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Tim FerrissTim Ferriss

Derek Sivers, Philosopher-Entrepreneur — The Greatest Year of His Life

Derek Sivers is an author of philosophy and entrepreneurship, known for his surprising, quotable insights and pithy, succinct writing style. Derek’s books (How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Your Music and People, Anything You Want) and newest projects are at his website: sive.rs. His new book is Useful Not True. This episode is brought to you by: Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic broad spectrum 24-strain probiotic + prebiotic: https://Seed.com/Tim (Use code 25TIM for 25% off your first month's supply) Momentous high-quality supplements: https://livemomentous.com/tim (code TIM for 20% off) AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement: https://drinkag1.com/tim (1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase.) Tim Ferriss is one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ other companies. He is also the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers: The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, which has exceeded 900 million downloads and been selected for “Best of Apple Podcasts” three years running. Sign up for "5-Bullet Friday" (Tim's free weekly email newsletter): https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-yt/ Follow the Tim Ferriss Podcast: https://tim.blog/podcast/ Visit the Tim Ferriss Blog: https://tim.blog/ Follow Tim Ferriss on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tferriss/ Follow Tim Ferriss on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timferriss/ Like Tim Ferriss on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ [00:00] Start [00:52] Derek Sivers: A Man who brings his own introduction. [03:01] First mind change: Emirati coffee. [06:16] Second mind change: Ruby to Python. [07:36] Third mind change: Rats. [11:10] Fourth mind change: China. [17:21] Fifth mind change: Dubai. [20:46] Tamashee: Come for the sandals, stay for the culture. [24:54] Cormac McCarthy Writes to the Editor of The Santa Fe New Mexican. [25:54] Shifting perspectives and the value of questioning preconceptions. [44:11] Brian Eno and MusicThoughts. [46:47] John Cage. [49:23] Three glasses. [50:01] Derek’s experimental housing project. [56:51] Rich Hickey and practical applications of simplicity. [01:22:27] Tyler Cowen. [01:29:04] Inchword and language learning. [01:39:45] Traveling to inhabit philosophies. [01:47:24] Parting thoughts.

Derek SiversguestTim Ferrisshost
Nov 13, 20241h 50mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:52

    Start

    1. DS

      So I very deliberately did what we might call the George Costanza principle, which is-

    2. TF

      Do the opposite [laughs]

    3. DS

      ... do the opposite of all of my impulses. Every time I felt yes, everything in me said yes-

    4. TF

      [laughs]

    5. DS

      ... I would say no out loud. And everything in me says no, I say yes out loud as a way of deliberately shaking shit up.

    6. TF

      [laughs]

    7. DS

      And so I was dating this woman for a few months a- and, uh, we had no great connection.

    8. TF

      [laughs]

    9. DS

      She said, "Oh, well, I can't travel to California with you unless we get married." And everything in me says, "Oh, hell no. Don't do that. That's stupid. I don't wanna marry this person." So I said, "Yes, let's do that." [laughs]

  2. 0:52 – 3:01

    Derek Sivers: A Man who brings his own introduction.

    1. TF

      [upbeat music] For people who don't know who Derek Sivers is, what is the brief overview of Derek?

    2. DS

      Oh, I have to do it? [laughs] All right.

    3. TF

      Yeah. [laughs]

    4. DS

      [laughs] I was a musician for many years, and then I started selling my music online in 1997 when there was no PayPal and there was, you know, Amazon was just a bookstore. So I started a little thing called CD Baby just to sell my music, but then it grew and became the largest seller of independent music online, and I did that for 10 years till I got sick of it and sold it. And then I was a TED speaker for a few years.

    5. TF

      [laughs]

    6. DS

      And then kind of threw myself into that completely. And then Seth Godin asked me to write a book, so I wrote a book, and then people really liked it, so now I've written five. And now I'm a, I don't know, dad in New Zealand thinking philosophically and living my life. How about that?

    7. TF

      I thought you did a great job. Thank you for that.

    8. DS

      [laughs]

    9. TF

      When I can't find a virtual assistant to do work for me [laughs] I'll ask my podcast guests to do my job.

    10. DS

      [laughs] Yeah.

    11. TF

      I'll also add, number one, people, if you enjoy this conversation, which I'm sure you will, not to apply any pressure to Derek, but I always have so much fun, go back and listen to the other conversations also, because you'll notice a few things. Number one, Derek has one of the most eclectic CVs imaginable. He's worked in traveling circuses. He has played music at pig fairs. He has [laughs] been an entrepreneur. He has certainly been a philosopher coder and many other things, but also, I would say overarchingly, crafted a life that is uniquely Derek's and frequently tests assumptions and to, I suppose, bucket one of what we're going to discuss today, changes his mind-

    12. DS

      Yes

    13. TF

      ... and finds himself zigging when he might have otherwise zagged or where other-

    14. DS

      Yeah

    15. TF

      ... people are zagging. And that is part of why I enjoy spending time with Derek, aside from the dashing good looks and wit and charm,

  3. 3:01 – 6:16

    First mind change: Emirati coffee.

    1. TF

      of course. So let's begin. As we were brainstorming what we might chat about, because we were hoping to catch up, I suggested a few things. We batted a number of things around, and we landed on things you've changed your mind about.

    2. DS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. TF

      Things you're fascinated by, people you're studying, not necessarily in that order. So let's start with things you've changed your mind about or on. Where shall we begin?

    4. DS

      I've got five things for you. I'm starting small-

    5. TF

      Great

    6. DS

      ... and getting big. Coffee. I've never liked coffee. Every time I tried coffee, I went, "Pleh. I don't understand how you people like this." And-

    7. TF

      [laughs]

    8. DS

      ... even when I'd be with somebody that knew I didn't like coffee and we were out somewhere and they would go, "Oh my God, this is the best coffee I've ever had in my life. Here, I know you don't like coffee, but if you're ever gonna try coffee, this is the one. Try a sip."

    9. TF

      [laughs]

    10. DS

      And I'd say, "Okay." I'd, like, try to get myself into this mindset, "I'm gonna like this." [slurps] "Ugh, pleh." I just, ugh, never liked it. So then I was in United Arab Emirates, and I was the guest of this Emirati man that we will get to later. And he said, "It is Emirati custom. You must have the, the coffee." And I went, "Oh, sorry, I don't drink coffee. I just..." He said, "You must have the coffee." I said, "No, really, I've never liked coffee in my life."

    11. TF

      [laughs] Yeah.

    12. DS

      He goes, "My friend, you, you must have the... It is Emirati custom. You must have the coffee."

    13. TF

      [laughs]

    14. DS

      I went, "Phew. All right." I took a sip. I was like, "Oh my God." I was like, "This is really good." And he goes, "That is Emirati coffee." I went, "No, you, really, there's something different about this." He goes, "Yes, it's, it's Emirati coffee." And I said, "Is that the one where they make it in the sand?" He said, "No, no, no, that's Turkish." He said, "This is Emirati coffee." So knowing that we were talking today and I was gonna mention coffee, I texted him. I said, "Hey, what was that coffee you..." 'Cause he'd said there are only three places in Dubai that know how to make real Emirati coffee. So he told me one, Bateel, B-A-T-E-E-L. If you're in Dubai and you wanna try real Emirati coffee, apparently, according to this Emirati, g- try Bateel in Dubai for real Emirati coffee. I've changed my mind on coffee. I now like at least Emirati coffee. There's one.

    15. TF

      [laughs] Okay. Just for definition purposes. [laughs] All right, I, you know, I'll hold my follow-ups. There are gonna be a couple of follow-ups, including-

    16. DS

      Okay

    17. TF

      ... how do you define Emirati? Is that basically a Brahman in the-

    18. DS

      Oh

    19. TF

      ... the UAE?

