One of The Scariest Hackers I’ve Ever Met — Pablos Holman

1. 0:00 – 0:34

   Start.

   1. PHPablos Holman0:00

      Probably what you could say about me is I do have a kind of extreme risk tolerance. My whole career, I've only worked on things that I thought were cool or interesting. I'll optimize for that over everything else. I've gone broke a bunch of times 'cause I worked on things that were, like, way too soon, [laughs] or way too cool, or way too expensive. I'd say that's the biggest thing that... And I think it's replicable. Other people could do that.

   2. TFTim Ferriss0:22

      Yeah.

   3. PHPablos Holman0:22

      Why are you over-optimizing on safety? Why are you going to work for a big tech company, or Goldman Sachs, or whatever that's optimizing for safety?

2. 0:34 – 2:57

   The first time I witnessed Pablos’ digital sleight of hand.

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:34

      Where to begin, Pablos? I don't even know where to start. [laughs] But I will start perhaps with my first glimpse of Pablos-

   2. PHPablos Holman0:41

      Okay

   3. TFTim Ferriss0:42

      ... which was circa 2008. I think it was the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.

   4. PHPablos Holman0:50

      Oh.

   5. TFTim Ferriss0:50

      It could have been Google Ignite.

   6. PHPablos Holman0:52

      Okay.

   7. TFTim Ferriss0:53

      But it was a demonstration, and I remember watching you. [laughs] Let me actually take it to Wired magazine for a second. So [laughs] this is, this is what they wrote about this particular event. "San Diego, California. Your credit card, the lock on your front door, your cellphone's voicemail, your hotel television, and your web browser are all not as secure as you might like to think. As Pablos Holman, a hacker clad in all black, gleefully demonstrated on stage Wednesday like an evil Las Vegas magician. Holman used caller ID spoofing to break into the AT&T voicemail of the organizer of the O'Reilly Emerging Tech Conference being held this week in San Diego. Using the speakerphone, Holman changed the outgoing message of the target, Brady Forrest, while he sat helpless in a back row." Maybe that's why I'm confusing with Google Ignite, because Brady also did Google Ignite-

   8. PHPablos Holman1:38

      Okay

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:38

      ... at one point. "Don't chuckle too much. The hack works for all many AT&T users, including anyone with an iPhone. Holman continued to show how Schlage..." Is that how you say that?

   10. PHPablos Holman1:49

       Schlage.

   11. TFTim Ferriss1:50

       Schlage locks, the kind that you likely have on your front door of your house, can quickly be opened by banging a filed-down key with a small mallet. Likewise, Holman used a snippet of JavaScript to create a link that forced CNNMoney.com to load a modified Onion story saying that iTunes store would soon be selling Tim O'Reilly's home movies for $199 apiece. [laughs] Then I'm just gonna paraphrase here in the interest of time, called up a volunteer. This one, a young man sporting a headband, also had an RFID-enabled credit card. Holman waved a magic reader over the kid's pocket. Up popped the kid's credit card number and expiration date on the projection screen with a few digits X'd out. Turns out that after months of trying to figure out how to break the encrypted information transferred by the card, Holman just bought a merchant card reader on eBay for $8. Now, the only reason I think I may have been at a different event is because my memory, and maybe I conjured exaggeration for dramatic effect, is that you actually walked along the front line, the front row of the attendees, and then put all of their credit cards [laughs] up on screen.

   12. PHPablos Holman2:53

       It was wild times.

   13. TFTim Ferriss2:54

       [laughs] Wild times. So

3. 2:57 – 6:28

   How did Pablos become what he considers to be a hacker?

   1. TFTim Ferriss2:57

      I just wanna read some notes from a mutual friend of ours [laughs] to give people a taste-

   2. PHPablos Holman3:04

      Oh, man

   3. TFTim Ferriss3:04

      ... of where we're going. I put shorthand here. "Password-stealing robot?" Question mark. "Key chain unlocking [censored] within a square mile?" Question mark. "Hardware in a car in Seattle downloading and re-uploading hard drives from unsecure Wi-Fi. [laughs] Printing food. Things that taste like steak?" Question mark. [laughs]

   4. PHPablos Holman3:23

      Oh, man.

   5. TFTim Ferriss3:24

      So, so far that's all... Is that all facts-

   6. PHPablos Holman3:27

      I mean, there's-

   7. TFTim Ferriss3:28

      ... ish?

   8. PHPablos Holman3:29

      There's something factual about all of them, but certainly something must be exaggerated. But yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss3:34

      Certainly something must be exaggerated. Well, we will find out. Let's begin with a question around this term hacker.

   10. PHPablos Holman3:40

       All right.

   11. TFTim Ferriss3:41

       What is a hacker to you, and do you consider yourself a hacker?

   12. PHPablos Holman3:45

       Well, I'm a hacker because my early life was all around reverse engineering a computer, and that was sort of a, out of necessity because I grew up in Alaska and there was nobody around who'd ever seen a computer. But I got one when I was, like, nine years old, one of the first couple thousand Apple IIs ever made. So I had a computer in the cold, in the dark, in the basement in Alaska, and nobody to show me anything about how it worked. So I s- had to learn by reverse engineering, what we would call reverse engineering. You kind of break things and see what they do, and then try to learn from that. And so I learned the hard way, and then the first, I don't know, couple decades of my career was all about trying to do new things with computers and, and advanced computers. And I didn't have any formal training. I didn't go to college. Software development was invented long after I got started. So there's a lot I didn't get that most people get. And, and so a hacker is somebody who I think is attracted to puzzles. They are attracted to computer security 'cause it's a bottomless pit of puzzles. And I am trying, at this point, to hack everything but computers, and I'm trying to rescue hackers out of the computer security department and get 'em into, you know, helping go attack bigger problems.

   13. TFTim Ferriss5:06

       How did you end up acquiring a computer in Alaska?

   14. PHPablos Holman5:11

       So my dad had put some of the first, you know, mainframes in the oil industry in the, like, early '70s, let's say. And so he kinda... He wasn't a really a computer guy, but he had a notion that these things might be interesting. And when Apple needed customers at, at the beginning of Apple, they went to the oil industry 'cause that was the big, rich industry at the time. My dad said, "Sure, we'll take one." So I got one of the first Apple IIs. So I'm, like, nine, 10, 11 years old. I had Apple II, I had a skateboard. People were sure that neither of them was a good waste of time, but it was a fair fight. Like, it was just too early, and I was lit up about this thing. You know, Apple II isn't very powerful, and at th- in those days, computers weren't useful. You know, it didn't have hardly any memory, it was super slow, but I was lit up. And so I tried to convince everyone around me that this computer was gonna be amazing someday, and no one believed me. They'd never seen a computer, but they were sure they weren't cool. And so I was, like, inviting girls over to my basement to show them my computer and-

   15. TFTim Ferriss6:13

       [laughs] Is that what they called it back then?

   16. PHPablos Holman6:15

       [laughs] You know, it, it had an, im- it made an impression-

   17. TFTim Ferriss6:18

       [laughs]

   18. PHPablos Holman6:19

       ... just not, not the one that maybe I was going for. So-

   19. TFTim Ferriss6:22

       [laughs]

   20. PHPablos Holman6:22

       ... I'm still doing that. You know?

   21. TFTim Ferriss6:23

       Yeah.

   22. PHPablos Holman6:23

       I'm still trying to convince people that these technologies are important.

4. 6:28 – 11:35

   The off-label mindset that makes a good hacker (like Samy Kamkar) great.

   1. TFTim Ferriss6:28

      So I'm trying to pull from your book, which I've been devouring.

   2. PHPablos Holman6:33

      All right. [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss6:34

      Deep Future: Creating Technology that Matters, about three-quarters of the way through, and I'm gonna do something dangerous 'cause I just got a off of opioid painkillers [laughs] from my arm surgery, try to pull from memory.

   4. PHPablos Holman6:44

      Way to go. [laughs]

   5. TFTim Ferriss6:45

      But let's, let's give it a good college try. Do hackers ask some version of not, what does this do, but what can I get this to do?

   6. PHPablos Holman6:55

      Yeah, so the way I described that before in the book is, is just a simple way of thinking about the mindset of a hacker. Most people, if you get a new gadget like your phone and give it to your mom, she'll ask you, "What does this do?"

   7. TFTim Ferriss7:10

      Mm-hmm.

   8. PHPablos Holman7:11

      That's a totally normal question. "iPhone," Mom says on the box. If you give a new gadget-

   9. TFTim Ferriss7:16

      [laughs]

   10. PHPablos Holman7:17

       ... to a hacker, then the question is, "What can I make this do?"

   11. TFTim Ferriss7:21

       Yeah.

   12. PHPablos Holman7:22

       And they're starting from a completely different position. They're gonna take out the screws, break it into a lot of pieces. You've met Samy.

   13. TFTim Ferriss7:29

       Yeah.

   14. PHPablos Holman7:29

       He's the poster child for this, you know?

   15. TFTim Ferriss7:31

       Could you-

   16. PHPablos Holman7:32

       He's violating the warranty-

   17. TFTim Ferriss7:33

       Yeah

   18. PHPablos Holman7:33

       ... before he got the shrink wrap off.

   19. TFTim Ferriss7:34

       Can you-

   20. PHPablos Holman7:35

       Yeah

   21. TFTim Ferriss7:35

       ... just for entertainment value, people can listen to my conversation with Samy Kamkar-

   22. PHPablos Holman7:38

       Yeah, do it

   23. TFTim Ferriss7:39

       ... to hear about his amazing adventures and [laughs] his crime and punishment involving MySpace-

   24. PHPablos Holman7:45

       Oh, yeah

   25. TFTim Ferriss7:45

       ... where he wasn't allowed to touch computers-

   26. PHPablos Holman7:46

       Samy is just-

   27. TFTim Ferriss7:46

       ... for a while. But what did he-

   28. PHPablos Holman7:47

       He's just the most delightful hacker

   29. TFTim Ferriss7:48

       ... he's super delightful human. What did he do with Google Maps?

   30. PHPablos Holman7:52

       Oh, Google Maps is one of my favorite things he did. Early on, Samy was finally allowed to use computers again.
5. 11:35 – 14:56

   The magic of Rodney Mullen.

   1. PHPablos Holman11:35

      Yeah.

   2. TFTim Ferriss11:36

      Well, thank you for saying that.

   3. PHPablos Holman11:37

      Yeah.

   4. TFTim Ferriss11:38

      Uh, that's a huge compliment coming from you, and it's also a very smooth segue because you mentioned two things that were of questionable value when you were a kid, computers-

   5. PHPablos Holman11:47

      Yeah

   6. TFTim Ferriss11:48

      ... and skateboards.

   7. PHPablos Holman11:48

      Yeah.

   8. TFTim Ferriss11:49

      Rodney Mullen, could you describe-

   9. PHPablos Holman11:51

      Oh, man

   10. TFTim Ferriss11:51

       ... to people who Rodney Mullen is?

   11. PHPablos Holman11:53

       Oh, man. So Rodney Mullen I don't have to describe for anyone who ever touched a skateboard-

   12. TFTim Ferriss11:58

       Mm

   13. PHPablos Holman11:58

       ... because Rodney is the godfather of street skating. He's the guy who invented every single thing you've ever seen a kid do on a skateboard. He's the first one to, like, ollie a skateboard, which is the fundamental basis of all s- street skating. I'm a shitty skateboarder, but- Rodney is one of my favorite people on Earth. He's such a delightful human, and we spend all night hanging out together talking about everything but skateboarding.

   14. TFTim Ferriss12:22

       [laughs]

   15. PHPablos Holman12:23

       But I- I've used him as an example of an inventor, again, because I'm trying to show people that a inventor is a valuable and important thing. Hackers are one source of inventor, but skateboarder is inventor. There's a difference between Rodney and every other skateboarder, and that difference is that Rodney will imagine something in his mind that's never been done before, may be impossible. He can spend months every night trying to make it happen on a skateboard, and then finally get it.

   16. TFTim Ferriss12:58

       Did he grow up in Santa Monica?

   17. PHPablos Holman12:59

       No, he grew up in rural Florida, so we have this kind of odd parallel childhood. I mean, Rodney is way more important than me, but Rodney's childhood was in rural Florida, no neighbors, like a farm, and he had a little patch of cement in the driveway. His entire skateboarding life started there. No one around him could skateboard.

   18. TFTim Ferriss13:23

       Yeah.

