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Tim Ferriss: Let me hit record. There we go. All right. Cheers, Kevin.
Kevin Rose: Cheers. Clink, clink.
Tim Ferriss: Good to see you. Clink, clink. So where are we and what are we drinking?
Kevin Rose: Are you supposed to say welcome to the show and shit? You’re already hammered.
Tim Ferriss: I’m not already hammered. I just feel like in my current state of mind and affairs of skipping the preamble, skipping all the foreplay, going straight in. If my audience has been with me for 700 of these, I’m like, you know, these guys are probably pretty limbered up by now.
Kevin Rose: Limbered?
Tim Ferriss: Limbered up. Love it.
Welcome to The Tim Ferriss Show everybody. This is a special edition, Random Show. It’s been a few months, at least.
Kevin Rose: I know.
Tim Ferriss: It’s good to see you.
Kevin Rose: We’re actually next to each other.
Tim Ferriss: I know.
Kevin Rose: If you’re watching the video, we are sitting next to each other on my floor, which is crazy.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. This is old school. I like it. In front of a recording couch.
Kevin Rose: Does my audio sound weird to you? Listen to this. Tell me if it sounds weird to you. Test 1, 2, 3. Hello. Hello. How’s it going? Does that sound weird? Watch. See?
Tim Ferriss: Talk, talk, talk.
Kevin Rose: Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. You sound good, right?
Tim Ferriss: Doesn’t sound weird. You don’t don’t sound weird.
Kevin Rose: Okay. Sweet.
Tim Ferriss: Actually. Yeah. You know when I get close, you’re pretty close, if I talk right now, yeah. I’m getting a huge gain blowback on my voice, but not yours.
Kevin Rose: Oh, interesting. So maybe it’s just a headphones thing.
Tim Ferriss: Sorry people. We’re going to leave all that in. That’s actually pretty funny. People will be like, what the fuck are these guys doing? I’m investing in tequila, folks. Not in editing. I’m just kidding, half.
Kevin Rose: All right. So we actually, in my new apartment in Los Angeles was we’re sitting on the floor in front of a little table here. I’m in L.A. now, I moved.
Tim Ferriss: Why did you move to L.A.?
Kevin Rose: So lot of things going on —
Tim Ferriss: Because since COVID everybody from L.A. has moved to Austin.
Kevin Rose: Is that true?
Tim Ferriss: I mean, a lot of people have moved.
Kevin Rose: I know a lot of people have moved to Austin.
It was one of those things where — I was in Portland, Oregon for a few years. Loved it. Beautiful, beautiful place. Rains a lot, not a lot of friends. And so it was hard because we’re in the middle of nowhere and it’s actually just kind of depressing, rain and no friends with COVID combined.
Tim Ferriss: Now when you moved there, I have to say, I was like, who does Kevin know in that area?
Kevin Rose: I knew a couple people and one of them moved and I had a couple other friends and then one of them had a baby and with COVID and everything you don’t get around the new baby and all that stuff. So it was tough. But my family lives out there. My mom’s out there. My sister’s still out there. And we just decided, hey, let’s get away from them. No, I’m just kidding!
Honestly, with all the NFT stuff going on, and the majority of my calls were either L.A. or New York that I was having work wise, and so why not get down to where everything is happening? We weren’t going to go to New York because it’s just wintertime, New York.
Tim Ferriss: You’ve already done New York also.
Kevin Rose: And I have two kids and it’s like New York’s harder with kids, but, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So why is New York harder with kids?
Kevin Rose: I mean when the snow is like super deep and —
Tim Ferriss: The winters.
Kevin Rose: The winters and there’s also traffic. I remember when I was out in New York and I was watching —
Tim Ferriss: I’m just laughing because I just spent three hours in traffic driving from San Diego to Los Angeles. It’s fucking terrible.
Kevin Rose: There’s a difference between L.A. stop-and-go freeway traffic and you’re watching these kids, and I saw this happen where they make them all hold hands when they’re crossing the street of course. And then a taxi comes flying around at a million miles an hour and almost wipes out a — I just kind of freak out. When we have the dad hat on with the kids, I’m like, I don’t want to have to worry about that stuff. I see.
And I know there’s more neighborhoody stuff and there’s areas of New York where we definitely could have made it work, but I don’t know. West Coast still, my mom, she’s up there. She’s in her eighties. She’s undergoing cancer treatments. I want to be on this coast. I can bounce up in a second if I need to. So made sense.
Tim Ferriss: That makes sense.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: All right. So sitting on the floor with a beverage in hand.
Kevin Rose: What are you drinking?
Tim Ferriss: That’s a great question because this is something of yours. I’m keeping it simple and having some tequila. Missing a little bit of Texas, Los Dos 100 percent agave Blanco.
I wanted something that would maybe be less likely to donkey punch me in the head hangover wise and so I chose this as much for the Blanco as for the bottle itself, I mean the actual ceramic container is gorgeous.
Kevin Rose: This is one of our favorite tequilas. I’ve got to say a big thank you to Anish who introduced me to this tequila, bought me a bottle of this as I think birthday gift or something. It just blew my mind. So really good. Not crazy expensive, like middle-of-the-road kind of world, but just awesome tequila.
Tim Ferriss: I have no idea just for the bottle alone I’m imagining this cost a fair amount to make, which is just true for a lot of the premium alcohols, you’re paying 20 percent of the price or 30 percent of the price for the glass or the crystal or whatever you’re actually not keeping, most likely.
So what are you drinking?
Kevin Rose: I am having a little bit of champagne just because my wife bought a bottle and we opened it. I am drinking a really douchey champagne. It’s not douchey but it’s like — can I just say that on your podcast?
Tim Ferriss: You can say whatever you want.
Kevin Rose: Okay. So this is the funny thing. Darya came back from the champagne store, the grocery store, and she was like, “I saved $300” and I’m like, “Cool, what’d you get?” We don’t ever drink this champagne but there was apparently a sale on something called Ace of Spades, which is Jay-Z champagne. It’s actually quite good. It’s actually quite good.