    20. DS

      No, no, no, sorry. Sorry, that's what we call people from United Arab Emirates.

    21. TF

      All right.

    22. DS

      So UAE-

    23. TF

      Everybody

    24. DS

      ... if you are of the lineage, if you are a citizen of United Arab Emirates, you're referred to as Emirati.

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm. All right. And then what is the special technique or special ingredient that makes Emirati-

    26. DS

      I don't know

    27. TF

      ... coffee so miraculous for you? [laughs]

    28. DS

      Hey, listeners, if you find out what's different about Emirati coffee, please let me know. I don't know. I just, I've been there. I went back six months later, same thing. I tried Emirati coffee, and I like it.

    29. TF

      Severe social pressure. [laughs]

    30. DS

      Yeah. [laughs]

  4. 6:16 – 7:36

    Second mind change: Ruby to Python.

    1. DS

      Python. So I'm just gonna include this because 20-something years, 23 years ago, I learned the Ruby programming language, and I became fluent in Ruby. And Ruby and Python are as similar as Portuguese and Spanish, but let's say Ruby is Portuguese, where Spanish became more and more and more popular. So-

    2. TF

      Mm

    3. DS

      ... when I first learned Ruby, it's like Ruby and Python were kind of side by side. Uh, Ruby was a little more popular at the time, but then over the years, Python just took off, and I refused to look at it. I was like, "No, I chose Ruby. I speak Ruby. I don't wanna learn Python. It's too similar. If I'm gonna learn another language, it's gonna be Lisp or Haskell or something really different. I'm not gonna learn Python, no." And so for years and years, I've been refusing and then just irrationally prejudiced against Python. When I was choosing a new language for a new project, I considered everything but Python, and then I realized I had left Python out because of my severe prejudice against it for no good reason. So I finally looked at the Python programming language, and I went, " [gasps] Oh, my God. It's beautiful. It's great. Oh, my God, it's wonderful."

    4. TF

      [laughs]

    5. DS

      So now I love Python, and that just felt amazing in my heart to be like, "Wow, this thing that I was prejudiced against for 20 years is actually wonderful. How cool." So coffee, Python, number two.

    6. TF

      Mm-hmm.

  5. 7:36 – 11:10

    Third mind change: Rats.

    1. TF

      Number three.

    2. DS

      Should I go on?

    3. TF

      Let's go on.

    4. DS

      Okay. I brought a prop. I wanna make this a good show.

    5. TF

      [laughs]

    6. DS

      Here we go. For the first time ever-

    7. TF

      [laughs]

    8. DS

      ... appearing are my little pet rats. Okay, if you see on YouTube or wherever.

    9. TF

      Oh, look at that. All right.

    10. DS

      These are my little guys.

    11. TF

      Two rats on video. They're sizable. Yeah.

    12. DS

      Yeah.

    13. TF

      Those are-

    14. DS

      They're little guys

    15. TF

      ... chunky monkeys.

    16. DS

      Um, mwah. They are so cute, and they are so wonderful, and they're so affectionate. You can't maybe tell 'cause I'm holding them up like they owe me money right now, you know, but-

    17. TF

      [laughs]

    18. DS

      So here's the deal. Years ago, I used to kill rats. I hated rats so badly. I lived in a basement apartment in Boston that had rats in-

    19. TF

      [laughs]

    20. DS

      ... and around the apartment that would sometimes be blocking my entrance to my apartment as I would come home, and I was tired. So I killed many rats with great vengeance. I hated rats. And then just a few months ago, my boy said, "Hey, Dad, can we get a pet rat?" I was like, "Pfft, ha ha ha," and I just thought it was a, you know, s- he was kidding. And he said a week later, he said, "You know, that really kind of made me sad that you just shot down my idea of the pet rat." I said, "Wait, you were serious?" He said, "Yeah." I went, "Oh, w- well, why would you want a nasty, awful rat as a pet?" He said, "No, they're not nasty and awful. Look." And he showed me some videos that rats are really sweet, and they're really wonderful. They're smart. They're trainable. You can train them to do little tricks and, like, pick things up and, like, go to a wallet and open it up and take money and bring it to you [laughs]

    21. TF

      [laughs]

    22. DS

      And, you know, very useful in a crowd.

    23. TF

      The Thieves Guild.

    24. DS

      Yeah, exactly.

    25. TF

      This is gonna be interesting. [laughs]

    26. DS

      The little Artful Dodgers. So it's like the difference between a wild rat and a pet rat is like the difference between a wild dog and a poodle. The pet rats are really sweet, so no matter what you think of wild rats, don't discount or don't hate on pet rats. They're actually really wonderful and cuddly, and they're even clean. They use a litter box. They don't like to... Like, they can control their bladder, you know? So they-

    27. TF

      Wow

    28. DS

      ... like a cat, they prefer to go in a litter box, and so they're really clean and wonderful. So I love my ra- oh, and wait, the lifespan. Their lifespan is two to three years, which as a parent is really wonderful because when a kid says, "I want a pet," you don't always want, like, a 15-year commitment, you know? The kid's gonna be away at college-

    29. TF

      [laughs]

    30. DS

      ... and you've still got the pet that your kid wanted when they were eight, you know? The lifespan is two to three years, which is, you know. So rats are good pets, and so I love my little rats. We've just got these two boys.

  6. 11:10 – 17:21

    Fourth mind change: China.

    1. DS

      Okay, number four, China.

    2. TF

      Number four, China.

    3. DS

      In 2010, I went to Guilin, China, and then I went to Taipei, Taiwan, and at the time, China was rough. I was like, I was walking over rubble. The air was just choking me with its smoke and the scents of oil, and everything felt very third world, very rough. And I just thought-

    4. TF

      Hmm

    5. DS

      ... okay, that's what China is. China, you know, developing economy. It's just rough. And then you go to Taipei, Taiwan, and it just feels like the most refined, first world, beautiful version. It's like, it's like Japan but with Chinese culture, and I thought, "Ah, someday I want to live in Taiwan because that's the really nice-

    6. TF

      Mm-hmm

    7. DS

      ... part of China." So here we are, 2024, 14 years later I go to bring my kid on a school holiday to China for his first time, and I thought, "Well, we'll start out rough by going to mainland China, and then we'll move on to, like, the best of the best with the refined culture of Taiwan and Taipei." And it turned out to be the opposite, that China was wonderful. We went to Shanghai, and it was, like, first world amazing, refined, silent because all the vehicles are electric now, so that was the very first thing I noticed. As soon as, like, you, I took the train from the airport, we got off in downtown Shanghai, I'm surrounded by 100 vehicles, and I hear nothing. It's just-

    8. TF

      That's so nice

    9. DS

      ... and I'm like, "Oh my God. What?"

    10. TF

      That sounds incredible.

    11. DS

      "This is surreal." Uh-

    12. TF

      Mm-hmm

    13. DS

      ... like, 20 motorbikes went in front of my face, like, right there, like, you know, three meters away, and I heard none of them. There was just this silent movement. I was like, " [gasps] This is so nice." And the people were just, just so polite and cultured, and it was none of this, like, hacking and spitting that I associated with it-

    14. TF

      [laughs]

    15. DS

      ... before, like, the shouting and the spitting, you know?

    16. TF

      That's good to hear. I remember the spitting from my visits. A lot of spitting.

    17. DS

      Yeah.

    18. TF

      [laughs]

    19. DS

      And even just transactionally, you have to get Alipay or WeChat on your phone first before you go, like, attach it to your credit card, but then once you're there, all transactions are just beep. Everything is so easy, and there are beautiful, like-

    20. TF

      Mm

    21. DS

      ... rental bikes everywhere laid out in perfect color-coded queues. Uh, you can just walk up to one and go beep and step on the bike and then just go where you wanna go, and you drop it off, you go beep. And everything is just so civilized and wonderful.

