A $1M Bitcoin Bet, Preventing Hangovers, AI Companions, Affordable Luxuries, Hi-Fi Audio, and More!

Tim Ferriss 0:00 [upbeat music]

Tim Ferriss 0:15 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is... I forgot there was a camera.

Kevin Rose 0:17 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 0:18 This is Tim Ferriss. [laughs] Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. We have, yet again, The Random Show.

Kevin Rose 0:24 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 0:25 KevKev RoseRose, Kevin Rose.

Kevin Rose 0:27 Thank you for having me, Tim. It's good to be here.

Tim Ferriss 0:29 It's good to be here-

Kevin Rose 0:30 We're-

Tim Ferriss 0:30 ... in your home.

Kevin Rose 0:30 We're in, we're in a, a home. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 0:33 We, we have our matching mini scooters.

Kevin Rose 0:35 We do. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 0:35 We also have a miniature kitchen set behind us. We were making pinto beans and home-style ice cream.

Kevin Rose 0:41 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 0:42 You may or may not be able to see that. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 0:43 Which is their favorite topping for pinto beans. My-

Tim Ferriss 0:45 And by "them," he means his progeny.

Kevin Rose 0:48 I have a couple little ones that hopefully will not be making an appearance-

Tim Ferriss 0:51 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 0:51 ... and have gone to bed, but we shall see. We've already had one jailbreak.

Tim Ferriss 0:53 We've already had a princess on the run. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 0:55 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 0:55 A little jailbreak, who came flying through. So Kevin, before recording, actually while recording, you said, "This is the important juice."

Kevin Rose 1:03 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:03 But that was off-mic, so I relayed it into the mic. What is this important juice that we have before us?

Kevin Rose 1:09 So, I mean, we've been doing these shows for a very long time.

Tim Ferriss 1:12 Super long.

Kevin Rose 1:12 And we've always... Well, not always. We've, we've highlighted some of our favorite drinks over the years.

Tim Ferriss 1:17 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:17 And one of the things that I, comes into my possession about once a year is a limited edition run-

Tim Ferriss 1:25 Y- y- you know it's expensive when it's in passive-

Kevin Rose 1:28 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:28 ... passive sentence form.

Kevin Rose 1:29 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:29 Comes into my possession. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:31 That's right. It sounds very fancy. It's, it's just a beer, people. So one of the things that I like to do, and, uh, we've talked about this before at, at some point, but unlike wine, the cool thing about beer is you can buy the best beer in the world-

Tim Ferriss 1:44 Mm-hmm

Kevin Rose 1:44 ... like, the number one ranked beer, and it's gonna cost you $100.

Tim Ferriss 1:47 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:47 That's not the case with wine, obviously.

Tim Ferriss 1:49 No.

Kevin Rose 1:49 So in t- terms of different styles of beer, obviously it's typically not IPAs that win the number one slot on that. It's, it's some of the heavier stuff. But on the IPA front, the second-highest ranked IPA by Beer Advocate, and I would argue the harder to find version of, of the IPAs, 'cause the number one ranked IPA is called Heady Topper.

Tim Ferriss 2:14 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 2:15 And it is in production year-round. This particular beer by Russian River Brewing is called Pliny the Younger. Now, you may have heard of Pliny the Elder, which is... You typically find at Whole Foods and things like that. The Younger is a limited edition run that they do once a year, and just... They, you used to have to go to Russian River Brewing to actually consume it.

Tim Ferriss 2:35 Hmm.

Kevin Rose 2:36 And just recently, probably, I'd say three or four years ago, they started putting it in bottles.

Tim Ferriss 2:40 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 2:41 So this is it in bottle form. I would argue that this is probably the most sought-after IPA in the world. It is $75 a bottle, so it's not cheap. It is a 16-ounce bottle, though, so per ounce. Nope, it's a... It was one pint. Yeah, one pint, so it's, it's expensive juice. But it is, uh, quite good, and I wanted to share it with you.

Tim Ferriss 3:05 Thank you.

Kevin Rose 3:05 And I also wanted to tell people out there how to find the rarest beers in the world.

Tim Ferriss 3:10 Let's do it.

Kevin Rose 3:10 I may have mentioned this at one crazy, long ago Random Show, but there is a place that I go to called mybeercollectibles.com. This is an ad. I have nothing to do with them.

Tim Ferriss 3:20 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 3:20 I j- e- every time I just mention any URL, you're in the same boat.

Tim Ferriss 3:24 Check, check out code KevKev2023.

Kevin Rose 3:25 Yeah, exactly. [laughs] Exactly. Make sure to get my 20%.

Tim Ferriss 3:27 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 3:28 But o- one of the things that, that, uh, this is, I'm probably gonna get them arrested, but one of the things-

Tim Ferriss 3:33 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 3:33 ... that is very difficult to do is to sell alcohol online.

Tim Ferriss 3:37 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 3:37 And so on the beer front, if you say, a- and this is true, if you were to drink this bottle, you can sell the bottle by itself for let's just say $5 or whatever be, it may be, because the bottle is just collectible in its own right. And so what they claim is that everything you're buying is a collectible.

Tim Ferriss 3:54 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 3:55 And so you're not actually buying the beer. And so it's a pr- it's a peer-to-peer marketplace.

Tim Ferriss 3:59 Yep.

Kevin Rose 3:59 And so they have people that go and buy that. I've been using them for several years now.

Tim Ferriss 4:02 They are gonna have the best month of sales-

Kevin Rose 4:04 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 4:04 ... before they get shut down.

Kevin Rose 4:05 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 4:05 It's gonna be really a blaze of glory. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 4:08 They, they've been okay. They've been okay.

Tim Ferriss 4:09 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 4:09 And, and i- uh, they always, I always find really good sellers on there. And y- you see on the side of this it says, you know, "Not packaged for resale."

Tim Ferriss 4:17 Right.

Kevin Rose 4:17 So you have to know somebody to get this. And yeah, I, I love a good IPA, and I would say this is, this is up there. This is pretty, pretty good

Kevin Rose 4:24 stuff.

Tim Ferriss 4:25 So you know the wine world. You know probably something about the beer world. You also know the high-end, I'm not even gonna call them watches, God forbid, timepiece world-

Kevin Rose 4:35 Sure

Tim Ferriss 4:36 ... very well. How much of the degree of scarcity, or not scarcity, how much of the fame that comes from being sought after is derived from the quality of the product-

Kevin Rose 4:52 Hmm

Tim Ferriss 4:52 ... versus the scarcity, versus the positioning, if there is such a thing, marketing, other factors?

Kevin Rose 4:59 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 4:59 I've become really interested in this question, and there's actually a spectacular episode, I haven't listened to it yet, on LVMH and the building of that-

Kevin Rose 5:06 Right

Tim Ferriss 5:06 ... from its very meager beginnings to its insane current state. And there's a book called How Luxury Lost Its Luster, so a lot of-

Kevin Rose 5:15 Hmm

Tim Ferriss 5:15 ... alliteration, which I read a long time ago. I do find the, this, the study of sort of scarcity-

Kevin Rose 5:20 Yes

Tim Ferriss 5:21 ... and high-end products very interesting.

Kevin Rose 5:22 Have you ever read the book The Luxury Strategy?

Tim Ferriss 5:25 The Luxury of Strategy?

Kevin Rose 5:27 No, just Luxury Strategy.

Tim Ferriss 5:28 The Luxury Strat- [laughs] I was like, the luxury of strategy.

Kevin Rose 5:30 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 5:30 It seems like a necessity. No, I haven't.

Kevin Rose 5:32 It's actually another really good one. It talks about just brand positioning and just how to set yourself up as a, you know, a really sought after-

Tim Ferriss 5:40 Premier

Kevin Rose 5:41 ... yeah, premier brand.

Tim Ferriss 5:42 Huh.

Kevin Rose 5:43 And some of the mistakes that brands make, where they go downmarket and they become a commoditized kind of like, you know, Ross Dress for Less.

Tim Ferriss 5:50 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 5:50 It's part of the reason why the fashion industry goes and destroys so many clothes. Like, it's not because they have leftover clothes. They could go and sell them. You know, it's what happened to Guess Jeans or any of these other brands where they said, "Hey- We have this extra inventory, let's discount it. Let's do outlet stores.

Tim Ferriss 6:04 Right.

Kevin Rose 6:04 Let's do, you know, these, these discounting stores-

Tim Ferriss 6:06 And then they get-

Kevin Rose 6:07 ... and it ruins the brand

Tim Ferriss 6:07 ... then they get anchored in the mid-market-

Kevin Rose 6:09 Exactly

Tim Ferriss 6:09 ... and then they're done

Kevin Rose 6:10 And then you can't go back up. Right. Once you go down, you can't, you, you can't regain that luxury.

Tim Ferriss 6:13 Well, we are, we... And there's so many ways, different ways to differentiate, right? As one example, we're in LA right now, and I'd never been to Erewhon.

Kevin Rose 6:23 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 6:24 So for people who don't know, Erewhon is a very famous, very expensive-

Kevin Rose 6:30 [laughs] It's not expensive. This is bottled water

Tim Ferriss 6:32 Well, let me paint a picture. I went in and I went to their hot meal cafeteria line, and I got a, a couple of boxes. I mean, it's two meals, maybe two-

Kevin Rose 6:41 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 6:41 ... and a half meals for me. And I was like, "Oh, I'll get a kombucha too, and, you know, maybe a water," and I think that was about it. There wasn't much more to it, and it was $147. I wanted to go there just for the spectacle because-

Kevin Rose 6:54 I mean, there's a dating scene there as well [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 6:55 There's this dating scene. It's, yeah. The point I was gonna make is I was having a conversation with someone, and I told them this story, and they said, "Wow, that's insane. I imagine if you took the same inventory, you could sell it for 20% less and do really well." And I said, "You could, but if Erewhon lowered their prices, they would be dead," I think. Right? Because the s- part of the allure, part of the story, part of the word of mouth is how expensive it is.

Kevin Rose 7:24 Yeah. I mean, it's that, but also, I- Erewhon's a... W- we could get into Erewhon.

Tim Ferriss 7:27 I mean, look, they have other stuff that is, I'm sure, of incredibly high quality, and I, I-

Kevin Rose 7:31 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 7:31 ... I respect that also, but the reason I hear about Erewhon in a place like Austin or other places in the country is highly exclusive, very expensive.

Kevin Rose 7:44 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 7:44 And I'm not saying that as a knock, right?

Kevin Rose 7:47 Right. Well, I think it's, it's what we've seen... Well, i- just talking about grocery stores, even though this isn't that most, that interesting of a topic [laughs] but, like, well-

Tim Ferriss 7:54 But this maps to a bunch of other things that I-

Kevin Rose 7:55 Oh, for sure.

Tim Ferriss 7:56 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 7:56 But, like, I think when, when you see Whole Foods get bought by Amazon-

Tim Ferriss 7:59 Mm-hmm

Kevin Rose 7:59 ... and it becomes this kind of mass scaled enterprise, although it was, you could argue, beforehand-

Tim Ferriss 8:04 Yeah

Kevin Rose 8:05 ... when you go in there, it's not the level of quality it was a decade ago. It's just not. Like, it's, it's been, it's been-

Tim Ferriss 8:10 Mm

Kevin Rose 8:10 ... degraded, and, like, this is now that next new level, right?

Tim Ferriss 8:14 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 8:14 And it's not... I would say that when you go into Erewhon, it doesn't feel bougie, though. It doesn't feel like crazy, like, just luxury for luxury's sake.

Tim Ferriss 8:22 Okay.

Kevin Rose 8:22 It's just like, "Wow."

Tim Ferriss 8:23 Is that what you mean by bougie? 'Cause that word, it gets-

Kevin Rose 8:25 Ah.

Tim Ferriss 8:25 I've, I've heard bougie said more times than I can count since I got to LA about a week ago.

Kevin Rose 8:29 I think it, it's just kind of like it, the one thing, I've only been in LA a few months, and the one thing that I love about it actually is that it's a choose-your-own-adventure.

Tim Ferriss 8:38 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 8:38 So you can go as crazy high-end as you want to whatever you wanna, like, however you define that, or you can find an awesome little dive bar-

Tim Ferriss 8:46 Yeah

Kevin Rose 8:46 ... with a great cocktail, right?

Tim Ferriss 8:47 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 8:47 And so I actually like that, and, like, for me, I tend to, like, float somewhere in the middle. Like, don't get me wrong, I like a nice, awesome steak at a great killer steakhouse, which they have a lot of those out here.

Tim Ferriss 8:58 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 8:58 But at the same time, it's like, it, it's, it's different than Portland. Like, Portland, we didn't have the high end. We had a lot of the middle.

Tim Ferriss 9:04 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 9:05 So it's like Erewhon is, is very small. It's a very small grocery store.

Tim Ferriss 9:09 It's super small. I was actually expecting it to be much larger.

Kevin Rose 9:12 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 9:12 So I go there, and I've been there since, and it is high quality. The food-

Kevin Rose 9:17 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 9:17 ... is high quality. I think the name is also, if I'm getting this right, an anagram of nowhere, for people who may be wondering-

Kevin Rose 9:23 Hmm

Tim Ferriss 9:23 ... about the name.

Kevin Rose 9:23 Interesting.

Tim Ferriss 9:24 The experience that I had actually yesterday brought a lot of this to top of mind for me, and my experience yesterday was going to this place called The Magic Castle for the second time ever.

Kevin Rose 9:37 Oh, nice. You went.

Tim Ferriss 9:38 I did, and for those who don't know about The Magic Castle, I'm not going to do it justice, but it is the mecca of magic in the sense that people from all over the world, the kids who become obsessed with magic, sleight of hand, illusion, et cetera, the one place, if they've heard of it, that everyone wants to go is The Magic Castle.

Kevin Rose 10:01 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 10:02 And anyone who's anyone, more or less, in that world blows through the doors probably once a year.

Kevin Rose 10:09 Did you dress up?

Tim Ferriss 10:11 You have to dress up.

Kevin Rose 10:11 Yeah, you have to wear a tie, right?

Tim Ferriss 10:12 This is where I was going. You have to wear a suit and tie.

Kevin Rose 10:13 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 10:14 Not just a tie. Suit and tie. I did not come here with a suit and tie, [laughs] nor did I come here with dress shoes. So a friend of mine who was visiting, who also didn't have any of the fancy clothes, because the opportunity to go came up very last minute-

Kevin Rose 10:26 Yeah. Men's Wearhouse

Tim Ferriss 10:27 ... we went to Hollywood Suits on Hollywood Boulevard.

Kevin Rose 10:31 And you rented?

Tim Ferriss 10:32 No. We couldn't rent, so we bought suits, but here's the thing. From the moment we walked in, and I know these are, these are, like, quality problems, right? The fact that you can buy a suit that you never intend to wear again is kind of insane, but I knew that it would cost close to the same to rent and that we didn't have time to rent. Because literally we found out that we had the opportunity to go to this amazing show, it's a very small show with an incredible magician, who I'll mention here because the show is absolutely spectacular, and then I'll rewind. So I'm gonna get his name probably pronounced wrong, but Simon Coronel, C-O-R-O-N-E-L. People, if you don't know this name, you are gonna know this name. This guy put on one of the best shows I've ever seen.

Kevin Rose 11:11 Young person, or?

Tim Ferriss 11:12 Yeah, he's young. I mean, I don't know exactly how old he is. Maybe he's my age, so I'll call that young. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 11:17 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 11:18 Just the older I get, the younger I think my current age is. But we went to Hollywood Suits. We had literally I wanna say 90 minutes, and we walked in... No, we didn't even have 90 minutes. We had an hour. We walked in. We just said, "Here are our sizes. Wear your suits," went over, grabbed whatever looked reasonably good off the rack.

Kevin Rose 11:38 Oh, God. I hate that. Are they s- the itchy? 'Cause I hate the way they make itchy stuff.

Tim Ferriss 11:40 Well, hold on. So we get, then it's like, "What size is your neck, shirt?" Boom. The guy, like, throws it on top, 'cause it's sort of a rack-and-stack high volume spot, right? And then it's like shoes, belt, this, that, and the other thing, and we walked out the door with everything for between 150 and $200 a suit. Okay?

Kevin Rose 11:57 That's insane.

Tim Ferriss 11:58 It's insane.

Kevin Rose 11:58 That's awesome.

