:02 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:03 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:03 And, but I have not been able to come up with like a pithy-

Chris Williamson 1:08:06 Mm

Tim Ferriss 1:08:07 ... word for this.

Chris Williamson 1:08:09 Mm.

Tim Urban 1:08:09 I, I always joked that if I could have a job, it would essentially be this. So if, if I could have any job in the world that I would do for free-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:17 Coming up with these words.

Tim Urban 1:08:17 Yeah. The, the one I... So this type of thing, or it would be, like, you probably don't get it as much in America, but in the UK you have the proper British red tops. So it'll be the... And they do horrific things back in the day where-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:28 What's a red top?

Tim Urban 1:08:29 Red top will be like the newspap- like proper, like scummy newspapers.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:32 I got it.

Tim Urban 1:08:32 But they'll have something like Wayne Rooney's shagged a prostitute that's a grandma, and they're running the story tomorrow, and they need someone to write the headline.

Chris Williamson 1:08:39 Oh, it's like the New York Post.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:40 Oh, like the New York Post. New York Post.

Tim Urban 1:08:41 Yeah, New York Po-

Chris Williamson 1:08:41 Yeah

Tim Urban 1:08:41 ... like the ability to just, I actually hate the articles, but the ability for just somebody to give me a story and then just say, "We need four words, five syllables, top breast."

Tim Ferriss 1:08:48 We need some horrible pun-

Chris Williamson 1:08:50 In

Tim Ferriss 1:08:50 ... in this headline.

Tim Urban 1:08:51 Yeah, yeah. We, this is it.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:52 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Urban 1:08:52 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:52 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:08:53 Yeah. I'm thinking about like disturb loop, like-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:56 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:08:56 ... or a do not loop, or a disturbapede, which makes me-

Tim Ferriss 1:09:01 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:09:01 ... think about like the human centipede.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:02 Human centipede.

Chris Williamson 1:09:03 Uh, like Ouroboros, like playing something into that-

Tim Ferriss 1:09:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Chris Williamson 1:09:06 ... could be fun.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:06 Or something with a boomerang. We could throw that one out to the audience too.

Chris Williamson 1:09:08 Cool. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:09 Since we may not-

Chris Williamson 1:09:09 Best, best ones in the comments below for when you ring someone and it's do not disturb and they call you back.

Tim Urban 1:09:13 I, I, I will say like in, as, as a blogger, I'm constantly-

Tim Ferriss 1:09:15 Do not disturb all the way down

Tim Urban 1:09:16 ... like explaining things and coming up with like terms and stuff like that, and it's like most of the terms don't stick, and the, the, the, like the posts or ideas of mine that have gone most viral or just stuck around the most are almost always like where I nailed the term. And it really is-

Chris Williamson 1:09:31 Mm

Tim Urban 1:09:32 ... like it is such an important thing, 'cause if you can really... I mean, look, look at, uh, the cancel culture.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:38 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:09:38 It was this concept.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:39 Mm.

Tim Urban 1:09:39 People said, "You know, where people are, there's too much political correctness-

Tim Ferriss 1:09:42 Yeah

Tim Urban 1:09:42 ... or like, you know, we're-

Tim Ferriss 1:09:43 Yeah

Tim Urban 1:09:43 ... it's a little bit w- you know, it's like it feels like there's witch hunts." It's, it wasn't quite getting it, and then this one term-

Tim Ferriss 1:09:48 It's alliteration. Oof

Tim Urban 1:09:48 ... and it labeled it.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:50 Yes.

Tim Urban 1:09:50 And that exposes it. Now you're acting kind of like that. And it just, it, it did a number on it. It was really like, it was, it was a powerful... It changed the, the, the culture war, this term.

Chris Williamson 1:10:00 Yes.

Tim Urban 1:10:00 I mean, so you can, examples like that are just so, and people who can do that really well.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:03 Oh, can I throw out one more related to that?

Tim Urban 1:10:05 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:05 Bigoteer, like a racketeer, someone who labels others for profit or gain of some type.

Chris Williamson 1:10:12 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:12 A bigoteer.

Tim Urban 1:10:13 That's great.

Chris Williamson 1:10:13 Very nice.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:14 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Urban 1:10:14 That's great.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:15 Uh, so what are some of the blog posts that have really nailed the terminology?

Tim Urban 1:10:19 Like, you s- you mentioned the TED Talk that's gone really viral, and I think part of what was successful there was procrastination is something that so many people experience, and was just, again, putting labels to things. Like I called that, that when you are procrastinating, I said, you know, I describe it, you're in the, the dark playground.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:39 Mm-hmm. [laughs]

Tim Urban 1:10:39 And it's a specific thing where you're, you're, you're, you're digging around social media, you're, you're texting with your friends.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:44 I'm looking up one of your blog posts.

Tim Urban 1:10:46 You're, you're, you're texting with your friends, and you're, you're doing whatever. And, and it is, you're in the playground, you're having fun, right? It's leisure time, but it's not fun at all. This is, is just dread and guilt and s- stress and anxiety that you're here, and you know you should start working, and you feel this. It's not fun. That's why it's the dark playground. But now I get m- messages from, you know, mothers that are saying, "My son, my nine-year-old son said, 'Mom, I'm in the dark playground. I need to get out.'" And it's like, okay, you know, that was a successful term. And it's like-

Chris Williamson 1:11:11 Yes

Tim Urban 1:11:12 ... you know, it's, it's-

Chris Williamson 1:11:13 It's interesting.

Tim Urban 1:11:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:14 The, the leverage-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:15 What are my-

Chris Williamson 1:11:15 The leverage that

Chris Williamson 1:11:16 exists is absurd

Tim Ferriss 1:11:17 ... I'm so tired. What about the tail end?

Tim Urban 1:11:18 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:18 Is that, does it, hey, am I uniquely affected by that?

Tim Urban 1:11:21 No.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:21 Is that-

Tim Urban 1:11:21 No, that one, and, and that's, this is why-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:22 Do you guys know this blog post?

Tim Urban 1:11:24 Yes, I think so. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:25 So-

Tim Urban 1:11:25 I've read it a long time ago

Tim Ferriss 1:11:25 ... you should describe it, 'cause this was sent to me by a friend, Matt Mullenweg, and like it's, I still think about it constantly.

Tim Urban 1:11:30 You remember the guy that sent it to you?

Tim Ferriss 1:11:32 Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. You want, do I have, if, yeah. Do you, do you-

Tim Urban 1:11:35 So this, this was, this is why I like blogging, 'cause I wanna take lots of swings at the bat.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:39 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:11:39 Swings, swings of the bat, because then you might hit a home run once in a while, and you don't know which ones. But if you're just doing, that's why books is like one giant swing over three years.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:47 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:11:47 I don't like that. Um, and this is an example of one where I was procrastinating during the SpaceX post. I was writing the SpaceX post, and I was like-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:54 You know what I should really do is write another blog post.

Tim Urban 1:11:56 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:11:56 [laughs]

Tim Urban 1:11:56 Classic, classic thing. I was like, "I have an idea. Oh, I'm just gonna do, instead of doing this like big giant mountain, I'm just gonna like, oh, I'm just gonna do this little idea that I've had for a long time." But then I like thought about it in bed in the morning, and I was like, "Oh, okay, I know how I wanna do it." And then I just got up and did it in a couple hours, and it made a, it, it was one of those that really made a big impact. Um, and the idea is that, um, so one of the things I like to do is just like use visuals or whatever to look at how much time we have. I like to zoom out, and I don't, I don't wanna just unconsciously go through life and then be like, "Oh, wow," like, "Look how much time passed." I never, I wanna be like, h- how mu- let's just look at it. How many weeks are there left if I live to 90? Like, let's just, let's just see this for what it is and so I'm not like caught, you know, I'm not blindsided by it later. Um, and so I would think about, okay, I've, you know, even just like watching the World Cup, I'm like, "I don't know, maybe I have 12 World Cups left," depending on like longevity research. Um, and that's if I'm lucky, you know? And-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:51 How many Christmases, how many-

Tim Urban 1:12:52 Yeah, exactly

Tim Ferriss 1:12:53 ... whatever.

Tim Urban 1:12:53 So I, I do this kind of thing. But then I kinda had a disturbing thought, which was not all of the important things in life are evenly distributed. World Cups are. Christmases are.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:03 Mm.

Tim Urban 1:13:05 I grew up spending 350 days a year with my parents or whatever, you know. When I got older and went to camp, maybe 330. Over 300 days a year with my parents, um, and my sisters. And, um, and then you graduate and, you know, you, you, you, you move, either go to college or whatever you're doing. You know, you- if, if you, if you move out of the city especially, you might see your parents, I don't know, 10 days a year, 20 days a year? I don't know. Uh, if they live in your city, maybe you see them 80 days a year, whatever. But either way, the number is much smaller. And so then I, you know, I was like, "Well, well, what if you actually add up the total number?" If just say I'm seeing them 15 days a year right now, so that's, I need 20 years now to capture one year of parent time when I was an, a kid. I was like, "Wow, if you look at the whole number, I'm 95% way, of the way through with my in-person relationship with my parents." And I, this was, I had this thought when I was like 30.

Chris Williamson 1:13:59 When you graduate from high school.

Tim Urban 1:14:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. When you graduate. So now I'm even older, right? And so, um, and this is if you're lucky, if your parents live long lives. Um, and it was super depressing. And also one of those things where I'm like, I need to... Th- some thoughts I have that are, you know, or ideas that are depressing and don't serve any positive purpose, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna just-

Chris Williamson 1:14:19 Yeah

Tim Urban 1:14:19 ... share my misery and spread it. Um, this, I was like, "No, this is important. We need to look at this. We need to look at this," uh, for, you know, two reasons. One, if you are living in California and your parents are in New York or whatever, and you are seeing them 10 days a year and that's just a reality, um, or again, with a friend. There's some friends I saw all the time in high school that I, I'll see once every five years now. Once every five years sometimes. These were close friends. Um, I might see that friend 10 more times, period. I might see my parents only, I don't know, 200 more times, 150, 100 more times. And so if that's the reality, being, like staring it in the face and being aware of it will at least make you treat those times you are together as what they are, which is precious.

Chris Williamson 1:15:01 Mm.