    22. TF

      [laughs]

    23. DS

      I was so im- it completely changed my mind about China. And then I don't wanna sound like I'm trashing Taiwan, but it was just interesting that by comparison, then I went to Taipei and I thought, "Whoa, if China's this nice, imagine how nice Taipei is gonna be." And I got there, and it was kinda, like, stinky and trashy, and they don't take credit cards-

    24. TF

      [laughs]

    25. DS

      ... or they don't have the apps, and so you have to pay cash everywhere. And I'm like, "Well, money and paper and coins," and I was like, "Wow, interesting." And so I met with a Taiwanese woman for lunch that I'd emailed with before, and she's an investor that goes to mainland China often. And I mentioned something about this cautiously as like, you know, "I don't wanna trash your home-" I didn't say it like that, but I just cautiously said, "Hi, I noticed something." And she said, "I'm glad you noticed." She said, "I noticed this, too." She said, "I go to mainland China cities every six to 12 months," and she said, "I feel like Taiwan maybe plateaued, like, 12 years ago."

    26. TF

      Mm.

    27. DS

      "Like, we kinda hit first world status and then stayed there, almost like Japan." You know? It's like Japan used to feel futuristic. Now it feels kinda stuck in the '90s, you know, fax machines and stuff, and which is kinda cute in a way.

    28. TF

      [laughs]

    29. DS

      Like, again, not to knock it. It just, it, it feels like it, it got to a certain point, and then it said, "Okay, we're happy here."

    30. TF

      [laughs] Then it plateaued, yeah.

  7. 17:21 – 20:46

    Fifth mind change: Dubai.

    1. TF

      So I think, and I'm no mathematician, but maybe you have one more?

    2. DS

      [laughs] Smartass. Okay, number five.

    3. TF

      [laughs]

    4. DS

      Dubai. [laughs] This is my big one because when I lived in Singapore, Dubai would often come up. People would compare the two, and they would tell me things about Dubai, about the shopping malls and the millionaire pandering and the Instagram hashtaggy, you look at me kinda crap. And Dubai was in my top 10 places I never want to go in my life. Fuck that place.

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. DS

      It sounds awful.

    7. TF

      [laughs]

    8. DS

      It sounds like everything I hate in one place. You couldn't pay me to go there. But then I have to notice that feeling in myself, and this is gonna be, we'll get to, like, the theme when we're done with this number five. But I had a flight from New Zealand to Europe that it changed planes in Dubai, and I looked at that and I went, "Ugh, Dubai." And I was like, "Wait a second. What is this prejudice in me against Dubai?" It's like saying, "I hate artichokes," but I've never tried artichokes, right? [laughs] Like, I hate Dubai, but I've never been to Dubai. Maybe I should go to Dubai. So instead of making it a three-hour layover, I made it like a three or four-day layover. I went, "Wow, okay. I'm going to Dubai for a few days." So I read a book called City of Gold, which was about the founding of Dubai and, and the creation of Dubai. And dude, it was so good. It is such a great book. Anybody listening to this, if you want a great read, read the book City of Gold about the history of Dubai. It is inspiring, the, the wisdom and the foresight and the boldness it took to make that place happen. It was really just like a vision that saw its way through to the end against all odds, right? So super inspiring. Then somebody said, "Oh, you need to read Arabian Sands by this man named Thesiger." And that gets into like the Arab Bedouin culture. It was written in the 1940s or '50s, kind of like a Lawrence of Arabia kind of guy, like from England but went through the desert and kind of became one with the Bedouin people and got to know the culture and wrote about it. So that was really inspiring. And then the United Arab Emirates itself, as I learned more about ... So Dubai, you know, is a city and a region inside the United Arab Emirates. It's one of the seven states, the Emirates in that country. And then, so Sheikh Zayed, the guy that was really like the father of the nation, was a really great dude, kind of like when I moved to Singapore and I learned more about Lee Kuan Yew and started to really admire-

    9. TF

      Mm-hmm

    10. DS

      ... the decisions he made. He became a bit of a role model. Like, learning about him like makes me wanna be a better person, you know? I just notice that it actually subtly influences my actions. And so when I'm in Singapore, I feel like a little bit infused with the, the role model. Like, I feel the presence of the role model of Lee Kuan Yew. And when I'm in UAE, I feel a little bit inspired by Sheikh Zayed because he was just such a great, generous dude. So, and also I think it's interesting that Arab culture gets a really bad rap in the media. Like, Hollywood portrayal is usually some white actor with brown makeup being stupid saying, you know, "Oh, I like this building. I'll buy 10 of them," you know? "I, I think I want a penguin colony in the desert," you know. "Make it happen." And they're kind of portrayed as fools that are too rich. And so getting to know the culture felt like this is really interesting. I, I really had the wrong idea about

  8. 20:46 – 24:54

    Tamashee: Come for the sandals, stay for the culture.

    1. DS

      this culture. Okay. So as I read these books, City of Gold and Arabian Sands, I have a thing on my website where I always show what I'm reading and I take notes from the books and I put the notes on my website. And a friend of mine that lives in Muscat, Oman saw my reading list and he said, "What is your interest in this region? I've noticed you're reading books about the Middle East." And I told him I'm just really interested in Arab culture and he said, "You must meet the man from Tamashee." And I said, "What?" And he goes, "Go to tamashee.com, T-A-M-A-S-H-E-E.com," and he said, "You will see a shoe store. His name is Mohammed Qasim. He designs sandals, but underneath the surface he's an educator of Arab culture." So the sandals are just like the, the storefront. But underneath it-

    2. TF

      It's like the pirate shop in San Francisco for [laughs]

    3. DS

      Oh, I haven't heard this.

    4. TF

      Oh, there is a place in San Francisco, it's on Valencia Street, and it is used for now educating kids, writing workshops, things like that. But because they couldn't get it zoned in San Francisco, they couldn't get permission for what they actually wanted to do, they had to create a storefront and then do the teaching in the back.

    5. DS

      Oh.

    6. TF

      And [laughs] so they created a, a pirate attire store and all the classrooms are in the back. So-

    7. DS

      Love it

    8. TF

      ... that was a, a bit of a [laughs] digression, especially because I can't even recall the proper name of the sort of writing outlet that is, is associated with this. But Tamashee, shoe store, sandal store on the front end, but it's actually education in disguise.

    9. DS

      At first I thought there was no connection, and then I realized that his sandal designs are actually kind of reflecting Arab traditions and culture through the design of the sandals. But it's like his true passion-

    10. TF

      Mm-hmm

    11. DS

      ... are these cultural trips he does. So if you go to tamashee.com and you click on the menu, you can click Cultural Trips and then you'll see. So my friend introduced me to this guy. So I met with him on my trip to Dubai. We meet by the creek and he tells me that his grandfather built the first building in Dubai. That was his grandfather. That's how young that city is.

    12. TF

      Wow.

    13. DS

      And he's just like, "Yeah, right, basically right over there. That was the very first building in Dubai. My grandfather is the one that built it." So I said, "Can you explain to me something about Arab culture?" And, and he said, "Well, wait. First you gotta understand that the culture of the people of the desert is very different than the people of the sea, like the, the Arabian Coast and which is very different than the people of the, the hills." And I said, "Okay. Well, where's your family from?" And he said, "Well, from the desert." But he said, "But you know, two uncles got in a fight and so kinda half the family moved off to Iraq for a while and there was kind of like a split in the family. But then they kind of reunited in Abu Dhabi." And he said, "But then Islam came along." And I said, "Wait, hold on. Islam, that was like the year 600." I said, "Have you been telling me your family history from 2,000 years ago?" And he goes, "Well, 1,800 years ago, yeah." I said, "Wait. How the fuck do you know your family history back 1,800 years?" And he said, "Well, we keep good records." I went, "Whoa."