   19. PHPablos Holman13:23

       He didn't have any influences. He just had his brain and the skateboard.

   20. TFTim Ferriss13:28

       Yeah.

   21. PHPablos Holman13:28

       So he invented what was possible, and so I think that is so important, so it's kind of analogous to my Apple II and Alaska thing. But what's so cool about it is that once Rodney does a new trick, puts it on YouTube, two weeks later, kids in Kazakhstan are doing it better than him.

   22. TFTim Ferriss13:45

       Yeah.

   23. PHPablos Holman13:46

       And so it's a very important contrast, I think, to show people the difference between what an inventor does the first time. The zero to one, that first time is incredibly hard. It takes lifetimes, it takes careers, it takes everything you've got to do something the first time that humans have never seen before. Every time after that, the second time to the nth time, that's craft. That is not invention. That's not art. That's craft. You know, you need a skill to do it. Rodney needed to be able to skate to, to invent, but I want people to understand how important inventors are, and we throw them under the bus. Like, they don't even... You don't know anybody probably besides me whose business card says inventor. It's not a legitimate career choice.

   24. TFTim Ferriss14:31

       I only know one person, a guy named Stephen Key, who's just prolific in the toy world, but-

   25. PHPablos Holman14:36

       Okay, cool.

   26. TFTim Ferriss14:37

       He's the o-

   27. PHPablos Holman14:37

       You know one

   28. TFTim Ferriss14:37

       ... but he's literally the only one.

   29. PHPablos Holman14:39

       But how many music artists could you name?

   30. TFTim Ferriss14:42

       Yeah.
6. 14:56 – 18:10

   How Eric Johanson and Pablos gave life to adorable password thief Hackerbot.

   1. TFTim Ferriss14:56

      I wanna dive into some of the, the personal, because some [laughs] of the magic tricks, so to speak, I wanna try to unpack a bit.

   2. PHPablos Holman15:05

      Sure.

   3. TFTim Ferriss15:05

      And it might be pearls before swine because I'm not technical-

   4. PHPablos Holman15:08

      It's okay

   5. TFTim Ferriss15:09

      ... do not know how to program.

   6. PHPablos Holman15:10

      No, no.

   7. TFTim Ferriss15:10

      But I am curious, for instance, this robot, I don't remember its name.

   8. PHPablos Holman15:16

      Oh, the Hackerbot.

   9. TFTim Ferriss15:17

      The Hackerbot-

   10. PHPablos Holman15:17

       Sure

   11. TFTim Ferriss15:18

       ... with the printer attached, right? Did I have-

   12. PHPablos Holman15:19

       Oh, yeah.

   13. TFTim Ferriss15:20

       Okay, what did this do?

   14. PHPablos Holman15:21

       It did, no, it had a screen, not a printer.

   15. TFTim Ferriss15:22

       It had a screen, okay. How did that work?

   16. PHPablos Holman15:24

       Okay. [laughs] So-

   17. TFTim Ferriss15:25

       And what did it do? Maybe you could describe it.

   18. PHPablos Holman15:27

       So in, it was like t- uh, a long time ago. So Eric Johanson is kinda my co-conspirator on a lot of hacking stuff. He and I were hanging out. We went to one of those first robotics competitions, which are huge now.

   19. TFTim Ferriss15:40

       Yeah.

   20. PHPablos Holman15:40

       It's like teenagers making robots that they turned into, like, a spectator sport. And we realized, like, oh, these kids are making robots. If they can do it, we should be able to do it, 'cause we're, you know, super geniuses [laughs] with a machine shop. I had the Blue Origin machine shop. So I figured we could, we could build a robot. Eric is amazing. You know, you come up with an idea, he'll smoke cigarettes and stay up all night and get it done while I go to sleep. And so Eric-

   21. TFTim Ferriss16:03

       That's a great friend to have.

   22. PHPablos Holman16:04

       Yeah, a great friend to have.

   23. TFTim Ferriss16:05

       [laughs]

   24. PHPablos Holman16:05

       So Eric starts, you know, trying to get PWM controls and all this stuff to build a robot. I bought the wheels. You know, I'm real- 'cause I'm good at buying wheels. We started building this thing, kind of assembling it as it goes.

   25. TFTim Ferriss16:17

       And these are robots for a competition?

   26. PHPablos Holman16:19

       No, we just were making a robot-

   27. TFTim Ferriss16:21

       I got it

   28. PHPablos Holman16:21

       ... for no good reason.

   29. TFTim Ferriss16:22

       I got it. I got it.

   30. PHPablos Holman16:22

       And eventually we figured out it should have a reason, so we're like, "Well, what should our robot do?" Neither of us drink beer, so it didn't need to fetch beer. We're like, "Well, we could make it do some hacking since that's what we're normally doing." So it became the Hackerbot, and everything the robot [laughs] can do, a nerd with a Linux T-shirt and a laptop can do.
7. 18:10 – 21:37

   Hacker self-defense and the zero-click exploit market.

   1. TFTim Ferriss18:10

      Is it fair to say, and I tend to tilt a little dystopian, so I'll just disclose that in advance, that- If you are a legitimate target who is non-technical-

   2. PHPablos Holman18:22

      Yeah

   3. TFTim Ferriss18:22

      ... of a very competent hacker, that your, your goose is cooked. I'm sure there are-

   4. PHPablos Holman18:29

      Yeah

   5. TFTim Ferriss18:29

      ... basic digital hygiene things that you-

   6. PHPablos Holman18:31

      Yeah

   7. TFTim Ferriss18:31

      ... can do.

   8. PHPablos Holman18:32

      You've heard them all.

   9. TFTim Ferriss18:33

      But what are your thoughts? Because I've talked to people, for instance, in the intelligence community, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, if you're the target of a state actor, and like-

   10. PHPablos Holman18:40

       Yeah

   11. TFTim Ferriss18:40

       ... the entire machine behind it," they're like, "They're gonna get your stuff."

   12. PHPablos Holman18:44

       That's true.

   13. TFTim Ferriss18:45

       Yeah.

   14. PHPablos Holman18:45

       The problem is, it is a moving target, so there's this kind of war of escalation between attackers and defenders, and a lot of what people are familiar with is just, it's just kids in Romania screwing around, try and attack against every IP address on the internet and see what falls in their lap. That's kind of, you know, stealing credit cards and Bitcoin wallets and stuff, so that you could kinda say doesn't really count.

   15. TFTim Ferriss19:08

       Mm.

   16. PHPablos Holman19:09

       It sucks, but all the st- recommendations you've heard of use a password manager and stuff will help you with that. But if you are the target of, of a sophisticated mostly nation state actor, it would just be an extreme lifestyle change to insulate yourself against that. And there's a very sophisticated game of finding new exploits, selling them, mostly to governments, and then they, they sit on them. They don't use them because every time you use a n- new exploit, like say if I've got a way of hacking an iPhone. That is so valuable, I'm gonna save it for a really, really, really good use, right?

   17. TFTim Ferriss19:50

       Yep.

   18. PHPablos Holman19:51

       The day I use it, I risk someone figuring out that it exists. That, so I want it to be what's called zero-day.

   19. TFTim Ferriss19:57

       Yeah.

   20. PHPablos Holman19:57

       Yeah. So you don't use those lightly, so most people don't have anything to worry about, 'cause governments don't give a shit about you.

   21. TFTim Ferriss20:03

       Right.

   22. PHPablos Holman20:03

       And so I think you're fine. If they start to [laughs] then you're gonna have a problem.

   23. TFTim Ferriss20:08

       What does the marketplace look like for zero-day exploits, right? Because I've heard-

   24. PHPablos Holman20:14

       Yeah

   25. TFTim Ferriss20:14

       ... of, say, Israeli developers formerly of intelligence developing these exploits, these zero-click exploits, if I'm using the term correctly, and then they sell it for like a million dollars a pop, or two million dollars-

   26. PHPablos Holman20:25

       Yeah

   27. TFTim Ferriss20:25

       ... a pop for specific targets or something like that. But how does that transaction actually take place?

   28. PHPablos Holman20:31

       I don't play this game anymore, but friends do. Say I were to discover a way to make a zero-click exploit for iPhone.

   29. TFTim Ferriss20:37

       Yeah.

   30. PHPablos Holman20:37

       That's probably the most valuable thing in the world right now.
8. 21:37 – 24:36

   International pockets of hacker density.

   1. PHPablos Holman21:37

      risky turf. American hackers don't wanna play that game because they can make more money doing legit stuff. If you're a Romanian hacker, there's no six-figure job for you, so you might play with seeing y- how I can use that to get Bitcoin wallets or something. Love Romania, by the way.

   2. TFTim Ferriss21:54

      I do too.

   3. PHPablos Holman21:54

      Yeah. Amazing.

   4. TFTim Ferriss21:55

      Love Cluj. I was just there a few months ago.

   5. PHPablos Holman21:56

      Amazing hackers.

   6. TFTim Ferriss21:57

      Brașov if you have the chance, folks. Also, little known fact, lots of bears in Romania. I find that to be-

   7. PHPablos Holman22:03

      Not compared to where I come from, but [laughs]

   8. TFTim Ferriss22:04

      I find that to be an appealing draw, but-

   9. PHPablos Holman22:05

      Their bears are little, though

   10. TFTim Ferriss22:06

       ... that's just me. In any case, are there pockets of incredible hacker density geographically speaking for whatever reason? Like you see this with all sorts of things, where there's a particular tennis school-

   11. PHPablos Holman22:20

       Yeah

   12. TFTim Ferriss22:20

       ... in Russia that produces just an absurd percentage of top tennis players for a decade or two.

   13. PHPablos Holman22:26

       Yeah.

   14. TFTim Ferriss22:27

       Or there's a million examples from a million disciplines. Does that exist for hacking? Is it like, "Oh, this particular city in China. Oh, this particular place in Uzbekistan," or wherever?

   15. PHPablos Holman22:38

       Well, there's two things that cause that. So one is a center of gravity of technical excellence, and, and so you could say places like Hungary put out amazing mathematicians, which translates to pretty good understanding of computers. Some of those Eastern European places had that and/or still do, and so there's a center of gravity there. Germany had these extraordinary hackers that would blow our minds. You know, we would go over there and just wonder why we were even-

   16. TFTim Ferriss23:06

       You say had, past tense.

   17. PHPablos Holman23:08

       I don't know now, 'cause I-

   18. TFTim Ferriss23:09

       Mm

   19. PHPablos Holman23:09

       ... again, I'm sort of-

   20. TFTim Ferriss23:10

       Hacking, yeah

   21. PHPablos Holman23:10

       ... hacking other things. But we used to go to the Chaos Computer Congress in Germany, which is like the big hacker convention, and you know, we could, we could blow their minds a little, but they could blow our minds a lot. [laughs]

   22. TFTim Ferriss23:20

       Yeah.

   23. PHPablos Holman23:21

       So that was cool, but what happened is in the early 2000s, Microsoft started to get serious about computer security, and they started to import hackers to Seattle from everywhere. I was in Seattle at the time, again, graduating out of hacking and computer stuff into other things, but all my friends were hackers. And what was great is we had this critical mass of hackers from all over the world, including Germany and all these places, that Microsoft imported. So that was a center of gravity for a while.

   24. TFTim Ferriss23:52

       Must have been fun grabbing dinner or drinks with that crew after work.

   25. PHPablos Holman23:56

       Yeah, that's what we were doing.

   26. TFTim Ferriss23:57

       [laughs]

   27. PHPablos Holman23:57

       It was, it was, actually, it was funny because it was at the same d- in the same era Dodgeball came out, which is like this-

   28. TFTim Ferriss24:03

       [laughs]

   29. PHPablos Holman24:04

       ... pre-iPhone location-

   30. TFTim Ferriss24:06

       Oh, I thought-
9. 24:36 – 25:06

   Conventions where modern hackers congregate.

   1. PHPablos Holman24:36

      good era. I, I think it's hard to say where our center of gravity is. Hackers have conventions that they go to now.

   2. TFTim Ferriss24:42

      What are the most interesting to you?

   3. PHPablos Holman24:44

      DEF CON kinda got a little out of control. I think it's a little too big. And then we did ShmooCon for 20 years. This is the last year though, so that one's over. But you could still go to Germany for CCC. That would probably be the best thing to do. In the US, uh-

   4. TFTim Ferriss24:56

      I can't leave my phone [laughs] in my hotel room.