Tim Urban 1:15:02 Or also, you can maybe make a big change. I've had people tell me they moved back home to where their parents are because of this post. Because if you go from living in California to you move back home and you see them now 60 days a year, you actually just brought that percentage down. Oh, instead of being 94% done, I'm only 81% done. Like, what? That's a, you can change the equation. So it's this actually really empowering thing. Or at least, you know, I'm not living in the same city as my parents, but I'm, I've become like so adamant about like, we need to all see each other every eight weeks, like somewhere. It needs to be we visit, we visit my sister's there, then we visit home, then we have Thanksgiving, then you should all come here for this. So it's like, it's helped motivate me to, I mean, and again, it's not pleasant, but having the delusion that we have endless time together, uh, is not helpful.

Chris Williamson 1:15:46 It encourages-

Tim Ferriss 1:15:46 Wow

Chris Williamson 1:15:46 ... a bias for action.

Tim Urban 1:15:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:15:48 One of the worst things to do is to identify something uncomfortable that it feels like you can't change or fix. That is where people really, really don't like, you know, this is how bad social media is for you. And people push back against that a lot because it, "Well, I, I feel, I feel like it's out of my control. I kind of agree with the problem, but you haven't yet given me, or the solution feels a little bit more out of reach than that."

Tim Urban 1:16:12 You know-

Tim Ferriss 1:16:12 I mean, I just start, I personally started taking my whole family on a family trip every like year to two years, and did that up until my parents were physically in- uh, incapable-

Chris Williamson 1:16:22 Beautiful

Tim Ferriss 1:16:22 ... of doing it. But like that post was a real catalyst.

Tim Urban 1:16:24 You're, you're-

Tim Ferriss 1:16:25 And conversations that I had with Matt and other people about it, and I was like, "Okay." Like, look, I'm not gonna move back home. I'm, I don't have any desire to live in the middle of nowhere. But at least we can block out like two to three-

Tim Urban 1:16:37 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:16:37 ... weeks of concentrated time where we're sharing these adventures together. We have the anticipation of the trip leading up to it-

Tim Urban 1:16:42 Totally

Tim Ferriss 1:16:42 ... which is a big piece of it. We have the memories and photos and everything else.

Chris Williamson 1:16:45 That, is that from you? That from you is one of my favorite idea... Look at us just mutually fellating each other. Um, one of my favorite things from you is that most-

Tim Ferriss 1:16:52 You promised it in the text to me, so here we are.

Chris Williamson 1:16:54 That is true.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:54 Oh.

Chris Williamson 1:16:55 Uh-

Tim Urban 1:16:55 Oh, Jesus

Chris Williamson 1:16:56 ... like Bonnie Blue. Um-

Tim Ferriss 1:16:58 Range

Chris Williamson 1:16:58 ... your, uh, your insight. Range, dude. It's the most-

Tim Ferriss 1:17:01 Range

Chris Williamson 1:17:01 ... the highest range-

Tim Ferriss 1:17:01 Highest range show

Chris Williamson 1:17:02 ... podcast on the planet.

Chris Williamson 1:17:03 Um, your idea that the holiday that you go on, you should book them as far out in advance as possible because so much of the enjoyment is done in anticipation. So, uh, there was this great study done a while ago. I did, uh, my master's dissertation on the effectiveness of anti-alcohol advertising on students at Newcastle University. I wanted to see what sort of interventions we could do to try and reduce... This is when, uh, drinking was a problem, not, not drinking, which is now the new problem. Uh, but the, uh, uh, thing that I realized is doing a little bit of reading and a bit of research around this was a study was done looking at when people enjoy nights out the most, and this included people that were drinking. So you'd think, how many drinks deep is it? Is it when you arrive at the nightclub? Is it when the music, the, the mainline DJ comes on, the headline DJ, and the, the, every, everyone's there and they're having a great time? No. It was in the flat, in the apartment as you were getting ready for the night out.

Tim Urban 1:17:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:17:57 Like, the middle of the bullseye of dopamine and human satisfaction is things are about to get a little bit better than anticipated.

Tim Urban 1:18:04 Friday at 3:00 PM at work is the happier moment than like mid- midday Saturday.

Chris Williamson 1:18:08 Correct. Correct.

Tim Urban 1:18:09 And by the way, the alter- the, the, the inverse of that is if you, if something shitty is, if, that I'm gonna dread is on my plate, I wanna know about it as late as possible. I, I had six months to think about that I have a TED Talk hanging over, that's gonna, uh, this horrifying thing over the horizon. I wish someone had just told me a month before, you have to... If you want me to speak at your wedding, tell me fricking 10 days before. Do not give me six months where I'm like, "Ah-"

Chris Williamson 1:18:29 The routine of it

Tim Urban 1:18:29 ... "after that wedding I have to come up with a really good speech." Ah.

Chris Williamson 1:18:31 Oh, that's so good.

Tim Urban 1:18:32 Right?

Chris Williamson 1:18:32 Yeah, because you're front-loading the pain-

Tim Urban 1:18:34 Exactly

Chris Williamson 1:18:35 ... as well as front-loading the anticipation.

Tim Urban 1:18:35 So you wanna know about good things way ahead, and you wanna know about bad-

Chris Williamson 1:18:37 Yeah, tell me about the gang bang a year in advance-

Tim Urban 1:18:39 Yeah, exactly

Chris Williamson 1:18:39 ... but tell me about the tax return one week before. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:42 Depends on the details on that one.

Tim Urban 1:18:43 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:18:43 Well, if, if, which side of the gang bang you wanna be?

Tim Ferriss 1:18:45 That's true. That is true.

Tim Urban 1:18:47 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:18:47 You know, um, the, the most depressing version of, um, your kind of tail end thing-

Chris Williamson 1:18:53 Mm

Tim Ferriss 1:18:53 ... it's this old proverb in, um, China, and it essentially goes along the lines of like, "The saddest feeling in the world is to grow the desire to take care of your parents, only to realize they're no longer there."

Chris Williamson 1:19:08 It's this proverb in Chinese culture. I'm like, "Jesus Christ."

Tim Ferriss 1:19:11 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:19:12 Jared, you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem?

Tim Ferriss 1:19:15 I don't consider a lot, Chris.

Chris Williamson 1:19:17 Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brewing Co. last night.

Tim Ferriss 1:19:21 But they're non-alcoholic.

Chris Williamson 1:19:24 And that's not a problem?

Tim Ferriss 1:19:25 Sorry, man, I, I just kept chugging, waiting for the regret to creep in. Never happened.

Chris Williamson 1:19:31 See, most people, like Jared, don't want to change what they drink. They just don't want the next day to be a complete write-off, and that is why I'm such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co. They make the best NA brews on the planet. You can find Athletic Brewing Co.'s best-selling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you, or best option, get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped direct to your door right now. Get 15% off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom and MODERNWISDOM at checkout. Near beer. Terms and conditions apply. Athletic Brewing Company, fit for all times.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:11 Bottoms up. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:20:18 There's a, a great line that I came across and I wanted to read to you guys. It's from, uh, Salih Guney, and it says, "You'll regret it if you get married. You'll regret it if you don't get married. You'll regret it if you have kids, and you'll regret it if you don't." Kierkegaard said this 200 years ago as follows: "Whatever you choose, you'll regret it because the problem isn't in your choices, it's in romanticizing a life you haven't lived."

Tim Ferriss 1:20:37 Grass is always greener.

Chris Williamson 1:20:38 "A person always finds an untraveled path alluring and mysterious. That's why the issue isn't making the right choice, it's choosing and deciding which regret you'll live with." And that was that Douglas Murray line. "In life, we must choose our regrets."

Tim Ferriss 1:20:51 Hmm.

Tim Urban 1:20:51 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:20:52 And you go, okay, in advance of a big decision, you might want to think which decision do I want to live with? But the better question is, which regret could I not bear living with?

Tim Urban 1:21:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:21:02 That's the one.

Tim Urban 1:21:02 It's a little like if you're, you know, someone who you can't be too perfectionist about finding your life partner. It's like, which flawed person and flawed relationship are you going to choose? And, and each one is gonna have a different set of flaws. And l- I think in both of these cases, internalizing that is very helpful because it can make you realize that if I have regrets, it doesn't mean something horribly wrong happened.

Chris Williamson 1:21:22 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 1:21:23 If this r- if marriage is imperfect, it doesn't mean I did something wrong. Like, it's... And, and, and so it, it can help you accept, which is half the battle. I mean, it's like re- regret is only really painful when you feel like, "I wish I could g- I, I, I made a huge mistake"-

Chris Williamson 1:21:38 Mm-hmm

Tim Urban 1:21:39 ... as opposed to like, "This is part of life."

Chris Williamson 1:21:40 This is a, a call that I made.

Tim Urban 1:21:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:21:41 Yeah, so thinking about a pendulum swinging in one direction or the other, going from, we were worried about binge drinking in 2010 when I wrote my dissertation, and now in 2026, we're worried about sobriety culture coming and taking away the way that people are able to communicate-

Tim Urban 1:21:54 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:21:54 ... and spend time and socialize. An equivalent for this, I think, and I've messaged Scott Galloway about this too, uh, as a, a, a famously unmarried man in his 30s. The conversation of you don't need to think that deeply about your life partner to now a lot of the biggest reels that Scott's done, and, and, uh, Warren Buffett, um, the single most important decision that you're going to make in your life is your life partner. This is a piece of advice that distributes unevenly to people. It makes people who are already prone to overthinking feel even more pressure.

Tim Urban 1:22:26 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:22:26 Meanwhile, the people that were just blase making decisions on vibes are just coasting through it.

Tim Urban 1:22:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:22:31 And it's applying even more pressure. I think this is... It's a, a noble insight, which is, hey, this is an important decision, and if you choose, if you choose wrong, it can make your life hell. But the "don't choose wrong" turns into "I must perfect."

Tim Urban 1:22:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:22:46 "I m- I must become a perfectionist in choosing right," and it creates paralysis of analysis. This is David Epstein's new book, Inside the Box.

Tim Urban 1:22:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:22:53 Fucking money, by the way.

Tim Urban 1:22:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:22:55 Really, really good.

Tim Urban 1:22:55 Yeah, it's really good.

Chris Williamson 1:22:56 Um, but yeah, that, that, that, that, um-

Tim Ferriss 1:22:58 What's the basic premise?

Chris Williamson 1:23:00 That con-

Tim Ferriss 1:23:00 I have an old one to recommend too

Chris Williamson 1:23:02 ... constraints breed, uh, creativity.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:05 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:23:06 If, if-

Tim Ferriss 1:23:07 Absolutely. Sure

Chris Williamson 1:23:07 ... I mean, he, he is really great at bringing stories together, but he has this, uh, what was it called? The Magic Company. What was that? Uh, it was all of the engineers from Apple.

