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Tim FerrissTim Ferriss

How to Thrive in an AI World, Tips for Life’s Darkest Hours, & The Art of Sabbaticals (4K)

Brought to you by: Momentous high-quality supplements https://livemomentous.com/tim Helix Sleep premium mattresses https://helixsleep.com/tim AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement https://drinkag1.com/tim Show notes and resources from this interview with Matt Mullenweg: https://tim.blog/2023/12/29/matt-mullenweg-2/ Texts: https://texts.com/ Automattic: https://automattic.com/ Matt Mullenweg's website: https://ma.tt/ Matt Mullenweg on Twitter: https://twitter.com/photomatt "What’s in My Bag, 2023" by Matt Mullenweg: https://ma.tt/2023/12/the-bag-post/ Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) is co-founder of the open-source publishing platform WordPress, which now powers over 40 percent of all sites on the web. He is the founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, WPVIP, Day One, Texts, and Pocket Casts. Additionally, Matt runs Audrey Capital, an investment and research company. He has been recognized for his leadership by Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Inc., TechCrunch, Fortune, Fast Company, Wired, University Philosophical Society, and Vanity Fair. Matt is originally from Houston, Texas, where he attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and studied jazz saxophone. In his spare time, Matt is an avid photographer. He currently splits his time between Houston and San Francisco. Please enjoy this interview with Matt Mullenweg! [00:00] Start [00:14] The Argentine Dr. Mullenweg. [03:23] Open source. [05:35] Secret hiring. [08:24] Matt is always on tour. [10:45] Texts. [13:15] How Matt chooses his next project(s). [17:38] Building a digital Berkshire Hathaway. [25:05] Why Matt’s excited about messaging. [28:16] How Matt discovers companies he buys. [29:06] RIP, Charlie Munger. [29:40] Worthy rereads. [32:24] My reflections on blogging, writing, and podcasting. [44:51] Tyler Cowen’s inimitable style. [45:40] Matt’s high school economics competition. [53:26] Cables. [54:23] AI spellcasting and community. [57:45] Developments that will amaze the future. [1:01:42] AI-proofing jobs. [1:04:26] Why Matt’s optimistic about future generations. [1:09:16] Data Liberation Front. [1:11:30] More open app stores. [1:16:33] Invisible tools (and weapons) of competition. [1:21:36] Online security advice for the layman. [1:24:25] WordCamp Asia. [1:30:16] Taking a sa-Matt-ical. [1:44:27] Rethinking nuclear energy. [1:46:42] Rethinking psychedelics risks. [1:57:40] Rethinking breathwork. [2:01:51] Coping with depression. [2:15:47] Rethinking TikTok. [2:17:21] Blogging: absurd and beautiful. [2:19:34] Rethinking Vienna sausages. [2:20:52] Pocket ranch. [2:22:32] Answering ancient emails. [2:23:44] The curse of the ultra-critical eye. [2:27:07] Rethinking meditation. [2:30:08] Bacterial dentistry. [2:33:57] Pocket party. [2:34:47] Parting thoughts. 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/

Tim FerrisshostMatt Mullenwegguest
Dec 29, 20232h 36mWatch on YouTube ↗

Summaries, chapters, transcripts, and FAQs on this page are made by uListen, not YouTube.

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:14

    Start

    1. TF

      [upbeat music] Matthew.

    2. MM

      [laughs]

  2. 0:14 – 3:23

    The Argentine Dr. Mullenweg.

    1. TF

      Matty.

    2. MM

      Yep. [laughs]

    3. TF

      Dr. Mullenweg.

    4. MM

      Not a doctor. [laughs]

    5. TF

      [laughs]

    6. MM

      At all.

    7. TF

      In my heart of hearts, you're always a doctor.

    8. MM

      Oh, thank you. I think in Argentina I got an, uh, honorary degree, actually.

    9. TF

      Really?

    10. MM

      So, uh, in that, in that country.

    11. TF

      I'm, I'm so jelly.

    12. MM

      [laughs]

    13. TF

      Argentina, I haven't been back in 100 years, but we're not here to talk about my aspirations and dreams, although maybe.

    14. MM

      Yeah, I hope to hear some.

    15. TF

      Well, we'll, we'll dive in and out, bob and weave. For people who don't have context on the Argentine Dr. Mullenweg- [laughs]

    16. MM

      [laughs]

    17. TF

      Could you give people just a snapshot?

    18. MM

      Ah, sure. So yeah, Matt Mullenweg, domain MA.TT, which is pretty fun.

    19. TF

      Excellent domain.

    20. MM

      So I go by MA.TT sometimes. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, few hours from here in Austin. And at the age of 19, I co-founded open source software called WordPress, which is a blogging content management system. Fast-forward 20 years, it's been 20 years now, and runs over a third of all websites in the world. A few years after that, I co-founded or founded a company called Automattic, which is kinda like the for-profit side of commercializing things around WordPress.

    21. TF

      Automattic.

    22. MM

      It's-

    23. TF

      M-A-T-T.

    24. MM

      Yes. It's, it's-

    25. TF

      [laughs]

    26. MM

      ... like any egotistical founder, I snuck my name into the company. And we started with just sort of Akismet anti-spam and WordPress.com, kinda easy ways to get going with WordPress. But since have expanded to e-commerce with WooCommerce, one I'll talk about with, with messaging.

    27. TF

      Mm.

    28. MM

      Like, we've done a number, over, like, 25 acquisitions.

    29. TF

      Mm.

    30. MM

      So we're trying to be like a digital Berkshire Hathaway.

  3. 3:23 – 5:35

    Open source.

    1. TF

      For people, and I know we've talked about this before and you've certainly talked about it in other places, but we're gonna get into a lot of new territory. Before we do that, though, open source, just for people who may not-

    2. MM

      Mm

    3. TF

      ... have familiarity with that term, what does that mean?

    4. MM

      Yeah. So normally when you sign up for software, you click through that license, [laughs] you know, that no one ever reads.

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. MM

      Ours actually has Easter eggs in it just to see if anyone will find them. Most of those licenses are about all the rights you don't have.

    7. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MM

      You know, sometimes you're not even allowed to look at the thing and see how it works. There's a whole right to repair movement right now where you can buy things that you're not even allowed to repair yourself.

    9. TF

      Hmm.

    10. MM

      Open source is the opposite. It's all about almost like a bill of rights for you as the user. So you... WordPress belongs just as much to Tim Ferriss as it does to me, which is kind of amazing.

    11. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    12. MM

      There's rights and freedoms you have to use it for any purpose, to modify it, to see how it works, all these sorts of things, that no one can take away from you. Even myself as a co-founder, or even if all the other developers got together and we all agreed to become evil, we couldn't take it away from you.

    13. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    14. MM

      It's that bill of rights, those inalienable rights, is, is the core of open source. And there's lots of examples. So, like, Wikipedia is open source applied to an encyclopedia, right? It used to be really bad. [laughs]

    15. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    16. MM

      Encarta, Encyclopedia Britannica were way better. But then over time, lots of people working together made it better and better.

    17. TF

      Yeah.

    18. MM

      And why did they work on it? For free, for fun, and also because it belongs to them.

    19. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MM

      So, you know, WordPress has many thousands, may- probably tens of thousands of contributors at this point. Why do they do that? It's not because I'm, you know... Is it Tom Sawyer painting the fence or is it the other guy? Um-

    21. TF

      [laughs] Yeah. You know, I need more caffeine to be on my literary references.

    22. MM

      [laughs] Yeah, but you know the, the... Wow, we should both know that. Wow.

    23. TF

      [laughs]

    24. MM

      I'm embarrassed for both of us. Tom Sawyer and, uh, it'll be the first thing-

    25. TF

      Yeah

    26. MM

      ... in the comments.

    27. TF

      Huckleberry Finn.

    28. MM

      Huckleberry Finn, yeah.

    29. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    30. MM

      It's because it actually belongs to people. So sometimes people come in and just fix one bug that's annoying them, or sometimes, you know, you have the pride of knowing that code you wrote is running on a third of all websites in the world-

  4. 5:35 – 8:24

    Secret hiring.

    1. TF

      collaborative in that way. Not to state the obvious, but it's a contrast to, actually, this news item I saw, and news is probably giving it a little bit too much gravitas, but I read this story which seemed credible based on the source. I'm not gonna give too much, but [laughs] this engineer joins a startup-

    2. MM

      Yeah

    3. TF

      ... actually was, and [laughs] fixes one or two bugs or develops a feature that he wanted in the product, and then put in-

    4. MM

      Resigns

    5. TF

      ... notice, and that was it.

    6. MM

      Like two weeks later. Yeah.

    7. TF

      [laughs]

    8. MM

      I love that story, um, because I know so many, like-

    9. TF

      [laughs]

    10. MM

      ... on the spectrum engineers that would totally do that. [laughs]

    11. TF

      [laughs]

    12. MM

      It's like a beautiful hack, right?

    13. TF

      Yeah.

    14. MM

      They're like, "Oh, I just gotta get this fixed. They won't..."

    15. TF

      [laughs]

    16. MM

      There's actually companies that would do that. One thing I have considered, I- is, like, secret shopping, like seeing if I could get hired by my own company-

    17. TF

      Mm

    18. MM

      ... under a fake identity.

    19. TF

      Yeah.

    20. MM

      Or, yeah, just something like that.

    21. TF

      Well, now, well-

    22. MM

      Would be kind of fun

    23. TF

      ... so why would you do that?

    24. MM

      Oh, one, to experience the hiring process.

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. MM

      Which is difficult for me to debug except by secondhand accounts.

    27. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    28. MM

      Two, to see if I, you know, how my code still is. [laughs]

    29. TF

      Mm. Do companies provide mystery shopper-like services for hiring processes?

    30. MM

      Mm.

  5. 8:24 – 10:45

    Matt is always on tour.