   5. PHPablos Holman24:58

      ... ToorCon. Yeah, ToorCon if you-- Oh, yeah, don't take any computers to these things. Go naked and you'll be fine. [laughs]

   6. TFTim Ferriss25:04

      [laughs] Naked and afraid.

   7. PHPablos Holman25:05

      There you go. [laughs]

10. 25:06 – 27:30

    Why, in geopolitics, technology is a game lost by the non-players.

    1. TFTim Ferriss25:06

       Yeah, CCC edition.

    2. PHPablos Holman25:07

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss25:07

       You know. Let me just pull on this geographic thread a little bit, and then we're gonna-

    4. PHPablos Holman25:15

       Sure

    5. TFTim Ferriss25:15

       ... move to other things. But this is from another of our [laughs] mutual friends. So questions around geopolitics from a tech angle. In other words, who is leading in what? Do you have any thoughts on that?

    6. PHPablos Holman25:28

       Oh, my God.

    7. TFTim Ferriss25:30

       [laughs]

    8. PHPablos Holman25:30

       Geopolitics.

    9. TFTim Ferriss25:31

       It's a promising start.

    10. PHPablos Holman25:32

        You know, here's how I would try to think about it. Technology in general, especially computers, especially computer security, these things are a war of escalation. You cannot win that war. You can lose very easily by not playing. And so for better or worse, I think it's important to think about these things this way. You know, you can kinda see it, if you're gonna say geopolitically on technology in general, you know, China and the US are definitely trying to play.

    11. TFTim Ferriss26:07

        Yep.

    12. PHPablos Holman26:08

        And you could see a lot of places, that I won't name, like Europe, that you absolutely could say are not playing. [laughs] And so you'll see how that plays out. You can see how it plays out with lots of technologies.

    13. TFTim Ferriss26:21

        What are the main technologies? I mean, are we talking semiconductors and AI? Are we talking about-

    14. PHPablos Holman26:25

        These days, those are the biggest ones, and the reason they're so big is they're generally applicable. So, you know, computers can be applied to everything. They'll end up, you know, if, if you haven't got one in your pocket by now, you will. I mean, they just... They go everywhere. So computer's a very important technology that's generally applicable. You just can't ignore it. So you could hang out in Copenhagen and draft off China and the US if that's what you wanna do, but I think it's dangerous not to play the game. So you wanna get to the point where you can at least wield these technologies to whatever extent you think is important. So that's as much as I think people really need to know. Now, there's a whole stack, you know? Those chips, you know, the software relies on the chips, which rely increasingly on energy. All these hyperscalers have woken up this year to the fact that a chip from NVIDIA needs a [laughs] shit ton of energy, and we've been burning gas to get it, so maybe we should find something better. So now there's a lot of attention on improving energy. I'm so excited about that.

11. 27:30 – 31:21

    The case to rally behind new nuclear power.

    1. TFTim Ferriss27:30

       Do you think the hyperscalers will actually help resurrect nuclear energy in the US?

    2. PHPablos Holman27:36

       I think hyperscalers are gonna save us.

    3. TFTim Ferriss27:38

       Yeah.

    4. PHPablos Holman27:38

       It's a crazy thing to say.

    5. TFTim Ferriss27:40

       It's kinda wild to say, huh?

    6. PHPablos Holman27:41

       It's a crazy thing to say, but you can thank Meta and Microsoft and Google. And the reason is we don't make enough energy on this planet. Now you could say we make enough energy for Americans because we're not very price sensitive and we can just keep throwing money at it, but you will watch, even not counting AI, you will see that energy demand is off the charts. Like, try to remember when Shell or Chevron advertised to get you to buy more gas.

    7. TFTim Ferriss28:13

       [laughs]

    8. PHPablos Holman28:14

       Like, it's the biggest market in the world. They don't have to advertise their product.

    9. TFTim Ferriss28:17

       Yeah.

    10. PHPablos Holman28:18

        I mean, they advertise to get you to buy it from them instead of-

    11. TFTim Ferriss28:20

        Well, speaking of dodgeball-

    12. PHPablos Holman28:21

        Yeah

    13. TFTim Ferriss28:21

        ... I think in your book you wrote that at one point, was it the Senate was like switch, switching players on a dodgeball team between [laughs] Chevron and someone else?

    14. PHPablos Holman28:32

        Well, yeah, I mean s- I would say the oil industry probably staffed Congress-

    15. TFTim Ferriss28:37

        Yeah, correct

    16. PHPablos Holman28:37

        ... for most of our lives.

    17. TFTim Ferriss28:39

        Yeah.

    18. PHPablos Holman28:39

        Now it's hyperscalers.

    19. TFTim Ferriss28:41

        Yeah.

    20. PHPablos Holman28:41

        And so we are getting the legislation that we need. You know, last year, the most bipartisan bill I know of was called ADVANCE. That was to build nuclear reactors in the US. Now, Trump has signed multiple executive orders to build nuclear reactors and free it up, and it's working. The overhaul of the NRC, which regulates nuclear, has been amazing. They're supportive and helpful. In my lifetime, they were usually a anti-nuclear activist group.

    21. TFTim Ferriss29:11

        Yeah.

    22. PHPablos Holman29:11

        Like, it's been crazy 'cause we invented one of the most advanced nuclear reactors at the Intellectual Ventures lab, where I was before. And for the last 18 years, you've seen me on stage telling people, "Nuclear reactors are awesome and they're coming," and they weren't coming, and that is because the NRC regulated them into oblivion. That has all changed now. And as of this year, this is crazy. As of this week, so we have now a nuclear reactor company I should describe which has invented a reactor that fits in a borehole. They bury it a mile deep. So this reactor is unquestionably safe.

    23. TFTim Ferriss29:50

        It's like the size of a small car or something like that?

    24. PHPablos Holman29:52

        It's the size of a Toyota, not more complicated than a Toyota, and the thing can be made in a factory like a Toyota.

    25. TFTim Ferriss29:58

        Mm-hmm.

    26. PHPablos Holman29:59

        But it's buried under 10 billion tons of rock. It's something that, you know, if anything went wrong, there'd be no radioactivity at the surface. It's a mile from anyone's backyard.

    27. TFTim Ferriss30:10

        And when you retire it or when it stops functioning-

    28. PHPablos Holman30:12

        You just fill a hole with dirt

    29. TFTim Ferriss30:13

        ... you just bury it.

    30. PHPablos Holman30:14

        Yeah. Leave the uranium where we found it. Like, it's a really exciting way of making nuclear reactors.
12. 31:21 – 38:00

    Sequencing priorities so the US can remain technologically competitive.

    1. TFTim Ferriss31:21

       Do you think the US is kind of a, a day late and a dollar short in terms of waking up to the reality? Because my understanding-

    2. PHPablos Holman31:28

       Yeah

    3. TFTim Ferriss31:28

       ... and I'm not gonna get the number right-

    4. PHPablos Holman31:29

       It's okay

    5. TFTim Ferriss31:29

       ... but looking at China, they have f-

    6. PHPablos Holman31:31

       Yeah

    7. TFTim Ferriss31:31

       ... how many functioning react-

    8. PHPablos Holman31:32

       I think they have about 130 reactor projects and, and they tend to get them done on time, on budget. There's different technologies. They're trying 'em all. It takes them about three years to build the reactor, and those are big ones. They're smoking it. It's amazing.

    9. TFTim Ferriss31:47

       And is that, uh, legac- well, maybe it's cleaned up, but mostly legacy technology in terms of the reactors

    10. PHPablos Holman31:53

        Yeah, so there are different kinds of reactor technologies, and I won't weigh in on that because I think we need 1,000 silver bullets, and I kinda want them all to succeed. Obviously, I invest in the ones I think [laughs] are the best. But the future of reactors involves a bunch of advanced reactor technologies. So, like, the TerraPower reactor that we invented at the Intellectual Ventures Lab, which we can't build because it's new technology, not because there's any other reason-

    11. TFTim Ferriss32:22

        That's a regulatory hurdle

    12. PHPablos Holman32:24

        It's a regulatory... But just 'cause the US has never figured out how to approve any advra- [laughs] advanced reactor technology. Once they do, we could build something like that. That reactor is powered by nuclear waste. It literally recycles nuclear waste inside the reactor. So that's where we wanna go. That might take a while. So the deep fission reactor that I described that goes in the borehole, no new technology, just a simple design-

    13. TFTim Ferriss32:49

        Mm-hmm

    14. PHPablos Holman32:50

        ... and you get the containment for the price of a hole, and we have a whole industry that's real good at holes.

    15. TFTim Ferriss32:55

        If you were, I'm not saying you would agree to this, but if, if you were brought in by people you trust to advise the current administration on what the US needs to do-

    16. PHPablos Holman33:07

        Yeah

    17. TFTim Ferriss33:07

        ... to remain globally, strategically advantaged-

    18. PHPablos Holman33:12

        Yeah

    19. TFTim Ferriss33:12

        ... right, or at least not lose, what are some of those pieces of advice that you would give?

    20. PHPablos Holman33:17

        Wow. Well, I'd say the number one thing is gonna be energy.

    21. TFTim Ferriss33:21

        Mm-hmm.

    22. PHPablos Holman33:21

        In energy, the number one thing is fission reactors. Love fusion, hope we get it someday. Don't hold your breath. We have other technologies that I think could happen sooner than fusion that we could talk about, like space solar. But I would say aggressively deploy nuclear reactors, make that as easy as possible. Take on the... I mean, the biggest problem remaining is the litigious nature of the US, so you start a nuclear reactor project, you get 1,000 lawsuits. We gotta squelch that because we're competing with China, and China doesn't have that problem. [laughs]

    23. TFTim Ferriss33:55

        Yeah.

    24. PHPablos Holman33:56

        And so, you know, make a clean regulatory track that makes it possible to deploy these things at scale. That's the most important thing.

    25. TFTim Ferriss34:03

        Mm.

    26. PHPablos Holman34:03

        If you get nuclear reactors, you solve a lot of other problems for free.

    27. TFTim Ferriss34:07

        Right.

    28. PHPablos Holman34:07

        And so I think that with limited attention span, that would be where my focus would be. Commercially, we can take care of the chips and everything after that.

    29. TFTim Ferriss34:15

        I may be just patting myself on the back here in a self-congratulatory way, but when you talk about sequencing, picking the proper sequence of problems to solve-

    30. PHPablos Holman34:26

        Mm-hmm
13. 38:00 – 43:51

    Evaluating risk and reward in deep tech investment.

    1. TFTim Ferriss38:00

       The inventions that you describe in your book are really compelling, right? And as I believe you describe them, please fact-check me if I'm getting this off, but that with deep tech, and you should probably define what that means.

    2. PHPablos Holman38:16

       Sure.

    3. TFTim Ferriss38:16

       The risk isn't so much... It doesn't seem to be market risk or a need risk, right? Like, people could read about the description and say, "Of course we should use that." There's technical risk up front-

    4. PHPablos Holman38:28

       Yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss38:28

       ... but I'm wondering how you think about and assess as an investor regulatory risk and-

    6. PHPablos Holman38:35

       Yeah

    7. TFTim Ferriss38:36

       ... all of the red tape and bramble bushes-

    8. PHPablos Holman38:41

       Yeah

    9. TFTim Ferriss38:41

       ... that entail getting something like that to launch or adoption.

    10. PHPablos Holman38:45

        Okay. So-

    11. TFTim Ferriss38:46

        'Cause you have built or indirectly funded people who have built-

    12. PHPablos Holman38:49

        Yeah

    13. TFTim Ferriss38:50

        ... much better mousetraps.

    14. PHPablos Holman38:51

        Right.

    15. TFTim Ferriss38:51

        Like, quite a lot.

    16. PHPablos Holman38:52

        Sure.

    17. TFTim Ferriss38:53

        And been involved with Nathan Myhrvold's lab and building technology for, say-

    18. PHPablos Holman38:58

        Yeah

    19. TFTim Ferriss38:58

        ... reducing the likelihood or severity of hurricanes. Simple tech, which-

    20. PHPablos Holman39:03

        Right

    21. TFTim Ferriss39:03

        ... we could get into, and it's like, why the hell isn't it being used?

    22. PHPablos Holman39:06

        So there's a few things there. I usually get involved when I see a technology that I think is ten times better than state-of-the-art.

    23. TFTim Ferriss39:17

        Yeah.

    24. PHPablos Holman39:18

        If you go to, like, Hewlett-Packard, there's somebody there who's an engineer that's super smart figuring out how to make inkjet printers, like, 1% better.