Tim Urban 1:23:16 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:23:17 Um, and it was the, the first ever Goldman Sachs idea IPO. So they didn't even have a product, but they just had such an amazing team that they IPO'd just with ideas. And they were able to do... They had unlimited budget. They'd IPO'd before they had a product. And he gives this example of a story where they were going to create basically the iPhone before the iPhone, and one of the engineers said, "I'm gonna run it from, uh, 1904," let's say. It was gonna be 100 years. Something like that, let's say. And another engineering team came in and said, "Well, uh, why do it from then? Why not do it from further back?" Because people might be do- using apps for historical recording and so on. He said, "Okay, well, I'll do it from year zero, and we'll get up to 2004," whenever it is. And another team came in and said, "Well, that's stupid. Why don't you go all the way back to the beginning of time so that we've got a full calendar that people can..." And it ended up what could have been four lines of code turned into this huge, unwieldy project, project.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:09 Yeah. This is General Magic.

Chris Williamson 1:24:11 If you don't-

Tim Ferriss 1:24:11 It's the company

Chris Williamson 1:24:11 ... General Magic. That was it. Thank you.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:12 There's a great documentary on this, and it's also like, if I can interject for a second, it's like, uh, Jodorowsky's Dune. I don't know if you guys have ever seen this documentary. It's about this ill-fated attempt to make a Dune movie, which was just like [laughs] I guess it was made by this crazy man named Jodorowsky, and it goes through all these disasters. And it didn't work out, but the team ended up being Giger, who designed the Alien. And so on the, the talent density of that failed project was so high, it's hard to believe. This is true with General Magic, too, right? You had, like, very, very young Tony Fadell, who went on to create the iPod and the iPhone. You've got-

Chris Williamson 1:24:53 Hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:24:53 ... the person who went on to create Android. Uh, it's, it's kind of nuts. And despite that, or in s- in d- I say [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:25:03 In spite of

Tim Ferriss 1:25:03 ... in spite of having-

Chris Williamson 1:25:05 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:25:05 ... this incredible talent density, it's like if you don't have constraints, well, if you have a lot of brilliant people with a lot of ideas, that could actually be a fatal recipe, right?

Chris Williamson 1:25:13 Correct. Yeah. Constraints breed creativity.

Tim Urban 1:25:14 This is another... You said coming up with the term is really important. Well, it's also just, like, I don't know, just getting a certain, like uh, a- anchor concept that can help anchor your rational- Rationality. So, like, one of the things I've always thought about with relationships for perfection, 'cause I'm, I'm like this. And the, and one of the times when I was able to kinda, like, finally s- you know, pull the pin. Yeah, is because I, I think I grew up a little bit and was in enough relationships when I was like ... Again, the fact that, like, every, they're all flawed. Every single one. So, but you also don't wanna be like, "Well, they're all flawed, so this relationship is fine," when it's actually really bad. [laughs] Like, right? So it's, it's more like what are, of their, if there's 30 things you would love to have in a partner, um, you're 100% gonna be missing a bunch of those in every partner. But what are your deal breakers? Like, actually think about, uh, two or three or four, don't get too much with these, that are like, "This is critical to me. Like, I, I, I'm, I will not marry someone who does not," you know, whatever. But I-

Chris Williamson 1:26:12 I was gonna say on both sides of the fence, 'cause they can be things that you must not have-

Tim Urban 1:26:16 Yes

Chris Williamson 1:26:16 ... and things that you must have.

Tim Urban 1:26:18 Exactly. And, and I think it's a mistake, it's not being perfectionist enough to sacrifice on those deal breakers. And I think it's being way too much of a perfectionist to be like, "Ah, you know, it's like she's not, you know, she doesn't love to, uh, jam music with me, and I did that with my previous, you know, girlfriend, and that's a mu-" It's like you can't have a ton of those or you're never gonna ever, no one's ever gonna be enough.

Chris Williamson 1:26:37 One of the biggest, uh, issues in relationships that, uh, people don't talk about enough are, uh, bedtime lag issues.

Tim Urban 1:26:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:26:45 Like, if you don't go to bed and wake up within maybe an hour of your partner, I think that there's a lot that you're missing. Like, just literally you're missing out on a lot of time together.

Tim Urban 1:26:54 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:26:54 But I think it causes an awful lot of, uh, friction between you and your partner.

Tim Urban 1:26:58 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:26:58 Because, like, you're gonna be woken up when they get into bed. They're gonna be woken up when you get out of bed. Sleep's really important. There's health effects. Gonna begin to resent them if they come in at a different times. Maybe some people are laissez-faire enough or a deep enough sleeper that it doesn't really matter. But I think aligning the sleep rhythm is probably one of the sort of unseen ... That should be a ... I- I- In order to get into the conversation, that's probably across the board a piece of advice that most people should, should follow.

Tim Urban 1:27:22 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:22 I'll, I'll play devil's advocate just 'cause I have historically had very strange-

Tim Urban 1:27:25 Big sleep gap relationship?

Tim Ferriss 1:27:27 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in some very good relationships, including my current relationship. But it's a few hours, I would say. Very often it's like one to two-hour gap. She'll get up before I do. Uh, I think it can work if you are okay with going to bed at different times. Also, as soon as you have a puppy or a child, like, you're on the same schedule.

Tim Urban 1:27:47 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:27:47 But ... 'Cause, or, or if someone's due in the morning, the other person's gonna sleep, so actually it's, it, um-

Tim Urban 1:27:50 It might actually be adaptive.

Chris Williamson 1:27:51 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:27:52 If you've got someone that goes to bed at 3:00 in the morning typically, and you're like, okay, well, you're obviously gonna do the night shift up until 3:00.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:57 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:27:57 And then if your missus is usually getting up at 5:00, it's like, all right, we'll just run that back a little bit earlier, and then-

Tim Ferriss 1:28:03 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:28:03 I usually am up a little later, and I'll usually, like, close down the house and, like, clean up the kitchen a little bit and, like, turn off all the lights and, like, take the dogs out.

Chris Williamson 1:28:09 And do off-time.

Tim Urban 1:28:09 And then, like, she'll be more likely to wake up and do morning

Tim Urban 1:28:11 stuff. Um-

Chris Williamson 1:28:11 Before we move on from terms, we are still struggling to fucking name this podcast series. It's currently Rabbit Hole, which is the, the working title. But we're still struggling. Was it, uh, fuck me, uh, Good Dudes, Good Vibe, Rabbit Hole.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:24 Fuck Me is pretty good.

Chris Williamson 1:28:25 Fuck Me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Autis-

Tim Ferriss 1:28:27 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:28:27 Uh, Fire Up the Autism Engine was another one obviously.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:29 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:28:29 But, uh, yeah. It's-

Tim Urban 1:28:31 What's wrong with Ra- This, this, Rabbit Hole described what we've done today. We've just gone down 20, 20 rabbit holes and we-

Tim Ferriss 1:28:35 Yeah

Tim Urban 1:28:36 ... you know, underground burrowed to a different rabbit hole and then come back up.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:38 It's, it's funny the, uh, the power of a name though, right? You know, here's a little, here's a little test for you.

Chris Williamson 1:28:43 Here we go.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:44 Have you ever heard of a book called Women, Love, and Relationships?

Chris Williamson 1:28:49 No.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:49 No. 'Cause nobody fucking did, right? So this book released, I think it was in the '80s or the '90s. Sold nothing. So he came along, changed the title, and just jazzed it up a little bit to Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.

Chris Williamson 1:29:05 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:05 And it was the best-selling book of the '90s.

Chris Williamson 1:29:07 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:07 And just ... It was the, basically the same book.

Chris Williamson 1:29:10 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:10 Different title.

Chris Williamson 1:29:12 Well, it's like, uh, when was the last time you had Patagonian toothfish? Not recently, right? Chilean sea bass?

Tim Urban 1:29:19 Oh.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:19 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:29:20 [laughs]

Tim Urban 1:29:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:29:21 Now we're talking.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:22 I don't want a toothfish.

Chris Williamson 1:29:23 Question. Question. Given that we've got-

Tim Ferriss 1:29:25 Question

Chris Williamson 1:29:25 ... k- we've got two authors and one fledgling author at the table, what is a book that you think is amazing but failed because of its name?

Tim Ferriss 1:29:34 Ooh, great question.

Chris Williamson 1:29:40 So mine, my, my kind of go-to for this is a little bit niche, but it's Mate by Tucker Max and Jeffrey Miller. It's, uh, Become the Man Women Want. It's a evolutionary psychology inspired dating book for men.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:53 Is that a bad title or is it just too generic?

Chris Williamson 1:29:55 It, I just think g- it should have done ... 'Cause Models by Mark Manson also I reckon had he have given it a little bit more magic would've been ... 'Cause it's still great and sold, like, relatively well, but could've been significantly better for what it was. Mate by Tucker Max and Jeffrey Miller is one of the best, if not the best book for guys to understand, understand how women think, understand what their fears are. It's very, like, sort of both sides of the spectrum in terms of being understanding about women, being pro-men without being too apologetic. And it fucking rips. And I think they even renamed it once.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:26 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:30:26 I'm, m- I'm not sure why. Uh, but it's ... That's just one that comes to mind. Like, fuck, that book was so good, and it, it didn't take off. And I feel like there was a big unlock in, in the name perhaps.

Tim Urban 1:30:36 I think with a book it helps ... I think with, like, certain things like a company or ev- even like a blog maybe, it's like l- like XKCD, I think if I were advising my friend before that started, I would've been like, "No one's ... It's just four random letters."

Chris Williamson 1:30:49 Do you wanna explain what, explain-

Tim Urban 1:30:50 Like, no one's gonna remember that

Chris Williamson 1:30:50 ... explain what that is? Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:30:51 Someone'll be like, "You should s- you should read that blog. It has the four letters." And they'll be like, "What?" It's obviously a m- massive success. Um, and-

Chris Williamson 1:30:57 Do you wanna explain what it is for people?

Tim Urban 1:30:59 Um, XKCD is Randall Munroe's, uh ... He's this, you know, brilliant com- He's a, you know, he does a, he does a three comic Monday, Wednesday, Friday. He also puts out books.

Tim Ferriss 1:31:06 It's like a comic strip.

Tim Urban 1:31:07 Yeah, it's a comic strip.