    1. TF

      part of why I like spending time with you. Good vibes, lots of smiles, lots of laughs, and you also find a lot of things that are interesting out at the edges. And you're, you're an immaculate packer of bags also. So for those who do not know, What's in My Bag every year gives the latest and greatest- [laughs]

    2. MM

      Yep

    3. TF

      ... of Matt's tech gadgetry and assorted doodads and doohickeys that, that he's traveling with as a road warrior who travels, fair to say, most of the time, right?

    4. MM

      Yeah.

    5. TF

      And your schedule, we're gonna, we're gonna get to my f- first planned question in a second.

    6. MM

      Hmm.

    7. TF

      I recall, maybe it was five months ago, six months ago, who knows, you s- you sent me something along the lines of, "Just in case we can overlap, here's where I'll be in the next year." And it was one of the most-

    8. MM

      Oh

    9. TF

      ... absurd, it was like a Rolling Stones-

    10. MM

      Tour

    11. TF

      ... tour.

    12. MM

      [laughs]

    13. TF

      Are you continuing to do that in terms of travel for the next year?

    14. MM

      Yeah, currently.

    15. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    16. MM

      So yeah, w- why do I go on tour? Well, it's a global community.

    17. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    18. MM

      So I want to have a global company and a global community. So our, our hack for Automattic, because we're apart most of the year, is the teams get together a couple times a year. So if you're an individual contributor, you might travel two to three times a year. But as CEO, this means that every week there's, like, a couple of meetups happening.

    19. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MM

      And so if I... And I try to hit the, the bigger ones, you know. Sometimes the small ones too, but mostly the, the really big ones where there's a couple hundred people there. But that's happening at least once a month.

    21. TF

      Hmm.

    22. MM

      Then for WordPress, there's, like, three major WordCamps per year that have thousands of people. So there's, there's all these different... I just did State of the Word in Madrid. So you just take those, you're, you're traveling a week out of the month already, and then you gotta add in some fun. [laughs] And, um-

    23. TF

      You're not gonna die of fun deficiency.

    24. MM

      [laughs]

    25. TF

      You know how to have fun. [laughs]

    26. MM

      Uh, yeah, it really adds up. But I have... It does take more of a toll than it used to, I gotta be totally honest.

    27. TF

      Hmm.

    28. MM

      Like, there was years I did, like, well over 400,000 miles, and looking back I was like, you know, I don't know if maybe I still have some of the energy or maybe I'm getting more radiation in the plane. I don't know. Maybe I'm-

    29. TF

      Yeah

    30. MM

      ... just getting older.

  6. 10:45 – 13:15

    Texts.

    1. TF

      So you mentioned gatherings, and the first cone that we're gonna weave around on this slalom of a conversation is things that are exciting you.

    2. MM

      Hmm.

    3. TF

      Things you're excited about, five or more. And I enjoy this format. It's very simple. I haven't done it much, and it's a shame because I always have a good time doing it. Where would you like to start?

    4. MM

      I've mentioned messaging.

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. MM

      So if you look at Automattic's history, it's like 2005 logging, CMS, 2016 commerce, WooCommerce. It's grown to over 30 billion of sales or GMV. And we entered our third major area this year, which was messaging.

    7. TF

      Mm.

    8. MM

      So we acquired this company called Texts. You might remember these sorts of programs, but, you know, we all have 20 different messaging apps.

    9. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. MM

      Texts currently takes 10 of them. It will take more in the future. So Signal, WhatsApp, you know, Telegram-

    11. TF

      Mm-hmm

    12. MM

      ... Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messenger, Twitter DMs, all these sorts of things, some of which have terrible interfaces. It brings them into one power user app. Right now desktop only.

    13. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    14. MM

      'Cause it's all ultra-secure. So it doesn't break any encryption or run anything in the cloud. It's all on your device, which is, I think, very, very important.

    15. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    16. MM

      Like engineers, you have, like, a code of ethics. I think we need to build things extra secure now. And yeah, it brings them all together. It's really nice. I often, like, acquire apps or invest in things to make up for my own deficiencies. So, like, investing in Calm in, like, 2012 or whatever it was-

    17. TF

      Mm-hmm. Yeah

    18. MM

      ... 'cause I, I felt like I need to meditate.

    19. TF

      [laughs]

    20. MM

      Uh, so [laughs] I'm so behind on messages. I'm like, "Okay, we gotta buy this company."

    21. TF

      [laughs]

    22. MM

      And yeah, and make it available, um-

    23. TF

      It's like a much more expensive-

    24. MM

      ... more widely

    25. TF

      ... version of the guy who gets hired and fixes the bugs and then leaves. [laughs]

    26. MM

      [laughs]

    27. TF

      Buying com-

    28. MM

      Yeah, yeah

    29. TF

      ... buying com- buying companies.

    30. MM

      Small team, really, really exciting, and it's Yeah, no, I'd love for you to try it, actually

  7. 13:15 – 17:38

    How Matt chooses his next project(s).

    1. MM

      there.

    2. TF

      All right. So I wanna ask you a, a strategy question, to the extent that you can discuss it. So you were kind enough to, well, spend a lot of time with me just as a friend overall, which I really appreciate. Love spending time with you.

    3. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    4. TF

      And also, just because disclosures are important, uh, I am available at your beck and call advisor [laughs] with, with Automattic.

    5. MM

      From the early days, yeah.

    6. TF

      From the early days.

    7. MM

      Yeah, yeah.

    8. TF

      And I am fascinated by not just how you operate in the world, but how you think about the world, right? Because that's a prerequisite for making a lot of not necessarily contrarian, because you can be a, a different form of sheep as a contrarian too-

    9. MM

      Mm

    10. TF

      ... by just doing the opposite of what everyone else does. That's easy. But picking and choosing where you're going to be unorthodox or approach things obliquely is more challenging. Uh, so the question, and I'm gonna set the table with some, some other examples, but the, the question is how you choose what you're gonna get into-

    11. MM

      Mm

    12. TF

      ... in terms of areas, products, et cetera.

    13. MM

      Yeah.

    14. TF

      Right? Because there's diversification, there's lack of focus, there's synergy, these words we can throw around. I would love to know how you think about, for instance, or thought about getting into commerce, right? Uh, which I think is a more obvious leap in my mind than, say, messaging.

    15. MM

      Mm.

    16. TF

      And what I've observed is, say, in the media landscape, well, the media landscape and the social media platform landscapes have collided in such a major way in, say, the last 5 to 10 years, where you have Amazon Studios-

    17. MM

      Yeah

    18. TF

      ... you've got Netflix, you've got messaging and then video and so on that are seemingly all being pursued on some level by a lot of these large platforms, in the form of, say, WhatsApp or whatever it might be. So how do you choose what to engage in next?

    19. MM

      Mm.

    20. TF

      And you, you said some people might say I'm unfocused. I don't consider you unfocused. There, but there are sometimes sort of hidden or unspoken rationales or logics behind.

    21. MM

      Very true.

    22. TF

      So how do you th- how do you think about what you're going to do next?

    23. MM

      Hmm. I do think about it for a long time.

    24. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    25. MM

      So we've been thinking about messaging and actually making investments in the space for, yeah, four or five years.

    26. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    27. MM

      Think a lot about environment and incentives. So one thing, you know, the reason there used to be these multi-messaging apps 15 years ago, and they all stopped working, was the networks all blocked them.

    28. TF

      Hmm.

    29. MM

      And there is a political environment now which I think is more conducive to being more customer and user-centric. Like, this is our data, right?

    30. TF

      Mm-hmm.

  8. 17:38 – 25:05

    Building a digital Berkshire Hathaway.

    1. MM

      And so.

    2. TF

      So if we come back to what you said, and the whole point of this format is scaffolding, and then we can deviate.

    3. MM

      Yes.

    4. TF

      So we're deviating right now.

    5. MM

      Yes, yes. [laughs]

    6. TF

      People may have noticed. Talking about a, let's just say, a next gen or digital Berkshire Hathaway.

    7. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    8. TF

      Right? So Berkshire Hathaway could have, well, originally textiles, but they could have insurance, then they could have something that is com-

    9. MM

      Chocolates

    10. TF

      ... chocolates. Right, See's-

    11. MM

      Mm

    12. TF

      ... Candies. Things that are completely unrelated on a face value business level, right? They're not integrated.

    13. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    14. TF

      In the way that a, a CMS or having a gajillion blogs and websites running on your platform would combine very easily with-

    15. MM

      Mm-hmm

    16. TF

      ... WooCommerce, right? So tho- those two pair very nicely. Are you thinking about, say, in the case of Texts.com ... that that is a standalone in the same way that some of these Berkshire Hathaways might be a standalone.

    17. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    18. TF

      How do you think about building and acquiring in that way? Are they sta-

    19. MM

      Yeah

    20. TF

      ... are they standalones? How much do they need to help each other or not? In the case of-

    21. MM

      Yeah

    22. TF

      ... uh, of Berkshire, right, like the, the insurance premiums and so on, as I understand it, provide a, a huge bolus of cash for all sorts of other purposes, right? So sort of the, the capital can be utilized, uh, across the family, in a sense.

    23. MM

      Yeah.

    24. TF

      How, how do you think about... Because there's so many different ways you could rank order the priorities when looking at potential acquisitions. Right? Is it just like customer pain point-

    25. MM

      Yeah

    26. TF

      ... converging trend lines in terms of regulation and public sentiment and objects-

    27. MM

      Which Berkshire navigates beautifully in highly regulated industries, including insurance, railways. Yeah. But yeah, how I think about it, so I like to study these people. I know you love doing that, too, study high performers. It's your thing, right? [laughs]

    28. TF

      I, I do that sometimes, yeah. Occasionally do that.

    29. MM

      But also, I mean, Charlie Munger, rest in peace, 99 years old. Warren Buffett, I don't know exactly, in, I think up there as well.

    30. TF

      Wow.

  9. 25:05 – 28:16

    Why Matt’s excited about messaging.

    1. TF

      Okay, so we took, we took a little side alley.