Tim Ferriss: I was just laughing because as soon as you mentioned that before we were recording and I was like, and you also have a red wine with Snoop Dogg’s face on it that’s in your sink. I’m like, Tupac grass fed butter? What’s next? What’s coming?
Kevin Rose: Not too far away from us is a grocery store that basically has Snoop Dogg’s wine. And it’s kind of like a table wine and Darya needs it for cooking. So she bought Snoop Dogg. It was, I think, a $10 bottle of wine.
Tim Ferriss: Don’t judge the cost of Snoop Dogg’s table wine. I just thought there was going to be more to that pattern.
Kevin Rose: That’s it, basically.
Tim Ferriss: And how is it?
Kevin Rose: It’s quite good. Very dry. Fantastic. So cheers.
Tim Ferriss: Cheers! Good to see you, man. Yeah. It’s been a long time since we’ve done one of these in person.
Kevin Rose: I know. It reminds me of the old school episodes that we used to do these all the time in San Francisco. And even with the glass background, it makes me think of one of your places in San Francisco.
Tim Ferriss: Totally.
Kevin Rose: Where all those people showed up angry, though.
Tim Ferriss: The protesters.
Kevin Rose: The protestors. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: That place, that particular place.
Kevin Rose: Have you been protested yet?
Tim Ferriss: I have not been protested yet.
Kevin Rose: It’s interesting. I think that’s going to happen actually with your thing you’re working on.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, God, I’m not sure. People’s imaginations really go wild with what horrible thing I’m concocting, but have not been protested. I’ll take the counterpoint. And this is, I don’t want to give him credit because I don’t know if he would want it, but a friend of mine who has this theory and I tend to agree with it, that people are going to be 10 percent less famous every year if they’re already a public figure, if they’re not in rapid ascension, if they’re not exploding and even if we go over a longer timeframe, it’s one thing to be popular in TikTok for a month.
Kevin Rose: You’re on TikTok, right?
Tim Ferriss: I’m not. It’s quite a different thing to be popular for 10 years on 20 years. And I just think that is going to become harder and harder to do because they’ll be more of a pool of people that’ll be — I mean the internet is —
Kevin Rose: Just the young kids coming up on you.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And I’m okay with it. I’m tired.
Kevin Rose: Are you done?
Tim Ferriss: I think I’m like that NHL player where they’re like, “Oh, wow. Yeah, given how many injuries he’s had, he’s doing pretty well out there limping along on the ice. Yeah. God bless him. He’s giving it a good college try.”
Kevin Rose: Have another sip of your tequila, because I have a serious question to ask you here. Tell me — that was a really intense sip on the microphone.
Tim Ferriss: That’s why I don’t wear a headset. I don’t have to worry about it.
Kevin Rose: It was very intense.
Kevin Rose: Okay. So you don’t want to go for Rogan. You don’t want to take him out? You could go for it.
Tim Ferriss: No. He’s won.
Kevin Rose: He’s won?
Tim Ferriss: Oh, for sure he’s won. Yeah, no, doesn’t even enter my mind, honestly.
Kevin Rose: Really?
Tim Ferriss: Does not even enter my mind.
Kevin Rose: You’d have to have a live studio and shit because a lot of it has to do with that live presence.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, for sure. I mean, he is a television professional. I mean, he’s a very good interviewer. He is very good commentator. He’s very comfortable in front of a camera and is an excellent storyteller. He’s, he’s got to be five to 10 times bigger than his runner up in terms of size for interview-format podcast.
Kevin Rose: You got to be up there with him.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, I mean I’m up there, but you have to understand that the there’s there’s Rogan and then there’s like, if it were the Tour de France, there’d be like one guy 10 miles ahead, and then there’d be a pack of —
Kevin Rose: He’s like the guy on roids.
Tim Ferriss: Then there’d be four guys —
Kevin Rose: No, I don’t mean he’s on roids, I mean in terms of how far ahead he is.
Tim Ferriss: Yes. I mean, it’s as if you then have a cohort of folks, there are four or five, maybe, who are spread out over 200 yards. And so there is maybe a popularity sequence to it, but they’re 10 miles behind the person in first place. So I don’t think about competing at all in that sense.
Kevin Rose: The other thing though, too, is I feel like his content, he’s really good at getting the spicy shit on, right? He’ll have the spicy guest on. He knows how to push the buttons and I feel like you have not — I mean you have fantastic intellectual conversations, but I don’t know that you push the agenda of normal celebrity for the sake of no stirring up the pot a bit.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, no, I don’t have the endurance for it. And he really enjoys so many different formats. He is Joe Rogan, meaning Joe Rogan is the best version of Joe Rogan. And I think anyone who looks at what Joe does and says, “I’m going to do that and I’m going to do that better. And I’m going to be bigger,” is foolish. I think that’s a terrible idea.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, no shit.
Tim Ferriss: And Joe has tremendous endurance, I think, in part because he has chosen formats and ways of communicating and ways of presenting visually that it seems he really enjoys. So if somebody tries to force fit themselves into that game. They’re going to lose.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. You both had Zuckerberg on the show. You maybe three months before him, four months, something like that. Behind the scenes, how much prepping do they give you of “Don’t ask Mark this,” what’s that like?
Tim Ferriss: They, meaning his team, were extremely easy to deal with, for me.
Kevin Rose: And did they say “This question is off limits? Don’t ask Mark about this.”
Tim Ferriss: No, they didn’t. I gave them, as I give every guest, final cut. So there wasn’t a lot of talk about prohibited topics or anything like that.
Kevin Rose: Did you go easy on him?
Tim Ferriss: I wouldn’t say I went easy. There’s something that people should know if they don’t already about the show and deliberate decisions that I make so that I enjoy the format in the same way that I think Joe does it with him as his format and anyone who has, I think tremendous in podcast years, longevity, which would be at least five or 10 finds the format that they’re best at.
It’s just different shaped athletes in different sports. And in the case of my podcast, I made the decision really early on that I don’t want to have a gotcha show. There are many other people who are going to do that better than I will because they enjoy it. I don’t. For example, as much as I respect MIke Wallace, I don’t need to be Mike Wallace. Mike Wallace already won the Mike Wallace game. If you have not heard that name, you should actually look him up because he was a very skilled interviewer. There’s a documentary about him that is fantastic and has chilling footage of him and the entire story behind interviewing Ayatollah Khomeini. In any case, it’s not Hardball, it’s not any of these formats. And in part that — this is going to sound so cheesy and Hallmark card, but I hated going into interviews myself because you’ve been interviewed a ton. I’ve been interviewed hundreds or thousands of times at this point.