Tim Ferriss 11:59 Yeah. So then they can't do the- We can't, they can't do the hemming there, so you have to, like, go down this alley around the corner, and you think you might be murdered, but no, you find somebody who's in this little room You could just staple it, though. I've done that before. You could staple it. We didn't have staplers, though. Okay. You know, we're, we're... We have to, like, call an Uber in, in 30 minutes to get to this place. And we get everything done. Literally, we walk in the door, and then 45 minutes later, we're in our suits. And we go to the Magic Castle, and my friend and I both have... I don't have a lot of suits, right? But I have one or two nice suits for weddings and things like that. They're not cheap, and they're fitted, and this, that, and the other thing. And both of us looked at the suits and thought, "Okay, these are not the best suits in the world, but they are surprisingly fitting and surprisingly good." And we, I got a compliment on my suit while I was there, and it raises questions. Yeah. Right? When it's like, okay, this was 150, $200, so what i- what differentiates? And yes, they're better materials. Yes, there's better fitting. But then you're waiting, like, five months for alterations or whatever when you get into the super fancy class, and you go, "Okay, that's not about entirely quality. That's about the story of the wait." Right. That's about being able to tell your friends the process you went through to get the thing. Right. Which is not to diminish its value. It's just to say it's really interesting that so much, such a high percentage of the total cost could be placed on that. So I think about these things.

Tim Ferriss 13:33 Do you think you're gonna get into any other high-end stuff? Although, I wanna back up to your comment that to get the equivalent in terms of grade for wine- Yeah ... would just be impossibly cost-prohibitive, right? It's, you're gonna, you're just gonna have to pay out the nose and take out a second mortgage. So affordable luxuries, right? In terms of affordable luxuries, anything else that you enjoy that you would sort of put in the same class? For me, one would be chocolate. Hmm. You can get what- Some of the best ... some would consider- Yeah ... the best chocolate in the world. And if you're willing to spend even 20 bucks, 30 bucks- What's your go-to? ... 50. I like Dick Taylor. I used to be... All right, I wanna hear yours. I haven't been in this world for a long time, but about 10 years ago, I really got into it. This is, uh, this is when I was, actually, I guess, a little bit earlier, maybe 11, 12 years, when I was working on The 4-Hour Chef. Yeah. I got into this and looked at it very seriously. I- coffee, you can really get- Hmm ... incredible coffee if you're willing to pay up just a little bit.

Kevin Rose 14:33 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the coffee is one that I, I do pay up for. I order a subscription, which is their single origin high-end coffee from a roaster called Proud Mary.

Tim Ferriss 14:45 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 14:46 And they're based in Australia, but they have a location in Portland, Oregon as well.

Tim Ferriss 14:50 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 14:50 And so they have a varietal of coffee called a geisha coffee. Have you ever-

Tim Ferriss 14:55 Geisha.

Kevin Rose 14:55 Yeah, have you ever had it before?

Tim Ferriss 14:56 No.

Kevin Rose 14:57 So it is just, like, the most delicate, awesome, floral, beautiful, elegant coffee you can consume, whereas when you make it properly, and I do, I do the whole measuring myself, you know, 32 grams of coffee, 350 grams of water, and I do it via pour-over. And when you do it, you don't need to add anything. So no, no sugar, no bu- no, uh [laughs] no butter.

Tim Ferriss 15:21 No butter.

Kevin Rose 15:22 I was thinking of the old, the old days of doing the-

Tim Ferriss 15:24 No pork chops. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 15:24 No, I was... [laughs] Remember when we did, you remember the bu-

Tim Ferriss 15:27 Yeah, bulletproof coffee and so on

Kevin Rose 15:28 ... bulletproof coffees? Yeah, exactly. So, um-

Tim Ferriss 15:30 Until I started-

Kevin Rose 15:31 No butter

Tim Ferriss 15:31 ... getting my cardiac markers measured regularly. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 15:33 That... Oh, my God, dude. I used to do bulletproof coffees all the time, where I'd add MCT oil-

Tim Ferriss 15:38 Mm-hmm

Kevin Rose 15:38 ... and butter, and then just, I... You basically drink that coffee, and about a half hour later-

Tim Ferriss 15:44 Disaster pants

Kevin Rose 15:45 ... you just shit your brains out. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 15:47 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 15:48 It's just, like, the worst. Why did we ever do that? Then I got my numbers back from Attia, and it's, like, freaking-

Tim Ferriss 15:56 Yeah

Kevin Rose 15:56 ... my cholesterol's all jacked up all over the place.

Tim Ferriss 15:58 It's like, are you... Do you have an IV bag full of triglycerides?

Kevin Rose 16:00 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 16:00 It's like, uh, what's happening here?

Kevin Rose 16:03 So yeah, I would say y- you've nailed it. I think chocolate, uh, you know, coffee's another one. Coffee's something I, you know, I do a cup every day, so that's great. Tea's in the same camp. You can get really nice high-end teas that are amazing for, you know, under $50.

Tim Ferriss 16:16 You know, this is gonna be maybe funny coming right after talking about health stuff and metrics, but I think when I get quite a bit older, maybe if I'm like, "Okay, I'm on the tail end here," I think I might take up pipe smoking.

Kevin Rose 16:31 No.

Tim Ferriss 16:31 I-

Kevin Rose 16:31 My dad used to smoke a pipe

Tim Ferriss 16:32 ... I love just the, it looks so relaxing-

Kevin Rose 16:35 But not inhale?

Tim Ferriss 16:36 ... and the smell of pipe tobacco-

Kevin Rose 16:40 Yes

Tim Ferriss 16:40 ... is so incredible.

Kevin Rose 16:42 Oh, dude.

Tim Ferriss 16:43 I think I just wanna be, like, a cantankerous old guy-

Kevin Rose 16:46 It's-

Tim Ferriss 16:46 ... in a rocking chair on a porch smoking my pipe, reading my book.

Kevin Rose 16:49 So I used to go into-

Tim Ferriss 16:50 Of course I'd in- I don't know. I d- I mean, maybe I wouldn't inhale. I guess you're supposed to just bring it to your mouth and then, like, puff away at it. I don't know.

Kevin Rose 16:56 Um, yeah-

Tim Ferriss 16:56 I don't smoke pipes

Kevin Rose 16:57 ... I think most people would inhale, but, like, they used to have these old tobacco shops you could go into where they'd sell raw tobacco.

Tim Ferriss 17:02 Uh-huh.

Kevin Rose 17:03 And I used to go in with my dad, and that's a good childhood memory, 'cause the smell is so amazing.

Tim Ferriss 17:07 It's incredible.

Kevin Rose 17:08 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 17:08 It's really, really, really phenomenal. So l- what else would fit that? And actually, people should also just ping us on Twitter and let us know if, if we're missing a category, because I enjoy thinking about affordable luxuries that most people could bring into their lives so they can carve out a small, a small piece of time, a small amount of cash to really feel like they are treating themselves to something that is amazing, right? And there are just certain categories where that's not possible because of how much demand there is, and therefore, how high the prices can escalate.

Kevin Rose 17:46 There's a bunch of stuff. I mean, uh, for me, there's little tiny micro-upgrades that you do around your household when you think about this stuff, and there's... So I was, I live near a, a convenience store, and I had run out of, of body soap, right?

Tim Ferriss 18:00 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 18:01 And I went across the street, and I bought some Dove

Tim Ferriss 18:05 Like body soap and it was like cedar something. I'm like, "Oh, that sounds okay, whatever." And I got there, by the time I got home, I flipped over the back of the label and it w- it was a bunch of artificial stuff in there. Yeah Like, it wasn't all as pure as the outside had said it, it was on the front. [laughs] And I put it on and it was like a perfume bomb. It was, like, so nasty. [laughs] And I was like, "Why did I do this?" And you go out and yes, you spend 25, $30 more and you get something from Aesop or a similar brand, and it's just amazing. Yeah. And you just like, i- speaking of those little luxuries, and I know that's, like, probably on the lamer [laughs] side of luxuries. [laughs] But I don't know, I like little things like that, like little tiny micro upgrades around the house,

Tim Ferriss 18:42 you know? Yeah. I have, I have a very simple rule when it comes to soap and shampoo and conditioner. Well, you're in the dating life, though. You need to have upgraded shit. Oh, boy. Well, let me pause. I'll come... We can come back to that if we wanted to. [laughs] I know you want to. We'll, we'll see, we'll see where it goes. [laughs] But I actually get complimented on my skin a lot. Like people are like, "What do you use for this, and this, and that?" Breathtaking. Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah. It's, it's luscious. No, it looks great. It looks great. Yeah. It's luscious. It's very supple. Supple. [laughs] Moist. [laughs] Okay. So [laughs] and all I use, I have for years only used Dr. Bronner's baby soap, basically unscented baby soap. Yeah, I'm getting a thumbs up from your wife. That stuff is so simple. I never feel like I have dry skin. I'm bald, so it makes it easy, right? It's kind of one, one tool for all things. And there you have it. It's not actually a luxury, but I'm just saying. No, it's great. [laughs] We- No, I use that, too, actually. It's, it's, it's great stuff. And you can buy them in, like, gigantic sizes, so they last a long time. Yeah. So that's my, my comment on personal hygiene and soap.

Tim Ferriss 19:49 So dating life. [laughs] No, we don't have to get into that. [laughs] Well, what... Let's see. We can give... Well, what are your questions? And then we can- I... No, I was just curious, like, you know, we haven't talked about this in great detail, but I'm curious, like, how do you... Do you change your house? Like, talking about the upgrades, like, you have to, like, create a cozy- Change my house? [laughs] Well, first of all, I'm... You know I'm paranoid and crazy about safety and security stuff. Yeah. So generally, I mean, f- first meetings are always out somewhere public. And for anyone who is currently in the fray of dating apps, they know that it is by and large just terrible. [laughs] It's so bad. [laughs] And, uh, yeah, I f- I've found it interesting. What I would say is, like, if you're in a relationship and you're like, "Wow, this is hard. This is this, this is that," and, you know, it would just be so much easier if I were single and I'd be having all the fun in the world. And it's like you're just trading a different set of problems. Yeah. You're just... So now that's not to complain about it, but [laughs] I don't think this subject's gonna go anywhere. We can cut this part. [laughs] No, we don't, we don't, we don't have to. I'm just curious. But, uh, have you changed anything in terms of, like, your workout regimens or anything like that to get back into fighting shape? [laughs] Uh, y- well, yes. I mean, I have been training. I mean, my, my training's pretty consistent. I would say that one of the bigger challenges about dating is that I do not recover... Actually, this ties into something. I don't recover from alcohol nearly as well as I used to. Yeah. And the fact of the matter is, generally, if you're going out, people are going to wanna have a drink or it's just gonna be social to have a drink or two. Yeah. Nothing crazy. I have no interest in that. But even two glasses of wine, I, can completely obliterate my sleep. And so the jury is out on what I'm gonna bring up, but there is this product, which I think you have tried. Yes. Now, I have, I have not tried it. This was, this was introduced to me by a friend who swears by it and said he was about to stop drinking, which may [laughs] might've been a good thing, but he didn't because he started using this product called ZBiotics. And ZBiotics is pre-alcohol probiotic drink and there are these... I keep [laughs] hiccupping like the stork from- [laughs] ... the S- Saturday morning cartoons after my, like, five sips of beer. Just a quarter of a beer. Jesus. All right. So 12 bottles of this, and the, the basic selling point is that you are consuming a prebiotic, and I'm gonna bring up the exact prebiotic 'cause I would love to get some scientific input from people who can assess this or who have tried it. Here is the, the, the selling point in the pamphlet. So the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. I mean, first, world's first is always a strong, a strong statement, so I'd be curious to, to hear if, if anybody can verify. But built by a PhD microbiologist, ZBiotics is the only product that actively breaks down acetaldehyde. Nope, I added an A. I knew I was gonna do it, Daria.

Speaker 22:50 Acetaldehyde?

Tim Ferriss 22:50 Acetaldehyde. I'm just saying it really quickly. Acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde. I'm gonna, I'm gonna check one of these while we're talking. In any case, [laughs] means when you drink booze, it is intended to help you m- metabolize or neutralize at least some of the things that will cause you to feel terrible. So this is back to the pamphlet. We started with a natural probiotic, which humans have been eating for centuries. Then we altered its DNA to produce an enzyme that breaks down the aforementioned word that I shall not repeat. This enzyme is just like the one your liver uses, but our prebiotic is designed to deliver it to your gut, a place where your liver can access and where you need it most. So that last paragraph is where I would love to h- have people help me understand if there's any credible science to back this up. I went on PubMed. I looked at some of the studies related to the actual strain of probiotic, which is either Bacillus subtilis or subtilis, and that is spelled B-A-C-I-L-L-U-S space S-U-B-T-I-L-I-S, ZB183. The reason I mention that is when I looked it up, the study seemed to show that it could mitigate some liver damage with excessive alcohol consumption and so on, but I didn't see much on the gut Most of the studies seem to be in different strains of animals and insects, like silkworms of all things I think were included. So who knows how that transfers. So would love to know what people think.

Kevin Rose 24:17 What does your buddy say? Is it, like, preventing hangovers?

Tim Ferriss 24:20 He says that this has completely changed his life from the perspective hang-

Kevin Rose 24:23 But change it in what way? Like, is he [laughs] waking up just-

Tim Ferriss 24:26 He wakes up without the type of hangover and costs that have come with drinking prior. Now-

Kevin Rose 24:33 So, like, credit cards? [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 24:35 Yes.

Kevin Rose 24:35 Doesn't charge as much and-

Tim Ferriss 24:36 So other people might bring up something like activated charcoal. I would be curious to hear if you've found anything helpful. You, you have more mileage than I do with drinking booze.

Kevin Rose 24:44 [laughs] I love this episode. You're like, "Hey, you like fancy rich shit?"

Tim Ferriss 24:50 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 24:50 "Like, tell me some, uh, some of the stuff we as commoners can use when we first get started." [laughs] Dude, you, you, you do more rich shit than I do, so.

Tim Ferriss 24:57 Oh, what? Oh, oh, you're gonna cut that.

Kevin Rose 25:00 Yeah, I'm gonna cut that.

Tim Ferriss 25:01 No, don't, don't get ... [laughs]

Kevin Rose 25:02 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 25:02 You lose that one. [laughs] All right, so.

Kevin Rose 25:08 Yeah, you like to drink a lot. Tell me more, Kevin. Are you alcoholic? [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 25:14 [laughs] You have a broader spectrum of expertise-

Kevin Rose 25:17 Oh, thank you

Tim Ferriss 25:17 ... when it, when it comes to- [laughs]

Kevin Rose 25:19 Oh, well now that you put it that way.

Tim Ferriss 25:21 Yeah, when it comes to training-

Kevin Rose 25:22 Yes

Tim Ferriss 25:22 ... in the, in the dark arts of-

Kevin Rose 25:24 In the dark arts of alcohol

Tim Ferriss 25:24 ... alcohol consumption. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 25:25 So Tim, thank you for mentioning that.

Tim Ferriss 25:28 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 25:29 I did get my PhD. [laughs] Now, I would say that I did try this at a, at a party about four or five months ago, and I think, you know, you had made a joke [laughs] before the show started where, like, if you're like, uh, something about car accidents and a h- a helmet and, like, it, it's like if you're gonna drive fast enough-

Tim Ferriss 25:47 Oh, no, what I said was, [laughs] yeah, there's, like, there's a point at which it doesn't really help. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 25:51 Right. [laughs] Exactly.

Tim Ferriss 25:52 Like, when you're like Band-Aids are great if you cut your finger. Like, you want Band-Aids.

Kevin Rose 25:55 Right.

Tim Ferriss 25:55 But if you just, like, chop your finger off-

Kevin Rose 25:57 Chop both your arms

Tim Ferriss 25:57 ... [laughs] yes.

Kevin Rose 25:58 Right. Yeah, so that, that's been my problem is I've, uh, every time I've tried one of these I've chopped my arm off. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 26:02 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 26:02 Like, I was at a party where, where it was like everyone was passing them out, and I'm like, "Oh," like, "the hangover cure." Like, I'm in.

Tim Ferriss 26:09 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 26:10 And then I have, like, five drinks, you know?

Tim Ferriss 26:12 [laughs] Yeah, right.

Kevin Rose 26:12 And it was, it was our, our big annual NFT party, not this year but last year, and it ended up being a lot of drinks, and so I woke up a little hungover, so anyway.

Tim Ferriss 26:20 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 26:21 Didn't work for me.

Tim Ferriss 26:21 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 26:22 Crappy product. No. It could be great. Darya, have, have you, you've tried it. Have you had any success?

Tim Ferriss 26:28 No.

Kevin Rose 26:28 No success there.

Tim Ferriss 26:29 All right, so I'd be curious to hear what people think, and this is really broadly to lob a question into the audience, which is what have you found helpful for hangovers? And you can just hit us on Twitter-

Kevin Rose 26:41 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 26:41 ... with, with #hangover. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 26:44 Now, what's interesting-

Tim Ferriss 26:44 And I'm sure there are gonna be a bunch of sanctimonious people who are like, "I don't drink. That's what I do." But-

Kevin Rose 26:49 #oldliver.