    25. TFTim Ferriss39:25

        Mm-hmm.

    26. PHPablos Holman39:26

        Which is awesome, but I want the guy who's figuring out how to make whatever comes after inkjet.

    27. TFTim Ferriss39:31

        Yeah.

    28. PHPablos Holman39:31

        So two times better, there's probably not enough margin there to ensure that you can go the distance, but ten times better, that's a real window. You know-

    29. TFTim Ferriss39:42

        Mm-hmm

    30. PHPablos Holman39:42

        ... it's ten times cheaper, ten times faster, ten times more efficient, ten times, you know, on any metric could be a good window. So that's kinda where I, I see deep tech breakthroughs as becoming sort of contenders, and then we try to invest in them and help get them out of the lab or out of the garage and into a startup. So that's what I'm looking for in the world. Now, that's a much different thing than what... You know, we're both very familiar with startups and venture capital and probably audiences too. The, the last couple decades of, of Silicon Valley, let's say, have evolved a very impressive machinery for funding iPhone apps to have weed delivered to your dorm room by a drone.
14. 43:51 – 49:56

    Shoring up the shape of shipping.

    1. TFTim Ferriss43:51

       Is top-line revenue and GDP a fair comparison? Or-

    2. PHPablos Holman43:54

       It's... I mean, you could nitpick over the details.

    3. TFTim Ferriss43:56

       Yeah.

    4. PHPablos Holman43:57

       Actually, if, if it's unfair-

    5. TFTim Ferriss43:58

       Let's be on my pay grade. I'm just kidding

    6. PHPablos Holman43:59

       ... it's unfair in my advantage.

    7. TFTim Ferriss44:00

       Okay.

    8. PHPablos Holman44:00

       It's unfair to my advantage, so I'm trying to be generous here.

    9. TFTim Ferriss44:04

       Yeah.

    10. PHPablos Holman44:04

        And so just rough numbers, we can nitpick later.

    11. TFTim Ferriss44:08

        [laughs]

    12. PHPablos Holman44:08

        Fact-check me, guys. 98%, if you fact-check me, I'm gonna win. Okay. 98% of what's left is, that's energy, but it's shipping. Shipping is a $2 trillion industry, as big as software. We could talk about that. Durable goods.

    13. TFTim Ferriss44:24

        And by shipping, you mean mostly ocean-based?

    14. PHPablos Holman44:28

        Right. Durable goods, all your sinks and bicycles and light fixtures and chairs, that's $4 trillion a year. Automotive is another four, five, six trillion. You know, [laughs] I mean, we're just talking about massive industries, bigger than the entire tech industry, and we've completely ignored them in Silicon Valley. That's what deep tech is. That's what we're going after.

    15. TFTim Ferriss44:52

        What about the regulatory, uh, implementation piece? Because, for instance-

    16. PHPablos Holman44:55

        Yeah

    17. TFTim Ferriss44:55

        ... I was reading the book, and I'm fascinated by containers-

    18. PHPablos Holman45:00

        Oh, okay

    19. TFTim Ferriss45:01

        ... and just how the standardizing of containers-

    20. PHPablos Holman45:03

        Oh, cool

    21. TFTim Ferriss45:03

        ... revolutionized, [laughs] I mean-

    22. PHPablos Holman45:07

        For sure

    23. TFTim Ferriss45:07

        ... activity on the planet.

    24. PHPablos Holman45:08

        Yeah.

    25. TFTim Ferriss45:09

        And learning through your book about the different types of fuel and just the congestion at ports caused by extraordinarily large seaborne-

    26. PHPablos Holman45:19

        Yeah

    27. TFTim Ferriss45:19

        ... container ships-

    28. PHPablos Holman45:20

        Yeah

    29. TFTim Ferriss45:20

        ... cargo ships, which is a necessity to reduce drag because they're optimizing for fuel.

    30. PHPablos Holman45:25

        Right.
15. 49:56 – 51:47

    How Pablos gained his name and famous frames.

    1. PHPablos Holman49:56

       islands.

    2. TFTim Ferriss49:56

       Is Pablos a common name in Alaska?

    3. PHPablos Holman49:58

       [laughs] Pablos is a totally fake name-

    4. TFTim Ferriss50:01

       [laughs] Yeah

    5. PHPablos Holman50:02

       ... 'cause all hackers have fake names. Um-

    6. TFTim Ferriss50:04

       Is the last name fake, too?

    7. PHPablos Holman50:05

       No, I'm not trying to fly below the radar at this point.

    8. TFTim Ferriss50:08

       Yeah.

    9. PHPablos Holman50:08

       My-- I got that username on a mainframe when I was, like, 12-

    10. TFTim Ferriss50:12

        Okay

    11. PHPablos Holman50:13

        ... and I don't even remember how, so-

    12. TFTim Ferriss50:14

        Okay [laughs]

    13. PHPablos Holman50:14

        ... I've been called Pablos for-

    14. TFTim Ferriss50:16

        Forever

    15. PHPablos Holman50:16

        ... longer than anyone can remember.

    16. TFTim Ferriss50:17

        [laughs] And I have to ask, I know we're taking a left turn here, but on the cover of your book, you have your glasses.

    17. PHPablos Holman50:24

        Oh, man.

    18. TFTim Ferriss50:25

        In every video I've ever seen, I see you in the glasses. What is the story behind the glasses?

    19. PHPablos Holman50:29

        So I've been wearing the same glasses for, like, 20 years, which is kind of why they ended up on the cover of the book and people associate me with the glasses. These are the best glasses ever made, which is why I started wearing them. And 'cause I'm in labs all the time, I kinda need safety glasses that wrap around and-

    20. TFTim Ferriss50:48

        Are they prescription?

    21. PHPablos Holman50:49

        Yeah.

    22. TFTim Ferriss50:49

        Okay.

    23. PHPablos Holman50:49

        And I need-- I've been wearing glasses since I was four, but, but I started wearing these, they're made of titanium alloy.

    24. TFTim Ferriss50:56

        What are they? Are they Oakleys?

    25. PHPablos Holman50:58

        Oakley made them in their heyday. So back before Oakley got sold out, they had these designers who were like little gods that could do whatever they wanted, and they built this factory in, like, Nevada to make titanium frames. But this is intensive to do, 425,000 watts to make one pair of frame.

    26. TFTim Ferriss51:18

        [laughs]

    27. PHPablos Holman51:18

        And they have all these volatile gases in the casting process, and so eventually the factory blew up-

    28. TFTim Ferriss51:24

        [laughs]

    29. PHPablos Holman51:25

        ... and nobody will ever make glasses this way again.

    30. TFTim Ferriss51:27

        [laughs]
16. 51:47 – 52:42

    Pablos is a possible-ist.

    1. TFTim Ferriss51:47

       Are you optimistic? Would you, would you describe yourself as optimistic?

    2. PHPablos Holman51:50

       Well, people cast me that way, and I, I think it's probably fair. But what I wrote in the book about that is that I think I'm not a Pollyanna-ish optimist. Like, I don't think everything's gonna be awesome. What I think is the future could be awesome, that we have some volition in this, that we build that future ourselves with the toolkit we have. That toolkit is largely the technologies we have. And so I think it's up to us to try. It's up to us to decide where we wanna go, what we wanna aim for, what future we wanna build, and do that. So I call it possible-ist. So I think a future that's awesome is absolutely possible. A shitty future is also possible, but the balance is up to us.

    3. TFTim Ferriss52:39

       Mm-hmm.

    4. PHPablos Holman52:39

       And so that's how I would describe that.

17. 52:42 – 55:13

    What makes Pablos an attractive hire for the world’s richest people?

    1. TFTim Ferriss52:42

       Let's talk about the B word for a second, billionaires. So I know of at least three, you don't need to name names, although you mentioned a few, uh, publicly, who just find you to be the shiniest, most attractive hire, and I wanna know why you think that is, because they're not, they're not looking for script kiddies in Romania, right? There are a lot of people who can steal passwords-

    2. PHPablos Holman53:08

       Yeah

    3. TFTim Ferriss53:08

       ... and who are capable-

    4. PHPablos Holman53:09

       Yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss53:09

       ... hackers of various types. But you just seem to pop up again, again, and again on these teams. Why is that?

    6. PHPablos Holman53:18

       So first of all, lots of hackers that are way smarter than me and way more potent, so nothing to worry about.

    7. TFTim Ferriss53:26

       [laughs]

    8. PHPablos Holman53:27

       I think the heart of what you're getting at is probably what you could say about me is I do have a kind of extreme risk tolerance. My whole career, I've only worked on things that I thought were cool or interesting. I'll optimize for that over everything else. I've gone broke a bunch of times 'cause I worked on things that were, like, way too soon [laughs] or way too cool or way too expensive. But I'm okay with that because I wanna do the thing... I'm not gonna do that anymore, but, [laughs] but I'm okay with that because I'm good at doing things I'm interested in. I think people are optimized for that, you know? I don't, I don't find that I'm effective if I'm working on something that's not interesting. So I've always optimized for that. So I took on things a decade before other people would see them as rational. That's how I ended up in some of those unusual situations in my career. As far as billionaires go, I don't think I'm just a shiny object. They can hire whoever they want.

    9. TFTim Ferriss54:23

       Not my words, by the way.

    10. PHPablos Holman54:24

        Yeah. Um-

    11. TFTim Ferriss54:24

        It's one of our mutual friend's words. [laughs]

    12. PHPablos Holman54:26

        Okay. Yeah.

    13. TFTim Ferriss54:27

        Shiny meaning attractive, by the way.

    14. PHPablos Holman54:28

        Yeah, I'm-

    15. TFTim Ferriss54:29

        Not just like a, not a crow collecting buttons or something. I'm just saying.

    16. PHPablos Holman54:33

        Yeah. I mean, some of these are very just circumstances that I ended up being open to-

    17. TFTim Ferriss54:39

        Mm-hmm

    18. PHPablos Holman54:39

        ... when most people wouldn't. I'd say that's the biggest thing. The-- And I think it's replicable. Other people could do that. Think about your worst case scenario. Probably you- your startup fails. You end up on your mom's couch. Regroup, try again.

    19. TFTim Ferriss54:54

        Mm-hmm.

    20. PHPablos Holman54:55

        For most people you and I know, most people in the US, most people in tech, that's what it looks like. It's not so bad.

    21. TFTim Ferriss55:00

        Yeah.

    22. PHPablos Holman55:01

        So why are you over-optimizing on safety? Why are you going to work for a big tech company or Goldman Sachs or whatever? That's optimizing for safety.

18. 55:13 – 1:02:02

    From Silicon Valley to Seattle: the Blue Origin origin story.

    1. TFTim Ferriss55:13

       So let me ask you this.

    2. PHPablos Holman55:13

       And I don't judge.

    3. TFTim Ferriss55:14

       Do you think people are under-optimizing on location? Because you mentioned Seattle. I'm not sure how you got to Seattle.

    4. PHPablos Holman55:19

       Yeah.

    5. TFTim Ferriss55:20

       But when I think Nathan Myhrvold-

    6. PHPablos Holman55:21

       Yeah, yeah

    7. TFTim Ferriss55:21

       ... Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, all Seattle, right?

    8. PHPablos Holman55:25

       Yeah.

    9. TFTim Ferriss55:25

       So is there some engineered serendipity placing yourself in the right location, or is that less of a factor?

    10. PHPablos Holman55:31

        Okay, so I was in Silicon Valley before that, and I would say the main reason I left is that sock puppet attack.

    11. TFTim Ferriss55:42

        [laughs] What does that mean?

    12. PHPablos Holman55:44

        In 2001, everything in Silicon Valley got shut down because of the dot-com bubble.

    13. TFTim Ferriss55:49

        Yeah.

    14. PHPablos Holman55:49

        And so-

    15. TFTim Ferriss55:50

        Never heard sock-

    16. PHPablos Holman55:51

        ... it was a wasteland.

    17. TFTim Ferriss55:52

        [laughs] Sock puppet attack.

    18. PHPablos Holman55:53

        You know what I mean?

    19. TFTim Ferriss55:54

        What does that mean?

    20. PHPablos Holman55:54

        It was... Okay.

    21. TFTim Ferriss55:55

        I like it. I wanna use it.

    22. PHPablos Holman55:56

        Oh, yeah. Sock puppet attack.

    23. TFTim Ferriss55:56

        So I need to understand what it means.

