The Random Show — Blockchain/Crypto Investing, NFT Experiments, Dogecoin, Zen Buddhism, and More

Tim Ferriss 0:00 [upbeat music]

Tim Ferriss 0:15 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Kevin Rose. Welcome to the Kev Kev Tim Tim Show, otherwise known as The Random Show. Kevin Rose, I have him here. How are you, sir?

Kevin Rose 0:23 Dude, you sound just like me.

Tim Ferriss 0:24 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 0:25 You said that you said you're Kevin Rose.

Tim Ferriss 0:26 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 0:27 I'm stoked, man. We're back, back doing The Random Show again, and this is, uh, this is gonna be one that I hope I can make it through.

Tim Ferriss 0:34 If you make it to the end without vomiting onto the screen, we will consider it-

Kevin Rose 0:38 Yes

Tim Ferriss 0:38 ... at least a success. And we require, I think, some context for people listening. Got a text from you about 45 minutes ago asking if we might be able to reschedule.

Kevin Rose 0:47 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 0:48 What are the reasons for that?

Kevin Rose 0:50 So-

Tim Ferriss 0:50 Not to name any, any people's names, but we can talk about-

Kevin Rose 0:54 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 0:54 ... compounds.

Kevin Rose 0:55 Okay, compounds. So you and I, we, we tend to... I mean, you're the one that got me into this stuff. It's really your fault.

Tim Ferriss 1:00 A dubious, dubious honor.

Kevin Rose 1:02 [laughs] You, you, you got me into the whole scene of trying out these different compounds and, and seeing what happens in the body. And actually, you know what? It's, it's a, it's a really good thing. It's a good story because I am going to hopefully live longer, not that I want to have my main, uh... I don't wanna live forever. I'm not one of those people that is, like, you know, waiting for the flippening to happen, where AI takes over and we just live forever. Like, I don't care about that, but I wanna have a good, long, healthy life for my little girls, right? So I pay close attention to all the different biomarkers, and one of the things that has always been an issue for me has been glucose disposal. So you and I, we sit next to each other, I don't... Actually, I don't know how you're... Let's just say a healthy person. I don't know how your glucose levels are.

Tim Ferriss 1:41 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:41 I know you used to eat all those bear claws, so.

Tim Ferriss 1:43 [laughs] It's true.

Kevin Rose 1:44 You do love the bear claws.

Tim Ferriss 1:45 Oh, I do.

Kevin Rose 1:46 So-

Tim Ferriss 1:46 I do

Kevin Rose 1:46 ... the, the issue I have is, is if I sit down next to a healthy person and we both eat the exact same carbohydrate, if we're wearing a con- a continuous glucose monitor, I will spike higher and the glucose will stay elevated in my blood longer than most people. That's not good. You don't want elevated glucose levels. It's what they would call, like, close to a pre-diabetic, so, you know, I just need to watch that stuff pretty carefully. Cardiovascular exercise is huge, high-intensity interval training, zone two training, all that stuff is really helpful. But there are also some compounds that you can take that help here. So one of them is called Ozempic, which is this subcutaneous shot that you do. So you just shoot yourself anywhere you want. I just do it in my belly. And it lowers your glucose levels. It's pretty amazing. It just works really well. And actually, the, some of the other benefits, it's been shown in studies to be cardio protective. So w- a physician that I work with actually prescribed it to me, and they said, "Hey, the one thing you may wanna worry about, like, it, it can cause a little bit of nausea in some people." And so I'm like, I'm like, "Okay," like, [laughs] you know? And they're like, "You may wanna ramp this up," right? So the, the little, like, syringe thing that it comes with, you can twist the little knob and you can choose how much you want to inject. And, like, I had a buddy that was doing it too, and he's like, "Okay, just do .25 for, like, four weeks and then you can work up to .5 and then eventually one milligram." And I'm like, well, all the benefits... And the, I should say another benefit is that the, the number one side effect is that people lose weight as well. So, like, you lose, like, your beer gut, you get slimmer, you have better glucose control. I mean, it sounds like a win-win-win across the board until it comes down to the vomiting side of things. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 3:26 Except for-

Kevin Rose 3:26 Yes

Tim Ferriss 3:26 ... the misery, the long and lean misery.

Kevin Rose 3:29 Yeah, so, you know, I just kinda jumped a step. Like, yesterday-

Tim Ferriss 3:32 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 3:33 ... you know, I had a couple beers and I'm like, you know, I just should just go in 'cause, like, I just don't want this to go straight to my gut.

Tim Ferriss 3:39 I love that it's combined. Just I wanna juxtapose here. This is worth highlighting. After a few beers. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 3:45 Well, I-

Tim Ferriss 3:45 Continue. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 3:45 Dude, first of all, I live in Portland, Oregon.

Tim Ferriss 3:47 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 3:48 Best breweries out here. It is very harder than sometimes... I've been, it, there's been a major heat wave here, Tim, and I-

Tim Ferriss 3:54 [laughs] Better stay hydrated with that alcohol.

Kevin Rose 3:56 Gotta stay [laughs] hydrated. No, but there's, uh, all jokes aside, uh, thankfully we got through the heat wave, and it, it is, the, the beers here are phenomenal. So I, it was 4th of July, you know, there was a lot of fun stuff happening, so basically I just go into the, you know, where the, uh, fridge is, and I pull it out of the fridge and I inject myself, and I turn it to .5 right away. I'm like, ah, I'm gonna skip that .25 stuff. Let's just, like, jump into the benefits, right? So I did it and I felt fine. I was like, you know, no big deal. Waited an hour, two hours, everything was fine. Went to bed. Woke up at about 4:00 AM just wanting to vomit. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 4:32 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 4:33 Like, just, just so bad and just, I, I, I haven't laid on the ground of my bathroom in a very long time, maybe since when I was doing my old Dig Nation podcast, like, like, 15 years ago or something.

Tim Ferriss 4:46 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 4:46 But it was, it was, yeah, it was not good. So I just kinda stayed in bed this morning, called off a couple of my meetings, and you made a good suggestion on something that decreases nausea. I did that, and here we are. Good to go. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 5:01 Good old Zofran. It helps.

Kevin Rose 5:03 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 5:04 Also really important side note, uh, generally when people use something like ketamine in a clinic, they'll give you Zofran beforehand, so it, uh, it does work quite well.

Kevin Rose 5:13 Oh, that's right, 'cause ketamine causes a little bit of nausea as well at the higher doses, right?

Tim Ferriss 5:17 It can. It can. Yeah, very different purposes. As far as I know, ketamine will not give you a six-pack.

Kevin Rose 5:23 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 5:23 But... [laughs]

Kevin Rose 5:24 Do you have glucose issues?

Tim Ferriss 5:26 Uh, uh, not really. Not really. I mean-

Kevin Rose 5:27 You, so you're just, like, you wake up in the morning, if you were to test yourself, you're, like, 75, 80, 85 kinda thing?

Tim Ferriss 5:33 I would have to take a look. I mean, you have to keep in mind also I haven't worn a continuous glucose monitor since, check this out, 2008 or 2009.

Kevin Rose 5:43 Oh, man. You're missing out.

Tim Ferriss 5:44 That was gen one Dexcom. You could not get it unless you were a type one diabetic, and the insertion procedure was terrible, and the device itself, you had to track the readout on a proprietary device.

Kevin Rose 6:01 Right.

Tim Ferriss 6:01 There was no integration with anything like a smartphone or an iPhone. And it was really helpful. I will say that most of the takeaways were pretty straightforward. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 6:13 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 6:13 It's like, yeah, when you eat a, a huge meal, even if it is, quote-unquote, good food, you really have this gigantic bolus of sort of carbohydrate intake. Uh, even if it isn't carbohydrate, really high protein, still spikes. Uh, so most of it was kinda self-evident, and after a few weeks I was like, "I think I have a pretty good read on what my triggers are, including foods that I respond to strangely." So I didn't feel the need to wear it continuously past a few weeks.

Kevin Rose 6:43 Oh, man, I remember when y- we went to the movies and you first had that thing on, and I, uh, you had this m- I mean, back then it was massive.

Tim Ferriss 6:51 It was huge.

Kevin Rose 6:51 You had this massive, like, third-party, like, like pD- like, like a, a, little mini tablet with you [laughs] or whatever those little device was.

Tim Ferriss 6:58 [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Rose 6:58 And I was like-

Tim Ferriss 6:59 Looked like a pager that was on my hip

Kevin Rose 7:00 ... yeah

Tim Ferriss 7:00 Yeah

Kevin Rose 7:00 Like a huge pa- I'm like, "What are you doing?" Like, no one had ever, I'd never heard of those devices before.

Tim Ferriss 7:05 Long time ago.

Kevin Rose 7:06 And you're right, the procedure back then was this massive needle. They, they would, they wouldn't even hide it. They didn't put it behind any, like, you know, thick plastic so you wouldn't see it. Like, you would watch the needle go in and inject another little-

Tim Ferriss 7:18 Yeah

Kevin Rose 7:18 ... thing into you, and then you would have to manually pull the needle out. It was so brutally invasive. And now, oh, dude, you gotta try the new ones. They're amazing.

Tim Ferriss 7:26 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 7:26 You don't even know it's happening.

Tim Ferriss 7:27 I have one. I actually have a new one. I haven't put it in yet.

Kevin Rose 7:29 Okay, cool.

Tim Ferriss 7:30 Uh, but the old Dexcom, if someone can think of, like, a barbecue [sighs] kind of two-tined pitchfork [laughs] that you use to, like, flip steaks or something, it kinda looked like a miniature version of that. It was two long prongs that were, uh, kinda like needles that you would have to push into your abdomen laterally.

Kevin Rose 7:55 Right

Tim Ferriss 7:55 Uh, and they were-

Kevin Rose 7:56 And there was no spring-loaded

Tim Ferriss 7:57 ... all, no, no

Kevin Rose 7:57 It wasn't like, like today-

Tim Ferriss 7:58 There's no spring loading

Kevin Rose 7:58 ... you push a button, it's one press button, and you pull it off and it's done.

Tim Ferriss 8:02 Yeah, none of that.

Kevin Rose 8:03 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 8:04 [laughs] So, uh, one of many things I did for the Four Hour Body. So are you planning on continuing to take, what is the name of the drug again? I know that it-

Kevin Rose 8:13 Ozempic.

Tim Ferriss 8:15 How do you spell that?

Kevin Rose 8:16 Uh, oz- Google Ozempic. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 8:19 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 8:20 O-Z- O-Z-E-M-P-I-C, I believe.

Tim Ferriss 8:23 Something like, yeah, O-Z-E-M-P-I-C. We are not recommending that you use this, people. Just to be-

Kevin Rose 8:29 Oh, I mean, you'd have to get a prescription from your doctor

Tim Ferriss 8:30 ... extremely clear

Kevin Rose 8:31 ... but yeah.

Tim Ferriss 8:32 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Rose 8:32 Yeah, so I, I, here's the deal. Like, I, I feel that, um, well, we can say it 'cause, uh, Attia has had a, a podcast on this compound and a couple other glucose-controlling compounds.

Tim Ferriss 8:44 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 8:44 Um, T-

Tim Ferriss 8:44 Are you taking metformin?

Kevin Rose 8:46 I am not taking metformin. I think that-

Tim Ferriss 8:48 Why not?

Kevin Rose 8:48 Well, I mean, the, the thing is, like you, Tim, it's like we, we just have to listen to the scientists and what they're saying, and that, for me, is all the, the scientists and people, analysts that Attia trains or works with, and, and, at, it is, um, a company. So, um, they look at that and say, yeah, there is a benefit for, for people with type 2 diabetes. Uh, but it's not necessarily clear if you don't have diabetes if there's a health benefit there. So I think it's, it's too early.

Tim Ferriss 9:17 You know, you were talking about beer consumption. Um, just to talk about the putting life in your years instead of years in your life side of the equation, uh, can I share with you an alcoholic beverage that I've become quite fond of?

Kevin Rose 9:31 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 9:31 Uh, this is new for me. So here is the problem, uh, one problem that I have, is I don't drink beer. It, it, it just does not really affect my system very well. So what ends up happening is I'll go out with someone like you, and you'll be like, "Yeah, let's have some beers." I'll be like, "Mm, I don't really have beer." "Okay, what do you want?" "I'll have a gin and soda." And then we're going kinda gin and soda for one beer, gin and soda for one beer, which ends in tears.

Kevin Rose 9:54 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 9:54 Like, just [laughs] ends-

Kevin Rose 9:55 Oh, that's the worst. Yeah

Tim Ferriss 9:56 ... it ends really, really poorly. And then I was approached by this company, uh, to sponsor the podcast, and I'd never heard of them, JuneShine. And JuneShine makes hard kombucha. Had not heard of them, and I was like, okay, well, I like kombucha. I do in fact enjoy alcohol, even though it's fallen out of fashion with people who are like, "I only use ketamine. I'm so evolved." I'm like, well, we should talk about that, but, uh-

Kevin Rose 10:20 Is that what people say? People say that? You-

Tim Ferriss 10:22 At parties, yeah.

Kevin Rose 10:22 Really?

Tim Ferriss 10:23 People are trying to use, people are trying to use-

Kevin Rose 10:24 "I only use ketamine. I don't use alcohol"?

Tim Ferriss 10:26 Yeah, that's, that's turned into this substitute for alcohol, which, you know, may or may not have a place, but suffice to say, I don't have ketamine in my house for a lot of reasons. [laughs] We could get into those. Uh, it has a place, but I will have this right here, this JuneShine, and it comes-

Kevin Rose 10:43 Yeah, I've had it

Tim Ferriss 10:43 ... with many different flavors. Yeah, it's great. And so I reached out to my team to ask them about the, the company, and [laughs] uh, one of them was like, "Oh, yeah, I know JuneShine. I have three boxes of it right next to me." [laughs] And I thought to myself, well, okay, that tells me something, 'cause my team I consider to have very good taste. Not literally, although they might have that, too. And it's great because it, it's carbonated. It has, I believe, 6% alcohol by volume, and you can get a nice buzz from one because it's highly carbonated, and certainly also has alcohol. And I just don't seem to have the hangover, nor the losing arms race of doing, like, gin and sodas per each other person's beer. It's been really nice. So this has turned into more of a recreational light alcoholic beverage for me. I'm a, I'm a huge fan.

Kevin Rose 11:36 Yeah, I didn't, the one thing I was curious about is wh- how much sugar were... I, I always see these types of beverages at the store, like these hard kombuchas or the hard seltzers, all, all that stuff, you know?

Tim Ferriss 11:46 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 11:46 And I hadn't tried that White Claw before, but I tried it for the first time. Have you tried the White Claw?

Tim Ferriss 11:51 [laughs] The White Claw. I haven't tried the White Claw. It's like the Facebook.

Kevin Rose 11:56 [laughs] Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 11:57 The White Claw. Uh, I haven't, but, uh, how did you feel after that?

Kevin Rose 12:01 It's not that good. It's not that good.

Tim Ferriss 12:03 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 12:03 It, it's, I, I get why it's, i- it's like, I don't know, I feel like when we were growing up it was, um, what was the hot thing? Like, the wine coolers.

Tim Ferriss 12:10 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 12:10 It's essentially kind of like a wine cooler type style drink.

Tim Ferriss 12:13 Zimas. Wasn't it Zima?

Kevin Rose 12:14 Oh, my gosh, that's the first alcohol I ever got drunk off of, Zima.

Tim Ferriss 12:16 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 12:16 [laughs] That's so funny. Um, but yeah-

Tim Ferriss 12:19 Back in the day

Kevin Rose 12:19 ... 3.6 grams of, uh, sugar, that's not so bad I'm looking at, uh-

Tim Ferriss 12:23 Yeah

Kevin Rose 12:23 ... at their site right now.

Tim Ferriss 12:24 Yeah, yeah. It's, uh, it's, it's allowed me to be socially, to socially drink alcohol without just crucifying my brain cells, and I've really enjoyed it. You wanna see a bad decision? You wanna ... I can share a bad decision with you.

Kevin Rose 12:40 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 12:41 Okay. A bad decision is this mug I'm going to show you. This is a mug that I bought some time ago as a gift for my girlfriend. And as context, just so people don't lose their minds completely, my girlfriend will often text me various things like, "Calm down, sugar tits." She calls me sugar tits for reasons that are unclear to me, but sometimes she'll call me sugar tits.

Kevin Rose 13:04 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 13:05 So I thought it would be very funny when I was walking through this random store and I saw some people chuckling at a mug, and so I bought this mug. I'm gonna show it to you first. Can you see what this says?

Kevin Rose 13:16 Yeah, it says, "Calm your tits."

Tim Ferriss 13:17 [laughs] Calm-

Kevin Rose 13:18 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 13:19 It says, "Calm your tits," and, uh, it has two little dots in the O and the U of your, so you can imagine that. And then, lo and behold, uh, we end up, uh, reuniting, 'cause we were traveling separately, and in between the time that I bought this and had, like, put it aside for her in a place where I knew she would find it, the day before we were to meet up we got into this huge fight. [laughs] And so then the next day I somewhat forget about this gift, and-

Kevin Rose 13:51 She thought you put that out there?

Tim Ferriss 13:52 [laughs] Well, I did put it out there, but it was two weeks earlier-

Kevin Rose 13:55 No, I know

Tim Ferriss 13:55 ... when everything was groovy. And, uh, so then she pulled it out and she was like, "Calm your tits. Hmm. Thank you, babe." And I was like, "Uh-oh. Uh-oh, I'm in trouble. [laughs] I'm getting pulled into the deep water. Oh, I did this to myself." Uh, and-

Kevin Rose 14:11 I feel like she would find that funny under normal circumstances.

Tim Ferriss 14:14 Under normal circumstances she would've found it hilarious.

Kevin Rose 14:16 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 14:16 But the fact that we had a heightened, let's call it a, a, a heated, a passionate discussion within 24 hours that had not yet been fully resolved, uh, led to calm your tits not being as funny as I'd hoped.

Kevin Rose 14:30 Yeah, that's fair.

Tim Ferriss 14:31 So good decision, bad decision. What else do we have on the roster?

Kevin Rose 14:37 Oh, man. Lots of stuff to talk about.

Tim Ferriss 14:39 We got a lot.

Kevin Rose 14:40 Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things, uh, we can ... We, we, you did put out a little tweet asking for people's questions. Lots of questions around blockchain and NFTs, all that crazy stuff. We can save that for later and we can go and stay on the health front. You wanna do that or do you wanna go into some of the blockchain stuff? Up to you.

Tim Ferriss 14:56 [laughs] You know, since, since I will be mostly just staring at you with a blank expression once we get to all of the technical details of crypto and blockchain, I'd say let's stick with health for a little bit here.

Kevin Rose 15:09 Yeah. Yeah, so I'm curious what ... A- actually, you know, looking at the video now, we're gonna put this video out or no? It'll be a video as well?

Tim Ferriss 15:15 Yeah, why not? I mean-

Kevin Rose 15:16 Yeah, so you got a little, like, device up above your doorframe behind you. Yeah, that-

Tim Ferriss 15:21 Yes

Kevin Rose 15:21 ... that little guy right there.

Tim Ferriss 15:22 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 15:22 Um, so one of the questions that I had for you actually is, like, you know, we're not as young as we used to be.

Tim Ferriss 15:29 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 15:29 And, uh, I, for me, flexibility has been such an important thing to focus on.

Tim Ferriss 15:37 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 15:37 And flexibility with supporting muscles to, so that when you do get flexible you're just not just like a blob. Um, and I'm curious, like, you know, I saw that machine hanging out behind you. Is that for flexibility? What do you do? Like, what's your focus these days on the training side? Are you incor- ... As you're getting older, are you incorporating more around, like, the, t- not, not longevity, but more around just less mass and more just, you know, practical, like, old people stretching? [laughs] Like, what are you, what are you doing?

Tim Ferriss 16:07 [laughs] Watching a lot of Richard Simmons videos.

Kevin Rose 16:10 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 16:11 [laughs] I am, uh ... So for people who can't see this, there is a pull-up bar within the door jams behind me, and so the design is such that as you pull down on it, the physics of the engineering cause it to sort of buckle outwards without damaging the inside of the doorframe. So it's a cool design.

Kevin Rose 16:35 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 16:35 It's a really elegant design. You can find them on Amazon. And I use that for hanging and, uh, really just decompressing or compressing, depending on how you look at it, my back scapula and, uh, also just re- relieving my lower back and hip flexors from sitting for too long a period of time. My priorities from a training perspective right now, I would say, I can just lay it out pretty simply, would be conventional weight training once or twice a week, probably no more than that. It's really to maintain muscle mass, perhaps build a bit of muscle mass, and also to make it, uh, a little easier to maintain healthy glucose levels, right? So if you are increasing your muscular mass, particularly if you're doing these workouts prior to a meal, your glucose disposal is just going to be improved. Like-

Kevin Rose 17:34 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 17:34 ... uh, GLUT4 transporters and so on, uh, will simply be, be more, uh, effective at doing their job. So let's say once or twice a week. On, on top of that right now, my activities are kinda seasonal these days, and they're seasonal in part because I really want to identify types of exercise that not only I enjoy, but that I can do with my girlfriend. And that's actually a byproduct of a conversation at one point with an incredible trainer, performance coach, and all around hilarious guy named Kelly Starrett, who's a beast. Like, when he turned, I think when he turned 40 he celebrated by running the Quad Dipsea, which is an ultramarathon. By the way, he weighs, like, 220 or 230 pounds. He's extremely muscular.