Chris Williamson 1:31:08 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 1:31:08 But it's, like, nerdy and s- science, and he's just, it's amazing. Um, and, uh, it has a giant-

Tim Ferriss 1:31:14 Been around forever too

Tim Urban 1:31:15 ... yeah, c- cult following. Yeah, he's been doing it forever. And, um- And he probably gets more reads than, like, anything in, like, the, the, you know, the comics or the newspapers these days. I mean, he's probably bigger than, um ... But, um, so I, I think although maybe the fact that not everyone's heard of him, maybe [chuckles] they, maybe it would be even bigger. I mean, that- that's-

Tim Ferriss 1:31:29 Hmm

Tim Urban 1:31:29 ... that's true. I don't know. Um, uh, I, I think ... I say, people say, "What's your blog's name?" Wait But Why, and they go, "What?" And I'm like, "It's..." I just say, "I'm sorry." And it's, I just was looking on, I was looking on, uh, GoDaddy, and I was like, "I need a domain that has a .com," and I had like my 100th idea. And I was like, "Okay, that's one," and I had, like, a small list of ones that actually had .coms. And I was like, "Sure." I think, like, it, it, names in certain situations are overrated. I think with books, probably not. I think books maybe is something that it's, uh ... But I think, you know, I think company names, I think if ... There are a lot of really dumb company names that are-

Tim Ferriss 1:32:03 I, yeah, I think it depends a lot on the nature of the company. I'm literally having-

Tim Urban 1:32:06 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:32:06 ... this conversation with one startup right now.

Tim Urban 1:32:08 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:32:09 Like, whether to keep or change. And in their case, I don't think it matters because they're B2B and selling-

Tim Urban 1:32:15 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:32:15 ... in a very, like, long sales cycle to sophisticated buyers, as opposed to a product that is, like, B2C, where it's like a consumer-

Tim Urban 1:32:25 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:32:25 ... facing product where you want people to be able to easily say, "Hey, have you tried X?"

Tim Urban 1:32:29 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:32:29 And if they can't remember X-

Tim Urban 1:32:31 Two years

Tim Ferriss 1:32:31 ... you're kind of dead in the water.

Tim Urban 1:32:33 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:32:33 Uh, I do have a book example. Uh, there are a lot of books that didn't do particularly well, but I don't think it was solely due to the title. This one I think might be title related. I've probably sold half the copies that this book has sold in total at this point, because I've talked about it [laughs] on ... I have a bookshelf in my guest bedroom with just this book for people to yank. But Awareness.

Tim Urban 1:32:56 Anthony de Mello.

Tim Ferriss 1:32:57 Anthony de Mello, yeah. And it's got, you know, the subtitle is The Perils and Opportunities of Reality. That's the better subtitle. They, they changed the subtitle to Conversations with the Masters, which makes no sense to me because it's a conversation with one guy.

Tim Urban 1:33:09 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:33:09 Transcribed, uh, conversations. But, uh, that book, if I had to pick one book to read on an annual basis, that would probably be the one.

Tim Urban 1:33:20 Hmm. Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:33:20 I mean, I have some other close runner-ups, but that, that one for sure. And it's so short.

Tim Urban 1:33:25 Why? What's the kind of reflections from the book?

Tim Ferriss 1:33:28 I, I would say this, so the, I mean, the, it, it is honing your ability to observe your own thinking and your own state. And without that meta ability, I think your, your striving to develop other faculties is severely, if not wholly, handicapped, right? You, you have to be able to sort of observe to the extent that you can without enhancement. There are certain drugs and so on that help with this, or practices, like different types of meditation. But without any augmentation, it's very hard to look at your operating system, right? What are the biases? What are the weights? Almost as if you were an AI model, right? Like, what has been built into, like, the confirmation bias and the narratives over time that you inherited from parents or whoever it might be, that have not actually been stress tested, that you didn't arrive at through any type of firsthand experience. Or maybe there was one outlying experience that was tremendously painful, and therefore you lived from that point forward for 15 years with this filter on reality which actually isn't defensible.

Tim Urban 1:34:33 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:34:33 But it's sitting in the background governing how you make decisions. Uh, and it's, it's incredibly colloquial. It's lectures that were transcribed and cleaned up, and it's unforgiving in its delivery. It's, like, it's very, uh, harsh. So some people don't like it. It's very in your face in some ways. But-

Tim Urban 1:34:53 Hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:34:53 ... uh, I have had so many people, friends of mine, including people who are very, very accomplished, either get, either get more done or f- like, feel like they have removed, like, gauze from their eyes or pain from their life, or all of the above after reading this book. It's like 150 pages.

Tim Urban 1:35:14 It's called Awareness?

Tim Ferriss 1:35:15 Awareness, yeah. It's a red cover by Anthony de Mello. He was a, he was a Jesuit priest, also a psychotherapist. And, uh, he's pulling from a lot of different traditions, but it's, it's very pithy. You would ... I mean, I think all you guys would like it, but I was thinking of you, George, because of the naming, right? His sort of idea handles that you then carry forward, the stories that he tells. I mean, I've read it like 20 times, so of course I've had some reps. But even after one reading, the stories that stick with people are so compelling and funny. It's a funny book.

Tim Urban 1:35:49 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:35:50 It's a really-

Tim Urban 1:35:51 Hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:35:51 ... sticky, effective book.

Tim Urban 1:35:54 I think that WinZip file of, I say that one word and it unlocks-

Tim Ferriss 1:35:58 Mm-hmm

Tim Urban 1:35:58 ... this entire ... You know, we, I still have an obsession with language. I've always loved language since I was a kid. And one of the problems if you do 1,100 podcast episodes where you're kind of obsessed with language is you can sometimes get nerdy on it, and you can start aphorism maxing, maxim maxing. And, uh, but for me, it's really important if I've got a single sentence that explains a huge concept. One of the best ones I came up with last year was idea, uh, advice hyperresponders. So advice doesn't land evenly. People who have a predisposition toward it tend to take it on board a lot, while the people that didn't already pay attention to it just coast past unchanged. I'm like, "Fuck," like, that explains so much of why certain people have their traits exaggerated, while the people that the advice is actually for ... Like, the prescription to work harder seems to be absorbed much more by people who are already working too hard than people who don't work hard enough.

Tim Ferriss 1:36:48 Hmm.

Tim Urban 1:36:48 And, and I, "Fuck, that now explains, it opens up this entire world for me," and it was a term that I needed for myself. And that if you're a super successful author who's got, like, ton of readers and distributes all of this stuff out, like you can move the entire sort of cognitive topography of everybody that comes into contact with it. And then people who don't even know the book or don't even know where it comes from-

Tim Ferriss 1:37:11 Yeah

Tim Urban 1:37:12 ... that-

Tim Ferriss 1:37:12 It spreads even bigger than the readers

Tim Urban 1:37:14 ... meme, meme being one of them-

Tim Ferriss 1:37:15 Right

Tim Urban 1:37:15 ... catches on too-

Tim Ferriss 1:37:16 Mm-hmm

Tim Urban 1:37:16 ... and, and, and starts to change the world.

Tim Ferriss 1:37:17 For the advice hyperresponder, was there any examples of some maybe bad advice that you hyperresponded to, and then some good advice that you

Chris Williamson 1:37:26 Have ignored or still ignore to this day

Tim Ferriss 1:37:28 I think the one about working harder is, is, is a good example of that as a, a person whose proclivity, predisposition was always to lean into, "I'm not doing enough. I should be working more. I need to be more diligent." I already pay way too much attention to stuff, and it sounded to me like type A advice for type B people. I just took that advice on for me as a type A person and it made ... It worsened my imbalances as opposed to correcting them.

Chris Williamson 1:37:54 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:37:54 Uh, but it's, uh, the thing that's interesting about that, the type A advice for type B people, or type A people have type B problems and type B people have type A problems. The reason that's particularly interesting is that on average maybe more people do need David Goggins screaming in their face to go harder than Eckhart Tolle whispering in their ear that they're already enough. Uh, perhaps that-

Chris Williamson 1:38:13 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:38:13 ... a- across the whole world it would be better for more people to pay more attention and work harder. But for a certain cohort of people, mostly people that listen to podcasts like this one, they actually need to hear the opposite message.

Chris Williamson 1:38:24 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:38:24 They need to be rest day maxing, not workday maxing. And, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:38:28 Yeah. Rest, rest maxing.

Tim Urban 1:38:28 Which ties, I'd say, which ... Yeah. That ties into awareness. I mean, that's where I think, like, the most important possible skill you can develop is self-awareness and just being able to see, "I go too far here. I'm not gonna listen to that advice." And if you, if you see that about yourself, you're not gonna fall into that trap as much. Um-

Tim Ferriss 1:38:44 One of the problems with that prescription, though, is that people who are already self-aware will take more self-awareness on.

Tim Urban 1:38:48 Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then too much self-awareness is not great.

Tim Ferriss 1:38:51 It's restricting.

Tim Urban 1:38:51 Yeah. You just, yeah, you're too self-conscious in everything you do and-

Tim Ferriss 1:38:54 Bingo.

Tim Urban 1:38:54 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:38:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Urban 1:38:55 It's true.

Chris Williamson 1:38:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:38:58 You also ... The problem with self-awareness is, yeah, when you think too much about yourself. One of the exercises I was trying to write about the other day for the book, this interesting little thought experiment for you two gentlemen, which is imagine we have-

Tim Urban 1:39:10 Gentlemen? Hold on, now.

Chris Williamson 1:39:11 Gentlemen, how dare you.

Tim Urban 1:39:12 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:39:13 Imagine we have a room here, okay? And there's 10 people inside the room, but one of them is secretly miserable but they're keeping it together. Everybody else is moderately happy. Now, think of everybody in your life that you know. Who do you think you could send in that room and have the best probability of figuring it out?

Tim Urban 1:39:32 Figuring out which one?

Chris Williamson 1:39:33 And who, and who would be the worst? Obviously don't answer the worst one publicly. Um, but who ... But if you think of those two people in your head, who would be the best person?

Tim Urban 1:39:40 Esther Perel. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:39:41 Why? What is it about them?

Tim Urban 1:39:43 I don't know. I just feel like she is so unbelievably perceptive of ... And I, I mean, I know this, I mean of her talks and stuff, but I, I know her personally and I just feel like she just, like, sees what I'm actually trying to say or what I'm actually-

Chris Williamson 1:39:56 Yeah

Tim Urban 1:39:56 ... feeling, like, really, really well, which is part of why I think she's so magnetic in her-

Chris Williamson 1:40:00 Also an amazing podcast.

Tim Urban 1:40:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:40:01 With couples work.