    14. TF

      [laughs]

    15. DS

      Imagine what that does to how you see your life if you see yourself in this long lineage of 1,800 years of recorded family history, like how that affects your dating and [laughs] you know, whatever choices on where to live. So Mohammed Qasim, this guy is a badass. I love this guy. He's such a wealth of- ... information and he communicates it so well. It really helps, by the way, that so he's got a complete American accent. He went to college in Boston for six years, like got into finance, came back, worked in finance in Abu Dhabi, and then just said, "No, my real passion is teaching the Arab cultural traditions that I think have gotten lost in our modern skyscrapers." So that's why he made it his passion project. You know, he could have made way more money in finance, but he has this Tamashee.com sandal store, and he teaches Arab culture, and I admire the hell out of this guy.

    16. TF

      That's a really cool

  9. 24:54 – 25:54

    Cormac McCarthy Writes to the Editor of The Santa Fe New Mexican.

    1. TF

      Easter egg. All right, so we'll link to that in the show notes, and I also pulled up this word that was on the tip of my tongue, McSweeney's. McSweeney's.net. People can check it out.

    2. DS

      Oh, of course.

    3. TF

      There's some hilarious writing. The one that I most recently shared with someone after it was shared with me is M- Cormac McCarthy Writes to the Editor of The Santa Fe New Mexican by John Keenan. It's only gonna be funny for people who have read some of Cormac McCarthy, like On the Road or Blood Meridian, but there's a lot of really good stuff. So that is the outlet. Also wanted to mention, because you mentioned Iraq, Iraqi music, traditional music, is some of the most incredibly intricate music I've ever heard using a dulcimer or a hammer dulcimer. There are different instruments involved. Absolutely spectacular. A lot of that has been destroyed, unfortunately, culturally and-

    4. DS

      Mm-hmm

    5. TF

      ... various teachers and so on due to all of the goings-on in Iraq over the last while. But

  10. 25:54 – 44:11

    Shifting perspectives and the value of questioning preconceptions.

    1. TF

      what is the overarching lesson that you take from the five things you have changed your mind on? Are there kind of meta lessons that you take from this?

    2. DS

      Yeah, you can see the theme, which is like, I love my rats, but even more it's like I love that I used to hate them, and now I don't. And I could have gone on twice as long about Dubai, by the way. The place is amazing. It is, it is this cultural melting pot that just warms my heart. The convers- uh, just sitting on the second floor of the Dubai Mall and watching the whole world go by, just the Nigerians and the, I don't know, the Saudis and the Russians and the Chinese and the British just all walking in through in the same place, and, uh, it's so amazing. I just, I kinda wanna live there. As happy as it makes me, I get this extra happiness of going, "Wow, I used to hate this place without even knowing it." And I take a sip of this coffee, and it's like, wow, for my whole life, I'm 55, I hated coffee.

    3. TF

      [laughs]

    4. DS

      And the Python programming-

    5. TF

      But the secret has been held back from you, so now you have to go to Dubai to have the coffee that you like.

    6. DS

      Right. Right.

    7. TF

      [laughs]

    8. DS

      The theme is that if you feel completely averse to something, get to know it better. That whatever you feel yourself leaning away from, try leaning into. If you hate opera, then go learn more about opera. And if you hate sports, well, then go learn more about sports. It's usually just learning about something gives you an appreciation for this thing that you used to just dismiss. At the end of the year last year, I just thought, "God, this has been, I think, maybe the greatest year of my life. I think this is the happiest I have ever been in my whole life." And I think the reason why was because I had five major things in one year that I used to hate that now I love. I thought, "God, this is the greatest joy."

    9. TF

      You said major things, so the rats makes it into major things? I like this. I like it.

    10. DS

      Sure. I mean, you know, they're my pets now.

    11. TF

      [laughs] I'm not minimizing rats. I mean, maybe I need some rats.

    12. DS

      Even the coffee and even the Python, I'm doing something in Python going, "Wow, I can't believe I, I hated this for 20 years."

    13. TF

      Well, I suppose they're major in the sense that to the degree you had a fixed position beforehand.

    14. DS

      Yeah.

    15. TF

      These were kind of strong, fixed positions of dislike, right?

    16. DS

      Yeah.

    17. TF

      So that turnaround is very interesting. Let me ask you this. Since in the case of the rats, that was catalyzed by your son bringing up pet rats. Dubai, you had a layover that then prompted you to extend how long you stayed there. Python, I'm not sure exactly how that about-face came to be, but having experienced the past year, you say to yourself, "This is one of the greatest or maybe the greatest year of my life, high levels of happiness. I think it's because I had these changes of mind." Are you farming for opportunities to change your mind proactively? And if so, how are you doing that?

    18. DS

      I don't have a systematic thing I can share. Uh, not that I'm not sharing it, I just don't have it. [laughs] Um, it just made me notice.

    19. TF

      That's fine. [laughs]

    20. DS

      Like now I just need to notice in myself-

    21. TF

      Mm-hmm

    22. DS

      ... when I'm irrationally averse to something. It can't even be a thought process. Sometimes... Okay, this is actually in my Useful Not True book that just came out.

    23. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    24. DS

      This idea that was actually a little bit sparked by you, where somebody dismisses everything a person says. It dismisses everything a public figure says because they don't like something about that public figure.

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. DS

      Right? Like, "Oh, I don't like the way he acts on social media, so fuck him. [laughs] I'm not gonna listen to a word he says."

    27. TF

      Right. Yeah.

    28. DS

      And that was inspired, I think I told you last time, that the, the first time I encountered that was years and years ago when I saw somebody holding 4-Hour Workweek.

    29. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    30. DS

      And I said, "Oh, wow, great book." And he goes, "Pfft. Yeah, the guy's full of himself. Here, you want it?" [laughs]

  11. 44:11 – 46:47

    Brian Eno and MusicThoughts.

    1. DS

      Yeah, let's talk ab-

    2. TF

      [laughs]

    3. DS

      Okay, you asked me in advance people I'm studying, so-

    4. TF

      Uh-huh

    5. DS

      ... let's do them in reverse order-

    6. TF

      Yeah

    7. DS

      ... since we already brought up Rich Hickey. So R-I-C-H H-I-C-K-E-Y. Wait a second, before we switch to that, have you ever met Brian Eno, the record producer?

    8. TF

      I have not met Brian Eno, but I have his Oblique Strategies-

    9. DS

      Yes. Wow

    10. TF

      ... card set. I was just reading about how he ended up coining the term ambient music in the hospital because he couldn't get up and change the volume, and ended up, he ended up listening to very, very low volume music a friend had put on for him. So I'm fascinated by Brian Eno, but I've never met him.

    11. DS

      Brian Eno's one of these guys that his thought process is fascinating. I don't love his music. I like his music. I don't love it. But I love his thought process. By the way, if you go to the website MusicThoughts.com, that's my love letter to Brian Eno and John Cage and some of these music thinkers.

    12. TF

      [laughs]

    13. DS

      I made that website in 1999, and it's a collection of inspiring quotes from Brian Eno, John Cage, and a bunch of other musicians.

    14. TF

      MusicThoughts.com?

    15. DS

      Yep, MusicThoughts do-... It's totally non-commercial. I'm not gonna make a penny off of anybody looking at it.

    16. TF

      Yeah.

    17. DS

      So I'm not trying to pitch it, but I'm just saying.

    18. TF

      All right.