And when you go in and someone just cuts an angle and is out to get some type of headline that they’re going to cherry pick from a longer statement you make and twist it out of context, I just didn’t want anything to do with that. I wanted my show to be the show — not because it’s easy necessarily, but because it’s well researched and thoughtful and not out to be aggressive for the sake of being aggressive. For all of those reasons and more, there were certain topics that I didn’t bring up. And in part that is because if it is a topic, let’s just say I were to ask Zuckerberg something like, what is your stance on A, B, and C or how do you personally think about Russia, Ukraine, this, that, and the other thing, when that is a clear and present high priority area focus within Meta/Facebook itself, he’s not going to have any maneuvering ability.
I mean, he’s going to feel, as he should, compelled to give whatever response they have jointly determined to be the right response. And so for me to throw that out, it’s a waste of everyone’s time and oxygen because number one, we’re not going to get, and I wouldn’t expect nor would I even recommend that he give something new in — and my podcast isn’t live again for many reasons, but I think I know which trees are worth barking up and which are not. I think I’m very good at picking those shots. And if people want, let’s just say, a politically oriented show or a controversy focused show or true crime or something, there are tens of thousands of podcasts, brand new ones that come out every week. You can find something you enjoy. For me, I wanted a lot of that interview, say, with Mark, which I was quite happy with, will remain evergreen for a very long time.
So talking about how he structures his life, thinks about priorities, how he integrates belief systems like religion into his family, I mean, these are all questions that may not be the topic of the week, but that nonetheless, I think will preserve value, maybe even appreciate and value over time as more and more people chase, whatever happens to be trending that instant on TikTok or whatever the platform is.
Kevin Rose: That’s a great point.
Tim Ferriss: TikTok, or whatever the platform is. Remember Vine? I mean, risky business betting on one platform.
Kevin Rose: When I interviewed Elon probably 10 years or so ago, I did the same type of approach where it was very let’s get into who you are as a person versus the topic of the day. And if you go back and watch an interview today, there’s still some great evergreen pieces of content that are lessons from just his childhood, growing up, lessons that he learned along the way, the idea of taking things back to first principles, all that stuff was pretty new when he talked about it back then. And I’m still really proud of that interview, that it still gets a lot of views and people — I should turn ads on that shit. I don’t have ads on that. It could be a little cash on the side.
Tim Ferriss: I was going to say, I saw the holes in your socks.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Just breaking down.
Tim Ferriss: All the hand-me-downs that you’re wearing.
Kevin Rose: That’s right.
Tim Ferriss: Times are tough in the Rose house.
Kevin Rose: So tough.
Tim Ferriss: What do you think I should do with the podcast?
Kevin Rose: Honestly?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Because I love you. I want you to move to Los Angeles and have a live show because I think a live show would be — because here’s the question. I guess what I was trying to hint at with the Joe Rogan piece is that I believe when I watch Zuck on his show and I watch a lot of people, Aaron Rogers and a few people that I’ve watched recently, the reason why he can get them to share intimate details is because of that. I mean, Aaron Rogers is sitting there smoking a cigar on his set, right? And they’re just kind of chilling out, having fun. It’s the Elon moment with the weed cigarette, all that shit. But that magic can’t happen remote.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s a lot harder.
Kevin Rose: It’s a lot harder. So I don’t know. If you’re going to go for it, I’d love for you to move to L.A. dude, but that’s just me personally because I want to have you more my orbit and hanging out more often.
Tim Ferriss: I’ve thought about doing a limited edition live series. I was actually looking at it right before COVID hit.
Kevin Rose: Well, you did that series, that television show.
Tim Ferriss: And I enjoyed that and I would do it again, and there is a magic, a connection, also an audiovisual component, if you want to show photographs or video, that is very hard, if not impossible to replicate live. I also just like having — I think having an audience is a lot of fun.
Kevin Rose: It’s the Oprah thing.
Tim Ferriss: I also just like having — I think having an audience is a lot of fun.
Kevin Rose: Well think about what Oprah did, right?
Tim Ferriss: Its like being an athlete and having to compete. It’s going from training to competing and since I don’t do live very often, I get a cheap thrill out of it. But what were you saying about Oprah?
Kevin Rose: Well, I was just saying that she was able to break down, I mean, a lot of the intimate stuff that came out was because they were sitting across from each other, right? You felt like you were just with her during that moment. Why don’t you do six months out of the year out here? A little studio, a little series, it could be cool.
Tim Ferriss: Maybe one month.
Kevin Rose: No, but that tax shit, that’s going suck about it.
Tim Ferriss: Can I just say, I think it’s so funny to talk to all the people moving to Austin, or I shouldn’t say all the people, I don’t talk to all the people, but when I talk to people and you’re in some mixed company and they’re all these tax refugees from California and you’re like, “So guys, yeah, how’d you decide on Austin?” They’re like, “Oh, man, well the barbecue and the flowers, and I really like armadillos and oh, I just thought, well, I really need to invest in a customized AI-driven, tech-enabled cowboy boot business, that’s what I thought. And I asked myself, where’s the best such business? Oh, it’s in Austin.”
So blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they dance around the taxes —
Kevin Rose: They won’t say it.
Tim Ferriss: They won’t say it. They won’t say it. So one of my stupid kind of old Muppet up in the balcony, “You’re not funny,” yelling at the other, kinder Muppets, is I’ll see how long I can push until they say it’s for the taxes. Just I’ll see just how many contortionist Cirque du Soleil acts that you can —
Kevin Rose: Watch them kind of sweat.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. They’re going to go through before they’re finally. “Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, whatever, my company was going public six months later and I just thought it’d be a good idea.”
Kevin Rose: I at least know a dozen people that have moved to Texas just for the taxes.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, for sure. I moved in 2017 and I wanted to move there right after college. But the fact of the matter is I moved to Austin because I wanted to leave a scene, also. I mean, there are tons of reasons.
