#812: The Random Show — New Health Gadgets, Tim’s Latest Adventures, How to Drink Less, Zen Retreats, AI + Your Genome, and Colonoscopy Confessions

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/b9c778a1db469f7a

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it's my job to interview world class performers from every imaginable discipline to tease out.
You guessed it. The habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply to your own lives.
This time we have a very special episode. This is always a
Listener favorite.
A recording with my close friend Kevin Rose. Kevin Rose, for those who don't know, at Kevin Rose, everywhere.
He is indeed a world class entrepreneur, serial founder, and
investor in the smallest of seed rounds up to the largest of companies. And what we always do, we trade our latest discoveries, our latest findings, what our friends have sent to us.
But first, just a few quick words.
From our sponsors who make this show possible.
I don't know about you guys, but I have seen a lot of crazy stuff in the last few weeks. I saw an AI generated
Video. It looks like a video.
Of an otter on a flight.
Tapping away on a keyboard.
having a stewardess ask him if you would like a drink and it goes on from there. And this was generated
With AI and it looks
Photorrealistic, basically. I mean it would have cost
Hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to do in the past.
Taken forever and now it's
Boom, snap of the fingers. It's crazy. So AI is changing everything. We know that it is also changing the way startups and small businesses operate. Things are going to get crazier. The rate of change is only going to get faster. And while a lot of good is gonna come of that, it also means
security and compliance headaches for one thing. And that is where today's sponsor, Vanta, comes in. I'd already heard a lot about them before they ever became a sponsor. Just like 10,000 plus other companies that rely on Vanta. My friends at Duolingo, shout out Duolingo and Ramp, shout out Ramp
one of this podcast sponsors and an ultra fast growing company used Vanta to handle security compliance. Why would they do that? Well
Vanta automates compliance for frameworks like SOC2.
ISO twenty seven oh one.
And HIPAA making it simple and fast to get enterprise grade compliant. But what does that mean?
It adds up to
Impressive results. Companies can save up to eighty five percent of costs, get compliant in weeks instead of months, and complete security questionnaires up to five times faster.
So
Check it out.
Vanta.com slash Tim.
That's V-A-N-T-A, like Santa with a V. Vanta.com slash Tim.
To see how Vanta can help you level up your security program. My listeners, that's you. Can get$1,000 off.
So check it out.
Vanta dot com slash
Tip.
If you ever use public Wi Fi, say at a hotel or a coffee shop,
Which is where I often work. I'm doing it right now, and as many of you, my listeners do, you're likely sending data over an open network, meaning there's no encryption at all. A great way to ensure that all of your data are encrypted and can't be easily read by hackers or captured by websites is to use this episode sponsor and
Express VPN. It is so simple.
It is one click, it is the easiest thing.
in the world. I use it overseas.
I use it in airports, I use it everywhere. With ExpressVPN, you simply download their app onto your computer or smartphone and then use the internet just as you normally would. With just one tap, you secure 10% of your network data. ExpressVPN encrypts and rerutes your network traffic through secure servers, so even though your data
Is still physically passing through your internet provider, they can't inspect it and they have no record of your browsing history. By the way, this is true even if you're at home.
Your ISP can snoop on all sorts of stuff, and I've seen that personally. It's very, very spooky. Don't like it. So ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is the number one rated VPN by CNET, The Verge, and tons of other tech reviewers. I've been using ExpressVPN for years, and I love that it gives me that extra peace of mind.
Knowing that no one else is looking over my shoulder, or even if they're trying to, it's gonna be very, very, very hard.
And as a bonus, I've also used it many times to unblock content from around the world. So if you're traveling and there's a particular
media website, there's a particular say version of Amazon or whatever that's blocked or Netflix, whatever, with ExpressVPN I can connect to servers outside the US.
Or inside the US, depending on what you want to do, easily gaining access to thousands of shows and movies I wouldn't be able to see otherwise. That's been true for stuff I've wanted to watch in Japan, it's been true for stuff I've wanted to watch in the UK, for instance, from the US that I haven't been able to access. It's super, super, super powerful as a tool.
So check it out. Go to expressVPN.com slash
Tim, you'll get four extra months for free when you use that link. So be sure to check it out. That's expressVPN E-XPRESS VPN.com slash Tim for an extra four months for free.
Optimal minimal.
At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then also you personally question. No, we're just seeing.
I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoscaling.