Kevin Rose 18:20 Crazy.

Tim Ferriss 18:21 Doing a standing back flip and, like, cleaning and jerking 350 pounds or something like that. That's how he celebrated his 40th birthday, just to give you an idea of who this guy is.

Kevin Rose 18:29 That's a party.

Tim Ferriss 18:30 Yeah, it's a party.

Kevin Rose 18:31 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 18:31 And, uh, great, great guy. The Ready State, you can look him up, uh, Kelly Starrett. And he was telling me about how he has prioritized activities with his wife over everything else. He's like, "Once you have kids, you've got a family, you've got business demands, anything that you choose outside of that is pulling you away from time with your wife or your family." And so he's really tried to prioritize that. And before I have kids, I'm hoping to develop some of those habits. So for instance, rock climbing is something that I'm doing more and more, and absolutely love. For basically everything that involves pulling, you're going to check the box.

Kevin Rose 19:12 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 19:12 And, uh, I really, really enjoy it. It's very cognitively challenging, too. I mean, it's like putting together like an upside down Tetris [laughs] board.

Kevin Rose 19:23 Yeah, I mean, well, they call them... They literally call them problems, right?

Tim Ferriss 19:26 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 19:26 If you're bouldering, they-

Tim Ferriss 19:27 Exactly

Kevin Rose 19:27 ... they're called problems because you have to sit there and spend 15 minutes thinking about what you're gonna do before you even attempt it, you know?

Tim Ferriss 19:32 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I really enjoy that. And so we'll, we'll go to the climbing gym two or three times a week. Usually, the, the lifting will happen after the climbing in the same gym. Kettlebell swings once or twice a week. I'm gonna get around to answering your macro question. These are all mostly strength and muscle mass focused.

Kevin Rose 19:55 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 19:55 But the climbing does help with mobility. So I would say that my focus, more than focusing on flexibility, which invokes this image of passive stretching, you know, laying on the ground with your legs split and, like, reaching forward and just kinda hanging out there for 60 seconds to 90 seconds. The-

Kevin Rose 20:13 That Van Damme moment.

Tim Ferriss 20:14 Van Damme. Van Damme.

Kevin Rose 20:15 Everybody wants to do the Van Damme, though.

Tim Ferriss 20:17 Everybody wants to do the Van Damme, this is true. However, uh, where I have had what, what people would consider the greatest flexibility gains and also just the most practical transfer of seeming more limber, it's been through weighted mobility. So AcroYoga, for instance, involves a lot of pressing, handstand work, inversion, a lot of pressing. And in the process of doing something like AcroYoga for the legs and the hips, or rock climbing for, uh, l- less so the upper body, but more the hips and the way that you rotate to improve-

Kevin Rose 20:51 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 20:51 ... your reach and so on, uh, has been really, really helpful. Uh, there's something called Jefferson curls that you can do, uh, and you must do very safely. I describe how to do it, uh, via someone named Coach Sommer, who is the former men's team, men's national team coach, how to do something called a Jefferson curl, uh, which is effectively a slow, rounded back, stiff leg deadlift.

Kevin Rose 21:19 Hm.

Tim Ferriss 21:19 And you're using very light weights, but you kinda, you kinda roll down almost as you would do in a yoga class, vertebra by vertebra.

Kevin Rose 21:25 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 21:26 And when you get more comfortable under weight in these end ranges of movement, then your body effectively says, "Oh, okay. Now that we've developed some strength in this end range, we can extend the end range."

Kevin Rose 21:38 Hm. Interesting. So it opens up naturally a little bit once you've had that supporting structure there.

Tim Ferriss 21:43 Exactly. And it relates to the Golgi tendon reflex and all sorts of things. But w- when I'm trying to develop flexibility, my question is usually, how do I actually develop strength at my current limitation?

Kevin Rose 21:57 Right.

Tim Ferriss 21:58 And, uh, that's, uh, also part of the reason why something called PNF is very effective for stretching, which is a more active sort of contract and release based form of stretching.

Kevin Rose 22:10 What is, what is PNF? What does that stand for?

Tim Ferriss 22:12 Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation, I believe. It's been a few decades since I've thought of it. Uh, but, uh, PNF usually... I shouldn't say usually, but it's very often involves partner stretching where someone would take, for instance, your leg extended. You'd be laying on your back. One leg is extended above you. They would push it forward until you reach the end range of your hamstring. You would then push against them for, say, seven seconds, and then relax, and then they would increase the stretch.

Kevin Rose 22:42 Hm.

Tim Ferriss 22:42 And you would go a bit further, and then you would repeat that.

Kevin Rose 22:44 Is this what you see, like, uh, NBA players, like, before they're about to go into a game, you see them kinda laying on their back, and they have a trainer come in, and they'll- they're pushing the leg in. There's always a trainer kinda supporting the leg and pushing it in. They're pushing against it. Is that the same type of stretching, or is that different?

Tim Ferriss 22:58 Good question. I would suspect it's different, just because PNF can be taxing, and you would spread it out much like you would spread out weight training.

Kevin Rose 23:08 Gotcha.

Tim Ferriss 23:09 So you wouldn't, as far as I know, you wouldn't do PNF every day, for instance. You would, you do PNF a few times a week. So my focus right now is... This is gonna sound kind of funny, 'cause it's so simplistic, but just feeling good, because there are times when I've been huge, right? I mean, I weigh 170 pounds right now. I've been 220 pounds, and not fat. I mean, huge. But did I feel comfortable walking around? No. I couldn't turn my head. I was like a turtle, you know? I had to like- [laughs]

Kevin Rose 23:37 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 23:37 ... rotate at the feet. I mean, it was ridiculous. So being comfortable, I'm doing a lot of weighted hiking also. So I'd say mobility, meaning strength in the end ranges, strength training, and then rucksacking, which I love doing when you have access to hiking trails, which you do in, in Oregon, certainly.

Kevin Rose 23:56 And is that with that one backpack we talked about a long time ago? You use this weighted backpack that you take with you?

Tim Ferriss 24:01 It is, yeah. GORUCK. So GORUCK is the brand I use. There are many other brands. You can get vests. Uh, personally don't love the vests. If you're gonna run with these things, which I'm never going to do, then I think the vests probably make more sense. But I prefer to use the weighted backpacks. And I have a 20 pound, a 35 pound, and a 45 pound, and then you can add different things to that, depending. It is a lot harder than people might think. [laughs] And what you don't wanna do is what I did in San Francisco the very first time I got a weighted- ... vest. And I was like, well, at the time I was really big. I was like, I can squat X number of pounds for a Y number of reps, no problem. I'm just gonna put on a 60-pound weight vest. And then, I, I very, very stupidly just started walking with no plan, right? I was just like, "Well, I'll just walk, and then when I start getting tired, I'll turn around." And [laughs] I kept walking, and I got to the point where it hurt so much that I had to take it off, and I was like, "Well, how do I get this home?" I was, like, two miles away [laughs] you know? So I had to leave the weight vest, like, on a sidewalk.

Kevin Rose 25:02 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 25:02 And then t- [laughs] again, I was like, if anybody steals this, they deserve it. Like, they can... If somebody's gonna, if somebody's [laughs] gonna steal a 60-pound weight vest, like, good for them, because clearly they have more endurance than I do. And so then I had to walk back, sort of do the walk of shame back to my house without this vest, and then get a car and go pick it up. But, uh, very big on, on the rucking. Very, very big. And honestly, these days also, and this might sound like a cop-out, but for a long time my maxim was, as far as resistance training goes, train to failure.

Kevin Rose 25:34 Right.

Tim Ferriss 25:34 One, one set, train to failure. There are many, many, many ways to build strength. I'm not saying that is the one and only way. Some people get very dogmatic about these things. I, it, it's just for, for bang for the buck, like, per minute of workout time, that's a great approach. However, as I have got a little bit older and I've been looking at things like time outside, time in nature, sun exposure, I'm not trying to optimize to get it under 20 minutes or under 30 minutes. I actually enjoy the process of doing it. So those are a, a few of the ways that I'm thinking about this, Ziff.

Kevin Rose 26:10 A couple questions there I'm curious about. So, uh, granted this information is a bit dated, but I was, I was climbing a lot in my youth and, and, and did quite a bit of indoor and outdoor.

Tim Ferriss 26:20 Yep.

Kevin Rose 26:20 And one of the people that I trained with, um, uh, was like a, you know, semi-pro climber that would tell me a couple things. One, every ounce of muscle he considered to be a potential negative, in that it's some, it's weight that can pull you off the wall. Because in his mind-

Tim Ferriss 26:39 Yeah

Kevin Rose 26:39 ... he's like, "It's dense weight, and you wanna be as lean as possible." And then the second piece was that he was a big fan of low weight, high rep.

Tim Ferriss 26:49 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 26:50 So just, you know, I mean, the guy could do 100 pull-ups in a row. It was just, like, insane, right? [dog barks] I, I'm, I'm curious... Was that the pup?

Tim Ferriss 26:57 [laughs] Yeah, it's Molly going crazy. She doesn't like the idea of 100 pull-ups, apparently. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 27:04 I, I, I'm curious though, what is your style? Like, if, if you're not going for mass and you're going for lean strength, it's not about gaining... You're not d- eating really high protein then, or what are you, what are you doing there?

Tim Ferriss 27:17 Well, I, th- there are also many, many, many, many different ways to train, and I don't think I have particular insight when it comes to climbing, although I have asked around, I've taken lessons, and have thought about it. But the short answer is I'm doing some high-rep work, like the kettlebell swings are generally gonna be higher repetition, and I'm using a 53 pound and then maybe a 72 pound kettlebell, doing two one-handed swings. You get a lot out of that exercise. Then when I'm doing other types of exercises, like inversion training, where I'm doing handstand work, where I'm really developing actually a lot of finger strength and, uh, shoulder extension, kind of bringing your shoulders to your ears if your hands were extended over your head, for instance, as well as, uh, some of the training for bouldering specifically, it's sh- super short duration.

Kevin Rose 28:14 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 28:14 So you could view that almost as you would view powerlifting. So I'm not, I'm trying to avoid a burn, generally speaking, in those types of scenarios, and I'm looking to build kind of neurally based-

Kevin Rose 28:27 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 28:27 ... strength, like better recruitment of motor units and things like that. Uh, so I'm combining the two, but certainly I agree with your friend 100%. It's like the more weight you gotta haul up that wall, the more, the harder you're gonna have to work. It's like-

Kevin Rose 28:40 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 28:40 ... cycling. Like, cyclists do not wanna have large upper bodies, [laughs] right?

Kevin Rose 28:44 Right.

Tim Ferriss 28:44 It's just drag. That's all it is. And, uh, for me right now, I am perfectly happy to be smaller and strong and working on things like climbing. There's no need for me to be large. I think... And a lot of people don't want to be muscularly large, but it's hard to find anyone who wants to be weak. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 29:09 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 29:09 I think everybody would like to be strong. And you can develop incredible relative strength and really develop yourself as a strength athlete while adding minimal body mass. Even as a male-

Kevin Rose 29:23 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 29:23 ... you can do that.

Kevin Rose 29:24 I gotta say, man, the, the biggest change for me going into my 40s that has been absolutely fantastic... Well, let me, let me s- j- stop for a second. Uh, jump back. You know, I've got a three-year-old and a two-year-old. When Zelda started getting a decent size, and you, when you have a little toddler running at you at full speed, and they want you to, like, catch them, and you like, [laughs] you know, especially when it's not straight on, it's kind of at an angle and you're doing one of these one arm, like-

Tim Ferriss 29:50 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 29:50 ... like, like touchdown, like, like football catches with the one hand. Like, you're doing that with like a, you know, 25 pound [laughs] little toddler or whatever. Like, I literally, like, have thrown my back out like five times.

Tim Ferriss 30:01 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 30:02 Like, to where I am on the ground and cannot move, and I had to crawl to my bed and lay there for, like, a day and a half. And-

Tim Ferriss 30:08 [laughs] Sounds terrible

Kevin Rose 30:09 ... it, dude, it is... Like, when you... I never knew that back pain... 'Cause you know when you're a kid, you're jumping off walls, you're doing all kinds of crazy shit, like you're, you know, I was jumping off my house onto the trampoline.

Tim Ferriss 30:20 Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Kevin Rose 30:20 And then you get older and you realize, like, things just start breaking, and back pain is a real thing. I mean, I know you've had some back issues in the past. Like, it is no joke.

Tim Ferriss 30:30 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 30:30 And I needed to fix it. So I started doing ... um, Pilates twice a week, and I stuck with it, and it's been about six months now, maybe five months, and I haven't had a single issue. I have not had a single issue-

Tim Ferriss 30:44 Yeah

Kevin Rose 30:44 ... since developing that core. It is crazy, and I can, I can toss the little kids around j- as much or more than I could back then. It's just insane to me, 'cause, like, it's a-

Tim Ferriss 30:54 Yeah

Kevin Rose 30:54 ... I was always like you. Well, I would always go to the gym and be like, "Okay, biceps, triceps, chest, back, out," right? [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 31:01 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 31:01 And, like, same, you know, or shoulders, too, you know? And, like, the same-

Tim Ferriss 31:05 Yeah

Kevin Rose 31:05 ... workout every single time. And, like, you look in the mirror and you're like, "Yeah, I look pretty good," but then, then it's like, you know-

Tim Ferriss 31:10 Then your toddler takes you down. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 31:11 Yeah, toddler, exactly. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 31:16 Do you do in person, or do you do-

Kevin Rose 31:18 Over Zoom.

Tim Ferriss 31:19 Oh, man. I, I'll-

Kevin Rose 31:20 Yeah, so she's amazing.

Tim Ferriss 31:21 Yeah, yeah. Don't mention her name 'cause then she'll get the hug of death, but I, I want a referral after we finish, because I have been, th- this is where [laughs] a lot of our listeners are probably gonna be like, "Oh, my God, they've totally lost it."

Kevin Rose 31:33 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 31:34 But, uh, Pilates, really technical Pilates is not easy. And-

Kevin Rose 31:41 That's right

Tim Ferriss 31:41 ... I have never felt better than when I am doing a combination, if I f- if I look back, like, when I have felt the strongest, the fastest, the most limber, it's when I was doing a combination of Olympic weightlifting, Pilates, and acro yoga. I felt so limber and simultaneously strong at all of these crazy end ranges. And the Pilates with a really technical trainer is incredibly, incredibly beneficial, and there's a lot of carryover, uh, in the same way that gymnastics strength training-

Kevin Rose 32:17 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 32:17 ... a la Coach Sommer, S-O-M-M-E-R, uh, has a lot of carryover. So, uh, despite the connotations that people might have associated with that word, [laughs] Pilates, and there's a lot of ridiculous, ridiculous stuff also, uh, it's, done technically, it is really hard. I'll, I'll give you an example. I remember last summer I was doing Pilates over Zoom, and a friend of mine was visiting who is a, a former international level competitor in, uh, kickboxing. I mean, he went to the world championships multiple times, and, uh, was also a high level athlete in a number of other sports. Like, he's a, he's a, he's a fit guy, had decades of competition. And we got halfway through this Pilates class, and he was, uh, I think, in sort of some type of, kind of side plank bridge doing stuff with his obliques, [laughs] and he just, he just collapsed, and he was like, "Jesus Christ, this is embarrassing. This is, what's happening?" [laughs] It was great. It is not easy.

Kevin Rose 33:20 No.

Tim Ferriss 33:21 So I'm definitely a proponent, strong proponent.

Kevin Rose 33:24 Yeah, you appreciate all those little small muscles that you never really pay attention to, and it just, like, yeah, the, a- and it, it is such a little, a good teacher will, will get in there and really help you work all those little tiny stabilizing muscles. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's just fantastic. Anyway, that, if anyone out there's having back issues, highly recommend.

Tim Ferriss 33:45 Yeah, check it out. And, you know, I think it's easy for people who lift weight in some fashion to be heavily biased against body weight or calisthenic type exercises, and it's very easy for people who do body weight, calisthenic type exercises, including something like rock climbing, to sort of glance askance at people who are lifting weights. And I, I think they are very, very complementary. But man, I have seen some gigantic bodybuilders and powerlifters do a yoga class and just end up on the floor because it is a different exercise.

Kevin Rose 34:27 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 34:28 So I, I do think they, they complement each other very, very well. All right. I say with a sigh, blockchain.

Kevin Rose 34:38 Yeah. Will Tim ever make his own NFT?

Tim Ferriss 34:40 [laughs] I would like your advice here.

Kevin Rose 34:44 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 34:44 Because I'm fascinated by NFTs. I have tracked them very closely, although I stopped following it quite as closely maybe a month or two ago. I do find the technology very interesting. Conceptually, I think there are many, many, many, many, many applications of NFTs well outside of, say, artwork.

Kevin Rose 35:06 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 35:07 And, uh, have also made some investments in OpenSea, for instance, which, uh, I think there was a question on Twitter also about picks and shovels and so on.

Kevin Rose 35:16 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 35:16 I think that OpenSea, not to narrowly put it into that category, but I, I do think that they're in a very good position to establish themselves as a dominant player, regardless of what types of standards might be developed, for instance. All of that said, great interest, so why the hell have I not done it? I've not done it in part because there has been this mad dash and money grab related to NFTs, and I don't want to be perceived, nor do I maybe subconsciously even want to be driven by trying to capitalize on a hugely speculative bubble, right? Where the goal is not to enjoy the artwork. The goal is to resell the artwork for more, right?

Kevin Rose 35:59 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 35:59 So it's... And that's fine. I mean, it's fine that a market exists. That's true in a lot of traditional art as well, or, uh, I would say less digital NFT type art. So I, I would love to create an NFT just to learn more about the process, right? To mint my own NFT and to go through with all of it, maybe more than one NFT. I would be curious to know how you would think about that if you were in my shoes, or in your own shoes for that matter, but in my shoes, because I'm, I'm giving you my confessional here.

Kevin Rose 36:29 Yeah, I mean, I think that with NFTs they're, you're right, it is a mad dash by a lot of people. ... a lot of celebrities entering the space, and they are quick to attach their name to a project. Oftentimes they're not even the ones doing the artwork, which is also just kind of, like, crazy to me. Like, so you'll have-

Tim Ferriss 36:48 [laughs] Yeah

Kevin Rose 36:48 ... a list celebrity come in, say, "I'm releasing an NFT," and it's like, "I did a partnership with this person," and it's, like, this beautifully rendered 3D animated thing. And you're like, yeah, they actually never touched the computer, did they? [laughs] Just like-

Tim Ferriss 37:02 Yeah

Kevin Rose 37:02 ... you know, it's like they're just associating their name with it, so-

Tim Ferriss 37:04 Which also happens in more traditional art. Uh, if anyone hasn't seen The Price of Everything, I think. It might be The Price of Anything. The Price of Everything, though, I believe, or The Price of Anything. There's a documentary that goes into some of this. But yeah, it's-

Kevin Rose 37:16 Oh, I have to watch that. That's, that sounds awesome.

Tim Ferriss 37:18 Oh, you'll love it. You'll love it.

Kevin Rose 37:19 Yeah, so basically, yes, there is some of that. Also, but at the same time, though, you have some really legitimate kind of emerging artists that are using NFTs as this new medium, and th- I have collector friends that are not treating it like, "Let's just grab and flip," but they're gonna be holding onto for many, many decades. So there's a combination of both that are happening. For someone in your position, you're right, there's the risk that you run is that you launch the Tim Tim NFT-

Tim Ferriss 37:49 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 37:51 ... and it's like, oh great, Tim's making, you know, a half million dollars off selling this NFT or whatever it ends up going for. He just did it for the money grab, right? So I think if anything, man, you don't need the money. Like, just do it for charity.

Tim Ferriss 38:03 I would donate it all. Yeah. That's... I would donate it all. But l- let's take that as an example, though. Okay, so 500K. What the hell would I sell for 500K?

Kevin Rose 38:10 Well, if you're a good artist-

Tim Ferriss 38:11 I mean, with, with the understanding that a lot of things have sold for... I mean, there was a, there was, you know, Beeple sold one piece, uh, this collage for $69 million, right? So there's certainly... He's an incredible artist, first-

Kevin Rose 38:21 Right

Tim Ferriss 38:22 ... I should s- I should say. Like, the guy is a machine, and also a virtuoso in what he does.

Kevin Rose 38:26 And also, like, insanely funny. Y- you-

Tim Ferriss 38:29 Yeah

Kevin Rose 38:29 ... you had Beeple on your show yet or no?

Tim Ferriss 38:30 No. No, I haven't.

Kevin Rose 38:31 Oh, the guy is just a riot. He's amazing.

Tim Ferriss 38:33 [laughs] Yeah, and good for him, you know, because he... Well, people can look up his story, but I mean, created every day for what, 5,000 days straight, something like that.