Kevin Rose: I remember you were in SF, right? I mean you were kind of getting burnt out on that shit.
Tim Ferriss: I was done for a couple years before I left. Then I got there and then COVID happened. And what I thought was going to take five to eight years happened in 18 months and now Austin is a scene and it’s like, “Fuck.”
Kevin Rose: Well, because I remember one time I talked to you and I don’t know if you want to keep this in or not, but there’s one time where you’re like, you moved to Austin kind of hoping to get away from that shit.
And then you’re going to coffee shops and people are like, “Dude,” and recognizing you and just being like, you’re like, “Fuck, I just wanted to find some peace.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, and you know, It’s the tech stuff because if somebody listens to the podcast and they say hi, honestly there are days when I need it. It feels good. But I’ll paint a picture. This actually happened to me, something very similar to this. If, however, I spot a guy in a man bun who has more tattoos than a Brazilian MMA fighter who’s been to prison and has an ayahuasca t-shirt on and is wearing a Bitcoin bracelet and comes over to me and he is like, “Yo, bro. Yeah. Well, I used to listen to your stuff, but I’m more of a Lex Fridman fan,” I’m like, “What is this?”
Kevin Rose: More a what?
Tim Ferriss: Lex Fridman, who’s actually a great podcaster. But somebody says this to me. And I’m like, what is this interaction about? This is such a bizarre interaction. That like archetype, which is at the nexus of a bunch of circles, including something called “conspirituality.” Whoever came up with that, high five, one of the best words ever. But this conspirituality that seems to have taken as its HQ, Austin.
Kevin Rose: You started this shit.
Tim Ferriss: It drives me coo-coo bananas. I did not start the conspirituality.
Kevin Rose: No, but you were one of the first people I heard talking about ayahuasca and shit.
Tim Ferriss: Well, yeah. That’s true. As soon as something is popular enough that people are doing it because it’s popular, then I’m like, I want to just exit stage left.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I saw this piece in the New York Post about socialites using ayahuasca to do God knows what. And it’s just the same status bullshit, the cars, the goodies that you show to your friends, all the status stuff that drives me completely nuts. And look, I’m sure I play some of those games myself because we’re human and we all play some of those games.
Kevin Rose: I don’t know that you do. I know you pretty well, and I’ve never seen you drive a crazy car.
Tim Ferriss: No.
Kevin Rose: You always have shitty cars.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah, I do.
Kevin Rose: It’s true.
Tim Ferriss: It’s true. It’s true. And yeah, in that way, I don’t play any of those games, or I try not to.
Kevin Rose: And your houses have always been very reasonable.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah, they’re modest.
Kevin Rose: You know. You have a private jet, but that’s —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, aside from my fleet of Gulfstreams —
Kevin Rose: Gulfstreams. Yeah, exactly.
Tim Ferriss: — I’m very reasonable. So as soon as, especially with the psychedelic stuff — God, it makes me so sad on some level that the fucking monkeys can’t help but soil their own home over and over again, it’s just like, oh, guys, come on. This one thing, can we not turn this into a Kicking It with the Kardashians, keeping up with whoever the hell is your next door neighbor? Because instead of this sideways glance, making sure that someone has noticed your hot new Bugatti, now it’s like, “Oh, well you had a good shaman experience. Let me tell you about my shaman.” And it’s like, oh —
Kevin Rose: Ah, Jesus.
Tim Ferriss: — it’s the same jerking off. It’s the same stupid game. And —
Kevin Rose: I still have never done the actual ayahuasca. I’ve got to do that one time with you. I’d love to.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, we can talk about it. We can talk about it. I —
Kevin Rose: I know you’d give me the authentic shit. I don’t want that bullshit. If I’m going to do it, let’s go in.
Tim Ferriss: I’m just going to be like, “Hold on, let me hop on Craigslist and find somebody good. Give me a second. Casual Encounters, does that make sense? I don’t know how they’re advertising these days.” I will say, just as a quick note, with ayahuasca specifically, I talk so many more people out of using, well this is broadly speaking, out of using psychedelics than I have ever talked into using psychedelics.
I think that’s something that a lot of folks listening may not realize, that I mostly disqualify or discourage people from doing ayahuasca or any psychedelic. It just depends a lot on the specifics for me because these things are so strong, and they can be —
Kevin Rose: Destabilizing, right?
Tim Ferriss: — incredibly destabilizing.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I’ve been there.
Tim Ferriss: And —
Kevin Rose: After I did that high-dose mushrooms, very amazing experience, and definitely therapy, like a shit ton, they tell you all compressed in this little thing. But for two or three days after I was just kind of like, ooh, the emotions were all over the place.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: It’s not just smooth sailing from the second you get done.
Tim Ferriss: No, no.
Kevin Rose: The chemicals have got to rebalance and shit.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, and you’re increasing plasticity. So if you take, you just imagine that you have this huge, let’s just say, maybe not huge, like volleyball-ball-sized ball of Play-Doh, and you have to heat it to be able to shape it. And that’s your brain. And then you heat it, and depending on all the inputs and stimuli, positive and negative, that enter your life or that you allow to enter your life over the subsequent handful of days or even weeks, will shape how that dries. And it’s not automatically for the better.
So long way of saying, definitely do your homework. This stuff has become so popular. And I’m excited about the therapeutic potential. I’m excited about the potential for examining in ways that have been effectively impossible before, for a lot of technological reasons. We will begin to ask and answer questions about the mind and consciousness itself that we have not even been able to scratch the surface of, even 20 years ago.
I think psychiatry is going to fundamentally change in a lot of really core ways. Fundamental core, kind of redundant, but you get the idea, that some of the tectonic plates under which psychiatry rests currently are going to shift very dramatically. And I’m excited about that.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Sounds great. Speaking of which, we haven’t even made any of our topics that we’re going to talk about today.
Tim Ferriss: Well, let me ask you before we move on.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Well it was going to be in line with that, but yeah —
Tim Ferriss: We’ll get there. We’ll get there. Now that you gave me one quarter of a drink.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I love it.