    19. DS

      It's a collection of Brian Eno's philosophies on music and thoughts on music that-

    20. TF

      Mm-hmm

    21. DS

      ... I would read these, these quotes to inspire me as I was making music and kind of knock my thinking, kind of like the Oblique Strategies cards-

    22. TF

      Hmm

    23. DS

      ... to shift my thinking into something different. And so even just reading his interviews, one thing he said is his job as a record producer is to have strong opinions in the studio.

    24. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    25. DS

      So that if he's in there producing a record by U2 and the guys are fighting about whether to have a guitar solo or not, whether it should be a loud guitar solo or a quiet guitar solo, he said, "Well, my job then would be to say, 'Well, how about we have no guitar at all in this song?'" And the band members go, "What? Are you crazy? No, this song needs guitar. No, we, Brian, we absolutely need guitar." And he goes, "All right. Happy I could help."

    26. TF

      [laughs]

    27. DS

      "By you disagreeing with me, I just helped you solidify your position, so that's my job here."

    28. TF

      Hmm.

    29. DS

      "So on the other hand, if you would've said, 'Oh, yeah, okay, no guitar. That's a good idea,' great, glad I could help. I'm not saying my opinions are right. I'm just trying to help you respond." I love that.

    30. TF

      You're providing a foil.

  12. 46:47 – 49:23

    John Cage.

    1. TF

      Quick question on, was it John Cage you mentioned?

    2. DS

      Yeah.

    3. TF

      I was first exposed to John Cage in a documentary a friend of mine named Steve Jang was involved with, Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV, which is about Nam June Paik, this amazing pioneer in experimental art, performance art, many different media, and he was inspired by John Cage. Now, I know very little about John Cage, but I did get to see a segment of a performance that he did which caused, like, 90% of the audience to leave. [laughs] It was just, like, the most agonizingly uncomfortable, I would say, noise to listen to. That is my sole exposure to John Cage, but I've heard him invoked as this figurehead of great influence, and I'm basing my impression of him only on that, what I would just say is awful performance that I saw part of in this documentary. How would you sell John Cage, or why is he interesting?

    4. DS

      I'm no expert, but let's just say he questioned things that hadn't been questioned before.

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. DS

      A lot of modern art, the kind where people look at it and go, "What? That's it? It's, it's a, it's a seesaw over the border between US and Mexico? You call that art? I could do that." And it's like, yeah, you, but you didn't. [laughs]

    7. TF

      Yeah.

    8. DS

      Somebody looked at that border between US and Mexico and said, "I think we could put a seesaw over that." And in a way, that's a beautiful statement. It's not about the brushstrokes on canvas. It's about the statement.

    9. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. DS

      So I think John Cage was doing that with music. He was questioning the core of what is this anyway? And so that's why I think his most famous piece is called Four Minutes and 33 Seconds, which is just four minutes and 33 seconds of silence.

    11. TF

      Yeah.

    12. DS

      The point was, hey, listen to the room around you. For four minutes and 33 seconds. There are sounds going on here already.

    13. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    14. DS

      I mean, I think that was his point. Maybe he stayed mute on it. I don't know.

    15. TF

      Okay. So is it fair to say that he's interesting to you for the same reason that Brian, you know, in the producer capacity, is interesting as a provocateur-

    16. DS

      Yes

    17. TF

      ... of sorts, like an instigator of new thinking?

    18. DS

      Yeah. I wanna emulate his thought process even if I don't love his end results. Well, that's, I... You said it first. That's why I love that you beat me to this, is-

    19. TF

      Mm. [laughs]

    20. DS

      ... your friends, that you may, you may not wanna live my life here with my, whatever, three glasses [laughs] and two rats-

    21. TF

      [laughs]

    22. DS

      ... but you like some of my thought process.

    23. TF

      [laughs]

  13. 49:23 – 50:01

    Three glasses.

    1. DS

      People keep emailing me about that. "Hey, I heard your podcast with Tim Ferriss. Oh, three glasses, huh?"

    2. TF

      [laughs] So let me explain that for people who don't, don't have the context. You should get a third rat just so you have the same number of rats that you have glasses. But when I visited you in New Zealand, [laughs] I was like, "Hey, do you mind if I have a glass of water?" "No, no, no. Knock yourself out." "Where are the glasses?" "Oh, they're in the cabinet." And I went and I saw three glasses, all of different, like dramatically different sizes. [laughs] And I was like, "What happens if you have more than three people over?" And you're like, "Oh, I'll just buy some more glasses." I was like, "Well, actually, that kind of makes a certain elegant sense." So those are the, those are the three glasses.

    3. DS

      On that note, do you wanna hear?

  14. 50:01 – 56:51

    Derek’s experimental housing project.

    1. DS

      I am building my dream home right now.

    2. TF

      [laughs]

    3. DS

      You can imagine where this is going.

    4. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    5. DS

      Just 20 minutes north of Wellington, I bought a piece of land where I'm building my dream home. It is a four by eight meter rectangle with nothing inside. No toilet, no kitchen, no nothing. Because I thought every house I've lived in came with its default shit, and I adapted myself to its default shit. Like, well, that's just where the bathroom is. That's just the size of the living room. That's just what it is. And I've always had to adapt myself, so I've never experienced the process of making the place adapt to me-

    6. TF

      Mm-hmm

    7. DS

      ... through practice, not in theory. So I thought if I just start with a four by eight meter well-insulated rectangle, then over time we'll see what I need. So I'm gonna start with just a little-

    8. TF

      Wait, did you say four by eight? Hold on. Four by eight meters is the whole house?

    9. DS

      Oh, sorry, sorry. It's actually two. Four by 14 meter rectangle, that's the two bedroom-

    10. TF

      Mm

    11. DS

      ... place where I'll sleep with my kid, and then next to it is a four by eight where I spend all of my waking hours.

    12. TF

      Okay. Got it.

    13. DS

      So it's the sleeping house and the waking house. And my kid actually gets his own four by eight meter cube to experiment with. And the whole idea is to see what you need. So I'm starting with no bathroom, no kitchen. I'm just gonna put a little induction hob outside and a, an outhouse, and then I'll see if that's okay with me. Or if I find-

    14. TF

      Mm-hmm

    15. DS

      ... through experience that I really want a bathroom inside, okay, well now I know from experience, not just because it's the default setting. So I'm, I'm trying to-

    16. TF

      Mm-hmm

    17. DS

      ... start from scratch and this is my dream house because of the process that it will allow me to have.

    18. TF

      [laughs] Okay. So this is a very mundane question, but I'm curious. Generally, if you're gonna have like a kitchen or a bathroom or something, you would have the piping or the, the power and so on put in a certain place. So as it stands-

    19. DS

      Right

    20. TF

      ... that is not the case. So you might have to do a fair amount of demo or deconstructing your house to add any of these things internally.

    21. DS

      I got this tip from Stuart Brand, wrote a brilliant book that everyone should read, anyone who's smart that is, called How Buildings Learn.

    22. TF

      [laughs] Mm-hmm.

    23. DS

      How Buildings Learn by Stuart Brand. You should try to get the paper book because it's just laid out in such a way that you kind of need the paper book.

    24. TF

      Mm.

    25. DS

      He goes through this analytical thing about buildings and he said, "This is a reason why you should never hide your wires and pipes. Just keep the infrastructure on the outside so that it's easier to change." He has a beautiful line in there. It's almost the opening point. He says, "All buildings are predictions and all predictions are wrong. So therefore-"

    26. TF

      Mm. That's cool

    27. DS

      "... the less predictive you can make your building, the better." That's why I'm just getting this rectangle. All pipes and wires will just be exposed, nothing buried, so that I can quickly change them. I can always see where they are. I'm very much following Stuart Brand's philosophy.