    24. PHPablos Holman55:57

        It... Because the poster child for dot-com bubble was pets.com.

    25. TFTim Ferriss56:01

        [laughs]

    26. PHPablos Holman56:02

        And they had this ad campaign. They spent, like, a billion dollars on ads, like Super Bowl ads, with a sock puppet, and it was just the most ridiculous thing.

    27. TFTim Ferriss56:10

        You're like, "The end is nigh." [laughs]

    28. PHPablos Holman56:12

        The end was nigh, and it's because-

    29. TFTim Ferriss56:13

        [laughs]

    30. PHPablos Holman56:14

        ... you know, everything was over-hyped.
19. 1:02:02 – 1:04:51

    Why Pablos prevails over his M-dash peers.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:02:02

       Amazing.

    2. PHPablos Holman1:02:02

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:02:03

       This is gonna be out of left field, but I like out of left field. But you know what? I don't wanna leave this question of why you get hired for these projects too-

    4. PHPablos Holman1:02:13

       Yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:02:13

       ... quickly.

    6. PHPablos Holman1:02:14

       Sure.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:02:14

       Because I, for whatever reason, feel like there's more there. Like, what, how do you look at the world, or what toolkit do you have? What are you able to provide that-

    8. PHPablos Holman1:02:25

       Honestly, I think there's probably somebody better at everything than me. [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:02:29

       You're very multidisciplinary.

    10. PHPablos Holman1:02:31

        Yeah. At this point, I'd say I'm kind of the canonical T-shaped person. You know, I went real deep in computers.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:02:38

        Mm-hmm.

    12. PHPablos Holman1:02:39

        And so I can appreciate and communicate with people who are experts in other things, 'cause I'm kind of a generalist. So I don't write much code. I mean, I'm fucking vibe coding for fun, but, like, no one cares about any code I'm writing.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:02:54

        Yeah.

    14. PHPablos Holman1:02:54

        I'm not that guy.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:02:55

        Mm.

    16. PHPablos Holman1:02:55

        But I, because my depth of knowledge is deep, I can appreciate an- another expert's depth of knowledge, and I think that that helps me to work with folks. A lot of people get pigeonholed into just the thing. You know, we see that with scientists or engineers a lot. That's, they're specialized too much. And if you look at, like, millennials, they're kind of typically very flat. They just, you know, "I could do anything," but they can't do anything well.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:03:20

        An M-dash shaped person.

    18. PHPablos Holman1:03:21

        M-dash per- yeah, M-dash.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:03:22

        [laughs]

    20. PHPablos Holman1:03:23

        Yeah, M- M-dash for millennial. I like that.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:03:25

        [laughs]

    22. PHPablos Holman1:03:25

        So I think that my suspension of disbelief, my willingness... Also, I think one of the other things that works to my advantage is most of my colleagues and friends are legitimate scientists or engineers, and they're formally trained, and they know what they're doing. Those folks get stuck with kind of some professional liability. If you're a scientist, you can't say crazy shit because that could be professionally damaging.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:03:54

        For sure.

    24. PHPablos Holman1:03:55

        I'm a hacker.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:03:56

        Yeah.

    26. PHPablos Holman1:03:56

        So I can ask all the dumbest questions in the world because nobody, they think I'm a little bit smart, a little bit dangerous, but I don't have... If I don't actually know about, you know, shipping or rockets, I mean, I had, I had to learn physics on the job. You know, I'm working with actual astrophysicists who know about rockets, and I had to understand what does delta v mean, and I'm, like, googling that shit on the side.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:04:19

        Yeah. [laughs]

    28. PHPablos Holman1:04:19

        So I had to learn those things on the job, and I'm, you know, more fluent now, but I'm not formally trained in those things. But I, it's okay for me to ask a dumb question about rockets.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:04:29

        Mm.

    30. PHPablos Holman1:04:29

        And so I think that helped me a lot.
20. 1:04:51 – 1:09:07

    Zero Effect and WarGames: The only movies that matter?

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:04:51

       [laughs] Okay. Zero Effect.

    2. PHPablos Holman1:04:53

       Oh, man.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:04:54

       What is Zero Effect? [laughs] You and Alan Lee are both fans of Zero Effect.

    4. PHPablos Holman1:04:59

       Okay.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:04:59

       And I've never, I've never seen it. What, what is Zero Effect?

    6. PHPablos Holman1:05:03

       I thought I got this from him, but he says I got it from, he got it from me. This is a, like a philosophy that drives me.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:05:10

       Okay.

    8. PHPablos Holman1:05:11

       So there was a film called The Zero Effect. It was, like, Ben Stiller made it 20 years ago or something.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:05:15

       1998, yeah.

    10. PHPablos Holman1:05:17

        Okay. The main character is the world's greatest private detective.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:05:21

        [laughs]

    12. PHPablos Holman1:05:21

        And at one point in the film, he's articulating his philosophy of being the world's greatest private detective, and he's a world, he's a private detective who never leaves his home.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:05:30

        [laughs]

    14. PHPablos Holman1:05:31

        So he stays home and he cracks every case.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:05:33

        It's like the fantasy of every millennial on screens right now.

    16. PHPablos Holman1:05:35

        Yeah, right.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:05:36

        [laughs]

    18. PHPablos Holman1:05:36

        Well, here's how to do it, guys. If you lose your keys and you go looking for them, of all of the things in the entire world, you're only looking for one of them, and your odds of finding it are very low. But if you go looking for something in general and you don't set such a specific target, you're bound to find something.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:05:58

        Mm.

    20. PHPablos Holman1:05:58

        And so it's a way of thinking about, like, oh yeah, if I'm open, if I'm open to what's possible. So for example, and why, why I say that's a philosophy that matters to me, I'm running a, like, the most wild venture fund ever.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:06:13

        Mm-hmm.

    22. PHPablos Holman1:06:13

        We invest in things that sound crazy, and I have to be open. Most of them, even I don't like them at the beginning. Even I'm like, "That sounds crazy." [laughs]

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:06:22

        Yeah.

    24. PHPablos Holman1:06:22

        But I have to force myself to stay open, let the founders try and explain why the, why it's not actually crazy. And, you know, by the time we invest, I'm convinced and I understand enough that it's like, okay, it sounds crazy but isn't. You know by now I'm in the business of things that sound like complete bullshit but aren't, right?

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:06:42

        Mm.

    26. PHPablos Holman1:06:42

        I have to be right enough times that they're not, but I gotta be open. So I think the zero effect is how I think about staying open to finding anything. So people come at me with- ... perpetual motion devices every day now. And, you know, it would be crazy to invest in one of these perpetual motion devices, but it might be genius if you invest in all of them, so I do. [laughs]

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:07:08

        [laughs]

    28. PHPablos Holman1:07:08

        Well, or at least a lot of them. So, you know, if one of them works-

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:07:11

        Yeah

    30. PHPablos Holman1:07:11

        ... I'll have it. So that's kind of the game, and I think more people would get something out of that approach to life than the opposite, which is m- much more common, which is people are trying so hard to be so sure and be right and all the time, and they really aren't anyway. They're spectators in the world. They're not building something anyway. So I think be open to s- things and be supportive. One of the best things about Silicon Valley in the '90s was the way everybody was like that. You know, you could just walk down the street, find a homeless dude, start telling him about self-sailing cargo ships or nuclear reactors. He'd be like, "Oh, cool man, my college roommate is a astrophysicist and might be able to help you with that." Like, everybody was in on it.
21. 1:09:07 – 1:11:31

    A major security malfunction exploited by Major Malfunction.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:09:07

       [laughs] You mentioned looking for keys. I just have to ask because I know that you're focused on Deep Tech-

    2. PHPablos Holman1:09:14

       Yeah

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:09:15

       ... but still, it seems like you have occasional side projects. [laughs] So the key with duct tape, at least as it was described to me, where you were like, "Oh yeah, this one opens my car, closes my car," and this one unlocks every [beep] in a [laughs] one- or two-mile radius. Is this just a fairy tale or-

    4. PHPablos Holman1:09:33

       It's not a fairy tale. It was figured out by a hacker named Major Malfunction in England.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:09:40

       Great handle. [laughs]

    6. PHPablos Holman1:09:41

       And so those remote key buttons that you have for your car-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:09:44

       Yep

    8. PHPablos Holman1:09:45

       ... they're kind of like RFIDs. They have a battery in them, so they can emit a signal, and then the car is listening for that signal. When you build almost anything, you build it to do the thing, but you almost always build a little backdoor. Watch WarGames. Okay, Major Malfunction, not through hacking, but by calling tech support for his [beep] because his wife was locked out in a sketchy situation, was told, "Oh, do this. Do, do, do... manipulate the key." So he's able to manipulate the key to open any [beep] .

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:10:20

       [laughs]

    10. PHPablos Holman1:10:20

        And he explained this to me, and I don't know if he was drunk or what, but he probably shouldn't have.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:10:25

        Pablos on the loose. [laughs]

    12. PHPablos Holman1:10:27

        Go by the dealership [laughs] and-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:10:30

        Yeah

    14. PHPablos Holman1:10:30

        ... you can open any [beep] . So at the time, I wasn't gonna say the name of the brand, but you did, so yeah, it was-

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:10:37

        We, I mean, we can bleep it out

    16. PHPablos Holman1:10:38

        ... th- one brand of cars can open [laughs] any car from that manufacturer. I think they probably have fixed this by now, but you would have to, or at least in modern cars. I sure hope so. I'm not gonna say how to do it. But yeah, that's a vulnerability that has poor foresight because in those days, this is an old attack, so I don't mind talking about it too much, but you, you don't have a system update. Those cars are not online. Now a, a Tesla and modern cars almost all have an internet connection, and they can run system update, which is a very important way of, you know, reducing attack surface for vulnerabilities. So now that cars have system update, we could fix something like that remotely, but in those days you couldn't, and so it was a, it was a pretty wild attack for a while.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:11:23

        Well, I guess it still is [laughs] if you, if you're going after vintage vehicles, potentially.

    18. PHPablos Holman1:11:27

        Maybe.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:11:28

        Yeah. [laughs]

    20. PHPablos Holman1:11:28

        I, I'm not, I'm not gonna tell you how to do it.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:11:30

        Yeah, yeah, no, that's... [laughs]

22. 1:11:31 – 1:12:36

    The enigmatic Neal Stephenson.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:11:31

       I'd be curious to know, and there was another friend who popped up in your book, Chris Young, so-

    2. PHPablos Holman1:11:38

       Oh, yeah. Oh, good

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:11:38

       ... I've spent a, I've spent a ton of time with Chris Young-

    4. PHPablos Holman1:11:41

       Great

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:11:41

       ... for the book that I wrote about learning and cooking and so on, and had a blast, and that's also the first time, I think I bumped into him twice now, but met Neal Stephenson-

    6. PHPablos Holman1:11:52

       Oh, yeah, good

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:11:53

       ... who is one hell of a diversified polymath. I mean-

    8. PHPablos Holman1:11:57

       Oh, yeah

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:11:57

       ... that guy is up to a lot more than writing. I mean, he-

    10. PHPablos Holman1:12:00

        Oh, yeah

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:12:00

        ... certainly is a prolific-

    12. PHPablos Holman1:12:01

        No, Neal is delightful. We got to obviously do Blue Origin together. He helped us start the Intellectual Ventures Lab. He and I started a sword fighting school one time.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:12:11

        He's really into, like, Victorian era exercises, right?

    14. PHPablos Holman1:12:14

        Yeah, right. No, he got all the club bells and for a while was training with a Sherlock Holmes-esque cane. I forgot. Oh, it's, what's that called? Bartitsu. Oh, man. It's great. I mean, I really love Neal. He's delightful and, but he would spend about half his day writing-

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:12:28

        Mm-hmm

    16. PHPablos Holman1:12:28

        ... in the morning, and in the afternoon working on some, you know, crazy project, and I got to work on a lot of those with him.

23. 1:12:36 – 1:19:56

    Long-form lessons gleaned from Jeff Bezos and the Blue Origin mission.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:12:36

       What are some of the characteristics or mental frameworks, anything at all, that distinguish some of these people who have employed you? So for instance-

    2. PHPablos Holman1:12:45

       Yeah

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:12:46

       ... and I think you might've written about this, certainly I've thought about it a lot, but the advantage that, for instance, Jeff Bezos was able to create even before he created his empire-

    4. PHPablos Holman1:12:57

       Yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:12:57

       ... with longer time horizons than anyone else.