Tim Ferriss: I’m on a roll. I may or may not have had some other chocolates.
Kevin Rose: Oh, that’s right. Little chocolate before we got started. I did not have that.
Tim Ferriss: But in any case —
Kevin Rose: Ayahuasca chocolate.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, God.
Kevin Rose: Just kidding.
Tim Ferriss: That would be the most — that would be like cat shit sandwich, it the flavor that comes to mind. All right, why would you want to do ayahuasca? What would the pull be, potentially?
Kevin Rose: Well, for me, I have had a few experiences on psychedelics that — every drug that you take is a little bit different. Right? You have a different door open. Like, high-dose weed is going to feel very different than high-dose mushrooms. It’s going to feel very different than microdosed acid, which I’m just talking about the things that I’ve tried. So I imagine there’s another door to open there.
Tim Ferriss: Bufo and ketamine. Different door?
Kevin Rose: Ketamine, very different. I’ve done ketamine before in a therapeutic setting. And it was actually the most pleasant, chill thing I’ve ever done. Like this is just chill.
Tim Ferriss: Watch out for the long-term brain damage if you guys ever do it. We’ll get into that in another episode.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, so this is just another, for me, I’m trying to figure out. And this is onto my first point about my seven-day retreat that I’m going to do.
Tim Ferriss: That was a good head fake. Did you answer my question?
Kevin Rose: No, no, no. What I’m saying is that I want to open as many doors as possible during this lifetime. Why not?
Tim Ferriss: Ah, yeah. Okay. All right. Hey.
Kevin Rose: It’s not to say I’m going to go and stick to one door and be down that path for the next six months. But why not just try it? We’re going to be dead in 40 years.
Tim Ferriss: It’s true. Despite all the people skipping lunch and dinner in hopes of —
Kevin Rose: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: — eking out an extra three years. So you were going to segue, opening doors, and —
Kevin Rose: Yeah. The problem, Tim, I have with a lot of these compounds is that I feel like they’re very prescriptive, and I worry that, you get these changes, don’t get me wrong. And granted, I don’t have as much data as you do on this front. But for me, I felt this nice relief for like a month. And then it kind of creeps back in to the normal steady state of the things. Right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: And so the plasticity, I wonder, is it something that you have to do multiple times? And how many times? And then on the worst case of this, you hear about these people that they just don’t ever come back, and they’re lifelong journeyers, that they are these psychonauts that — and you’re like, are you killing more brain cells? Are you really reworking the plastic there or you just kind of like —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, or you took that Play-Doh and just threw it down on a sand dune.
Kevin Rose: Exactly. So for me, we mentioned this many times on the show, is I love the meditation side of things. I think of it as trying to reach the same peak, but in a more steady state, every day microdose way, that eventually over a decade or longer of practice, you’ll eventually get to some amazing state of consciousness. I’m obviously not there yet, but I’m doing my first seven-day silent retreat at Mountain Cloud Zen Center, which I’m very excited about.
Tim Ferriss: Henry’s place?
Kevin Rose: Henry’s place, yeah. Henry Shukman, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Nice.
Kevin Rose: Fantastic teacher.
Tim Ferriss: So why do this retreat? What are you hoping to gain from it?
Kevin Rose: Well, if you read a lot of the Zen books that are out there, a lot of the, whether it be The Three Pillars of Zen, or Zen: The Authentic Gate, a lot of the big unlocks that happen with meditation are not just through 50 minutes a day, which Zen is typically 25 minutes of seated meditation, five minutes of walking, and then another 25 minutes of seated. It actually happens at these sessions, so these proper retreats, where you’re doing days meditating and you really go deep. It allows your mind to really calm. And you’ve done this. You’ve been there.
Tim Ferriss: Yep.
Kevin Rose: So I just want to go. I want to see what’s there. In this spirit of unlocking these other doors and trying new things, Hell, yeah, let’s go.
Tim Ferriss: Let’s go.
Kevin Rose: You know?
Tim Ferriss: LFG, Zen. All right. Are you concerned at all? Do you have any worries? How are your knees going to be? You’re going to be sitting a lot.
Kevin Rose: I’m going to be bringing my seated — I actually have a — I use a Japanese-style seated bench for meditation versus the folded legs.
Tim Ferriss: Kind of like a sybian. It’s got a little adapter on it.
Kevin Rose: Like a bidet.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Exactly. So I’m going to go and do that.
Tim Ferriss: Hitachi magic wand. Keeps the hips loose.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. I don’t even know what you’re saying, but sounds great. I’m used to sitting for an hour a day like that. So that’s not a —
Tim Ferriss: No, but you’re going to be going from an hour to how many hours a day?
Kevin Rose: I know. I’m fine. It’s going to be like eight, or eight or nine.
Tim Ferriss: Once you lose feeling in your legs, you’re fine.
Kevin Rose: I’m fine. I’m really, like I’m all in.
Tim Ferriss: Just roll back to your room?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I’m all in. I just want to do this.
Tim Ferriss: Good for you.
Kevin Rose: I’m very excited.
Tim Ferriss: Good for you, man.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I do like Henry.
Kevin Rose: Henry’s amazing. For those of you that don’t know, just a plug for Henry via Sam, Henry has a lot of his courses on the Waking Up app from Sam Harris. So you can check his stuff out there. Fantastic Zen teacher. Just a good human, you know?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Great guy. Very well spoken.
Kevin Rose: You had him on the podcast twice, I think.
Tim Ferriss: He’s been on twice. So for people who want a taste test of Dr. Shukman, you can —
Kevin Rose: Your second interview with him around the koans was just brilliant, dude.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, so good.
Kevin Rose: It was fun.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah, because that was part of the intention for the first episode, as you know.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And then we got hooked on all these other topics and didn’t come back to it. And I was like, all right, we need to do round two.
Kevin Rose: They’re so cool. Yeah. I love it.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So anything you’ve enjoyed watching recently?
Kevin Rose: Yes. I was going to get into some of the, I figure we could do, because it’s been a while since we’ve hung out. And I’m sure with COVID and everything else, we’ve hit some good movies.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: I was going to give you my favorite points —
Tim Ferriss: Five-point search terms?