Tim Ferriss 26:50 Yeah, #oldliver. You guys can not reply because we don't, we don't need those. I've cut back a lot on booze, but occasionally there's a place for it. And by the way, all you folks who are like, "I'm enlightened. I don't drink anymore. I just use ketamine five times a week," you guys are gonna have a rude awakening in, in a handful of years.

Kevin Rose 27:07 Did you hear that they've, they're finding fentanyl mixed in with ketamine now?

Tim Ferriss 27:10 Of course they are. Yeah, fentanyl is mixed in with everything. And by the way, folks, two milligrams overdose, you're dead-

Kevin Rose 27:15 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 27:15 ... if you get stuff mixed in. So-

Kevin Rose 27:17 It's, it's, don't mess around with that stuff, people

Tim Ferriss 27:18 ... yet another reason not to play around with miscellaneous powders.

Kevin Rose 27:21 Yeah. Um-

Tim Ferriss 27:22 What's up next, Dr. Kevin?

Kevin Rose 27:23 All right.

Kevin Rose 27:24 So I want to talk a little bit about my obsession with AI.

Tim Ferriss 27:28 Yeah, let's do it.

Kevin Rose 27:29 Because it's changed a lot. So let me just put it to you this way. You know how I always track new shit, like I-

Tim Ferriss 27:36 Yes

Kevin Rose 27:37 ... I pride myself in always being someone to wanna play with whatever is kind of halfway working/breaking if it means that, you know, five years from now I was able to spot something early on-

Tim Ferriss 27:49 Yeah

Kevin Rose 27:49 ... and, and, and, you know, hopefully identify a trend before it really took off. So-

Tim Ferriss 27:53 Mm-hmm

Kevin Rose 27:53 ... I would say that GPT, when it came out, the ChatGPT, the first few v- versions were just, were just fun for me. It was kind of like, "Oh, I'm having a conversation with AI. Wow, it's, it's, it's actually producing a real result when I'm, like, typing to it. It, it can help me rephrase or rewrite a paragraph or, you know, it can summarize some bullet points." Like, there's, it was doing a lot of little small meaningless more or less tasks, but quite well. And then 4.0 came out.

Tim Ferriss 28:23 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 28:24 So when 4.0 came out, my consumption of and usage of ChatGPT went from about, you know, let's call it 30 minutes a week to probably about 5 hours a week now.

Tim Ferriss 28:35 No kidding.

Kevin Rose 28:36 So I use it a lot.

Tim Ferriss 28:38 What are you using it for now?

Kevin Rose 28:39 I'm using it to code.

Tim Ferriss 28:40 Hmm.

Kevin Rose 28:41 So it can, it can code for me now.

Tim Ferriss 28:43 Wow.

Kevin Rose 28:43 So you know my background here. Like, I studied computer science, but I dropped out, and part of the reason, I, I don't know how much I've mentioned this publicly, but part of the reason I dropped out was that I could look and understand code a lot faster than I could write it.

Tim Ferriss 28:56 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 28:56 And so, you know, still to this day I can, I can read code just fine. I mean, this, granted sometimes there's some syntax I have to look up or figure out, but, like, more or less I'm there. The issue was that if I'm thinking through a problem, it would take me, you know, three to four times as long as anyone else to, like, figure out the same problem.

Tim Ferriss 29:14 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 29:14 And it just, I just didn't have the brain for it.

Tim Ferriss 29:16 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 29:16 With GPT I can come in, and as I start to have little hiccups or I wanna think through a problem, I can just ask it to figure it out for me, and it writes code that is, like, 99%, like, ready to go.

Tim Ferriss 29:31 Could you give an example of a problem?

Kevin Rose 29:32 Yeah, I'll give an example. Let's say you are, you're a WordPress user, right? That's what your blog's powered on.

Tim Ferriss 29:38 Yep.

Kevin Rose 29:38 And you're like, "Hmm, I wanna write a new WordPress plugin, and I want it to do this with my audience, segment it like this, do this only when someone is coming from this country, and make it appear like this." And, you know, you could change anything you want. You just describe it in a couple paragraphs and say go. It literally will print out all the code for you. You copy and paste it and save it as a script, and you're good to go, and it works.

Tim Ferriss 29:59 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 30:00 It's insane.

Tim Ferriss 30:01 So what does that mean for, say, five years from now?

Kevin Rose 30:03 Well, a couple things. Practically speaking, right now my engineering team, I had one of my developers tell me, "Hey, I had this," like, what they would call a, a kind of- ... laborious kind of task of, like, just something you don't wanna code. You're like, "Ah, God, I gotta re-sort this data in a certain way," and like, "Yeah, this is gonna take me 45 minutes." It was done in five, right?

Tim Ferriss 30:25 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 30:26 And it's like-

Tim Ferriss 30:26 Using ChatGPT.

Kevin Rose 30:27 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 30:27 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 30:27 And so, like, all of those little meaningless coding tasks, they're just gone, right?

Tim Ferriss 30:32 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 30:32 Like, that's, it's, it's already, it's done.

Tim Ferriss 30:34 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 30:34 It's done.

Tim Ferriss 30:35 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 30:35 And so I've been using it to create art, and I can tell it to go and write P5.js scripts for me, which is what Art Blocks is based on-

Tim Ferriss 30:44 Okay

Kevin Rose 30:44 ... for all the NFTs.

Tim Ferriss 30:45 So art, meaning you're using code-

Kevin Rose 30:48 Yes

Tim Ferriss 30:48 ... to generate art.

Kevin Rose 30:49 Generative art, exactly.

Tim Ferriss 30:50 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 30:50 And so I can describe it visually, and it comes back with something that's amazing.

Tim Ferriss 30:56 That's cool.

Kevin Rose 30:56 And I'll show you some examples-

Tim Ferriss 30:57 Yeah, I'd love-

Kevin Rose 30:57 ... after the podcast

Tim Ferriss 30:58 ... I'd love to see it.

Kevin Rose 30:59 And it's crazy addicting, 'cause you start getting into it and you're like, "Oh, what if you take it in this direction, in this direction?" So you're only limited, you're limited no longer by your skill, but your own-

Tim Ferriss 31:09 Mm

Kevin Rose 31:09 ... internal creativity of your, of your brain.

Tim Ferriss 31:11 And your ability to prompt well.

Kevin Rose 31:13 Yes, yes. But you can even help it write. I'll give you an example.

Tim Ferriss 31:17 This is about to get super meta.

Kevin Rose 31:19 No, yeah, exactly.

Tim Ferriss 31:20 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 31:20 You can tell it, "I'm having a hard time writing a prompt. How might I be more efficient?" And it'll give you 10 ways to rewrite the prompt.

Tim Ferriss 31:25 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 31:26 So you, and it's, so it just, it's, it's helping itself.

Tim Ferriss 31:28 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 31:28 It's so nuts.

Tim Ferriss 31:30 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 31:31 And so once you realize that it's so much more than just rewriting a paragraph for you or helping put together an essay, but it can actually create real software for you, dude, it's, it's just... I realize now that what's gonna happen is that, you know, Marc Andreessen was very famous, very famous venture capitalist maybe a decade ago of saying, "Software is eating the world."

Tim Ferriss 31:54 Yep.

Kevin Rose 31:54 Right? And so it was this idea that we had all of these old systems that were largely, you know, pen and paper based or weren't connected or weren't efficient, and software would come in and be connected, be put, the data would be put in the cloud, and we would have, you know, this new type of, of in-cloud infrastructure, right?

Tim Ferriss 32:14 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 32:14 That would power everything and be connected like it never was before. All of that is, is, is still continuing to happen, but this next generation is what I believe is AI is going to eat the software. So if, if software ate the world, AI is gonna eat the software, meaning that AI is gonna come in and reimagine every single tool that we use. So every single productivity tool that we use. It will be a part of almost every application that we use in, in really meaningful ways. Like, I've seen it, it sort data and create, you know... So I, I don't know about you, but when I use Excel, the hardest thing for me to always wrap my head around and figure out were pivot tables. Did you ever get good at pivot tables?

Tim Ferriss 32:55 No.

Kevin Rose 32:56 Well-

Tim Ferriss 32:56 I never got good at, at Excel, period.

Kevin Rose 32:57 Oh my God. Pivot tables were one-

Tim Ferriss 32:58 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 32:58 ... of those things where it was just like, it was a, it was a, they're, they're a nightmare to, to-

Tim Ferriss 33:02 I use notebooks, and then I lose my notebooks-

Kevin Rose 33:03 Okay

Tim Ferriss 33:03 ... and I'm screwed.

Kevin Rose 33:04 So anyway-

Tim Ferriss 33:05 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 33:06 ... you don't have to learn it any longer. You just tell-

Tim Ferriss 33:08 Yeah

Kevin Rose 33:08 ... it what you want, how you want the data sliced and diced, and it just, like, it not, not, um, when I would, what I don't mean is output from ChatGPT, but I mean it will be working in Excel or in Google Sheets-

Tim Ferriss 33:19 Yeah

Kevin Rose 33:19 ... and just automatically rewrite the tables for you.

Tim Ferriss 33:22 That's wild.

Kevin Rose 33:23 And so it's, you're just gonna give it a little prompt, and that's it.

Tim Ferriss 33:26 Right.

Kevin Rose 33:26 And I'm telling you this, th- this is coming a lot faster than I had thought. So two years ago it was very linear to me.

Tim Ferriss 33:33 Mm.

Kevin Rose 33:33 I was like, ah, month over month, like, oh yeah, G- ChatGPT 3 is out now, now 3.5, and I see a little bit of an upgrade. When 4 hit, oh my God, like-

Tim Ferriss 33:42 It seems like it's just gone vertical

Kevin Rose 33:43 ... everything has changed. It's gone vertical.

Tim Ferriss 33:45 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 33:45 It's exponential now. And so, dude, the next couple years are gonna be insane. Just insane.

Tim Ferriss 33:50 Yeah, I think the next 12 months are gonna be-

Kevin Rose 33:52 Yeah, you're probably right

Tim Ferriss 33:54 ... full cuckoo, full-

Kevin Rose 33:54 I'm, I'm being conservative, but yeah

Tim Ferriss 33:55 ... yeah, full cuckoo bananas. I mean, I've been, not to the extent that you have probably, but experimenting here and there, having my team experiment also-

Kevin Rose 34:02 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 34:02 ... to see if people who are non-technical, I- I'm non-technical, but I can figure out quite a few things, people who really have maybe even an allergy to a lot of tech tools, like what they can do with ChatGPT-

Kevin Rose 34:14 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 34:14 ... just to try to peek around that corner.

Kevin Rose 34:16 Oh, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 34:16 Like, okay, what is this gonna look like when there's more mass adoption? And I ran an art competition, which was an AI art competition a while back, and was absolutely blown away.

Kevin Rose 34:31 This is for the, the Punch of Cock.

Tim Ferriss 34:33 This is for the Punch of Cock. The, the, the punch the cock.

Kevin Rose 34:37 [laughs] As they say, yes.

Tim Ferriss 34:39 As they say in France.

Kevin Rose 34:39 We've translated it in so many languages now. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 34:41 Oh, yeah. No, it's, it's a massive global phenomenon.

Kevin Rose 34:43 How do you say that in Japanese, by the way?

Tim Ferriss 34:44 [laughs] Cock punch.

Kevin Rose 34:46 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 34:47 [laughs] Cock punch monogatari. Yeah. So the, uh [laughs] yes, that was for the Cock Punch NFT, which raised 2 million bucks, something like that. Made 1.7 to 2 million bucks for the foundation, which is great. All that's been deployed, and that's all fantastic for scientific research. But the, the point I was gonna make, the art competition following that where fan art was being generated using AI, people could also use Photoshop and other tools to fine-tune or to manipulate anything that came out of, say, a Midjourney or DALL-E or something like that. The results absolutely blew my mind, and I'm going to be, you h- you heard it here first, folks, so I'm gonna be running some more competitions which will have different formats, because a prerequisite or a condition of s- valid submission for the competition was you had to capture your entire process well enough that somebody could stand a good chance of replicating your result.

Kevin Rose 35:45 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 35:46 And by capturing that, now we have, let's just say top 10 finalists. You have 10 extremely good tutorials for people who want to step into the ring-

Kevin Rose 35:56 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 35:56 ... and play with it themselves.

Kevin Rose 35:57 So you've heard of Stable Diffusion, right?

Tim Ferriss 35:59 I have, yeah.

Kevin Rose 35:59 Okay, so Stable Diffusion is one like Midjourney.

Tim Ferriss 36:02 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 36:02 It's one like, you know, any of these like DALL-E that can create imagery out of-

Tim Ferriss 36:06 Yep

Kevin Rose 36:06 ... prompts, right? They, so Stable Diffusion went open source-

Tim Ferriss 36:11 Yep

Kevin Rose 36:11 ... which was a big like, "Oh, fuck."

Tim Ferriss 36:12 Maverick move.

Kevin Rose 36:13 Yeah. Well, yeah, it was, but it was like, "Oh, shit," 'cause like they release it, once you release it open source- [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 36:17 Yeah, it's gone

Kevin Rose 36:17 ... everybody's got it, and they're running with it in different directions, right?

Tim Ferriss 36:21 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 36:22 A buddy of mine gave me a Discord-

Tim Ferriss 36:24 Okay

Kevin Rose 36:24 ... to go onto, and he's like, "You gotta check this shit out. This is crazy, right?" And it's called Unstable Diffusion. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 36:30 Okay.

Kevin Rose 36:31 And so they basically took all the guardrails off of [laughs] Stable Diffusion-

Tim Ferriss 36:35 Yeah

Kevin Rose 36:35 ... you know, all the protections and shit.

Tim Ferriss 36:37 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 36:38 Oh my God. The things-

Tim Ferriss 36:40 What kind of stuff do you see?

Kevin Rose 36:41 Dude, what do you think you see?

Tim Ferriss 36:43 I don't know.

Kevin Rose 36:44 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 36:44 Deep, deep fake Taylor Swift porn? I mean-

Kevin Rose 36:46 Uh, imagine anything-

Tim Ferriss 36:47 [laughs] I don't know

Kevin Rose 36:48 ... anything you can imagine in its ultra-realistic, like, state, where you're, you're almost like you look at it and you're like, "Is that an image?" Like, it's, it's like you don't even know. Like, it's tricked you already, but it's, like, the most elegant [laughs] ... It's like, it's just-

Tim Ferriss 37:06 Just say it.

Kevin Rose 37:07 No, it's just like, it's, it's like-

Tim Ferriss 37:08 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 37:09 ... porn done in its, like, finest. Like-

Tim Ferriss 37:12 Very, very tasteful AI porn.

Kevin Rose 37:13 No, no, no, but, like, you can do whatever you want.

Tim Ferriss 37:15 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 37:16 So, like, there's all these different channels, and so you can go into some channels and see, like, aliens with, like, six breasts and, like, weird shit, like, where you're like, "That looks real." Not like-

Tim Ferriss 37:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Kevin Rose 37:26 ... like, what was it, the movie that Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger was in with the three-breasted woman? You know what I'm talking about?

Tim Ferriss 37:30 Total Recall.

Kevin Rose 37:31 Total Recall. Yeah, not that. Like, this looks so real.

Tim Ferriss 37:33 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 37:34 Like, it, it, it's, it's disturbingly real stuff-

Tim Ferriss 37:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Kevin Rose 37:37 ... right?

Tim Ferriss 37:38 Teenage boys are screwed. They're not gonna-

Kevin Rose 37:40 They're screwed

Tim Ferriss 37:40 ... they're not gonna get anything done [laughs] in the next-

Kevin Rose 37:42 Dude, this is-

Tim Ferriss 37:42 ... 10 years. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 37:43 Well, no, but they're screwed in terms of relationships, dude.

Tim Ferriss 37:46 Yeah?

Kevin Rose 37:46 I'm telling you, this is what worries me. So remember the movie Her, right?

Tim Ferriss 37:50 Yeah, I do.

Kevin Rose 37:51 So-

Tim Ferriss 37:51 Great movie

Kevin Rose 37:52 ... one of the things about Her, well, for people that haven't watched it, you gotta go and watch this 'cause it's going to, gonna become a reality, this man that has a relationship with his phone, and the phone has a very serious, like, you know, AI on it.

Tim Ferriss 38:04 Yeah, phone or laptop when he's at work.

Kevin Rose 38:06 Right, exactly.

Tim Ferriss 38:06 There, there's this ubiquitous AI companion.

Kevin Rose 38:08 Just following him around, right?

Tim Ferriss 38:10 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 38:10 And one of the things about OpenAI that you can do now is you can save and train model data to s- to be persistent.

Tim Ferriss 38:18 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 38:19 So I can go in right now-

Tim Ferriss 38:21 Sorry for Toaster licking the bowl in the background.