Tim Urban 1:40:02 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:40:02 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 1:40:03 Which is ... I mean, and that's ... Who's, who's better at doing a podcast with couples? Couples therapy is usually y- the, this person who barely knows you two-

Chris Williamson 1:40:10 Mm-hmm

Tim Urban 1:40:10 ... can, within a few minutes start to see stuff that-

Chris Williamson 1:40:12 Mm

Tim Urban 1:40:13 ... you don't see with each other.

Chris Williamson 1:40:14 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:40:15 It's like th- th- that's incredible power.

Chris Williamson 1:40:17 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:40:17 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:40:18 There, there are also ... I mean, I would think of, for instance, my friend Kevin Rose. Super close friend, serial entrepreneur, amazing investor, great guy. EQ off the charts. Off the charts. So he would walk in and observe the room, and I think with millions of years of evolution tilting in his favor, uh, I don't think it's necessarily something he could verbalize-

Tim Urban 1:40:38 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:40:38 ... but he would pick it out. It's an interesting idea of is it a trainable skill? What's also interesting is that you could kind of replace secretly miserable person with psychopath, con man, having an affair, and you'd probably pick loosely the same people to be able to go in to do that.

Tim Urban 1:40:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:40:58 And it appears that it's closely related to theory of mind, which seems to come online at, like, four years old. So a three-year-old h- almost has no theory of mind. They can't understand that Tim has thoughts or thinks differently to me.

Tim Urban 1:41:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:41:10 And it happens at four years old. And-

Tim Ferriss 1:41:12 I think that's when the lying starts as well.

Chris Williamson 1:41:14 Yes. So this ability to be able to think, "Oh, think how Tim thinks"-

Tim Ferriss 1:41:19 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:41:19 ... and then sometimes think how Tim's thinking-

Tim Ferriss 1:41:20 You do not want to do

Chris Williamson 1:41:21 ... I'm thinking. Yeah, I know. [laughs]

Tim Urban 1:41:22 Well, it's funny watching up close, like, it ... There's a f- there's stages before that. First is, like, I am the only person and everyone else is like a f- is like a f- here for my per- my ... Everyone's a figment of my imagination.

Chris Williamson 1:41:34 [laughs]

Tim Urban 1:41:34 And then there starts to be-

Tim Ferriss 1:41:36 NPCs

Tim Urban 1:41:36 ... like, oh, like, other people are here and they're real. Like, they actually have their own consciousness, but they're all here for me. They're all here. And then there starts to be, you're like a kid and everyone smiles at you in the grocery store and it's, "Oh, everyone's doing their own thing. They're not here for me, but everyone likes me. Everyone's good. Everyone loves me." You know? And then you start to realize, like, oh, I'm just a random person.

Chris Williamson 1:41:55 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 1:41:55 And, like, I'm not a kid anymore and people aren't, like, all smiling at me.

Chris Williamson 1:41:57 The first existential crisis-

Tim Urban 1:41:59 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:41:59 ... when you're about five years old.

Tim Urban 1:42:00 Well, and actually, the, the, there's a lot of theories, uh, as I forget who originally, but it's, you know, this, this oceanic feeling that you have when you think everyone is there for you and that everyone loves you and everyone knows you, is some people get ... can, cannot let that go and they're, the f- the, the desire, the deep desire some people have for fame is-

Chris Williamson 1:42:21 Oh

Tim Urban 1:42:22 ... forever chasing.

Chris Williamson 1:42:22 Oceanic.

Tim Urban 1:42:23 Yeah. Oce- the oceanic feeling or, uh, uh, is this feeling this, like, this, you know, that you're in this ocean of, like, love and just ... And then later you feel this very cold loneliness. And fame is like, [gasps] "If I could be famous and everyone knows me again-

Chris Williamson 1:42:35 Mm

Tim Urban 1:42:35 ... and everyone loves me-

Chris Williamson 1:42:36 Wow

Tim Urban 1:42:36 ... and I'm admired," you know? And it's this ... And I think a lot of people have a real, like, 13 to 15-year-olds have, like, this, a lot of them people go through. I think I went through this at that age, like, this you want fame more than anything in the world because it's the ultimate, like, being popular in school. But, like, it's like the, you know. And then most people grow out of that, but I think some people don't.

Chris Williamson 1:42:54 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 1:42:54 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:42:55 To, to your question about trainability, I think, I think it is trainable, but different people have better raw materials. Or some people, right? It's like vertical jump, muscle mass. Like, sure, you can improve on those metrics a lot with really thoughtful training, and I think that's true. But some people just get it, and I think it goes beyond human-to-human interactions, too, right? Like, I'm very, uh, very, very interested in dog training and mammal training writ large. Actually goes beyond, uh, mammal training. That's, like, a whole separate-

Chris Williamson 1:43:25 Why?

Tim Ferriss 1:43:26 Uh, because I think that-

1:43:31 It's interspecies communication that however primitive it might be is fascinating in and of itself. I think that, I mean, dogs in particular, like the relationship between dogs and humans is kind of crazy. Like, if you start to look past the familiarity of seeing dogs everywhere, like yeah, dogs. And you're like, "Wait a second." [laughs] Like think about how unusual it is-

Tim Urban 1:43:53 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:43:53 ... that we have effectively co-evolved over time. [laughs]

Tim Urban 1:43:55 Yeah, there's an animal that lives in my house.

Tim Ferriss 1:43:57 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:43:58 That's weird

Tim Ferriss 1:43:58 It's an animal lives in your house. Actually, like-

Tim Urban 1:44:00 And it does stuff

Tim Ferriss 1:44:00 ... this is like-

Tim Urban 1:44:01 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:44:01 ... this is like a companion/guardian. I grew up with four cats. I lo- look, cats are great, but like ca- cats are animals that live in your house. Dogs are sort of in a separate category if they're trained. Uh, and I think a certain different type of awareness and consciousness comes online for dogs vis-a-vis training, um, as you develop kind of labels for different things. Uh, so for, for all of those reasons, but it extends to equine training and how that could be apply like animal interactions to people with autism or PTSD. Like you see some wild stuff, and this doesn't end up being limited to, to, to horses, for instance, in the case of the therapy. You ... I've seen instances, I volunteered at a, a wolf sanctuary in Colorado for a period of time, which is a long story. But wolves that had either been injured, trapped by ranchers, or raised in captivity, which is a terrible idea. Please, people, don't get like wolf dogs or anything like that. It's really, it's really, really awful on a lot of levels. But, uh, there are these ambassador wolves that they have. I think it's just called Mission Wolf in Colorado if people wanna look at it and possibly support it. But, uh, these civilians can come in and visit and like donate money if they want, and the ambassador wolves will go straight up to people who are seemingly having the most pain in the room. It's weird.

Tim Urban 1:45:23 No way.

Chris Williamson 1:45:23 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:45:23 It's weird. Yeah. Or the people who are most withdrawn, like autistic and autistic kids and things like that. And, uh, it just raises a lot of really fascinating questions.

Tim Urban 1:45:32 I've seen, I've seen some videos of dogs that are there to stop seizures. If people are about to fall and have seizures, maybe people have got epilepsy, epilepsy, and these dogs are kind of-

Chris Williamson 1:45:41 They're giving out some pheromone that the dog-

Tim Ferriss 1:45:42 They can use them for autoimmune disorders, Hashimoto's.

Tim Urban 1:45:45 They jump up before someone has the collapse.

Chris Williamson 1:45:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Urban 1:45:48 It's able to-

Chris Williamson 1:45:48 Give some smell

Tim Urban 1:45:49 ... be there.

Chris Williamson 1:45:49 Yeah, yeah.

Tim Urban 1:45:50 And it jumps up and c- 'cause when they're shaking, the dog sort of lies on them like a weighted blanket or make sure that they're not gonna fall over. And there was a woman that was taking some f- there's a v- I don't know why there's a video. Maybe it was a Ring doorbell camera or like internal doorbell camera or something. And she's taking food out of the oven, and the dog jumps up and, uh, pulls her back. So, you know, when you're sort of crouching down, she's already halfway down, grabs her in the back of the collar and pulls her to the ground and lies on her. And she's fine, and she's thinking, "What is this dog doing? Is it okay? Is this something that's gonna go on?" And then [snaps finger]

Chris Williamson 1:46:21 Seizure.

Tim Urban 1:46:21 She has a seizure.

Chris Williamson 1:46:22 Terrible.

Tim Urban 1:46:23 After the dog's been there too.

Tim Ferriss 1:46:24 So-

Tim Urban 1:46:25 Insane

Tim Ferriss 1:46:25 ... so this

Tim Ferriss 1:46:26 raises ... Yeah, I mean, if we wanna get into like crazy town territory.

Tim Urban 1:46:28 Let's go.

Chris Williamson 1:46:29 Let's go, Tim.

Tim Ferriss 1:46:30 Well, I'll do, let me-

Chris Williamson 1:46:31 Two hours deep

Tim Ferriss 1:46:31 ... let, let me do non-crazy town, and then we'll segue to crazy town. So the, the non-crazy town is the reason I bring up the dogs is that you will s- I, I've noticed that the same people who have the highest EQ around humans often have the highest EQ around animals, right? So they like intuitively know how to interact with animals or be guarded around the right type of animals. Say, a dog that's really quiet may actually be really afraid and could be aggressive. Or they can read that type of body language even though it's a different species. Whereas some people have no awareness, right? They'll walk up to a dog that is clearly uncomfortable, and they'll come top down to like put their hand on the dog's head, and it's just like, oh my God, you're just a- asking for trouble. Or they're not paying any attention to their kids. Like why do so many little girls have dog bites on the faces? Because little boys are kinda assholes, and they like to like poke dogs and stuff, but little girls like to hug dogs around the face and neck.

Tim Urban 1:47:25 Oh.

Tim Ferriss 1:47:25 Dogs don't like that.

Chris Williamson 1:47:27 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:47:27 Right? And parents aren't paying attention. So it's not actually necessarily the dog's fault. It's the parent's fault. So I think that EQ is not limited to human to human. Um, and that just relates to the theory of mind stuff.

Tim Urban 1:47:41 I wonder if-

Tim Ferriss 1:47:41 Maybe, maybe the theory of mind can be ex- expanded to dogs.

Tim Urban 1:47:45 D- dogs are like pattern recognition machines on four legs. I once heard someone-

Tim Ferriss 1:47:48 Yeah. I think that's part of why I s- I, I think, like, I noticed with my dog, like she can ... If I'm about to leave, but I haven't even started getting ready yet, she can tell something's different the way he's-

Tim Urban 1:47:58 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:47:58 Yeah

Tim Urban 1:47:58 ... you know? Um, but, but you know, I, I'm interested in dog training. I'm not a good dog trainer. My dog is not very well-trained. But I ... Training a mammal will make you realize, um, an important skill, which is, uh, you are a mammal.