    2. MM

      [laughs]

    3. TF

      If we, if we come back to things that you're excited about-

    4. MM

      But I didn't actually answer your question on messaging.

    5. TF

      You didn't. Yes.

    6. MM

      Like, so why messaging?

    7. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MM

      It is not built on top of WordPress, and it's not part of our publishing-

    9. TF

      Mm-hmm

    10. MM

      ... kinda thing. But I do believe it is sort of a fundamental human right to have private, and hopefully in the future, open source messaging. And so that's, again, I only wanna work on things I feel like I can work on potentially the rest of my life.

    11. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    12. MM

      So, you know, publishing commerce [laughs] and messaging, that covers a lot of human activity.

    13. TF

      It does.

    14. MM

      And if you have those things truly free, I think you have a free society.

    15. TF

      Hmm.

    16. MM

      And that's also exciting to me, because how do we help bend the long arc towards more freedom, more liberty across the world? And technology does that better than, I think, any sort of diplomacy or anything else-

    17. TF

      Mm-hmm

    18. MM

      ... um, that at least I could work on.

    19. TF

      Are there any other people or companies that stand out as being aligned or philosophically adjacent with the ethos you're describing?

    20. MM

      Well, one, there's a lot more open source companies now. GitLab is a really great one, led by Sid. They're actually even more open than we are. [laughs]

    21. TF

      Mm.

    22. MM

      They publish, like, everything, and they're a public company now. You know, like $9 or $10 billion, so that's pretty cool. Have those examples. I think Elements, which is built on the Matrix ecosystem, so open source messaging. Actually, the competitor to Text Beeper, really awesome company, and I think philosophically very aligned. So what's cool is more and more of this is happening. Also, there's a fun trend where sometimes people who did proprietary companies-

    23. TF

      Mm

    24. MM

      ... and then made a ton of money off them, what they do next is often open source. So Jack Dorsey, right, made a ton of money off Twitter, Square. One, he's taken Square to a more of a crypto direction. He wants to enable that. And two, what's he funding? Something called Nostr and Bluesky, which are two competing open source Twitters, [laughs] which is really cool. Um, Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, what's he doing today? He's running Signal, which is an open source non-profit messaging app, which is amazing. Signal, very phil- philosophically aligned. So Wikipedia, Mozilla, you know, there's, there's a lot out there, both for-profit and non-profit.

    25. TF

      Based on the very little I know, and you track this type of thing much more than I do, but in terms of number of users per full-time employee pre-acquisition, how would you place WhatsApp? I mean, it's [laughs]

    26. MM

      The messaging apps are tops.

    27. TF

      Yeah.

    28. MM

      I think Instagram was pretty, like, a good size with, like, 13 or 14 when they sold. Telegram's actually pretty amazing-

    29. TF

      Mm

    30. MM

      ... today. Signal is pretty small team.

  10. 28:16 – 29:06

    How Matt discovers companies he buys.

    1. TF

      So how do you, you know, as the buyer first resort, right? The-

    2. MM

      Hopefully, yeah

    3. TF

      ... the, hopefully, the, the aspiring buyer first resort Berkshire Hathaway, known as Automattic, how do you find these various companies or threads to pull on, or how do those people find you?

    4. MM

      Yeah, people do reach out sometimes, which is always nice. Yeah, I guess fundamentally it's usually just driven by me as a user.

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. MM

      Like, I'm always trying out new products. Friends recommend it. My colleagues, actually, of the people we employ, they tend to be, like, very early adopters and very digitally savvy.

    7. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MM

      So I mean, that's why we launched Bitcoin in 2012 [laughs] when it was $12. Like, I wish I could say that that was me being brilliant. No, it was one of my colleagues who was like, "Oh, this thing's so cool. We can add support." I think he hacked it over a weekend. And so all right, cool. [laughs]

  11. 29:06 – 29:40

    RIP, Charlie Munger.

    1. TF

      Amazing. I'll tell you just a quick anecdote that I haven't mentioned really, uh... I don't know that I haven't mentioned it anywhere, because why would I? But you mentioned, uh, Charlie Munger. Rest in peace.

    2. MM

      Mm.

    3. TF

      I was, if I'm remembering correctly, I mean, I was definitely tentatively scheduled, I think it was to interview him the next Tuesday.

    4. MM

      Oh, my goodness.

    5. TF

      Yeah.

    6. MM

      Yeah, he had just started doing podcasts-

    7. TF

      Mm-hmm

    8. MM

      ... for the first time.

    9. TF

      Yep.

    10. MM

      He, he did the one with, uh, the Collisons, right?

    11. TF

      Uh, he did, I think it was Acquired. I can't recall exactly.

    12. MM

      But we'll link it up.

    13. TF

      Uh-

    14. MM

      It was a really great episode.

    15. TF

      Yeah. So for people who, who didn't get a chance, we'll link

  12. 29:40 – 32:24

    Worthy rereads.

    1. TF

      to that in the show notes.

    2. MM

      I, I appreciated that when he pa- For someone who I've been so obsessed with for many years, when he passed, I actually had a feeling of, "Wow, what a life well lived," and so appreciative how much he's published over the years.

    3. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    4. MM

      So even though he hadn't done a lot of these podcasts or modern stuff, he has been doing the meetings [laughs] and, you know, speeches and other things for decades now. So, you know, you don't always have to meet your mentors. I think you talk about that as well. Like, it sometimes is really great to just have the book or the speech or something like that.

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. MM

      And it can, can really live with you. You can grow up with it. You can reread it over the years.

    7. TF

      Yeah.

    8. MM

      Like rereading Siddhartha, or I know you have some things that you read. Oh, is it Zorba the Greek?

    9. TF

      Zorba the Greek is spectacular. I think we might've been together-

    10. MM

      When you found that, yeah. We were in-

    11. TF

      ... in Greece when I found that book, of all places, in Greece, in Santorini.

    12. MM

      [laughs]

    13. TF

      Absolutely love that book, yes. So that is, that is one I go back to revisit.

    14. MM

      Yeah.

    15. TF

      There are a lot of books I go back to revisit. Awareness by Anthony de Mello would be another one.

    16. MM

      Yeah.

    17. TF

      Very short, very fast. Uh, I'm a, I'm a increasingly a fan of rereading.

    18. MM

      Mm-mm.

    19. TF

      That includes some fiction too, as you mentioned over The Greek.

    20. MM

      Yeah.

    21. TF

      Any books you reread?

    22. MM

      Siddhartha.

    23. TF

      Why?

    24. MM

      Just a-

    25. TF

      Great, great cover

    26. MM

      ... an interesting story of, of, of enlightenment and journey, and it's actually my Twitter bio is, "I can, I can think, I can wait, I can fast."

    27. TF

      That's a great line. Something like that.

    28. MM

      Yeah.

    29. TF

      Yeah.

    30. MM

      I probably have it out of order, but, but I do them out of order too sometimes.

  13. 32:24 – 44:51

    My reflections on blogging, writing, and podcasting.

    1. TF

      but I have a question for you related to blogging, actually.

    2. MM

      Please.

    3. TF

      And then ultimately led to the podcast, but without the blog, very hard to drive people to the podcast-

    4. MM

      Mm

    5. TF

      ... and show notes.

    6. MM

      Yeah.

    7. TF

      So the, the blog was both jet fuel and bridge and connective tissue, and still continues to be. I have thought a lot about next chapters for myself-

    8. MM

      Mm-hmm

    9. TF

      ... recently.

    10. MM

      Mm.

    11. TF

      I love doing the podcast. I plan on continuing doing the podcast. The 10th anniversary's coming up next April.

    12. MM

      Wow.

    13. TF

      10 years of, on average, 1.4 episodes per week, every week. It's been going for a long time.

    14. MM

      Wow.

    15. TF

      And I wasn't the first podcaster, nor will I be the last. But 10 years is a p- is a good stretch, and it's an opportunity to pause and reflect and think about things. And when I was doing that recently, it's the end of the year, I noticed that often I, I enter a game that is new. I'm not the first participant, so I'm not at the absolute cutting edge.

    16. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    17. TF

      But I'm on the sharp edge.

    18. MM

      Yeah, yeah. Pretty early.

    19. TF

      Yeah, pretty early. And then I stick around for a while, and I focus on it with incredible enthusiasm and [laughs] OCD, like-

    20. MM

      Ridiculous intensity [laughs]

    21. TF

      Yeah, intensity. And then it, it often gets a bit crowded or saturated, and then I do something else, right?

    22. MM

      Yeah.

    23. TF

      So, like, the, the, th- that was true a bit with the blog, but it, it wasn't so much that blogging got crowded, but other opportunities surfaced. And then there was the startup investing, and then that was a focus from, say, 2008 to 2015. Then I took a hiatus for a while.

    24. MM

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    25. TF

      I took a startup vacation.

    26. MM

      Remember that.

    27. TF

      Took a complete break from that. That was in tandem with books. Took a break from the books after The 4-Hour Chef. That's when the podcast was started, right, in 2014. Have done that for a while, and now I'm looking at various trends, various types of collective and individual behavior. I'm like, "Okay, there's a lot more-"

    28. MM

      Hmm

    29. TF

      ... zero-sum behavior. Things are getting very saturated.

    30. MM

      Hmm.

  14. 44:51 – 45:40

    Tyler Cowen’s inimitable style.

    1. TF

      I've been invoking Paul Graham like Candyman, Candyman, Candyman for years now, but-

    2. MM

      [laughs]

    3. TF

      ... as, as of, as of yet, we have not had a podcast conversation. Maybe someday.

    4. MM

      I don't, I don't think he does that many. Uh-

    5. TF

      He does very few. He had a, he had a conversation with Tyler Cowen.

    6. MM

      I love that one. It was hilarious.

    7. TF

      Which was hilarious.

    8. MM

      [laughs]

    9. TF

      Which was hilarious, and, uh, I have the utmost respect for both of those guys. Tyler is also a one of a kind. He has stylistically produced a very novel and helpful show. There's no one like Tyler. Like, he has an inimitable style.