    28. TF

      Stuart Brand is a s- is a smart, fascinating man. Just a quick pitch for Stuart Brand. So I met Stuart through Kevin Kelly. Now, Kevin Kelly-

    29. DS

      Yeah

    30. TF

      ... founding editor of Wired magazine, fascinating, genius, bizarre guy. Has an Amish beard, but he's a technology futurist, built his own house by hand. [laughs] Uh, spends more time in China than probably anyone I know. He's just an eclectic combination of all sorts of things, and the title of my podcast with him way back in the day was The Real World Most Interesting Man in the World or something like that. And in the midst of the conversation with Kevin, or maybe speaking offline, he said, "If you really want the person I consider to be the most interesting man in the world, it's Stuart Brand." [laughs] And so I had Stuart on the podcast a number of years ago and boy oh boy, you wanna talk about a polymath, he's something else.

  15. 56:51 – 1:22:27

    Rich Hickey and practical applications of simplicity.

    1. DS

      Yeah.

    2. TF

      Other people you are studying.

    3. DS

      All right.

    4. TF

      Or things you're fascinated by. We can hop around. Depends on where you wanna go.

    5. DS

      I already started. [laughs] Rich Hickey.

    6. TF

      Oh, that's right. You mentioned him. I wrote him down because that was left dangling, and I was like, "Who is this Rich Hickey?"

    7. DS

      So Rich Hickey, he's a programmer. He's the inventor of a programming language called Clojure, C-L-O-J-U-R-E. He's actually one of my number one picks for somebody that I would like to get on your show. Like, if we did a co-hosting kind of thing and I were to get somebody on-

    8. TF

      Mm-hmm

    9. DS

      ... he's... Actually, I already emailed him. He didn't reply. But [laughs] maybe-

    10. TF

      [laughs]

    11. DS

      Hey, if anybody knows Rich Hickey, and if he's interested, nudge, nudge, nudge. He did a brilliant talk. If you search YouTube for either Simple Versus Easy, or I think the name of the video on YouTube is called Simplicity Matters. Here's his point, and I actually jotted down these notes so I could try to bang out his point quickly, and then we'll talk about it. And keep in mind, everything I'm about to say, he's just talking about programming. He's speaking to a room of programmers. He said, "We, we mistake simple and easy. We think that simple means easy and easy means simple." But he said they're two different things. The word complex, if you look at the definition, it's actually, it comes from the word complect, which is to braid things together. So if something is complected, it means it's intertwined with other things. And so the adjective complex means that something is bound to other things. Whereas simple comes from simplex, which means it is not bound to other things. It stands alone. Easy, the root of that means that something is near at hand. It's something you already know how to do. It's within your realm. So easy and hard are subjective, but simple and complex are very objective things that we can look at. Something is simple, it stands alone. It's complex if it's bound to other things. And he said, here's where it gets tricky, is that it can be very easy to make something very complex. So he says you could just type gem install hairball, and with typing three words on a computer, you can install a massive framework, whether it's Ruby on Rails or WordPress, and if you start using that, well, wow, you are now complected with a huge complicated system that you're intertwined with.

    12. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    13. DS

      And so now everything I say after this, this is my take on his analysis. But it's really easy in life to say, "Okay, yeah, let's get married," [laughs] or to have unprotected sex and get pregnant and have a baby. That's easy. Adopt a dog. Hiring people. You can have a problem and think, "Ugh, all right, well, I've got some money and I'm overwhelmed. Just, I'm gonna get a consultant to, like, hire 10 people. Okay, great. Now I've got 10 employees. Phew. That was easy to take some work off my plate." But your life is now objectively complex. You are complected with these other people and their needs and their time schedules and their desires. Handing off parts of your business to say, "This is hard. I'm just gonna hand off my billing or my something or my this or my scheduling to these apps or these subscription services," that was easy to just hand it off, but now your business is very complected with these other services. So hence my rant on our last conversation over scotch at my house about tech independence. His point is it can be really hard to make something simple. It can be much harder-

    14. TF

      Mm-hmm

    15. DS

      ... to do something that is objectively simple, that stands alone, that isn't dependent on other things. It can be harder to make that. But it's ultimately usually a better choice because It's more maintainable, it's easier to change, it's easier to stop and start. It's simpler, even if it's harder to make. So the point is, in his thinking, is to beware of complexity, which can be objectively measured, and aim for doing the simpler thing, even if it's harder. In my take, I think you can make simple things easier just by learning more, uh, say about the fundamentals of something. Instead of just adopting somebody else's high-level solution, you can just spend a little time learning about the core underneath it, about the fundamentals. Then you can forget norms, you can forget what others do, what others think, and you can just get to the real essence of what you need. I'm not just talking programming now, I'm just meaning like in life.

    16. TF

      What would be an example of that?

    17. DS

      My four-by-eight [laughs] house. It's like-

    18. TF

      Mm-hmm

    19. DS

      ... really I just need a shelter where it's temperature controlled, so it's really well insulated. I do need a mattress to sleep on, and I do need a place I can work. But to me, those are the-- Oh, and I do need a little food. To me, these are the core things of a shelter. But even, say, with friendships, do I need to live in the same place with my friends? Well, not necessarily. My dear friends, my best friends, are often far, far away. I don't need to move to a place that has all of my friends if I can reach them on the phone. Talk about just the thought process. I very often find myself asking like, "Well, what's the real outcome I'm after? What's the real point of this?" And once I figure that out, well then what's the most direct route to that outcome? Never mind what other people do or what the norms are. What do I think is the most direct route to that outcome? And then try to keep it simple along the way and be very wary of dependencies and entangling myself with other things. So that's my take.

    20. TF

      Could you give another example or two of how you implement that in your life or how you might? 'Cause I know there are more examples.

    21. DS

      The next two might be less relatable because it's writing and programming.

    22. TF

      [laughs] Less relatable than the four-by-eight-meter box?

    23. DS

      [laughs] 'Cause I know everybody wants to live in a cube.

    24. TF

      With nothing inside.

    25. DS

      So here's a good question to strip away some things. Ask yourself, "Would I still do this if nobody knew?" There might be a lot of things in our actions that we do because the w- we like the way it would look to others, because it would be impressive to others. That's a first thing to just strip away when you're beginning this thought process is like, if I were to never tell anybody and nobody were to ever know, would I still do this thing? Okay, well then that might just be the decoration. Two examples. Programming-wise, I'm constantly asking this when I'm building something. It's just, I need to get this calendar entry into this database with this time. Do I need a whole bunch of JavaScript? Do I need a bunch of CSS and things flying around? Do I need fading graphics? No. I just need this thing there. What's the most direct way to get that calendar entry into that database? Okay, so that's like a programming example.

    26. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    27. DS

      Writing-wise, my last two books, How to Live and Useful Not True, I'm spending most of my time reducing. Like my, my rough draft, I always spew out everything I have to say on the subject, and then I spend 1,000 hours crunching like every single word going, "Eh, is that word necessary? Wait a second. Is that whole sentence necessary? Wait. Can the point still be communicated without that sentence? If it can, okay, let me try to get rid of that sentence and see if the point still comes across. Actually, does the point come across without this entire chapter? Oh my God, it still does. Then I, therefore I don't need this chapter."

    28. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    29. DS

      One of the most useful things that happened recently is a few months ago, an organization in Australia paid me to come give a talk. And I said, "What do you want me to talk about?" And they said, "Anything." I said, "How about my next book called Useful Not True?" They said, "Sure." So it was a room of very successful, very effective people, and I had one hour on stage to communicate the whole idea of my next book. And at the time, the book was still in process, and that was so helpful because I noticed that there were a few things that on stage, even though I had it in my notes, I skipped over it. And I thought, "Okay, well actually we don't need to do that. Okay, let's get to the next point." And so later when I was back home I thought, "Wow, I just skipped over that whole point on stage, so why do I think it's worth killing trees to print that point? Apparently it's not. Cool."