    6. PHPablos Holman1:13:00

       Yeah.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:13:00

       Just changing The timeframe.

    8. PHPablos Holman1:13:04

       Yeah.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:13:04

       Thinking and planning.

    10. PHPablos Holman1:13:05

        Yeah.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:13:06

        What else have you gleaned from some of these folks?

    12. PHPablos Holman1:13:09

        I think it's a very important one because, like you said, sort of flippantly mentioned billionaires, and people get pissed off about these folks as soon as they're rich just because they're rich or successful. But it... Often, what I see is it's blinding them, it's blinding people to learning what is it that made those people successful? What is it that's good? What is it that's replicable? What are the lessons?

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:13:34

        Mm-hmm.

    14. PHPablos Holman1:13:34

        And that's why I think we kinda need you to pay attention to them because, you know, for better or worse, more people probably listen to you than, than these billionaires. And so you can-

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:13:42

        God, God save us

    16. PHPablos Holman1:13:43

        ... get those lessons. Yeah. So for example, what I learned working for Jeff that really made a big difference to me personally, was that if you think about Blue Origin, what is really going on there? It's not a way for Jeff to get rich.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:13:59

        Yeah.

    18. PHPablos Holman1:13:59

        That's covered. So why make Blue Origin? Well, Blue Origin's vision is to build a future for humans off of this planet, turn Earth into like a wildlife refuge that maybe you would visit once in a lifetime, 'cause this is an awesome, amazing, and beautiful place, and-

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:14:17

        Mm-hmm

    20. PHPablos Holman1:14:17

        ... you know, we don't wanna fuck it up too badly. So that sounds crazy, and none of us are gonna be around for that, but it might take thousands of years to craft that future for humanity. You know, in the best case scenario, Earth just melts into the sun, and that's if nothing else wipes us out in the meantime. So we gotta... Uh, if you believe in the sanctity of human life, you believe in the... Humans are something special, and I do, then in the long run, you wanna build kind of a plan B, if not planet B.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:14:51

        Mm-hmm.

    22. PHPablos Holman1:14:51

        So that's what Blue Origin is about. Now, that's gonna take generations, maybe millennia to do, but even so, it would start with one small step.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:15:01

        Mm-hmm.

    24. PHPablos Holman1:15:02

        Blue Origin is that one small step. Can we get it started? And it's actually a really amazing thing. And so I learned to start by thinking on longer term horizons, and that's not super... Like, a thousand-year project to build space colonies, obviously not very relevant to me. I run a 10-year venture fund like everybody else who's an investor. So what does that mean for me? Well, it gives me a way to think about new technologies. If I look at this nuclear reactor that goes in a borehole, as an example, or this cargo ship, and I say, "All right, 100 years from now, are we gonna be burning nasty bunker oil to move those Happy Meal toys around, or would we make these self-sailing cargo ships?" It's, like, such an easy thing to answer. Anybody could do it. You don't need to be smart. You don't need to know anything about tech to answer that question.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:15:58

        As soon as you extend the horizon.

    26. PHPablos Holman1:15:59

        You extend the horizon. In 100 years, anything could happen. In 100 years, the regulatory environment could change. Maersk could be out of business. All the cabals could be out of business. You know, whatever. All the things, any objection you have probably could be solved in 100 years. So then ask yourself, "Does it have to take 100 years, or could we do it in 10?" And if you can start to craft a vision for how to do it in 10, then you align with a lot of the machinery in the world that works. Venture funds are all 10-year funds. I can't invest in things that take 20, but I can invest in things that take 10. That's... So all the money is in 10-year funds. So people's careers could do... You know, they could sign up for a 10-year project, but a 20-year project might be too much. So that's the kind of thing that helps me craft a vision for what I could invest in. Like, okay, ships, yeah, we could do that in 10 years. The nuclear reactor, totally we can do it in 10 years. We're gonna do it by July. So all these crazy sounding things that we do, I looked at them as things that definitely will get done in 100, but we're gonna try and do it in 10. I learned that from Jeff.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:17:12

        Mm-hmm.

    28. PHPablos Holman1:17:12

        You know, when you look at what even Amazon is doing, they're taking on a whole bunch of projects that they could prove a success in less than 10 years. They're like a giant venture fund internally, basically. Silicon Valley is thousands of million-dollar experiments. You know, we just try all these things that could be done in 10 years or less.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:17:32

        Mm-hmm.

    30. PHPablos Holman1:17:33

        And, and in 10 years, you could do a lot. I think people don't realize, you know, Google, Apple, Microsoft, all companies that were successful in less than 10 years. But not just that, the Apollo program was less than 10 years, the space shuttle program-
24. 1:19:56 – 1:23:44

    For solving the world’s problems, communities are crucial.

    1. PHPablos Holman1:19:56

       us how to do it better.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:19:56

       Well, you also, you don't need to like everything about someone-

    3. PHPablos Holman1:20:00

       Yeah. That's true

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:20:01

       ... or admire everything about someone in order to recognize and potentially model some of the things that really do work.

    5. PHPablos Holman1:20:09

       Well, I appreciate you demonstrating that by hanging out with me today.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:20:12

       [laughs]

    7. PHPablos Holman1:20:13

       I mean, I think the... There was, like, this thing I learned a little. I got a glimpse of this from this thing that, like, a bunch of music artists did called the ONE Campaign, like U2 was doing it, and the idea behind the ONE Campaign was 'cause they wanted to solve malaria, they wanted to solve HIV. They wanted to go after some big global scale problems. And the reason it's called ONE is that they wanted to get all these constituencies from around the world to focus on this problem, and they only had to agree about this one thing.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:20:44

       Mm-hmm.

    9. PHPablos Holman1:20:45

       We only have to agree about this one thing, which is that we need to solve HIV. Yeah, we don't agree about all this other stuff. We don't even like the same music. We need the Republicans and the Democrats and the autocrats all together for this one thing, and that was... That had a big impression on me because I think it is important. Like, we don't all agree about everything. I'm a cypherpunk. We don't agree [laughs] about a lot of things, okay? That's okay, and most of my friends, I, I want them for what they're good for and what we can work on together. So yeah, I, I'm with, with you on that. And that's why I can work for people who... I mean, I probably don't agree with everything [laughs] people I work with are about. But we need, like, 1,000 Elons. Maybe they don't all need X accounts, but we need 1,000 Elons, and we need them to go after all these things, and-

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:21:31

        Mm-hmm

    11. PHPablos Holman1:21:31

        ... that's, that's how we're gonna build the future.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:21:33

        This [laughs] is from a New York Times article from 2018, so-

    13. PHPablos Holman1:21:37

        Oh, man

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:21:37

        ... this may not be relevant anymore, but I have attended a lot of conferences. You've been to a lot of conferences.

    15. PHPablos Holman1:21:44

        Yeah.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:21:44

        I've heard of most of them, but one popped up, MARS Conference. [laughs] I don't even know if it still exists, but what was it like to attend that?

    17. PHPablos Holman1:21:53

        MARS is-

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:21:53

        And what is it?

    19. PHPablos Holman1:21:55

        So that's just a small event. Jeff Bezos has that event annually. It's for machine learning, automation, robotics, and space. Jeff and Amazon organize it. It's a really delightful event because we bring in the world's experts in those four things, and we've been doing that for, like, a decade.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:22:15

        Mm-hmm.

    21. PHPablos Holman1:22:15

        And so it's a way to make a peer group out of people who often are siloed 'cause they're researchers in a lab somewhere. They wouldn't necessarily party together otherwise, and so it's a very important thing. I'm oddly, like, probably the one person who's [laughs] worked in all four of those things.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:22:32

        Yeah.

    23. PHPablos Holman1:22:32

        Everybody else is usually, like, a Nobel Prize winner in something. But it's otherwise like a normal conference. We come hang out together for a few days. Thankfully, Amazon or Jeff is paying for it, [laughs] which is great, and we get to cross-pollinate these folks who really, you know, often are peerless in a sense 'cause they're world-class experts in their thing. You're surrounded by people who are smarter than you. We'll have, you know, five or 10 Nobel Prize winners, and we don't even put them on stage. You know, it's a, so it's a rarefied group, and I'm convinced that these things are so important because people need a community. And we have a, a WhatsApp group where we sort of stay in touch with each other the rest of the year, and people are very supportive and helpful. You know, wherever you are, I mean, look, you don't need MARS. You d- but you do need a community.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:23:27

        Mm-hmm.

    25. PHPablos Holman1:23:27

        And so one cool thing about Silicon Valley, if you're into, I guess, like, right now, AI-type stuff, you could definitely find a community there. The deep tech founders are having a harder time 'cause there's no geographic center of gravity, so we're trying to, at least for our founders, help them get that going. But man,

25. 1:23:44 – 1:28:31

    Newlab PSYOPS.

    1. PHPablos Holman1:23:44

       it's-

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:23:44

       Well, this is a good-

    3. PHPablos Holman1:23:45

       ... community matters

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:23:46

       ... good time to [laughs] explain why the hell we're sitting where we're sitting.

    5. PHPablos Holman1:23:50

       Oh.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:23:50

       What is this location? Where are we?

    7. PHPablos Holman1:23:52

       This place is so cool. So we are at the Newlab in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and this is like nothing else even I know about. It's actually kind of like my lab, The Intellectual Ventures Lab. It's about the same size, maybe a little bigger. There's a machine shop here. There's labs of all different kinds, and it's an incubator for deep tech startups. They have, like, 100 of them.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:24:13

       It's a beautiful, beautiful space.

    9. PHPablos Holman1:24:14

       It's a beautiful space. It's, I think, a kind of a public-private partnership with the city to build this thing, and they've been at this for, like, a decade. I've been friends with the founders for that whole time and just so impressed with what they've done. I actually don't have anything to do with it. I'm pimping Newlab because if you have a deep tech startup, these folks can help.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:24:34

        Mm-hmm.

    11. PHPablos Holman1:24:34

        And I think it would be great to attract more deep tech founders to these things. They, 'cause they built this one, and they built one in Detroit that's even bigger.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:24:43

        Yeah.

    13. PHPablos Holman1:24:43

        And it's so cool. And it's got space, so if you're trying to build something, go see Newlab. And I thought this would be a cool place to record the podcast because it's cool, and in New York, it's hard to find a cool space that's not tiny.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:24:56

        This is anything but tiny.

    15. PHPablos Holman1:24:57

        Yeah.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:24:57

        And I was pulling up my phone because [laughs] we haven't spent much time together, and I'm pulling up to this location that I have no familiarity with [laughs] . And so I just wanna I just want to read our text exchange for a second. [laughs] "Pulling up now. Enter through Building 77." I'm like, "Where the hell is Building 77?" Okay, you drop a pin. "Apparently, the main gate is under construction." I'm like, "Okay." And so I walk over, and then you're like, "Walk all the way through that building. There's a turnstile with a guard, but he is easy to PSYOP." [laughs] "Then go out and left." And I'm like, "Building 5? PSYOP completed," and I'm out and walking left. We're gonna come back to the PSYOP. But then you say, "The big building straight ahead is your target. Get to that and then go left. No number on it. Entrance is at the far corner of the building." [laughs] And then I said, "Am I being set up for a podcast kidnapping? Very elegant." 'Cause I'm like, "Where the hell am I going?" He said, "I'll come out and meet you at the black van," and there was actually a black van.

    17. PHPablos Holman1:25:50

        [laughs]

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:25:50

        [laughs] And I'm like, "Wow, is this just what-

    19. PHPablos Holman1:25:53

        Now you know why Elon, Lee, and I are friends.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:25:55

        [laughs]

    21. PHPablos Holman1:25:57

        [laughs]

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:25:57

        Yeah. I was like, "You know, this is a coin toss. I have no idea what this... This could be the long con.

    23. PHPablos Holman1:26:01

        Yeah, it's, it's been-

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:26:01

        This will be an amazing long con

    25. PHPablos Holman1:26:03

        ... Well, my dating life has been very colorful because of every girl who's dating me then ends up meeting me at, like, some strange warehouse in the industrial district-

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:26:13

        Uh-huh, yeah

    27. PHPablos Holman1:26:14

        ... with wires hanging out of metal, and-

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:26:15

        Yeah

    29. PHPablos Holman1:26:16

        ... yeah.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:26:16

        I remember ages ago when it, when it first came out, someone recommended that I read Kevin Mitnick's The Art of Deception.
26. 1:28:31 – 1:40:43

    AI and the ripple effects of China’s engineering-minded vs. America’s attorney-heavy leadership.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:28:32

       but I'm wondering what impresses you-

    2. PHPablos Holman1:28:35

       Yeah

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:28:35

       ... about China, 'cause they really seem to have their act together. The h- the homogeneity, relatively speaking, of the country helps.