    10. MM

      The rapid fire questions.

    11. TF

      The rapid fire, the rapid fire no follow-ups [laughs]

    12. MM

      Of different things. Yeah.

    13. TF

      [laughs]

    14. MM

      I'm kinda terrified about going on his show. He's, he's the reason I started blogging. He was a big influence.

    15. TF

      Okay.

    16. MM

      So-

    17. TF

      Tell me, tell me... I'm not sure I knew this. Tell me more

    18. MM

      ... 'cause he's been doing Marginal Revolutions for, like, I think over 20 years.

  15. 45:40 – 53:26

    Matt’s high school economics competition.

    1. TF

      Yeah.

    2. MM

      And when I was in high school, one of the super cool things I did, you know, you did wrestling.

    3. TF

      [laughs]

    4. MM

      I, I did this, um, economics competition run by the Federal Reserve Bank.

    5. TF

      Sexy.

    6. MM

      [laughs] I know. Let me tell you. [laughs]

    7. TF

      So you must've been beating the girls off with a stick. [laughs]

    8. MM

      Uh, sa- sa- somewhat. You know, the, my macroeconomic insights were not quite, um, driving the interest I hoped for since, s- hence me getting into computers and jazz and stuff.

    9. TF

      Yeah. [laughs]

    10. MM

      So, um, but we did this economics competition and it provided... It really opened a lot of opportunities for me. I got to go to Washington, DC, meet Alan Greenspan.

    11. TF

      What, what does it mean to have an economics competition? I mean, was this like econometrics, mathematics competition? Like, what are we talking about?

    12. MM

      Yeah. It was an interesting format. So have you heard of the FOMC, the Federal Open Market Committee?

    13. TF

      No.

    14. MM

      So that is the committee of bank presidents and Federal Reserve leaders that come together to determine what's called the fed funds rate, which basically trickles down to be the interest rates.

    15. TF

      Man, I bet a lot of people would be in, like to be in that room, wouldn't they? Yeah.

    16. MM

      It's a, it's a pretty cool meeting.

    17. TF

      It must be a-

    18. MM

      And they're basically-

    19. TF

      That's like the Illuminati.

    20. MM

      And they've been doing an amazing job, too.

    21. TF

      Yeah?

    22. MM

      Like, think of all the recessions we've avoided and all the problems I don't have. So it was, I think, Volcker who said, like, their job is to take the punchbowl away as the party starts going.

    23. TF

      [laughs]

    24. MM

      You know, by turning up the interest rates-

    25. TF

      Yeah

    26. MM

      ... slows down the economy. So they have a lot of levers, and some new ones as well. So the first 15 minutes is we would do a mock meeting. So, like, you would be Greenspan, I'd be Ben Bernanke. Like, we kind of pretend role play-

    27. TF

      Yeah

    28. MM

      ... the different presidents, and we'd read their essays and speeches and things to try to, like, have their style or their point of view. And based on data up to when the competition started, so if, like, new economic data was released that morning, we might incorporate it into the presentation. So do 15 minutes of that, and then second 15 minutes is they can ask you any question about economics they want.

    29. TF

      And do you have to still be in character, or is this-

    30. MM

      No.

  16. 53:26 – 54:23

    Cables.

    1. MM

      This is a quick one, and I mentioned it already, USB-C.

    2. TF

      [laughs]

    3. MM

      Like, if you know me, you know how much I love cables.

    4. TF

      You love cables.

    5. MM

      And yeah, I experiment, and the fact we have some-

    6. TF

      It, it's, it, it is hard for me to convey [laughs] verbally how much Matt likes different kinda cables.

    7. MM

      [laughs]

    8. TF

      And containing the cables, and organizing the cables. It is a thing.

    9. MM

      And gifting the cables. I like, you know-

    10. TF

      And gifting-

    11. MM

      ... to give someone a good cable.

    12. TF

      And [laughs]

    13. MM

      Like, they, they think of you every time they charge up.

    14. TF

      It's true. I was just using your, your external battery pack that you gave me for my birthday the other day, and I was like, "Oh, Matt."

    15. MM

      Yeah. [laughs] What do you get the guy who does ha- has everything?

    16. TF

      Yeah.

    17. MM

      The coolest battery pack.

    18. TF

      [laughs]

    19. MM

      You know? Like, so, uh, 'cause I've tested 20 of them.

    20. TF

      Yeah.

    21. MM

      So, you know-

    22. TF

      Yeah

    23. MM

      ... it's one of those things.

    24. TF

      I know you've put in the mileage. [laughs]

    25. MM

      All right.

    26. TF

      So USB-C.

    27. MM

      Everything's going USB-C now. iPhone is USB-C. I'm down to, like, I think one or two things in my life that are not USB-C, and it's glorious.

    28. TF

      [laughs]

    29. MM

      So I'm very excited about that.

  17. 54:23 – 57:45

    AI spellcasting and community.

    1. MM

      Um, I'm really excited about AI.

    2. TF

      All right.

    3. MM

      Like, honestly, it's, the programming of AI, like the prompt engineering-

    4. TF

      Mm-hmm

    5. MM

      ... can't really call it programming.

    6. TF

      Spellcasting.

    7. MM

      Yeah. It, it's like s- casting spells. It's ridiculous. And when you hear a good prompt, like you just said, it's like, "Oh, that's so cool."

    8. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    9. MM

      And it's kinda open source-ish in that I don't really, I guess you could have proprietary prompts. People do, but there's actually sites now where people buy and sell prompts and-

    10. TF

      Which is so cool. Yeah, it's wild.

    11. MM

      So it's kinda like a new form of programming- ... coming online. That, for me, is as exciting as when I first learned to program.

    12. TF

      Hmm.

    13. MM

      'Cause it, it, like, unlocks these superpowers. And it's also just fascinating, like, the things you think would be easy, like driving the cars, turns out to be really hard. Stuff you thought would be really hard, like writing poetry like Shakespeare, it just kinda-

    14. TF

      Not-

    15. MM

      ... spits off in seconds

    16. TF

      ... not hard at all.

    17. MM

      [laughs] You know? Like, turn this podcast, make it all rhyme, you know, it could do that.

    18. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    19. MM

      And that's kinda ridiculous-

    20. TF

      Kinda nuts

    21. MM

      ... but cool.

    22. TF

      Okay, so on the AI side, this is, of course, been a topic in the zeitgeist for a bit now. A lot of people are talking about AI. You, unlike me, have some technical chops [laughs] and you know how to code. I would love to know if you have any controversial, there's no emotional valence to this, right? Or maybe uncommon thoughts around AI or, or questions that you're asking, things you're looking for that maybe are not what I would get in response from, you know, 100 people.

    23. MM

      Hmm.

    24. TF

      I wouldn't get 50 of them telling me the same thing.

    25. MM

      That's hard, 'cause I don't know what 50 people would tell you. But I'll tell you, one day I-

    26. TF

      But you get the idea. I mean, they would tell me probably what's, what's in the news cycle-

    27. MM

      Yeah

    28. TF

      ... and the media cycle. Even if it's within the niche community of fintech on Twitter, right? They would, they would have those inputs.

    29. MM

      I'll tell you what I kinda hate about it, which is that it's gotten me addicted to Twitter again, which I'd broken.

    30. TF

      AI?

  18. 57:45 – 1:01:42

    Developments that will amaze the future.

    1. TF

      What do you think will be surprising f- looking back three years from now, what will lead-

    2. MM

      Hmm

    3. TF

      ... most people to think, "Holy shit. Really didn't see that coming"?

    4. MM

      Next year. So next year-

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm

    6. MM

      ... I think we're having at least a 10X in the models-

    7. TF

      Mm-hmm

    8. MM

      ... in a way that is hard to anticipate. There's also these new chip architectures coming out.

    9. TF

      Hard to predict too, right? Not just anticipate, like-

    10. MM

      Well, I think this next turn we're gonna be able to predict a bit. I think we're gonna plateau a little bit after that. So maybe these are some controversial thoughts.

    11. TF

      So I think the, the, the 10X of the models, I mean, it depends on how do you define 10X? Are we talking about capabilities? Are we talking about, uh, what are they called? Parameters?

    12. MM

      Tokens, parameters. Yeah, yeah.

    13. TF

      Yeah.

    14. MM

      So some of that's going up a lot. How we're learning from things is, is improving a lot. Some non-GPU chip architectures, which could be very, very interesting, are coming online, or non-transformer ways of learning-

    15. TF

      Hmm

    16. MM

      ... that could be vastly more efficient. What I think it'll affect, like, every day is we'll get small versions of this on our phones, so some really cool local, um, and open source AI stuff.

    17. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    18. MM

      So something not people understand, but I definitely even wouldn't have predicted myself, is how fast the open source has caught up. We now have open source, the Mistral models, like GPT 3.5, maybe even GPT-4 quality-

    19. TF

      Mm-hmm

    20. MM

      ... which is kinda wild.

    21. TF

      Yeah, that is wild.

    22. MM

      And remember, ChatGPT just came out last year.

    23. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    24. MM

      Like, like 13 months ago.

    25. TF

      That's [laughs] ... Talk about time dilation.

    26. MM

      Right?

    27. TF

      [laughs]

    28. MM

      So this is... And the world's gonna get a little weird.

    29. TF

      Oh, it's gonna get-

    30. MM

      I would say-

  19. 1:01:42 – 1:04:26

    AI-proofing jobs.

    1. TF

      So the question I wanna ask is related to kids, actually. So if you had kids, or let's just say you were talking to a young group of kids, right? So you're talking to the equivalent of, say, the economics team you referred to. So let's just say-

    2. MM

      Hmm

    3. TF

      ... 15, 16-year-old kids, clearly smart, have some ambition, they wanna do some stuff.

    4. MM

      Hmm.