No
Kevin.
Good to see you, sir.
Tim Tim, always a pleasure. Good to be here.
So the ravages of
Childhood illness or
Ripping through your household at the moment.
I mean it was one of those things where I hit you up this morning, I was like, Yeah, there's a cold going around. Can we boot this podcast? You're like, I have to have my colon examined. And so we decided to do it today. So I feel I feel pretty good though, actually, all things considered.
Yes.
True story we have.
All of the fun things to discuss in our advancing years.
But you know, one step at a time.
One step at a time. By the way, I have a lot of pro tips for the colonoscopy.
If you haven't already.
Let's do it. I have done a colonoscopy before. The reason that I am methodical about this
is not to immediately
start on a down note, but a friend of mine ended up getting terminal
colon cancer, which metastasized, I guess, prior to that diagnosis to his liver.
And so I have been
Very much on schedule.
With
Doing this type of checkup.
Even though it's inconvenient, even though it's unpleasant.
You gotta do it. You just have to do it.
Yeah.
I I had a friend who actually had a big, massive chunk of his colon removed because of this, had some cancer, so
Yeah, very important to stand out, but but I will say
The drugs they give you when you're going in. Probofol. Probably. Yeah.
That shit is that's that's what Michael Jackson died on.
You know that? That's what he died on.
Well, that's why I want self administer.
No, you don't self administer that, but I will say if you have a cool doc.
And it's typically the anesthesiologist that does this.
They will do what's called the slow ramp.
Where rather than push it all in and give you that bowl's dose where it just knocks you out.
They let you just chill and ride it for about a minute or so.
And I can see why Michael Jackson was hooked on this shit.
Like I did that with the my ass with a slow ramp.
When the last time I got it.
Do you feel like you
Amazing when you do that stuff.
Yeah, it was crazy.
That sounds like an anti sales pitch. I think if it's likely that I will just
Remember the bliss of that experience and want another bite of the apple. Maybe I won't ask for the slow rep. I'll just say, Hey, just blow dart in the back of the neck. Take me out as quickly as possible. So that is
I think where I'll go with tomorrow's lovely procedure. I didn't tell you this the the last time I did my colonoscopy
It's always hard when there's a really attractive nurse in the room.
And like they're like flip on your side.
And you know what they're gonna do. And it's just like
I don't really feel like this is the right
Cruise.
Set and setting was not right for me there.
But there was I went through with it. There's nothing you could do at that point. You just like flip on your side, hopefully you don't remember anything and you don't and you're good. So it is okay. But anyway. God speed tomorrow, Tim.
Wishing you the best. Well you're also the reason we were
Comparing notes.
for self care and how that can change over time is you said that you have a scan scheduled for this week.
Right.
Yeah, at Prenovo tomorrow, so full body MRI scan done.
I'd mentioned this on a a podcast we did a while back, but they found
Basically a little tiny thing in my brain that could turn into a larger vessel rupture. And so
They have to keep tabs on it. So I go back once a year and it's been stable. It's been totally stable for the last, you know, call a year and a half.
So they're like, Yeah, you could have had this your entire time. That's part of the problem with getting these full body MRIs, right? Because you go in there,
Yeah.
On the plus side, like, you know, I've had a friend
that found a tumor in his brain and he had it removed. It was as a golf ball. It was crazy. He was fine.
And catch that stuff early and it's amazing because like it saves your life. And then on the downside
Lots of false positive.
Like little tiny cysts and things that are just been there your entire life. Or just positive positives, but they're small things that you
Can't or won't do anything about, so you just need to accept.
That you have.
Exactly. Like a brain aneurysm, which is what I have, and now I don't I know that I have it.
Fun times. So there is that.
Yeah.
What are your suggestions for people psychologically if they're listening? And for instance, I think of my
Parents who have been by and large, especially one more than the other, averse to getting comprehensive checkups in part because
Ignorance is bliss until it isn't.
Right. If it's something serious, then you just accidentally signed your death warrant. If
You take it.
To an extreme extent.
But they are afraid of what they might find.
What are your thoughts on this? My thoughts is
Step number one, honestly, for me is just develop a baseline of scientific literacy. You could listen to studying the studies or read that from Peter Atia.
There's a book called Bad Science that I actually excerpted for the four hour body at one point, just to give you an idea of what matters and what doesn't, because a lot gets sensationalized in the news. And so you can
Train yourself to blow things out of proportion.
And
Once you realize
just how inert and unimportant. For instance, I have a number of I don't know if they'd be termed cysts or otherwise, but like one on my kidney and then one in another place. And it's not fun to see those things.
But
I suppose.
having done so much
in terms of medical checkups, blood draws, and so on, there is also a conditioning over time where you become less sensitive. But if you only do it,
Once in a blue moon.
You're more prone to overreacting. Any other thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think you ha nailed it where it's like for me, it's an annual thing. So I'm just like automatically gonna do it no matter what. And once you get two or three of them
under your belt you're much better off. But
I would say that, you know, one of the things that I've heard time and time again is people don't like going into MRIs because they put you in this little tiny tube.
And a lot of people have claustrophobia around that. And I know that you can watch Netflix on some of them now and they got all these little displays, but
It doesn't help people. So I would say there's two things that I've seen.
That people have done to sidestep this. One is if you talk to your doctor and you really do have a severe anxiety around
Claustrophobia, they'll give you some kind of benzo and just kinda chill you out for a little bit. You can go in there and just
And you'll get through it.
And the second thing is there's another test called Grail. I don't know if you've ever done the Grail test, but um my physician does that as well.
Yeah, and it's just a blood test and it's gonna screen for a bunch of cancers as well.
And so you know, if you're like, hey, no way with the MRI, I don't want to know about the cis, but I still want some cancer screening.
I think that Grail's probably the best to market for just general blood work cancer screening.
Should we move on from
Old man roll call. Dying. Yeah, exactly. From death. From death. All right. I'll kick us off with something that I think is pretty fun. That
I certainly was not aware of and it's a documentary.
So this is a documentary. It's called Thirty Two Sounds.
And people can check this out. If you're going to watch it, watch it with a headset. It could be
In early.
AirPods, something like that.
But certainly if you have higher quality headphones, I would use those. Here's the description. It has ninety six percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Thirty Two Sounds is an immersive feature documentary and profound sensory experience
from Academy Award nominated filmmaker Sam Green.
Featuring original music by JD Sampson. The film explores the elemental phenomenon of sound by weaving together thirty-two specific sound explorations into a cinematic meditation on the power of sound to bend time.
cross borders and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us. It's just
A fundamentally different
movie going or film watching, in this case, listening experience than anything I've ever seen. So from that perspective,
I thought it was
Worthwhile.
Very worthwhile.
And it will certainly lead you to for a period of time afterwards
relate to
The world of sound?
And this ability that sometimes we take for granted, which
Under the hood is pretty bizarre or at the very least amazing. So that's a recommendation to get us out of Deathland and into Savoring Lifeland.
So walk me through this as someone that hasn't even seen a trailer for it. Are we talking like sound bath action here? Like are we are we seeing visuals on the screen? What is it?
You're seeing visuals, there are points in the documentary, for instance, where they'll prompt you to close your eyes.
If you are cited.
They don't assume that everyone is. And it weaves the visual
and the auditory together, along with
Background.
context from the filmmaker.
Into
a documentary that is just unlike anything I've seen. So I for that reason thought I would throw it out there because as you know, Kevin, and maybe we'll talk about this, but we
Spent some time together. My first time with Henry Shuchman in New Mexico. We did a mini
Zen retreat.
And
You can really sharpen your awareness.
Broadly speaking, by
Honing in on the specific, right? So you might do a session where you're focused just on
Breathing in and out and the sensation.
At the nostrils, for instance. You might also focus on soundscape. And when we were sitting, we did a lot of focusing on.
Soundscape, different types of sounds, things that are intermittent, things that are one off, things that are droning in the background.
And
This documentary can be a tool in the toolkit.
I just think it's a nice way to jump start that type.
Or magnify.
The awareness that we already have.
This is one of those things where
I don't know about you, but I found myself drawn to more
kinda indie weird documentary style stuff lately just because there's so much
commercial shit out there where I'm like, I don't need another show. I don't need more violence in my head.
Yeah. I watched Flow not too long ago. I think we talked we talked about that once before. That was
Fantastic movie.
You didn't like it though, right?
I haven't watched it yet. And I guess what I wanna know is
How long does it take for you to get accustomed to the
So lo fixe.
Aesthetic.
of that particular animation.
Right, because it looks
I'm not even sure how you would describe it like
Very uh polygonal, right? It's very if I'm getting the pronunciation right. Polygonal.
I think I'm getting that.
Low poly, yeah, which polygon, polygonal. There we go. Something like that. I'm getting too fancy for my own good, but
How long does it take you to get accustomed to and if my memory serves me right, it's from a filmmaker somewhere in like Hungary or Lithuania, something like that. Animated film.
All about animals.
The visual
I guess aesthetic. The look is what
kept me from watching it.
So maybe you could just speak to that for a second.
Yeah, so it does have this very
Low poly
Kind of
Nintendo
Type vibes to it, where it's like
It's not the PS five. It's like it's kind of like a a crappier version where you can see some of the artifacts and
But it there's no speech at all. Like it's it's just completely silent film. Well, not silent, as as it sounds, but it there's no talking at all. And it's kind of post-apocalyptic.
vibes this cat is trying to kind of make its way through this new world.
It's beautiful. I'd say about five minutes of that weird, like where am I? Why is this low poly? And then all of a sudden
You feel polyamorous. What is it when you get like used to something like that? Is it polyamorous? Polyamorous.
Yeah, yeah.
So you get used to it whether you like it or not. But it was Latvia was where it was it came out of the way. It's beautiful. Watch the watch the trailer. It's like a minute and a half long. It's absolutely stunning. It's like this cat forms these relationships with these birds and these dogs, and they're all
Trying to survive and it's eighty four minutes of just good, fun, low poly documentary.
Is there a minimum required amount of enhancement before you watch such a thing or were you watching a stone called? Okay. Just make it clean.
I'm clean these days. Let's talk about clean because sometimes
When I hear you say clean, that means that you've been clean for like
Thirteen, fourteen hours. So what are we talking here? Let's hop right into it.
Twenty four hours.
No, I'm just kidding. And I'll watch Flo tonight. I've been meaning to watch it and for whatever reason I've kept pushing it.
Don't really have a great excuse.
So since I'll be up all night.
Shitting my brains out, drinking these various potions that the doctors prescribe me. I might as well try to watch something.
So give you a uh just real quick on the flow movie, three point five million dollar budget to create this. So it was like very scrappy.
Thirty six million in the box office.
You know, was at the Cannes Film Festival, they premiered and it just won a bunch of awards. So
Anyway, highly recommend checking it out. I think you can stream it for free, but
Yeah, on to should we switch to claim?
Yeah, clean. Let's do it.
So, dude, here's the deal.
Okay.
We've had this conversation a few times.
And you and I will get on a phone call and I'll be like, How you doing? You're like, Oh, dating's hard because you have to drink every night and
You know, I'm like life's hard, so you have to drink every night. I'm like Mary's hard so you have to drink every night. Yeah. So it's kinda like you're damned if you do. No, but all jokes aside, one of the things that I realized is that earlier this year I made this like very proud statement.
I'm gonna go ninety days without drinks and
Everybody says ninety days is where the magic happens, you know, this and that, you know.
Classic Kevin bullshit where I fail after like a week, right? And so
I w
Close to a month, I had a couple little things where I was like, Well, I got this event, I'm allowing myself to have two or three drinks, whatever. So it was kind of cheating, but I did a month ish, right?
Around the holidays and then after I lost my house in the fire.
I realize that
There was this moment where I just realized like what I'm doing is no longer serving me. And it's really
I just didn't feel
Like drinking was
the solution to anything. I wasn't having the same joyous
kind of fun with friends type drinking. It was more
out of habit and also
Continuous
So what I mean by that is like rather than
I've never been the like, oh damn it, I had six drinks. Like those were I mean, maybe a dignation or some stupid shit like that. But like outside of the random podcast once a year.
It was more a consistency thing. And then I got some really scary blood work back from my doctor where I went and have my quarterly blood check.
And my liver enzymes were like one fifty.
And which is just insane.
They should be like under twenty.
That's like Barry Bonson is peak level.
Right. Exactly. Like I should have been jacked as shit from juicing. But instead it was just me hitting you know, champagne or drinks, like you know, and I I the problems I would have
Two things. One, my liver
is just not what it used to be as I get older and two
You know, the consistency, like I said, two or three drinks. Just like a lot of nights in a row.
And it was really easy for my wife and I to crack a bottle and just finish it together and just call it a night.
So
Long story short, I was like, I need to change something and what I'm doing is not working.
And if I really want to go ninety days, I have to surround myself with people that
Can help me here, right? And so I have had now three friends
That I've done.
One version of a twelve step program.
One I think has actually been on your podcast before, but like
I called them all up and I said, Hey
I don't think I can do ninety days by myself.
Like I I need some help. Like I need some support here. What can I do? What tools do you have at your disposal?
That I can lean into for support here.
And they were super helpful. Each of them had a slightly different recommendation.
And I pulled some of those tools and I started applying them to my everyday life.
And now you know as we speak, I'm twenty six days completely
Perfectly sober, not a single drink.
And it was
Freaking hard, dude, to get here, but I'm feeling really good now.
Having known you a long time and maybe if people are first time listeners, this is a
Remarkable stretch.
Oh my god.
Yeah. What's the last time you were thirty days, brother?
I'm actually close to thirty days right now. I had two days probably where I had some drinks in the last almost thirty days. We can talk about it. We can talk about it. It is
Almost entirely because of the people around me.
Yeah.
Right. And I I so I have some follow up questions for you, but what were the tools or the things that you did
The things you tweaked that
Made it.
More successful this time around.
Well, it's ongoing, but I will get to three months and I have no doubt about that at this point. But I would say first and foremost is to reach out and connect with people that have done
Some type of
assisted programs and there are multiple different types of like, you know, twelve step ish type programs.
That are out there.
And
I'd say that the first thing was that
A friend of mine said hey listen.
One of the things that the tenants of kind of AA that it works quite well.
Is it's not about going ninety days.
All it is is about waking up that morning and saying, Not today.
It's about twenty four hours. It's always about twenty four hours.
It's about the recommitment every single morning.
To wake up and say, Hey, I can have a drink tomorrow.
Just not today.
And then saying that over and over and over again. And
When you're someone that went through Covid and
I didn't drink a lot and then all of a sudden I thought we were all gonna die, so I drank a ton.
And
It's this
Kind of itchiness.
that appears at around week one and a half or so.
This kind of like
There's a a saying like a snake shedding its skin, like this kind of like withdrawal type thing that you have to go through.
That is very challenging.
And it's at that point that you have to realize you're in the thick of it.
And I wasn't having like
D T or anything crazy, you know?
What is that? Delirium tremens. Yeah, yeah, we like shakes and stuff like that. Yeah. So
This was more just like
How do I get to a point?
Where I can be comfortable in my own skin.
And sit here.
And be okay with just being myself. And it's a very weird thing to say it.
I wasn't
Able to pull that off.
And actually what it is is it's phone calls to these people.
What happens in a lot of these different programs, and there's two of them that I looked at specifically, is that
One of the first things that happens when you join these various programs is they surround you with like minded people and phone numbers.
Phone numbers of people to call.
And you call them up and it's not like, Hey, talk me off the ledge here. I'm sure for some people it is, but for me it's just like, Hey, help me get through this next half hour.
And how should I be thinking about this, right? Yeah. And so
Once you kind of build up enough of a runway here, and I'm at I'm finally at the p uh point where
I feel really, really good in in in a way that I haven't in a long time.
And I don't want to go back on that. And so
That support network, I think, is one of the strongest pillars of like a twelve step program is
Like you said, surrounding yourself with people that are just gonna be there to pick up the phone and have that conversation.
And then it's a bunch of hobbies to fill out the rest of the time.
And it's not just people to, like you said.
Talk you off the ledge, which may or may not be the case, but
People to whom you feel accountable.
Also, right? You just got on the phone and talked to someone, and if you drink
Chances are you're gonna have to talk to them.
And
You don't want to be the person who
Breaks rank.
Right, or who doesn't live up to your commitment. So that accountability
is really powerful. You said there were two organizations that you took a look at. What were the two
organizations or
Groups.
I would just say
Use chat GPT and type in twelve step programs, not drinking. You're not supposed to talk about these things.
Oh, when you go to check them out.
It's like five club.
Wait, you're supposed to talk about them? Why not?
'Cause I know people, for instance, who have been like, Yeah, I'm in narcotics anonymous or whatever. Well give an example. So Brad Pitt got a bunch of shit for saying he was an AA.
If you're an AA, you're not supposed to say you're an AA. Oh, you got shit from AA people. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
I would think that would be a good thing because he would draw attention
I would too.
A lifeline for people who are having trouble with alcohol.
That's interesting. Right, exactly. Most of these organizations don't want you
Chatting about them.
And so it's really fascinating.
Weird. But it not in like a culty way. It sounds very culty ish, but in reality it's just like
To protect who's in them and also not make it be about the organization if someone fails.
'Cause if like if I were to go back and say, Hey, listen, I'm trying this thing out right now, or I tried this thing, or I went to two meetings of this thing, and then then later you hear I only made it forty five days.
Like, oh, that must suck as an organization. And so it's like you don't associate yourself with any of these things'cause a lot of people
might see that as a failure and then never try it. So that's one of the other things that they they say. Okay. Well I don't want you to come under the wrath of the spider web of A
One thing that I can suggest is Lego.
Lego. If you're not watching the video, I'm holding up a massive Japanese wave called the Great Wave of Kanagawa.
Which is a a wood block print that was done. Yeah, Hokka Sai.
From the uh what was the Edo period, I think, right? When he did these wood block prints.
But I spent
Like
Three days making this with my oldest daughter, which is amazing.
So much fun.
So much fun. Just a quick note on
that particular piece. So it's very easy to find. Most people have seen it. A lot of people have seen it. If you just search Hokusai, H O K U S A I Hokusai's wave, you'll see this pop up. But if you search evolution of
Pokusized wave, you get to see
Over time.
his like prototyping and tweaking and changing of that particular wave until it landed on what we now recognize as this timeless iconic piece, which was quite cool. So people can take a look at that. It's so cool.
Yeah, his his stuff is amazing. And the fact that Lego makes adult Legos now, it's so much fun.
Are they just bigger for larger hands? What makes them adult? Or they're just the instead of being the bat car, they're
Hoke size wave.
Well
The pieces are smaller, so they tend to look a lot more realistic. Like you could hang this on the wall and actually be like art versus a Lego.
And then they're doing it with like little mini bonsai trees, and I did with the bamboo shoots, and like they're actually pieces that you kinda want to have around your house.
Oh check this out.
This one you'll like too.
I haven't done this one yet, but
This is one that you can only find in Japan, but I think you can find'em on um on Amazon. Uh this one's called Nanoblox. It's like a Lego competitor.
Yeah, so these are really tiny little pieces.
I bought this one when I was in Tokyo.
But this is a cherry blossom tree. And I I can't remember how many pieces this one is, but
It's like they can be in the in the thousands. Yeah, this one's nine hundred and ninety pieces.
For this little tiny tree.
They're fun to do, but it just gives you something, you know, I realize what I need is
A friend of mine actually said he took up golf with his wife and he was like hey I I
I took up golf with her because all we did was drink or talk about our kids. It was one of two things. And
You know, you need to have something that you go and do in the evenings, whether it be rock climbing or
Some type of physical activity that is not that substance, you know.
Yeah. The physical activity piece, I mean, I've always found super effective because you get punished if you're drinking too much. If you're doing something that's really physically intensive. You mentioned this guy going to play golf with his wife.
So my question for you, we can always cut this too, but since about
your surroundings and so on is
Daria also on board with
The not drinking or are you able to
Take that on yourself while she's
Partaking. How does that
Working out.
Yeah, so she's still drinking and
I would say that
The one nice benefit is the been that she's cut back a lot just naturally.
Which was cool to see. So
Her consumption
She's always kinda wanted to cut back, but I I don't know how much of it is a result of seeing just
My general energy levels going up and
I feel a hell of a lot better. Oh, by the way, my liver enzymes are back down to like
you know, low thirties, which is great.
So I'm starting to see like my complexion and like all these
There's weird things are happening, they're just getting better.
Turns out not drinking is actually good for you. But uh I think that is inspiring her to drink less, which is fantastic. But she still drinks and it doesn't bother me. It's like it is what it is. Like she's
She has a hard time with certain things around the house when it comes to the kids and noise levels and
And stuff that
I think it's easier for her to have a drink or two just to kinda calm the nerves a little bit.
But I think it's already showing.
you know, it's wearing off on her as well, which is great.
Mm-hmm.
Nice. Well
I'm excited to see what happens at day ninety.
It seems like a huge difference now is you have the phone a friend.
Support system put in place.
Yeah, the phone of friend is huge, but also there is this group of people that get together and they have a weekly Zoom.
And
I jump on that as a bunch of this one's guys only, as a bunch of guys that
don't really want to be drinking.
And it is
A bonding moment to just talk about how these people are showing up and to hear stories about people
That are showing up as better dads in particular. Like really
Hits home with me.
Not that I was showing up as a bad dad, but like
When I think about my father and
How kind of
You know, some of the verbally abusive stuff and i his wasn't related to alcohol, but just like
Dads showing up at the as the best versions of themselves means a lot to me.
Like it means a lot to be
An awesome dad to my kids and
When I see these other dads that would have otherwise been alcoholics in their home talking about how much
They love their children and how they have more
Пацієнс форм, патіс форте.
Because the fact that they've stopped drinking.
Or severely cut back on drinking is just like
It's a blessing to s to watch that unfold. And yeah, I'm seeing it.
in this large group of people that talk about these things, you know?
Yeah. I'd be curious to know we can also cut this. Obviously we can cut whatever, but
It's top of mind because I had Terry Reel on the podcast a couple of weeks ago.
And his first book, which put him on the map.
is I don't wanna talk about it, which is specifically focused on male depression. And he talks about covert depression.
Meaning
Men have these
Common
modes of covering up depression, whether that be workaholism, alcoholism, sex addiction, fill in the blank.
Right. Typically some type of kind of compulsive busying or dulling.
Addiction. It could be drugs, I suppose. It could be cocaine. That's not dulling, but
It's a
quite a laundry list of things that he discusses as coping mechanisms for depression. Right. Yeah. And
I don't think that
Substance abuse is always that.
Some people just meet a molecule that is really not a good fit from an addiction profile perspective. I do think that it could be
Certainly.
Predisposition.
As simple as that. It's like
Your body, your bloodline.
really shouldn't play with this molecule. But then there are other cases where there's other stuff under the hood.
Do the people in your group talk about that at all? Does that come up?
Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely.
I would say that if I had to guess it's
The vast majority of it is the under the hood stuff.
It's not addressing all of the childhood trauma or
our kind of family of origin stories, where and how we grew up, and there's almost always
A bit of that. So kinda as we popcorn around
the zoom and talk about different things.
One of the things that commonly comes up is just, you know
Not only how are you showing up today, but some of these little bits get exposed.
around these traumas that were largely left unaddressed and so led to
this kind of dependents or this escape that you know alcohol can provide.
Which is just this dulling of my general
ease being able to sit there and be comfortable in your own skin.
because of a lot of the things that occurred to you as a child and not even knowing it, you know?
And so addressing that stuff I think is a big part of a lot of these
different step programs that are out there.
They have different means and ways in which you can go and get that, put pen to paper.
Get out a lot of those things and
Address them and put'em out there to the world and
Hopefully move on from them and and heal from that, you know?
Yeah, totally.

Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.
About three weeks ago, I found myself between 10 and 12,000 feet going over the continental divide, carrying tons of weight, and I needed all the help I could get. And in those circumstances, I relied on momentous products every single day and every single night. Now regular listeners
probably know I've been taking Momentus products consistently and testing them, the entire spectrum of their products for a long while now. But you may not know that I recently collaborated with them.
To put together my top picks.
I always aim for a strong body and sharp mind. Of course you need both.
And neither is possible without quality sleep. So I designed my performance stack to check all three boxes, creapeure creatine for muscular and cognitive support.
Whey protein isolate for muscle mass and recovery, and magnesium three and eight for sleep. All Mementous products are NSF and Informed Sports Certified, which is professional athlete and Olympic level testing. So
What's on the label is exactly what you're getting. Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think. So just head to livemomentous.com slash Tim, that's livemomentous.com slash Tim, or use code Tim at checkout for thirty five percent off of your first subscription.
That's live momentus.
dot com slash Tim Mementis M O M E N T O U S
Live Momentus.com slash Tim.
Or code Tim for thirty five percent off your first subscription.
I
All right, so I just got back from the most travel I've done in quite a while, four to five weeks. I was in
Taiwan for
A week.
Which was
Spectacular and I'll come back to that. Japan as always, fascinating, interesting.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
frustrating depend on which side of it you hit.
I mean we've talked about this before, but it's kinda like.
Japan is like twenty to thirty percent blade runner and like seventy to eighty percent DMV in terms of like rules and paperwork and so on, but I love Japan.
And then also spent a bit of time in the UAE, actually in Abu Dhabi unexpectedly.
So lots of travel updates, I will say
For Taiwan. I had not been back to Taiwan since
nineteen ninety nine or two thousand. So twenty five years. And
I had had a very tough time when I studied
abroad in Beijing. I studied at two universities.
And this was 1996, and it was a very, very rough experience at the time for a host of reasons. One was there was a lot of political tension between the US
And
China.
And
I had my head shaved and looked like military, particularly back then. I was a bit bigger.
And it was just not a particularly welcoming
Environment.
There were concerns about
Foreign students.
Affecting.
Domestic students, Chinese students, so we were put in a foreign experts dormitory. We were completely separate. So it's actually very hard.
To learn Chinese in the way that I was hoping to learn.
Chinese. My Japanese got better because there are a lot of Japanese students in the dormitory.
And also met some great
People who
lived in Beijing. So it wasn't exclusive
But I had a really rough time and when I got back to the US basically decided to stop studying Mandarin and a friend of mine who
So white guy born in uh the south of Japan.
So he had perfect Japanese, southern dialect. His English was a little unusual because he sounded like a Japanese person who had learned to speak English very well. This is a guy who looks like you know you or me. So there was something funky and and and really funny and awesome about that.
He also spoke really well.
And spoke Chinese really well. And he said, You have to at least go visit Taiwan before you lay down your pen and retire your Chinese. And so I ended up spending
Uh about a month in Taiwan and it just blew my mind.
Right.
without the cultural revolution in Taiwan, a lot of the older culture
from China had been preserved. Also native sort of indigenous Taiwanese culture and cultures had been preserved.
Very different.
From a
kind of interpersonal perspective.
And uh just had the best time.
one could possibly imagine. And in fairness, I have been back
to mainline China in other places more recently. And it's a very different experience now. Although
Once again, we're back in tension city between the US and China. But what I would say is if you have the chance
To go to Taiwan.
You should take the chance. And
This might sound like a
Also, I don't think it's pessimistic. I think it's inevitable that at some point Taiwan will be reabsorbed.
by mainland China and it's gonna change really dramatically culturally
Linguistically.
perhaps the ability to travel there will get more complicated. I don't know how it's gonna change, but it will change a lot. And
that I could see happening within the next few years.
Very surprisingly to me, people on the ground, at least the Taiwanese locals I spent time with, and I was with locals the whole time I was there. I wasn't with any expats.
They're completely unconcerned. They really don't seem to be thinking much about this type of transition. Either because they think it's not gonna happen.
Or because they view it.
As I just said, somewhat as an inevitability. So they're like, Yeah.
It'll change. Things will change, but
So it goes. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of hand wringing.
And fretting about it.
Which was super
Surprising to me. I will say though, if you want to visit a place that is really warm where the people are really funny.
Where the food is outstanding.
And it's almost feels like there's a
Blended.
courtesy that you might recognize also from Japan. And certainly Japan has a long history there. So that could be some of the influence. Really I encourage people to check out Taiwan and do it soon.
And I want to give a shout out to
A uh restaurant there.
That's
Two of the locals I know.
are involved with.
And you're gonna love the name of this.
Restaurant.
It is
Customized.
Although pretty sure it predates Google. The name of this restaurant is Really Good Seafood.
That is the actual name.
It's very descriptive. You know what you're gonna get.
Yeah, it's very descriptive.
Fantastic sculpture also, like bronze sculptures in this restaurant, strangely enough, but really good seafood.
Highly recommend people check it out. And you just can't go wrong in Taiwan. Try to get at least outside of Taipei for a short period of time.
And there are amazing hikes in the mountains.
Yeah, I was gonna ask you, did you do any tea? Cause obviously the oolongs in out of Taiwan are just absolutely stuffed. They're stuffed. Did you do any tea tours?
We drank a lot of tea.
Did not do a tea tour.
But actually if you hold on for a second, let me go grab some tea. I haven't even unpacked. I literally got back yesterday. So hold on one second, I'm gonna go grab something.
Yeah.
All right. So I brought some tea back and
Taiwan has a lot of everything from a T perspective, but certainly what gets the most airtime is
U Long T. You really hear about U long.
They have.
So many incredible
T'es.
But
This right here, Cha Cha Tay, which

Certainly is not Chinese.
But they have these incredible tees.
And this one in particular was recommended, which is called Oriental Beauty Oulong Tea. And
There are a million different varieties.
Certainly if you spend time there.
I would say do not miss out on the tea. If you think tea is boring, if you think tea doesn't really spark your interest.
Doesn't capture you.
I would suggest
Just going whole hog.
On
As much tea as you can.
And get out in the mountains, I mean even an hour outside.
of Taipei you can go on these walks
In rainforests that are
to my eye, denser than the Amazon. I mean that it is so lush and so dense.
Waterfalls rivers monkeys
You just get to see it all. It is really
Incredible from a biodiversity perspective.
And
I do think sadly.
At least
For ease of travel.
With Taiwan as it exists right now, the window could be quite narrow.
For
A lot of
So I would say.
Maybe things will change, maybe they won't, if and when the big red dragon basically subsumes Taiwan, but I would say get there sooner rather than later.
You will not be disappointed and certainly
Check out.
Really good seafood.
Really good seafood.
That's restaurant.
And then of course going from Taiwan to Japan.
Pretty easy transition. It's a very short flight.
I guess somewhere between three and four hours.
And
instead of tea in Japan, just went on the rampage with coffee, actually, this time around. And one of the main reasons for the trip was to visit my host family
Who I stayed with when I was fifteen. I'm still very close to them. And so we we were able to go out to this rambunctious local ramen joint and just
Yeah, act like old times and catch up as if no time had passed. It's just so nice to have those deep relationships.
And
Like everyone everywhere, they're getting older, meaning my parents, my host brothers, their kids, and it was wild to see my
Oldest host brothers.
Older boy is now
Sixteen. He's taller than I am.
I remember seeing him when he was a baby, right? Because I went to my host brother's wedding.
prior to that. And he is the age that I was when I was in Japan.
Which is just wild.
It's so wild and wanted to give a couple of recommendations for people if they want to try.
bunch of coffee. There's there are a million options out there, but
I don't know how to explain it.
And people are gonna think this sounds really funny, but
The
Latte at Glitch Coffee in Ginza for whatever reason.
A number of people had it and we were all like, What?
Did they do with this latte? I don't know how it was I don't know if it was how they blended it.
Oh dude, it's Hokkaido milk, of course. Well, no, no, no, well that's the thing though, because we had like
twenty different
Lattes, but at glitch.
In Ginza specifically, the way that they blended it.
And put the whole thing together was so obscenely good.
It is very small. It's a pain in the ass to wait outside, especially if it's raining like it was when I was there. But I would highly recommend checking it out. But you're right that Hokkaido milk.
Is famous throughout
The world certainly without all of Asia.
And it's just a different thing. It just tastes
Yeah.
So much better than the milk.
that I've had, at least here in the US.
I'll give one more which is Sendai.
Sendai coffee.
And people can check that out as well. Very cute. Different style. And there I would suggest
Checking out they have a few varieties of Colombian
Coffee. Colombian Kindle.
Wine yeast peach infused honey. Now there's no sweetener in this.
But all of these notes are super, super obvious.
This stuff right here.
They really know their coffee, man. They really do. Have you been to Coffee Mamea out there?
I was gonna go to Cafe Mamea, but we did not end up going.
So I've not my favorite in Tokyo.
It is insanely legit. They have a couple of different locations, but there is one that they have, they serve the coffee in in like wine snifters.
And you know, it's like thirty five dollars a cup and they're getting the world's best geishas in there and they're just like making
This fantastic varietal of coffee.
Just for clarity, the geisha is the coffee, not the people. That's right.
Have you tried any of the age coffees in Tokyo?
I mean, I might have in the course of going to all these different places, but perhaps not. Mama, I wanted to go to check that out. It's a whole production, right? Like if you go to the one location where they give you the omakase, it's like a whole three hour event. And I had just at that point in the trip with the amount of time we had, I was like, number one.
Because tourism has exploded, I mean I have never seen
Even
a quarter of the number of tourists in Japan that I saw this last trip because the yen is weaker and a lot of people are coming in from all over, not just China, but also Thailand and many other places.
If you want to book a reservation
You need to do it far in advance. For instance, you want to go to like Ghibli Museum. I used to be able to do that a week or two in advance. Now you got to do it months in advance.
Yeah, last time I was out there, it was just insane how many tourists were coming over. And I I saw Craig Mott out there, which is fantastic. He took me to a secret little coffee spot that I don't want to blow up and ruin by Michigan podcast. But it was fantastic.
Another one.
Just Google L A M B R E
Aged coffee beans Tokyo.
And they have coffee beans that they've been sitting on for over twenty years. So they'll serve you coffee beans that are twenty or thirty years old.
It's a different experience altogether when you get these kind of like slightly fermented age coffee beans.
This little shop seats like eight people.
It's fantastic. Highly recommend. So that was my
sort of
Deal with jet lag.
Plus.
Enjoy Japan this time around, which I hadn't done. I had done a lot of like we experienced it together, you know, sake tastings and things like that. Didn't want to go the alcohol route. I was very tempted to go to Gen Yamamoto again, who's incredible. Gen's best. Yeah. But
I didn't want to do the booze. So ended up doing the caffeine route and
Absolutely loved it. It's also a great way to explore.
There's a place I wanna say
You look it up.
Wanna say it might be Nizu.
Nezu Cafe.