Kevin Rose: Five-bullet movie list, because I know you love five bullets. I actually have five bullets right here.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, look at that, you do.
Kevin Rose: Little bullets.
Tim Ferriss: All right.
Kevin Rose: You love those bullets.
Tim Ferriss: I do.
Kevin Rose: How about my five-bullet movie list, and you tell me yes or no, whether you like these? Whether you’ve seen them?
Tim Ferriss: Oh, great, yeah.
Kevin Rose: And then you do the same for me. You got five?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t. I do not have five. I have one.
Kevin Rose: All right.
Tim Ferriss: But —
Kevin Rose: Good job.
Tim Ferriss: But it has six episodes. So technically, I think I have six and you have five.
Kevin Rose: Okay, sweet. Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Six-bullet Friday. All right, so the new Top Gun?
Kevin Rose: Fucking great.
Tim Ferriss: Fantastic.
Kevin Rose: Can you believe that he did all that flying himself?
Tim Ferriss: It’s unbelievable. The fact that he is still doing so many of his own stunts, is —
Kevin Rose: It’s insane.
Tim Ferriss: — incredible. And it’s —
Kevin Rose: It makes you want to pick up Scientology.
Tim Ferriss: You’re in the right place.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. It’s true.
Tim Ferriss: The real reason that Kevin moved to L.A. That is not the case. I thought Maverick was fantastic.
Kevin Rose: So good.
Tim Ferriss: Saw it in IMAX. I hadn’t seen anything on IMAX in a long time. And I was like, all right look, if we’re going to do it, let’s actually do it.
Kevin Rose: I really went into it being like, “Oh, Jesus, I hope they don’t ruin this. Another Top Gun? Is this going to be cheesy?” And I walked away being like, “Damn, that was good.” It was really good.
Tim Ferriss: It was fantastic. And there have been also a lot of filmmakers who have enjoyed it. Not that that’s my indicator. I just thought it’d be fun to go see an old school, all the tropes, use all the cliches because they work.
Kevin Rose: Oh, the music! Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: So good.
Tim Ferriss: You know exactly what you’re signing up for. And having something that reliable and uplifting is really reassuring in a world of increasingly chaotic uncertainty, it’s like, yeah, you know when you go to see fucking Maverick, it’s not going to end with an orphan kid dying.
Kevin Rose: Right.
Tim Ferriss: You know that’s not the ending.
Kevin Rose: All right, so the next movie, The Price of Everything. Have you seen that?
Tim Ferriss: The Price of Everything. Is this an art doc?
Kevin Rose: Yes. Yes.
Tim Ferriss: I saw it a long time — yeah, I saw it quite a few years ago. Yeah, I really, really enjoyed it.
Kevin Rose: Okay, cool.
Tim Ferriss: So why don’t you, you’ve seen it much more recently though.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, it basically just gives you, if you’re ever curious, behind the scenes of the contemporary art world, what goes on at auction, how these artists make their art. They actually, which is crazy, they actually hire people to do the art for them.
Tim Ferriss: Some of them do, yeah.
Kevin Rose: Some of them do. It’s just a crazy, behind-the-scenes view of the art world. And for someone that’s into NFTs, it was just like, I learned a lot. So highly recommended.
Tim Ferriss: It is a wild romp through contemporary art. And if you’re in the camp of, let’s just say, advocate, you really enjoy contemporary art, you’ll get a lot out of it. And also if you think that much of contemporary art is complete horse shit, you will also get a lot out of it, because neither camp is going to be disappointed.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Hey love, can I have a little sippers of something you find? Thank you. Not a beer, just any wine or anything. Thank you.
So The Price of Everything. The next one, Elvis.
Tim Ferriss: I have not.
Kevin Rose: The new Elvis film.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, look at that. There we go. Bam.
Tim Ferriss: Thank you.
Kevin Rose: Look at that bling.
Kevin Rose: So the new Elvis film. So here’s the deal, I didn’t give — I don’t care about Elvis. Who cares about Elvis, right? I didn’t think — no, seriously. I was like, Elvis, old people, blah, blah, blah. You watch Elvis, this new movie —
Tim Ferriss: So why did you go to it?
Kevin Rose: Tony Conrad actually told me it was fantastic.
Tim Ferriss: All right.
Kevin Rose: And so I put it on and I was blown away.
Tim Ferriss: Huh.
Kevin Rose: Because Elvis was a misfit. He grew up in a Black neighborhood. That’s how he got a lot of that soul vibe that came through in his music. And then also, he was thrown in jail because of the way he moved his hips and shit. Like these were the times back then, right?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: And so he got on stage and just make his finger move and stuff to get the crowd going and shit, because he couldn’t move his hips, otherwise, he’d be thrown in jail. It’s a brilliant story. Then it shows how he got hooked on drugs. And whenever I thought of Elvis, I thought of this Vegas singer, overweight, passed away. I don’t know much about — I learned a lot. And he reminds me of just any other icon. I can see why he’s so massive. It was like a history lesson in a movie. So highly recommend it.
Tim Ferriss: Cool. Yeah, I’ll check it out.
Kevin Rose: You should.
Tim Ferriss: It looked like this cinematography was beautiful, just based on the preview.
Kevin Rose: Fantastic. Yeah, I was not expecting to love an Elvis movie. That is not me, right? But I walked away being like, he was a badass, a lot cooler than I thought.
Tim Ferriss: Cool. I’ll check it out.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Next one, Everything Everywhere All At Once. So good.
Tim Ferriss: It was great. And I’ll give you a bit of trivia, maybe if you have not heard this already. I was watching it, and Michelle Yeoh’s husband, from within 30 seconds, I was like, I know that guy.
Kevin Rose: Goonies.
Tim Ferriss: Yes, exactly. I was like, Data from The Goonies, within 30 seconds. I’m just so glad that guy —
Kevin Rose: Got work again?
Tim Ferriss: — is still around. Yeah, he could’ve ended up in a million different places. And the fact that he’s in, I’m sure he’s —
Kevin Rose: He looks good, too.