Kevin Rose 38:23 [laughs] The, the-

Tim Ferriss 38:24 Ringing the-

Kevin Rose 38:25 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 38:25 ... Tibetan meditation bowl with his-

Kevin Rose 38:27 [laughs] Exactly

Tim Ferriss 38:28 ... his, his collar.

Kevin Rose 38:29 Collar. [laughs] All right. So what you can do is you can go in and you can say, "Here are the properties of who I want you to be," and people are doing this. There's this website that has all these AI hacks, prompt hacks they call it.

Tim Ferriss 38:41 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 38:41 And you can go in and say, "You are this personality type. You're a little bit bitchy, you're sassy," like blah, blah, and you can save this, and it will respond to you and learn from you, and you can have what appears to be a human conversation with your perfect, like, polar opposite or whatever you're looking for-

Tim Ferriss 38:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Kevin Rose 38:59 ... in life. Dude, I'm telling you, we're three years out from that being conversation-based.

Tim Ferriss 39:04 Have, have you heard of Replika with a K?

Kevin Rose 39:06 Yes, of course.

Tim Ferriss 39:07 Okay.

Kevin Rose 39:07 I looked at that. I almost invested in that company years ago.

Tim Ferriss 39:09 All right, all right. So you should explain Replika 'cause they claim to have 10 million registered users.

Kevin Rose 39:13 Yeah. Yeah, so this is a company that was raising capital quite a while ago, and I, I saw them, but it was before the AI thing really took-

Tim Ferriss 39:19 Clicked

Kevin Rose 39:19 ... took off.

Tim Ferriss 39:20 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 39:21 But yeah, I mean, this is, this is it. Like, this is this idea, and I worry because, like, you know, you think of countries-

Tim Ferriss 39:27 Replika is Her, just so you guys know. I mean, there's more to it, but-

Kevin Rose 39:30 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 39:30 ... that's basically it.

Kevin Rose 39:31 But imagine, imagine w- we've seen this... Y- you would know this better than I would, but in Japan there's been this, the decrease in, in dating, and I've, I've heard about there's, like, this shame of, like, whether or not you have a, a high-quality job enough, and, like, there's, like, this disconnect between the male and female population. Do you know what I'm talking about? There was a report that came out on the, how dating was on the decline.

Tim Ferriss 39:52 Well, dating and fertility and just-

Kevin Rose 39:53 Fertility, yes

Tim Ferriss 39:54 ... uh, reproduction in general is, is on the decline, and they're, they're in a very problematic situation.

Kevin Rose 40:00 So imagine-

Tim Ferriss 40:00 From birth rate, like replacement rates, they're in a really sticky, terrible situation.

Kevin Rose 40:05 Okay, so now-

Tim Ferriss 40:06 Which I think China could be in in, like, 20, 30 years. 20, 20 years probably.

Kevin Rose 40:11 But I think we're all gonna be there because I think-

Tim Ferriss 40:12 Like, population implosion

Kevin Rose 40:13 ... I think you might just have a [laughs] partner online, like a, a AI.

Tim Ferriss 40:17 Yeah?

Kevin Rose 40:18 Like, we might just have AI partners-

Tim Ferriss 40:19 Yeah

Kevin Rose 40:19 ... you know?

Tim Ferriss 40:20 Well, I was talking to, I was talking to someone about this because, as you mentioned, right, I'm, well, I'm single now, and they said, "Oh, you should hop on Replika, just, like, check it out," and I was like, "I don't actually want-"

Kevin Rose 40:32 Did it scare you?

Tim Ferriss 40:33 It, well, it scared me in the sense that I was like, okay, there are times when I'm really lonely.

Kevin Rose 40:37 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 40:37 And humans are messy. Humans are difficult, and if you get close to someone, it's great for a while. You have the honeymoon phase, and things are great, and puppy love, and like, [laughs] "Everything you do is so funny," and then things change, right, and it gets a little more complex. But if you had an AI companion who, especially if it were v- compelling voice-

Kevin Rose 40:59 Wow, yeah

Tim Ferriss 40:59 ... which is gonna happen immediately.

Kevin Rose 41:01 Oh, dude, two years.

Tim Ferriss 41:02 I mean, it's, it's already... Like, I've seen, I've seen AI, I can't remember the company names, but that have been trained on voice data-

Kevin Rose 41:11 Yes

Tim Ferriss 41:11 ... to mimic, and I actually know podcasts that are being produced right now-

Kevin Rose 41:16 No

Tim Ferriss 41:16 ... us- using AI. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 41:19 We're not even here

Tim Ferriss 41:19 ... AI to read scripts that are sort of pieced together from celebrity sample data.

Kevin Rose 41:28 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 41:28 And listeners have no idea.

Kevin Rose 41:30 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 41:30 They have no idea.

Kevin Rose 41:31 It's so crazy.

Tim Ferriss 41:31 Like, these, these podcasts are not, quote-unquote, "real" because it's not what you think it is, and we are so close to there being the equivalent of, like, the Scarlett Johansson Her-

Kevin Rose 41:45 Right

Tim Ferriss 41:45 ... right? Like, sexy, smoky voice-

Kevin Rose 41:47 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 41:47 ... like, sassy, funny. Getting there.

Kevin Rose 41:50 Gives you your little shit from time to time, but doesn't ask you-

Tim Ferriss 41:52 Yeah

Kevin Rose 41:52 ... to pick up your socks.

Tim Ferriss 41:54 Yeah, right. [laughs] Right, that kind of thing.

Kevin Rose 41:56 You know, daughter's looking at me like, "I'm ju- I'm kidding."

Tim Ferriss 41:58 The [laughs] ... I didn't want to dig into Replika because I was like, you know, there's a chance-

Kevin Rose 42:03 Yeah, you fall for one of these

Tim Ferriss 42:04 ... that it's better than I think it's gonna be.

Kevin Rose 42:05 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 42:06 And then I start playing the game because I'm like, oh, I'm just testing this service, and then I start getting my human needs met by this AI, and it takes-

Kevin Rose 42:15 Dude, this is happening

Tim Ferriss 42:16 ... and it, and it takes the pressure off of, which maybe sometimes could be a good thing, but takes the pressure off of human interaction.

Kevin Rose 42:23 Dude, I think this, this is my point. This is why I wanted to bring this up. I think this is gonna happen. The question is- If I-

Tim Ferriss 42:29 Children of men, here we come

Kevin Rose 42:30 ... actually, I have a question for Daria. Like, if I start talking [laughs] to someone on AI that is a, a female AI person, is that cheating? It is?

Tim Ferriss 42:39 Yes.

Kevin Rose 42:40 What?

Tim Ferriss 42:40 That, that doesn't s- no, no, well, I'm just repeating what she said. That doesn't, that doesn't surprise me. I've thought about this a lot, too. I'm like-

Kevin Rose 42:47 It's cheating if I talk to AI? And sh-

Tim Ferriss 42:49 Well, I mean, especially if it's, like, sexting and this, that, and the other.

Kevin Rose 42:52 Why is that cheating?

Tim Ferriss 42:53 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 42:54 It's an AI. What, what did she say?

Tim Ferriss 42:56 She said, "Well, you don't talk to me." [laughs]

Kevin Rose 42:58 [laughs] Well, stop bitching about my socks.

Tim Ferriss 43:02 [laughs] Yeah. The, the, I think th- this will become an absolute issue, right?

Kevin Rose 43:09 Oh, it's gonna be a huge issue, dude.

Tim Ferriss 43:10 It's gonna be a huge issue.

Kevin Rose 43:11 This is one of the things that it really, truly keeps me up being like, I either need to invest in this company [laughs] or avoid it or a combination of thereof. Like, like-

Tim Ferriss 43:20 Yeah, in- invest in it so that you can have your bug out bag and your, your bunker-

Kevin Rose 43:24 Yeah [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 43:25 ... and your [laughs]

Kevin Rose 43:26 It's just-

Tim Ferriss 43:27 Everything prepared

Tim Ferriss 43:28 for the apocalypse. Okay, speaking of the apocalypse, do, do you mind if we switch to-

Kevin Rose 43:31 Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.

Tim Ferriss 43:32 Bal-

Kevin Rose 43:32 That was a fun one, though

Tim Ferriss 43:33 ... Bal- Balaji bet. That was a fun one. I'm glad you brought that up. So I [laughs] I'm a spectator mostly at this point. Or maybe I'll, I'll just serve as a stand-in for the audience, for those who are not deeply intimate with crypto or this world. But what, what bet? So Balaji Srinivasan-

Kevin Rose 43:52 Yes

Tim Ferriss 43:52 ... what bet did he make roughly? We don't have to get all the dates right or anything like that. And what do you think of it?

Kevin Rose 43:57 Yeah, so basically for people that don't know, this is an individual, Balaji, he's, like, really well known.

Tim Ferriss 44:03 Former CTO of Coinbase.

Kevin Rose 44:05 Yes. A- and also in, just insanely well known for nailing a lot of the COVID predictions.

Tim Ferriss 44:12 Yep.

Kevin Rose 44:12 Like, he came out and said, you know, things, like, really intimate details like, you know, masks will be a fashion statement, like, really early on, right?

Tim Ferriss 44:21 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 44:21 Like, this is, like, where if you read this stuff, a- and we all have historically going back, you'd be like, "Wow, that, like, that bravo," like, really prescient stuff, right?

Tim Ferriss 44:30 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 44:31 So, you know, when he talks about the future, a lot of people pay attention.

Tim Ferriss 44:36 Yep.

Kevin Rose 44:36 And so one of the things that happened with the, the collapse of these, uh, of a lot of regional banks with SVB and then First Republic and others is he said, you know, this is, this is not an isolated event. There's gonna be a triggering that's gonna lead to hyperinflation, the devaluing of the dollar, and in the next 90 days, Bitcoin is gonna be worth $1 million a coin, and I'm willing to stake and bet a million dollars that that is the case. And somebody else had challenged that.

Tim Ferriss 45:01 I think he responded to someone who said-

Kevin Rose 45:03 Okay

Tim Ferriss 45:03 ... "I'll put a million dollars on the line," and he's like, "I'll take that bet."

Kevin Rose 45:05 Okay. There we go.

Tim Ferriss 45:06 And something, I think June 17th or something.

Kevin Rose 45:09 Yes. Yes, yeah, th- so you're more accurate than I am. But that, that was essentially it. So that led me to pay attention.

Tim Ferriss 45:16 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 45:16 I was like, okay, well, that's interesting.

Tim Ferriss 45:19 Led a lot of people to pay attention.

Kevin Rose 45:19 Right. L- like, let's, let's, let's dive into this and figure out what's going on with Bitcoin. And honestly, what ha- it, it, it caused me to do personally is I hadn't paid attention to Bitcoin in a long time.

Tim Ferriss 45:29 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 45:30 I've been in the world of Ethereum with NFTs and everything else, and there, there's something, like, nice about how scalable and green Ethereum is, that now that it's moved to proof of stake, and there's just a lot more activity there day to day than there is, say, Bitcoin, right?

Tim Ferriss 45:43 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 45:44 But I started digging into Bitcoin, and one of the things I realized is that in a world where the press cycles are always coming back to, or oftentimes they're hitting Ethereum pretty hard in that their NFTs go up, they go down, they go left, they go right. That's, like, a bad look for Ethereum.

Tim Ferriss 46:04 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 46:04 In some cases. People get hacked, it's a bad look. Like-

Tim Ferriss 46:07 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 46:07 ... lose a certain amount of money.

Tim Ferriss 46:09 People. People. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 46:09 I know. Yeah, I know that quite well. But I'm just saying that there's these certain black eyes, and there's something about the simplicity of Bitcoin and this store of value that is still attractive.

Tim Ferriss 46:21 Right.

Kevin Rose 46:21 Because it is, it's the OG cryptocurrency. It's still trading at over $30,000 as of, as of the time of this podcast. And every year that goes on, it seems to be, you know, a more legitimate asset that-

Tim Ferriss 46:34 Recording on April 16th.

Kevin Rose 46:35 Yeah, but, but every year that goes on, it seems to me a more legitimate asset that is gonna stand the test of time. It's not going to zero, right?

Tim Ferriss 46:40 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 46:40 Like, it's a digital currency. It was the first of its kind. So, you know, I started playing around with some of the layer two that's built on stop, uh, on top of that with the Lightning Network, and noticed that some of the pain points have been smoothed down a little bit, and then I realized one thing that, that caught me, where I was like, you know what?

Tim Ferriss 46:57 Can you explain to people who don't know what that is, what that is?

Kevin Rose 46:58 Yeah, so, so Bitcoin is notorious for being just a very low transaction per second blockchain. So if you threw, like, say, you know, the Visa scale at it, like how many times a Visa card gets swiped every day, it, it wouldn't even, it, it would just, it's laughable. It's like they can do, you know, singular low double-digit transactions per second, whereas Visa can do, you know, 40,000 plus or whatever it may be. I'm just-

Tim Ferriss 47:23 Right

Kevin Rose 47:24 ... these are rough estimates, but you get what I'm saying. It's, it's along those orders of magnitude. So Bitcoin had to figure out a solution that would scale, help it scale that infrastructure so that more payments could happen.

Tim Ferriss 47:36 Yep.

Kevin Rose 47:36 And so they created a layer two that kinda sits on top of it that still has final, it resolves back to the main coin, so it has the security and safety of Bitcoin. It's much how Ethereum is scaling right now-

Tim Ferriss 47:49 Mm

Kevin Rose 47:49 ... with some of the layer two networks that sit on top of it. So their main one is called Lightning. It's the Lightning Network. And so it allows you to do ultra-fast transactions, and it, it can scale up to, they say, I think it's up to a million transactions a second or something. It's something crazy. They haven't tested it at those limits, but that's what the paper is written as anyway. So I tried a bunch of this stuff out. I kicked the tires on a few things, and then I realized that Bitcoin, unlike Ethereum, the nice thing about it, it has this, you know, finite supply-

Tim Ferriss 48:18 Mm-hmm

Kevin Rose 48:18 ... that is slowly coming to an end, like, over time, right? So every, I think it's four, four and a half years, they do a halving event where they decrease the total number of issued coins in half. They do this chop, they chop it right in half as in terms of the number of coins, new coins issued. And they're about to do another cycle here in a little over a year. So when this next halvening event happens, there's even less currency coming out of that faucet.

Tim Ferriss 48:46 Mm.

Kevin Rose 48:47 So, you know, these halvening events, I went back and looked historically, and they're typically the year before the halvening event and the year after the halvening event, you typically see a pretty substantial-

Tim Ferriss 49:00 How many halvenings have there been?

Kevin Rose 49:01 Quite a few. I mean, so I- it's like, it was like five now or something like that.

Tim Ferriss 49:06 Okay.

Kevin Rose 49:06 So you typically see, and, uh, don't get me wrong, like I'm not saying... This is not investment advice. This is not always gonna hold true, but obviously if there's more demand and less supply, meaning less bitcoins being issued, you're gonna see a change in price. That's just-

Tim Ferriss 49:21 Mm

Kevin Rose 49:21 ... you know, obs- obviously, we know these markets how, and how they play out. So no one's talking about the halvening yet. It typically, people start raising chatter around this time.

Tim Ferriss 49:31 Mm.

Kevin Rose 49:32 And so when every single other time when I, when the halvening events start to happen and the chatter starts to spin up, the price has always gone up.

Tim Ferriss 49:40 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 49:40 And I've watched this happen time and time again. So for me, I was like, you know what? Classic cryptocurrency, I hate that it's not green. That kills me. I'm happy that more mining services are going green, and they're moving to cheaper energy sources, which are typically by like thermodynamic and a whole bunch of the nuclear energy and... But they try to-

Tim Ferriss 50:01 Yeah, wind.

Kevin Rose 50:03 They're... Exactly.

Tim Ferriss 50:03 There's a ton in Texas.

Kevin Rose 50:04 Yeah, so they're trying to move closer to these energy sources, they can get cheaper power. That said, I still think there's obviously a lot of, of dirty energy that's being wasted here on Bitcoin mining. It's a big bummer. But, you know, that is the one part that just gives me a little bit of pause that like kind of hurts my soul. But I, I did, you know, purchase a little position there because I do like it, especially in times where we see the devaluing of the dollar. We see Russia and China buying more gold.

Tim Ferriss 50:35 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 50:36 And I'm just like, I want a nice hedge that's decoupled from the dollar, that's sitting out there that, you know... Yeah, I'm not saying it should be a big double-digit percentage of your overall, you know, asset allocation, but for me personally, I, I don't mind having a little of that parked in and set on the side.

Tim Ferriss 50:54 So maybe you could repeat for the audience what you said to me. This is a while back, but when we were talking about this, and we were talking about what might happen if the dollar's just massively devalued, or if we experience hyper, hyper, hyperinflation.