But it does not allow any photographs or social media or laptops. And I just thought that was so fantastic. There's a handful of those out there. Did you go to Bear Pond Coffee out there at all?
No. That's a little bit further out. So bear pond's amazing. There's a guy there, he does the angel stain. He there's one cup of coffee he makes like this really
highly processed
over the top expressos not possibly that dense
Dense, thick, rich espresso.
And then they have Hokkaida milk there as well.
I think it's some of the best. Oh, it's just unbelievable. Kevin.
But there's no social media. I have to stage an intervention. If you're gonna be a coffee nerd, you can't say expresso. You gotta say espresso.
Okay, espresso. I Did I say expresso?
You said it twice, yeah.
Okay. All right.
Listen, cut that out, fucker. It's too good. It's too good.
I have these sayings that like Daria always calls me out on where I say things where I think I pick them up from my parents and there's like three or four things that I are completely like not even close to the actual word.
It was from my family, my upbringing, I think. Expresso was one of them.

Well my mom.
Her mom, as a joke, would say certain words totally incorrectly.
Like instead of horizon, she would say the horizon.
And then my uncle went into school to give a presentation when he was a little kid and he said
Horizon and just got like laughed out of class. And then his mom was like, Oh yeah, no, I was totally wrong. I was just kidding.
Come on, come on, Mom.

Oh, I gotta tell you before we move on, people should know if they don't get a chance to go out to Taiwan and something I
Desperately wanted to do and and I wholeheartedly agree. It seems that
Sadly tensions are rising, so there is a small window, but
A friend that I met in San Francisco. Have you ever been to that red blossom tea company in SF?
Yeah. So I think they are the best importer, domestic importer, at least in the United States, of
High quality oolong tea. So
If you cannot make it out and I have no affiliation with them at all, but if you can't make it out
to Taiwan, but you want to try some of these teas that Tim is talking about.
Red Blossom T company, just Google them.
The website has fantastic oolongs.
And they're reasonably priced, they're pretty awesome.
Yeah, and also just to be clear, guys, this doesn't need to be expensive.
These coffees, you might have to wait a little while, or these teas, but they're not gonna cost necessarily. If you go to a super fancy place, sure, but 99% of what I had is gonna cost less than what you had at Starbucks.
Yeah.
Hundred percent.
It's not expensive. It is not outside of reach.
All right, man.
Where should we move next?
Yeah, I mean I d definitely want to cover how you did on that meditation retreat. We can talk about that at some point, but I can also talk about some tech stuff as well.
Why don't we do a a tech
Debrief then we can talk about the the Zen retreat.
Yeah, so the tech debrief, I would say for me, the latest and greatest is that the new Whoop finally came out, which is
This little guy here on my wrist, it's about I think twelve percent smaller.
Now I'm or
Whooped and Apple watched up all at the same time.
The whoop
Band.
The reason I like it, or I had historically liked it, is that it does not have a display on it.
And so it's not competing with your time in any way. You kinda check the stats in the in the morning or at night or whatever you may be.
And
They
really maximized the hell out of this hardware because they
Had not updated the device in like four years. So it was the same hardware, but they kept doing firmware updates.
The heart rate tracking got better, everything was just
continually getting better via these firmware updates.
This is the first new device in like four years.
This one is called the MG, which stands for medical grade.
It does feel a lot smaller.
And there's some new features that I think are worth mentioning that are
Pretty awesome.
Some stuff that the Apple Watch doesn't do.
So this one now has blood pressure.
Monitoring as well.
So you calibrate it with your cuff, which I did last night, and then it's gonna give me insights throughout the week.
It will kinda give you a range or a score range, so it's not gonna give you exact cuff measurements.
But it'll generally let you know how you're doing.
Whether you're not you want to pay more attention or not. So
It's in beta right now, but it seems so far it seems pretty good and pretty accurate. And granted, I've only had this for a few days now.
The VO2 max tracking is awesome. The zone training is great. It's gotten better. They have this feature called Whoop Age.
The whoop age I think is pretty cool because
Basically what it does is it takes a look at a bunch of different metrics across the board. So you can think of this as resting heart rate, sleep quality, heart rate variability.
Stress levels, which is getting through a couple of different algorithms that they have.
Your VO two max.
A slew of different things and it combines them all into this score and it says okay
How do we think you're doing are you
At an accelerated aging pace right now, are you flat?
Or do we think you're actually
below average and that you're aging slower
than most people, which is where you wanna be.
And so they give you this cool little whoop age insight.
Which is fun.
I would say
Out of all the devices that I've played with and own
The Who probably is the geekyest of them all. And then it gives you the most data points and the most insights. And now they have this little AI agent.
You can have a conversation with, you can say, Hey, how did I do yesterday?
Like is there anything I should be paying attention to? And it'll come back and pull from your real time data that's on your phone.
So I like it. It's a little bit pricey, but the one I have is$359 a year. And they do have some that are less expensive.
But
You know, it's early days. We've only had it for a few days, but it it's something to pay attention to in terms of the wearables out there, the track.
You know, everything is related to all the different metrics that you can pull from.
I don't know if you've had a chance to do this, but I've really been
Increasing the
Frequency of my zone two training.
And the way that I've typically calibrated that is with the talk test.
Sort of per Peter Tia, right? Keeping it simple, like you're on a bike.
And
You could hold a conversation on the phone or with someone.
In full sentences, but you wouldn't really want to. That's right, my understanding of the simple way to measure it. Now I've talked to other people
who are involved with like professional cycling teams and they're like, Well, actually you really want to do A, B, C, D, and E to calibrate it, which sounds very complicated, and I'm probably not going to do it. Have you had a chance to compare what
The whoop says about zone two and something like the talk test to see if they correspond.
It's a great question. And and I I think one that I'm with you and that I want to get more zone two. I'm trying to get like a half hour in per day.
At least and uh Tia really pushes for, you know, close to an hour or tr tries to get to an hour.
There's an equation for this as well, which is like age divided by plus, you know, there's like there's a few of these out there that are like, how do you figure out?
What zone two is for you.
For me, this one is they're using their own model. So they have their own model that they kind of give you a range.
But one of the things that I do like is I was messing around with this last night
Is if you go in and you do a real legit VO two max test where
They're actually hooking up to the full gear, they're putting in the treadmill.
You can plug that in and it will feed it into the model, or you can manually define the zones as you see them. So you can go in there and type in what you want your zones to be.
And it will use that versus their own internal tool, which is quite nice. But yeah, they're using some type of model. I'm not sure which one they're using.
Okay.
Cool. Yeah, maybe I'll compare them since I'm in Austin, so I've access to
you know, the ten squared facility and I can go in and I did a VO two max test not too long ago with the whole kit and caboodle, the band mask on and everything.
Yeah.
uncomfortable as a first timer. So I'm curious to see what type of
acclimating or practice effect there is on my next VO2.
Max training, even if my
capacity hasn't increased, do I get better results because I'm just more comfortable with
The gear and the settings and the cycling and so on. We'll see.
We'll find out. It's gonna be hard to
Tease that out.
The one thing I will say is that there is a great YouTuber that I like called the Quantified Scientist. And what he does is he goes in
And it takes every single wearable, at least mainstream wearable that's out there.
And he has the hardcore, you know, VO two max devices at his house. He has all the E C
Devices that measure sleep.
And he's basically a statistician and comes in and gives you the data and says
How does this actually compare
to the gold standard.
For these different measurements. And so
He has yet to do that on the new whoop, but in the aura ring and the apple watch and the garments and everything out there.
He'll actually put on the full VO two Max.
Mask like you're saying, and then compare them and say this is the closest to the gold standard without having to wear the quantified scientists is awesome.
For sleep, I guess it could be any number of things. It might be EEG if we're talking about brainwaves. The E C is uh electrocardiogram E G
So that's right. Yeah.
Yeah, sorry, this one does the E C G if you like hold on to the side of it, it'll
Tell me.
If I have any AFib or anything like that as well.
On the new world.
Okay.
Yeah. All right. I'm doing a
Literally getting another bike.
Well, I should say bike. It's more of an ergometer.
this week because
I love so much about this company, but the Peloton seat.
Is just
completely breaking my cock. It's so bad. And to like retrofit it.
Or to try to modify it is really, really challenging. So I think that in the interest of reproductive health, and I'm not
Kidding about that actually. Like you can do with the wrong seat with strike the high flexing on it. Do a lot of damage.
You're like I'm so massive. The seed is just absolutely just destroying my junk.
Well, when my yeah, my elephant trunk. I need to wrap it around this pole in the front. Exactly. Make sure. Just loop it over the front bars, you'll be fine.
Safety first.
I'm serious that if people are doing a lot of cycling and they're having any type of sexual dysfunction or
Reproductions, it's worth taking a look at the seed. Like this is something that got flagged to me, fortunately, in advance, because I was like, huh, as I was doing some of my workouts.
I noticed it seemed like almost a tingling or lack of circulation in one of my legs, and I was like, That can't be good. So
As it stands, I'll be able to do it.

endorsement, but I'm moving to another ergometer just so I can do that.
And have the ability to easily swap seats.
If need be. So I might have more on that.
Should I hop in?
With uh
Some new experiments or at least observations. Yeah. Actually let me give you one more quick one that I think is gonna be fun for people that a physician turned me on to, that I
have been using now when I travel, which is amazing. So
Again, no affiliation with any of this stuff, but there it was a Stanford scientist that came out with this nasal spray called Profi P-R-O-F I.
And I bought it on Amazon.
And so it's essentially the spray that is like this hydro gel.
That goes up into your nasal cavity and you spray one
For each side.
Is it in your nose?
And it
Is
Like a gel that
Basically if you just breathe in through your nose when you're on a flight or you're traveling or in your big room of people
It will trap and it holds all of the different viruses and bacteria that you're inhaling.
Into this dže.
And destroys them at the gel level.
And people are like getting less sick. They're not picking up the average
Cold when they're in big rooms.
They did a small study
In a hospital setting around covet I'll find it
It wasn't with
This particular brand but the same
It was I think it was another generic brand of the same type of gel.
And they just show that the odds of you getting COVID or the the flu
were severely reduced for people that were using this gel inside of their nose.
So I was like you know, it's like fifteen bucks or something. I was like hell yes.
And so I picked it up and I've been using it when I travel and knock on wood. I you know, I've been doing a lot of travel like you.
Over the last few weeks haven't got sick at all. It was only when I didn't do it at home when my kids were sick that I ended up getting a cold.
Anyway, it's pretty awesome. It was developed over at Stanford and recommend checking it out.
Okay. So we'll get a link to that.
And actually for years now, I don't know if I've ever told you this, for at least ten years, when I'm about to go on any extended travel, I will get a saline mist spray.
From
CVS of Walgreens and just simply moisturize or hydrate inside my nasal passages, which seems to make
a big difference also for the purposes of just avoiding my nemesis, which is sinus infections. If my nasal passages and my sinuses get dry, I've had issues with sinus infections since I was a very, very little kid. And
If I'm consistent.
With
This type of
Nasal spray, it seems to help. So maybe the next step up
Is the Prophy

Makes me think it's
That's a hell of a brand name.
Express. I literally saw it.
A sign in a coffee shop in Romania. This was in Brashov and it said, Dear Americans, espresso does not have an X in it. I feel very no, you're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone.
Kinda makes sense. Express. You want to be in the Express Land Express. Exactly. Thank you. I'll share a couple of just rapid fire like Scooby snacks for people and then I'll talk about a recent experiment. So this is another one from Japan. And this is is not
Very expensive, but if you can find it online, you might be able to find it at something like uh Nijia market or a a Japanese market of some type. This is a dashi.
And it's got dried bonito and dried
anchovies and dried flying fish and sweet kelp, all this stuff. It's from a place called Okume.
Which was established in eighteen seventy one, and you can see here.
It's a little hard to see, but the package basically looks like tea package.
You have these individual satchets that are full of
This
And you put it into hot water so you can have it like tea in the morning. Oh, I love it. Without making it a big big production.
And this is just their classic dashi. They have a million different options.
But man, I feel like
A dose of dashi and broth.
couple of times a week does a lot to keep the doctor away. So this is gonna be
A very easy I have tea so many times a day already, just to swap in one of these.
As part of the routine. Well,
Make it more interesting and also I think
Could potentially do some really nice things for health.
There's a book that I read on my travels, have been reading.
I've read it at least ten times and every time I read it, particularly if I've taken a break.
of two or three years.
Where I say to myself
This is why I need to read the book more often, and it's this one. This is
Awareness by Anthony DeMello.
Oh, I love that book.
Fantastic book.
It's such a good book and different things hit you at different times. I started reading this and we'll get to it in a second after our Zen retreat.
'Cause it talks about
a lot that overlaps even though
Anthony DeMello.
was largely based, maybe entirely based in India.
But he was a Jesuit priest, also a psychotherapist.
And
The density, I would say, of like
insights per page on this.
Yes.
Just incredible. It's effectively a cleaned up, organized version of his greatest hits.
given as lectures.
And it's very easy to read. It's very funny. It's
Very short. It's only about a hundred and seventy pages.
And once again, I'm reading it and different things are popping out at different points in life. And I actually have multiple hard copies that I've highlighted.
at different points and the highlights are different things. They're really
Different.
Uh the passages that resonate at different points in time.
Oh man.
Yeah, to anybody out there
Who
And it's not exclusive.