    30. TF

      [laughs]

  16. 1:22:27 – 1:29:04

    Tyler Cowen.

    1. TF

      perfect sense. Who else do you have on your list of people you're studying?

    2. DS

      All right. Tyler Cowen.

    3. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    4. DS

      Just a few days ago in an article on bloomberg.com called "Who Was Bitcoin's Satoshi?" So we still don't know who is Satoshi, the inventor of Bitcoin.

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. DS

      And, you know, there's this law of headlines that if, if it ends in a question mark, the answer's usually no, you know? So when I first saw the headline-

    7. TF

      [laughs]

    8. DS

      ... I thought that the answer was going to be it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter who Satoshi is. Forget it. And oh my God, Tyler Cowen took it somewhere else. Like, even if you would've asked me, by the way, "Hey, Derek, I'm gonna give you an hour alone in a room to think about one question. Does it matter who is Satoshi, the inventor of Bitcoin?" Even after an hour, I think my answer would've been, "Of course not," and I would've just sat there for an hour just going, "No, no, no."

    9. TF

      [laughs]

    10. DS

      Tyler Cowen took it the opposite way, and I, I jotted down his points, but it's a masterpiece in this kind of if/then knock-on thinking.

    11. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    12. DS

      He said, "Okay, if we find out that Satoshi is dead, that the inventor of Bitcoin is dead, then that's a good thing because it means Bitcoin will be more safe because it won't be open to future alteration. The person can't tarnish the reputation of it." You know, say like Elon Musk and Twitter kind of like, you know, by continuing to be there can tarnish the reputation of something. Sorry, I shouldn't have gone there.

    13. TF

      [laughs]

    14. DS

      Satoshi can't come back and change the rules for the worst. And then he even said, "This is why all religions have dead founders, is because the founder can't stay in and tarnish the reputation of, of the religion." So I went, "Okay, good point. If Satoshi's dead, that is good for Bitcoin. It can stay as is and won't get tarnished, won't get changed." And he said, "So there's a chance that Satoshi is an older guy from this previous movement around E-Gold that was generally seen as like a failed project, that a bunch of people were into this idea of E-Gold, and it didn't work out. If Satoshi is somebody from that group, then that means that even projects that look like they've failed can create great things. So we should maybe think more highly or, or be less dismissive of projects that seem to be failing because who knows what they will lead to?" He said, "There's a chance that Satoshi is this person," and I forget their name, but he said that would've been 21 years old- And in grad school at the time of inventing Bitcoin. He said, "If that's true, that means we should raise our, our perception of what young busy people can do, that they can do more than we realize." This guy, while in grad school, also invented Bitcoin.

    15. TF

      [laughs]

    16. DS

      And he said, "If Satoshi is still alive, that means..." Oh, by the way, we should say for y- I assume people know, but maybe not, that whoever is Satoshi has hundreds, or l- okay, let's say at least tens of billions of dollars in Bitcoin, that all he'd have to do, whoever Satoshi is, would have to just take it. It's, it's already there in the account in the public record that we can see. So Satoshi is one of the richest people on Earth, whoever Satoshi is. So he said, "If Satoshi's still living, that means that some people don't want to be billionaires or just have incredible self-restraint." Like, maybe upon realizing what he created, he destroyed the, the key, destroyed the password so that he could not take those billions of dollars, you know, to protect himself from that.

    17. TF

      Hmm.

    18. DS

      He said, "Now, if there's a chance that the, that Satoshi is a pseudonym for a group of people, if that's true-

    19. TF

      Mm-hmm

    20. DS

      ... it means a group of people can keep secrets way better than we expected, which means-

    21. TF

      [laughs]

    22. DS

      ... that conspiracy theories are more likely to be true about anything, in general, about UFOs, about JFK or whatever."

    23. TF

      [laughs]

    24. DS

      "If this group of people is Satoshi, and they could have hundreds of billions of dollar or tens of billions of dollars, but they are choosing not to, and they are all keeping the secret, that's amazing, and we should regard secrecy more higher than we can."

    25. TF

      Hmm.

    26. DS

      So that's the end of the bullet points, but I read this one little Bloomberg article, and my jaw dropped. I went, "Oh my God, this is the kind of thinking I aspire to. That is some amazing lateral creative..." I don't know. What kind of thinking do you call that? But that's what I wanna do more of.

    27. TF

      Hmm. I love it. Yeah, Tyler's incredible. Highly recommend people check him out. That's a, that's a really good Tyler example. Cowen, C-O-W-E-N. Definitely recommend people check him out. Also past podcast guest.

    28. DS

      Yeah. [laughs] That was a great one. Previously to this, one of my favorite points of his is he said that restaurants are better in places of high income inequality. Why? Because these are places that have both rich customers and low-paid staff, so somebody can afford to run a great restaurant because there are enough people that will pay because there are rich people around, but there are enough low-income people that we can have a good amount of staff. And he said that's why the best restaurants-

    29. TF

      Hmm

    30. DS

      ... are in places of high income inequality. Like whoa, that's again a brilliant connection.

  17. 1:29:04 – 1:39:45

    Inchword and language learning.

    1. TF

      All right. So I think we have one more category. We'll see how many we get to.

    2. DS

      Here's something I'm fascinated with. It would be-

    3. TF

      I heard a sharp inhale. Where should we go?

    4. DS

      Inchword. Inchword.com. I-N-C-H-W-O-R-D.com. This is actually a bit of a call-out. I don't usually do this, but I would like to hear from translators, that if you're a translator, contact me because I've got a lot of paying work because I'm really interested in the subject of translations that are always improving. Well, not always. At a certain point, you could call it a release. But you know, as a writer-

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm

    6. DS

      ... the first time you write a sentence is not always the best. [laughs]

    7. TF

      Sure. [laughs]

    8. DS

      You improve it the second or third time, and at any given sentence we see in your books, that might be the fourth time you've improved that sentence, maybe over the course of months.

    9. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. DS

      There's always room for improvement. But when somebody makes a translation of one of your books-

    11. TF

      Hmm

    12. DS

      ... the incentives are a little off now because the translator's incentive, as long as they're not translating, you know, the Bible or something, their incentive is mostly just get it done, good enough, get paid. The publisher's incentive, the publisher who publishes the translation, their incentive is hire a translator that will make a good enough translation for a low enough price that we can get this out in the market now and make a profit selling it. But my incentive as the writer that sweated over these words for years and really crafted it almost like song lyrics-

    13. TF

      Hmm

    14. DS

      ... like I have a different incentive 'cause if I'm gonna have a translation of this book out in the world, I want it to be great, like really, really great, which means my incentive is to work closely with the translator to make sure that what they're doing is the best it can be and that it's communicating what I intended.

    15. TF

      How do you do that in a language you don't speak?

    16. DS

      I don't know.

    17. TF

      Yeah.

    18. DS

      But I'm, I'm, that's my question. So this is the, I don't have the answer, but I'm fascinated with The problem.

    19. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    20. DS

      So, so far, the best idea is what I'm putting at inchword.com, which is this idea of incremental improvement. So-

    21. TF

      Oh, so this is your website.

    22. DS

      Yeah. I made it. It's my little passion thing, yes.

    23. TF

      Okay. All right. [laughs]

    24. DS

      So it's this idea where once I call, uh, something done, whether it's an article or a book, I put every sentence into its own entry in the database, and then I pass it to a computer that does the first round of a bad translation. So now we have a starting point.