Kevin Rose 51:11 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 51:11 Right? We're like carting around dollar bills in, uh, wheelbarrows to buy, you know, s- a Kit Kat at the local 7-Eleven. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 51:19 Well, you and I are ta- we're talking about this, and we were like, "Oh, this crazy bet happened." This was probably like what? Maybe a month ago or something.

Tim Ferriss 51:25 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 51:25 And we're like, "This crazy bet happened. It's a million dollars, and what if Bitcoin goes to a million?" And I was like, "Well, wait a second. Like if Bitcoin [laughs] goes to a million dollars and there's hyperinflation, then a million dollars is worth like..." And you said, "Yeah, like the price of a sandwich or something like that." [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 51:38 [laughs] Yeah.

Kevin Rose 51:38 And I was like, "Yeah, so it doesn't really matter." Like Bitcoin's a hard one because when you traditionally think about currencies, you always think of them pegged to somebody else's GDP, right?

Tim Ferriss 51:49 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 51:49 So you think of the, the pound being pegged to, you know, what's going on in, in the UK, and it's like, what do you peg Bitcoin to?

Tim Ferriss 51:56 Yeah. Well, also, like there's the question of like what is its value in the absence of a reliable peg?

Kevin Rose 52:02 Right. Exactly.

Tim Ferriss 52:03 And, and, and if-

Kevin Rose 52:03 That's a, that's a better question. Yes

Tim Ferriss 52:04 ... I mean, this is to, to be clear, I'm sure the Maxis are gonna just have a field day with this one, but... And there are some people I, I respect and admire among that crowd, but there are also a lot of very aggressive sort of religious fundamentalists in there, which I, which I'd prefer not to spend so much time with. But the, the- there are a bunch of questions that I have, which I don't have great answers to, but they're just questions. O- one would be what you just described, right? It's like, okay, well, if the dollar experiences this massive hyperinflation, what does... How does one establish the value of Bitcoin for the exchange of services or goods?

Kevin Rose 52:43 Right.

Tim Ferriss 52:43 Right? The second, I think, is for me, what happens in a place like Europe? What happens in a place like Japan? What happens in a place like fill in the blank if the US collapses? [laughs]

Kevin Rose 52:58 Right.

Tim Ferriss 53:00 So where is the sort of currency safe haven?

Kevin Rose 53:02 Right.

Tim Ferriss 53:03 If there is one.

Kevin Rose 53:04 Well-

Tim Ferriss 53:04 And, and then the next question is, if, if things were to get that bad, and it doesn't even need to be... If we assume for the moment that the rise in Bitcoin price to, let's just say Balaji's bet of a million, is predicated on a, on a similar increase in hyperinflation for the dollar-

Kevin Rose 53:25 Right

Tim Ferriss 53:25 ... right? Which, uh, would just not be sustainable, right? The whole country just blows to pieces. Do you not have more pressing problems than Bitcoin?

Kevin Rose 53:33 Right.

Tim Ferriss 53:33 Like, are you gonna be able to get on your United flight to escape the US to fill in the blank location? You, you're going to have such a series of questions that are more fundamental perhaps than money, that if you think that is a likely outcome, you should be in full-blown advanced prepper mode right now.

Kevin Rose 53:57 Right. Well, the, the question I, I guess I, I think I have is like are the rails in place for the preppers to get into Bitcoin? Because if something happens where we see this massive-

Tim Ferriss 54:11 Or the, or the Bitcoiners to get into prepping properly. But yeah.

Kevin Rose 54:15 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 54:15 But, but let's, let's... We can deal with the first.

Kevin Rose 54:17 Yeah, so the first one I w- I would say is like, you know, in... This is two of us playing economists on TV, on, on podcast [laughs] which is not-

Tim Ferriss 54:25 With some booze

Kevin Rose 54:26 ... with some booze, which is never sound advice. But-

Tim Ferriss 54:28 Yeah, yeah. This is not economic advice

Kevin Rose 54:30 ... but, but-

Tim Ferriss 54:30 If any central bankers are listening.

Kevin Rose 54:32 Right. Yeah, exactly. Please come on. Join us.

Tim Ferriss 54:33 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 54:34 So the, the one thing that I, I think is, is interesting is when you think about what is happening worldwide right now with, with China and with Russia And we take a look at the data, what does the data tell us over the last few months? And what has been reported is that China and Russia right now are not buying Bitcoin, but they're buying a lot of gold.

Tim Ferriss 54:58 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 54:59 And so that to me doesn't signal as though we have an emergent new world currency as much as it does instability and a flight to safety. And so if there's instability and a flight to safety and gold is still, you know, the, the kind of safe haven for that, which it appears-

Tim Ferriss 55:18 Mm-hmm

Kevin Rose 55:18 ... to be, that would explain why, I mean, there's been, since November, there's been a 40% run up on the price of gold.

Tim Ferriss 55:25 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 55:25 And so, you know, I don't know that Bitcoin is that safe haven, but there's one chart, there's one graphic that blew my mind and it made me rethink everything, and that is when the day that SVB came out and said, "We're potentially insolvent," and all the regional banks took a hit.

Tim Ferriss 55:46 Yep.

Kevin Rose 55:47 There was a screenshot. Did you see the screenshot? Do you know what I'm about to talk about?

Tim Ferriss 55:50 I'm not sure.

Kevin Rose 55:50 There was a screenshot where someone saved to their iPhone all the regional banks, all the major banks even as well, and it was a list of all of them in the stocks app, right? You know how you can list them-

Tim Ferriss 56:02 Yeah, yeah

Kevin Rose 56:02 ... and then like it just goes down the screen? And it's like negative 20%, negative 15%, negative 30%, like just going down the screen.

Tim Ferriss 56:08 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Kevin Rose 56:08 It was just like-

Tim Ferriss 56:09 FRB was like negative 60 or something.

Kevin Rose 56:10 Oh, dude, it was just bloody all the way down, and then there was two at the top, and it was Bitcoin and Ethereum, and they were both green, like heavy green. And that was the first time where I was like, "Oh, shit," because every single time, there has always been at least, and this is someone's observational data, like I'm just like what, from what I can recall, the market has been more or less tightly coupled with Bitcoin and Ethereum. Like if the market's down-

Tim Ferriss 56:34 Super tight, super tightly coupled

Kevin Rose 56:36 ... if the market's down, they're down, right? 'Cause it's, it's a speculative asset, and when people start to r- feel their pocketbooks hurting-

Tim Ferriss 56:42 Yeah

Kevin Rose 56:42 ... they pull out of cryptocurrency. This was the first time where I was like, oh, shit, some people are moving into cryptocurrency-

Tim Ferriss 56:49 Yeah

Kevin Rose 56:49 ... as the banks start to collapse.

Tim Ferriss 56:51 Now, in fairness, that is a subset of stocks, especially if you're looking-

Kevin Rose 56:56 For sure

Tim Ferriss 56:56 ... at regional banks and not the S&P 500, right? I think the-

Kevin Rose 56:59 Yes. I, I'm pretty sure the S&P was down that day too, but I, I don't, I, I gotta imagine-

Tim Ferriss 57:03 Entirely possible

Kevin Rose 57:03 ... I gotta imagine the whole banking sector was down.

Tim Ferriss 57:05 I am... So, so let me ask you this, and you know that I'm pretty heavily vested in, in these things, so I'm very deeply interested in Bitcoin. But just to, just to act as a stand-in, let assume that, and based on at least the homework that I've done, which, you know, your mileage may vary, but the e- the S&P has been very highly correlated to Bitcoin and Ethereum for that matter.

Kevin Rose 57:31 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 57:31 Right? Uh, it, these are treated as risk on assets.

Kevin Rose 57:34 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 57:35 And when things go down, people sell, especially when you-

Kevin Rose 57:38 They're most risky shit

Tim Ferriss 57:38 ... when you can sell it whenever you wanna sell it-

Kevin Rose 57:40 Yes, 24/7

Tim Ferriss 57:40 ... and it's not just market hours, yada, yada, yada. What is different this time around? Because I do think there, there are two issues with the bet. One is that, and this is, this is, this happens to everybody, right? You develop a, it's not quite a sunk cost fallacy. You develop a confirmation bias, right?

Kevin Rose 57:59 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 58:00 You begin to find reasons to support your book-

Kevin Rose 58:05 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 58:05 ... your existing positions. And, and just one more thing, and that is I do think the Balaji bet can't be viewed solely as a prediction because people pay attention to him. People purchase or sell based also, some people do, Balaji's predictions and so on. And it makes me think of this section in Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis. It's the book that made Michael Lewis famous. It's a great book. It's about, I think it's mostly about, mostly about bond trading and there was some like big swinging dick top dog inside, I think it was Salomon Brothers, and he bought some position. He was like, "The market's going up 4X," and he bought like $500,000 worth, and it started to go down, and people were laughing, and he had lost a bet, and people were making fun of him, and he's like, "Oh yeah?" And then he bought like $500 million worth of it, and the market [laughs] freaked out-

Kevin Rose 59:06 Freaked out. Yeah [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 59:06 ... and went sh- sh- skyrocketing 'cause they're like, "Oh my God, somebody knows something we don't know." So he was able to move the market, right?

Kevin Rose 59:14 Right.

Tim Ferriss 59:14 He made a prediction, but he also moved the market, and I think that, I don't think Balaji's bet, it, it-

Kevin Rose 59:20 Balaji can't move the market. It's too big.

Tim Ferriss 59:21 Well, I'm not saying he can't move the market, but it was, it, it became global news.

Kevin Rose 59:25 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 59:26 Right?

Kevin Rose 59:27 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 59:27 You don't think he can move the market even if it, it affects larger institutional players and so on?

Kevin Rose 59:32 No-

Tim Ferriss 59:32 I'm not saying that Balaji single-handedly can move the market, but I think it's, I don't think it's fair to say that it has zero impact on the buying and selling behaviors of people.

Kevin Rose 59:44 Oh, no doubt. I mean, I think anyone can temporarily move the market. If, if Tim Ferriss tweets out, "Oh my God, one of my best friends, an insane researcher, just found a hole in Bitcoin. We're all fucked," [laughs] you know? I have a-

Tim Ferriss 59:57 Right

Kevin Rose 59:57 ... I have a strong feeling that there would be some movement in prices.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:01 [laughs] Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:00:02 Right? Like-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:03 But you're saying it would recalibrate.

Kevin Rose 1:00:04 Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:05 Mm.

Kevin Rose 1:00:06 There's just too much volume going through it every single day. Like don't get-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:08 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:00:08 ... me wrong, like if there, it's a hype cycle, right?

Tim Ferriss 1:00:10 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:00:11 Like j- Cramer's gonna talk about it. Like people are gonna... It's gonna spread.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:15 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:00:15 It's gonna have its 48-hour window, and then there's gonna be a bump, which we, I think we saw, and then it'll just recalibrate from there. So, but-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:23 I thought it was irresponsible to make that type of public pronouncement. I would be shocked if it gets to a million by mid-June.

Kevin Rose 1:00:30 I don't know that it's irresponsible. I just think it's like y- you're making a bet and you're-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:34 There are pe- there are, there are people who cannot afford to take their savings and put it into Bitcoin who are gonna do it because of something like that.

Kevin Rose 1:00:41 Well, the good news, it's gone up since he said that, so they're up regardless.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:44 Yeah. Well, yeah, it's one thing to get into a position

Kevin Rose 1:00:47 Yeah, that's a great point

Tim Ferriss 1:00:47 ... as you famously know, 'cause you, you're like, "I'm buying this-"

Kevin Rose 1:00:50 As you-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:50 ... and then you never tell me when you fucking sell things

Kevin Rose 1:00:52 ... as you more famously know, [laughs] we can talk about your Bitcoin investing. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:00:55 Oh, Jesus Christ. I mean, yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:00:58 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:59 Yeah, good lord.

Kevin Rose 1:01:00 All right. So let's, let's, let's move on from there.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:02 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:01:03 So I have some fun stuff to talk about.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:07 Let's do it.

Kevin Rose 1:01:09 I guarantee you you're gonna love this next little segment.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:11 All right. I'm excited.

Kevin Rose 1:01:12 Okay?

Tim Ferriss 1:01:13 Yes.

Kevin Rose 1:01:14 We talked about New Year's resolutions before.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:16 Oh, God. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:01:17 But I have one that I didn't tell you about.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:20 Okay.

Kevin Rose 1:01:22 I wanna show you something here.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:23 All right.

Kevin Rose 1:01:23 Since you're seeing this for the first time, you can go ahead and read this for the audience here. What does that say?

Tim Ferriss 1:01:27 It says, "ABC Letter Tracing Practice Workbook for Kids."

Kevin Rose 1:01:31 Ages what?

Tim Ferriss 1:01:33 Ages three plus.

Kevin Rose 1:01:34 Okay. And then when you open the first page, what does it say?

Tim Ferriss 1:01:37 Oh, Kevin Rose, age 45, [laughs] February 9th, 2023.

Kevin Rose 1:01:41 And then what do you see from, from here?

Tim Ferriss 1:01:44 Oh, you're letter tracing.

Kevin Rose 1:01:45 Yes. So I'm learning how to write with my right hand.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:48 Amazing.

Kevin Rose 1:01:49 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:01:49 This is incredible. It's pretty, it's pretty shaky. Your, your hands-

Kevin Rose 1:01:53 It is a little shaky

Tim Ferriss 1:01:54 ... your hands are a little shaky.

Kevin Rose 1:01:55 You can see that I'm having some issues here.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:57 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:01:59 I... Please, love, stop laughing in the background. My wife is, like, dying laughing. She-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:04 [laughs] It's, it's so good. It's funny. It's funny

Kevin Rose 1:02:06 ... she, she didn't know about this. This is the first she's hearing of it, by the way.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:08 All right. All right. This is great. I, I'm loving it.

Kevin Rose 1:02:10 So I, I have started to learn how to write with my right hand.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:13 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:02:14 And I decided-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:15 I can see these cute bunnies and acorns and-

Kevin Rose 1:02:17 It's getting a little better, right?

Tim Ferriss 1:02:18 ... mushrooms and puppies making it interesting.

Kevin Rose 1:02:20 So, you know, I'm just now getting started. I got a ways to go, but, you know, this is one of those things where I was watching my kids do it, and I'm watching their brains kinda activate-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:30 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:02:31 ... as they're, like, learning how to trace and how to... And, and Zelda's really n- actually, her letters were flopped and turned around at one point. Now they're straight and-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:40 That's, that's what I did.

Kevin Rose 1:02:41 You did the same thing?

Tim Ferriss 1:02:41 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:02:42 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:42 Yeah, I still do it. Dysgraphia. My letters end up backwards and upside down and stuff when I write some letters-

Kevin Rose 1:02:47 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:02:48 ... in handwriting.

Kevin Rose 1:02:49 Sometimes I skip a letter and then I come back and rewrite it. I don't know what the fuck that is, but that's something I got. I don't know.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:54 I get too crazy-

Kevin Rose 1:02:55 That might be-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:55 ... and I just, like, jump around

Kevin Rose 1:02:56 ... yeah, early onset dementia. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:02:57 [laughs] Great. Thank you.

Kevin Rose 1:02:59 But, but, but the thing here is, is, you know, there's no, I have no scientific reason other than to say I realize that this is activating somewhere in my brain something new.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:09 Yep.

Kevin Rose 1:03:10 And it's just, like, one of those things where I'm left-handed.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:14 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:03:15 So I've always smudged the shit out of everything I do.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:17 Yeah, totally.

Kevin Rose 1:03:17 It's just like a, a streak of ink across the page-

Tim Ferriss 1:03:20 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:03:20 ... 'cause my hand... And I was like, "You know what? My kids are learning. Why don't I learn at the same time?" And so that's something I started-

Tim Ferriss 1:03:25 That's awesome

Kevin Rose 1:03:26 ... recently. Anyway, I thought you'd think it was-

Tim Ferriss 1:03:27 Are you enjoying it?

Kevin Rose 1:03:27 ... amazing. Yeah, it's fun. You just, like... Actually, my hand gets really fatigued-

Tim Ferriss 1:03:31 It must

Kevin Rose 1:03:31 ... and so I have to start. You know?

Tim Ferriss 1:03:32 Oh, yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:03:32 So I set a timer for 10 minutes, and then I just go to town and, like, start doing my, my numbers and my letters.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:37 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:03:37 And then just, like, I got two workbooks in my office.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:40 That's amazing.

Kevin Rose 1:03:41 Yeah, it's just... I, I thought you would like it-

Tim Ferriss 1:03:42 I love that. I love that

Kevin Rose 1:03:42 ... 'cause as a lifelong learner-

Tim Ferriss 1:03:43 Yeah, totally

Kevin Rose 1:03:43 ... like, this is something that you'd be into.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:45 I'm, I'm totally into it. And I-

Kevin Rose 1:03:46 Do you know what it's doing for me? Is, like, helping my, a certain part of my brain?