But
If
You suffer from anxiety or depression, or if you just feel like you have a little too much edge, you're running a little fast, you feel a little overcommitted, clogged, stuck at points, whatever it might be.
This book
is fast acting medicine and it's not a panacea.
But it's really
Complimentary for almost anything else that you would do.
to help with the types of symptoms that I just described, which are really symptoms of modern living, ultimately, especially for people in urban environments. And even if you're not in an urban environment, if you've got one of these phones,
you are plugged into the
Ansiosphere, right? It's like the world of anxiety.
Because that is how
You keep clicking and that is how platforms continue to gather data they can sell in one form or another.
So Anthony De Mello awareness.
Always recommend it. Haven't read it myself in a while and long overdue. So I did want to mention that. Oh man. Tim, thank you for reminding me about that book. I you know I when
Well, I'll have to keep coming back to this, but when my house burned down, I lost I lost all my books. And it's funny, I forgot that that was one of my favorites that I had on my bookshelf there. And like you, I know you do this as well.
There's like three or four books I would buy like five copies of, and I just leave'em at my house because when I have a friend stop by
I'm like, oh, yeah, I need to give you this book, right? Like there's ones that you absolutely love so much that you just want to gift out because you just like feel like you should give as many people as possible this book, right? This was one of those books, and I just ordered on Amazon.
It's ten bucks on Amazon in the US.
It said you first bought this in twenty nineteen, probably via your recommendation.
But yeah, fantastic, fantastic book. Thank you. I'm I just bought mine.
Yeah, for sure. And uh do you want to talk about actually let me give a couple of other
Quick.
Recommendations for folks.
One is an oldie that but goodie, much like awareness that I had not seen in probably
I wanna say ten or fifteen years. Now, who knows? Maybe the brand was different back in the day. But as a quick status update on my
Increasing eclectic.
laundry list of injuries. So my right elbow has been a problem for twenty plus years. It started with an accident in Jujitsu, my arm got hyperextended, pop pop.
And
Then over time I've developed these tears in my extensors. So people think of tennis elbow, right? So if you kind of
pull your fingers up on your arm towards your face where you're looking at your fingernails. Let's just say you're admiring a nice
New manicure that you have.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So if you're just pulling your fingertips back.
Towards your shoulder.
You're using your extensors. And I have tears in both of those. It's gotten bad enough that I had to stop.
Rock climbing, that was the first indication when I started to get to
Say like five eleven's in the gym when you're crimping and starting to pull.
the knuckles back. I think I basically grabbed the paper tear and ripped it further. So I'm at a point where I need
Almost certainly needs surgery.
And this is your right hand?
This is my dominant side, yeah.
Oh man, that's extra brutal for you.
Yeah, it's my dominant hand. Yeah, you're gonna lose that one. That's not the one you wanna lose.
Yeah, so uh fortunately the surgery is pretty straightforward. I don't know what you're thinking about, but
I am not left handed either. The the stranger.
Yeah, the string.
Ha ha ha.
Don't underestimate the stranger. Oh, hello. Have we heard before?
If you get it, you get it. All right, let's move on.
So I will probably need
two to three months of rehab before I'm able to get back to full force. And even now,
for instance, using barbells for any kind of weight training.
creates too much torque and tension at the elbow and it really ends up being incredibly painful. So I'm using a lot more dumbbells the reason this is relevant is
because of the back injury and the back compression, I don't really like putting barbells across my shoulders.
I won't get into all the details, but I'm holding dumbbells for extended periods of time and
Normally that's not a problem, but if you're doing most of your leg workout
by holding on to kettlebells or holding on to dumbbells.
The first thing that's gonna go is your grip, especially because my right elbow is really compromised right now. And
To use
Standard
basic lifting straps for
Dumbbell is really challenging.
If anyone's used these, you know what I'm talking about.
To sort of wrap the strap around multiple times and to get it into some type of symmetrical position with both hands. So this thing right here.
is another option. What I'm holding is called Versa Grips, V-E-R-S A Grips, G R I P P S. And it's a lifting strap, but really all you're doing
is folding it over once.
And then putting her your hand on top of it. So it's a lifting strap that is much more amenable, much more
straightforward to use pretty much for everything, but particularly for
dumbbells which I'm gonna be using not just to train
to do prehab to get myself as strong as possible prior to surgery, but also post surgery. So I would say
If that's of interest.
You can check that out. I'll give one more
Rec.
And then we can move on. This is a book that
People have
Almost certainly.
Not seen before.
It's called Everything Is Its Own Reward.
By Paul Madonna.
And it is a book of beautiful architectural drawings. You might think to yourself, boring. Most of it is in the San Francisco area or San Francisco Bay area, but it's the philosophical musings and the writing.
that Paul has in this book that is so deeply fascinating and weird.
And thought stirring.
To me, and I came across this.
The first time.
In a hotel.
in the Bay Area, it was just sitting on the coffee shop and I was killing time before doing something. I picked it up and I ended up sitting there and reading it for about two hours. Completely forgot to have dinner.
And I've once again, much like the thirty two sounds documentary, never quite come across a book.
like this. It is so strange. And I feel like the combination of thirty-two sounds.
Awareness.
And this very, very weird, often funny
Often profound. Everything is its own reward by Paul Madonna, which is definitely gonna sell out on Amazon. So the race goes to the Swift.
Create
Almost a an extended psychedelic experience in the sense that
Things that you're accustomed to seeing.
Things that you think or do or hear.
on autopilot most of the time, because that's the only way you can survive is to have most things on autopilot. You see a fresh
as if you're encountering them for the first time.
After
Taking in a diet doesn't have to be very long, even for
A day or two.
with some of these different books.
And uh documentaries and so on.
It's really just seeing
I don't use this word lightly, it's more of a metaphor, but seeing the miracle in the everyday.
And makes me think of some people who are really creative who seem to have one foot in that zone all the time. For instance, I was watching a an NHK, which is like the BBC in Japan.
mini series on the creative process.
of Hayo Miyazaki, who's the founder of Studio Ghibli, which has made pretty much every Japanese animated film most people have heard of.
So my neighbor total
Spirited away.
Ponion, etc, etc.
He's sometimes called the Disney of Japan, which is a description he does not like because he says Walt Disney was a businessman. I'm just a director. Just a director. Very Japanese. But in one of the episodes talking about his creative process, he takes a video camera. This is an older doc series.
And
Tapes it, affixes it to the headrest of
His driver's seat in his car.
Because he says, I want to see what I'm seeing.
Because effectively there's magic hiding in the ordinary. He's like, That's what you want to find.
And I feel like all of these
Tools.
Help you to do that, which for me
Is deeply
Therapeutic.
Beautiful, stress relieving.
In ways that are hard for me to put words to, but you don't need drugs to get there. These are all things that can help recalibrate you.
Just a few degrees to change your waking experience in that way.
Tim, one other thing I'll say is that you had mentioned a book that immediately sold out before
Called the Well of Being. Several episodes ago.
And um
Uh, I'm actually rebuying it right now, but uh because it's back in stock. I just want to let people that is now back in stock because it was going for several hundred dollars a copy.
After you mentioned it and it sold out.
So now it's back for thirty five dollars again.
But that's still one of your favorites, yeah.
It's a great book. It's outstanding.
Yeah, that's the children's book for adults.
Yeah. Yeah. That is an exciting point. I I I'm I'm picking that up again as well.
And the book you mentioned and the book that I just mentioned are books that you really want in hardcover.
If you can get them.
That's the intended
Medium.
for these two books, for sure.
One thing I'll mention as a quick throw out there. Not everyone can travel to Japan. We get that. There are lots of
artisanal Japanese goods that are absolutely phenomenal.
A lot of websites that import do so with very limited supply and then also
They mark them up like crazy. So you'll find some of these shops here, especially in LA, there's some of these shops you go to, and it's just like things are just outrageously priced.
One place I found that I really like that
Yes, it is a little premium, but is
I would say is one of the best curators of fine Japanese goods is
A friend of mine turned me on to this. Uh it's called POJ Studio.com.
P O J
Yeah, you gotta check this out. I think you'll really like it.
So if you got POJ Studio and then click on shop at the top there.
And it's go bestsellers kinda like shop all or whatever.
And then look at some of these pieces. It's everything from like
high end Japanese towels to incense to
These beautiful tie dyed kinda door dividers, like the hanging things. What was the name of the URL again?
It's P O J
Uh-huh.
Studio dot com.
Studio.

Yeah in pursuit of a perfection. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, they got all sorts of beautiful stuff.
Absolutely stunning imported.
Japanese kind of small production artists and stuff from little tiny
trays and containers to
room dividers to throw pillows to
You name it if you like that vibe.
Oh, they have these beautiful hand hammered
little singing bowls that you can use for meditation.
I got their Japanese Hanochi wood incense with sm smells amazing.
Anyway, I think this is one of the best importers of
small artisan Japanese goods that's out there. So
Highly recommend checking out.
And also if you want to go
Low end.
Or like mid tier.
I mentioned Nijia Market. They only have twelve stores across the US, mostly in California and Hawaii, but you can find Japanese markets and you can also find
Broadly speaking, East Asian markets, right? If you find East Asian markets
Whether that's Chinese Taiwanese
Korean fill in the blank, chances are they're gonna have a lot of Japanese goods, and also they will have plenty of good stuff from their primary.
country in the sense that if it's Chinese on, let's just say China, if it's Vietnamese on, although I put them in the South East Asian, I guess, category, but Korean, et cetera, you can just find some amazing
Amazing, amazing teas as an example because culturally that is such a part of the lived experience of those places.
Try it out.
Walk through.
Pick up something you can't read.
Make sure it doesn't have any allergens that are gonna kill you and then give it a shot.