Kevin Rose 38:43 Clearly not doing it for the money when he got started.

Tim Ferriss 38:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin Rose 38:45 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 38:45 I, I could not be, I could not be happier that, that people like, uh, like him are doing well in this environment. So yes, I have some graphic art ability. I could do something that was graphically inclined.

Kevin Rose 39:00 You basically have a f- a few different avenues to explore. One, I love the s- putting it underneath the charity, 100% of proceeds go to charity, fantastic, boom. You check that box, no one's gonna complain. The second thing is what do you do? Do you take existing media that you have? So maybe it's, uh, a portion of one of your episodes. Maybe it's, uh, something that you said one time that has resonated with a lot of people that is, you know, um, you want to kind of memorialize in, in a audio clip with a, a, a p- a cover art of your podcast or I, I... You can do anything you want there.

Tim Ferriss 39:31 Tim Tim Talk Talk, episode one.

Kevin Rose 39:34 [laughs] Yeah, exactly. I better get some royalties on that bitch.

Tim Ferriss 39:37 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 39:37 I interviewed you. Um, so yeah, definitely split the royalties with whoever else was on the show.

Tim Ferriss 39:44 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 39:44 [laughs] No, but the other thing is, like, you are an artist. Like, I've seen some of your stuff. You can, you can do some amazing things, or you could get super artsy. You can, like, mash a body part on a piece of paper and scan it in. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 39:54 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 39:55 You could do something like that, you know?

Tim Ferriss 39:56 I could, I could.

Kevin Rose 39:57 You have hardcore fans.

Tim Ferriss 39:58 I could get all Art Basel, you know?

Kevin Rose 40:00 Yeah, [laughs] exactly.

Tim Ferriss 40:01 Tape a banana on a wall, smash a body part against it, sell it for a few mil.

Kevin Rose 40:06 There you go.

Tim Ferriss 40:07 Oh, man.

Kevin Rose 40:08 But-

Tim Ferriss 40:08 Yeah, you know, y- I mean, a lot of people don't know this probably, but I wanted to be a comic book penciler for probably 10 years, so I spent a lot of time looking at graphic art. Was an illustrator for a period of time, so I suppose I could do that.

Kevin Rose 40:20 Listen, I love Gary Vee. [laughs] I, I love him. He's a, he's a good friend of ours. You've seen his art out there, you know? He's put out some NFTs. Like, dude, I've seen your art, too. I would say that you have the skills to put out your own NFTs. Like, if Gary can do it, you can do it, brother.

Tim Ferriss 40:36 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 40:36 Like, seriously.

Tim Ferriss 40:37 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I, and I'm grateful to people who are experimenting and pioneering and, uh, trying all these various things in the space because not everything is gonna work. Certain things will work, and you know, I f- I feel like also it's really, really hard to perhaps look at it through this lens, but with NFTs, like, yes, there's, there are going to be some amazing things. There's also gonna be a lot of noise, but it's kinda like tech companies in '99 or 2000.

Kevin Rose 41:07 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 41:07 It's like yes, some- someone could say all of those companies were garbage, but you know, amidst all the noise you had, like, the Googles and the Amazons, [laughs] right?

Kevin Rose 41:18 That's right.

Tim Ferriss 41:19 And, uh, I don't know if it was in '99, 2000 or shortly thereafter, but it was, it was in the same window.

Kevin Rose 41:24 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 41:25 And those are, like, world changers, right? Those are history changers in a lot of ways.

Kevin Rose 41:30 Yeah, the, the thing is it's just a new, it's just a new canvas type, you know? Like, I, I don't see it as, like... There's a shit ton of, like... How many craft fairs have you been to where you go down-

Tim Ferriss 41:42 Yeah

Kevin Rose 41:42 ... and it's like, oh, the Sunday craft fair, and you go and you're like, oh my God, there's like, people are painting on canvas.

Tim Ferriss 41:46 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 41:46 You're like, "I would never buy that," right?

Tim Ferriss 41:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 41:49 So it's just that, that's happening in the world of NFTs, right?

Tim Ferriss 41:53 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 41:53 Anyone with Photoshop and the export and save as PNG file can create an NFT, you know? So-

Tim Ferriss 41:58 Yeah, yeah, totally

Kevin Rose 41:59 ... anyone and everyone can participate, and I think that's a good thing, and there will be some amazing kind of cream that rises to the top, and that is, you know, we're already starting to see it. There's a handful of names out there that are, you know, NFT kind of native that are starting to gain a lot of momentum, and, and, and serious collectors and followings. And you know, I could... Like, XCOPY's a great example of an artist-

Tim Ferriss 42:21 Mm

Kevin Rose 42:21 ... that puts out these just crazy, almost seizure-inducing, flashing NFTs.

Tim Ferriss 42:29 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 42:29 No, they're insane.

Tim Ferriss 42:31 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 42:31 But, but he's been doing it since day one, and now some of his one of ones are selling for over a million dollars in Christie's-

Tim Ferriss 42:37 Wow

Kevin Rose 42:38 ... and they're, they're going around some of the major auction houses, and there's a handful of those folks that are, that are doing some really unique things in this space. So it's not all crap, I guess, is what I'm trying... I think Art Blocks, too, is another one to, to check out on the generative side. They're kind of like, to answer your question about- How do you sift through all the crap? I don't know if you had that question, but I will answer it.

Tim Ferriss 42:56 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 42:57 It-

Tim Ferriss 42:57 Thanks for-

Kevin Rose 42:58 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 42:58 ... I'll let you create my questions for me.

Kevin Rose 42:59 Yeah, [laughs] exactly. Essentially, Art Blocks, they have this editorial kind of board of other artists that, that then kind of vote in who gets accepted and, and put on the platform.

Tim Ferriss 43:10 Mm.

Kevin Rose 43:10 And so-

Tim Ferriss 43:10 Oh, yeah

Kevin Rose 43:11 ... um, the curated side is, are the, only the people that meet that bar. And I think we're gonna see more of that.

Tim Ferriss 43:15 There's a lot of that in the curated marketplaces.

Kevin Rose 43:17 Right, exactly.

Tim Ferriss 43:18 There's a lot of that. What is the story with the artwork on your, your Twitter, your Twitter?

Kevin Rose 43:25 Oh, my-

Tim Ferriss 43:26 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 43:26 ... my Twitter?

Tim Ferriss 43:26 [laughs] Whew. Man, that June shine's going to my head. Uh.

Kevin Rose 43:31 Are you drinking right now? Are you really drinking or were you just... I thought you were just holding up the camera.

Tim Ferriss 43:35 No, no, no. I dr- I just, I just skulled one. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm good.

Kevin Rose 43:38 That's amazing. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 43:39 Uh, what is this artwork on your Twitter profile?

Kevin Rose 43:42 Yeah, so what you're seeing right there is, uh-

Tim Ferriss 43:45 It looks like a bunch of pills.

Kevin Rose 43:46 Yeah, that's a, that's a squiggly. So this is-

Tim Ferriss 43:48 A squiggly

Kevin Rose 43:49 ... this is crazy. Um, essentially, well, it's f- funny we're talking about Art Blocks. So th- that piece of art right there is the very first project to launch on Art Blocks, and it is this little squiggly, and it looks very simple, like a little tiny snake, a multicolored snake. And essentially what Art Blocks is, is it's a generative art platform. So-

Tim Ferriss 44:10 Yeah, you should define what generative is-

Kevin Rose 44:12 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 44:12 ... for folks.

Kevin Rose 44:12 Let's, let's define that. So basically, if you think about traditional art, it's always an artist, they sit down, they do something, they, they mint it, they paint it on canvas, whatever it may be, and the artwork is, you know, quote, unquote, done. And then that is then sold. Generative art is essentially a artist that comes in and says, "I'm going to write an algorithm that is a piece of math that will define the basic parameters of a piece of art, but I'm gonna introduce some randomness to it, and that randomness is gonna be created by the end user." So when you click to mint a piece of generative art, you are then putting that time code, that kind of s- timestamp of randomness into the algorithm, and then the algorithm spits out your unique piece of art. So you have no idea what you're gonna get-

Tim Ferriss 45:00 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 45:00 ... until it actually arrives in your wallet. And so what you're seeing there, that little squiggly, is something that I minted. I didn't know what it was gonna be. And some of them have more rare attributes than others, different colors, different thicknesses, like all these... And, and people collect them because they love the kind of luck of the draw on what you're gonna get, and they love the output, 'cause sometimes the output is even more interesting than what the original artist could have ever, you know, contemplated when writing that initial algorithm. So it's just a new, uh, I think it is a, a really interesting new form of art that could be captured and held by the blockchain. Because generative art has been around for a long time. You know, people have been doing computer generative art, and they would always like, you could go to showrooms and they would have like, you know, computer screens or monitors up showing off this stuff. And it was always like a, a computer science-y kind of thing over the last 20 years. But there was never a way to capture that and save it. I mean, you could save it as a file, but then, you know, blockchain actually provided a way to say, okay, the output is now captured and saved in the blockchain. It is a unique asset that can then be transferred and traded. So it's actually es-

Tim Ferriss 46:05 Right

Kevin Rose 46:06 ... essentially a new form of-

Tim Ferriss 46:07 We can give you-

Kevin Rose 46:07 ... art, art form

Tim Ferriss 46:07 ... we can give you title.

Kevin Rose 46:08 Right, exactly.

Tim Ferriss 46:08 We can give you title to this unique digital asset.

Kevin Rose 46:11 Exactly. So this is kind of a new form that is o- only possible or enabled by the blockchain, which I think is, is really fun, you know? And so that's why it's gaining a lot of traction. I'll give you a sense of how quickly this market is growing. So Art Blocks, two months ago, did around 2 million in secondary sales of all of their works of art. This month, or, or sorry, not this month, last month, 'cause we're just getting into July now, last month they did over 9 million in secondary sales.

Tim Ferriss 46:39 Wow.

Kevin Rose 46:39 Um, and so it's just, it's really taking off. So I, I think it's like third. It's like NBA Top Shots, CryptoPunks, and then I think Art Blocks is the, the, the third platform. They, they jump around, but it's right around there.

Tim Ferriss 46:50 Say, say, say that, say that one more time.

Kevin Rose 46:51 Uh, NBA Top Shots, like the NBA collectibles.

Tim Ferriss 46:54 Yep. That's number one?

Kevin Rose 46:55 I mean, it depends on the month, because sometimes CryptoPunks, uh, or some other project will appear that is, you know, massive and blows up.

Tim Ferriss 47:02 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 47:02 But, you know, CryptoPunks is the OG original kind of, uh, uh, not generative art, but it was the or- the original kind of randomly created... I guess you could consider it kind of generative in some way, but there were random output was, was captured with all these different attributes.

Tim Ferriss 47:17 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 47:17 That one-

Tim Ferriss 47:17 Yeah, people can check it out at larvalabs.com

Kevin Rose 47:20 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 47:21 Larva Labs is amazing. I mean, they, they do all sorts of fascinating stuff.

Kevin Rose 47:24 Really cool stuff. And, and do you know that Jay-Z set his Twitter bio to a CryptoPunk-

Tim Ferriss 47:29 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 47:29 ... uh, a couple weeks ago?

Tim Ferriss 47:31 Did not know that. Wow.

Kevin Rose 47:32 Yeah, so the-

Tim Ferriss 47:33 Let me take a, let me take a look at that. That's a big deal.

Kevin Rose 47:35 That's a big deal.

Tim Ferriss 47:36 Huh. Wow. Go Jay-Z. [laughs] It's one way to add some value to the [laughs] market you're participating in. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 47:46 I mean, I, I, I feel that it's, it, it's silly for people to say this is just all hype, you know? And there, there is a lot of that out there. They're like, "Oh, this is just gonna go away." It's funny, if you look at, like historically, when these new mediums come out, like what happens and what people say. I, I actually did a bit of research on all this, and, um, I don't know if you knew this, but back in the, when Canvas was first introduced, uh, before that was largely like cathedral wall, mostly on wooden planks that... Oh, are you still there, Tim?

Tim Ferriss 48:16 Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Well, that was fucking crazy. Uh, my house got hit by lightning.

Kevin Rose 48:20 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 48:22 And the whole, the whole show came to a grinding halt. Uh.

Kevin Rose 48:26 Did your house actually get... Was it your house that got hi- hit by lightning or no?

Tim Ferriss 48:29 It's unclear. It's unclear. It's unclear, but there was a massive thunderstorm and lightning and thunder all around this remote house at an undisclosed location. And I'm in the middle of fucking nowhere, for context. [laughs] And everything just went out, and I was like, "Oh yeah, this is why you have a generator. This is why I have generators [laughs] in places like Austin, where I was the only house on my street with power during the snowpocalypse." It's just like, it's, it's incredible- We'll come back to Jay-Z and the CryptoPunks in a second, but it's just incredible how fragile the infrastructure around us actually is.

Kevin Rose 49:07 Yeah. I mean, I have the same thing. I lost power for seven days in Portland during this last winter storm. We had a ice storm, and it took everything out.

Tim Ferriss 49:15 Yeah, it's wild. It's wild. And, you know, I do worry about or think a good amount about attacks on the power grid, cyber attacks on the power grid, and there's actually a book that I highly suggest people check out called Lights Out, subtitle, A Cyber Attack, A Nation Unprepared: Surviving the Aftermath by Ted Koppel. And it will scare the shit out of you. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 49:43 Dude, I feel like these, these types of things just make one more paranoid, you know?

Tim Ferriss 49:49 Well, you've heard the expression, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Kevin Rose 49:52 [laughs] Right.

Tim Ferriss 49:53 Which isn't intended to be a justification for, like, building spider holes in the back of your [laughs] house and going really above and beyond the call of duty to ridiculous lengths to prep in any sense. But having some basic provisions and basic backup plans in case of disaster I think is pretty smart. I mean, we, most of us have fire extinguishers. We hope never to use them, but we recognize that having one for 100 bucks or less, 20 bucks, is, is, is worth the downside protection. Similarly, wearing seat belts. Like, when's the last time you had a head-on collision? Not recently probably. But we all wear seat belts because it's relatively easy to do that and mitigate high levels of downside. I think generators fall in that category. I think backup water falls in that category. And, uh, it's, it's just a very present reminder for me of just how, if, we, we saw it during, or personally I saw it during Hurricane Sandy when I was working on a chapter related to disaster preparedness in The 4-Hour Chef. There's an extensive section on that, which [laughs] seems to not match at all with anything related to cooking or, [laughs] uh, chefs. But in fact, uh, it does relate. It was kind of too long-winded to explain, but I was going back and forth with my editor at the time, and they were like, "Look, Tim, I'm into prepping, and even for me this seems ridiculous." And then what happened? Hurricane Sandy hit, and everything was totaled, and people in New York were going without power. And I just think it's a good sort of pop quiz from the universe in a lightweight way. When your power goes out in this way, it's like, all right, how much water do you have, right? How much ability do you have to charge your devices without access to the power grid? Just super basic stuff.

Kevin Rose 51:47 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 51:48 Right? 'Cause I was thinking, okay, we were, we were gonna record this, 'cause we were texting back and forth, but as soon as the power went out, what happened? All the cell towers were overwhelmed, so my bars went from, like, three to one immediately.

Kevin Rose 51:59 Right.

Tim Ferriss 51:59 And I was like, well, you suggested we could record via phone, like have the conversation and just record locally on QuickTime, which is what we're gonna do. But that also, you have to think out to, like, the tertiary effect of something like that.

Kevin Rose 52:13 Sure.

Tim Ferriss 52:13 And-

Kevin Rose 52:13 Up until a certain point, where you're just like, this is overkill. That, that's the problem-

Tim Ferriss 52:17 Yeah, no, dude

Kevin Rose 52:17 ... I have, is like, where do you, where do you draw the line, you know?

Tim Ferriss 52:19 Well, do you have backup water at home?

Kevin Rose 52:21 I, I mean, I have, like, basically-

Tim Ferriss 52:22 Do you have, like, a week of water for your family?

Kevin Rose 52:24 No. I don't have a week.

Tim Ferriss 52:26 It's like a few hundred bucks, man. You should definitely do it.

Kevin Rose 52:28 No, I mean, I've got, like ... Well, here's the deal. Do I need a week of water, like, backup? Like, I've got-

Tim Ferriss 52:33 Well, I'll give you an example. So in Austin, Texas, there have been multiple boil warnings where there are high levels of rain, some type of flooding. The municipal water treatment facilities become overwhelmed, and they issue a boil warning. So you can drink the water as long as you boil it. Uh-

Kevin Rose 52:50 Right. But I have, I have n- uh, a HEPA, not HEPA, but I have the equivalent of that on the water side that does 99.99% of viruses and bacteria.

Tim Ferriss 53:00 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 53:00 So I have, like, the crazy over-the-top, like, water sanitation, like, coming into the house.

Tim Ferriss 53:07 So you can just, like, take your kids' diapers and recycle them through-

Kevin Rose 53:09 It doesn't matter, yeah

Tim Ferriss 53:09 ... your drinking water.

Kevin Rose 53:10 You just ... [laughs] Yeah, exactly. I can just pee into the thing. It just works.

Tim Ferriss 53:12 [laughs] So yeah, you know, it's, I just, I just view these things, I'm like, why not have a few hundred bucks of distilled water?

Kevin Rose 53:19 Well, no, I get it. I have, I have basically I would say probably about four or five days worth of water.

Tim Ferriss 53:25 Yeah, that's good. Just for you. Your family can fend for themselves.

Kevin Rose 53:28 Well, just, I can get in a car-

Tim Ferriss 53:30 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 53:30 ... and drive to some place where there's water. I don't think, like-

Tim Ferriss 53:33 No, well, that's the thing, though, is like in, in Austin, it was like within 24 hours all water at every grocery store was gone.

Kevin Rose 53:40 Right.

Tim Ferriss 53:40 So it just raises interesting questions for me. Uh, right? 'Cause then you're like, okay, well, if that happens, what are people gonna do? They're gonna think about driving outside the limits of Austin. Okay? So then what, and then what, and then what?

Kevin Rose 53:51 That's right.

Tim Ferriss 53:51 But I don't think I'm that crazy about it.

Kevin Rose 53:53 I don't think that's crazy.

Tim Ferriss 53:54 I'm not that-

Kevin Rose 53:54 No, we, we smooth the waters here.

Tim Ferriss 53:55 I'm not, I'm not, like, walking around downtown in a ghillie suit or something, you know? It's like I, I-

Kevin Rose 54:00 Do you have a, a gas mask?

Tim Ferriss 54:02 I do not have a gas mask. I had one in San Francisco, and I don't have one. Do you have a gas mask?

Kevin Rose 54:07 I do not. Do you have any type of full body virus protection suit?

Tim Ferriss 54:11 Like a hazmat suit?

Kevin Rose 54:13 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 54:13 I do not.

Kevin Rose 54:14 Oh, so you're not that bad.

Tim Ferriss 54:15 Do you?

Kevin Rose 54:15 Yeah, I've got a couple of those. No, I'm just kidding. [laughs] I don't actually.

Tim Ferriss 54:18 [laughs] My kids wear them from 9:00 to 5:00.

Kevin Rose 54:20 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 54:20 That's pretty standard in the Rose household. No, I don't have those, uh, in part because right now I'm in a very rural environment. I'm in the middle of nowhere. Uh, but you realize quickly also without the amenities of a city center how dependent you are on things that are easy to take for granted, like power or telecommunications. And if a tree goes down and lands on the lines, like, you're just out of luck-

Kevin Rose 54:45 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 54:45 ... until it gets fixed. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 54:46 Yeah, I'm on the, uh, wait list for one of those Tesla Powerwalls. So I think-

Tim Ferriss 54:50 Yeah, those are cool. Those are cool.

Kevin Rose 54:52 They're all back ordered.

Tim Ferriss 54:53 Exactly. Right?

Kevin Rose 54:55 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 54:55 So then, then what? Then the .1% of poop in your water's gonna kill you.

Kevin Rose 55:00 Something has to get you, man. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 55:04 And you're taking all these life extension drugs, and then the poopy water's gonna get you.

Kevin Rose 55:07 Yeah, exactly.

Tim Ferriss 55:08 [laughs] All right, so Jay-Z. You know, I looked it up, uh, while I was futzing around and messing around. And for those who haven't seen it, Mr. Carter at SC, it's actually surprisingly hard to find on Twitter [laughs] despite that has three million followers and zero following. But, uh, Jay-Z does in fact have a CryptoPunk as his profile pic. Is that the right term-

Kevin Rose 55:32 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 55:32 ... to use?

Kevin Rose 55:33 That's right.

Tim Ferriss 55:34 That's wild to me. When did that happen?

Kevin Rose 55:36 Couple weeks back, two, three weeks ago.

Tim Ferriss 55:38 Wow.

Kevin Rose 55:39 It's a big deal.

Tim Ferriss 55:40 That's-

Kevin Rose 55:40 It's a big validation.

Tim Ferriss 55:41 It's a big deal.