Tim Ferriss 1:03:49 Oh, that's-

Kevin Rose 1:03:49 Daria would know.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:50 Daria has, Daria-

Kevin Rose 1:03:51 She's the neuroscientist.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:52 Yeah. Daria would have more credibility discussing this in any capacity. There, there is something kinda similar that... When did you start this?

Kevin Rose 1:03:59 Just at the beginning of the year. Have you tried writing with your left hand?

Tim Ferriss 1:04:02 I have, because I've broken so many things so many times. So I, when I shattered my right wrist one of several times, I had to do all my writing in school with my left hand, and for the first week it was terrible. I was also just thrown into baptism by fire because it was like, "Okay, now you get to write for, like, several hours a day with your non-dominant hand." [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:04:20 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:20 So I just got crushed.

Kevin Rose 1:04:21 So are you good? Are you, can you-

Tim Ferriss 1:04:22 Oh, I don't think I'm good.

Kevin Rose 1:04:23 So you're not into it as-

Tim Ferriss 1:04:24 Especially because left-handed is w- I, I mean, I, I say it's weird. I'm sure right-handed is equally weird for you, but just, like, the whole, like, hook claw.

Kevin Rose 1:04:31 The hook. Yeah, the claw.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:32 So I wanted to pull up the name of an artist who got me back into penciling, and she was not aware of this, but she published a book that I ended up grabbing, which was unbeknownst to me a guide to her toolkit and approach to much of her artwork. Artw work. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:04:53 Artw work. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:04:54 Artw work. I'm so tired, folks. It's not any booze. Slept terribly last night. Maybe we'll talk about my low back. I have all sorts of low back issues.

Kevin Rose 1:05:01 I had low back this morning, dude.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:03 So this woman, I m- I might be pronouncing her first name incorrectly, but I'm gonna say Eliza Ivanova, and her account on Instagram is Eliza, E-L-E-E-Z-A. One of my favorite artists out there. She's spectacular.

Kevin Rose 1:05:16 Can I see some of her stuff?

Tim Ferriss 1:05:17 Yeah, yeah. Formerly at Pixar. And her ability to draw animals and portraits is-

Kevin Rose 1:05:26 Wow, that is beautiful

Tim Ferriss 1:05:26 ... just spectacular.

Kevin Rose 1:05:27 Wow.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:27 And there's a certain, like, surreal-

Kevin Rose 1:05:31 Oh, I love this

Tim Ferriss 1:05:31 ... feel to it, and she's... You see what she's using here. I'm showing an Instagram video. She's using a smudging stick instead of, say, crosshatching, which can be really rough on the wrists and the hands, to very quickly create amazing pieces of art. And she has a number of books. I bought her most recent book, which gives sort of an overview of her technique and approach to artwork. And so I have been, like this type of stuff, for instance, rather than starting with sort of a stick figure or a, not quite mannequin, that's not the word I'm looking. Maquette. Not maquette. But rather than starting with the bones of someone, starting with the, the outline of the figure-

Kevin Rose 1:06:16 Hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:06:16 ... then adding the shading-

Kevin Rose 1:06:18 Gosh, she's so good

Tim Ferriss 1:06:18 ... then adding the details and going back and forth. It's so intricate.

Kevin Rose 1:06:22 Don't you just wish you had that skillset?

Tim Ferriss 1:06:23 I-

Kevin Rose 1:06:23 I mean, you're really good.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:25 I-

Kevin Rose 1:06:25 But, but, like, you're not that good.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:26 Oh, she's better. Yeah, she's obviously much better. I mean, look, look-

Kevin Rose 1:06:28 Do you have a screen protector on, by the way?

Tim Ferriss 1:06:29 Yeah, I do.

Kevin Rose 1:06:30 I can't see at a

Kevin Rose 1:06:31 certain angle.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:31 So this is a new thing. All right. You wanna hear a story? You're gonna love this. All right.

Kevin Rose 1:06:36 You're protecting your...

Tim Ferriss 1:06:37 Protecting my screen.

Kevin Rose 1:06:38 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:38 But, well, this is a privacy screen.

Kevin Rose 1:06:40 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:41 And I went to a restaurant here in LA, and sit down at the bar because that's what's, what's available. Huge bar. It's, like, 75 feet wide.

Kevin Rose 1:06:52 By yourself?

Tim Ferriss 1:06:53 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:06:54 Was this a date?

Tim Ferriss 1:06:54 Yeah, 'cause I just... No, I just finished a workout.

Kevin Rose 1:06:57 Oh, you should just text me up when you're doing shit like this. I'd come join you for a drink.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:00 That's horseshit, you're always super busy.

Kevin Rose 1:07:01 We're in the same neighborhood.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:03 All right. All right. I will text you next time.

Kevin Rose 1:07:04 Please do, seriously.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:05 Yeah, yeah. So I had done a workout, I finished, and then I was just like, "Hey, looking for a place to eat. What can you guys recommend?" Ended up at this restaurant, [laughs] and then I was sitting there, ordered my food, having a great time, beautiful venue, like flirting a little bit with the waitress. Like, that's not gonna go anywhere, but it was fun. Like, she was just like good vibes.

Kevin Rose 1:07:25 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:25 It was, it was just-

Kevin Rose 1:07:26 That's amazing

Tim Ferriss 1:07:26 ... it felt good, right?

Kevin Rose 1:07:27 Yes. Yeah, good, good vibes.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:27 And like it was... What was that?

Kevin Rose 1:07:29 It was a good, a good vibe-

Tim Ferriss 1:07:30 Yeah, it was just good vibes

Kevin Rose 1:07:30 ... she's giving, yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:07:30 Like, it wasn't g- clearly wasn't gonna go anywhere, but it was just, it was just fun. And then [laughs] somebody comes and sits right next to me. There's like 20 empty seats in the bar.

Kevin Rose 1:07:39 Oh, Jesus.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:39 Like-

Kevin Rose 1:07:39 I had this one when I was pissing one time-

Tim Ferriss 1:07:41 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:07:41 ... in a movie theater.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:42 Okay. All right. All right.

Kevin Rose 1:07:42 Where there was 30 urinals-

Tim Ferriss 1:07:44 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:07:44 ... and a dude walks all the way down and stands right next to me.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:46 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:07:46 And I'm like, "Yeah."

Tim Ferriss 1:07:47 All right.

Kevin Rose 1:07:47 "Yeah. Thanks, buddy."

Tim Ferriss 1:07:48 Yeah, so, so he sat right next to me and ultimately ended up being a fan of mine, and he was very cool, but the fact that he was sitting right next to me meant I felt very self-conscious looking at my phone. I was like, if I look at anything on my phone or I try to text someone or anything, this is incredibly visible to everyone around me. And so I ended up getting a privacy screen for my iPhone, which is fantastic. I mean, such a simple solution. Also protects the screen.

Kevin Rose 1:08:18 Yeah, it works quite well.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:19 And there you have it, so that, that's, that's, that's my story about pri-

Kevin Rose 1:08:23 That's it [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:08:23 [laughs] That's the... my story about the privacy screen.

Kevin Rose 1:08:25 Cool story, bro.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:25 Yeah, cool s- cool story, bro.

Kevin Rose 1:08:27 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:08:27 Yeah, Jesus Christ.

Kevin Rose 1:08:28 Do you have a [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:08:29 You know, let-

Kevin Rose 1:08:30 Do you have a, do you have a name for the privacy screen so at least people can buy it if they're looking for one?

Tim Ferriss 1:08:34 Uh, you know, I do.

Kevin Rose 1:08:35 TimTimsPrivacyScreens dot com.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:36 This is, this is TimTimsPrivacyScreens dot com.

Kevin Rose 1:08:39 It works quite well. I'm actually kinda shocked 'cause I can't see shit from you, and I'm sitting, like, a foot from you.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:44 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:08:44 I really can't see anything on your screen.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:45 Yeah, it's amazing.

Kevin Rose 1:08:46 It's amazing.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:46 It's, it's really helpful. So let me, let me try to find this and it's gonna-

Kevin Rose 1:08:49 All right, I'll start with the next story while you're-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:50 There, there is a-

Kevin Rose 1:08:51 ... you try to find it

Tim Ferriss 1:08:51 ... well, hold on. There's a brand, it starts with a B. It's not Belcom. Belski. [laughs] It's not Belski. Belkin.

Kevin Rose 1:08:58 Belkin, yeah, Belkin.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:59 Yeah. Thank you, Daria. So I think it's... I think I initially was looking for a Belkin because those are well-known, and I ended up being unable to get it quickly, so I just have something made in China that is a similar design. So there you have it. But the, the key term is iPhone protector/privacy screen, and if you search for that you'll find something.

Kevin Rose 1:09:25 All right. [laughs] Now that your privacy is covered [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:09:28 Now that I got that sorted.

Kevin Rose 1:09:29 Let's move on to my next story, which is Nintendo.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:33 Enough about, enough about you. Let's talk about me.

Kevin Rose 1:09:35 L- [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:09:35 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:09:36 So let me ask you a question.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:37 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:09:37 When do you think W- Nintendo was founded?

Tim Ferriss 1:09:40 Oh, I have maybe some unfair advantages here. I'm gonna say 1880.

Kevin Rose 1:09:46 Yes. How did you know that?

Tim Ferriss 1:09:47 Was I, was I close?

Kevin Rose 1:09:48 Yeah, it's in the late 1800s, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:49 Yeah. Because 1839-

Kevin Rose 1:09:53 No, it was, like, later 18... uh-

Tim Ferriss 1:09:54 1800s

Kevin Rose 1:09:54 ... let's look it up. Yeah, the 1800s.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:56 So the reason I know that, this is g- actually, you probably don't even know this.

Kevin Rose 1:10:00 No, I don't.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:00 So there's a Japanese card game. They're these tiny little cards. They're, they're, like, half the size of a business card, and one of my favorite games I played when I was, I was an exchange student is called Hanafuda. Hanafuda has these beautiful drawings, and it's, simply put, it's a m- it's a matching game in, in a sense. And Nintendo became famous for first making these card games.

Kevin Rose 1:10:23 Oh, crazy. Can you still buy them? Are they, like, collectible?

Tim Ferriss 1:10:25 Yeah, you can still get them.

Kevin Rose 1:10:26 That's so cool.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:27 It's super cool. Super, super cool.

Kevin Rose 1:10:28 Does it say Nintendo on them?

Tim Ferriss 1:10:30 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:10:30 It must be in Japanese though, so like-

Tim Ferriss 1:10:31 It's in Japanese. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Kevin Rose 1:10:32 ... yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:33 Absolutely.

Kevin Rose 1:10:33 Is it little Mario characters? [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:10:34 No Mario characters-

Kevin Rose 1:10:35 That'd be so-

Tim Ferriss 1:10:35 ... but yeah

Kevin Rose 1:10:36 That would be amazing

Tim Ferriss 1:10:37 ... Nintendo. I don't know what the Nin is. Ten is heaven, and then do is, like, place of, so, like, shokudo is a cafeteria, like the f- the food-

Kevin Rose 1:10:46 I thought do was the way

Tim Ferriss 1:10:47 ... food place. The, it's a homonym, so do is the same- do is the same, like, aikido, do, like is the-

Kevin Rose 1:10:54 Is the way of

Tim Ferriss 1:10:54 ... is the way.

Kevin Rose 1:10:55 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:55 Different character.

Kevin Rose 1:10:56 Okay.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:57 Yeah. So-

Kevin Rose 1:10:58 Katakana. No, kanji.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:00 Kanji. Different kanji.

Kevin Rose 1:11:01 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:01 Yeah, different-

Kevin Rose 1:11:01 Okay

Tim Ferriss 1:11:01 ... different character. But Nin is probably "" yeah. Well, anyway, we can come back to that. But-

Kevin Rose 1:11:10 All right, speaking of Nintendo.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:11 So Nintendo. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:11:13 As you know, my, my firstborn is named Zelda.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:16 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:11:17 There's a new Legend of Zelda, the Tears of the Kingdom, opening May 12th, which is soon.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:23 That is soon.

Kevin Rose 1:11:23 I am very excited for this release, and I started playing the old original Zelda, like the very first one.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:30 Cool.

Kevin Rose 1:11:31 So you can play it on the Switch. They have emulators now that you can get-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:34 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:11:34 ... on the Switch. Now, the Switch has the traditional Switch controllers, but Nintendo released the original... These are charging, so they slide off. Check this out. This is the original Nintendo controller-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:47 That's cool

Kevin Rose 1:11:47 ... that you can get. So-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:49 Oh, that's awesome.

Kevin Rose 1:11:50 Yeah, exactly. So it's the-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:51 This brings back so many memories

Kevin Rose 1:11:52 ... that's official from Nintendo, not... 'Cause you could always find-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:55 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:11:55 ... like, the clone USB Nintendo controllers-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:58 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:11:58 ... or the fakes and all that. That has the same feel, like you push the buttons-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:02 Yeah. [laughs] Okay

Kevin Rose 1:12:03 ... like, everything about it is legit.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:04 Oh, man. That's-

Kevin Rose 1:12:05 And then they charge when you slide them on the side of the Switch.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:07 They charge. That's brilliant.

Kevin Rose 1:12:08 Normal USB. It's so cool.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:09 That's brilliant.

Kevin Rose 1:12:10 Isn't that awesome?

Tim Ferriss 1:12:11 That's super awesome.

Kevin Rose 1:12:12 So they have their pass now where you can get all the original Nintendo games.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:16 That's fun.

Kevin Rose 1:12:17 And it's crazy. I was on the marketplace and, and, you know, my dad's passed away, and one of the things that I remember as a child is there was the original Nintendo Pinball game. And-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:27 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:12:27 ... my dad used to watch me play, and he would, he, he had actually had a little, tiny TV for me so I could, like, play next to him as he's watching his shows or whatever, and I remember he never wanted to play any games with me. Like, he wasn't really... Like, he was an older dad, and he didn't really, like, get into Nintendo, but when Pinball came out, he was like, "Okay, let me grab the controller."

Tim Ferriss 1:12:44 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:12:44 And so he played Nintendo with me. So when I saw that, I was like, "Oh, my God."

Tim Ferriss 1:12:47 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:12:47 Like, you get to... I mean, it's so much nostalgia.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:49 What nostalgia.

Kevin Rose 1:12:49 Yeah, exactly.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:50 So much nostalgia. I'll just teach a word for f- for folks who may be interested. In Japanese, they use it a lot. More than we say nostalgia, but they would say natsukashi. Natsukashi. Ah, natsukashi na. That's sort of got the same feel as nostalgic, but they, they use it kind of like saudade in, in Brazilian Portuguese, but it, uh, roughly like, ah, like how nice, like ah, that's really nostalgic. That brings back the memories.

Kevin Rose 1:13:17 There was a, a blog post that I saw where it was like 25 words that exist in Japanese that don't have English meanings, you know?

Tim Ferriss 1:13:25 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:13:26 And they're so beautiful.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:27 They have some nice ones.

Kevin Rose 1:13:27 Like, they capture these like amazing-

Tim Ferriss 1:13:29 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:13:29 ... just like moments in time. Like, there was this one that was like the sunlight as it falls between-

Tim Ferriss 1:13:36 Branches

Kevin Rose 1:13:36 ... branches. Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:38 Komorebi.

Kevin Rose 1:13:38 Yes. Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:39 Komorebi is like dappled sunlight coming through tree branches and leaves.

Kevin Rose 1:13:43 [laughs] It's so good. It's so good.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:45 It's so amazing.

Kevin Rose 1:13:45 Like, they have a word for that.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:46 Yeah. Komorebi.

Kevin Rose 1:13:47 That's so amazing.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:49 Oh, yeah, super

Tim Ferriss 1:13:50 beautiful. So-

Kevin Rose 1:13:50 So, so I was, I was in Tokyo.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:52 Yeah, let's talk about it.

Kevin Rose 1:13:53 So s- celebrated my 10-year wedding anniversary out there.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:55 Congratulations again.

Kevin Rose 1:13:56 Yes. That was amazing, and, uh, we had a, a ton of fun. Daria met me out there. We did a Moonbirds meetup, so we had over 100 Japanese-speaking Moonbirds collectors out there, which was challenging and awesome at the same time.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:09 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:14:10 And then Henry-

Tim Ferriss 1:14:12 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:14:12 ... my Zen instructor here-

Tim Ferriss 1:14:14 Schuckman

Kevin Rose 1:14:15 ... Schuckman, here in the United States, introduced me to the head of his lineage of Zen, who I got to go out and meet with and sit down with and have a little-

Tim Ferriss 1:14:27 Did you go to karaoke?