All right, so let's talk about the Zen retreat in a second. I will tell you
One interesting
hypothesis that I have related to something we've discussed once before, which is accelerated TMS. So the
Compressed administration of
Basically a magnetic coil.
Oh, you bastard. There's a squirrel on my squirrel proof bird feeder just
Trying to go to town right now. You rat bastard.
I don't think he's gonna succeed.
Oh yes.
Oh you bastard squirrel proof my pan over, I gotta see this.
Did you pan the camera?
It's not gonna work. I'll knock all my shit over.
Yeah, yeah. Oh you bastard. I th I think he's been
No, no, he's he's really getting in there.
All right. So I got distracted. Apparently accelerated TMS doesn't help with with that kind of distraction. I've just never actually seen
My bird feeder getting pillaged so badly as it is right now by this squirrel. Nice work, squirrel. I love this version of Tim that's like bird feeding hummingbird feeders, little anti squirrel devices. Oh, he just got set for like a whirly gig spin, though, so there's there's something.
You need to get the webcam out there, dude. I do. Only squirrel. All right. Accelerated TMS. I feel like the dog and up Squirrel. Yeah, exactly. Squirrel.
So the accelerated TMS, for people who are interested in learning more about this, I recommend listening to my podcast with Nolan Williams, who's a scient out of Stanford, who's
the head of their brain stimulation lab. But effectively
Different types of brain stimulation, in this case transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Particularly when applied in this condensed format.
In this case, it's fifty sessions of brain stimulation. They're about nine minutes long each.
You're doing fifty sessions in five days. So you're doing
Ten hours a day.
Every hour on the hour.
You were having
this brain stimulation. And in my case, it's for
an anxiosomatic target that just means it's effectively to reduce
Symptoms of O C D
compulsive rumination. I don't wash my hands or flip the light switches and you know that not to
judge anyone who does, but it's like my form of OCD, which I've been diagnosed with, and it's not surprising at all, is this repetitive perseveration.
A loop of thoughts.
that even though I'm aware it's unproductive, even though I'm aware it's unpleasant.
I feel powerless to stop. That type of perseverating, which then of course
Engenders anxiety and sometimes insomnia, et cetera. Of all of the things I've tried, and you and I spoke about this, when I did my first five day
sequence of accelerated TMS. Bizarre, there was like a two
week delayed onset. Nothing really seemed to happen for about two weeks.
And then boom, for three to four weeks I had let's just call it complete remission of symptoms. Like all of that stuff just went away.
And uh
nothing has approached that in terms of amplitude and especially durability of effect. And that includes psychedelic therapies. But what's interesting about this is after that five day treatment.
I went back and I did a single day booster, which did nothing. And then I did a three day booster which also did nothing. Now
Not sure if I've talked about this publicly. Maybe I have, maybe I haven't. Part of the reason I wanted to do
Lower dosing was after my first five day sequence.
I remember after a week or so, I was like, Hey Doc
I
Can't seem to ejaculate. Is that a known problem?
And
Needless to say.
That did not help my anxiety. I was incapable of But you can still get the timber, you just couldn't get the the output.
Yeah, I couldn't get the output.
Okay.
And then the doc was like huh, interesting. We haven't seen that because this is still a very new
treatment and particularly for
Anxiety and OCD. The depression has been much better studied, but he said, Yeah, it kinda makes sense if we're whacking down your sympathetic response.
He's like, Yeah, there's this mnemonic in
Medical school, which is point and shoot, meaning parasympathetic.
to get the erection and then sympathetic.
To have the ejaculation.
To have the orgasm. And he's like, Yeah, it makes sense. And I was like, Okay, and is this fixable or am I like totally screwed forever? And he's like, No, it should just like return to baseline. And it did.
I have an addendum to that, though.
So
I wanted to use lower dosing.
To avoid that.
One day did nothing. Three days did nothing also.
And then
I was like, what the hell is going on? Okay, I guess I can do five days. You get nothing done for five days, right? Because you're getting your brain zapped every hour. And it basically feels like
You did it an all nighter for the L sats ten times a day. I mean you get very, very tired. When you say zap, does it hurt? Doesn't hurt at all. It feels like somebody lightly flicking the side of your head. It doesn't hurt. So it's it basically for nine minutes.
It's like there's nothing and then it's like.
And then there's a pause for
I'm just making this up. Let's just call it, I don't know, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, and then it's a paddle that's pushed against your head. That's it. I don't find it painful at all.
This is with a
Mag
venture or Mag Ventures device. There are other devices that can have different types of
Effects which have different types of helmets and
Caps that are used and so on.
Doesn't hurt.
in this particular case. So then I was chatting with the doctor before planning another round.
And he was like, Well, it is pretty strange that three days did nothing.
And I was like, Okay.
And we're trying to brainstorm strategy. And what I did is I went back in my calendar and looked at
The preceding few weeks before every one of these treatments and for the first treatment, the five day treatment.
I had had
Some psychedelic exposure.
And I was like, interesting.
Because I've long assumed that there could be some type of synergistic effect with these two things.
And there are people who are looking at this very closely right now.
So
This time around, the hypothesis is that actually the improved neuroplasticity, and who knows, maybe it's even
anti inflammatory effects could be a million different things from the psychedelic exposure
worked synergistically with the five day accelerated TMS to produce the effect.
That I then
witnessed and experienced which was incredible, right? If if I could figure out how to replicate that.
Then I would do it.
Let's just call it
Once a quarter, once every four months, something like that.
Why wouldn't I do it? Right. And and I will say
that it took the edge off and
By that I mean I was less motivated to do a lot of types of work, maybe from tampening down the sympathetic nervous system. But what I found for myself was number one, at this point in my life, totally fine with it.
And number two.
I actually think it made me better.
At
Kicking my targets.
And not
Doing
Work for the sake of movement.
Because
I didn't have the underlying anxiety that perhaps I was subconsciously coping
With buy.
some type of frenetic activity or overcommitting to phone calls or work or creative projects or exercise or who knows what it was.
So that extra space that was created by not having as much
compulsive behavior across the board, I would say.
Is
No discernible
decrease over, say
Three to four months.
in my sort of creative output. Like totally happy with it.
I'm very curious to see how accelerated TMS ends up being enabled.
or disabled, and it I think it might depend on the dose, with different types of pharmaceuticals. And there's one that's been studied called Cetriline.
With an S S E T R A L I N E. People can find studies related to this.
So that's something I'm gonna be watching very closely. Now I have an update on the because I know you're you you wanna know about my ejaculation, Kevin.
No, it's always it's my first thing I ask you when I'm returning.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't think it was the TMS. So
I actually had a theory.
That I tested and
It's N of one, so take it.
With a huge grain of salt, but I thought it might be the Trazodone.
Which some people use for sleep.
And it's interesting for sleep because it doesn't seem to disrupt sleep architecture as much as other drugs.
However
One of the
less common but known side effects can be
Delayed.
Ejaculation. I was like, interesting. Well let me take that
off the table.
And I did take it off the table, and lo and behold, no issues.
So back to two minutes.
Oh God.
Yeah.
This never happens, I swear.
But I thought that might be um if people are taking sleep medications, like you can end up treating the wrong thing very easily or pulling levers, forgetting about certain medications that you're using where
You haven't taken a moment to look at
side effects that are less commonly reported, but none the less statistically significant.
So
Not saying that was definitively the cause because I don't I I couldn't prove that, but
So far, so good. I guess.
So after these treatments or the ones that were successful, was there anything else that was a a positive, like were were you sleeping better at night or no?
Well, for the three to four months that I mentioned, for sure, my sleep was so much better. Now, is that because my rumination is less? Is it because I have maybe like someone taking a munjaro or something, less compulsive behavior across the board. So I'm not drinking as much caffeine as like a fixation, maybe. I don't know.
But I did sleep much, much better.
And
I mean the quality of life difference before and after was
hard to overstate. I mean it's really, really incredible. I will say this time around, just like
the first round of five days
If you were to ask me right now
What difference has it made, I would say it hasn't made a fucking one iota of difference.
I mean, I happen to be in the middle of a bunch of very stressful things related to family health emergencies and various
Other
Kind of time sensitive.
situations that I think would contribute to almost anyone feeling quite
Anxious but
I am patient this time around because there was the delayed onset.
And
If it takes two weeks, takes two weeks, you know. So I'm just
Gonna cross my fingers, not drink. That's a big part of the not drinking, also was preparing for that. And then afterwards wanting to ensure that.
I'm giving my brain
The best chance possible.
to adapt in the way that I wanted to adapt.
So
leaving out as many neurotoxins as possible seems like a good
standard operating procedure at least for the next little while.
And
We'll see, man. Fingers crossed. But I remain very, very bullish on this technology.
I really feel like for people who fit
criteria that would exclude them from psychedelic assisted therapies. Let's say people with a history of schizophrenia or family history of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
This treatment could be very, very interesting in addition to especially combining it with some type of metabolic psychiatry, which I had Chris Palmer from Harvard on to talk about a while back.
use of whether it's ketogenic diet, exogenous ketones, maybe some combination.
I think there's a lot of promise. I think there's a lot of promise.
That's awesome.
That's where the foundation's gonna be spending more time also in addition to the psychedelic stuff.
I'm curious when you think about how, you know, these are obviously very expensive of treatments.
And you know, you can't find'em in every city.
Are you seeing any application of this technology at the consumer level that you have tried or you've heard good things about? I know
It's not the same, but Matt Walker.
You've had'em on your podcast.
Sleep scientist I ran the Berkeley Sleep Lab. He had a device called Somni, which I haven't tried.
Which does transcranial electric simulation fifteen minutes before you go to bed.
Supposing your deep sleep.
So he's involved in that product. So I'm seeing more of these kind of like
consumer brain stimulation devices pop up in the market. Anything worth
playing with here or is it just not that just like all kind of
Not
Proven out yet.
Not ready for prime time. Yeah, I I can't speak to Somney. Definitely people if they're interested in
Unpacking sleep. I mean why we sleep, I believe is the title of of Matt's book. I'll scare the shit out of you.
It'll scare the shit out of you in in I think a productive way and then
He and I spoke on the podcast about things he might add to that or modify, update, et cetera.
The consumer grade, it's timely that you should ask me that. So right before recording this podcast.
I actually had
An investor deck.
presentation with a company that is working on something. So you and I should talk about that separately. I think it's very interesting. As a category, it is incredibly hard to make work, both as a technology, so just scientifically to show
Compelling.
Cause and effect.
I think is very difficult in this category.
And
From a business perspective.
There are a number of different reasons that it can be very, very challenging, but I do think there might be
Some interesting tools on the horizon. What I will say is
as a general rule of thumb. I can't speak to Somnia and Matt Walker is a credible scientist, so let's
Exclude Somni from what I'm gonna say.
But
Almost every at home.
Brain stimulation device.
Or
Let's just for simplicity's sake call it brain stimulation device.
I've seen is at best a scam.
and at worst could do a fair amount of damage. These tools, if they're used incorrectly.
T M S, let's just say.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation, if used incorrectly, can actually
Worsen. So exacerbate.
the conditions that you're trying to treat.
You see people online, you see people on YouTube or on Reddit who are just going to be like burn marks and shit too. Like they get like burns.
just DIYing this stuff. Yeah. I would strongly advise against that. The brain is really, really, really sensitive. You don't want to fuck with it without some real bona fide.
creds behind the device and instructions. So I would encourage people to
as a general rule, steer clear of anything that is being sold direct to consumer. I'm sure there are some exceptions.
But
I would say for the most part, this is not across the board.
But
For the most part.
You're dealing with fly by night operations.
And you should not trust the integrity of your brain.
to these devices. I'm sure there are exceptions, but just as a general rule, I would say that separately
I would say that for instance, the therapy that I just paid for is very expensive because insurance doesn't currently cover accelerated TMS, or at least I'm not aware of insurance that will cover accelerated TMS.
But
I was texting with a friend of mine.
Who is seeing very good results.
For
Her PTSD?
And it gets sort of comorbid with depression and other things. So it's hard to untangle all of that. But she is doing TMS conventionally, which is less frequent.
And her insurance is covering it.
So
I would say I'm optimistic that there is a future where
insurance, at least some insurance carriers will cover accelerated TMS.
Particularly when the
Hopefully cost benefit.
is really made.
Incredibly clear.
through patient results because some of the stuff you see.
Yeah.
Incredible, right? Like seventy percent plus remission of treatment resistant depression.
After her.
A week of treatment. These are the types of
Results that
rival or exceed some of these psychedelic assisted therapies. And when we're talking about these
intractable or very difficult to treat psychiatric conditions.
These outcomes are really, really notable.
The data sets are super small.
for a lot of the applications of accelerated TMS, but
I'm supporting that.
through the foundation scientifically.
Because I do feel like
A lot of the issues we're facing.
We're facing because of
Effectively.
Modern.
Civilization. And
I don't foresee it getting any easier. So I do think it's important to try to support these technologies and interventions.
So that hopefully they can reach some level of scale.
And I'm
Skeptical.
that taking people for a six hour ride on a mind bending
psychedelic that takes them to the seventeenth dimension.
is scalable. I'm not even convinced that it's a good idea to do that with incredibly large numbers.
Of patience.
So
That's yet another layer of why I am really supporting some of these other technologies.
It's super exciting. I I think we're about to enter into a golden age of
Tech meets
life sciences and see a whole slew of different compounds and therapeutics that are just gonna change
The way that we live over the next five years.
I didn't tell you this, but I did my whole genome sequencing. So not the twenty three and me, but did the whole thing. You spend, you know, I think it's about seven hundred dollars now to get your full genome done.
It's incredible how cheap it's become, huh? It's crazy.
Yeah, compared to back in the day.
Yeah, back in the day it was insane, right? It was like twenty thousand dollars or more or something just a few years ago. Something crazy.
That was even if it was available if you could find it. Yeah, right. Cause it was like really hard to to even get someone to do it. But anyway, long story short.
I have had the most stubborn
Homocysteine, which is a biomarker that
It's not
known to be causal, but is is oftentimes correlated with may different types of cancers and
Mainly heart disease.
And I have not, even with
multiple physicians helping me out. I've never been able to get it back to healthy levels. So
I took my whole genome.
Dumped it into AI.
And we worked out a playbook together.
On
where we could find menthol dodors to and which methylated B vitamins I could give to help fix the broken cycle, because I have the MTHFR genetic mutation.
It's a very fancy way of saying one biomarker completely jacked up, my dad died of heart disease, I don't want to die of heart disease. How can we fix this shit? Right. So
We work through a way
For me to supplement and start adding on supplements.
I'm eight weeks in.
And for the first time.
My homocysteine is at normal levels.
After many years of trying to figure this out.
And I was working through this process.
In tandem.
with my AI, which was crazy.
And it ended up being
NAC was the thing that we had to add to the mix.
as a menthol donor to get it to work and hack around my M M T H F R mutation.
Do you think any of that change in Homo system could
Be a response to
the cessation of drinking in the last whatever it is, twenty seven days.
I've done drinking bouts of not drinking before and test it, it's still completely elevated. So
Nothing to do with drinking. I thought the same thing, but yeah, this is because
The only thing I changed that I've added on now is we slowly started adding on B methylated B vitamins, but it was the NAC
That was uh the methyl donor that got me over the the hurdle here and dropped it down dramatically.
So I'm I'm way in the healthy zone now, which is nuts. My my physician is like what the hell did you do? And I'm like
Talking to AI. But I'm just saying this is like
This is one of many things. I just we'll have an announcement next time we do a podcast together where I just put fifteen million in
to a protein, this novel protein coming out of UCSF.
that is doing wonders around dementia and Alzheimer's. I did this via True Ventures where I'm a partner over there. So I joined the board of this company and we've got some really interesting data coming out of that.
It's just a very fun time to be alive at the intersection of AI and life sciences.
Yeah, it is. And just for reference, so Craig Venter.
Back in the day.
His personal genome sequencing. That was in two thousand seven.