    5. TF

      What type of career advice might you have for them? 'Cause I was discussing this with a friend of mine who has a, a bunch of kids, and he was saying, "I don't know what to tell my kids." He's a technologist, and he's like, "I think lawyers-"

    6. MM

      Wow.

    7. TF

      He's like, "Right now we've basically, we've..." I can't remember the exact AI that he's using. It's not ChatGPT, but he's using a legal specific AI to draft almost all of their agreements.

    8. MM

      Hmm.

    9. TF

      I don't wanna doxx him, so I'm not gonna give too much more detail. [laughs] But, like, this guy's very smart and he, he, he, he is, he's using that to replace a lot of at least, kinda first round drafting. Now, there are many reasons to have lawyers and law firms besides just drafting. So to be clear, if you need a privatized army to inflict [laughs] God knows what, then it's a different, different conversation. But then you have many aspects of AI that are going to disrupt jobs. I mean, they really just are, or people are gonna have to bob and weave. Despite what some of our mutual friends might say about, like, no one's ever gonna lose their job and so on, I don't believe it. So what might you advise to someone now, and they could be young or somebody who's just thinking about a career pivot, like, what... How do you AI-proof yourself, or at least kinda put on an eight-point harness-

    10. MM

      Mm-hmm

    11. TF

      ... so you have some defensibility? What are your thoughts?

    12. MM

      You know, one, maybe this is something I changed my mind on, but it is the one on my list, is I used to really advocate to learn to code. You know, these can write pretty good code now.

    13. TF

      Oh.

    14. MM

      I've gone back and forth, so if you'd asked me, like, three months ago, I was like, "Nah, don't learn to code anymore." Now I think I'm back to it's worth to learn to code, the same way it might be useful to learn a martial art-

    15. TF

      Mm-hmm

    16. MM

      ... even if you're not gonna be defending yourself every day as, like, part of your livelihood. Like, there's, there's something intrinsically good, studying the humanities, et cetera. So I think learning to code can teach you to understand what's going on with computers in a way that I think an AI world will also be very useful. I would tell kids to play with this stuff a ton.

    17. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    18. MM

      You know, the prompt engineering, the, the, the playing with it. Learning how to learn is something I know you're very passionate about. Feels pretty timeless.

    19. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MM

      And I'd probably point to that Great Work essay by Paul Graham. He talks a lot about ambition and how important it is, and what, what you're doing. Like, h- what's your drive? How are you gonna leave a dent in the universe? Or do, or do your best trying, you know?

    21. TF

      Yeah.

    22. MM

      And I feel like that's really, really,

  20. 1:04:26 – 1:09:16

    Why Matt’s optimistic about future generations.

    1. MM

      really important.

    2. TF

      Hmm.

    3. MM

      I'm actually very optimistic about future generations. Tell you something I changed my mind on.

    4. TF

      Yeah, let's do it.

    5. MM

      We'll jump around a little bit. It's got two parts. One, I, I used to be worried that, like, we were gonna have too many people on Earth.

    6. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    7. MM

      Read this great book Kevin Kelly recommended called Empty Planet. Basically says we're not gonna have enough people. [laughs]

    8. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    9. MM

      Population has already peaked in most developed countries. I think the US is the only nuclear superpower with a growing population over the next 30 years.

    10. TF

      What do you attribute that to?

    11. MM

      Well, for us it's just immigration.

    12. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    13. MM

      So if we mess that up, we're gonna lose this whole-

    14. TF

      Toast

    15. MM

      ... it's a big competitive advantage for us when you think about when the best people in the world wanna send their kids to school here and stay here.

    16. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    17. MM

      If we mess that up, we're, I think, we have some other advantage geographic and resource-wise, but, like, yeah, that's a really important one. I had personally chosen not to have kids. Seven years ago now I decided, or six years ago, like, I'm not gonna have kids the rest of my life.

    18. TF

      Hmm.

    19. MM

      Sort of built my life around that. Been rethinking that somewhat.

    20. TF

      Hmm.

    21. MM

      Maybe it's the ripe old age of 40.

    22. TF

      Wow.

    23. MM

      Maybe it's also knowing that we're not gonna have enough people in the world. It's kind of exciting to think, you know, someone born today, in 18 years, what are they doing?

    24. TF

      Yeah.

    25. MM

      Like, for most of the past hundred years you could predict a few things. Like, there's colleges which have been around for many hundreds of years. Like, there's a few things that have worked. I don't know if in 18 years, like, you have a really super smart, precocious kid, you're gonna wanna send them to a Harvard or a Princeton or, like-

    26. TF

      Yeah

    27. MM

      ... any of these things.

    28. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    29. MM

      I think the world might have shifted so much-

    30. TF

      Mm-hmm

  21. 1:09:16 – 1:11:30

    Data Liberation Front.

    1. TF

      What is the... Oh, you know what? We can, we can look it up and put it in the show notes. It's not Turing, but the best way to predict the future is to invent it. Do you remember the attribution on that?

    2. MM

      I wanna say Alan Kay.

    3. TF

      Alan Kay. That is it. It's Alan Kay. What a great line, and how true. What else are you excited about or have you changed your mind on? We may come back to the kids thing. My- I'm still, like, in shock over this. This is amazing.

    4. MM

      I know. We'll talk about it more.

    5. TF

      Yeah.

    6. MM

      It's developing. You know?

    7. TF

      Yeah.

    8. MM

      I'll say like I don't know what that looks like for me, if it's traditional, non-traditional. But we just announced at just my State of the Word, which is an annual speech I do. It's like State of the Union.

    9. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. MM

      And it's something I'm very, very excited about. Next year we're working on, we're calling it Data Liberation Front. One reason I think proprietary services have gotten a lot more popular-

    11. TF

      Mm-hmm

    12. MM

      ... is they do subtle things to lock people in. Remember we talked about the messaging earlier?

    13. TF

      Yeah.

    14. MM

      And some, some of the w- CMS spaces, like Wix, don't even provide an export.

    15. TF

      Mm.

    16. MM

      So they really, it's like a roach motel. You check in, you can't check out. So-

    17. TF

      [laughs]

    18. MM

      ... what we're doing with this Data Liberation Front is creating an open source directory that provides two-way, like import of all this data. So whether that's in an e-commerce, in another page builder, 'cause there's all these different page builders for WordPress besides Gutenberg.

    19. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MM

      Everything. And then once it's in WordPress, you can get it into anything else that you want-

    21. TF

      Hmm

    22. MM

      ... because WordPress is kinda universally supported RF formats. We're also improving the WordPress to WordPress migration format. So we have an export, but it actually isn't great in that, like, it doesn't... Moving the files and the plugins and everything is still a pain in the butt, so we're gonna make that really, really easy. And so my hope is by, like, radically lowering the friction, it'll help make the web, kind of force everything to be a more, bit more open.

    23. TF

      Hmm. Data Liberation Front. Catchy name. So it's, it's in a sense, and this may be a terrible analogy, but it's like a Google Translate for content-

    24. MM

      Technology

    25. TF

      ... management and technology, right? Like-

    26. MM

      Yeah

    27. TF

      ... from anything to anything, like, and then from that next top to whatever else.

    28. MM

      It increases competition.

    29. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    30. MM

      This also means that if you're in WordPress, everyone else is gonna do this too.

  22. 1:11:30 – 1:16:33

    More open app stores.

    1. MM

      not user-friendly.

    2. TF

      What are some other ways that you would like to see the technology world, or just technologies stirred up in this way? Where if-

    3. MM

      Hmm

    4. TF

      ... if one person or company were to do X, it would sort of catalyze a bunch of mimicry-

    5. MM

      Mm

    6. TF

      ... or slash competition that would be ultimately better for users and humanity slash fill in the blank.

    7. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    8. TF

      You know what I'm grasping for, right?

    9. MM

      Yeah, yeah.

    10. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    11. MM

      We've talked about messaging. You know, app stores are opening up now. There's been some judgments against Google around billing systems and other things.

    12. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    13. MM

      A big reason I think the world's gone proprietary the past 15 years has been mobile platforms, which are way more locked down than desktops. Everything has to go through their app store. You can't just run arbitrary software on your phone.

    14. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    15. MM

      Um, you will be able to do more stuff like that over the next few years.

    16. TF

      So, so could you just walk me through an example so, so I understand what you mean?

    17. MM

      Sure.

    18. TF

      What it looks like and what it could look like. Like, so currently what the issues are, and then what it could look like.

    19. MM

      Yeah. So today every app on your phone has to go through the app store.

    20. TF

      Right. In case of-

    21. MM

      So they go through an approval process

    22. TF

      ... iOS, yeah.

    23. MM

      Sometimes Apple is slow at approving things. Sometimes they kick stuff out.

    24. TF

      Mm.

    25. MM

      Tumblr got kicked out.

    26. TF

      Yeah.

    27. MM

      You know? They typically take a pretty big cut of payments. They force you to use their subscription systems, and they take 15 or 30% of it, which breaks some business models. So that's why, like, for a while, I think they made exceptions, but when you subscribe to like Spotify or Netflix through your phone, it would cost more-

    28. TF

      Mm-hmm

    29. MM

      ... if you did it on the web, 'cause they have to pay that cut. And the exceptions they make are somewhat arbitrary.

    30. TF

      Mm-hmm.

  23. 1:16:33 – 1:21:36

    Invisible tools (and weapons) of competition.

    1. MM

      all these big tech companies.

    2. TF

      What are some of the lesser-known tools of competition or, like, invisible tools of competition in the sense that someone or a platform or fill-in-the-blank larger company making, say, a, a messaging service break 5% of the time or be 10% slower, right? That's, that's an in- sort of invisible means of leverage. I would have to imagine there are examples of under the umbrella term of, say, privacy, you could also see some really [laughs] incredible sort of competitive pressuring/crushing-

    3. MM

      Yeah

    4. TF

      .../fill in the blank. So I'm just, I'm just wondering, as someone who's worked in technology, understands technology, as an operator-

    5. MM

      Mm

    6. TF

      ... an individual contributor, can code, and who also is right in the middle of the switch box, so you see a lot-

    7. MM

      [laughs]

    8. TF

      ... you get to test a lot that is behind the scenes, what, what are some of the lesser-known tools of sort of invisible competition?