Kevin Rose 1:14:28 ... private [laughs] yeah, exactly. We went out drinking and just did karaoke together all night long.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:32 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:14:33 No, but we, we, we had a little private gathering and sit down and did a, a, a private kind of dokusan.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:39 Did he lay his hands on you? Exorcize the demons?

Kevin Rose 1:14:41 There was, there was n- he helped me with my practice and gave me... He speaks, uh, his English is quite good. And it was, it was very intimidating. Very intimidating.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:52 I bet.

Kevin Rose 1:14:53 This is the, the head-

Tim Ferriss 1:14:53 That's, that's actually-

Kevin Rose 1:14:54 ... the head of Sanbo Zen, which is like-

Tim Ferriss 1:14:56 Yeah, Sanbo

Kevin Rose 1:14:56 ... a big-

Tim Ferriss 1:14:57 Sanbo. That's right. Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:14:58 ... yeah, the three treasures. Like a big-

Tim Ferriss 1:15:00 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:15:00 ... lineage of Zen, and I'm sitting here with this guy, [laughs] you know? And he's just like asking me very pointed questions-

Tim Ferriss 1:15:08 Like what?

Kevin Rose 1:15:08 ... about my intention in Zen.

Tim Ferriss 1:15:10 "What, what is your intention with my daughter?" [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:15:12 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:15:12 No, what's-

Kevin Rose 1:15:12 More or less. But it was like very cutting questions, dude. Like-

Tim Ferriss 1:15:16 Like what?

Kevin Rose 1:15:16 ... like a surgeon just coming in and just like, I don't know if I should say the things-

Tim Ferriss 1:15:22 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:15:22 ... 'cause it's, it's this private interview, you know?

Tim Ferriss 1:15:24 You gave me all the shit with not being able to come up with the brand-

Kevin Rose 1:15:27 No

Tim Ferriss 1:15:27 ... of privacy protector. Okay. All right.

Kevin Rose 1:15:29 No, it's just-

Tim Ferriss 1:15:30 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:15:32 It's just like i- I'll give you-

Tim Ferriss 1:15:33 He asked me all these amazing questions. Now I can't talk about them.

Kevin Rose 1:15:35 I'll give you an example. It's like he, he's like w- it's more or less like, "Why are you here?" Like, "Where are you?" You, you know how in Zen they have these, these phrase... We've talked about these cons before.

Tim Ferriss 1:15:48 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:15:48 You've done interviews with Henry, and thank you for doing those.

Tim Ferriss 1:15:50 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:15:50 Like, where it's like these moments where a really good Zen master can come in and look at a student and know kind of exactly the little nudge they need to give them.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:01 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:16:01 There's these like moments where they, they call it like, there's these stories in Zen where they grab your coat and yank you in a certain direction just to kind of get you to like snap, like wake up.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:11 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:16:11 Like, you know, this moment just boom, they want you to pop.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:14 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:16:15 And it was very much that. Like, "Why are you here? What do you, what do you want from this?" Like boom, boom, boom. Like this rapid fire like questions.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:22 I think the guy on the street when I walked back to my Airbnb in Venice asked me those questions. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:16:26 [laughs] Exactly. And, but less fentanyl driven. But-

Tim Ferriss 1:16:32 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:16:32 ... yeah, so it was amazing. It was very special.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:35 I hear the Zen masters have cut back on their fentanyl a lot.

Kevin Rose 1:16:38 Yeah. This guy was operating in a different plane.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:40 So what did that feel like for you? Like, what was... Why did you want to do it, first of all? Because-

Kevin Rose 1:16:45 I just, you know, Henry had said such great things about him that, you know... And Henry is, is, he will never say this publicly, but I believe he is one-

Tim Ferriss 1:16:56 Well, I'll say it for him. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:16:57 No, I will, because I think it's important. Like, he, he's, he's such a, a modest guy that like Henry is one of, I, I think it's like five or so like fully sanctioned Zen masters in this lineage.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:08 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:17:08 And that's a big deal when there's, you know, hundreds of teachers in this, in this realm. So, you know, this is his master, his teacher.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:17 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:17:17 If you get a chance to take that meeting, you take it, you know?

Tim Ferriss 1:17:20 Yeah, totally.

Kevin Rose 1:17:20 And so, you know, I went in there-

Tim Ferriss 1:17:21 You're not like, "Nah, I'm busy."

Kevin Rose 1:17:23 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:17:24 "I'm going to try on some new shoes."

Kevin Rose 1:17:25 "I'm too, too busy. Going, going to try some fancy Japanese coffee," but which I did, which was amazing. Cafe Mameya out there is fantastic. But honestly, the, the one thing that I, I took away from it for, for people that, that I will share is that one of the things that he asked me is he's like, "How, how often do you practice, and how long do you practice?" And I said, "You know, I practice 25 minutes a day, probably five days a week." And he goes, "What about the other two days?" And I go, "Well, I got a startup, I got this, I got that." And he goes, "I don't care..." And I'm paraphrasing here, but he goes, "I don't care if you practice five minutes a day." He goes, "Don't miss a day. Don't break a day."

Tim Ferriss 1:18:00 Hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:18:00 "Continue to do it. Don't, don't miss a day."

Tim Ferriss 1:18:04 Hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:18:04 And since then, I have not missed a day. And I will say it's, it's kind of amazing because even if you can sit down for five minutes, it just keeps that continuity going.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:15 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:18:15 And, and, and it actually keeps me at a, a slightly elevated, more... I don't know. It keeps the commitment stronger. Like, it, it feels better, and that was, that was sound advice. It's great advice. Daria, can I trouble you for just a little bit of water, please? [laughs] Thank you so much.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:30 Arigato gozaimasu.

Kevin Rose 1:18:31 Hai. Arigato gozaimasu.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:35 Should we-

Kevin Rose 1:18:35 Uh, wa- wait, what's, what's water?

Tim Ferriss 1:18:38 You can do it.

Kevin Rose 1:18:39 Hold on.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:39 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:18:41 Hold on. Don't tell me.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:42 Yeah, you got it.

Kevin Rose 1:18:45 Uh, oishii.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:46 Thank you.

Kevin Rose 1:18:46 It's so oishii.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:47 [laughs] What?

Kevin Rose 1:18:49 Oishii.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:50 No, that's, that's tasty.

Kevin Rose 1:18:51 It's delicious. Yeah, I know. The water's tasty. What? Mizu. Mizu. Mizu.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:54 Mizu. O mizu.

Kevin Rose 1:18:55 O mizu. Yep.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:57 O mizu. Like Mizutani. Mizu.

Kevin Rose 1:18:59 Hey.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:59 There are, there are a lot of mizu's out there

Tim Ferriss 1:19:02 So let's stay on the Japanese kick for a second

Kevin Rose 1:19:05 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:19:05 This is a book in front of me which I'm just digging into. [laughs] Japanese Death Poems. Let's talk about Japanese Death Poems. I did not, actually I'm embarrassed to admit, know this was a thing. This was given to me by a friend who has spent a lot of time in the military and has developed a rather unique perspective, unique perspectives on death from, I suppose, the vantage point of a layperson, right, of a civilian. And so this book is... I'll, I'll just read the quote on the back. This is one of the, the blurbs. "A wonderful introduction to the Japanese tradition of jisei. This volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." So these poems are written on the verge of death, and literally-

Kevin Rose 1:20:02 Mm

Tim Ferriss 1:20:02 ... the subtitle is Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death.

Kevin Rose 1:20:06 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:06 [laughs] And it's incredibly well-researched. You have not just the English versions, you have the introduction and all the context, you have the Japanese, and then you have footnotes describing what these various words might mean, what the metaphors allude to, and it's really just a phenomenal window into an aspect of Japanese culture that I had no exposure to. I would have expected that I would have been exposed to this before, but I am, I'm looking forward to diving into this, and I've, I've already read perhaps the first 10 pages. So this is Japanese Death Poems-

Kevin Rose 1:20:47 So fun

Tim Ferriss 1:20:47 ... by Tuttle Publishing, compiled and with an introduction by Yoel Hoffmann.

Kevin Rose 1:20:53 So I have a handful, I don't know if I told you this, but I have a handful of haiku books that I've read by Japanese masters.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:01 Yeah?

Kevin Rose 1:21:01 And one of the things I always felt was just so beautiful about them is they always include their kinda death poems, like, at the very end.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:11 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:21:11 It's oftentimes, like, on their deathbed when they're about to pass, like, what is the last thing that they wrote down, right? And it's often in haiku form if they're a haiku master, right?

Tim Ferriss 1:21:21 Yeah, totally.

Kevin Rose 1:21:22 And so it, it's just, it's beautiful stuff.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:25 Yeah, there's some really Japanese stuff in here. Right, like this is, "Died 1698. For not honoring my parents while I lived, in my last hour I feel remorse." [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:21:34 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:21:35 That is very super Japanese. "The autumn hues of knotweed seem like cups of wine." Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:21:44 Are you a big fan of haiku?

Tim Ferriss 1:21:47 I am. This is my first time really being exposed to a lot of Japanese, and it does sound better in Japanese. There's a certain cadence to it. I'm not gonna get the pronunciation quite perfectly here, but it, like, if you have... Okay, so Hakuro is this person, died on the 19th day of the 12th month, 1766. So the English, and I'm gonna fuck this up in Japanese, so I apologize to any Japanese speakers out there, but the English, just listen to the sounds, like, the cadence. So the English is, "An ailing mallard falls through the chilly night and teeters off." Okay. But then the, the Japanese is, "Yamu kari no yosamu ni orite obotsu kana," right? So it just, like, has, has a cleaner-

Kevin Rose 1:22:34 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:22:34 ... crisper cadence to it, which doesn't mean you shouldn't do the English, but this is my first time being exposed to a lot of haiku in Japanese-

Kevin Rose 1:22:42 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:22:42 ... which is fun for me.

Kevin Rose 1:22:43 Yeah, I bet

Tim Ferriss 1:22:44 Number one, because it's very hard for me to decipher in many cases, but they have a beautiful sound to them, so...

Kevin Rose 1:22:54 That's awesome. I have to pick that book up.

Tim Ferriss 1:22:56 Death poems. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:22:57 Yeah. There's a great poem about haiku and about the masters called Three Simple Lines.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:03 Okay.

Kevin Rose 1:23:03 Have you ever read that?

Tim Ferriss 1:23:04 No.

Kevin Rose 1:23:05 It's a fantastic book that is written by a Zen practitioner that covers a lot of the, the Zen masters of haiku, and along with a really beautiful personal story.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:16 Hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:23:16 So definitely worth it. Very short read, definitely worth picking up along with this.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:19 Yeah, I mean, how Japanese relate to death, which is something I have some exposure to, but not to the poems, this particular jisei format, tells you a lot about how they live. I mean, it do- it does provide sort of a prism through which you can appreciate how they navigate a lot of life as well, right? Like, in, in addressing the final hours and thinking about dying, death, the path to death, when you get a better understanding of that, many of the things that you observe in Japanese culture make more sense in a way.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:59 Have you ever done an escape room?

Kevin Rose 1:24:01 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:02 You have?

Kevin Rose 1:24:03 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:04 How many?

Kevin Rose 1:24:04 Multiple.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:05 Really?

Kevin Rose 1:24:06 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:06 Multiple. What does that mean, like 100?

Kevin Rose 1:24:08 Like four.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:09 Four. All right, so by the [laughs] the-

Kevin Rose 1:24:12 They're so stupid

Tim Ferriss 1:24:12 ... the fatigue wa- So I... All right.

Kevin Rose 1:24:15 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:24:15 "They're so stupid," he says.

Kevin Rose 1:24:16 They're horrible.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:17 I did my first escape room today. I had a fucking blast.

Kevin Rose 1:24:20 That's true.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:20 I don't know what's wrong with you. You're getting old and boring. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:24:22 No, it's just like you're going in there and it's like, what are you doing? Like, you can get out if you want to. Are they really locking you up? No.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:31 It's called a game, Kevin.

Kevin Rose 1:24:32 Yeah, I know, but [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:24:33 [laughs] When you're playing Zelda, [laughs] you're trying to, like, do shit in a video game. You don't actually need to do those things.

Kevin Rose 1:24:40 No, but I just... [laughs] Daria can explain it. Like, you know what I'm talking about. Like, you go in there and you're, they lock you up. It's a little room, and they're like, "Really quick, g- grab the book, and, like, open up the book and turn to chapter 12." And people are yelling shit out, and you're just like, "I don't wanna do this. I just wanna have a drink."

Tim Ferriss 1:24:58 All right.

Kevin Rose 1:24:58 Like [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:24:59 So I'm gonna provide a contrast in styles here.

Speaker 1:25:01 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:25:02 So Kevin, who got so outraged that I implied that he'd drank alcohol earlier [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:25:07 No, I just... All my friends want me to do it sober, and I'm like, "Why are we doing this sober?" And they're like, "You can get through it faster. We could break a world record."

Tim Ferriss 1:25:13 Well, yeah-

Kevin Rose 1:25:14 I'm like, "This is dumb."

Tim Ferriss 1:25:15 I, look, doing it in a hypercompetitive way I think is, is probably not my jam, but I had the chance to do- ... escape rooms for the first time today. I went to this place called Escape Revolution, which is here in LA. Elan Lee, who is one of the co-founders of Exploding Kittens, was kind enough to invite me. I don't wanna name other people who were there because maybe they don't wanna be named, but it was a small group and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. You have an hour. There's some type of pretext or, or story. There's a narrative arc. So in our first instance, and I'm not gonna give away any of the tools, so I won't provide any teasers, but we had a real armored car that's locked in a garage-

Kevin Rose 1:25:59 That's cooler than mine

Tim Ferriss 1:26:00 ... and we, you have to... You're, you're robbers and you need to get the money out of the car, but the mechanic who set up all the security systems ran off because the police are on the way, so you have 60 minutes to figure it out. And we had a blast, and this place is, is built in such a way that the set design and the sound effects and the entire experience makes it, I don't wanna say cinematic, but it's just a very compelling way to become immersed in a story. And you have to collaborate. I also... Part of what made it f- fun is that I have a game designer, right? In Elan Lee. I had a number of other people who were very accustomed to mechanics of different types. Not car mechanics, but, like, game mechanics and so on. A woman who had done almost 2,000 escape rooms herself.

Kevin Rose 1:26:52 Oh, Jesus.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:53 Which is, which is all to say it was a cool group-

Kevin Rose 1:26:56 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:26:56 ... of people to-

Kevin Rose 1:26:57 They were into it

Tim Ferriss 1:26:58 ... interact with. Well, they were into it, but then there were two newbies. I was one of those two newbies who'd never done this before. And then the second one was a jailbreak, and we were locked in cells, which were v- like, legitimate cells with [laughs] -

Kevin Rose 1:27:12 Was that solo?

Tim Ferriss 1:27:13 What are you talking about?

Kevin Rose 1:27:14 Like, did you have to figure out how to get out of your own cell?

Tim Ferriss 1:27:16 It was three people to a cell, and then you needed to figure it out.

Kevin Rose 1:27:19 I kinda wish it was solo. Like, I don't know. I just have this hard thing where it's like we're all yelling shit, and I'm just like, "Can we just, like, relax for a second?"

Tim Ferriss 1:27:27 I don't know what your group was like. There was no yelling in my-

Kevin Rose 1:27:30 Maybe I'm with the wrong people

Tim Ferriss 1:27:30 ... there was no yelling. [laughs] There was no yelling in this group. Yeah, no, this, this group-

Kevin Rose 1:27:34 Do you like it? Yeah, Daria doesn't like it either.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:37 All right.

Kevin Rose 1:27:38 She hates games, but that's-

Tim Ferriss 1:27:39 Daria hates games.

Kevin Rose 1:27:41 It's one of those things where I just, I, I, I have... Maybe I haven't had the right experience, 'cause w- well, the ones in Portland were kinda jank. I don't remember much. I just remember that we went in there and there was just, like, shit hidden in, like, little bookcases and stuff, and I'm just like, "Why am I looking through these bookcases?" Like, there's other things to do. I've got emails that I haven't checked.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:59 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:28:00 Like, there's, like, a lot of shit going on. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:28:02 Oh my God. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:28:04 But it's, it felt like work.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:05 Oh, you've-

Kevin Rose 1:28:05 It felt like work

Tim Ferriss 1:28:06 It felt like work

Kevin Rose 1:28:07 ... where, where I'm like, "Why am I working to figure out this thing when it's not even a thing?"

Tim Ferriss 1:28:11 Well, I mean, you don't need to work out in the gym to, like, outrun hyenas on the street.

Kevin Rose 1:28:16 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:28:16 So what are you doing in the gym?