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. DS

      So now, if you're the first translator to come through and translate the automatic translation into your language, let's say that's a low bar. That's low-hanging fruit. So let's say that will pay 50 cents per sentence. But now, if you've done one round of improvements over the computer translation, and now somebody else comes through and says, "Hmm, I can improve that further," that sentence, not the whole thing.

    27. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    28. DS

      That sentence, I can improve that one. Now that'll pay, like, a dollar per sentence if it's an improved... And now say two different people have improved it twice, and now a third person looks at that and says, "Hmm, I know how to improve that better." Okay, well, now you can make, say, $2 per sentence to improve it better. The, the stakes are getting higher for improving it.

    29. TF

      [laughs]

    30. DS

      And there are incentives now to make it as good as can be.

  18. 1:39:45 – 1:47:24

    Traveling to inhabit philosophies.

    1. TF

      right. Derek, anything else in that top hat?

    2. DS

      I'll just say this quickly. I love this little phrase. I realized when I was, like, digging into my incentives why I do things, I travel to inhabit philosophies. You can hear about life in Brazil or life in Japan, but it's a different thing to, to be there in it, that I think there's some philosophies, whether it's Stoicism or hedonism, that we can just do from a chair by just sitting and changing-

    3. TF

      Mm-hmm

    4. DS

      ... our thought process. But, you know, Brazilianism, [laughs] Japanism, Arabianism, I don't know, Parisianism, like these are kind of like philosophies. The way that people live in places-

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm

    6. DS

      ... are kind of living philosophies that I want to experience what it's like because I want to think that way. So I would l- really like to go there, live as close as I can to being like a local, learn the language, live that life according to that way, to inhabit, embody this way of living-

    7. TF

      Mm-hmm

    8. DS

      ... in order to feel the actual physical results, the actions of living that philosophy. And I thought, "This is actually the reason I travel."

    9. TF

      Hmm.

    10. DS

      It's not to look at things or take pictures or post them to impress people. It's I, I travel to inhabit philosophies.

    11. TF

      I love that. What are you finding of the philosophy? What is the philosophy of the UAE or Dubai, recognizing that the cultures are very different depending if they're by the hills or the water or the desert, but how would you try to express that philosophy?

    12. DS

      Easy. Generosity. That's the thing when I said that Sheikh Zayed, who founded it, Bedouin culture underneath it, and then, say, Emirati culture or Arabian Arab culture, generosity is by far the number one. If you read this book Arabian Sands by Thacher, he has all these stories of when he'd be out in the desert on the camels with his little crew of six guys, and they only have, like, this much food left, like nothing, and their tummies are grumbling and they're starving. It's funny that I just said tummies. That was cute. Um, [laughs] and, uh, s-

    13. TF

      [laughs] I just noted that for myself.

    14. DS

      [laughs] I'm kind of kid. I don't know.

    15. TF

      What's my bedtime story, Dad? [laughs]

    16. DS

      [laughs] And also my little rats here. I love kissing their little tummies. Anyway, okay, so if somebody would approach them, you know, like, "Oh, hello, my friend," whatever. He said as soon as somebody approaches, that's it. We're not gonna eat today because this is the way.

    17. TF

      Hmm.

    18. DS

      You give whatever you've got. So anybody, a stranger approaches, you say, "Hello, friend. Come sit with us. Here. No, have some soup. Don't worry. We're not hungry. We've eaten enough. This is for you now. Come sit with us." When I went to Dubai that first time, somebody I had met once from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, we h- we met briefly in Oxford. He was the only person I knew that lived in the region. So I emailed him saying, "Hey, man, I'm going to Dubai for my first time. Are you gonna be around?" And he said, "My friend." He said, "Cancel your hotel, uh, reservation." He said, "You're going to stay at my home in the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. I have an apartment in the Burj Khalifa. Stay at my home. You're my guest." I said, "Wow, that would be great." I said, uh, "It'll be so good to see you again." And he said, "No, no, I won't be there." He said, "I live in Riyadh, but my uncle will get you from the airport and just give you the keys. My home is your home. Stay as long as you want."

    19. TF

      [laughs]

    20. DS

      And so I did. I stayed in the Burj Khalifa for a few days. This generosity runs so deep. It's hospitality. It's generosity. And if, and you understand why- You're in the harsh environment of the desert. Everybody's living a harsh life. When you meet somebody that's traveling and passing, it's like, "Oh, come in, come in. Here, have some... Don't even need to tell us your name or who you are, your tribe or nothing. Just come in, my guest. Please, have whatever you want, my food. Take a bed."

    21. TF

      Mm.

    22. DS

      "Stay as long as you want." And that's so deep in the culture that, yes, I would like to inhabit that philosophy. Now that I've been on the receiving end of that hospitality, part of me kind of wants to have a home near the Dubai airport and make that my, like, my main home base. And for whenever I'm not there and I'm traveling, to just open it up for any of my friends in the world. Like, "Please, you're coming through? Please, stay at my home." Like, I want to return that generosity.

    23. TF

      Is it gonna be a six-by-eight foot [laughs] cube?

    24. DS

      [laughs] Ah, touche. Come, my home.

    25. TF

      Everything I have is yours. Wait, Derek.

    26. DS

      There's nothing here.

    27. TF

      Quick text. Where's the bathroom? Oh, no, there's no bathroom.

    28. DS

      Oh, no, my friend. [laughs]

    29. TF

      [laughs]

    30. DS

      Question whether you truly need it or not.

  19. 1:47:24 – 1:49:58

    Parting thoughts.

    1. DS

      Yeah.

    2. TF

      Well, it's fun. Always fun to hang, man. Always great fun.

    3. DS

      Thanks.

    4. TF

      Is there anything that you would like to say, anything you'd like to point people to, mention anything at all before we hop off and land the plane?

    5. DS

      Let's bring out the little buddies again for the, uh... These guys have been sleeping by my feet-

    6. TF

      Aw

    7. DS

      ... the whole time we've been talking.

    8. TF

      Adorable.

    9. DS

      They are. They're really good little pets. If you don't wash your hands after you cook, then you just let them lick your fingers. Oh, he's licking me right now. It's really sweet the way they lick. They never, ever, ever bite. They're very gentle.

    10. TF

      Hmm. [smacks lips] Well, unlike my hamsters I had when I was a kid. They were biters.

    11. DS

      Yes. Yeah, same. I had gerbils. They were nasty.

    12. TF

      [laughs]

    13. DS

      Anyway, I don't know. Well, you know my usual call-out. I really enjoy the people that I've met through your podcast. So-

    14. TF

      Mm

    15. DS

      ... hey, anybody listening to this all the way through, I truly enjoy my email inbox. I spend about 90 minutes a day just answering emails, and I really like it. So send me an email, say hello, introduce yourself, especially if you're a translator or if you live in Dubai or you found anything here fascinating.

    16. TF

      [laughs] All right. Do you want them to do the detective work of finding the email address? [laughs] Is that the hurdle?

    17. DS

      Oh, sorry. Go to my website. Just go to S-I-V-E dot R-S. There's a big contact me here link.

    18. TF

      [laughs]

    19. DS

      It's easy detective work.

    20. TF

      Okay. S-I-V-E dot R-S. [laughs]

    21. DS

      Yeah. That's my name.

    22. TF

      Pretty, pretty low hurdle, so. [laughs]

    23. DS

      Yeah.

    24. TF

      If they can't clear that, then they have other problems.

    25. DS

      [laughs] Yeah.

    26. TF

      All right, man. Well, thanks for taking the time.

    27. DS

      Yeah.

    28. TF

      As always, really appreciate it.

    29. DS

      Sorry I missed you in England.

    30. TF

      Yeah. Next time. We'll both get our knees repaired, and then we'll-

Episode duration: 1:50:08

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