    9. MM

      There's a lot of dials. So I'll talk about things that are publicly known-

    10. TF

      [laughs]

    11. MM

      ... and people have been caught about-

    12. TF

      Yeah

    13. MM

      ... uh, versus all the secret things we do. No, I'm kidding.

    14. TF

      Yeah. [laughs]

    15. MM

      Um, X, Twitter, under Elon Musk got caught. You know, every single link you click on Twitter goes through t.co, a redirect service.

    16. TF

      Yep.

    17. MM

      To certain media sites and other things, they were inserting, like, a 5 to 10 second delay.

    18. TF

      Mm.

    19. MM

      Again, every little bit of friction, particularly on mobile, people just press the back button. They go back to the tweet list. So, like, it's, it's incredible, and there's studies around this. Like, every 100 milliseconds the page takes to load, like, lower conversion, et cetera. What else has been caught? Google got caught for, they created this format called AMP, Accelerated Mobile Pages. It was to- designed to compete, make mobiles faster. We actually supported it wholeheartedly.

    20. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    21. MM

      And they did it kind of open source and everything like that. Some documents leaked that basically said that... And it's funny 'cause I think the people working on AMP didn't even know this.

    22. TF

      Mm.

    23. MM

      I think they were actually, like, true believers in the sort of improving the web type of thing. Certainly we didn't know this. But there was something in AMP that also, like, blocked, I'm not gonna get this right, but it, like, blocked header bidding or something. Basically made it harder for other advertising networks to run on these pages-

    24. TF

      Mm

    25. MM

      ... in a way that benefited Google, and I think Google particularly has sharp elbows around advertising stuff.

    26. TF

      Mm-hmm. The greatest moneymaker in the history of the internet, you mean? [laughs]

    27. MM

      I, I get why they, yeah. Um, and the duopoly there of them and Facebook, them and Meta-

    28. TF

      Oh

    29. MM

      ... is entrenched by regulation as well. So Bill Gurley has this amazing presentation. Have you seen this? The-

    30. TF

      I'm not sure which one. I've seen a few of his presentations.

  24. 1:21:36 – 1:24:25

    Online security advice for the layman.

    1. TF

      Mm-hmm. Do you have any security or basic security or privacy recommendations for average Joe or Jane? Well, I guess, I, I, I don't wanna insult my listeners [laughs] but just-

    2. MM

      Yeah

    3. TF

      ... like somebody like me. I'm not technical, right?

    4. MM

      Yeah.

    5. TF

      But if you were to say, "Yeah, one thing you wanna be really careful about is this," like, well, on my, on personal devices-

    6. MM

      Yeah

    7. TF

      ... and computers, like, just, uh, a lot of people do X. You should really do the opposite of X.

    8. MM

      The easy stuff. Make sure your apps and operating system are always up to date.

    9. TF

      Yeah.

    10. MM

      I actually get really excited. It's, like, one of the first things I do in the morning is, like, load the app updates.

    11. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    12. MM

      So make yourself excited about it.

    13. TF

      Yeah, very important with-

    14. MM

      Mm

    15. TF

      ... browsers like Chrome, too.

    16. MM

      Yeah. There's a lot of actively exploited stuff out there. Two, you know, good passwords. I think you've talked about this.

    17. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    18. MM

      I like password managers like 1Password. There's also this new thing coming out called passkeys.

    19. TF

      You know, I have seen this, and I don't know what it means, so I would actually love a-

    20. MM

      It's-

    21. TF

      ... a 101.

    22. MM

      This is kind of a new thing for your audience. Like, if a server supports passkeys, you should switch to it. So basically it's a technology which eliminates passwords. You use, like, a secure key exchange. And as a user, what you'll see is that you just log in with scanning your face or something.

    23. TF

      Hmm.

    24. MM

      And it's kinda built into the OS in a really secure way, and it's unique. You know, like, the thing that breaks my heart is when people use the same password on multiple services.

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. MM

      Never do that. All my passwords are, like, super random, like 40 character. Like, I, I couldn't tell you if I wanted to. But, you know, you generate them, and that's kinda what this does in a better way, except with keys.

    27. TF

      Do you mind getting into the weeds for a second? Just on a technical level, what are we talking about? Are these kind of like private keys and private messaging, like PG- PGP? Am I making that up? I think-

    28. MM

      PGP stands for pretty good privacy. This is like a key exchange. Yeah.

    29. TF

      Okay.

    30. MM

      So-

  25. 1:24:25 – 1:30:16

    WordCamp Asia.

    1. TF

      it. Okay. Passkeys, to revisit. What else are you excited about, Dr. Mullenweg?

    2. MM

      WordCamp Asia. This is actually a joint thing.

    3. TF

      Yes. This is... Let's, let's talk about this. So this is, this is something I am very excited about, and I need to finesse some details to make sure it's gonna work, but what are we talking about?

    4. MM

      We've had some pretty epic travel adventures.

    5. TF

      We've had some great-

    6. MM

      But it's been a while.

    7. TF

      Adven- It has been a while. [laughs]

    8. MM

      We've hung out more in, like, home bases and things-

    9. TF

      Yeah

    10. MM

      ... but the kind of traveling.

    11. TF

      We've been all over. We've been to Vietnam.

    12. MM

      Yeah.

    13. TF

      Been to Turkey.

    14. MM

      Yeah. Greece.

    15. TF

      Been to Greece. Been all over.

    16. MM

      And actually, the only time I've set foot in Taiwan, which is where WordCamp Asia is this year, was we were connecting to Vietnam.

    17. TF

      Hmm.

    18. MM

      Actually, an amazing story there. A cool Tim story as well. Um, like, there was something wrong with our tickets, and they weren't letting us board.

    19. TF

      I remember this.

    20. MM

      And this was kinda early. Like, not everyone spoke English or something, and you, like, started breaking out some Mandarin. [laughs]

    21. TF

      I remember that

    22. MM

      ... it somehow got us on the plane. I don't-

    23. TF

      I remember that

    24. MM

      ... I still don't know what you said.

    25. TF

      I remember that.

    26. MM

      God.

    27. TF

      I haven't thought about that in forever.

    28. MM

      Yeah.

    29. TF

      I still have the photograph that you took in a park late night in, in Vietnam of this little kid with a cute hat with break dancers in the background. I s-

    30. MM

      In the background, like sort of, yeah

  26. 1:30:16 – 1:44:27

    Taking a sa-Matt-ical.

    1. MM

      exciting.

    2. TF

      [laughs] Love how I keep saying I need to finesse the details, but Matt is committing on my behalf. I am... I, I would like to make it happen. I really... This is a priority. So that is in there. What else are you excited about?

    3. MM

      It kinda ties into that.

    4. TF

      All right.

    5. MM

      It's something I haven't told you.

    6. TF

      Oh, wow.

    7. MM

      Which is I am taking a sabbatical in 2024.

    8. TF

      Sabbatical.

    9. MM

      Yeah. So Automattic has this benefit-

    10. TF

      Mm-hmm

    11. MM

      ... where every five years-

    12. TF

      Mm-hmm

    13. MM

      ... you get two to three months fully paid time off.

    14. TF

      Okay.

    15. MM

      And a hack on it to encourage people to take it is if you don't take it until year seven, you don't get another one until you're 12.

    16. TF

      Hmm.

    17. MM

      The clock starts when you come back from the previous one. I extol the benefits of this.

    18. TF

      [laughs]

    19. MM

      We have literally, like, hundreds and hundreds of people take them.

    20. TF

      Uh-huh.

    21. MM

      Maybe over a thousand at this point. I talk about why it's so amazing. I'm the biggest hypocrite. In 18 years, I have not taken one myself.

    22. TF

      Hmm.

    23. MM

      Luckily, almost every other executive has, so, like, the example gets set. But I finally was like, "You know, I just need to pull the trigger." And so February, March, April, including during this WordCamp, [laughs] is I'm gonna be officially on sabbatical. And so that, I'm- Honestly, terrified. [laughs]

    24. TF

      I'm sure you are

    25. MM

      I don't know, I don't know how to unplug for that. I mean, you saw me in Antarctica. I got weird-

    26. TF

      [laughs]

    27. MM

      ... after, like, eight days of no internet.

    28. TF

      I mean, a lot of people get weird in Antarctica, in fairness.

    29. MM

      [laughs]

    30. TF

      But yeah. [laughs]

  27. 1:44:27 – 1:46:42

    Rethinking nuclear energy.

    1. MM

      So that's, uh, as we're... I'm calling it the sa-Matt-ical. [laughs]

    2. TF

      [laughs] Matt is a specialist in, uh, dad jokes.

    3. MM

      [laughs]

    4. TF

      This began, I mean, it may have begun in the delivery room for all I know. Okay. Let's, let's... We may come back. I'm sure at dinner we'll talk about the, the sabbatical more, but in terms of things that you've changed your mind on, are excited about, or absurd things you do-

    5. MM

      Mm

    6. TF

      ... any and all of the above. You want to do a lightning round?

    7. MM

      Yeah, I've got some changed, and I've got some absurd.

    8. TF

      Okay.

    9. MM

      Changed. Changed my mind on nuclear, actually.

    10. TF

      Okay. From what to what?

    11. MM

      Well, I think, I think even, like, when I was a baby, my mom took me to, like, a nuclear protest or something, and so, like, as someone caring about the environment, I sort of assumed nuclear was not... I was kind of anti-nuclear.

    12. TF

      Mm.

    13. MM

      Right? Chernobyl, et cetera. And now I'm pretty fully convinced that it is necessary. We should be building as many of these plants as possible.

    14. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    15. MM

      And it's, like, gonna be an amazing part of the bridge to, like, yeah, a more carbon-free future.