Tim Ferriss: — been in maybe many, many, many other films. But to end up in this, as such a, I don’t want to say sleeper hit, but unexpected, I would imagine, mega hit.
Kevin Rose: So I made Darya watch it, and she was just like, “What the hell am I watching?” It’s a weird ass film.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a super bizarre movie.
Kevin Rose: If you like really weird shit, and your jam is kind of funky, indie, odd, you walk away being like, “What the hell did I just watch?” But it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant at the end of the day.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah. I really enjoyed it.
Kevin Rose: The jumping for the dildo scene was just — do you remember that, when they were trying to race?
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yes, now I do. Yes. The fight scene?
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: It’s in the middle of a fight scene.
Kevin Rose: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: It’s ridiculous. Yeah, there’s a lot a to it. It’s a strange movie. So my last one on list of ones that I watched recently, that was four, here’s number five. Airplane, the original Airplane. Have you watched it recently?
Tim Ferriss: No. And it would never get made today, which is probably part of what makes it funny.
Kevin Rose: It’s cringe bad, really sexist. And there’s a whole lot of jokes in there that you look at and you’re like, “How the hell did they make this?” But it’s also, there’s so many iconic moments, and bits that when you watch it — I heard you spitting back in the glass there. It’s just fantastic to watch again.
Tim Ferriss: Airplane.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Oldie. All right. All right.
Kevin Rose: What’s your one movie that you have to recommend?
Tim Ferriss: Well, I’ll share an oldie. It’s not as old as Airplane. But if people have not seen, I recently re-watched it, Spirited Away by Studio Ghibli, which at the time was headed up by Miyazaki Hayao. My favorite movie of all time.
Kevin Rose: Really?
Tim Ferriss: It still is.
Kevin Rose: Why?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it just has —
Kevin Rose: I watch it and I’m like, this is good.
Tim Ferriss: It just has all the ingredients. I think I also watched it when I was 15 or 16.
Kevin Rose: So there’s a little nostalgia.
Tim Ferriss: It might have been a few years later, but the coming of age and hero’s journey of Chihiro, who then gets renamed Sen, and there’s a whole story and sequence behind that, the fact that she goes from so weak to so self-confident and strong, the way that is woven in to a fantasy backdrop, including so many of my favorite things. There’s Japanese bathhouse, a bunch of weird gods, a bunch of creepy like ghost-type phantasms like Kaonashi, or No Face is one of the characters. And I thought the animation and the backgrounds in everything, when you consider particularly that they’re hand-painted, was spectacular and is spectacular. So I’ve rewatched that. I’m also very interested now in world building. I’m doing a bunch of fiction writing right now.
Kevin Rose: Tell us more about that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, we’ll get into that.
Kevin Rose: Are you going to talk about that today or no?
Tim Ferriss: No, I’ll save it. I’ll save it. But I will say, I’m bouncing around a little bit. So, Spirited Away. And then recently I read a classic, I think it was published in 1968, initially, called A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, and it’s incredible. It’s such a beautifully crafted book. The language is really not flowery, but poetic sometimes in a very simplistic way. That is to say, even very basic senses she’ll make beautiful. And without A Wizard of Earthsea, Harry Potter doesn’t exist, or at least wizarding schools as we’ve come to think about them. There are so many components of fantasy worlds that we take for granted now that would not have existed were it for A Wizard of Earthsea.
And then prior to that, I also listened to, I know I’m jumping around a bit, The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time. So I had not read The Lord of the Rings, I had not read any J.R.R. Tolkien. And when you consume those two books, especially Tolkien stuff, you realize how many of the archetypes that we just assume have been around forever because they’re so ubiquitous, came out of this guy’s head.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. One question there. Did you see the new Amazon series?
Tim Ferriss: The new Amazon series. Oh, the —
Kevin Rose: The new Lord of the Rings.
Tim Ferriss: — I can’t remember the name of it. I’ve seen the trailer pop up because they’re promoting the hell out it.
Kevin Rose: Oh, they spent a billion dollars on the series. Something crazy.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I haven’t watched.
Kevin Rose: Jeff Bezos went nuts.
Tim Ferriss: I haven’t watched it, but I will.
Kevin Rose: Cool.
Tim Ferriss: And as far as my other item, my one item, I’ll mention it. I mentioned it to Darya earlier because I think it’s so spectacular. It’s a limited series or a six part, I want to say, animated series, although it combines 3D and 2D animation in a really innovative, spectacular way, is Arcane, which you heard me mention earlier as well. And Arcane is based on a game I have never played, but many people do: League of Legends, or it’s based on some characters from this game. And Riot Games — and there’s a separate behind-the-scenes series, which is the making of Arcane called Bridging the Rift, which I’m also watching. And they just threw everything at this. And the animation studio in France, Fortiche, that helped to create not just the visual components, there’s a lot to it. And the musical —
Kevin Rose: Is this streaming?
Tim Ferriss: — composition behind it — it is on Netflix.
Kevin Rose: Oh, cool.
Tim Ferriss: And every frame of this series could be a beautiful, large NFT or piece of artwork that you would put on a wall.
Kevin Rose: I love that.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, it is staggeringly detailed and gorgeous, so I’m just recommending to everybody. And they spent nine figures on it. I don’t know if it was 100 million, 200, or more. But the fact that they were willing to dedicate, after a lot of testing, it wasn’t haphazard, but willing to dedicate that type of resources to a six-part animated series, ah, man, it’s really gorgeous. And it also shows a contemporary example of world building. Even though there was world building, there is world building in League of Legends because I’ve learned more about the game even though I haven’t played it, when you’re creating six hours of content on a handful of characters, you have to flesh them out and create narrative arcs that intertwine in a way that you just don’t necessarily have to in a video game. So, highest recommendation.
Kevin Rose: Can I pick your brain a little bit here or just maybe get you to divulge a little bit here? You’ve mentioned now a couple times about doing a little bit of writing in this genre. You’re not doing a book —
Tim Ferriss: No.