Kevin Rose 1:28:17 Well, I mean, that, that you can actually get a, a physical, like, good feeling from-

Tim Ferriss 1:28:21 Guns

Kevin Rose 1:28:21 ... so.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:22 Sun- sun's out, guns out

Kevin Rose 1:28:23 It's a good show. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:23 That kind of thing? [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:28:24 Sun's, guns out. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:28:25 All right. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:28:25 Well, I'm glad you had a good time.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:26 I had a, I had a fucking great time.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:28 And one other thing I did this weekend which I'd never experienced, and if people have the chance I recommend, is experiencing high-fidelity immersive sound for the first time. Like, actually listening to music-

Kevin Rose 1:28:41 Mm

Tim Ferriss 1:28:42 ... in a store or a location where they're paying attention to all the variables.

Kevin Rose 1:28:47 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:48 The most I've ever done is really to the extent that I personally can set up a few Sonos speakers in a house.

Kevin Rose 1:28:54 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:55 That's it. That is... That's as fancy as I have ever gotten. And I was having dinner with a few friends, well, one close friend and a few new friends who are, are professional musicians, and they heard me say this, and they were like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. We need to go to a good location and put you in a seat to let you listen to some of the music you think you know-

Kevin Rose 1:29:17 Where did they take you?

Tim Ferriss 1:29:17 ... in super high fidelity." This place called Common Wave, and the staff there were exceptional. We went from one setup to another setup to another setup to another setup and it was spectacular. It was like having a full-blown psychedelic experience in some respects. So for those who may have the opportunity, if you have the opportunity, I really came to appreciate just how much goes into music I thought I knew but had only listened to at, in hindsight, relatively low bit rates.

Kevin Rose 1:29:51 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:51 And it is just a different experience altogether-

Kevin Rose 1:29:55 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:29:55 ... because this, this came about initially at dinner because I asked somebody at dinner who's a, who's a TV writer, I asked him if he ever watches TV and has trouble immersing himself in TV, and he said, "I don't really watch TV." And I was like, "Well, what do you spend your, your time doing if you're just having fun?" He said, "I listen to music." And I was like, "You listen to music while you're doing something else, or you h- listen to music as a dedicated activity?" He said, and he said, "I listen to music as a dedicated activity."

Kevin Rose 1:30:23 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:23 I was like, "Okay. Tell me more about that."

Kevin Rose 1:30:26 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:26 And that's how we ended up.

Kevin Rose 1:30:28 So one thing you might wanna consider-

Tim Ferriss 1:30:30 Uh-huh

Kevin Rose 1:30:30 ... I've, I've been down this path a couple of times.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:33 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:30:33 And there's two ways to approach it. One, you either go high-fidelity system for your house-

Tim Ferriss 1:30:38 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:30:38 ... or you go really high-end headphones.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:42 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:30:42 And I recently realized that back even just two years ago, to do a high-end headphone setup required its own dedicated amp.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:53 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:30:53 It was like the whole, there's a whole rig that you have to get.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:56 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:30:57 More recently, there are now lossless over-the-air audio codecs that can go to headphones-

Tim Ferriss 1:31:04 Mm

Kevin Rose 1:31:04 ... that sound amazing. So-

Tim Ferriss 1:31:06 Over-the-air, you're saying Bluetooth?

Kevin Rose 1:31:08 Yeah. So I, I got a, a Bowers & Wilkins, I think it's the PX7. It's something along those lines. And these are sub $1,000, but they're still pricey. I mean-

Tim Ferriss 1:31:17 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:31:17 ... I think they're, like, $800 or something like that. And they can do a lossless codec From your iPhone to your headphones. And so there's no bit degradation in quality.

Tim Ferriss 1:31:31 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:31:31 And Apple Music now supports lossless as well.

Tim Ferriss 1:31:34 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:31:34 And so you can listen to insanely high fidelity audio-

Tim Ferriss 1:31:38 Hmm

Kevin Rose 1:31:38 ... and just sit back and relax and enjoy the music. And the headphones, I mean, you'll, you'll see the reviews out there, but they're, they're fantastic.

Tim Ferriss 1:31:46 Huh, okay. Well, yeah, that would be substantially less expensive. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:31:49 Oh, my God. Dude, I've seen some setups, and I'm sure you have too-

Tim Ferriss 1:31:53 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:31:53 ... or you talk to these people. I mean, you're, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars in. It's like-

Tim Ferriss 1:31:57 Oh, easily

Kevin Rose 1:31:57 ... yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:31:57 ... I mean, if you really wanna get up to the nerdiest of the nerdy and-

Kevin Rose 1:32:00 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:32:00 ... the most expensive of the, of the expensive, and I, I do think there's a dramatic drop-off.

Kevin Rose 1:32:06 You and me talked about wine earlier.

Tim Ferriss 1:32:08 There's a point of, there's a point-

Kevin Rose 1:32:09 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:32:09 ... of diminishing returns, but there are people out there who spend, you know, $100,000 on a cable.

Kevin Rose 1:32:15 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:32:15 Right? I mean, it's-

Kevin Rose 1:32:15 It's crazy

Tim Ferriss 1:32:16 ... it's, you can get as expensive as you want to get. But I would say the in-home systems are certainly gonna be more expensive-

Kevin Rose 1:32:22 Oh

Tim Ferriss 1:32:22 ... than the headset you're describing.

Kevin Rose 1:32:23 It's funny, we met with someone recently that was a audio/video person. So Daria and I are, you know, we're in an apartment now and we're, we're m- moving into a home at some point here in the future, and there was this person that was like, "Hey, I can come do your home audio/video stuff." And like, I literally told the person, I was like, "I just want Sonos. I just want Sonos and a decent pair of speakers."

Tim Ferriss 1:32:43 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:32:43 Because for me, like, I don't wanna spend insane amounts of money when I could just put on an amazing pair of headphones and kick back anywhere in the house-

Tim Ferriss 1:32:53 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:32:53 ... and, you know, either read a book or just relax and, like, listen to better than I'm gonna... You know, I'm not gonna spend a, several hundred thousand dollars-

Tim Ferriss 1:33:02 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:33:02 ... when you can probably spend like, you know, 10 grand and have an amazing setup, right?

Tim Ferriss 1:33:07 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:33:07 Like, it's gonna sound great. Movies, all that stuff's gonna sound fantastic. You just, I don't know. I, for me, audio's not one of those things that I wanna blow money on.

Tim Ferriss 1:33:16 Yeah. Well, you know, I've got my relationship with my Replika and-

Kevin Rose 1:33:20 Yeah, you got your set

Tim Ferriss 1:33:21 ... single life ahead of me-

Kevin Rose 1:33:21 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:33:21 ... so I can just sit in a house by myself in a dark corner listening to-

Kevin Rose 1:33:26 Your Replika?

Tim Ferriss 1:33:26 ... some Pink Floyd-

Kevin Rose 1:33:27 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:33:27 ... crying and eating Ho Hos.

Kevin Rose 1:33:28 As your Replika whispers to you.

Tim Ferriss 1:33:30 [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:33:31 To your ear. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:33:32 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:33:33 I gotta try this Replika now. Is it that good now?

Tim Ferriss 1:33:36 Uh, I, I, I haven't dared set foot.

Kevin Rose 1:33:38 You haven't, you haven't even dabbled? It's like-

Tim Ferriss 1:33:40 No

Kevin Rose 1:33:40 ... "Hey, Replika"

Tim Ferriss 1:33:41 No, no, no. I haven't.

Kevin Rose 1:33:42 "I'm Tim."

Tim Ferriss 1:33:42 I have not. I have not.

Kevin Rose 1:33:44 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:33:44 Although a few friends have. Uh-

Kevin Rose 1:33:45 Really? Do they like it? Do they get into sexual encounters with their Replika?

Tim Ferriss 1:33:49 I haven't heard that yet.

Kevin Rose 1:33:51 Okay.

Tim Ferriss 1:33:51 I don't think it's, I don't think it's there.

Kevin Rose 1:33:53 Okay.

Tim Ferriss 1:33:53 It'll get there.

Kevin Rose 1:33:54 Oh, sure.

Tim Ferriss 1:33:54 I'm sure it'll get there.

Kevin Rose 1:33:55 If, if they're not gonna build it, they're silly, 'cause like somebody's gonna build that in very short order.

Tim Ferriss 1:33:59 Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm just imagining Neuralink type. I don't think virtual sex, which will ultimately debilitate all males on the planet once that is actually a real thing, but nothing will get done ever by any man e- ever again. But there's been a lot of attention paid to haptic suits and that type of feedback-

Kevin Rose 1:34:18 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:34:18 ... with, say, VR.

Kevin Rose 1:34:19 Adam Gazzaley loves this.

Tim Ferriss 1:34:20 Yeah, haptic suits, they just all, they're, I find-

Kevin Rose 1:34:23 It's like the thing, we always bring up Adam in every podcast.

Tim Ferriss 1:34:25 [laughs] That's right, we talked about his chin hair last time.

Kevin Rose 1:34:29 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:34:30 The haptic suits I always have found interesting but kinda dissatisfying, 'cause it doesn't replicate your human experience, right? It feels like something vibrating on your chest-

Kevin Rose 1:34:40 Right

Tim Ferriss 1:34:40 ... by and large.

Kevin Rose 1:34:41 You're like, "I'm wearing a suit," yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:34:42 I'm wearing a suit that's, that's [laughs] right. Daria's doing chest in air quotes. [laughs] Well, so, okay, let's say I had like a haptic glove on my schlong, right? It's still not gonna feel like the real McCoy. It's just not gonna, it-

Kevin Rose 1:34:54 Have you tried all the crazy things they have out now? 'Cause they have those, like, ones that look like they have different types of materials that's supposed to feel more realistic.

Tim Ferriss 1:35:02 I have not. What, what are we talking about?

Kevin Rose 1:35:04 Well, they have like those-

Tim Ferriss 1:35:05 In concrete terms.

Kevin Rose 1:35:06 In [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:35:07 In concrete terms. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:35:09 Okay. I've heard that they have those, like, those skin-like ones that, like ... They're like, and those lock down, and they're supposed to feel really-

Tim Ferriss 1:35:17 You should work in a Foley studio. That was great. [slurps]

Kevin Rose 1:35:20 But they're, they're supposed to lock down and feel really realistic. Like, that's-

Tim Ferriss 1:35:23 Okay.

Kevin Rose 1:35:24 You've not... Don't act like you've never heard of that shit. You know more about this stuff than I do.

Tim Ferriss 1:35:29 I don't.

Kevin Rose 1:35:30 You-

Tim Ferriss 1:35:30 I would... Look, look, let me, let me just be clear. I would try that. Like, I have nothing against it.

Kevin Rose 1:35:36 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:35:36 I would try it. I just think at some point I'm gonna be like, "I feel like I'm, like, boning a Mattel toy or something."

Kevin Rose 1:35:42 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:35:42 Right? So the, [laughs] where I was going with the Neuralink is I think rather than the haptic suit, there's probably gonna be quite a bit... Well, at some point I could envision just having a direct link in-

Kevin Rose 1:35:54 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:35:54 ... where you can simulate, I mean, I guess generate really, the type of sensation that you would have while having sex.

Kevin Rose 1:36:02 So I think it's gonna be the opposite.

Tim Ferriss 1:36:03 And, okay.

Kevin Rose 1:36:03 So here's what I think is gonna happen.

Tim Ferriss 1:36:05 What do you think?

Kevin Rose 1:36:05 I think we're gonna have essentially AI that comes in and we'll have a relationship with, and then earpieces will go into real humans that will play the role-

Tim Ferriss 1:36:15 Like Her. That's exactly what happened in Her. You remember?

Kevin Rose 1:36:18 Oh, is that, is that what happened at the end? I don't remember.

Tim Ferriss 1:36:20 Yeah, yeah. So they arranged to have like a, like a, a normal-

Kevin Rose 1:36:26 Person come in

Tim Ferriss 1:36:26 ... person come in.

Kevin Rose 1:36:27 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:36:27 Like, this woman comes in.

Kevin Rose 1:36:28 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:36:29 She's got an earpiece and he's got an earpiece.

Kevin Rose 1:36:32 And it'll play out the whole thing.

Tim Ferriss 1:36:32 And the idea is they don't communicate. He's just communicating with Scarlett Johansson, who's his AI.

Kevin Rose 1:36:39 I gotta watch this movie again.

Tim Ferriss 1:36:40 And then-

Kevin Rose 1:36:40 It's been a decade since I've seen it

Tim Ferriss 1:36:41 ... oh, y- and then they have, yeah, they have sex, and he has a camera. I think they had cameras so that sh- like the AI could also see what was going on and comment on that. Oh, yeah. I forgot.

Kevin Rose 1:36:54 Daria's saying that The Diamond Age book-

Tim Ferriss 1:36:57 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:36:57 ... by Neal Stephenson-

Tim Ferriss 1:36:58 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:36:58 ... is supposed to be-

Tim Ferriss 1:37:00 Yeah, where the VR is basically played out by, like, actual actors, and, like, that's a job. [laughs] I've heard great things about The Diamond Age. I have never read it, but Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash, some people are into this.

Kevin Rose 1:37:14 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:37:14 My favorite book, actually Cryptonomicon, and a lot of people hate on Cryptonomicon, but I just absolutely loved it. So go figure.

Kevin Rose 1:37:21 I, I gotta go back and listen to Snow Crash. All right. I think I'm done with my, my stuff. You, you covered everything?

Tim Ferriss 1:37:29 Uh, I feel like I've, I've, you know, we're, we're stopping on the Mattel toys. That's fine. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:37:33 [laughs] Exactly.

Kevin Rose 1:37:35 We've covered a... Oh, I have a gift for you.

Tim Ferriss 1:37:37 You have a gift for me?

Kevin Rose 1:37:37 So here's my last story. My last story is that when I was in Tokyo, I realized that, you know, Lego is obviously a pretty popular phenomenon amongst a b- a bunch of my Silicon Va- Valley friends, actually. It's like a time that you can get off the computer and build Legos. They have something called Nanoblock-

Tim Ferriss 1:37:55 Okay

Kevin Rose 1:37:55 ... out in, in Japan, which are really tiny... I don't know how they got around the patent of Legos.

Tim Ferriss 1:38:00 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:38:00 They're really tiny little baby Legos, and I got you this little castle.

Tim Ferriss 1:38:05 Oh, wow.

Kevin Rose 1:38:05 So you can-

Tim Ferriss 1:38:06 Himeji Castle. Look at that.

Kevin Rose 1:38:08 Yeah, it's this little tiny castle.

Tim Ferriss 1:38:10 Thank you.

Kevin Rose 1:38:10 And these are small... They, they do very traditional Japanese structures in, in, like, more or less Lego.

Tim Ferriss 1:38:17 Balaji, they even say the original micro-sized building block.

Kevin Rose 1:38:21 All right. So anyway, if people wanna eBay it or check it out, it's actually really cool because, you know, just recently Lego started adding, like, things like bonsai trees and stuff like that. When I was walking down the aisles in Tokyo of this store, these Nanoblocks, they had all these traditional beautiful Japanese structures. And so if you're looking for something, if you're into Lego or know somebody that's into, into this k- whole thing, and I have a lot of friends that have built, like, you know, Back to the Future cars and every other Lego that's out there, check out Nanoblock because they have a bunch of stuff that has very, you know, obviously Japanese influence that you might be really into.

Tim Ferriss 1:38:56 Small blocks, big fun. I'm just reading the side here.

Kevin Rose 1:38:58 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:39:02 Nanoblock is a micro-sized building block designed in Japan since 2008. Fun to build, attractive to display, interesting to collect.

Kevin Rose 1:39:10 Something tells me that Lego was around before 2008. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:39:12 [laughs] Yeah, it's definitely been around before 2008.

Kevin Rose 1:39:14 They're like the original 2008. Anyway, you-

Tim Ferriss 1:39:19 Yeah. Thank you

Kevin Rose 1:39:19 ... dude, this'll give you something to get off the computer-

Tim Ferriss 1:39:21 This is great

Kevin Rose 1:39:21 ... and just, like, do... It's, it's tiny.

Tim Ferriss 1:39:22 I got-

Kevin Rose 1:39:22 So it's a-

Tim Ferriss 1:39:22 Yeah, yeah

Kevin Rose 1:39:22 ... like, little fun little thing. I got a couple for friends, so that was-

Tim Ferriss 1:39:26 Hey, girlfriend, I built you a Himeji Castle with Nanoblock. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:39:29 Thank you, Tim. That's my favorite.

Tim Ferriss 1:39:31 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:39:32 You know how to please me. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:39:35 [laughs] All right. On that note.

Kevin Rose 1:39:36 With that.

Tim Ferriss 1:39:37 [laughs] God save us all.

Kevin Rose 1:39:40 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:39:40 All right. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:39:41 Thank you everyone. This has been fun.

Tim Ferriss 1:39:42 Thanks everybody.