    16. TF

      Mm-hmm. And you see that in small-scale reactors, which with less likelihood of technical problems and, and issues that-

    17. MM

      Yeah, all of the above

    18. TF

      ... you've seen. Yeah.

    19. MM

      Let's take the things that work. They're expensive. Like, we need to get better at building stuff. Like, China's really kicking our butt here. We stop turning ones off that were running. [laughs]

    20. TF

      Yeah.

    21. MM

      So, like, that sort of stuff, like, stop shooting ourselves in the foot.

    22. TF

      Mm.

    23. MM

      We saw what happened with Germany, you know, when they turned a bunch of stuff off, but they're now turning it back on. So this is going the right way, and there's a lot of investment in the tech here, and so, you know, let the Bill Gates startup and the other ones, and the Sam Altman startup, like, let them ship.

    24. TF

      And nuclear in this case refers to fission. We're talking about fission?

    25. MM

      Yes, and there could be breakthroughs around other things. But, I mean, people are scared of this, but also, like, the US military has nuclear-powered submarines and [laughs] aircraft carriers that are going around underwater. Like, we've been done this very reliably for, like, many decades now.

    26. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    27. MM

      So I feel like that was a wrong turn in history.

    28. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    29. MM

      Some theories, it might have been influenced actually by, like, countries or companies with a lot of sort of-

    30. TF

      Vested interest

  28. 1:46:42 – 1:57:40

    Rethinking psychedelics risks.

    1. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    2. MM

      Psychedelics.

    3. TF

      Mm. Tell me.

    4. MM

      You know, thanks to you, we were very early supporters of a lot of research around this and so that-

    5. TF

      Yeah, you supported a lot of amazing things

    6. MM

      ... and I felt like, especially during that period where everything was outlawed, been very pro-legalization-

    7. TF

      Mm-hmm

    8. MM

      ... in a lot of ways and, like, for weed, for example.

    9. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. MM

      I think there's some interesting stuff coming out around, like, marijuana, which I'd kind of not heard any bad stuff about-

    11. TF

      Mm-hmm

    12. MM

      ... where like, oh, this can actually create some risk for psychosis. There's... I used to make fun of these things, right? Like, the, the old documentaries where, like, you smoke one blunt, you would go crazy. Like the-

    13. TF

      Oh, yeah. Reefer, Reefer Madness film

    14. MM

      ... Reefer Madness, like, all this stuff. It was so dumb. But we funded a lot of research.

    15. TF

      Yeah.

    16. MM

      And I like that people are researching these things so we can understand the good and the bad of these molecules-

    17. TF

      Mm-hmm

    18. MM

      ... and how to use them safely.

    19. TF

      Yeah.

    20. MM

      'Cause we see the impact is so incredible.

    21. TF

      Mm.

    22. MM

      And there's also... I, I have now seen, I think you have as well, where it can go wrong.

    23. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    24. MM

      Super rare, but there's other stuff, maybe confounding factors, so.

    25. TF

      Yeah, for sure. So that's a changed your mind on, or that's a-

    26. MM

      Yeah, I think I used to be, like-

    27. TF

      ... modified

    28. MM

      ... very super pro just open-

    29. TF

      Yeah

    30. MM

      ... legalization of everything.

  29. 1:57:40 – 2:01:51

    Rethinking breathwork.

    1. TF

      uh, with, with his-

    2. MM

      Which kind of brings me to my next changed mind thing-

    3. TF

      Yeah

    4. MM

      ... which is perhaps the antidote to some of this, which is breathwork.

    5. TF

      All right.

    6. MM

      So I, I think I thought breathwork was just kinda whatever. [laughs] You know?

    7. TF

      [laughs] Dumb.

    8. MM

      And there, there's a million versions of it, right?

    9. TF

      [laughs]

    10. MM

      And there's apps for, like, other shift. There's the Wim Hof stuff. There's all these sorts of different things. I also, like, we had a friend from, like, Esalen who was like, "Oh, yeah, all the hippies who, like, did a ton of stuff in the '70s don't actually take stuff anymore. They just do breathwork now." And so some of these things came in from different areas. I've just started to explore it a lot more.

    11. TF

      Mm.

    12. MM

      It's incredibly powerful. We've been playing with a Shiftwave chair, right?

    13. TF

      Yeah.

    14. MM

      Which kinda coordinates the pulses on the chair with breathwork. The breathwork is, I would say, a lot of the benefit of that. It's also a tool you can have with you at all times.

    15. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    16. MM

      You could travel to any country in the world with it. [laughs] Like, it's like-

    17. TF

      With your lungs

    18. MM

      ... it's literally the most basic element of living is breath, and so there's something cool if that's perhaps a unlock to a more calm inner state or, like, access to different things.

    19. TF

      What has been your personal experience with breathwork?

    20. MM

      I feel like there's breathwork that can make me sleepy. I feel like there's breathwork that, like, helps me focus. I feel like there's breathwork... It's a Tony Robbins thing, you do like this.

    21. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    22. MM

      Very, like... There, there's stuff to, like, give you energy. Particularly, I'm very interested in endogenous solutions versus ex-

    23. TF

      Exogenous

    24. MM

      ... exogenous, yeah.

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. MM

      So instead of, like, have another green tea or something if I'm tired in the afternoon-

    27. TF

      Mm-hmm

    28. MM

      ... like, maybe what's a movement of breath I could do?

    29. TF

      Something internal, yeah.

    30. MM

      Yeah.

  30. 2:01:51 – 2:15:47

    Coping with depression.

    1. TF

      tail end.

    2. MM

      W- what would you recommend for someone going through a deep depression? Because one of the things about depression-

    3. TF

      Mm-hmm

    4. MM

      ... is it can be hard to take a shower, to do that, you know-

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm

    6. MM

      ... 30 days of the thing.

    7. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MM

      So, now, w- do you have, like, breakouts or things you'd recommend to interrupt that cycle?

    9. TF

      Depression, depression is a multifaceted beast. And for people who don't have the context, I, for my entire adult life certainly, although the frequency and severity has changed substantially in the last 10 years, had extent- experienced extensive... extended and extensive depressive episodes.

    10. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    11. TF

      Almost killed myself in college. I've written about that at some length, so if you just search Tim Ferriss suicide, that post will pop up. It's one of the more important posts I've ever written. It'd be certainly top three-

    12. MM

      Yeah

    13. TF

      ... or so of the blog posts I've written. Very proud of that post. I mean, if you look at the comments, you'll see why.

    14. MM

      Hmm.

    15. TF

      Thousands of comments at this point. But how I relate to suicidal ideation I think can be found in that post. But number one, I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on the internet, but I do have a lot of personal experience with depression, and I've been approached by a lot of people with depression, including close friends. And I would say that, as you mentioned, it can be seemingly impossible to summon the will to do anything when you're severely depressed. I mean, there, there are people who get almost into catatonia, right? Where they're-

    16. MM

      I actually... So this year I experienced it for the first time.

    17. TF

      No kidding.

    18. MM

      A very close loved one was going through chemotherapy.

    19. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MM

      And it was interesting. It hit me quite hard-

    21. TF

      Yeah

    22. MM

      ... which I felt dumb as well, because I'm not going through it myself. But what really, like, woke me up is, like usually you hear me talk about WordPress and Automattic, I'm so excited about it.

    23. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    24. MM

      There was a day I just looked at my computer, I was like, "Oh, I don't care about this."

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. MM

      That never happened before.

    27. TF

      Yeah.

    28. MM

      And that was the wake-up. I was like, oh man, like, everything seems kind of grayscale. I feel this apathy, and it really gave me a lot of empathy for things you've described before-

    29. TF

      Hmm

    30. MM

      ... that I hadn't experienced personally.

  31. 2:15:47 – 2:17:21

    Rethinking TikTok.

    1. MM

      Got a couple more.

    2. TF

      Let's do it.

    3. MM

      I saw the most incredible, horrifying stat, which made me change my mind on TikTok.

    4. TF

      Oh.

    5. MM

      I'm, I'm just gonna read this, 'cause it was ridiculous. 20% of 18 to 29-year-olds... Did you hear this?

    6. TF

      No.

    7. MM

      When said, "Do you agree with the statement the Holocaust was a myth?"

    8. TF

      Wow.

    9. MM

      Agreed with it. And it, they had the chart of the different-

    10. TF

      Mm-hmm

    11. MM

      ... eras, and, like, 65 plus, it was, like, 0%.

    12. TF

      Yeah, yeah.

    13. MM

      Or, like, .1 or something.

    14. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    15. MM

      And then, like, it goes up to this 18 to 29, 20%. That's horrifying. Like, oh, my goodness. Whatever has led to that sort of misinformation-

    16. TF

      Mm-hmm

    17. MM

      ... and there's some indicators that it could be sort of TikTok related-

    18. TF

      Mm-hmm

    19. MM

      ... makes me really question, like, is this an adversarial thing? Like, is this another country, like-

    20. TF

      Mm-hmm

    21. MM

      ... goosing the algorithm a little bit-

    22. TF

      Yeah

    23. MM

      ... in a way that, yeah, is very scary misinformation.

    24. TF

      Yeah, it's terrifying.

    25. MM

      Yeah.

    26. TF

      I mean, you imagine what a geopolitical advantage it would be to be able to ever so slightly nudge sentiment about X or person Y in a certain direction.

    27. MM

      Our social networks are not allowed in China.

    28. TF

      Yeah.

    29. MM

      There's no Facebook, there's no Twitter/X. There's no, like... I don't... There's no Instagram. I think that's, there's a reason for that.

    30. TF

      Mm-hmm.

  32. 2:17:21 – 2:19:34

    Blogging: absurd and beautiful.

    1. MM

      Got some absurd things.

    2. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    3. MM

      Blogging I think is absurd, and it's beautiful.

    4. TF

      [laughs] Absurd, meaning it's like a hor- like the, the, the horse and buggy in the modern world of, of clips and video and, and AI? What do you mean?