Kevin Rose 55:42 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 55:42 It's a big validation. Also, I'm sure if he owns one or 20 of those that, uh, he just 3X'd his investment probably, or does that not translate? Like, what, what types of things affect the pricing dynamics for the CryptoPunks? And people can look at this if they go to larvalabs.com, and then go to Projects, and click on CryptoPunks. You can look at the top sales. These things have been covered everywhere, and like you said, they're the, they're the OGs, the, uh-

Kevin Rose 56:16 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 56:17 ... kinda first edition. They're like the Model Ts of NFTs. So you can look at largest sales. So right now, to give people an idea, and when you look at these, people are going to [laughs] just end up gaping, jaws falling to the floor looking at these things and wondering why on earth an alien with a pipe in his mouth would be worth 7.57 million-

Kevin Rose 56:40 That's outdated

Tim Ferriss 56:41 ... dollars. It's outdated?

Kevin Rose 56:42 Oh, yeah. There's been a alien sale now at Sotheby's for 13 million.

Tim Ferriss 56:46 Wow. That's crazy.

Kevin Rose 56:48 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 56:48 I see. So off platform-

Kevin Rose 56:49 I mean, these are 20 by 20 pixel little things too. These are not massive images. They're just so, they just happen to be the first. You know, they were the first on chain-

Tim Ferriss 56:56 Yeah, just imagine, like, playing Spy Hunter or one of these, Lode Runner, one of these really old games, and the graphics associated with that. That's basically what you're looking at.

Kevin Rose 57:06 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 57:06 Okay, so that's outdated. So I see. So the, this is, and I know these, these transactions have taken place off of the platform-

Kevin Rose 57:13 That's right

Tim Ferriss 57:14 ... of Larva Labs. I got it. So this is not an accurate reflection at all of the top sales.

Kevin Rose 57:19 Right, because the top sales are now going off to Sotheby's and Christie's, and the, the traditional auction houses are stepping in and saying, "Actually, we consider NFTs to be real art. We're gonna offer them to our collectors," which-

Tim Ferriss 57:31 Surprise, surprise. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 57:32 As you can imagine. Yeah, exactly. Surprise, surprise.

Tim Ferriss 57:34 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 57:37 It turns out they also charge a 20%, uh, commission on every sale. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 57:41 Yeah, very, very, very reasonable 20% commission.

Kevin Rose 57:43 Yeah, well, suddenly they're art, you know? But no, they, it's, it's cool.

Tim Ferriss 57:46 Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Rose 57:46 It's cool that they embrace this and they put their stamp of approval. They've also done that with a handful of other projects now, some other really top artists in the NFT space, so.

Tim Ferriss 57:54 Yeah, yeah. Sotheby's seems to be really on top of it.

Kevin Rose 57:57 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 57:57 I mean, they were kind of ahead of the curve with the NFTs, for sure. I mean, they're really able to capture a lot of that market very quickly at the high end. Uh, so I have to give them credit for that. So it looks like now, maybe you can explain to people, because I know you, I know you have the explanation. But we're looking at the largest sales at larvalabs.com/cryptopunks, and you've got two aliens, so 7.57 million and 7.58 million respectively. Then you've got four gorillas, then an alien, then a something I can't even identify. I don't even know why.

Kevin Rose 58:33 They're apes, but uh-

Tim Ferriss 58:34 [laughs] Thank you. All right, we've got four apes, an alien. Number eight just looks like a, a, I have no i- like a pediatric cancer patient. Uh, I don't, I don't know what this, I have no idea what that is. Then a bunch of aliens. Not aliens. This is what I get for having too many hard kombuchas on my Random Show. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 58:55 So I'm looking at the-

Tim Ferriss 58:56 Four zombies.

Kevin Rose 58:57 Okay.

Tim Ferriss 58:57 You're looking at the top, top 12.

Kevin Rose 58:58 I'm looking at the top, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 58:59 All right, so what is number eight?

Kevin Rose 59:01 What is number eight?

Tim Ferriss 59:02 Yeah. What is it?

Kevin Rose 59:03 Uh, number eight is, so if you-

Tim Ferriss 59:05 Number-

Kevin Rose 59:05 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 59:05 ... number 6487.

Kevin Rose 59:06 So it just looks like a plain person, right? And the reason why-

Tim Ferriss 59:10 Yeah

Kevin Rose 59:10 ... that one is so valuable is it, is because it has zero attributes. So there was nothing-

Tim Ferriss 59:15 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 59:15 ... applied to it. So-

Tim Ferriss 59:17 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 59:17 ... if you sort by attributes, there's only, I think, like, seven or eight that actually have zero or something like that.

Tim Ferriss 59:23 Wow.

Kevin Rose 59:23 So.

Tim Ferriss 59:23 Got it. Got it.

Kevin Rose 59:24 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 59:24 Got it.

Kevin Rose 59:24 It's just like a bald person.

Tim Ferriss 59:26 Yeah, it'll, it'll blow people's minds to look at this and some of the transactions that are going on. So have all of the highest priced transactions left this platform and moved more to the auction houses and so on?

Kevin Rose 59:40 Yeah, that's right. I, I think the, anything, any time someone has one of these aliens now, they know it's gonna fetch double digit millions of dollars. And so they want to obviously get as many collectors bidding as possible. And what better way to bring in, you know, the old money into the game than to go with a Christie's or Sotheby's and pull from that collector base. So that's-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:00 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:00:00 ... that's been the approach.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:02 Wild. So wild. That's really, it strikes me as significant, maybe I'm over-weighting it, that Jay-Z has as his profile pic a CryptoPunk. Am, am I overstating that?

Kevin Rose 1:00:17 Well-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:17 It just, I mean, that, that is really pretty on the nose, right? I mean, [laughs] it's not subtle. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:00:23 I think it, it also speaks to kind of what's going on behind the scenes. I mean, Jay-Z has, um, a, a music company called Tidal-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:31 Yep

Kevin Rose 1:00:31 ... which is a big streaming provider on, on, on the music side, and they recently sold that to Square, which Jack Dorsey is CEO, uh, and founder of, and also obviously CEO of Twitter. They, Square is now, I believe, the number two largest purchaser of Bitcoin because people use Square Cash App to buy Bitcoin. As you can imagine, there's been a lot of talk around how artists can potentially monetize, you know, songs using NFTs or other works of art using NFTs. And, you know, Jack's in the middle of all that. So it would not surprise me that the Square Cash App Eventually turns into a way to showcase and kind of purchase and trade NFTs. There's been some rumors now that Twitter is going to jump into the NFT game in some way. Jack famously auctioned off his first tweet for millions of dollars and turned it into an NFT.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:24 That's cool. That's cool.

Kevin Rose 1:01:25 So, you know, Jay-Z's in the mix of all of this.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:01:27 So I- I'm sure he's, he's, you know, kind of learning what's going on, and obviously you have to come back to the original project, which defined the NFT standard, which is CryptoPunks.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:38 Yeah. So wild. What do you f- what do you foresee as developments in the crypto or blockchain space, or what are you watching closely?

Kevin Rose 1:01:49 Well, I think it's, it's funny because people get so caught up in these kind of bull and bear markets and, and watching these coins and saying like, "Oh, it's crazy. It's down 20%, it's up 20%." And I think if you... I- I try not to get caught up in the weeds there and just zoom out even further, because I think once you do that, the lines start to smooth out a bit and you understand that we're in the very early kind of first innings of this entire rewriting of the financial stack. And so, you know, that's part of the reason why I created the podcast to cover these things, is because there's just so much going on right now.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:24 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:02:25 We need to bring the average consumer up to speed so they know how to get into this stuff early before it's, uh, you know, on paypal.com, which is what Bitcoin [laughs] and Ethereum are now, you know?

Tim Ferriss 1:02:35 @modern_fi.

Kevin Rose 1:02:37 Oh, that's my T- my Twitter.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:38 You made it.

Kevin Rose 1:02:38 Yeah, just modern, modern.finance.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:40 Modern Finance. Modern.finance. Modern Finance Podcast.

Kevin Rose 1:02:43 On the web.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:43 Check it out, folks. On the tweets, on the Twitters, it's @modern_fi. All right, so you're tracking that. You, you're saying people get caught up in the micro cycles.

Kevin Rose 1:02:56 That's right, and they think it's over.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:57 So the fair weather speculators are going to get their faces ripped off in panic and then end up in a bad position?

Kevin Rose 1:03:02 It's because they're always buying at the highs and selling at the lows, you know? I mean, that's a very common-

Tim Ferriss 1:03:07 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:03:07 ... thing here. And, and I mean, Tim, you know this man. You bought in right when everything crashed, or just before it crashed, and you got decimated-

Tim Ferriss 1:03:14 I did, but-

Kevin Rose 1:03:14 ... for about four [laughs] three years.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:16 Yeah, I did. I did. Yes, I did. I, I, I came in in probably, what was it? Mid-2017, something like that, and promptly got my face ripped off. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:03:26 Right. But you were smart. You didn't do anything. You just sat there and-

Tim Ferriss 1:03:29 I was just like, there, there isn't a compelling... Based on the thesis that I had, I mean, which is a fancy way of saying what I hoped would happen in the future based on a couple of assumptions, there was no real reason to sell, right? It was, uh... There were these really jagged, acute short-term moves. But if I actually had high conviction in the assumptions that led me to buy in the first place, it would be hypocritical and self-defeating to sell at that point, so I didn't sell. Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:03:58 Yeah, and that was great, because that ended up, it's probably, what? Up at least 5X or more since, since all that happened.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:04 It, it's up a bit. It's up a bit. Yeah, I mean, it's not up as much as it was s- I guess end of April, beginning May, but that's okay. That's okay. I mean, I think there are just these sort of hype and deflation cycles that you see in everything.

Kevin Rose 1:04:19 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:20 Right? And, and, and my biggest regrets in all of investing are actually the times that I sold prematurely.

Kevin Rose 1:04:27 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:28 It's not having invested in things. It is in... In other words, it's not, it's not having missed opportunities to invest, it's having not h- uh, held the things I invested in for a longer period of time.

Kevin Rose 1:04:41 Yeah, Shopify. [clears throat] Sorry.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:43 Shopify-

Kevin Rose 1:04:44 My throat

Tim Ferriss 1:04:44 ... Shopify was a huge one.

Kevin Rose 1:04:45 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:04:45 I mean, that was my biggest misfire of all time, was... But at the time, that represented, in absolute dollars, a really significant win for me-

Kevin Rose 1:04:55 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:04:55 ... to try to get to the point where I didn't have to be preoccupied with money. So it made sense, right? Like, the logic of selling that actually made sense. Do I regret it? Yes. The... A better example would be in 2008, when I had one stock that I'd put a bunch of my, like a very double-digit percentage of my net worth into. Can you guess what it was? And I put it in maybe in 2005.

Kevin Rose 1:05:26 Uh, WordPress?

Tim Ferriss 1:05:28 No, no. Although I am an advisor to WordPress, and I'm a... Uh, or rather to Automattic, and I'm a big fan. But-

Kevin Rose 1:05:35 Trying to think of what you would've bought back then. Maybe Amazon?

Tim Ferriss 1:05:38 Yeah, I bought Amazon in, like, 2005 or something like that. Uh, maybe a little bit later. I'm taking a look right now.

Kevin Rose 1:05:47 So wait, you regret that? No, you don't regret that. Obviously that's been-

Tim Ferriss 1:05:50 I regret selling it.

Kevin Rose 1:05:51 Oh, you sold it, like, three years later.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:53 I sold it, I sold it when the subprime crisis landed and everything was just going through the floor.

Kevin Rose 1:06:01 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:02 And boy, oh boy, that was a mistake. Should've held onto it. And I didn't have clear rules for myself then.

Kevin Rose 1:06:10 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:10 It was... I, I had rules for buying, but not rules for holding or selling.

Kevin Rose 1:06:15 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:15 And I think people, at least I get my- I've gotten myself into a lot of trouble by having rules for buying, which I, I sort of intuitively have a pretty good feeling for. I think you have an even better feeling for it, honestly. You're just... Uh, that's absolutely one of your mutant powers. But then, uh, w- how long to hold, when to sell, having rules for that in advance is something that I have historically not been as good at, and that has been a big problem, uh, certainly with Amazon as, as sort of the, the textbook example of that, you know, selling 2008 on a panic, and now it's, who knows, 5 or 10X? I have no idea.

Kevin Rose 1:06:55 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:55 [laughs] Oops. Uh, but yes. All right, so coming back to blockchain or crypto, I mean, they're sort of like one. The, the latter is sort of contained within the former. What else are you paying close attention to? So you... O- of course, you're observing the sort of mass behavior, right?

Kevin Rose 1:07:12 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:12 And misbehavior. What else are you watching?

Kevin Rose 1:07:15 Yeah, I mean, we do a lot of crypto investing at True Ventures, where I'm a partner over there.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:20 At True Ventures.

Kevin Rose 1:07:20 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:20 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:07:20 So we've probably deployed, I'd say, 50 million or so so far this year in just in crypto-related-

Tim Ferriss 1:07:27 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:07:27 ... deals. So that's a, a pretty decent chunk of our fund. So i- it's something that we track very closely. And I would say the, the problem for the average consumer is that there's just a lot of garbage in there. There's just a lot of crap.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:40 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:07:40 So, you know, I would say that-

Tim Ferriss 1:07:43 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:07:43 ... unless you're educated and you are really deep in the space, and you're listening to all the podcasts, and you're, you know, reading all the different n- Coindesk every morning, and y- if you're at that level, then you can probably go out there and say, if you feel like it, you can go out and say, "I, I believe I see where the momentum is taking things." And so that's kind of what I do as a profession. Now, I don't recommend that people do that, you know, with their everyday, just random pick of a doggy coin. 'Cause, like, all of the-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:13 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:08:14 You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of hype around these different, you know, f- meme coins that are appearing, and those come down crashing as fast as they go up. So we have a problem similar to NFTs, where anyone can spin up a new coin, which is a few modifications to some of the open source software that's out there, make a meme around it, pump it, and then dump it, and people get burned.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:37 KevKevCoin.

Kevin Rose 1:08:38 Yeah. Uh, uh-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:38 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:08:39 TimTim-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:39 The K.

Kevin Rose 1:08:40 Yeah. We could do, we could call it that.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:41 TimTimToken.

Kevin Rose 1:08:41 TimTimToken.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:42 TimTimToken and KevKevCoin. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:08:44 I mean, we could... Like, literally, I, within an hour, we could launch a new TimTim, uh, token. And, and it would be live.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:51 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:08:52 And then we could put some liquidity on Uniswap. We could get it trading. We get people... I mean, that happens every single day.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:58 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:08:58 So I, I... It's really frustrating. And, you know, it's, it's, it... But it is what it is. It's a unregulated market. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's super exciting. There's a lot of innovation happening, a lot of really high quality projects, but a lot of, of crap to... You know, it's buyer beware. So you just have to be careful on, on, on how you evaluate these different opportunities, and definitely do not buy into the memes that are out there. Like, it's just that those are, those are silly. And, um, I'm not saying that one of them isn't going to eventually... 'Cause there's this, like, fine line between community support, and that turns into something real, and a meme, right? And, and something-

Tim Ferriss 1:09:36 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:09:37 ... that's being used to kind of pump and dump. And so-

Tim Ferriss 1:09:39 So would you, would you consider Dogecoin a meme coin?

Kevin Rose 1:09:42 It started off as a meme coin, and I think that there are attributes of it-

Tim Ferriss 1:09:47 Before, before-

Kevin Rose 1:09:47 ... that I really like

Tim Ferriss 1:09:48 ... the big EM started tweeting about-

Kevin Rose 1:09:50 Yeah, exactly

Tim Ferriss 1:09:51 ... the Doge.

Kevin Rose 1:09:51 Elon, Elon started pumping up the Doge.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:53 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:09:54 Well, he- here's the deal with Doge. Like, even the... I, I knew the founder really well. Uh, I had him on my podcast seven years ago or whatever it was. And we talked about Dogecoin, and it was a joke to, initially. It was just, like, a fun... Like, he set the supply super high. Everybody was using it to tip using these little bots on Reddit. And, you know, I had literally millions and millions and millions of Dogecoin because they were worthless.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:18 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:10:18 And I was tipping out, you know, 10,000 at a time here, 5,000 over here. Like, it was just like, we all did it. It was just fun, right?

Tim Ferriss 1:10:25 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:10:25 And it was just kind of, like, a way, like a ha- a tip of the hat-

Tim Ferriss 1:10:28 Mm-hmm

Kevin Rose 1:10:28 ... to someone. Like, oh-

Tim Ferriss 1:10:28 Monopoly money.

Kevin Rose 1:10:29 Yeah, exactly.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:29 It was Monopoly money.

Kevin Rose 1:10:30 Monopoly money. So that has now evolved into... It had a really strong community back then. It died down for a few years, and then the community came back, and then Elon jumped on top of it. But it's still lacking a few things, like the underlying developers that are working on it. Now, this could be changing, and I've, I've heard that they're seriously considering refactoring the code base. But it was just a dead project that had minor bug fixes applied to it, so there was no real... Outside of it being a quote-unquote "meme coin" and being hilarious and watching it go up in price, the, the technology stack that it was written on wasn't being well... It was being maintained just so that it didn't break. There was no innovation happening there. And so that is not the future of currency. The fu- Like, the, the future, like, currency that is going to, to, to really be a real true utility has to have an active development community behind it supporting it and evolving it over time. And so that is happening on a handful of other projects, not so much on Doge. But there is so much interest in Doge now, and it is being listed on a bunch of, of the major exchanges again. I could see... It wouldn't be crazy, uh, if you said, "Hey, Kevin, guess what? Five years from now, they now have, you know, 5,000 active developers doing all these really funky weird things on Doge." And I'd be like, "Well, that makes sense," because it had, it had the community drive a lot of that, you know?

Tim Ferriss 1:11:56 Hm.

Kevin Rose 1:11:56 But, but they're... The, the, outside of Doge, they're, they call them, like, the doggy coins. There are a bunch of other doggy style coins that are just, like, basically-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:06 Doggy style. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:12:07 Well, I'm sorry, Tim. Like, they're just-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:10 Continue

Kevin Rose 1:12:11 ... they're similar, they're similar doggy coins. I'm sorry that your m-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:13 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:12:13 ... mind went there. B- but they're, they're, they're doggy themed.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:16 Oh, dude, put that on me. Put that on me. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:12:18 [laughs] They're, they're doggy themed coins that are just, like, l- literally just out there for, to get people excited. The prices go up, the whales sell, and, you know, it's, it, it ends in tears.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:30 And then ends in tears. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:12:31 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:32 So all right. So Dogecoin, that's not a primary position in the True Ventures portfolio-

Kevin Rose 1:12:39 No, it is not. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:12:40 ... I'm guessing. Yeah. Okay. Uh, how do you... Well, actually, a number of questions. So since we invoked the name of the great Elon, you've spent some time with Elon. I have averely not. But there are those who attribute the recent correction/crash to various tweets associated with Elon, including one r- related to the environmental costs of Bitcoin. Some think that is overstated. Some think that is just, some think it's understated. Lot of controversy around it. Then there are those who would say, you know, Elon is a small perhaps contributing factor, but really it's just a, a, a overall macro run from risk assets. So even though people attribute the correction, or some people do, to that type of comms from Elon, it's, it's, it's not really accurate, in that it's, it's really a macro trend that happened to coincide at the same time. What are your thoughts? Do you have any thoughts on any of that?

Kevin Rose 1:13:46 Well, Elon certainly carries a lot of weight, or, uh, I think people more recently, even though he's tweeted a few times about cryptocurrency since all of this went down, and it didn't seem to really impact price as much as it did back when he first started doing it. So I would say he probably has a little bit less sway, and people really got pissed off when-

Tim Ferriss 1:14:05 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:14:05 ... when he did this. I wouldn't... I, I think that, you know, listen, we had a massive runup over the last, you know, six months. So to see a sell-off or correction like that just totally makes sense to me. I don't know that I'd pin it-

Tim Ferriss 1:14:17 Yeah, yeah

Kevin Rose 1:14:17 ... all on Elon. I think that certainly his comments and pulling it out of, you know, Tesla from accepting Bitcoin and, you know, it, it, it certainly sparked something that everyone was already thinking behind the scenes, and that's true. You know, Bitcoin is a very dirty currency. I would say that I have read reports, and I have talked to folks that are in the camp of, you know, they will point out that the mining operations have really led to a lot of renewable energy. Um, so a lot of these Bitcoin mines around the world are placed in places where renewable energy is there and in place and operating because it is the cheapest form of energy. Now, granted, there are other places where it's running purely off of coal. So I don't know that I fully buy that. So, you know, I, I think that I, I'd have to set that aside. I don't think that the underpinnings of Bitcoin are gonna be rewritten anytime soon. It is such a... You know, the fact that Satoshi disappeared, it's kind of like this... I, I know they have folks that are in charge, but it's, it's almost like don't touch it unless it's really broken. There's like just, you know, it's such a massive market cap, and it does one thing really well, which is just store of value. So while there is a lot of little additional add-ons that are helping it scale, no one is thinking about completely rewriting it from the ground up in the way that, say, they're doing on Ethereum. Like, Ethereum is being rewritten right now to switch to, uh, proof of stake from proof of work, so out of the dirty CPU, GPU mining world into something that is ex- insanely clean and more efficient. And that upgrade will take place sometime in the next year or so. So there are other cryptocurrencies that certainly realize that this is an issue, and they want to get away from the useless... Or well, I mean, it's, it's a very... You're also, uh, in some sense, when you do these proof of work operations that require a lot of CPU and GPU and are very power intensive, that is how the security of the network is maintained. So they are useful in that sense. But we have, I just think we have better, cleaner tech now that we can apply to the same problem.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:27 What are your hopes for Chia, if any, and could you describe what Chia is?