And people can do more homework on this, but that cost ten million dollars. Estimated to have cost ten million dollars. Wow.
And
You just look at
Where we are now and
You can imagine moving forward. And actually this ties into
My
Visit to the UAE.
And to Abu Dhabi specifically, because what they can do and what they are doing with AI absolutely blew my mind. I mean, they have
Number one.
I think it's seventy percent of government services are administered through an app on smartphones.
And there are AI assistants that people interact with. So for instance, if you're driving, you want to report a pothole, you just take a photograph of it, it geotags it, deals with it, gets it to the right agency.
Then off you go.
And
I suppose looking kinda down the pike also with genomics, I think they're gonna be a
global leader in genomics because of just how much data they have, not only from a full genome perspective, but from a behavioral perspective and centralized

Actually very, very interested to see what they do specifically with life sciences.
And AI because this intersection is gonna be
So fertile.
I mean it's it's just
Unreal. If you look at Alpha Fold and what AlphaFold has done. Yes.
The new Alpha Field's amazing.
I mean we're looking at
Eclipsing decades of human work in incredibly short periods of time.
Have you done your full genome yet?
Tim.
I did my full genome a million years ago with a startup that effectively went out of business. So I should probably do it again just to boot that back up.
I did delete all my data on twenty three and me because I was panicked that they would get bought by someone.
Which they did. Just got announced.
Yeah. So I was able to delete mine just in the nick of time, but
I saw a demo.
This was years ago.
Of
company taking genome data and with a sufficiently large data set.
creating a basically like a
suspect sketch of the person's face.
Based on their o
Genome data. Like if they have photographs from multiple angles of these people.
'Cause this is what one of these companies was doing.
And they have
The uh
Full genome sequenced.
And who knows, maybe this is science fiction, there are passion something in the future. But I guess what I'm saying is
I don't think
You can anonymize
your genetic data in the way that we would hope to be able to anonymized it.
Do you care though?
Like do I care? Are they gonna really gonna clone me? Are they gonna clone you?
I mean they might make your Peloton seat fit better.
Like if they have the full picture. But outside of that
You know, like what are they gonna do with it?
Well I mean,
I run more on the hypervigilant side than you do.
Right? Yeah, I know you do. I would say for me, it's not a question of
Why do you care? It's a question of like what are the reasons to
not have a tighter hold on it.
And if there are secure ways to share it, I'm all for it. But for instance, I mean the twenty three and me thing, I'm not the only person who
deleted their data for sure, right?
And
I suppose my feeling is we don't know what we don't know. I don't know how this data might be used.
I really have no idea.
So I would prefer to have as much control of it as possible. And also way back in two thousand
Ten?
When I was writing
The
For our body, I guess it came out in two thousand ten, so I was writing it prior to that. And I'm not sure if this conversation happened.
Shortly thereafter, but it was with a very credible
Scientist.
who is at NASA at the time working on all sorts of advanced
Physics and chemistry and so on.
And he was commenting on the fact that it was very foolish.
For
uh very well known billionaire at the time to release their full
Genome.
data and he said because if you wanted to develop a
Customized biological weapon.
to say walk up to that person in a crowd and like blow a powder into their face.
at Ted or wherever, he's like, you could do that very, very easily. He's like, it's actually not hard to design something like that.
So I was like
Well now you're freaking me out.
Let's get

And I also don't have the technical on something like that, but it didn't seem
This guy didn't have a tinfoil hat. He had a real job.
He was producing really good work. He was published.
And
That conversation stuck with me. That was around two thousand ten.
Think about this.
If I have the resources and the power.
To like build a custom gene killing Tim Ferris powder agent.
I'm pretty sure I can hire someone just to walk up and shoot you. Like you have the resources. Like you really don't need to go that far to take somebody out with a custom, like or you know what, the phlebotomist that leaves your house, I can just like pay them for a little dip of your juice and like go get it tested, right?
There are ways to do that. I mean, but well, I guess what I'm saying is
Within twelve months I mean we're gonna have
LLMs that are capable, I mean, hopefully they have the safeguards in place of enabling your average Joe or Jane to create biological weapons from household items, right? So
I'm just saying
I'd prefer not to tempt fate as a public figure by
Keeping the reins too loose.
On that stuff.
Do you remember that Life Lock guy? You remember that that company Life Lock that he did his social security number on like a thing and he's like, I'm totally secure. And then he got all hacked and everything because I did it and he's stolen and all this shit, you know? Yeah. It was amazing.
Yeah. Oops. And I will also say that
Something happened to me a couple weeks ago.
That's
is like the flip side of the
Cambrian explosion of discovery with the intersection of healthcare and AI.
And I'm not sure how humans cope with this, but in a sort of post fact world where what you don't touch and see with your own eyes in person
is going to be
A huge question, Mark. And the reason I say that is a a few weeks ago.
I start getting all of these DMs and texts and so on saying, Hey, is this you?
Like, hey is what me and I clicked through
And there was a video.
Of me.
Saying sign up for X, Y, or Z, and I'll tell you the three stocks that are underpriced right now that'll make you rich. Basically, something like that.
And it was a video.
Your side hustle.
My side hustle, yeah. And
The video, I will say, was like ninety percent indistinguishable from me.
The background.
Clothing.
Facial hair.
Everything was dialed. There were just a couple of max headroom movements for people who get the reference, like a couple of little glitches.
That raise questions, but in twelve months that's not gonna be there.
And
I'm not sure, for instance
from a societal perspective, or let's just say from a
personal perspective, like how will people know what is real Kevin versus fake Kevin? Do you have to train your whole audience to use private understand private and public keys? Like what do you actually do?
Dude, this is top of mind for me right now in a way that you would never believe. Yes.
I mean, I'm working on this exact problem.
So well, Alexis, the co-founder of Reddit and I, you know, we we think we mentioned this, we bought dig back and we're gonna build a social platform for people to
converse about a variety of different topics. And top of mind is that in a agenti world where AI
Agents can be spun up for pennies because the cost is going to zero.
And they can have conversations with you, they can convince you of things, they can do all these different
Both good and bad things.
How are you gonna know what's real?
Just as a test, what I did recently is I took a model
I picked a pair of six dollar headphones on Amazon.
And I got all the details about the Amazon and I said, Sell this to me.
is if they will out compete and outperform a five hundred dollar pair of headphones.
And it wrote this
Really detailed report about
The craftsmanship and like how they were able to get this in for only five dollars. And it was super compelling and convincing.
And I was like
It's game over.
Anything we read online.
can no longer be trusted.
Right. And so
There is a a handful of people right now working on this exact problem.
And we're trying to figure out how
We can know both who it guarantee that there's a human on the other end of the keyboard, number one.
And number two
When you go out and you talk about something with authority.
How can we have
and prove that you actually have wisdom or authority that passes through to what you're talking about. So
For example
I don't want to get too geeky, but for example, into your point about this needs to be something average average consumers can understand versus private and public keys and everything else. But like, you know, I've owned aura ring for, you know, let's call it five years now.
Now I could go on any forum online and say, Hey, I love my O ring of own it for five years. Now that could be an LLM that's g that's providing you complete bullshit.
Or can be actually someone that's owned an or ring for five years.
There are technologies out there. They're really geeky.
They're called ZK proofs.
That can go out and
They can work with
Service providers and say we can guarantee
with an algorithm and create a proof that this person is doing and saying what they're claiming to say, which is that I've actually had a paying subscription for the last five years, right?
And we're going to need to have these proofs, like
Uh kind of a cheap way of thinking this is like sometimes you see these like trust pilot scores or whatever, or the better better business bureau scores, or there's gonna need to be that around everything that we talk about online. So including a Tim Ferris.
verifiable checkbox that when I click on it, it will say this was produced.
Created, published.
And