Tim Ferriss 1:48:16 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 1:48:16 And your brain, if you treat, treat your brain like a dog, um, and great things can happen.

Tim Ferriss 1:48:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:48:23 You just become a behaviorist.

Tim Urban 1:48:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:48:24 Like Skinnerian reinforcement.

Tim Urban 1:48:25 Well, because you're br- you know, the, it's this idea that, well, I'm a person. It's like, no, no, you have a m- you might be a person with like, you know, this higher consciousness. In your head is a mammal brain.

Tim Ferriss 1:48:33 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:48:34 And it's not that different than your dog.

Tim Ferriss 1:48:35 It do- it teaches you about how to train yourself, for sure.

Tim Urban 1:48:37 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:48:37 Reward and punishment.

Tim Ferriss 1:48:38 Schei- Seinfeld talks about this-

Tim Urban 1:48:39 Oh my God. It's, yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:48:39 ... in training his mind like a dumb little puppy.

Tim Urban 1:48:41 Yeah. If, if you treat-

Tim Ferriss 1:48:43 I shouldn't say dumb little puppy. It's just like a blank slate puppy. It doesn't know what to do and what not to do.

Tim Urban 1:48:46 It's, it's a primate brain. We're all ... Like, this consciousness is stuck inside of a, of an ancient primate. I mean, it's, that's what it is. And so it's like if you realize that and you're like, like you said, you wanna have positive ... You wanna have things on your desk that encourage ... I mean, that's ... What is that? That's because yours a dumb primate that is gonna be the person sitting at the desk.

Chris Williamson 1:49:03 How else have you applied this behaviorist dog training lens to yourself?

Tim Urban 1:49:07 I mean, ju- just, just reward. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:49:09 Yeah. Uh, I mean, really, it's, it's ... So I, I should say, like, if we're talking about like B.F. Skinner and Skinner boxes, like we're getting ... You can get into territory where you s- you don't, you basically a- assume, and I'm simplifying here, that something does not exist if you can't observe it externally, right? But this is how you get into like, oh, animals don't feel pain. Oh, blah, blah, which by the way, we assumed about infants for a very long time.

Tim Urban 1:49:34 It's not that crazy.

Tim Ferriss 1:49:35 It's not that long ago that people were operating on infants without anesthesia, right?

Tim Urban 1:49:39 Ooh.

Tim Ferriss 1:49:39 Crazy. So- Uh, I, I mean, there are, there are, I, I'm careful with the Skinner stuff, but when you get into, like, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, there's an amazing book called Don't Shoot the Dog, which has a terrible title. Maybe this is a good example of a book that failed. Don't Shoot the Dog, but it's written by this woman, Karen Pryor, who worked in training marine mammals, right? Dolphins and so on. And, uh, a lot, I think she and her colleague also worked with the military, like training cats. Like, the military's trained cockroaches to, like, turn light switches on and off. I mean, this is-

Tim Urban 1:50:13 [laughs] Oh, man

Tim Ferriss 1:50:13 ... this is not science fiction. This is real stuff.

Tim Urban 1:50:15 Back at crazy town now.

Tim Ferriss 1:50:16 So it's like, how do you do that, right? Oh, yeah, I'm not even ... I'm just getting warmed up.

Tim Urban 1:50:19 Okay, okay, okay. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:50:19 Oh, yeah. Uh, but this is well documented. Like, that's, that's not fiction. Um, sidebar, the mosquito-sized or the fly-sized drones out of China.

Tim Urban 1:50:27 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:50:28 I don't know if you guys have seen these videos. Holy shit. Terrifying.

Tim Urban 1:50:31 Bad times.

Tim Ferriss 1:50:31 Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Where's Neil Stevenson when we need him to make some predictions? But, um, took myself completely off the rails here. [laughs]

Tim Urban 1:50:40 Don't Shoot the Dog. Mosquito drones.

Tim Ferriss 1:50:41 Don't Shoot the Dog, Karen Pryor. When you're training, say, a marine mammal, right? Okay. Dolphin doesn't do what you want it to do. You can't hit it with a rolled up newspaper. You can't chastise the dolphin. It just swims away from you, right? So you end up focusing on positive reinforcement, right? Providing rewards for the behavior that you're trying to shape, and behavioral shaping is also just an interesting concept I could explain in a second. And she started using different auditory cues, and that converted into clicker training for dogs. So to teach a dog what to do or not do-

Tim Urban 1:51:17 Hang on. Sorry. The training of dolphins is where the clicker for dogs comes from?

Tim Ferriss 1:51:22 Yes, from, uh, aquatic mammals.

Tim Urban 1:51:24 No fucking way.

Tim Ferriss 1:51:25 Yeah, because they would use whistles.

Tim Urban 1:51:26 We're clicking at dogs-

Tim Ferriss 1:51:27 Mm-hmm

Tim Urban 1:51:27 ... because we clicked at dolphins.

Tim Ferriss 1:51:29 They used whi- I think they used whistles, but it's the same idea. Uh, because you're trying to indicate to this dog, and this applies to humans too, like w- what is the right behavior?

Tim Urban 1:51:40 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:51:40 What is the wrong behavior? But for instance, like, the dog shits in the house, you come home two hours later, and then you punish the dog. It's so temporally dislocated. The dog has no idea.

Tim Urban 1:51:49 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 1:51:50 Right? It's, it's not effective. It's just going to make the dog less likely to offer behaviors because it doesn't know when it's gonna get punished, right? Uh, and I ... Look, I understand approaches to e-collars, and I think they have their place and so on, but, uh, this is just to say that when you start digging into this and you start thinking about behavioral shaping, so I'll give an example of behavioral shaping, a simple example. And look, I'm not a professional dog trainer, but I do find it really interesting. So for instance, if you're trying to get a dog to sit is really easy, but if you have a treat, right? So you're using a lure, and you start with a motion that's, let's say the dog's right here, it's standing, and you do this. You push it back behind its head. It sits down to get its mouth closer to the treat, right? And then over time, you lose the treat because now it has figured out how this dance works, and then you get to a point where you're using, like, the international sign language for sit. And then you're, then you start to pair that with sit and then this, and then you can actually remove the manual signal altogether and just use the verbal cue, right? But if you're trying to get, like, a dog to turn around and do a spin, which is more of, like, a vanity trick than a safety thing or a functional thing, but as soon as it t- turns slightly, it might ... It's not gonna get it on the first go around. You click, you give it a treat, and so you're basically encouraging it to continue that behavior, and you can shape really complex behaviors over time, as long as you're not trying to boil the ocean at once. So how does that pertain to humans? All of it pertains to humans, whether you're trying to train yourself, whether, you know, as you're building a family, you're thinking about, you know, like, you're not gonna crate train your kid, although you kind of do, I guess, with a crib in a sense.

Tim Urban 1:53:36 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:53:36 But, uh, I think a lot of this applies, and people get upset, and they're like, "Oh my God, I can't believe you're comparing a-

Tim Urban 1:53:42 So reductive

Tim Ferriss 1:53:42 ... baby to a dog." And I'm like, "Guys, evolutionarily speaking, like, we're not that different."

Tim Urban 1:53:48 No.

Tim Ferriss 1:53:48 I mean, there are some important differences, and it's like, yeah, we've got more, you know, white matter and so on. But-

Tim Urban 1:53:54 Don't breastfeed a dog.

Tim Ferriss 1:53:56 Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:53:57 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:53:57 Don't [laughs] Um, yeah, I was, I've been fostering a dog for the last six months who, uh, was gonna get euthanized. She was on the, she was on the street. And-

Tim Urban 1:54:09 Wow

Tim Ferriss 1:54:09 ... so it's been, so I've been very much in the thick of it with a dog that was effectively a wild animal-

Tim Urban 1:54:15 Wow. Aubrey?

Tim Ferriss 1:54:15 ... off the streets. Uh, a really adorable dog. Uh, looks to be, haven't done the genetic testing, but, like, an Anatolian shepherd mix, so very tawny colored with a black muzzle. Uh, out-

Tim Urban 1:54:30 This isn't the one that I met, no? That's your-

Tim Ferriss 1:54:32 Different dog. Different dog.

Tim Urban 1:54:33 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:54:33 Yeah. The rear feet are slightly externally rotated, so could be some Great Pyrenees in there. Uh, but much smaller. The Anatolian shepherds can get huge. They're found in Turkey. They're found in the, in, you know, the Caucus region. They can get up to, like, 150 pounds, 200 pounds. Uh, at least 150. They're huge. She's a lot smaller. She's about 60 pounds, so I would guess that she's a mix with something else, possibly German shepherd or Belgian shepherd, something like that. Uh, but man, when you're starting with something that is really feral, it's different.

Tim Urban 1:55:09 Well, m- and what's the original dog trainer? Like, the, the actual dog trainer is the dog's brain offering dopamine treats.

Tim Ferriss 1:55:17 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:55:17 So when you give food, it's not the food, it's the dopamine hit that the brain gives that makes the dog want it. So this is what ... Before humans were there to train dogs, animals across the animal kingdom for millions of years have been trained by their genes-

Tim Ferriss 1:55:33 Mm

Tim Urban 1:55:33 ... to act a certain way using dopamine treats.

Tim Ferriss 1:55:36 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:55:37 And, and then, and so it's just, and then so w- all we're doing is leveraging this system that's already in place in the dog's brain, and we're saying, "Oh, we can, we can get the brain to do a dopamine hit when f- that, and tie that, that, and then the dog can tie that hit to this behavior instead of the thing it's programmed to be tied to, which is get food."

Tim Ferriss 1:55:55 Yeah. Yeah. So a big part of it is figuring out, right? Because humans have been selectively breeding dogs into all these weird shapes for millennia.

Tim Urban 1:56:01 Yeah, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:56:02 What does this dog respond to?

Tim Urban 1:56:04 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:56:04 Right? 'Cause some dogs are really food driven.

Tim Urban 1:56:07 But then, then your brain-

Tim Ferriss 1:56:08 Yeah

Tim Urban 1:56:08 ... is also giving you dopamine treats.

Tim Ferriss 1:56:10 Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Urban 1:56:10 And this is what social media platforms do, is they are geared towards flooding your brain with dopamine treats when you give it attention, and therefore ad dollars.