Kevin Rose 1:16:35 Yeah. So Chia is a cryptocurrency that was created by Bram Cohen, who's the inventor of BitTorrent. We all, you know, remember BitTorrent from when we were pirating movies or whatever it may be. It was sort of the kind of first peer-to-peer, um, elegant way to swap large files. Bram went on to create Chia. Um, Chia is definitely... You know, it's one of our investments at True, so full disclosure there.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:58 Yeah. Me too. I'm an investor.

Kevin Rose 1:17:00 Yeah. The reason why we backed Bram is because, I mean, there's, there's a handful of engineers that y- if they raise their hand, they say, "I'm going to do something new," you just realize that the caliber-

Tim Ferriss 1:17:10 He's just an animal

Kevin Rose 1:17:11 ... yeah, one of the top tier engineers in the world, so you say, always say yes to something like that. So he's come up with a way to do, um, a proof of space and proof of time, uh, a blockchain that uses hard drives for farming. So he calls it farming. And it essentially, part of the reason why I was attracted to it initially is because everyone has additional hard drive capacity. And you can turn a normal computer into a farming rig that goes out and, and will actually plot and farm and do the same functions of a cryptocurrency, meaning providing space as a way to protect the network rather than just GPU and CPU, and it is just so much more green. It doesn't... It uses like one one-thousandth of the amount of energy of, say, like, using a Bitcoin, uh, CPU or GPU, and potentially democratizes in a, in a much more broader way. And so what I mean by that is that, you know, if you were to compete and you were to mine Bitcoin today, you would have to go out and buy a very custom kind of ASICs custom, uh, processor rig, or a really fast GPU if you're mining on Ethereum, and spend thousands and thousands of dollars to go out and participate in the network. So you just can't use an off-the-shelf computer anymore the way you could when it first launched, you know, in its first, uh, uh, year or so. So now with, with, with Chi- with something like Chia, and, and you know, Ethereum's moving this way as well, um, with proof of stake, you don't really need the hardware requirements. So you can go out and just use some extra hard drive space, join a pool, and then you can be mining or farming, uh, kind of instantly. So the number of active participants in the network goes up, which means it's more decentralized, which means it's better for, for overall security. So rather than just be, it being controlled by several thousand, you know, the hope is with something like Chia, you get hundreds of thousands of people participating and, and doing this farming. And so far it's, it's, it's been working quite well. I mean, they've got a lot of people. They had, uh, you know, a warning go- went out. Several big publications wrote kind of warnings that- Hard drives were being sold out everywhere, so you couldn't go to, like, a, an electronics store. Like, Best Buy was selling out of their top-end hard drives because people were using them for, for mining on Chia. And so there was going to be this massive hard drive [laughs] shortage. So W- Western Digital's stock, like, went up because of it.

Tim Ferriss 1:19:36 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:19:37 And it was just... It, it's just crazy. But I, I-

Tim Ferriss 1:19:39 That's wild.

Kevin Rose 1:19:40 It's wild. It's wild. But it's, um... Yeah, it's... I would say, uh, you know, just playing both sides of the coin, b- obviously, I said I was a fan 'cause we're investors, but also, you know, it's early days for this. So I wouldn't go out and say, "Hey, buy a bunch of Chia." If anything, I would say just fire up an extra hard drive that you have sitting around and play with it and see what you think. Like, it's, you know, none of this, none of this is investment advice, but-

Tim Ferriss 1:20:00 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:20:00 ... I, I-

Tim Ferriss 1:20:01 Yeah, to be clear, there we go, [laughs] we are not registered investment advisers or other professionals. This is for informational purposes only. Continue, please.

Kevin Rose 1:20:09 Yes. Yeah, so I mean, with all this stuff, though, Tim, like, you know, like when I walked you through some of that MetaMask stuff one time, it's like the only way to learn this stuff and to get into it and understand what you're buying rather than just blindly buying is to play.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:22 Is to roll up your sleeves and get in there.

Kevin Rose 1:20:23 Put $100 in, go lose $100 on something crazy that you didn't, didn't understand, but by the end of it, you, you do. And so that's, that's where, um, that's where you learn, and, and I think it's the most valuable piece of all this.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:35 So in an ocean of options, and again, this is... You and the other partners at TRUE have significant informational advantage, and many other advantages compared to anyone, almost anyone listening to this, uh, so this is not intended to be advice. But just so I have a better understanding, how do you vet, how do you choose blockchain/crypto investments? Because there is so much out there. There's this paradox of choice. How do you choose things-

Kevin Rose 1:21:12 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:21:12 ... at this point? Are there p- any particular checkboxes or criteria?

Kevin Rose 1:21:16 Yeah, 100%. So the way that I think about it is that first you have to say, "Where have we been and where are we going?" And so when you start off the kind of where have we be- we've been, when these f- chains first launched, they had one utility. They were like a store of value and a way to send digital currency to and from one wallet to another, right? That was Bitcoin for the first few years. And now, when you think about where we're going, there are just a whole slew of different arenas that this blockchain technology's been applied to. So, you know, you have decentralized exchanges. You have, you know, the NFTs that we talked about, and marketplaces around that. Um, all of the Web3 kind of censorship-resistant communication protocols. You have insanely high performance protocol, or s- or, uh, blockchains like Solana and some of the others that are out there, and they could do 50,000 transactions per second. And so what gets unlocked when you have that type of speed operating on a blockchain? Then you have existing big behemoth blockchains like Ethereum, and like how are we gonna scale Ethereum in the short term? So you talk about what they're called layer two scaling solutions. The entire financial stack is being rewritten from the ground up. So thinking about what is the future of checking and savings accounts? What does it mean to stream money to people in real time, and how does that work? And so, you know, there's a world where a startup pitched this not, just recently, where they've figured out a way to stream money to people in real time. And so what that means is rather than going into work and, like, clocking in and, you know, waiting two weeks to get paid, you clock in, and money hits your account every, you know, 25 to 30 seconds in real time as it's being earned. And so there's just, like, this complete rethinking of, of, of the distribution of, of financial assets. So, you know, what once was, if you t- Let me pull up, like, Wells Fargo right now. But if you pull up like a, a big bank, and you say, "Wells Fargo Wikipedia," and you take a look at the head count that they have to, uh, employ to pull off a traditional... So they have 7,200 branches in 2021, 13,000 ATMs, and 268,000 employees for-

Tim Ferriss 1:23:41 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:23:41 ... for Wells Fargo. So think about what that payroll must look like.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:45 Yeah, it's a lot of mouths to feed.

Kevin Rose 1:23:46 A lot of mouths to feed, and that bloat that is in the financial system. And so what do you get in return? You have a checking and savings account. You get some FDIC insurance, which, which is nice. And you get absolutely nothing. You get no interest.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:59 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:23:59 Like, I get that it's nice that they handle fraud on the check side and, you know, there's, there's a, a, phone number to call and all of that. But all of that money that is... That they're taking your money and lending it out on your behalf behind the scenes, and, you know, their revenue for 2020 was $72.34 billion for 2020. So-

Tim Ferriss 1:24:21 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:24:22 ... that money now in a decentralized fashion on the blockchain where now you have some of these people writing things like Aave, some of these lending platforms. Or you have like a BlockFi that is partially centralized and partially decentralized. You have these new banks and new financial institutions and these new protocols that are emerging that take just a handful of people to write code, manage, and operate. And then all of that wealth transfer, or wealth creation, is being distributed back to the individual. So I'm excited for the future of finance because I think that, you know, I mean, like, for example, you know, you and I have talked about BlockFi before.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:04 Yeah. You and I have talked quite a bit about it.

Kevin Rose 1:25:06 Yes. And BlockFi, for example, um, Zac, I had the CEO on my show. We talk about what they're really good at is, is these interest accounts that give people real, like, insane interest at right now. I think it's like 7.5% right now on stable coins, which is just nuts. Like, what are you gonna get from a bank? If you keep ... $100 in your BlockFi account. And then I don't mean this to be an ad for BlockFi. I'm not gonna put any affiliate code anywhere in anything and Tim's showing us [laughs] or anything.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:35 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:25:35 But it's like, it's, it's essentially, it, it's, it's just, uh, they're giving you 7% on your money on these, on these stable coins, which are US dollar coins, which don't change. You don't have to worry about them going up or going down. Because they're able to go out and pass that, that savings, they don't have that massive overhead that a traditional bank would have, and they just pass that right back to the end consumer. And so a lot of these pla- uh, platforms, whether it be Compound or Aave or some of these platforms, you can go and bring your cryptocurrency in, you can lend it back to the platform, and you'll get paid interest back to your wallet, um, which is just awesome. It's, it's nice to see that-

Tim Ferriss 1:26:11 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:26:11 ... finally going back to the consumers versus just being kept by the big banks.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:15 Yeah. It's super fascinating to me, and, and, uh, you introduced me to BlockFi, and have since become an investor, and, uh, don't place a lot of bets in this space. But the idea, and who knows net-net, like, a- at the end of the day, what the pie chart is going to look like, but the idea of a blockchain-first banking, uh, or finance company is very interesting, right? It allows you to do certain things, like offer this 7 or 7.25%, or whatever the, the APY is, on accounts that otherwise don't really exist. Because as you said, there are all of these intermediate sort of cost centers, including headcount associated with traditional banking, that are just simply removed-

Kevin Rose 1:27:06 Right

Tim Ferriss 1:27:06 ... when you shift to this type of technology. Uh, the ability to, say, borrow based on your cryptocurrency assets or anything that's related. These are, uh, sort of new frontiers in a lot of respects. And, you know, that's part of what makes it super exciting. So obviously, both of us are fans of BlockFi and many other things. What are the risks that you foresee on the horizon? And I know this is a common question, but I'm gonna ask it because I think people will be interested in your answer. How much do you worry about sort of regulatory overstep or shutdown, right? So we've seen what's happened in China. Of course, China is not the United States. But how concerning for someone who invests a lot, or for a firm that invests a lot in crypto and blockchain, is the regulatory side of things?

Kevin Rose 1:28:04 Honestly, I'm very much looking forward to regulation. I think it's gonna be a great thing. The lack of clarity around how to treat certain types of asset- assets in this world is what's holding it back, I, I believe. You know, there's, there's... I, I don't think... The, the big question to ask here is the one like you hinted at with China, where is it, does the US wake up one day and say, "Actually, cryptocurrency's illegal. Shut it all down." And I just can't see-

Tim Ferriss 1:28:33 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:28:33 ... that being the case here, where it's too far entrenched in, into everything that we're doing. Um, every major bank, whether they like it or not, is now embracing blockchain in some capacity. It's a fantastic underlying technology. So it would just be odd to say we're banning a certain type of technology. Like, I just can't see that happening in the United States.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:56 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:28:57 I, I hope that there's more clarity, because a lot of it is very confusing right now. And, and to be fair, a lot of it's being defined in real time. So, you know, we don't know how to handle certain types of assets. Like, there's, there's just weird things coming out of this. Like, I'll give you an example. There's a protocol called Alchemix that are these self-repaying loans. It sounds nuts, but in the world of DeFi-

Tim Ferriss 1:29:24 [laughs] What does that mean?

Kevin Rose 1:29:25 It, it, it, it's, it's crazy.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:27 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:29:27 So basically, what-

Tim Ferriss 1:29:29 I could use some of those. Self-repaying loans.

Kevin Rose 1:29:31 Well, basically what it does is it goes out, and you come in, and you take a certain amount of cryptocurrency. Let's just say it's $10,000, right? And they take that entire principal, and they go invest it into yield-generating protocols that are out there in this world of decentralized finance. And they instantly give you half of it back into straight, let's just call it a stable coin, like a US dollar stable coin. So you take 10,000, they give you 5,000 to go do whatever you want with. And because of the yield that they're able to generate on the entire principal, they take all of the interest payments and pay it back into the loan so that it pays itself off automatically. And you're... At the current rates, it's a little over two years, and the loan just automatically pays itself back. So you're receiving your interest payments upfront, if that makes sense. But this is only something that would be possible in the world of DeFi, where you're having smart contract work with smart contract, and not in traditional lending. It just wouldn't make sense.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:35 Right.

Kevin Rose 1:30:35 Because you're taking all of the benefit and giving back to the customer. And in traditional lending, when you have malice defeat, as I mentioned with the Wells Fargo example, they would never give you that full yield back, right?

Tim Ferriss 1:30:45 Well, they can't do it.

Kevin Rose 1:30:46 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:46 They can't.

Kevin Rose 1:30:47 Exactly. So this is like... But, but the weird thing-

Tim Ferriss 1:30:50 They're only, uh, they're, they're only making a mere 72 billion.

Kevin Rose 1:30:53 Right. Exactly.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:53 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:30:54 And, and the odd thing, though, is like these repayments are happening in n- near real time back to the, the paying down the loan in near real time. And so talk about like all these little micro transactions that are occurring over that two, two years and change. Now, how do you treat those repayments? Who's paying them, and where are they coming from, and what's your cost basis? And you could imagine, like it just makes you go cross-eyed. Like, the, no one in the IRS is gonna tell you how to do this. [laughs] Like, there's, this has never been defined before. So a- and And how do you even file something like that with the IRS to explain to them what you're doing?

Tim Ferriss 1:31:33 I mean, e- even handling basic crypto stuff-

Kevin Rose 1:31:35 Right

Tim Ferriss 1:31:35 ... right now with, with filings is very challenging.

Kevin Rose 1:31:39 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:31:40 You can do it, but it's, it's very involved.

Kevin Rose 1:31:42 So there's some very sophisticated financial, just these, these, these new tools, these new, um, types of code that is being deployed in these smart contracts, and we don't really have a clean way to even report them, you know, let a- let alone understand how to, uh, what tax rate we should be charged. So I, I don't know. I, I'm excited for some of the more regulation to come into place. I think the... But you asked, your question-

Tim Ferriss 1:32:05 Just to remove the uncertainty.

Kevin Rose 1:32:06 Exactly.

Tim Ferriss 1:32:06 So even if the rules are stringent and, uh, punitive in some respect, at least the rules will be clarified and defined.

Kevin Rose 1:32:13 Yeah, I'm, I've, I want to pay my taxes. I don't wanna go to jail. I just don't know how quite to do it-

Tim Ferriss 1:32:18 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:32:18 ... right?

Tim Ferriss 1:32:19 Well, [laughs] I wasn't implying otherwise.

Kevin Rose 1:32:21 No, no, no, I'm just saying, I'm just saying in the world of DeFi-

Tim Ferriss 1:32:23 Thou doth protest-

Kevin Rose 1:32:24 [laughs] No, I'm saying-

Tim Ferriss 1:32:26 ... too much. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:32:26 ... in the world of DeFi, this is what people are running into, is they don't know how to-

Tim Ferriss 1:32:30 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:32:30 ... handle this stuff. So-

Tim Ferriss 1:32:32 Yeah, yeah, I know

Kevin Rose 1:32:32 ... it's a very exciting space, but it's a very kind of bleeding edge, you know, um, you know, enter at your own risk kind of world. I, uh, to answer your question of, like, what am I, uh, scared of, what are the risks that are out there, I think, uh, there's a few. One is, you, you mentioned the regulation side. That, that's certainly one that kind of is off there lingering in the background, which I, I'm not so much worried about the, the, what's gonna happen, uh, on the US, but I'm worried about, what if another country bans it?

Tim Ferriss 1:33:01 Hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:33:01 'Cause that causes some instability in the markets when other countries ban it.

Tim Ferriss 1:33:06 Which would be the most impactful countries were they to ban crypto? Outside of China, are there any countries that stand out that one might not expect? So outside of the US, like, who are the players who would really move the markets?

Kevin Rose 1:33:21 Yeah, that's a good question. I, I think China was the big one, to be honest, and now that that's kind of over, um, uh, obviously the European Union would be huge. Anything in the, with the UK would be huge. But I, I, I just don't see those markets cracking down. Um, so I, there's nothing out there that is, like, the big scary whale that we're just waiting for that to happen. Like, I, I don't know of any other big countries. If anything, we're seeing, you know, countries now embracing cryptocurrency and making it an accepted, you know, form of tender. Like, it's, it's... So that's happening, which is just fantastic.

Tim Ferriss 1:33:57 Hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:33:58 Okay, so let's just put that regulations part aside. There's two other pieces that I always think about. One is the, the meme coins, the, the shitty coins that rise to the top and people think 'cause it's a top 25 traded coin they should buy it. That's a huge risk. The second thing is that people don't dollar-cost average their way into the markets, so that means that they just buy a big chunk too, oftentimes too much, and then they panic sell.

Tim Ferriss 1:34:19 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:34:20 So, you know, dollar-cost averaging is a very simple concept. You have $1,000, or let's just say $1,200 that you wanna invest total into cryptocurrency, and you're like, "Listen, my chunk, what I can afford for me is $1,200." You take $100 and you do one buy the first of every month for a year, and you dollar-cost average your way in. That way you're never buying at the high, never buying at the low. You're kind of getting that nice blend over 12 months. 12 months may seem like a long time. I, I personally would do something like that over, like, three to four months, and just figure out what is that. Don't look at the markets in terms of, like, trying to time it. You just say every, this is the day, second week of every month, on every Monday, or whatever it may be, whatever your day is, and then you go off and you make that buy. And so that's... And the third piece is, like, y- is that people run into, and this is, uh, something that comes up a lot, is that people bite off more than... They take on too much risk. So it has to be something where if s- it goes, it drops by 75%, you will not sell. So it can't be so meaningful that you're freaking out and you do a panic sale. Because this is gonna be, this is where the risk is. But also, you know, with risk comes the reward, obviously. So when you're playing in these crazy waters, these shark-infested waters, like, there's gonna be some really bloody days. And if that's the case, you have to just be able to sit there and take it and not panic sell because you know and you believe in your heart of hearts that the future is digital currencies. And if that's the case, the market is gonna be bigger five years from now, 10 years from now, and 20 years from now. And if that remains true, back to that, like, what is my original thesis around this market, then you're gonna be good in the long term, but you have to be able to sit there and close your eyes on those really horrific days. And they will come, and there'll be multiple.

Tim Ferriss 1:36:02 Lots and lots and lots. For me, I've realized if I am not comfortable making an investment for at least three years, I just shouldn't do it.

Kevin Rose 1:36:13 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:36:13 Because I probably haven't done sufficient homework to have strong conviction on my base assumptions that should underlie that type of decision. And if I'm not willing to hold for at least three years, like, you're going to get punched in the face at least a few times-

Kevin Rose 1:36:31 Yes

Tim Ferriss 1:36:31 ... over three years. And if I've committed to that, then, and I've only allocated so much that I can afford to easily have sidelined, right, for that period of time, and illiquid, you're gonna end up panic selling.

Kevin Rose 1:36:47 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:36:48 Uh, just as I did with Amazon in 2008, which was a huge mistake, right? I, I'd taken too much. I'd put it into an excellent company, but I didn't have rules for when I would sell or why I would sell, right? I only had my reasons for buying, but my reasons for buying were based on kind of present tense evaluation, not looking at long-term trends. So I didn't have myself set up for success for that investment.

Kevin Rose 1:37:13 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:37:13 Which was a bummer. And I ended up selling and then buying back in, uh, in early April of, I guess last year. Yeah, early April 2020. But, uh, man, oh, man, would've been a lot better to actually hold onto it for the entire period of time.

Kevin Rose 1:37:27 Here's the crazy thing, Tim. I'm curious how you think about it these days, but the one thing that is a little bit different than what you said there around stocks versus crypto is that the people that are the true believers will say, if you really believe that the future of currency is digital, then there is nothing to sell. Like, why would you ev-

Tim Ferriss 1:37:48 Yeah. Oh, totally. Totally

Kevin Rose 1:37:49 ... what would you, what would you sell into? Because you're already h- holding the best-

Tim Ferriss 1:37:51 Yeah

Kevin Rose 1:37:51 ... form of that thing. That you're holding currency. The, the-

Tim Ferriss 1:37:55 Yeah, right

Kevin Rose 1:37:55 ... you don't sell into the US dollar. Why, when they're just printing more US dollars? Be- that would just be silly.

Tim Ferriss 1:38:00 Totally, totally. Uh, right. So I, I don't wanna come out with, like, super strong opinions, but I haven't ... I mean, I'm, I'm generally not selling the primaries, right? Like the primaries being Bitcoin, Ethereum. Like, I, I have not sold any Bitcoin or Ethereum in years, and I don't have any plan to in the n- in the near future. There are other things, I'm not, uh, we, I don't think we should name them, but more speculative things, uh, that might on paper offer a market cap that just does not make sense compared to the utility and ubiquity of other things. In which case, okay, maybe you take some of that off of the table. Uh, but, uh, because th- there's just not a high, there's not a equally high degree of confidence in the durability over time of those things.