    4. PHPablos Holman1:28:43

       Yeah.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:28:44

       The speed with which the CCP can execute top-down helps tremendously.

    6. PHPablos Holman1:28:50

       Yeah.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:28:51

       But anything else come to mind?

    8. PHPablos Holman1:28:53

       Yeah. So look, I could learn a lot about China from you. I've been there some, but probably not as much. I don't speak the language. My way of learning was to start sleeping with a Chinese woman-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:29:03

       [laughs]

    10. PHPablos Holman1:29:03

        ... so I've been doing that for five years.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:29:05

        That sounds more fun than memorizing characters, frankly.

    12. PHPablos Holman1:29:07

        [laughs] It's helped a ton. I really opened up my eyes to China. So yeah, my fiancée is, uh, Chinese, but been in America long enough that she'll put up with me. And I think the insight from that book, I haven't read Breakneck yet. It's a relatively new book. I am also c- just kind of a spectator on what's happening in China.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:29:31

        But you have a unique multidisciplinary technical lens that includes deep tech.

    14. PHPablos Holman1:29:35

        So what I can tell you, I think there's a couple of major factors, and the insight about the preponderance of lawyers I think is huge and really important, so I'm excited about reading that book. The reason we invented LLMs is to put lawyers out of business so we can fix this country, and I think that's gonna work. So if you are a parent right now, don't send your kid to school to become a lawyer, 'cause we're gonna replace all the lawyers with AI. [laughs] I think where this goes, I'm optimistic, and I know I'm taking a side here, but I'm, I'm only half joking about that.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:30:08

        Yeah.

    16. PHPablos Holman1:30:08

        Now-

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:30:08

        I use LLMs on a weekly basis for legal-

    18. PHPablos Holman1:30:11

        Legal

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:30:12

        ... first passes already.

    20. PHPablos Holman1:30:13

        For lawsuits? Good.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:30:14

        No, no.

    22. PHPablos Holman1:30:14

        No. [laughs]

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:30:14

        For all my lawsuits.

    24. PHPablos Holman1:30:15

        Yeah. Um-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:30:16

        Yeah, no.

    26. PHPablos Holman1:30:17

        [laughs]

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:30:17

        Oh, I'll give you an example. I mean, this will be no surprise to you, but with just off-the-shelf basic ChatGPT or fill in the blank for your favorite LLM, I was selling a property in rural New York, and it was taking kind of forever to get done. There were a lot of arcane local laws-

    28. PHPablos Holman1:30:36

        Yeah

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:30:36

        ... and so on, and I wanted to protect the land from overdevelopment.

    30. PHPablos Holman1:30:41

        Oh.
27. 1:40:43 – 1:43:05

    Unearthing like-minded inventors and innovators.

    1. PHPablos Holman1:40:43

       these other things.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:40:44

       How do you find wild inventors or do they just come to you and you act as kind of a honeypot for the forlorn, the crazy, the people into the DeLorean with the crazy hair, as I heard you say once?

    3. PHPablos Holman1:40:54

       Honeypot means something else to hackers, so I'll go with, like, lightning rod.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:40:57

       [laughs] Yeah. Okay. [laughs]

    5. PHPablos Holman1:40:59

       [laughs] You just look for the crazy hair and the DeLorean and that's how you find them. I'd say I attract some of them because I've worked on some of the kinds of projects they wanna do.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:41:09

       Yeah.

    7. PHPablos Holman1:41:09

       And hopefully they believe that I'll at least hang in there long enough to understand what they're trying to do and, and maybe believe in it and maybe invest in it. So that's, that's where I'm at. There are times when I find out about a technology or an invention that we might've been really helpful with that... but it's too late.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:41:30

       Yep.

    9. PHPablos Holman1:41:30

       That is frustrating.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:41:32

        Too late in terms of stage.

    11. PHPablos Holman1:41:34

        Meaning, yeah, we're basically helpful at the beginning. You know, we're helpful in the early stages when you gotta get out of that garage or get out of that lab and become more maybe venture compatible so that you could go... You know, we're trying to help people co-opt the machinery of venture capital and aim it at deep tech.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:41:54

        Yeah.

    13. PHPablos Holman1:41:54

        And so if you're kind of on that track, we could maybe be helpful. Not for everyone, but that's what I'm looking for. And, and so, yeah, I would, I would love to see these, especially the breakthroughs really early.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:42:04

        But I guess is your game to attract them to you or do you go out and search in the-

    15. PHPablos Holman1:42:08

        I do still, you know, like I-

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:42:10

        ... dark corners of nerddom?

    17. PHPablos Holman1:42:11

        Yeah, but I still need help. You know, I need to deputize my friends. There's probably, like, VCs hanging out at Starbucks by MIT.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:42:19

        Yeah.

    19. PHPablos Holman1:42:20

        But those professors call me-

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:42:22

        Yeah

    21. PHPablos Holman1:42:22

        ... when they have something that their post-docs wanna spin out and I'm like, "Yes, that's the help I need," because I can't hang out at every lab. I go and I visit-

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:42:32

        Yeah

    23. PHPablos Holman1:42:32

        ... and I try to be helpful. So some of it's labs. About another third is, like, rogue engineers who are working at some company that's got their head up their ass and not doing the coolest thing, so I like that. And then my favorite third is, like, the crazy hackers who are in a basement. And you just can't find them. They're not, they're not going to TED or whatever. They're-

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:42:53

        Rodney Mullen wasn't going to TED when he was a teenager?

    25. PHPablos Holman1:42:55

        Yeah, Rodney's not going to TED. [laughs] He- That's, that's right.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:42:58

        [laughs]

    27. PHPablos Holman1:42:59

        He spoke at a couple of TED events, I think.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:43:01

        Okay, but I mean when he was, like, the undiscovered-

    29. PHPablos Holman1:43:03

        Oh, yeah. No. Right. Yeah.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:43:04

        Yeah.

28. 1:43:05 – 2:00:34

    How Pablos learned salsa dancing via aikido vs. my own tango experience.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:43:05

       Where does salsa enter the picture?

    2. PHPablos Holman1:43:07

       Oh my God.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:43:08

       Because it seems to be important to you.

    4. PHPablos Holman1:43:10

       Well, it is important to me. Actually, so I remember the tango thing that you did-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:43:14

       Yeah

    6. PHPablos Holman1:43:14

       ... that I read about, and you and I have a radically different relationship to dance. I can't do things that are choreographed. I can't memorize things. I can't focus on, like, a structured plan for learning something like you do. All reverse engineering.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:43:31

       Yeah.

    8. PHPablos Holman1:43:32

       So when I show up To salsa, what I'm doing is, yeah, there's a teacher and they're showing me a thing I'm supposed to learn. I have to try everything and throw out the stuff that doesn't work.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:43:42

       Yeah.

    10. PHPablos Holman1:43:42

        That's literally how I learned to dance. So I'm a really good salsa dancer now 'cause I started 20 years ago, but very unorthodox [laughs] salsa dancer, which-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:43:51

        [laughs]

    12. PHPablos Holman1:43:51

        ... to be fair to my partners, I should say that, 'cause I don't dance like everyone else, and I can't learn to dance like someone else because I can only... I have to try the stuff and, and then converge on what works, and that's a really great thing, but I dance differently than everyone else. But yeah, salsa for me was very important because, partly 'cause too much of my life was hanging out with hackers-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:44:13

        Yeah

    14. PHPablos Holman1:44:13

        ... who fit a demographic that's a little too homogenous in its way. Maybe not intellectually, but certainly by all other metrics. So I had trained in aikido-

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:44:23

        Mm-hmm

    16. PHPablos Holman1:44:24

        ... for like a decade, which is, you know, a Japanese martial art.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:44:27

        Yep.

    18. PHPablos Holman1:44:27

        Very structured, very disciplined, very traditional. And I love, I'm obsessed with the physical communication. I love that part of it. L- and, and what's cool about aikido is you'd always train with a partner, and that's not true for like a lot of martial arts. You know, I'd done a lot of punching and kicking in the air with karate and stuff before that, and it just didn't land for me. With, uh, aikido, you always have a partner, and so they're attacking you, and without words you're trying to communicate that you want them to shove their head in the ground-

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:45:01

        Yeah

    20. PHPablos Holman1:45:02

        ... or something like that. And I love that. You know, I love that feeling of physical communication. And I'm not great at aikido and I was d- trying to learn that through reverse engineering as well, which also has its unorthodox problems. But eventually, short story, short version of the story is I figured out that it was an upgrade to train instead of with sweaty old Japanese guys, [laughs] sweaty young Latin girls.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:45:25

        [laughs]

    22. PHPablos Holman1:45:25

        So I'm still basically doing the same thing as aikido, but in salsa, and I can do it any night anywhere in the world. There's salsa dancers. You just gotta know where to find them.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:45:35

        Yeah.

    24. PHPablos Holman1:45:35

        You don't need to speak the language. And so I got a lot out of dancing salsa 'cause it, I got a community of people in all walks of life. I'm not a rock star in salsa. I get outranked by the Mexican dishwasher every night. It's good for my ego 'cause I'm at the bottom always, and I think that's good for me.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:45:56

        Yeah.

    26. PHPablos Holman1:45:56

        And you learn something. My way of moving through the world is so heavily affected by aikido and salsa. Yeah, so anyway, I've been doing that for a long time.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:46:04

        Yeah, salsa has a huge advantage over tango, that you can find it anywhere. Tango is pretty-

    28. PHPablos Holman1:46:09

        Yeah, it's more niche

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:46:10

        ... narrow.

    30. PHPablos Holman1:46:11

        Yeah.
29. 2:00:34 – 2:06:38

    Why you should invest or get involved in deep tech.

    1. TFTim Ferriss2:00:34

       Pablos, we've covered a lot of ground. We could of course-

    2. PHPablos Holman2:00:37

       We could keep going. Yeah

    3. TFTim Ferriss2:00:37

       ... cover a million other things-

    4. PHPablos Holman2:00:38

       I get it

    5. TFTim Ferriss2:00:39

       ... for another five hours, but is there anything that we haven't touched on that you would like to bring up?

    6. PHPablos Holman2:00:45

       Oh, wow.

    7. TFTim Ferriss2:00:46

       Anything at all. I have a few closing questions as well-

    8. PHPablos Holman2:00:48

       Okay, that's cool. Yeah

    9. TFTim Ferriss2:00:48

       ... but I'm just wondering if anything comes to mind.

    10. PHPablos Holman2:00:50

        I guess the thing I maybe alluded to but didn't articulate very well is that you could see how I kind of, in my career, I got, I got the software out of my system young, 'cause I got an early start, and then maybe by 2001 or something I was able to sort of say, "Okay, did all this stuff with computers, but maybe I could go beyond that and bring other technologies to life." And when I look at Silicon Valley, I see a lot of people who might wanna do that. They got to do the software stuff. They're maybe 10 or 20 years into their career now. And so maybe, uh, we can win some of them over and help us come bring these other technologies to life. Like I described, I think the opportunities are bigger. The impact is bigger. And why would you wanna do that? Well, I think there's a meaning in it. There's a opportunity here to see technology as- A force for good to make the world better. We build this toolkit that we're gonna use to build the future, and you get to add something to that toolkit. So yeah, I just think, you know, if you put that framework to use, you could kind of get a sense of, like, where technology can go and get a lot more excited about it. It's really sad for me to see people that are pissed off about technology in general or even pissed off about their phones or whatever. I'm like, "Yeah, okay. Well, what are you using it for? You know, are you just doom scrolling? 'Cause we could do a lot better than that."

    11. TFTim Ferriss2:02:12

        Yeah.

    12. PHPablos Holman2:02:12

        And so if I had a chance to, like, try and share something, it would be that, like, there's a lot left to do.

    13. TFTim Ferriss2:02:19

        That is a military helicopter that just flew over us. [laughs]

    14. PHPablos Holman2:02:21

        Oh, yeah, you're trained in military helicopters.

    15. TFTim Ferriss2:02:24

        [laughs]

    16. PHPablos Holman2:02:24

        Great. We can rewind.