Tim Ferriss 1:56:21 Well, we also think of ourselves as, like, the masters of the universe, but it's like to what extent did we domesticate certain plants, and to what extent did they domesticate us-

Tim Urban 1:56:31 Totally

Tim Ferriss 1:56:31 ... for propagation, right? I mean, it's like, it's, it's, it's a fun question to-

Tim Urban 1:56:34 Say more-

Tim Ferriss 1:56:34 Oh, yeah

Tim Urban 1:56:35 ... say more on the tumble down the-

Tim Ferriss 1:56:36 Well, it's just-

Tim Urban 1:56:37 ... little rabbit hole here.

Tim Ferriss 1:56:37 Yeah, I mean, it's, it's just, like, if you look at, like, wheat, corn, soy, et cetera, I mean, they've been very effective-

Tim Urban 1:56:43 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:56:43 ... at propagating themselves as a species. And I, I don't want to attribute, like, anthropomorphizing the-

Tim Urban 1:56:49 Wheat

Tim Ferriss 1:56:50 ... the, the wheat necessarily. But just from an evolutionary impe- just from a, an evolutionary and, um, sort of propagation imperative, it's like how did they end up being-

Tim Urban 1:57:01 Mm

Tim Ferriss 1:57:01 ... so ubiquitous? Um, I just think it's a fun question to poke around with.

Tim Urban 1:57:05 Well, when I was studying, like, history and you're looking at, oh, we domesticated not just plants, we domesticated the horse, we domesticated the dog. Um, and now the c- the modern cow, the modern, you know, house dog, they couldn't survive in the wild because they've been domesticated, so now they rely on this artificial structure. And then I, you know, you read more about humans and, oh, shit, what is civilization? We domesticated ourselves.

Tim Ferriss 1:57:29 Yeah.

Tim Urban 1:57:29 We cannot survive as ... If you br- bring us back to 50,000 BC, pluck any ... I mean, maybe you're, like, one of these people that might ... Most of people I know, we would die. We don't, we're not ... Our natural habitat, we cannot live in it, just like our, the, the Maltese cannot live out-

Tim Ferriss 1:57:44 Mm

Tim Urban 1:57:44 ... in the natural wolf habit- habitat. We can't live there because we domesticated ourselves. And this is one of these weird things where we now live within this structure that we only can live in, just like a house. It's like a h- a dog can only live in a human house, a, a dog pet. We can only live in this civilizational house.

Tim Ferriss 1:57:59 Mm-hmm.

Tim Urban 1:58:00 Uh, none of us know how to ... Again, very few of us know how to hunt and, and truly gather, and do the things-

Tim Ferriss 1:58:05 Would, would that not be different slightly that we have, like, um, genetically, anatomically, in terms of our features and our functions, humans are not too dissimilar to what would've been around 50,000 years ago, but dogs would be very different to what was around previously? Uh, if, if we had been born back then-

Tim Urban 1:58:21 Yes

Tim Ferriss 1:58:21 ... culture would've been completely different, sure.

Tim Urban 1:58:22 We haven't gone to the full extent that, yes. That, that is, that ... I mean, I'm sure there are some little changes, but yes. Like, maybe we're less aggressive than we would need to be back then or something like that, but you're right. We haven't domesticated our, our biology, but when we are now raised in this world, we have totally domesticated ourselves psychologically and, and intellectually, um, and just in the skills we have. Uh, and it just, it kind of, um, you know, it, it just ex- it explains a lot. And you, then you see in- interesting clashes back in, you know, when first civilizations were developing, where you have these wild people essentially, um, clashing with domesticated people. And that doesn't always go ... You know, sometimes the, the, the weapons got good enough eventually that the domesticated people couldn't be fucked with. But for a long time, these, you know, m- uh, step hordes, Mongols, and others, you know-

Tim Ferriss 1:59:14 Right

Tim Urban 1:59:14 ... the, whatever they are, the Huns and many, many others, um, would come down with no technology at all, but they were essentially wild people. Uh, again, they, they had horses.

Tim Ferriss 1:59:22 Except for horseback archery.

Tim Urban 1:59:23 Yes. They had horses.

Tim Ferriss 1:59:24 And they were pretty good.

Tim Urban 1:59:25 They had horses, but, like, on the wild to domesticated scale, they weren't very far. And when they would clash, it wasn't just that they were really great with their weapons. They had this level of kind of wild brutality and, and, you know, which, you know, and, and kind of a lack of, um, um, a civilizational notion of empathy for human lives or whatever are, are, are worth something. I mean, the Mongols thought of humans as cattle, as, as another, you know, whatever. Uh, killing them was not a, a moral wrong, and that was this huge advantage. So it's just interesting to, like, when you ... You know, and that, this is what's scary, what's v- very scary when you think about civilizational collapse, talk about AI apocalypse, things like this. I mean, what's scary is, um, just the power goes out. That means the internet goes out. I mean, you'd see a lot of very domesticated people in a total chaotic situation,

Tim Urban 2:00:14 and it would be, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:00:15 People lose their shit really quickly. Uh, I was in, uh, San Francisco, and I was volunteering for something called NERT, which is the Northern California Emergency Response Team, and it's a volunteer coalition of people who are distributed throughout, in this case, San Francisco. And it's done in collaboration with the police and fire department to train volunteers to respond in the case of a highly destructive earthquake or natural disaster of some type. And I remember in the very beginning, they, they effectively said, "Okay, San F- the broader San Francisco area has population of X," whatever it was, 1.2 million people. "Guess how many fire engines we have?" And they defined, like, what a fire engine was and so on. They're like, "10." Okay, so what happens if we have a conflagration, which I think is a square block on fire, of X magnitude? And they're like, "You should expect to be without water and electricity in these following areas for this period of time," like seven to 10 days. And I remember I was living in Glen Park in San Francisco, and PG&E had a rolling blackout. And it was like, okay, power's out. And for, like, the first few hours, people were, like, wandering around outside. It was a Saturday, and they're like, "Hey, your power out?" "Yeah." "Oh, wow, wow. Well, nice to see you, Bob." You know, everyone was very civil. And then it's, like, five or six hours, and then people start to realize, oh, all of my food in my freezer is going to thaw-

Tim Urban 2:01:46 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 2:01:46 ... at some point. And I think the water may have also been off. And around, like, 10 hours post, there's one guy in the neighborhood who had a little Honda generator because he was a burner. He went to Burning Man, and he was, like, keeping his stuff frozen. And one or two people wandered over, and they're like, "Hey, Joe, could I borrow that after you're done with it?" Clearly he's not gonna be done with it 'cause he's using it. And I think it was at, like, hour 15 or 18, there was an entire throng of people who were these, like, hyper-liberal ... peace, you know, live long and prosper, live and let live types who are getting openly hostile about who would get to use his generator next. This is less than 24 hours. So the, the basic courtesies of-

Chris Williamson 2:02:33 Wow

Tim Ferriss 2:02:34 ... modern life fall away very quickly.

Tim Urban 2:02:37 There's a whole wild person in every human-

Tim Ferriss 2:02:40 Yeah

Tim Urban 2:02:40 ... that is completely contained in a normal situation. Sometimes I'm in a coffee shop and I see all these people want standing in line, so, and I just, like, suddenly have a s- split screen to, like, those people, like, stabbing each other for food. And then I was like, then I come back here and I'm like, "Ah." You know, it's a little-

Tim Ferriss 2:02:54 [laughs]

Tim Urban 2:02:54 Like, it's the, the, you know, we're, it, it's all fine when it's fine.

Tim Ferriss 2:02:58 Yeah.

Tim Urban 2:02:58 And, you know, I don't know.

Tim Ferriss 2:02:59 So let me say a couple things real quick.

Tim Urban 2:03:00 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 2:03:00 So, uh, this is gonna sound strange. Not, not to, like, defend, um, you know, Genghis Khan and, and the steppe hordes, but-

Chris Williamson 2:03:08 Still done pillaging for a second tip, so-

Tim Ferriss 2:03:09 Not, not pillaging

Chris Williamson 2:03:10 ... we've already had it with-

Tim Ferriss 2:03:10 Not pillaging

Chris Williamson 2:03:11 ... adult

Tim Ferriss 2:03:11 There's a book, uh, I won't recommend it to be by one of the, I mean, a name everybody would know. Uh, there's a book called Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. It is remar- from, like, modern postal systems to infrastructure to reli- re- uh, religious freedom. They did kill and rape a lot of people. Um, but, uh, that book is, is worth reading, especially the first half of it, uh, just to get a full grasp of the historic implications. The second, just to give an OG podcast shout-out, uh, Wrath of the Khans by Dan Carlin.

Tim Urban 2:03:45 Oh my God.

Tim Ferriss 2:03:46 Hardcore History.

Tim Urban 2:03:46 Listen to every Dan Carlin episode. It's just-

Tim Ferriss 2:03:48 I mean, honestly, still maybe the best, no offense, no offense, no offense-

Tim Urban 2:03:51 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:03:52 ... best podcast of all time. Dan Carlin, Hardcore History, Wrath of the Khans. It's like a five-part series. Each one is four to five hours long.

Tim Urban 2:03:59 Oh, so, so many-

Tim Ferriss 2:03:59 And you will not be bored. You will rip through it.

Tim Urban 2:04:02 They are... I mean, this is a whole other topic, but-

Tim Ferriss 2:04:04 Yeah

Tim Urban 2:04:05 ... but, like, history podcasts are one of my favorites, and he is the, oh, the, the GOAT.

Tim Ferriss 2:04:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:04:09 I heard that, I heard that he used to do them in a single take, and if he messed up, he'd just restart again.

Tim Ferriss 2:04:13 Oh, God, it wouldn't surprise me. He's a perfectionist. I mean, that's why they took so long.

Chris Williamson 2:04:16 What's he doing? Is he still doing... I haven't seen him in-

Tim Ferriss 2:04:18 I'm not sure, but part of the reason I also love Dan as an example is that wherever you are, whenever you are, you run into whatever industry these things that are taken to be true because they get repeated a lot, right? You have to post X times per week. You have to do this. You have to do that. No one's gonna listen to a podcast that's longer than 60 minutes. And, and Dan was like, "I'm gonna do one six-hour podcast or five-hour podcast once every six months."

Chris Williamson 2:04:46 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 2:04:46 And he was top of the charts forever, for years upon years upon years.

Tim Urban 2:04:51 Not many people are doing A+ work, and when you are-

Tim Ferriss 2:04:53 Yeah. Yeah

Tim Urban 2:04:53 ... none of those rules apply.