Kevin Rose 1:38:49 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:38:49 Right? Uh, or you just can't find a compelling logic to be like, "Why sh- why is this worth X percent of the total market cap of Bitcoin?" [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:38:58 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:38:58 When, uh ... You know, then, then I consider that. But I hear you. I mean, there are definitely in the true believer camp, it's like, look, if you actually believe A, B, and C what you're saying, you should never sell.

Kevin Rose 1:39:09 Right. The only point where I would say-

Tim Ferriss 1:39:11 Never is a b- never is a strong word, though.

Kevin Rose 1:39:12 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:39:13 I would say given current information, right? Given what we know currently, given the current of information, I don't have any plans to sell BTC or Ethereum.

Kevin Rose 1:39:24 Right. So in my mind, what I think is, okay, if I, I kind of like, you know, thinking about Amazon, of course Amazon's gonna continue to scale and be the, the leader in that space. If I believe the same in the digital cryptocurrency space, but I'm in a coin where I think to myself, "Gosh, I really see this emerging player that's coming up that I really believe in as well," then I might do a lateral move where I say, okay, well, I have a lot of gains in this one particular cryptocurrency, but I also want to get a little exposure to this other one. I'm gonna sell part of this and then move into another coin, and, and that just kinda diversifies my cryptocurrency basket a little bit more. Now, one other piece is we talked about kinda right-sizing the position that you're holding so that you don't freak out if there's a big dip. At some point, because this, I, I believe this market will expand and continue to grow over the next couple decades, that position, let's just say you put in 10,000, you know, over the next three months, and that turns into a half a million dollars. At some point, you're gonna look at that whole thing and be like, "Wow, this is now meaningful. I am going to freak if it [laughs] drops by 75%."

Tim Ferriss 1:40:28 Yeah, totally.

Kevin Rose 1:40:28 And so what do you do then? So my playbook is, one, and I'm just speaking for myself, but what it is is if cryptocurrency grows to the point where it is no longer, you know, whatever your number is, 10% of your overall holdings, 20%, whatever you're comfortable with, and all of a sudden it's 40% of your overall net worth, then my way of trimming is not to say, sell and grab some US dollars. What I do is I say, let's sell, but then diversify into, uh, stocks and bonds and more traditional assets. So more of the Wealthfront style, kinda fully diversified. You know, that to me is more the boring, old school, hoping for 7% a year-

Tim Ferriss 1:41:09 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:41:10 ... you know, type of style investing. But I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm definitely not one of these people, you talk to pomp or something, and they'll be like, "Oh, I'm 100% Bitcoin." You're like, "What stocks do you hold?" "Oh, no, no, just, uh, just Bitcoin." You're like, "W- wait, what?" [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:41:21 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:41:21 Like, like, uh, that, that's a little aggressive, you know? So I, I'm definitely a fan of, of having, you know, other assets as well. So it's not just all about crypto.

Tim Ferriss 1:41:31 Yeah. Totally. And I should say also, I mean, 7% sounds terrible, but, like, if, [laughs] if it's a decent number to begin with and you don't sell and rebuy and, and rack up all of these transaction fees and management fees and so on, uh, you could do worse. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:41:50 Yeah. Oh, totally.

Tim Ferriss 1:41:52 Like, people, a lot of people go to zero trying to chase, like, 40% annual returns. Uh, and I'm, actually I have a lot of sympathy for people who had the experience, their first experience investing in this last run-up with crypto, because they're just ruined forever. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:42:07 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:42:07 In a, in a way. I'm just like, oh my God, like, this is, I don't wanna say a non-recurring phenomenon, but it's just like i- if, if your baseline is set at hundreds of percentage per year, you, it will be very hard to convince you that it makes sense to invest in something with a reasonably predictable 7 to 10% per year, let's just say. And that's a tough position psychologically-

Kevin Rose 1:42:33 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:42:33 ... for people to be in, you know?

Kevin Rose 1:42:35 Absolutely. The one hack I did wanna share with the audience that I think is a really worthwhile one is ... Well, I don't wanna ... I, I'll s- I'll say it. Like, I think that the mistake a lot of cryptocurrency holders are doing today is that they're holding their cryptocurrency where they're not earning anything for their cryptocurrency. So a lot of people will have a Robinhood account. I'm an investor at Robinhood, so I'm, like, I'm, I'm slamming them right now, and I'm sorry. I'm, I'm not an investor. We invested at Google Ventures, and I hold some of their funds. So I'm, I'm, I, I don't mean to talk bad about Robinhood, but they don't give you any interest when you're holding your crypto there. The same thing goes for Coinbase. Coinbase just now said, "If you have our stable coin, USDC, we'll give you 4%." But actually they do Ethereum 2 staking, which is nice. But outside of that, they're not really giving you any interest if you hold Bitcoin there. There are some places that you can go, that you can transfer your cryptocurrency to, um, you know, PayPal doesn't give you any interest, that you can earn interest on your crypto paid in crypto. So paid in, in kind. So you're getting more crypto as you're sitting there holding it. So my strategy is that there's two sites that I like, BlockFi, and then als- which we already mentioned They give you interest on Ethereum, Bitcoin, a whole slew of other coins. And then Gemini is another really world-class exchange that gives you interest on just holding your crypto there. So every time I launch my wallet, I see that I have more crypto, because every month I'm earning interest on it, and I just would hate for people to be letting their crypto sit there and not earn any type of, of interest. Now, there are risks because they're, they're lending your crypto out on your behalf, but, you know, the ... That's why, actually, I, to plug my show again, I did an episode all around w- risk with the head of risk of both of those, um, organizations to talk about how they're doing it behind the scenes. And after listening to that episode, I'm, I'm confident and comfortable in, in what they're doing. So yeah, I've been doing... I've been using BlockFi for years now and getting out- out- outrageous interest rates, um, which is, you know, is a great thing to do when you're sitting on some crypto. Why not earn more?

Tim Ferriss 1:44:38 Hear, hear. What else should we talk about, Kev-Kuh?

Kevin Rose 1:44:40 Yeah, so we covered crypto pretty well.

Tim Ferriss 1:44:43 [laughs] Thank you for the we. [laughs] I'll take it.

Kevin Rose 1:44:47 It, it's a fun world, man.

Tim Ferriss 1:44:49 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:44:50 You're doing fine, Tim. Just keep holding your-

Tim Ferriss 1:44:52 Thank you. Thank you

Kevin Rose 1:44:52 ... Bitcoin and Ethereum. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:44:53 Thank you. I'm just breathing while I listen. Yes, thank you. I'm doing great. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:44:57 Those are great. You know, one thing I wanted to cover is, um, a question came in from Twitter saying, asking, and, and again, I guess then we can wrap it up unless you have more, but one of, one of the ones that we have on the last on our list here is, um, the most recent thing you've added to your daily architecture, any new rituals, question mark. And I was gonna a- a- I was really curious when that came in, 'cause I, I... We haven't talked about this in a while. Like, what have you picked up both in COVID and then kind of like, uh, coming out of, slowly coming out of COVID, or anything new for you?

Tim Ferriss 1:45:31 So the first thing that comes to mind, uh, is anything and all things related to sleep. This is a perennial topic, but, you know, in the last, I would say, month, I've had probably 10 days at least of the best sleep I've ever had. And a lot of that stemmed from a conversation I had with a neurobiologist from Stanford named Andrew Huberman, really interesting guy, and we talked quite a lot about sleep. He studies, um, the visual system very intensely.

Kevin Rose 1:46:03 Was he on your podcast?

Tim Ferriss 1:46:05 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:46:05 Awesome.

Tim Ferriss 1:46:06 Yes, he was.

Kevin Rose 1:46:06 Yeah, he was on Darya's podcast too recently, which is great.

Tim Ferriss 1:46:08 Yeah. He's, he's a smart guy. He's a smart guy. And we spoke a lot about sleep. We spoke about testosterone and increasing testosterone. We talked about performance, the risks of increasing testosterone, different methods, et cetera. And in the sleep camp, we, or I should say, he rather, told me about increasing fish oil, specifically EPA, to at least one gram per day. And I'd been taking fish oil, but I'd not been taking that quantity. And I began taking fish oil and a number of other supplements, including magnesium beyond just magnesium threonate, which is very good for sleep. And on top of that, paying more attention to circadian and cyclical cues that he and I talked about. So I've been trying to ensure as soon as I wake up that I go outside and spend at least five minutes in the sun, and I'll do that by jumping rope and walking around with Molly, my dog. But to really ensure that, to the extent possible, I don't wake up, and then brush my teeth, and then check my phone, and then check my calendar, and sit inside dilly-dallying or j- even doing important work for an hour or two before getting outside exposure. I've really been trying to very consistently get sun, even if it's cloudy outside, just, like, solar/sky exposure as soon as I get up. And I've been having some of the best sleep of my life. It's really, really, really remarkable.

Kevin Rose 1:47:46 And what are you using to track your sleep?

Tim Ferriss 1:47:49 Right now, uh, because I, I shifted locations recently, I mean, not full-time, but I'm just... I'm, I'm outside of, of my usual home base. So I have an Oura Ring that is charging. I haven't been wearing it. I do use Eight Sleep also on the bed, which is incredibly helpful-

Kevin Rose 1:48:05 Yeah, we love ours

Tim Ferriss 1:48:06 ... for, yeah, creating two zones. And, you know, my girlfriend, if she could sleep inside a sauna at n- 90-plus degrees, she would probably do it. I, I really need to sleep at kind of a surrounding temperature of, like, 67 degrees, or I have a, a incredibly hard time getting to sleep. So the Eight Sleep does provide some tracking, and I've found that, that Eight Sleep's, I suppose, inference or extrapolation from what they can sense in the bed is pretty good, even when they're paying attention to HRV. Certainly the number of times that you're tossing and turning, getting up, et cetera, uh, surprisingly accurate from what I can tell. I, I was very skeptical. I do use the Oura Ring. That's gonna be the primary for looking at sleep quality and HRV. So those would be the two tools predominantly. But, you know, at the end of the day, even though I find these tools very useful, you know by 1 PM if you had a good night's sleep or not.

Kevin Rose 1:49:07 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:49:07 And you probably know as soon as you get up.

Kevin Rose 1:49:09 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:49:09 And so it's, it's, it's a subjective feel as much as anything else, and f- I am a different person. If I get three or four nights of excellent sleep, I am a different human being. Like, qualitatively and probably quantitatively in a bunch of ways, I am just a different human being.

Kevin Rose 1:49:25 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:49:25 So, so those are, those are a few of the things that have changed.

Kevin Rose 1:49:29 Couple questions.

Tim Ferriss 1:49:30 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 1:49:31 So when you are... When you have a bad night's sleep and you look at your Oura data, what does that mean for you? Does that mean lack of REM sleep, lack of deep sleep, or is there anything that jumps out?

Tim Ferriss 1:49:41 Yeah. For me, it's, it's lack of deep sleep.

Kevin Rose 1:49:43 Yeah, same.

Tim Ferriss 1:49:44 It's lack of r- it's lack of restorative sleep. And I don't know how deeply- Pun intended, I should read into that. But my deep sleep is very easily compromised. Uh, it is very easily compromised also if I have more than two alcoholic drinks. Of course, not all alcoholic drinks are created equal. [laughs] So 6% is very different from, like, tequila shots. But I've paid a lot of attention to that, and that is another reason why I was actually more than happy to have a drink or two this early, since we started recording at 3:00 PM my time. Because if I drink a little bit earlier, this is not... This is coming out really off terribly, 'cause [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:50:27 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:50:28 I'm not suggesting that people become day drinkers. But if I drink at, say, happy hour, like an early happy hour, which is not really my thing, but just for the sake of illustration, like at, like at 4:00 or 5:00 PM, I'm a- my body is able, in a waking state, to seemingly metabolize a lot of that before I go to bed.

Kevin Rose 1:50:50 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:50:51 And I consequently do not wake up with the rapid heartbeat-

Kevin Rose 1:50:54 Ugh, that's the worst, man

Tim Ferriss 1:50:56 ... and the, like, the, the alcohol night sweats. It's the worst.

Kevin Rose 1:50:58 I hate that rapid-

Tim Ferriss 1:50:59 And it-

Kevin Rose 1:50:59 ... heartbeat where you wake up and you've just got that, like-

Tim Ferriss 1:51:01 Oh, it's terrible

Kevin Rose 1:51:01 ... you can just feel it going, and you're like, "Oh, what do I do?"

Tim Ferriss 1:51:04 Ugh, it's the worst.

Kevin Rose 1:51:05 "I'm hot."

Tim Ferriss 1:51:05 You can't-

Kevin Rose 1:51:05 "Drink water"

Tim Ferriss 1:51:06 You can't do anything.

Kevin Rose 1:51:07 The worst.

Tim Ferriss 1:51:07 Yeah, you can't, you can't do anything. You just have a terrible night's sleep. So having even an additional three hours to metabolize before going to bed makes a huge difference for me, so I've been paying attention to that as well. But almost all of my changes recently have been associated with improving sleep quality.

Kevin Rose 1:51:27 Can I ask you what, um, type of, w- what manufacturer of omega-3s do you take?

Tim Ferriss 1:51:32 Yeah, I can tell you. Let me go grab it.

Kevin Rose 1:51:35 All right, Tim has left the room. We'll see if this makes the edit or not. I'm betting it's Carlson Wild-Caught Omega-3s.

Tim Ferriss 1:51:47 Okay, here we are. [capsule rattles]

Kevin Rose 1:51:51 You having another one? You [laughs] taking another one?

Tim Ferriss 1:51:53 These, these are delicious.

Kevin Rose 1:51:54 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:51:55 Um, don't judge me, Kevin. This is not my usual, but [clears throat] in any case. All right, so the, uh, the first, I have two here. This is a Nordic Naturals ProOmega, 650 EPA, 450 DHA, and that is right here.

Kevin Rose 1:52:13 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:52:14 This guy. Uh, which I've been using. And then the second that I have is Thorne, that's T-H-O-R-N-E, Super EPA, and that's this guy right here.

Kevin Rose 1:52:27 Cool.

Tim Ferriss 1:52:28 Uh, so those, those are what I ended up choosing. And, uh, the, the effect is really remarkable, and it's difficult... Uh, I would say it's impossible. Let me be clear. It's impossible for me to say that my sleep quality improvements are entirely caused by this. I'm also spending more time outside. I'm doing rucksacking. I'm getting more exercise. I'm getting a lot more sun exposure. I'm in nature. My body tends to just... Down-regulate's not the right word, but my nervous system downshifts a lot when I'm surrounded by nature. So there are many factors and there are many environmental changes in my life that have taken place in the last few weeks, but I have spent a lot of time in nature at many other points, and my sleep has not had this dramatic a change. So it leads me to think that there are other causal factors, and this is, this is the most obvious. This is the most obvious thing.

Kevin Rose 1:53:24 Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I've been taking a couple grams of omega-3s for, for a while now. Um, and I just find for me, I, I actually see the benefits on the joint side. Like, I just have less, like-

Tim Ferriss 1:53:35 Yeah, totally

Kevin Rose 1:53:35 ... kind of joint, joint issues.

Tim Ferriss 1:53:37 Yeah, I've noticed, I've noticed that actually in my feet. I have, uh-

Kevin Rose 1:53:41 It's like the old man episode. [laughs] I love that.

Tim Ferriss 1:53:43 This is the old man episode. But my family has a history of gout. So my, my family has gout on at least the maternal side, and a sort of precursor indicator of that is often high uric acid levels. And I've been pretty loathe to start another medication, which will be a maintenance medication forever. In this case, it would be allopurinol.

Kevin Rose 1:54:07 Yeah. Dude, I've been taking allopurinol for five years now.

Tim Ferriss 1:54:09 Yeah, e- even though it's very, very well-tolerated, right? As far as drugs go-

Kevin Rose 1:54:14 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:54:14 ... it's very well-tolerated. But I'm like, "Oh, God, I'm gonna end up that old guy with the pill case with 100 pills that I have to take every day."

Kevin Rose 1:54:21 Too late, dude.

Tim Ferriss 1:54:22 [laughs] I don't take that many things right now. I've really tried to minimize it, although compared to the normal people, I probably seem like a complete disaster. In any case, the EPA, or perhaps it's, it's both, including the DHA, the, the higher levels of fish oil consumption, unexpectedly, I was stretching and I noticed, "Oh, wow, I don't have that usual stiffness," which I thought might be some type of degeneration in the joint. Although, I had X-rays and it didn't appear to be the case. The stiffness and pain that I feel in that big toe joint, which is very often-

Kevin Rose 1:54:58 Mm

Tim Ferriss 1:54:58 ... where gout first-

Kevin Rose 1:54:59 Yes

Tim Ferriss 1:54:59 ... presents, which I was very concerned about. I was like, "Oh, fuck, do I have gout? Really? Am I, like, some fat aristocrat from, like, the 1700s in France?" Like, what is this? Like, really? How can I have gout? And, uh, some people think that that's primarily caused by, I think it's purines in DNA, and that's associated with, with protein, and therefore people take by extension that to mean that animal protein should be decreased. Uh, it's not quite as simple as that. Uh, there's actually a chapter that I pu- I published on my blog, tim.blog, people can find it, on gout and the understated culprit, which is fructose-

Kevin Rose 1:55:38 Mm

Tim Ferriss 1:55:38 ... as found in high fructose corn syrup and in fruit to a lesser degree. So it's not quite as simple as, as people might paint it to be. Nonetheless, what I noticed is like, holy shit, like that pain in my toes was like 90% gone-

Kevin Rose 1:55:54 Hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:55:55 ... after a week of doing it. And I, I cannot think, because this has been consistent for years now, that I've had this-

Kevin Rose 1:56:00 Oh, interesting

Tim Ferriss 1:56:00 ... this pain. I mean, it's been a c- it's been a s- kind of a s- a, a static level of pain. And after a week or two, again, maybe it's placebo, who knows, but I wasn't anticipating this as an effect, so it's hard for me to think that it's expectation. [inhales] It's like, you know what? It's hard for me to come up with many reasons not to do this, so I'm gonna give it a go. If you take too much, more is not better, and I, I think you could probably cause intestinal bleeding or all sorts of problems if you were just to chew these like gummy bears or something.

Kevin Rose 1:56:34 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:56:34 So, uh, you know, word to the wise, uh, talk to your doctor about things like this, but I've, I've certainly found it beneficial. What about you? Your daily architecture.

Kevin Rose 1:56:43 Yeah, I mean, I would say-

Tim Ferriss 1:56:44 That's a very kind of highfalutin way to put it, but yeah, your da- [laughs] your daily architecture.

Kevin Rose 1:56:49 Yeah, uh, the only thing I would say that I've, I've really stuck with that... Well, a lot of people out want to know about our sauna routines and if we're still doing sauna. That was a b- a hot topic in the-

Tim Ferriss 1:56:58 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:56:58 In the-

Tim Ferriss 1:56:59 Hot Topic, doggy style. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:57:01 I, I gotta tell you, man, the sauna, sauna for me has been... It's just the best. It was, it's the best money I've, I've ever spent outside of having a, a nanny from time to times. Uh-

Tim Ferriss 1:57:13 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:57:13 It's, it's like sauna-

Tim Ferriss 1:57:15 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:57:16 ... sauna is just so key. I just feel so much better.

Tim Ferriss 1:57:20 It's bad.

Kevin Rose 1:57:20 I mean, there's, uh, all the health benefits and the studies, they just g- they, there's more and more coming out all the time. I will say one thing, one, a pro tip: do not oil your sauna. So I oiled my sauna.

Tim Ferriss 1:57:32 Wait, what does that even mean? You like-

Kevin Rose 1:57:34 So they have this sauna oil on Amazon, and it-

Tim Ferriss 1:57:37 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:57:37 Like, when the wood dries out, you're supposed to put oil on it, you know?

Tim Ferriss 1:57:40 Okay.

Kevin Rose 1:57:40 And so I buy this sauna oil on Amazon-

Tim Ferriss 1:57:42 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:57:42 ... I oil it, and then it literally off-gases like smoke, like smoky oil.

Tim Ferriss 1:57:48 Oh, that's terrible.

Kevin Rose 1:57:49 And now listen to this, dude. It's been doing it-

Tim Ferriss 1:57:51 It's like a skillet on the oven-

Kevin Rose 1:57:53 Yes. Yes

Tim Ferriss 1:57:53 ... on the stove top.

Kevin Rose 1:57:54 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:57:54 That's terrible.

Kevin Rose 1:57:54 And so-

Tim Ferriss 1:57:55 Ugh

Kevin Rose 1:57:55 ... I was like, "Okay, this is crazy." So I went in, I sanded it down, like tried to get it all out, you know, scrubbed it with like soap and shit, and then, dude-

Tim Ferriss 1:58:07 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:58:07 ... it's still off-gassing. So then I started wearing my N95 mask in there.