    5. MM

      It feels that way sometimes.

    6. TF

      Yeah.

    7. MM

      Right? Like, everyone's, like, onto something else. I guess newsletters are kinda like blogging, but, like, you know what? There's something so beautiful about doing it. I've been doing it a lot more this year, and it's one of the most rewarding things in my year.

    8. TF

      What do you find rewarding about it?

    9. MM

      The comments, the interaction, the follow-up. So it's all that. The writing, well, the act of writing forces you to clarify your thinking.

    10. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    11. MM

      I- it activates something different in your brain. I mean, you know this. I'm preaching to a writer, [laughs] a real writer. That's incredible. The act of publishing is incredibly vulnerable, scary, and then all the stuff that happens afterwards, you learn so much from.

    12. TF

      Yeah. We need to chat about how to, not resurrect, because there are still good commenters, but how to, how one could create, like, the best comments section on the internet. Because what I've noticed, and I'm sure you've noticed this, is that with blog posts, a lot of that conversation has sort of left the room to social media. So the volume of comments and so on is less, but there are exceptions, right? If I, if I go to, say, the, the Derek Sivers blog and I look at his comments section-

    13. MM

      Awesome

    14. TF

      ... amazing comments section, right? If I look at Tyler Cowen's comments-

    15. MM

      Pretty good, although mixed. There's a lot of-

    16. TF

      Mixed, but he's... I mean, I remember-

    17. MM

      He moderates it.

    18. TF

      He moderates it.

    19. MM

      And he participates himself.

    20. TF

      He moderates it. I was-

    21. MM

      So I think that's, that's the secret. You have to participate yourself.

    22. TF

      Yeah. So he posed a question as, like, the most underrated geniuses of all time, and he nominated Beethoven, or I'm, I'm screwing it up. But it was some classical music composer, and there was an amazing discussion in the comments-

    23. MM

      Mm

    24. TF

      ... which, uh, of course may have been, as I think you're implying, [laughs] tightly curated.

    25. MM

      I don't know. I think he's pretty open and... But you set an example.

    26. TF

      Yeah.

    27. MM

      So by the behavior that you do in the comments and that, you know, what you allow-

    28. TF

      Mm-hmm

    29. MM

      ... that sets the standard, and people follow that.

    30. TF

      Yeah.

  33. 2:19:34 – 2:20:52

    Rethinking Vienna sausages.

    1. MM

      Oh, this is my last changed mind. It's a little happier than the last one. Vienna sausages.

    2. TF

      Vienna sausages?

    3. MM

      You know the sausages in the can?

    4. TF

      I have no idea what you're talking about.

    5. MM

      Oh, wow.

    6. TF

      [laughs]

    7. MM

      So there's this thing called Vienna sausages.

    8. TF

      Okay.

    9. MM

      Um, I have no idea if they're from Vienna, but it's like-

    10. TF

      [laughs]

    11. MM

      ... they're kinda like, um, how many? Six or seven sausages in, like, a little can like this.

    12. TF

      Okay.

    13. MM

      It pops open. It's one of those... I used to do it, had a, have it as a kid.

    14. TF

      Uh-huh.

    15. MM

      And I, you know-

    16. TF

      [laughs] It makes me think they're not from Vienna. [laughs]

    17. MM

      I, I usually am not allowed to shop for myself because I, I'm basically like a-

    18. TF

      Gummy bears and-

    19. MM

      ... a kid with a credit card

    20. TF

      [laughs]

    21. MM

      ... my parents' credit card. And, like, so I bought a bunch of Vienna sausages 'cause I was like, "Oh, this is gonna be healthy." And so I brought it home.

    22. TF

      Yeah, as an adult, you're saying.

    23. MM

      Oh, this was, uh, like, last month.

    24. TF

      Okay.

    25. MM

      Uh, [laughs]

    26. TF

      All right, got it.

    27. MM

      'Cause I was like, "I'll put it in my desk drawer." I like to keep, like, healthy snacks by my desk and where I work.

    28. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    29. MM

      And I just assumed it's sausage. Must be like, uh, you know the punchline that's coming.

    30. TF

      Yeah.

  34. 2:20:52 – 2:22:32

    Pocket ranch.

    1. MM

      This is a, a fun food one as well.

    2. TF

      Let's do it.

    3. MM

      You know, there's so much good fancy pizza in San Francisco-

    4. TF

      Yeah

    5. MM

      ... like Flour + Water, et cetera. One that I really like is called Delfina.

    6. TF

      Uh-huh.

    7. MM

      I, another thing perhaps with my Texas upbringing that I'm obsessed with is the sauce known as ranch.

    8. TF

      Ranch?

    9. MM

      Yeah, ranch sauce.

    10. TF

      Ranch sauce, like ranch dressing?

    11. MM

      Ranch, ranch dressing, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    12. TF

      Yeah. Uh-huh.

    13. MM

      Uh, sauce, ranch dressing. See?

    14. TF

      [laughs]

    15. MM

      This is why you're the chef.

    16. TF

      [laughs] Yeah. Ranch sauce. Got it. Okay, ranch.

    17. MM

      I, I asked for ranch in Delfina, and they just scoffed.

    18. TF

      [laughs]

    19. MM

      I have not been scoffed at like that in a while. And then I tried this overseas where-

    20. TF

      Oh

    21. MM

      ... there was something, and I asked for some ranch, and it, it did not go well.

    22. TF

      [laughs]

    23. MM

      I will now contrast at a restaurant called Canessa in San Francisco, a new one.

    24. TF

      Condesa or Canessa?

    25. MM

      La Canesa.

    26. TF

      Canesa, okay.

    27. MM

      And they have a lot of, like, ex-Sazon people. It's a casual restaurant, but like-

    28. TF

      Uh-huh

    29. MM

      ... really good service. They served up amazing pizza. I had the crust. I like to dip the crust in the-

    30. TF

      Uh-huh

  35. 2:22:32 – 2:23:44

    Answering ancient emails.

    1. MM

      I still insist on looking at every tab in email, and I'm tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands behind at this point. I think I have 500 tabs open right now.

    2. TF

      Wait, what?

    3. MM

      This is an absurd thing.

    4. TF

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    5. MM

      And so-

    6. TF

      You have 500 tabs open in your browsers?

    7. MM

      Yeah.

    8. TF

      Yeah, okay.

    9. MM

      And the email thing is like I'll, I'll even reply to emails from, like, seven or eight years ago.

    10. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    11. MM

      I have, like, that folder of stuff like...

    12. TF

      [laughs]

    13. MM

      And I go through it almost like masochistically, and the sad thing is like, on a third of them, it just bounces, [laughs] because people don't have the email address anymore.

    14. TF

      Wait, why on earth are you replying to emails from seven or eight years ago? Is this just like your Opus Dei penance? Like-

    15. MM

      Right. For, there's so- probably some of that

    16. TF

      ... just cat o' nine tails on the back for-

    17. MM

      I also like-

    18. TF

      ... "I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy"

    19. MM

      ... I've really appreciated people who have replied to me-

    20. TF

      All right

    21. MM

      ... when I was nobody or anything like that, and so I kinda wanna pay that forward a little bit. I also just am really impressed. There's folks who are-

    22. TF

      I feel like there may be a point when you've repaid that debt.

    23. MM

      What's that?

    24. TF

      I said, I feel like there may be a point where you've sufficiently repaid that debt, that you don't need to continue to crawl on your knees on broken glass with your tab of 10-year-old email.

    25. MM

      I didn't say this was a good idea.

    26. TF

      Oh. [laughs]

    27. MM

      You asked for absurd things.

    28. TF

      Oh, I know. This is absurd.

    29. MM

      So this is absurd. [laughs] All right. So I'm still doing that, and, um, yeah, maybe I'll work on that on my sabbatical. [laughs]

    30. TF

      There you go.

  36. 2:23:44 – 2:27:07

    The curse of the ultra-critical eye.

    1. MM

      No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

    2. TF

      [laughs]

    3. MM

      Um, I think you might have some of this as well. I have a very ultra-critical eye.

    4. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    5. MM

      And I've been constantly remodeling things instead of just enjoying them. They're, they're pretty decent and fine already, and, and this is one of those things that there's a superpower as well. Like, I can open a web app or a design and, like, immediately suppart- spot things down to the pixel.

    6. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    7. MM

      But the downside is sometimes I go in, like, an apartment that's beautiful, and I'm like, "Oh, next to that speaker, there's, like, a little divot in your ceiling"

    8. TF

      Yeah

    9. MM

      ... that-

    10. TF

      I have the same thing

    11. MM

      ... that now you're gonna see every time. No, I'm kidding. [laughs]

    12. TF

      Yes. [laughs]

    13. MM

      I just cursed your apartment.

    14. TF

      Yeah.

    15. MM

      But so that is like a, a curse as well, and I would like to be able to turn it off to just enjoy things as they are, the wabi-sabi.

    16. TF

      Mm-hmm. And, but how do you think you'll make any progress with that?

    17. MM

      No idea. Maybe someone can leave a comment. [laughs]

    18. TF

      [laughs] I've become a bit better at this. There are, there are cases where I succumb to this fine eye for detail, but I think that... And, and this comes back to the depression question a little bit. I would push back on the idea that some of the interventions I mentioned, like 30 days of meditation, are out of reach for people who are having a hard couple of weeks. I would say that the returns on something, and, and this is very simple, right? Number one, s- the social return on, say, going to a weekend transcendental meditation training, interacting with someone-

    19. MM

      Mm

    20. TF

      ... is net positive to begin with, right?

    21. MM

      Mm.

    22. TF

      So I'm assuming you can get out of bed, right? If you're, if you're crippled psychologically and can't get out of bed, then it's a different conversation. But if you can get up and you're just like, "I really just don't know what to do to get out of this funk," meditating twice a day for a week, I would say in the vast majority of cases, right, 20 minutes a session twice a day will make a difference.

Episode duration: 2:36:07

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