    17. TFTim Ferriss2:02:25

        Yeah. No, no.

    18. PHPablos Holman2:02:26

        Uh-huh.

    19. TFTim Ferriss2:02:26

        I'm good. I'm good.

    20. PHPablos Holman2:02:27

        Yeah.

    21. TFTim Ferriss2:02:27

        I just wanted to ma- say this is [laughs] this is a lively environment. I like it.

    22. PHPablos Holman2:02:30

        Yeah.

    23. TFTim Ferriss2:02:31

        Those people, let's say there are at least a handful listening who resonate with what you just said.

    24. PHPablos Holman2:02:37

        Yeah.

    25. TFTim Ferriss2:02:38

        What should they do? Should they fill out a form on your website? Should they check it out anything online related to you, send you an email? I mean, what would you want those people to do?

    26. PHPablos Holman2:02:46

        Yeah, careful what you ask for. I-

    27. TFTim Ferriss2:02:48

        Yeah, I'd be careful with the email, but-

    28. PHPablos Holman2:02:49

        Yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, I try to read every email. Already, I can't reply to all of them, so I don't know the right answer. With or without me, I think these are important things to do. We can take on some fraction of, [laughs] of things and help out a little bit. I, I think that what I'm trying to do is convince not just those founders, but also those investors.

    29. TFTim Ferriss2:03:12

        Yeah.

    30. PHPablos Holman2:03:12

        Like, "Hey, you could steer what you're doing to bigger opportunities." Look at deep tech, like, you don't have to be a physicist to do it. You could find some important things and some really, really lucrative things to invest in in deep tech, and you won't be competing with all the other usual suspects, so.
30. 2:06:38 – 2:12:49

    Clearing up fusion confusion.

    1. TFTim Ferriss2:06:38

       If you could only place one bet in fusion, where would you place it?

    2. PHPablos Holman2:06:42

       Oh, boy. Don't get me started.

    3. TFTim Ferriss2:06:43

       [laughs]

    4. PHPablos Holman2:06:44

       Okay, I'm started.

    5. TFTim Ferriss2:06:45

       Yeah. [laughs]

    6. PHPablos Holman2:06:46

       Okay, fusion. [laughs]

    7. TFTim Ferriss2:06:47

       Or would your answer be zero?

    8. PHPablos Holman2:06:49

       It's not zero. So here's the thing. So fusion, as you know, fusion is like rattle these molecules and get them to break apart and get a bunch of energy out. That's fission. Fusion is push these molecules together and get them to become one.

    9. TFTim Ferriss2:07:00

       Yeah.

    10. PHPablos Holman2:07:01

        Plasma fusion is the biggest branch of fusion research in history, and so what that means is you're gonna heat up these molecules so much that they expand and open up to the possibility of getting stuck together.

    11. TFTim Ferriss2:07:13

        Just create a miniature sun, no big deal.

    12. PHPablos Holman2:07:15

        Is temperatures that rival the sun, 'cause that is what the sun is doing.

    13. TFTim Ferriss2:07:20

        Yeah.

    14. PHPablos Holman2:07:20

        It's doing fusion. But what you need that we don't have on Earth that the sun has is you need a lot of pressure as well. Now, the pressure you could get if you could make a vessel that would hold the plasma, but the plasma's so hot it'd melt anything on Earth. So the way we do it now, the best idea so far has been what's called magnetic confinement. You create a giant super magnet and use the magnetic field to push the plasma together. And it's far enough away that it won't melt using the force to do it. So that's a super cool idea, but it has been very difficult to make it work, and scientifically we didn't even really know if it would work, and that's why people make fun of fusion all the time and say that "It's 20 years away and always will be." That changed. So the cool thing is a few years ago, the team from MIT, called Commonwealth Fusion Systems, published a series of, I think, seven papers that explain exactly how they can make magnetic confinement fusion work, and the real breakthrough was a new superconductor. It's a superconductor that allows them to make the world's most powerful magnet, which they have done, and it's awesome. Crazy cool magnet. But now they got that working, we're out of the science risk window into the technical risk window, which means can they engineer a fusion reactor? So I'd say Commonwealth is probably the most well-funded, most advanced plasma fusion reactor company. They're building what's called a tokamak, which is like the giant donut shape thing you see pictures of, and I wish them a lot of luck. But they have extreme engineering problems, like it is really hard to build that thing, and once they get it built, then they're gonna need tritium, and there's about enough tritium on Earth left to make it go one time. [laughs] And the only way to make-

    15. TFTim Ferriss2:09:08

        Yeah

    16. PHPablos Holman2:09:08

        ... more tritium is, you guessed it, in a fusion reactor, where they've gotta get, like, 99% efficiency on getting the tritium out, and we don't know if that's gonna be possible. So there's, like, just a zillion of these really hard engineering pro- So anyway, that's a long story.

    17. TFTim Ferriss2:09:20

        Can't you just source the tritium from gunsights?

    18. PHPablos Holman2:09:22

        You can source it from the moon.

    19. TFTim Ferriss2:09:24

        [laughs]

    20. PHPablos Holman2:09:24

        So there are people who wanna go to the moon and grab tritium and bring it back. The stuff in gunsights is... There's very little of it left.

    21. TFTim Ferriss2:09:30

        Yeah, I thought.

    22. PHPablos Holman2:09:30

        There's tritium paint and in your old Swiss watches and things, and that, that's why they glow, you need tritium. But anyway, the point of all this is to say in the best case scenario, fusion is very difficult. I really hope we get it. The upside of that is once it really does work, you'll get more energy out than you put in. So think of like a gas tank you have to fill once and it runs the rest of your life.

    23. TFTim Ferriss2:09:55

        What is that, Q greater than one?

    24. PHPablos Holman2:09:57

        Q greater than one is the metric.

    25. TFTim Ferriss2:09:59

        Has anyone crossed that?

    26. PHPablos Holman2:09:59

        No one has ever actually achieved that if you count the entire energy for the system.

    27. TFTim Ferriss2:10:05

        Yeah.

    28. PHPablos Holman2:10:05

        There are projects, and once in a while you see fusion headlines where it's like, "Fusion works from Livermore" or whatever, and what they've done is on system level one, which basically means the energy going into the fusion from, like, the 192 giant lasers, is less than the energy coming out of the fusion, but they're not counting the energy going into the lasers.

    29. TFTim Ferriss2:10:23

        Yeah.

    30. PHPablos Holman2:10:23

        So-
31. 2:12:49 – 2:15:55

    Making progress happen is a team effort.

    1. PHPablos Holman2:12:49

       have a few.

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:12:49

       I'm not gonna ask you to pick one-

    3. PHPablos Holman2:12:51

       Yeah

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:12:51

       ... because that would put you in a tight spot, but could you name one of I'm sure quite a few or several from your portfolio that you, that you feel is likely to be a winner? And the reason-

    5. PHPablos Holman2:13:04

       Yeah

    6. TFTim Ferriss2:13:04

       ... I'm asking is that-

    7. PHPablos Holman2:13:05

       Yeah

    8. TFTim Ferriss2:13:05

       ... I want to know what the characteristics are that give you that-

    9. PHPablos Holman2:13:11

       Yeah

    10. TFTim Ferriss2:13:11

        ... conviction.

    11. PHPablos Holman2:13:12

        I think the heart of what you're getting at, like one thing worth articulating here is, you know, like I attract those technical founders, those inventors. A lot of the time I can't invest.

    12. TFTim Ferriss2:13:25

        Yeah.

    13. PHPablos Holman2:13:25

        And the reason is I love the technology, but there's no entrepreneur.

    14. TFTim Ferriss2:13:30

        Yeah.

    15. PHPablos Holman2:13:31

        There's no commercial animal. There's nobody who can sell some shit, and a lot of times the homework I have to give them is, "Go find a frat buddy or a cousin or a roommate or somebody who can sell something," 'cause you need that-

    16. TFTim Ferriss2:13:42

        Yeah

    17. PHPablos Holman2:13:43

        ... to build a business. And I can only take a few bets where I don't see that, hoping that it's gonna come later.

    18. TFTim Ferriss2:13:50

        It's interesting because you have the opposite problem of a lot of venture capitalists.

    19. PHPablos Holman2:13:53

        That's right, I do.

    20. TFTim Ferriss2:13:54

        Right?

    21. PHPablos Holman2:13:54

        And I, and I know that.

    22. TFTim Ferriss2:13:55

        And you're not looking for technical co-founders.

    23. PHPablos Holman2:13:57

        Every other VC will tell you, "We back the best founders."

    24. TFTim Ferriss2:14:00

        Yeah.

    25. PHPablos Holman2:14:01

        That's their mantra, and I get it. And increasingly I'm sympathetic. You know, I have backed founders who I... 'Cause I love the tech, but they just... You know, they spent their career on the tech. They're only making a business because it's the next logical step.

    26. TFTim Ferriss2:14:15

        And the other issue is that if you have someone who's very technical, let's say that they happen to be a unicorn-

    27. PHPablos Holman2:14:19

        Sure

    28. TFTim Ferriss2:14:19

        ... and they're also really good at business, if they try to spearhead both sides of that coin-

    29. PHPablos Holman2:14:25

        Yeah

    30. TFTim Ferriss2:14:25

        ... they're gonna burn out.
32. 2:15:55 – 2:18:19

    Parting thoughts.

    1. PHPablos Holman2:15:55

       want to.

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:15:55

       Pablos, where should people find you online? What are the best websites or otherwise?

    3. PHPablos Holman2:16:01

       Deepfuture.tech is our website. There's a podcast there, which is mostly just long conversations with nerds. That's how I learn, so I pick the brains of nerds and record some of them. And then I'm on all the stuff, like, you know, I'm Pablos on X, but nobody listens to me there. LinkedIn, more people listen, but... So you could do those things. Oh, I have a really good... I have probably the best email list in the world, 'cause the only things I send out are super inspiring and amazing technology. So join that or, yeah.

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:16:29

       They can find that at the deepfuture.tech?

    5. PHPablos Holman2:16:31

       Yeah, sure, yeah. There's a WhatsApp group with propaganda.

    6. TFTim Ferriss2:16:34

       [laughs]

    7. PHPablos Holman2:16:34

       You can join that, too. [laughs]

    8. TFTim Ferriss2:16:36

       And if people are interested in the book, which I have in my backpack right now, it's Deep Future: Creating Technology that Matters. A lot of good stories and a lot of head-spinning statistics.

    9. PHPablos Holman2:16:46

       Oh, no, don't say that.

    10. TFTim Ferriss2:16:47

        Uh, well, I shouldn't say statistics. That makes it sound too sterile.

    11. PHPablos Holman2:16:50

        Yeah.

    12. TFTim Ferriss2:16:51

        But just facts and figures that underscore a lot of important points that are pretty jaw-dropping, such as the five out of every six dollars associated with shipping going to fuel or whatever the number might be and, and-

    13. PHPablos Holman2:17:07

        Yeah

    14. TFTim Ferriss2:17:07

        ... and so on. I mean, it's really remarkable.

    15. PHPablos Holman2:17:09

        The statistics, those are meant to be dropkicks.

    16. TFTim Ferriss2:17:14

        Well, Pablos, thank you for taking the time.

    17. PHPablos Holman2:17:17

        Oh, man.

    18. TFTim Ferriss2:17:17

        So great to hang.

    19. PHPablos Holman2:17:18

        Oh, this is awesome. I'm glad we finally got to do it after-

    20. TFTim Ferriss2:17:20

        Yeah, super fun

    21. PHPablos Holman2:17:20

        ... after all these years and-

    22. TFTim Ferriss2:17:22

        Yeah

    23. PHPablos Holman2:17:22

        ... I, I came unarmed so I wouldn't-

    24. TFTim Ferriss2:17:24

        [laughs] Appreciate

    25. PHPablos Holman2:17:24

        ... intimidate your-

    26. TFTim Ferriss2:17:25

        Appreciate that

    27. PHPablos Holman2:17:26

        ... sensibility about getting hacked.

    28. TFTim Ferriss2:17:27

        [laughs] Yeah, black van's still out front, so it ain't over until it's over.

    29. PHPablos Holman2:17:31

        [laughs]

    30. TFTim Ferriss2:17:31

        And for everybody listening, we will link to all the things we mentioned, including Pablos' website, the book, newsletter, et cetera, at tim.blog/podcast. You can just... I can guarantee you that Pablos will be the only Pablos, so just search Pablos-

Episode duration: 2:18:29