Tim Ferriss 1:58:11 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:58:12 And so Darya's like-

Tim Ferriss 1:58:13 This is why you need a gas mask, to use your own sauna.

Kevin Rose 1:58:15 Yeah, Darya's like, "What are you doing?" She's like, "I'm not going in that sauna again." And I'm like, "Listen," I'm like, "It'll... Let me burn it out because it'll... But I still need to get my sauna on." So I, I used the, my gas mask. And then, dude, I go in there-

Tim Ferriss 1:58:26 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:58:26 ... and my eyes, when I walk out after, after 20 minutes, my eyes are bloodshot 'cause the, like the smoke is hitting my eyes, and my eyes were burning.

Tim Ferriss 1:58:35 It's not the gummies?

Kevin Rose 1:58:36 No, it was not the gummies. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:58:37 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:58:38 It's not your gummies that you hand make and send me.

Tim Ferriss 1:58:40 My gummies. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:58:42 Um, [laughs] the... Honestly, it, it's just like... So I, I ripped out my entire sauna, had all the wood removed, and had to buy a new sauna.

Tim Ferriss 1:58:51 Oh, what a mess.

Kevin Rose 1:58:52 Yeah. So that sucks.

Tim Ferriss 1:58:54 Wow.

Kevin Rose 1:58:54 Anyway, so routine-wise, [laughs] architecture-wise, it's been one year, almo- coming up on one year of meditation, and that, my friend, is the biggest game changer I've ever had, is when I decided to take it seriously and not just do it like an app, just, but like really sit and, and, and do it really, like real practice.

Tim Ferriss 1:59:14 So what, what does real mean? This is an hour a day?

Kevin Rose 1:59:16 You know what's funny, Tim? I never told you this.

Tim Ferriss 1:59:18 And it's Zen, Zen style? This is, this is with your teacher?

Kevin Rose 1:59:22 Yeah, it's Zen style. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:59:23 In accordance with his instructions?

Kevin Rose 1:59:25 That's right.

Tim Ferriss 1:59:25 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 1:59:25 So what's funny, Tim, is one time, I don't know if you ever remember, y- y- we were talking about meditation. This was probably seven, six, seven years ago, and you said something to the effect of like, "I, I, I think that most people, they just close their eyes and think about things when they're meditating." Or like you didn't, like, it's almost like you didn't believe it.

Tim Ferriss 1:59:45 Oh, I still think that's true. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:59:46 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:59:47 I mean, I think there are benefits to meditating, but I think most people are just thinking about bullshit with their eyes closed.

Kevin Rose 1:59:51 That's right. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:59:52 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 1:59:53 And I was gonna ask you, have you ever found yourself in deep on, uh... Have you ever meditated to where you've been like... I mean, 'cause you did the, you did the opposite side. You did the, you have a really famous, you talk about that.

Tim Ferriss 2:00:05 Yeah, the Vipassana.

Kevin Rose 2:00:06 Vipassana.

Tim Ferriss 2:00:07 It's like, uh, s- [laughs] psychotic breakdown.

Kevin Rose 2:00:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:00:11 Your breakdown. I had, I had that. Yeah, that was, that was pretty deep, having a full psychotic break, I would say was pretty deep. I, I have felt, yes, I've had very, very deep experiences. Some of the best experiences I had were actually... I'm blanking on the style and the name currently. Hmm.

Kevin Rose 2:00:33 Give me some hints.

Tim Ferriss 2:00:35 Neval would have the answer. I'll tell you the, the general approach, and the general approach is having nothing to do. You actually sit there. You do not repeat a mantra. You do not pay attention to the breath. You just sit there, and this is gonna sound paradoxical, but you actively try to do nothing.

Kevin Rose 2:00:58 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 2:00:58 You just sit there. And doing this in a group environment for a period of time, did it with a small group, uh, and this was one hour in the morning, one hour, let's just call it 5:00 PM, like 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM. And doing it in a group, I do think there's a dynamic that is gained, certainly a different dynamic that presents itself in a group. I don't have any explanation for this either. There are theories, certainly, pet theories. But doing it in a group two hours a day for a period of even a week produced some very, very, very, very deep states.

Kevin Rose 2:01:35 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 2:01:37 Uh, and I would say in terms of kind of ROI in a short period of time, I found that very interesting. When I came back to so-called normal life, I did not sustain that twice-daily cadence for very long, and I think in part because I was doing it by myself or with my girlfriend and not in a group. Having that accountability was very, very helpful. Uh, but I have experienced some very deep states in meditation.

Kevin Rose 2:02:02 Have you found those to be pleasant states or just kind of, um, [tsking] like when you walked away, did you have a smile on your face? Did you feel like you felt-

Tim Ferriss 2:02:11 Oh, very pleasant.

Kevin Rose 2:02:11 Okay.

Tim Ferriss 2:02:11 Very, very peaceful.

Kevin Rose 2:02:12 Cool.

Tim Ferriss 2:02:13 Yeah, very pleasant and very at peace, for sure. Oftentimes, uh, what I've noticed, this can be, for me at least, facilitated by doing a very intense but short sauna session-

Kevin Rose 2:02:28 Hmm

Tim Ferriss 2:02:28 ... for say, 15 to 20 minutes, and then sitting outside and sort of air cooling and meditating for 20 minutes.

Kevin Rose 2:02:34 Yeah, that's nice. That's just a great feeling.

Tim Ferriss 2:02:37 Oh, it's incredible. Found that to be very consistent. So to answer someone's question that you brought up, I still do sauna very, very regularly and view it as a key and simple lever that I'm able to pull for mental health. Whether it helps me physically or not, I don't know. I mean, it maybe, sure. Heat shock proteins, all of that. Yeah, okay, maybe. I'm not gonna know if it did anything until I'm dead, so [laughs] jury's out. But from just a day-to-day psycho-emotional and mental perspective, doing a sauna, especially late afternoon, if I do it too close to bedtime it interferes with my sleep, but if I do it, you know, 4:00 or 5:00, then it seems to help and also dramatically increase HRV the next day.

Kevin Rose 2:03:25 Oh, interesting.

Tim Ferriss 2:03:26 Yeah. Yeah, I've noticed that, as have a couple of other people. But coming back to architecture and your meditation, so one-year anniversary, congratulations. That is the anniversary of what? Maybe you can describe for us.

Kevin Rose 2:03:39 Yeah, so I mean, I had been, like most people that have ever played around with meditation apps, you know, I'd been dabbling, uh, and even, you know, helped build one that is a free meditation app, but I, I just was dabbling. I was always dabbling. I was doing the 10, 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes, you know, just those little sessions guided, and they were fantastic. Very, very great prescriptive meditation. Oh, you have something wrong, you're feeling stressed, you know, fear of flying, whatever it is, like there, there's all these courses for that. You can take them, you know, there's not a lack of apps that offer this type of content. I think that the shift and the change was telling myself that this is a long road to practice, to really train the brain. Like if you think about what we... If we want to do anything at a, and Tim you know this way better than I do, if you wanna do anything, you know, if you want to be really good at something, it, it can't just be an afterthought, casual, I'm gonna make time for this-

Tim Ferriss 2:04:34 When I feel like it

Kevin Rose 2:04:34 ... when I feel like it. Exactly.

Tim Ferriss 2:04:36 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:04:37 So I made that shift in my brain and said, "Okay, I believe there is something worth pursuing here, that a dedicated longer practice, longer duration, and a more serious discipline," so for me that was a form of Zen called Sanbo Zen.

Tim Ferriss 2:04:54 Sanbo?

Kevin Rose 2:04:55 Yeah, Sanbo is like the, the, uh, offshoot. It's more kind of a lay Zen.

Tim Ferriss 2:05:00 How do you spell it?

Kevin Rose 2:05:00 S-A-N-B-O.

Tim Ferriss 2:05:02 Sanbo Zen. Interesting.

Kevin Rose 2:05:03 Yeah, so when I heard about this and, and was introduced to, to my teacher Henry, you know, got excited about it and really decided to dive in and say, "Okay, I'm gonna read a few of the books that are out there on this type of Zen, and then create a real practice that is, you know, 55 minutes of sitting a day."

Tim Ferriss 2:05:22 How much is it?

Kevin Rose 2:05:23 55 minutes.

Tim Ferriss 2:05:24 [laughs] Why 55 minutes?

Kevin Rose 2:05:26 Well, you do 25-

Tim Ferriss 2:05:28 I like fives, but [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:05:29 Yeah, you do 25 minutes of, uh, your first sit, and then you do a five-minute walking meditation, and then another 25 minute sit.

Tim Ferriss 2:05:37 Oh, okay. Cool.

Kevin Rose 2:05:38 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:05:38 And for those wondering, so s- as I just looked it up, Sanbo Kyodan. Sanbo Kyodan is a lay Zen sect derived from both the Soto and the Rinzai traditions. Sanbo literally means three treasures. I wonder what the treasures are. San is like ichi, ni, san. San, three. Sanbo. Bo is like bo-chan, like my, my darling, my treasure kind of thing. Uh, but yeah, Sanbo is three treasures, and then Kyo, well, we can get into the Japanese another time. But yeah, Kyodan, religious organization or teaching organization. That's cool. So 55 minutes. What are, do you know what the three treasures are by any chance?

Kevin Rose 2:06:19 Yeah, the one treasure is the Sangha, so the, the group.

Tim Ferriss 2:06:22 Ah, yeah.

Kevin Rose 2:06:22 The other one is the Dharma, uh, the teachings. And the third one is escaping me right now. You could just type in three treasures. It'll, there, three treasures apply more to than just Sanbo.

Tim Ferriss 2:06:33 Okay. Yeah, here we go. Okay, wait a minute. Three jewels are the Buddha, the fully enlightened one; the Dharma, the teachings expounded by the Buddha, hence the term or phrase Dharma talks, if you've ever heard that; and the Sangha, the monastic order of Buddhism that practice Dharmas, but that's also colloquially thought of as the group that practices together. Roger that. Okay. So you've done 55 minutes a day for a year.

Kevin Rose 2:06:59 I will say that I have certainly missed a few days, but nothing, nothing crazy, not like where I'm like, "Oh, I missed that entire week." Like there'll be a day or two where it just didn't work out.

Tim Ferriss 2:07:08 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 2:07:09 And there's been also a handful of days that are on the 25 minute side, like there was definitely, uh, versus doing the 55. But yeah, for the most part I've, I've been really consistent.

Tim Ferriss 2:07:20 What is the practice? What is the session? I know you mentioned it in brief already, but what does a session look like and feel like to you?

Kevin Rose 2:07:28 Well, I, it, it depends on where you are in your practice. When you're first being instructed, the teaching is essentially kind of counting or just following the breath, so very almost v- like v- Vipassana style.

Tim Ferriss 2:07:40 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 2:07:41 Just to get that base level of concentration honed. So you know, it, it's a very, like there's a teaching where they talk about the Zen master, uh, that was sitting and, and the concentration was so intense that they're, they're sweating. Like you can see sweat on their brow because they, it, it is like a very active thing that is happening with the, with the, the honed concentration.

Tim Ferriss 2:08:03 Yeah, they hit you with a switch if you're nodding off

Kevin Rose 2:08:05 They still do that

Tim Ferriss 2:08:06 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:08:06 If you, if you would like to request it, you can go in the, in the zendo and you can request that that happen.

Tim Ferriss 2:08:10 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:08:11 It's not for pain, it's for a jolt. You know? And like, I mean, it's not like a, a beating practice, you know?

Tim Ferriss 2:08:16 This is for you, not for me.

Kevin Rose 2:08:18 Right, [laughs] exactly.

Tim Ferriss 2:08:18 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:08:20 So, um, yeah, so that's, that, the initially it's just that initial kind of counting and awareness, and then eventually if your teacher and you feel you're ready for it, um, you know, you take on a koan, which is one of these things to sit with, like, a just a, a Zen kind of m- saying or word to sit with that is used as kind of a... What's the best way to put it? Kind of like just a, a helping aid.

Tim Ferriss 2:08:47 It's like a paradoxical cue.

Kevin Rose 2:08:49 Right.

Tim Ferriss 2:08:50 Right? Or it's, uh, something like that. Yeah, paradoxical anecdote or riddle used in Zen Buddhism-

Kevin Rose 2:08:54 Mm

Tim Ferriss 2:08:55 ... to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment. That is the definition that comes up for me.

Kevin Rose 2:09:01 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 2:09:02 Koan.

Kevin Rose 2:09:03 So what you do is when you sit with that koan, eventually you will be able to answer it, and there are hundreds of them, and there are checking questions that are done with your instructor.

Tim Ferriss 2:09:14 Checking questions?

Kevin Rose 2:09:15 That's right. So if you sit down with a Zen master and they ask you, uh, you know, probably the most famous one is, uh, the sound of one hand clapping.

Tim Ferriss 2:09:25 Yeah, right.

Kevin Rose 2:09:26 You would then be able to answer that question through a series of checks, and eventually you can go through and kind of answer all of them. So you'd be able to answer all of the different-

Tim Ferriss 2:09:39 So there's a right and a wrong answer-

Kevin Rose 2:09:41 Yes

Tim Ferriss 2:09:41 ... to something like that?

Kevin Rose 2:09:42 More or less, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:09:43 Oh, wow. Oh, God damn, that's stressful. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:09:46 But I mean, they get a, the you, you get-

Tim Ferriss 2:09:48 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:09:48 ... it wrong a lot. So essentially like if you're going to do one of these, they c- they call them like a session where you go and do these like multi-day retreats, you will go and you will sit, and then you have a, the one-on-one session with your, your Zen master at that, in the evening when you're kind of wrapping up, you know? And they'll sit you down and say, you know, "What is the answer to this question?" Whatever you're sitting with. So some people sit with, most common one is one called mu, and i- and they'll say, you know, "What is mu?" And if you, and then you can either say, "I don't know," and you can walk out, and that's fine. They ring the bell, and the next person goes in, or you can try and answer it. And-

Tim Ferriss 2:10:23 Wait, s- what is mu? I mean, not that, I'm not asking you to give the cheat sheet for, for people, but...

Kevin Rose 2:10:29 I don't know the answer to that question.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:31 But broadly speaking, is mu a character?

Kevin Rose 2:10:35 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:35 Is it-

Kevin Rose 2:10:36 So it's a, there's a Japanese character for it.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:37 Oh.

Kevin Rose 2:10:37 It means emptiness or naught.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:39 It's like, like mushin. Mushin is like no mind.

Kevin Rose 2:10:42 No, no, naught. Exactly. Em- empty.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mushin.

Kevin Rose 2:10:45 So basically where that came from is there was a very famous Zen teacher, Zen master named Joshu, and Joshu, um, was asked by a monk one day, the monk asked Joshu, "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" And Joshu's answer was just mu.

Tim Ferriss 2:10:59 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:11:00 And that was coming from... They will tell you that answer was coming from a non-dual world. So it was like a [laughs] this is kind of hard to explain.

Tim Ferriss 2:11:10 It gets, gets a little tricky.

Kevin Rose 2:11:12 Yeah, [laughs] exactly. So what you d-

Tim Ferriss 2:11:15 Do you want me to give you a m- I can give you a breather if you like.

Kevin Rose 2:11:17 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:11:17 I've got some s- I've got some stuff. But yes, continue.

Kevin Rose 2:11:20 Yeah, so you just basically sit with-

Tim Ferriss 2:11:22 Or not.

Kevin Rose 2:11:23 What are you talking about?

Tim Ferriss 2:11:23 Or not.

Kevin Rose 2:11:24 What, what breather?

Tim Ferriss 2:11:24 [laughs] I'm just saying if you want a moment to gather yourself, 'cause this is some pretty esoteric shit, I can, I can, I can read what I found on the sassho, the checking questions.

Kevin Rose 2:11:35 You, you'll read the answers?

Tim Ferriss 2:11:36 But I'm gonna lie.

Kevin Rose 2:11:36 [laughs] No, no, read what, read what you found.

Tim Ferriss 2:11:38 [laughs] Read the answers like the, uh-

Kevin Rose 2:11:40 Just ruin my entire practice

Tim Ferriss 2:11:42 ... like, like, like the mantras for, uh, for transcendental meditation where they're just listed out by age.

Kevin Rose 2:11:48 That's right.

Tim Ferriss 2:11:48 Yeah, I could do that, and just like to really make everyone cry. The, uh, and I say that as someone who paid for the training and still uses TM.

Kevin Rose 2:11:56 Paid for it.

Tim Ferriss 2:11:56 I still use it. So teachers may probe students about their koan practice using sassho, checking questions, to validate their satori, understanding, although I would debate the translation of satori there, or kensho, which is a really cool-

Kevin Rose 2:12:09 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 2:12:09 ... word, like seeing the nature, uh, seeing the phenomenon. For the mu koan and the clapping hand koan, there are 20 to 100 checking questions, depending on the teaching lineage. The checking questions serve to deepen the insight of the student, but also to test his or her understanding. That's wild that there would be questions. I'm just trying to imagine. I'm not asking you to spill the beans on the secret cult that you've joined, but the questions that would be related to something like, what is the hand of one hand clapping, right?

Kevin Rose 2:12:37 Yeah, but thing, the-

Tim Ferriss 2:12:38 It just, it seems like it's unanswerable-

Kevin Rose 2:12:40 Yeah, that's right

Tim Ferriss 2:12:40 ... by definition because it's intended to show the sh-

Kevin Rose 2:12:42 That's right

Tim Ferriss 2:12:43 ... the inadequacy of logic.

Kevin Rose 2:12:44 That's right. And so the best way it's been described to me, and this wasn't by my Zen teacher, but I've, I've heard it, uh, described at, elsewhere, is like the answers are going to be something that you will only understand if you've had that kensho awakening type moment, or you would only be able to provide.

Tim Ferriss 2:13:00 Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rose 2:13:01 So your answers, in the same way that when the monk asked, you know, "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" And Joshu's response was mu, like that would make no sense. Make no sense at all.

Tim Ferriss 2:13:12 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:13:12 So your answers are also going to make no sense in this plane, if that makes sense. But your teacher will understand them because they will be listening from another plane. Does that make sense? [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:13:25 Kind of, sort of. I mean, it's, it's, it wa- it's... Oh, here, let me give an analogy. It's gonna be terrible.

Kevin Rose 2:13:30 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:13:31 You're gonna love it. Uh, so it's like if you're trying to explain like ejaculation to someone who's never ejaculated, and you're like, "It's kind of like a sneeze in your balls," and they're like, "What?" And like, they're never gonna understand it.

Kevin Rose 2:13:44 Yeah, this is a bad one, Tim. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:13:45 But if they've had the, if they've had the experience of ejaculating, then like there's kind of no explanation needed, and you can give like a mu type answer, and they're like, "Oh, yeah.

Kevin Rose 2:13:52 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:13:52 Yeah, I hear you. Mu, it's so mu. That stuff is so mu."

Kevin Rose 2:13:55 I don't know that that's-

Tim Ferriss 2:13:56 There you go

Kevin Rose 2:13:56 ... how I'd describe it, but that, I like it. I mean-

Tim Ferriss 2:13:58 You're, you're, you're welcome. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:14:00 Yeah, that's, you're, you're practically a Zen master, Tim. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:14:03 This is three hard kombuchas later. I think I'm enlightened. I think. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:14:06 It's great. No, but I, I, th- that's, that's the gist of it, is like, we would never, even if we read the answers, they would-

Tim Ferriss 2:14:14 It can't be a reading-

Kevin Rose 2:14:15 Right

Tim Ferriss 2:14:16 ... based, logic-

Kevin Rose 2:14:17 Exactly

Tim Ferriss 2:14:17 ... based answer.

Kevin Rose 2:14:18 Exactly.

Tim Ferriss 2:14:18 It has to be something that you have a felt experience of-

Kevin Rose 2:14:21 Right

Tim Ferriss 2:14:21 ... through this thing that is given the label of ken.

Kevin Rose 2:14:23 And that's why there's so many checking questions.

Tim Ferriss 2:14:24 Yeah, kensho.

Kevin Rose 2:14:25 Because they'll, they'll be checking from a bunch of different angles whether or not you've actually felt or had the experience versus it just-

Tim Ferriss 2:14:31 That's cool

Kevin Rose 2:14:31 ... being like, just like a, a read response.

Tim Ferriss 2:14:35 Yeah, that's super interesting. I think the, y- ho- honestly, I mean, the, even though in some respects they're very different, there are similarities, meaning in the psychedelic, in the psychedelic ecosystem in, in the realm of whether it's psychotherapy assisted by different psychedelic compounds or otherwise, you know, there could be a place for these type of checking questions.

Kevin Rose 2:14:56 Interesting.

Tim Ferriss 2:14:57 Uh, and, and actually, in some of the indigenous traditions, there are, mm, I don't, I don't want to call them fact-checking questions, but there are sort of standards and experiences that are thought to be representative of different levels of awareness within the context of, say, an ayahuasca experience.