Tim Ferris's lips and not some AI generated world.
That has to exist, otherwise everything is lost online.
Yeah.
Well, keep up the hard work.
Folks working on that problem.
I literally was I was spent a half day over at World, which is Sam Altman's other startup around proving humanness.
And the way they do it is they actually scan your eyeball.
And I had my eyeball scanned.
And you know, now I have an ID, a world ID that is
Proof that I am that human.
They don't own that. They don't have a copy of that. It lives on my device.
And it's sharded and kept separate so it can it only can be reconstructed by me, but
We're entering into this really weird time where
There's a trade off between privacy and proving that it's me and uh it's it's gonna be messy for
For a few years.
For a few years. Yeah. It's gonna be messy for a few hundred years. Sounds like minority report. The I scans.
Yeah. I've I've got a buddy right now
that is a hardcore technologist that that looks at these things and studies these things and he he claims right now he believes that thirty percent of
the Internet's traffic, whether it be
People writing back to you on Twitter.
Or, you know, any of these social networks, he thinks it's all bots at this point.
And and he has proof of some of them that will friend you up.
create long term relationships with you only to convince you of that one thing that they were trying to do that they spent six months building up
rapport with you and it's all BS, dude.
It's all for pennies, you know?
It's crazy.
Have you seen a great movie? Ex Machina?
Oh of course. Fantastic. So good. So scary. We gotta go revisit that. We also need to watch her again.
You know, I haven't watched her, like that'd be another one to watch again.
I mean watching her, I remember watching that.
And
feeling like it was
further off than it actually is right now.
I'm just realizing like it's basically here.
Right. Basically right now.
Yeah.
Did you see that lawsuit that basically there was a bunch of uh guys that got together and did this lawsuit against OnlyFans saying that they were
They sued the platform because they found out that they were just talking to bots and not the actual models them them themselves. Did you see this? No. So they there's they're suing these these creators.
How much you gonna make from that, Kevin? Twenty seven bucks?
No, he but yeah, exactly. Well here's the best part. The number one upvoted comment on that was like you were talking to models, you were just talking to large language models. Like it's so true. Oh man.
Yeah.
Well
Here goes nothing, right? This is like the click, click, click going up on the roller coaster.
Yeah, it's like
Here we go. And it's
Yeah, I came back from my travels realizing like wow.
I really
Think it will.
behoove me to just take a few weeks to a month and do a very deep dive on what I can do with these models.
Because a lot of what I saw travelling.
And just
How prescient an invested
and advanced certain places are, like Abu Dhabi as an example. I was like, holy shit.
From a geopolitical perspective, this is gonna be the haves and the have nots.
Right.
And
It's like okay, I guess I'll keep brushing up on my archery skills. It's why I need the need the elbow surgery sooner rather than later. Yeah. Well
Real quick before we wrap, dude, let's touch on the meditation theme because that is like in the I need more of, which is getting off the computer and actually disconnecting. You want to talk about your experience?
Let's talk about it. Let me give a quick update before we do that. Like a quick like
Commercial break.
Which is this guy. So you remember this guy? Coyote, the game that we talked about? It hadn't launched last time we were talking, or or maybe it had just launched. Now so this game
Coyote, which is kind of like rock, paper, scissors on steroids in a group dynamic where you can help or sabotage other players.
The cam.
has become one of the top selling games at Walmart, where it is exclusively for a couple of months.
It's been one of the absolute top sellers.
Yeah.
has produced two or three of the videos of gameplay have become the most popular videos of all time from Exploding Kittens, which is the company I partnered with.
I mean tens of millions of views of gameplay. So
It's all to say, like it's going super, super well. And there's a lot more
that I'm gonna explore with this over the next couple of months. But so far
Including people with younger kids. They've modified the rules a little bit, but you can I have friends who played
I mean
Hutchins, our friend.
Chris Hutchins played with his like four or five year old, I wanna say. He sent me a testimonial video from her, not for public use, but she was a big fan. So you can play with younger kids.
And
I would just say couldn't be happier with how it's it's turned out. So many thanks to
Alon Lee and the whole exploding kittens team for
going on this two year journey of working on this thing together. So if people want to check that out, Tim dot blog slash coyote and you can find the game at pretty much any Walmart or order it online.
He's it five.
That's awesome. Dude, and thanks for giving it out to everyone that came out to the live dignation at South by. That was that was awesome for you to do.
Yeah, those are the first first people to ever get their hands on one.
My pleasure. Okay.
Zen.
Getting offline.
Yes.
You wanna kick us off? Tell us what it looked like. What was the format?
If you do a classic Zen retreat, at least in this lineage of Zen called Sambo Zen, which is the lineage that Henry Shepman
Teaches.
You're in for it. You're in for a little bit of an ass kicking in that you
Get up at the crack of dawn and you sit and then you sit some more and you do the tiny little walk and then you sit some more and then you have some mush in a bowl.
Then you sit the more. And you do that until about eight PM at night.
You do it all over again.
Completely silent.
for five to seven days. I've done a couple of these five and seven day airs.
They're no joke.
They're meant to be kind of slightly demoralizing slash brutal. They're they're they're designed
They're truly designed to break you down in a in a good way. Break down the ego, break down
Your willingness to live, but I I just don't like it's it they're pretty hardcore. So
But you're working on on Zen Klan. So you're you're trying to crack a clan. Uh Tim has a great interview.
With Henry Shipman on his podcast to check out all about Koans. But anyway, long story short, this was not that.
We said, hey, if we get together a small group of people
We can talk at night.
Have some dinners.
Really intimate, call it like seven, eight people small.
And get Henry and Valerie, which are both Zen masters, to come in.
And kind of instruct us during the day.
No early call times. I think we got there around nine ish.
Yeah, it's perfect.
Which is perfect. You know, get that morning coffee in ahead of time.
And
had, you know, a great lunch and then afternoon sit and then we w all went to a dinner at night. So
Did that for what was three days and it was fantastic. I I loved it, but I'd love to hear what you got out of it.
I got a lot out of it.
One.
Up front.
benefit was it was like a very
warm bath reentry to meditation retreat.
You had a tough go, your first one, right?
For people who want to deep dive into what happened in my first extended Vipassana silent retreat, which I made a lot harder by fasting for a very extended period of time and then also adding microdosing, neither of which I recommend if it's your maiden voyage, they can listen to my interview with Willoughby B. Britain, B-R-I-T-T-O-N, on some of the
Occasional.
Adverse events.
With
Meditation, which are very, very similar to those of psychedelics, actually. So if you want to check that out, you can check that out. I also did a conversation with Dan Harris of Ten Percent Happier, where we got into this in some length. But
Putting that
Aside because the
End result was basically
Complete nervous breakdown.
getting back on the horse and doing it in this way was very
much a form of recovery for me, right? Getting back to a point where I feel like there are forms of meditation I can engage with.
Specifically extended meditation.
that don't necessarily run
the risk of the
types of issues that I ran into on my first salary tree. Which, by the way, uh I've spent
Let's just say.
a week in various jungles or mountains fasting before by myself.
And the same types of issues crop up. Your mind really gets going. I think the fasting actually is the main
Culprit with
Increasing the intensity as much as it did, not the microdosing, but sure they acted together.
This particular format.
And I think the type of meditation with a mixture of silence and
Intermittent guidance from Henry.
Was not only just a
Less strained.
Less
Mm.
I actually felt like it was very, very productive and I know
Henry and Valerie both commented on how it seemed that people
made a lot of progress in a very short period of time in this smaller group. It could have been a function of the smaller group because if you have 40 people, there's always gonna be somebody like coughing or farting or fidgeting or whatever in a smaller group, it's a everyone's on best behavior. And we're also in a small group that was taking it very seriously.
But
Much like with anything else.
Density of practice matters.
And when you are sitting once a day, like I meditated earlier this morning.
using the way app, which we're both involved with, that involves Henry.
I sat this morning, I'll sit again later today. But when you're doing a few hours a day
You're able to say to yourself, Okay, in the next sit, I want to focus on this particular aspect. And then
If you have a very
Uncomfortable.
meditation session, or you're just thinking about popcorn and cats the whole time, or something stupid, and you're like, ah, fuck, I kinda failed that meditation. You have another at bat.
Five minutes later.
Right. Right. And psychologically you can develop a certain
level of
Not just confidence, but also momentum that you can take back.
into your daily less intense practice. So I I found it really, really
beneficial. So thank you for putting so much time and energy into helping.
Organized that.
And you know, the group makes the difference.
This was just an outstanding group, very different perspectives.
Some people had never really meditated before, certainly never done meditation retreats for others like me, sort of intrepid people.
dipping their toe back in.
And
I found it incredibly rewarding and I would do it again, for sure.
That's awesome.
Yeah. I had
Never done something with Henry that involved actually talking during the meditation because it was always like
You get to sit with him in private interview once a day.
When you're doing a a silent retreat. So you th you go back into a room and then you get, you know
Five minutes to talk about
Were there any?
hurdles or obstacles that you that came up and how might we address these.
That's typically how you do it on Zen style. So
To address those at length.
in real time was awesome. So I yeah, I mean
Highly recommend trying to to pick up a practice. It is challenging for monkey minds like myself and
You know, after a few years, I'm just now starting to
to find my way. I mean, ever since then, Tim, I've been doing close to pretty much fifty minutes a day.
Since we got back from it, which has been fantastic.
It's still a challenge.
You know, there'll be days where your mind just goes off the rails and you say, Hey, that was today. So it goes. You know, you can't beat yourself up, I think at the end of the day.
Yeah, I was uh I was busy with really good seafood. Didn't do as much meditating as I would like.
Ha ha ha ha.
Right.
I will give a shameless plug because
The reason I got involved with the way with Henry, this app that he has is because
Most people are not gonna have access to Henry directly in person, right? That's just not
going to be feasible, but
I mean look, I can call Henry. I can text Henry and
Ninety nine percent of the time I just use the app.
Which should tell you something. So
If you go to the wayapp.com slash Tim, you can get thirty free sessions. And I'm pretty sure you don't need to, at least in the beginning, you didn't need to use your credit card. So you're not in this
It's not exactly a bait and switch, but this like boiling frog scenario is my understanding. Last time I checked still didn't require a credit card. So thirty free sessions, you can try it out the wayap.com slash Tim. And I will literally be doing that in another like two hours. I'll be doing another session.
Kev Kev.
Anything else you'd like to add?
No, I think that was great. People should know we we
Did not plan to have that be a sponsor or anything like that for the for the way.
I know you have to say all that stuff, but I g also it's just a fucking awesome app. So it's like that's the nice thing about
Being able to pick your sponsors.
And pick people that you work with, you know.
I love that about podcasting. We
You know, we started that Dignation podcast again with me and Alex, and I do that every three weeks now. And we have all these sponsors coming, and it is so
Nice to be able to be say no.
You know, you're like, No, I don't want to do that.
Because I don't believe it. Yeah. So it's like awesome that
That you're in that spot. But
I will leave you with one last bit, are we wrapping up?'Cause I have one last quote of the day.
So my quote for you all would be one that a friend of mine that gave up alcohol
said to me and I I don't believe this originated with him, but I thought it was a great one, which is
I had
My first drink
For the same reason that I had my last.
And that is to be a grown up.

It's good one.
That's a good one. Yeah. Well keep it up, Kev Kev. I'm impressed. I'm very uh I say that very sincerely. That's a very long stretch.
And it sounds like you've cleared a couple of hurdles. You have the phone a friend option.
And
I'm rooting for you, man. I'm definitely rooting for you. And and having this conversation also reinforces that
I think I'll just continue.
With my current
Cadence, which is like Okay.
Maybe once or twice a month.
Special occasion only.
And
Outside of that.
Just really.
Don't feel the need to do it. And also with everything else I've got going on, I recognize that I'll give you another quote for Booze, and this was actually something that.
a dear friend said to me at one point, he likes to drink. He said
He said drinking is borrowing happiness from tomorrow.
If you're coping at night.
in some respect with alcohol.
It's not a free lunch. You're gonna pay for it tomorrow. And that's also true with w recreational ketamine use. Don't think that's a get out of jail free card, so don't fuck around with that. Kevin and I have talked about that ad nauseum before, so we can leave that alone. But
For me, uh very inspiring to hear you talk about this this stretch and everything that uh has improved. So I'm gonna keep it. I gotta say uh
The the main thing for me, man, I that was unexpected, without a doubt, is the mood boost.
Like in the last w
I've noticed that I'm just
I I never considered myself depressed or anything like that. I was happy person, like pretty good, but like
I
Don't take things as personally, which is like it's weird. I'm for some reason I'm just getting a little ten percent little like lift in mood, which
I'm loving. Like I'll take it all day long. It's great. So
Last quote, last quote. I got one more w good one too. I love good I love good quotes.
Discipline is the strongest form of self love.
It's ignoring what you want right now for a promise of a better future.
That's uh along the same lines as your quote there.
Yeah. So was that was that from your last fortune cookie or do you have a source for it? I don't know where I I found that one. Also, this one's good too. Uh courage isn't the absence of fear, it's the ability to take action despite it.
Yeah, I've got some difficult conversations.
Coming up this week. So that's a that's a good one. Good one to end on.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I know. All right, brother.
Yeah. Yeah. Same to you, brother. And actually no, you it's not what you think it is. It's something else. But catch up we'll catch up offline and
Not the premature ejaculation stuff. Okay. I need to have my level of trazodone. Yeah, no, it's it's not that. Uh and uh that's a amazing place to end an episode. And for uh people who want links to everything we've discussed, we'll link to the accelerate TMS to Nolan Williams, to the books, to third you sounds, to all the stuff that Kevin mentioned, the Prophy.
Spray for your nasal gel needs.
My favorite expressos machine. Yeah. We'll link to Kevin's favorite expresso machine. Uh you'll be able to find that all at Tim Dog slash podcast. And until next time, be a little kinder than is necessary. Not only to others, but to yourself. Thanks for doing it.
Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading.
albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmas, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then
I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash.
Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.
Thanks for listening.
If you ever use public Wi-Fi, say at a hotel or a coffee shop,
which is where I often work, I'm doing it right now, and as many of you, my listeners do, you're likely sending data over an open network, meaning there's no encryption at all. A great way to ensure that all of your data are encrypted and can't be easily read by hackers or captured by websites is to use this episode sponsor
Express VPN. It is so simple. It is one click and it's the easiest thing in the world. I use it overseas.
I use it in airports, I use it everywhere. With ExpressVPN, you simply download their app onto your computer or smartphone and then use the internet just as you normally would. With just one tap, you secure 100% of your network data.
ExpressVPN encrypts and rerouts your network through secure servers, so even though your data is still physically passing through your internet provider, they can't inspect it and they have no record of your browsing history. By the way, this is true even if you're at home, your ISP can snoop on all sorts of stuff, and I've seen that.
Personally, it's very very spooky. Don't like it. So ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is the number one rated VPN by CNET, The Verge, and tons of other tech reviewers. I've been using ExpressVPN for years, and I love that it gives me that extra peace of mind, knowing that no one else is looking over my shoulder, or even if they're trying to, it's going to be very, very, very hard.

And as a bonus, I've also used it many times to unblock content from around the world. If you're traveling and there's a particular media website, there's a particular say version of Amazon or whatever that's blocked, or Netflix, whatever, with ExpressVPN I can connect to servers outside the US.
or inside the US, depending on what you want to do, easily gaining access to thousands of shows and movies I wouldn't be able to see otherwise. That's been true for stuff I've wanted to watch in Japan, that's been true for stuff I've wanted to watch in the UK, for instance, from the US that I haven't been able to access. It's super, super, super powerful as a tool.
So check it out. Go to expressVPN.com slash.
Tim. You'll get four extra months for free when you use that link, so be sure to check it out. That's expressVPN E-X-P-R-E-S-S-VPN.com slash Tim for an extra four months for free.
I don't know about you guys, but I have seen a lot of crazy stuff in the last few weeks. I saw an AI generated
Video looks like a video of an otter on a flight.
Tapping away on a keyboard.
having a stewardess ask him if he would like a drink and it goes on from there. And this was generated
with AI and it looks
Photorealistic, basically. I mean it would have cost
Hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to do in the past.
Taken forever and now it's
Boom, snap of the fingers. It's crazy. So AI is changing everything. We know that it is also changing the way startups and small businesses operate. Things are going to get crazier, the rate of change is only gonna get faster.
And while a lot of good is gonna come of that, it also means security and compliance headaches for one thing. And that is where today's sponsor, Vanta, comes in. I'd already heard a lot about them before they ever became a sponsor. Just like 10,000 plus other companies that rely on Vanta.
My friends at Duolingo, shout out Duolingo and Ramp, shout out Ramp, one of this podcast sponsors and an ultra fast growing company, use Vanta to handle security compliance. Why would they do that? Well, Vanta automates compliance for frameworks like SOC2.
ISO 27001 and HIPAA, making it simple and fast to get enterprise grade compliant. But what does that mean?
It adds up to impressive results. Companies can save up to 85% of costs, get compliant in weeks instead of months, and complete security questionnaires up to five times faster. So check it out. Fanta.com slash Tim.
That's V-A-N-T-A, like Santa with a V, Vanta.com slash Tim to see how Vanta can help you level up your security program. My listeners, that's you can get$1,000 off.
So check it out.
Fanta.com slash
Tim.