Tim Ferriss 2:04:54 Yes. Yeah, the rules just didn't apply. Ev-

Chris Williamson 2:04:56 The best tagline that we've found for this is there will always be room for better.

Tim Ferriss 2:05:00 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:05:00 There will always be room for better.

Tim Urban 2:05:02 Yes. It doesn't matter what the industry is. Uh, you know, uh, you know, it, it just, it's just something really great. There's just not very much of it. Doesn't matter how many podcasters there are, very few people are doing A+.

Chris Williamson 2:05:12 Feels like that's accelerating now, that you, because you have LLMs churning sh- more shit out.

Tim Urban 2:05:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:05:19 And you're gonna have more video models churning more shit out. It feels that whether there's less quality today or is there j- it just feels maybe there's less quality relative to the, the amount of quantity. So it's also a discovery problem. It encourages everyone to average back to the mean, right? It regresses the, the aggregate of content that's being put-

Tim Urban 2:05:36 And then people get discouraged and think, "Oh, there's so much content. Like, what's the point of it?" It's like, no, no, no, if you can do something great, p- it will just rise above this, and

Tim Urban 2:05:44 the world will see it.

Chris Williamson 2:05:45 Speaking of novel content, the Japan and USA algo crossover because of the translate mode that happened has resulted in some pretty spectacular outcomes. None more so than Kenki Kid's account. Have you seen this guy? Okay, so he, uh, describes in his bio on X as a company employee living in Yokohama's Kanai area, originally from Yokohama, born in 1985, currently 41 years old, single, 41 years with no girlfriend history, non-appealing to the opposite sex, unattractive, amateur virgin, likes sex services, hobbies are watching soccer, overseas travel, planning to retire early from the company at age 50, has given up on marriage, and is currently seeking a comfortable single life. So what's interesting about this guy, he's been tweeting about visiting different-

Tim Ferriss 2:06:30 That is one hell of a bio. How did he end up getting so many characters?

Chris Williamson 2:06:33 I think you're able to compress things down on, in Japanese.

Tim Ferriss 2:06:37 Yeah.

Tim Urban 2:06:37 Impressive for a dog as well.

Tim Ferriss 2:06:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:06:38 Uh, uh, he's been tweeting about visiting different handjob parlors in Japan and is using the revenue paid out from X to fund his future trips. He's essentially unlocked an infinite handjob glitch in reality.

Tim Urban 2:06:51 Chelsea supporter. It's also just no one in, in, in the, in the Western world talks like this. It's just this very specific, like, Japanese-

Chris Williamson 2:06:59 Uh, so there's a quote tweet. Go to the quote tweet, Jared. Uh, it's where he says, "Today both my regular handjob spot and the married woman place are running discount events and I'm torn about which one to go to." That's quote tweeted by an American saying, "Americans be like, 'I can't even get some chopped foid from a dating app to go on a $250 date with me,' while the Japan bros are like, 'Damn, the handjob parlor and the MILF joint are both on sale tonight. I don't know which one to pick.'"

Tim Ferriss 2:07:23 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 2:07:24 And he is using the X revenue-

Tim Urban 2:07:25 Damn

Chris Williamson 2:07:25 ... in order to fund his handjob-

Tim Urban 2:07:27 He's like the most honest man in the world.

Chris Williamson 2:07:29 It's unbelievable.

Tim Urban 2:07:30 Can you set a calendar reminder for Black Friday? Just checking.

Chris Williamson 2:07:33 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:07:34 Kenki Kids.

Chris Williamson 2:07:35 Dude, unbelievable. Yeah, the crossover from, uh, American people finally being able to see Japanese content on X-

Tim Ferriss 2:07:41 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 2:07:42 ... has resulted in some-

Tim Ferriss 2:07:42 I mean, I, I did love the, I don't know if you've seen these split videos of, like, Japanese cleaning the stadium after a game and Knicks fans.

Chris Williamson 2:07:49 You brought this up.

Tim Urban 2:07:49 Yes. They do-

Chris Williamson 2:07:50 You know

Tim Urban 2:07:50 ... even what's interesting, when the Japanese team played at Wembley against England, they cleaned the changing rooms afterwards. The players even did it.

Tim Ferriss 2:07:59 Yeah.

Tim Urban 2:07:59 It's a completely different cultural difference. What's interesting though is you have these languages merge online. I'm assuming you're gonna have podcasts language merge. Do you actually lose less, um, the cultural differences as much? One of the reasons why Japan is so unique is because they did that Sakoku, right? Where they, whilst the rest of the world was all mixing ideas, if you left Japan, killed. If you tried to enter Japan, killed. So it's so unique and so alien.

Tim Ferriss 2:08:22 It's like the Galapagos-

Tim Urban 2:08:24 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 2:08:24 ... of culture.

Tim Urban 2:08:24 Yes. And I wonder with-

Chris Williamson 2:08:25 Yeah, it's a great way to put it. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Tim Urban 2:08:27 ... with the internet now, do you actually have... Because I, I can feel it already that English culture's becoming a bit more American.

George Mack 2:08:35 Or, or even like this internet culture, it's not even American now. It feels like it's post-American. It's becoming more-

Chris Williamson 2:08:40 It's just global

George Mack 2:08:40 ... online.

Chris Williamson 2:08:41 It's just the online culture.

George Mack 2:08:42 It- Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 2:08:42 The internet is like the anti-Japanese isolationist-

George Mack 2:08:46 It's-

Tim Ferriss 2:08:46 ... culture effect.

George Mack 2:08:47 Yes. Um-

Chris Williamson 2:08:48 And they're sure on the dark web.

Tim Ferriss 2:08:49 And, and then what you... What's unfortunate is then what's nice is when you have all these independent cultures and each one does something really well, and you can kind of... When it all starts to blend, you really lose the vari- the variety is where, like, variety is the, in both evolution and cultural evolution, is the engine of creativity-

George Mack 2:09:05 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 2:09:06 ... and growth and, you know, and it's, it's like instead of having, you know, a bunch of different brains in a room brainstorming, you just have kind of like one, one thinker, and it's, it's a shame.

George Mack 2:09:13 Mm.

Chris Williamson 2:09:13 Someone, uh, wrote a blog post a few years ago about where did emos and goths go? And the question was that subcultures need time to ossify. And-

George Mack 2:09:22 Mm

Chris Williamson 2:09:22 ... if you've got this sort of global permaculture thing that's always moving, and any bit that moves in one side of the membrane affects another bit over here. It's like everybody being on a bouncy castle at the same time.

George Mack 2:09:33 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:09:33 And somebody that jumps up and down over there impacts everybody else. So you don't have time to silo off to create this sort of weird niche, trends-

George Mack 2:09:42 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 2:09:42 ... music, tastes-

George Mack 2:09:43 Mm

Chris Williamson 2:09:43 ... language. Now, you see subcultures on the internet with language, but very quickly, like, look at looksmaxxing. All of that immediately now has become common vernacular because-

George Mack 2:09:52 Mm

Chris Williamson 2:09:52 ... one part of the bouncy castle is now affecting every square inch of the bouncy castle.

Tim Ferriss 2:09:54 To me, you know, I'm just pulling from words you're throwing out. You want a podcast name idea?

Chris Williamson 2:09:57 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 2:09:58 Bouncy Castle Gang Bang. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 2:10:00 Bouncy Castle Gang Bang.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:01 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 2:10:01 I'm actually not far off.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:02 It's catchy. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 2:10:03 That's not, that, that's, that's-

Tim Ferriss 2:10:05 It's evocative.

Chris Williamson 2:10:06 That's-

Tim Ferriss 2:10:06 It's very visual

Chris Williamson 2:10:06 ... it's either that or Fire Up the Autism Engine.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:08 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 2:10:08 It's one of those two.

George Mack 2:10:09 It is visual.

Chris Williamson 2:10:10 Yeah.

George Mack 2:10:10 I'm... Why have you mentioned goths and emos then?

Chris Williamson 2:10:15 When was the last time you thought about goths and emos?

George Mack 2:10:16 Yeah. And I always ask Chris this question, and I ask you two guys this, which is when the fascinating thing about something fading away is that you don't notice it fading away-

Chris Williamson 2:10:25 Yeah

George Mack 2:10:25 ... because by definition it's fading away. Is there anything that's currently fading away or has faded away that you think we would have forgotten about until you mentioned it? Like, a good example is the voicemail. The voicemail, if you watch... I was watching Breaking Bad, and the um- there's about five minutes every episode of like a voicemail scene where it'll be, the voicemail will be playing across the house, and it's just disappeared.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:47 Mm.

Chris Williamson 2:10:47 Yeah.

George Mack 2:10:47 It doesn't exist.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:47 Mm-hmm. It's gone.

George Mack 2:10:48 But nobody really discussed it because by definition, if something's fading away.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:52 Yeah. There's stuff that's fitting in too, like mullets.

George Mack 2:10:54 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:55 Mullets are back in vogue.

Chris Williamson 2:10:55 Mullets are very, very back.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:57 But yeah, I'm waiting for you.

George Mack 2:10:57 Mustaches came back. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 2:10:59 Yeah. You, you're actually only able to grow a mullet.

Tim Ferriss 2:11:01 I don't know if I could make a... Well, I can't do, like, the flat top mullet, which would be my sort of like aspiration-

Chris Williamson 2:11:09 Mm

Tim Ferriss 2:11:10 ... 'cause that is just not gonna work. So I could do like a power donut rat tail.

Chris Williamson 2:11:15 Po- power donut.

George Mack 2:11:16 How donuts. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:11:16 Power donut. Power donut rat tail, also not a bad podcast name.

Chris Williamson 2:11:20 Yeah, that's true.

Tim Ferriss 2:11:21 Um, yeah.

George Mack 2:11:22 Not a bad Grindr name as well, Power Donut. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 2:11:24 Power Donut Rat Tail.

George Mack 2:11:25 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:11:26 You know what I'm talking about, right?

George Mack 2:11:27 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:11:27 Like Professor X.

George Mack 2:11:28 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:11:28 That, that sound, that sounds like a wonderful couple that could be born out of Grindr, Power Donut and Rat Tail-

George Mack 2:11:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Chris Williamson 2:11:34 ... would get together

Chris Williamson 2:11:35 very well. Tim, what else have you brought from home? You've got this bag it's lurking next to me.

Tim Ferriss 2:11:37 I brought lots of stuff.

Chris Williamson 2:11:38 I want to see the goodies.

Tim Ferriss 2:11:38 I'm