Kevin Rose 2:15:18 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 2:15:18 So they're, they're not that dissimilar. They're actually very similar. And I should correct something I said earlier, because I was thinking of a different character. Kensho, the sho is different than the... There are a lot of h- uh, homonyms in Japanese, a lot of things that have the same pronunciation. So the sho in kensho is a different character than I had envisioned. Uh, it's, it's nature or essence is the sho. Ken is to see, uh, like kengaku. If you wanted to go to, say, a judo school and observe but not participate, you would ask if you could do kengaku. Kengaku is, gaku is to study, so it'd be like visual studying. That's super cool, man. I'm so glad that you're digging deep into all this. It's great to see you stick with something for a year [laughs] .

Kevin Rose 2:16:02 Yeah, seriously. It's gonna be a long journey, man, but, you know, now's the age to get started.

Tim Ferriss 2:16:07 Yeah. Why do you think you've stuck with this? Uh, I mean, y- y- so there's a, um... Oh, God, what is the expression? Since we're on... Oh, well, we, I say, just like we explained cryptocurrency and blockchain stuff earlier, which was basically you talking, uh, I'm, I'm kind of on this, uh, you know, speaking in tongues Japanese kick right now. But there's this expression, I think it's ""I think that's what it is. Somebody who's a native speaker of Japanese could correct me, but there's a, there's an expression in Japanese which is like, he g- he or she gets hot quickly and gets cold quickly, meaning they pick up habits and routines and various things, and then they stick with them for very short periods of time. Like, they get really excited about something, and then they just drop it.

Kevin Rose 2:16:50 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 2:16:51 Right? Which I think you and I both do, although I think you take it to a whole new level. So why do you think you've stuck with this for a year in the way that you have? What, what, what has changed in you, or what is it about this particular thing that has, has grabbed you?

Kevin Rose 2:17:08 Well, I would say that I, I told myself that I knew that the upfront work of just being able to sit for an hour and be comfortable with it was gonna take some time. And to be able to still the mind to the point where you can just get comfortable and it not feel like just this crazy effort that you're like, "Why the hell am I doing this?" is, is a lot of work. But I said, "I'm gonna push through until I can at least get to the point where when I get up off the cushion, I feel better than when I sat down, and I don't feel like it was a, just a waste of my time." Like, oftentimes... And, and, and that's a, it's, it's, it was a challenge initially to say, "Can I calm my mind to the point where I will actually consider this a net positive?"

Tim Ferriss 2:18:01 Hmm.

Kevin Rose 2:18:02 And I, I'd say it took about three months. It took about three months to get to the point where when I would get up after 55 minutes, I would say to myself, "This is great. I feel really good."

Tim Ferriss 2:18:13 How did you stick with it for that long? Three months is not, I mean, it's not the, you know, we're not talking about, like, 100 Years of Solitude, but it's, it's, it's n- it's a nontrivial period of time for someone who operates at really high RPMs. So, like, why even have that as a goal?

Kevin Rose 2:18:28 Honestly, Tim, if I'm being really truthful, it was because I was really depressed.

Tim Ferriss 2:18:34 Hmm.

Kevin Rose 2:18:35 We had a lot of stuff going on, both in the country and with the pandemic and having a second child and just having all of this stress hit all at the same time.

Tim Ferriss 2:18:44 Hmm.

Kevin Rose 2:18:45 I just felt like I just needed something. I just needed something to be-

Tim Ferriss 2:18:49 Yeah

Kevin Rose 2:18:49 ... able to sink into that wasn't the news, that wasn't what was going on around us.

Tim Ferriss 2:18:53 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 2:18:54 And it was right during the pandemic that I decided to, that's why I decided to do this, was because I just couldn't... I, I just, I... You know, you're sitting at home, and you, you're not really going out and doing anything, and it's just like, I can either drink, [laughs] you know? Or, or insert any other bad thing to do here, or I can pick up something-

Tim Ferriss 2:19:12 Hey, now. Hey, now. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:19:14 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:19:14 No, I'm just kidding. I hear you.

Kevin Rose 2:19:15 No, but, like, you know, it's, so that was, it was, it was a lot of that where I was just like-

Tim Ferriss 2:19:19 Yeah

Kevin Rose 2:19:19 ... I thought we were all gonna die, and I was just like-

Tim Ferriss 2:19:22 Yeah, for sure

Kevin Rose 2:19:23 ... I need to go deep here. And, and luckily, that was enough of a driver to get to the point where then it was tolerable and then enjoyable.

Tim Ferriss 2:19:30 I'm so happy for that.

Kevin Rose 2:19:31 Yeah. It's, dude, it's, it's... I'm, dude, I'm not anywhere close to being anything in this world, in, in the world of Zen. Like, it's gonna be 20-plus years or longer for me to get really, really deep, but I'm g- two things: I'm glad I started, because I am at the point now where it is enjoyable, and two, I would say that the only thing I've noticed is that I don't, little things that just used to get underneath my skin really don't quite hit me as hard. And so-

Tim Ferriss 2:20:01 Yeah

Kevin Rose 2:20:01 ... those little, little edges have been sanded down a little bit, those little rough edges. And so I can take a sharp elbow with ease in ways that I couldn't before. So- I think that's, that's the one benefit. And, and, and whatever else comes on top of that is gravy and I'm excited for, but, you know.

Tim Ferriss 2:20:20 It's also super weird, Zen Buddhism. And I think that that is a more accurate reflection of what we call reality than the kind of clean, abstracted pictures we like to paint [laughs] of reality that we would, that we would like to be the case because it allows us to grasp it and kind of navigate it so much more easily. Uh, f- you know, for that reason, I think that the journey through Zen Buddhism actually has a lot in common with sort of deep study of psychedelics. I think they're very similar. Because the further you get in, the more you realize nobody fucking knows what's going on. Like, this is actually very, very... Like, the, the, the more I know, the less I know, in a sense. And I find that very liberating, actually.

Kevin Rose 2:21:15 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:21:16 And, uh, yeah. I find it very liberating. It's like, nobody knows what's going on. Okay. All right. Well, as long as [laughs] great.

Kevin Rose 2:21:21 My goal is to eventually to get you to, to study some Zen. I, I think you would be so... You, you're the perfect person for it because it is, there are actual obtainable things, you know what I mean? Like-

Tim Ferriss 2:21:32 Yeah

Kevin Rose 2:21:33 ... like, i- in some sense, the whole practice is not about o- is about obtaining nothing, so it's not like it's like... But, but the, but the fact that there just are checking questions is like s- it, it's so much... I, I'm a k- k- kind of person that wants to check a box, you know? I wanna, like-

Tim Ferriss 2:21:47 Yeah. That, that appeals to me-

Kevin Rose 2:21:48 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 2:21:48 ... for sure.

Kevin Rose 2:21:48 I can see that appeals to you as well.

Tim Ferriss 2:21:49 [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. That's g- I mean, it, it is always been of interest to me. I mean, even when I was in Japan, uh, you know, I spent time with, I remember passing these monks who would be, uh, what is the expression? Asking for alms. I mean, they would have-

Kevin Rose 2:22:08 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 2:22:08 ... to do a tour of duty where they would ask for money. They'd have to beg for their food, if any, money to buy food. And so I would, I would always pass these monks, uh, not all of them were necessarily Zen Buddhist monks, but I would, I would pass them every day as I was walking back from school, and I was 15 as an exchange student in Japan. And have spent a lot of time, uh, recognizing that Zen is not uniquely Japanese, although Zen, the word, that pronunciation is Japanese, is a tradition that predates its introduction to Japan.

Kevin Rose 2:22:49 Yeah. I mean, it came from China, right? Initially. Like, the, it was called Chan before.

Tim Ferriss 2:22:53 Yes, something like that. I don't know the character that was used for that. It's probably the same character, actually. Uh, let me just... Let me look it up. It's probably the same.

Kevin Rose 2:23:02 Is it Chan? Chan?

Tim Ferriss 2:23:04 Yeah. Yeah. Chan. Chan, second tone in, uh, Mandarin, and then Zen in Japanese, and then in Korean, I guess that's Jan? Jan? Somebody could tell me. I'm pretty rusty on my Hangul, but my, looking at the, at the Korean, I think it's Jan, and then, uh, we have Vietnamese and so on. What I like most about Zen is that it embraces paradox, because so much of our existence, I think, is paradoxical. And so much of what we want and so many of our conflicting goals can sort of be symbolized by this word, paradox, that it's such a fundamental aspect of our existences, but it's so uncomfortable to look at directly also because it's not easily put on a shelf and organized and just slotted into some category that you can understand and figure out.

Kevin Rose 2:24:05 Dude, I want you to have a Zen master on your show. Why wouldn't you do that? Like, Sam's had some great-

Tim Ferriss 2:24:09 I'd do that. I'd do that.

Kevin Rose 2:24:10 You should have Henry on your show, man. He's amazing.

Tim Ferriss 2:24:13 I'd be open to having Henry on the show. I mean, i- I think part of it is that I, I don't feel like I am qualified to ask informed questions about it, if that makes sense.

Kevin Rose 2:24:23 He's had a lot of students also that have dabbled in psychedelics, so he has some good background there as well.

Tim Ferriss 2:24:28 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:24:29 And kinda comparing-

Tim Ferriss 2:24:30 Yeah

Kevin Rose 2:24:30 ... one of the, like, senior students that also practice Zen and do psychedelics. It'd be interesting to draw some more parallels there.

Tim Ferriss 2:24:36 Yeah, that could be, that could be... Yeah, and I'm not a, a, a, even though I support a ton of the science and I'm very involved with the policy and regulation and all sorts of aspects of the psychedelic ecosystem right now, I don't, I'm not a hammer looking for nails. I don't think that psychedelics are panaceas. And-

Kevin Rose 2:24:54 I mean, you're on mushrooms right now. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:24:57 [laughs] You know, it wouldn't be out of character for that to be the case-

Kevin Rose 2:25:00 That'd be amazing

Tim Ferriss 2:25:00 ... but I'm not, I'm not on mushrooms right now.

Kevin Rose 2:25:02 You're just casually chewing in the background, just like...

Tim Ferriss 2:25:05 Yeah, just, just chomping-

Kevin Rose 2:25:06 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:25:06 ... on some mushrooms, like trail mix. Uh, no, no. I'm on, I'm on the, I'm on the hard kombucha kick right now. But the, I, I would love to have somebody on. I'd be, I'd be open to that.

Kevin Rose 2:25:15 I think that would be a really fascinating conversation because you are, I mean, you have such a g- great background in all things Japanese, and obviously, you know, the, the kinda whole, the, the whole space with psychedelics and Japan, all these things, like they're all interconnected in some way, you know?

Tim Ferriss 2:25:31 Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're definitely interconnected. I mean, I, and also, I don't view these tools as mutually exclusive, right? And I was listening to an interview recently with Dennis McKenna, who I'm gonna have on the podcast soon. Dennis McKenna is the younger brother of Terence McKenna, who is considered the Irish bard of psychedelics. Very, very smart guy, incredible storyteller. Dennis is more of the scientist and the, the ethnopharmacologist, uh, phytochemist, uh, of the two. He's, he's very scientifically literate and understands organic chemistry and synthesis and things like this. And, you know, one of the points that he's made And did make in this interview I heard was our experience of reality is mediated through chemistry and neurotransmitters. So when you hear people talk about, say, getting to certain states naturally and arguing that is better than augmenting or using psychedelics, the argument rings somewhat hollow when you really start to dig underneath it. And that's not to say that one should not develop self-directed capabilities without the use of drugs or plants to achieve these states. I'm not saying that. But the fact is when you practice something like, if, unless we're gonna go into transpersonal psychology and some really gnarly terrain, which I could do, but what we're talking about is an experience of reality, which is a hallucination that we are creating as the mind sort of applies filters to incoming information to optimize for a few things like propagation of the species. And when you enter in a non-ordinary state of reality, whether it is through ingesting, say, four or five grams of dried mushrooms, in the case of psilocybe mushrooms, psilocybin-containing mushrooms, or doing very dedicated zen practice, like you are changing the cocktail.

Kevin Rose 2:27:43 100%.

Tim Ferriss 2:27:45 And in that respect, they're actually very close cousins. Although, you know, certainly some compounds and plants I think are, are better for achieving states similar to, you know, Satori or Kensho maybe than others. Like meth probably not, right? [laughs] I mean, I don't think that, uh, anyone's gonna suggest meth for, for coming to terms with some of these deeper realizations necessarily. But there's more, I think there's more common ground than not.

Kevin Rose 2:28:14 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:28:15 Uh, at least for those who make a really deep study of it, like, like, like Dennis as an example, who I really encourage everyone to check out. Very, very bright guy. And, uh, I'd love to have him on.

Kevin Rose 2:28:27 I think it'd be great.

Tim Ferriss 2:28:28 Henry?

Kevin Rose 2:28:28 Yeah, Henry Shukman.

Tim Ferriss 2:28:29 Yeah.

Kevin Rose 2:28:30 He's done a, a couple Q&As with Sam. Sam has him creating a lot of content for Sam Harris's, uh, meditation app. So he has a whole dedicated zen section in there. But, yeah, I think you'll find him fascinating because he's also really well-versed in all the latest science and studies going on, and especially some of the neurosciences happening around the study of emptiness, which is, uh, this kind of like, Henry can speak to it, but it is like the state, like that Kensho state of, of no thing, like the non-existence.

Tim Ferriss 2:29:00 Huh. Yeah, mushin. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:29:02 So I, I think you guys would hit it off. It'd be fun.

Tim Ferriss 2:29:05 I, I would be very interested. I think mostly, and, and maybe this wouldn't be the case with Henry. I mean, sometimes you can get into kind of dangerous pop science territory unless you're talking to someone like Adam Gazzaley, right? Who, who's, or Gaz- how the hell does he say his last name?

Kevin Rose 2:29:20 Gazzaley.

Tim Ferriss 2:29:20 Gazzaley?

Kevin Rose 2:29:20 Yeah, Gazzaley.

Tim Ferriss 2:29:21 Yeah, yeah. Gazzaley. Side note, who got crazy treatment somewhere in the Middle East because of his last name. Did he tell you this story?

Kevin Rose 2:29:28 No.

Tim Ferriss 2:29:29 Yeah, yeah. There's a sort of iconic figure in, I, I don't want, I want to say Persian, but it could have been actually in Saudi Arabia or somewhere. In Middle Eastern culture and history, it was Gazzali, G-H-A-Z-A-L-I. And they saw his name and he landed at the airport and they're like, "Are you Adam Gazzaley?" And he's like, "Yes."

Kevin Rose 2:29:52 Oh my God.

Tim Ferriss 2:29:53 "Oh, you don't need to wait in this line, sir. Like you come with us." And he was like, "Uh, what?" [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:29:57 Is it gonna be really awesome or really bad?

Tim Ferriss 2:29:59 Like really, really bad. Yeah, so Adam Gazzaley, Gaz- Gazzaley, however, I should know this after decades of knowing the guy, but is a world-class neuroscientist, right? So speaking to him about science is one thing. I would be most interested with Henry to just talk about his personal experience-

Kevin Rose 2:30:18 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 2:30:18 ... and to see how well he can describe his personal experience. Like look, for me it's like either, like you gotta choose one end of the pole or the other. It's gotta be like randomized controlled studies or personal experience.

Kevin Rose 2:30:35 Right.

Tim Ferriss 2:30:35 And both of those I'm very open to. It's the stuff in the middle that gets-

Kevin Rose 2:30:38 That's fair

Tim Ferriss 2:30:38 ... really wonky-

Kevin Rose 2:30:39 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 2:30:39 ... and kind of MacGyvered and, and hard to defend.

Kevin Rose 2:30:42 Yeah, his, his descriptions of enlightenment and waking up and some of the, they're the best I've ever heard.

Tim Ferriss 2:30:48 All right. Cool.

Kevin Rose 2:30:50 You will, you will be blown away and you'll have some... And you could ask him about the checking questions because he does that with the students, right? So he's-

Tim Ferriss 2:30:56 Yeah

Kevin Rose 2:30:56 ... he's, he's clearing all the students and how many of them make it. I'd, I, I'd be really curious, you know? Like how-

Tim Ferriss 2:31:01 Are those off, but are those off limits? Are those like the level 29 of Scientology where I can't ask that until I clear a bunch of hurdles?

Kevin Rose 2:31:09 Dude, it's not a Scientology type thing, man. It's, it-

Tim Ferriss 2:31:11 No. [laughs] I know, I'm just saying is that like protected knowledge where I can't-

Kevin Rose 2:31:16 I don't think so.

Tim Ferriss 2:31:17 Okay. And he can always say, "I can't tell you."

Kevin Rose 2:31:19 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:31:19 Also. Which is fair. Like I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. [laughs] I'm not comparing what you're doing to Scientology. No disrespect to Scientology. I know you guys like to sue people. Don't sue me.

Kevin Rose 2:31:28 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:31:30 [laughs] Some of my best friends are Scientologists. [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:31:34 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:31:36 But, uh-

Kevin Rose 2:31:38 I'm into it, man.

Tim Ferriss 2:31:39 Yeah. [laughs] Oh boy. Here we go.

Kevin Rose 2:31:42 I was just about to make some Scientology comments. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:31:44 Uh, Kevin, Ke- I love you guys. Kevin hates you guys. It's-

Kevin Rose 2:31:48 No, I've, I studied, uh-

Tim Ferriss 2:31:49 ... definitely too new

Kevin Rose 2:31:49 ... for a while and, uh, thought it was great. You know, had a good time there.

Tim Ferriss 2:31:53 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:31:53 A good, good, uh, buffet on Sundays.

Tim Ferriss 2:31:56 Oh God. All right.

Kevin Rose 2:31:57 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:31:58 Here we go. Into the Thunderdome we enter.

Kevin Rose 2:32:00 We're both dead next week. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:32:02 And we're both dead next week. It was nice to have you guys. Uh, so, uh, where do we go from here? Hard to segue.

Kevin Rose 2:32:09 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:32:10 Uh, I would be, I would be interested.

Kevin Rose 2:32:12 Sweet. I'll do the introduction.

Tim Ferriss 2:32:13 Yeah, yeah. Email intro Henry and, uh-

Kevin Rose 2:32:16 I'm excited for this one. This is gonna be fun

Tim Ferriss 2:32:17 ... that, that'd be cool. I, I'd be into that. I mean, it, it overlaps with so many of my interests, right?

Kevin Rose 2:32:22 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:32:23 And I'm not averse to it. I don't have an aversion to it. Uh, the word enlightenment, I'm not gonna lie, bothers the shit out of me.

Kevin Rose 2:32:30 You gotta say that then. Bring that up. I'd be really curious to ... Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:32:33 Yeah, yeah. It just like the idea of ... Because it just, it creates this bifurcation between, like, the unenlightened and the enlightened.

Kevin Rose 2:32:40 Right.

Tim Ferriss 2:32:40 It kinda creates this priesthood, and I have some fundamental allergic reaction to, like, this intermediate to the divine-

Kevin Rose 2:32:48 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 2:32:48 ... if that makes any sense. And I'm not saying that is how it is presented within Zen Buddhism, but I do see how that could be used to create power dynamics-

Kevin Rose 2:32:57 Right

Tim Ferriss 2:32:57 ... that are unhealthy.

Kevin Rose 2:32:57 Yeah. That's, that's one of the things that, uh, I was concerned with, having grown up in a religious household, and later, you know, kind of understanding that some of the, what I was told was not necessarily true. [laughs] But, uh, the reason I'm so attracted to, to Zen, we were, we were talking about earlier, is just, like, they ask you ... They, it's not about believing what they say; they ask you to taste it for yourself. That, that's what they say, you know?

Tim Ferriss 2:33:22 Yeah. Yeah, I dig that. That's cool. I can get behind that. Uh, awesome, man. Well, please make the intro, and then I'll, I'll chat with Mr. Henry.

Kevin Rose 2:33:31 What a episode this has been. We've had lightning-

Tim Ferriss 2:33:33 Yeah

Kevin Rose 2:33:34 ... strikes.

Tim Ferriss 2:33:34 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:33:36 We've ... I almost threw up at the beginning.

Tim Ferriss 2:33:38 Yeah, Kevin almost puked in the beginning. Technology was taken down by an act of God.

Kevin Rose 2:33:42 Right. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:33:45 We've covered a lot of ground here.

Kevin Rose 2:33:46 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:33:47 Yeah, yeah. Good times, man. Well, it was good to hang.

Kevin Rose 2:33:49 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:33:49 Good to spend some time together. Anything else you'd like to, to mention before we, before we wrap?

Kevin Rose 2:33:54 Uh, I asked my wife what we should talk about on the show, and she said, "How about my podcast?" So-

Tim Ferriss 2:34:01 [laughs]

Kevin Rose 2:34:01 ... I should ... I thought that was funny, one.

Tim Ferriss 2:34:03 Go for it. Go for it.

Kevin Rose 2:34:04 And yeah.

Tim Ferriss 2:34:04 Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Rose 2:34:05 So, uh, my wife, Darya Rose, she's a, uh, PhD neuroscientist, uh, from UCSF, and she has a fantastic new show called The Darya Rose Show. She's covering some crazy topics, dude. Like, she, she has other scientists on so they can talk science, but she's covering-

Tim Ferriss 2:34:20 You, you should,