Kevin Rose: — but you’re doing something — I mean, I think now’s the time to start teasing things out a little bit. Can you just tell us what is Tim working on these days? And you don’t have to go into a lot of detail, but can you give us a little bit of like, “I’m flushing out a — doing this or maybe pushing here.” Can you —
Tim Ferriss: Well, here’s what I’ll say. I’ll say that — and I’m not going to — hey, Toasty. I’m not going to divulge too much, but I will say that I’ve been experimenting with fiction for about a year and a half, two years.
Kevin Rose: Well, you did the NFT with us, which was great —
Tim Ferriss: So my first NFT experiment, thanks to your encouragement, was a short fiction piece called “[How] to Start a War.” And I really enjoyed the process of putting that together and specifically the writing process of playing with fiction. And in that particular case, it was very strongly based on real events. It’s fiction, but a lot of it was based on real people and real events, which makes it even spookier, if people want to check that out. And we did that through Grails, which was great. And I’m continuing to work those muscles after a lot of conversations with people like Steven Pressfield and others who have been very encouraging. I may have some stuff to show in the next few months.
Kevin Rose: Cool.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I’ll put it that way. But it has been a great excuse to read and watch a lot of fiction, sci-fi and fantasy primarily, and have learned so much. I’ve ended up going really deep. So, with Ursula K. Le Guin, for instance, who was a huge influence on Neil Gaiman, whose writing I’ve loved for a very long time, including books that I’ve recommended probably on previous random shows many years ago like The Graveyard Book, which is just fantastic. If people only read non-fiction and you want an easy gateway drug, try that out. The audio book by Neil Gaiman is fantastic.
In any case, so I’m working as I’m thinking about fiction through these influences and lineages, so I’m looking at Neil Gaiman, like all sorts of aspects of his process in writing. And then I hear him talking about Ursula K. Le Guin. Then I go on Twitter and ask people if I’m only going to read one of her books, which one should I read? Get a whole host of answers. Start with A Wizard of Earthsea. That leads me somewhere else. Then I watch a PBS documentary on her life, and then learn about A, B, and C. And just following the bread crumbs of my curiosity in that way has been a while.
Kevin Rose: So, Tim, I’ve seen you like this a handful of times. I’ve seen you write a handful of books now. We’ve been friends that long. And I see when you go down rabbit holes, I see this, and I can recognize it, and it means that you’re up to something big.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: It really does. And you look happy when you’re —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I’m having a good time.
Kevin Rose: — describing this. It looks like you’re having a good time.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I’m having a good time.
Kevin Rose: That makes me happy.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, thanks man.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’m excited. I feel like I am awakening muscles or creative processes that have been dormant for a long time.
Kevin Rose: It feels like this is — it’s potentially a new way for you to flex your creativity in a different — it sounds like something you’ve had a passion for for a very long time and now is the first time you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to go for it here.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, totally. And it brings back so many — and there’s a value here, right? It’s not just simple nostalgia there. It brings back so many emotional imprints that were powerful and positive when I was a kid. And especially given some of the darker stuff that I’ve talked about in my childhood, it’s easy for my psyche to weigh the negative more heavily, to weigh the dark stuff more heavily. But by, say, going then into some of these corners of the fiction world, it’s brought me back to —
For instance, right now I’m rereading The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, I mean, which was my favorite book as a kid. And I remember I used to get in trouble, I would pull pranks and stuff and get sent to detention, and detention in elementary school was in a few places. I always tried to dodge the nurse’s office because it’s so boring. I wanted to get sent to the library. And then I would go get sent to the library and I started reading The Neverending Story, and I fell so in love with it that I took it out of its spot and I hid it in a different corner of the library so that nobody else would take it out so I wouldn’t get interrupted. And then I would get into detention again and I would know exactly where it was hidden so I could go back and continue reading The Neverending Story.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience. Some people might have this experience if, for instance, they saw Aladdin as a kid and then they go and watch it as an adult and they’re like, “Oh, my god, Robin Williams had a lot of humor for adults, and I didn’t notice it as a kid.” Similarly, with a lot of these fiction books, like you read A Wizard of Earthsea, or you read The Neverending Story, there is a lot of deep philosophical discussion and a lot of insight and you might even say truth that is really applicable, maybe even more so to adults who can grok that piece to it. Don’t you love that when you reread something a little bit later and it just hits you in a completely different way?
Kevin Rose: Yeah, totally. It’s the best.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s a lot of fun. So, I’m lit up. Yeah, I feel good.
Kevin Rose: That’s awesome. Love to hear that. Sweet. I know we’re coming up on an hour here, but I’ve got a couple more quick little things that are fun.
Tim Ferriss: Coming up on an hour. How old are we? Jesus.
Kevin Rose: I know. It’s like it’s time to go to bed. It’s 9:45.
Tim Ferriss: It’s 9:45. Time to have my warm milk and go to bed.
Kevin Rose: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: Put on my overalls.
Kevin Rose: Could I have a little more champers, love? Thank you. Tim needs a little splash of something too.
Tim Ferriss: Carbonated water’s great for me.
Kevin Rose: So this is a fun one, actually. This is completely off topic, but I thought it was just — it’s such a fun little hack.
Tim Ferriss: I love how this is off topic for The Random Show.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. It’s — thank you very much.
Tim Ferriss: Really appreciate it.
Kevin Rose: So, one of the things that I love about The Random Show is we can bring up anything, and it’s like what are we excited about? What little hacks are we finding? And we used to do a lot of that back in the day now that we’re old.
Tim Ferriss: Now we’re just old and lazy.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. We’re like —
Tim Ferriss: Tired.
Kevin Rose: We were joking —
Tim Ferriss: Hacks? Who has time for that?
Kevin Rose: — we were joking about this before we went live. We were going to talk about what cholesterol medicine we’re on and shit.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I was just saying the 20-year-old versions of us would be so disappointed.
Kevin Rose: So disappointed. So, inflation is a bitch right now, right? It’s kind of going crazy. One of the things that —
Tim Ferriss: It’s like $34 avocado toast here in Santa Monica.
Kevin Rose: It’s not cheap.
Tim Ferriss: People are hurting.
Kevin Rose: We’ve got to go tomorrow, by the way. I know a great place we’re going to take you to. So one of the things that I’ve always generally avoided are just government bonds because the interest rates have been shit. Right? So, they have something called the I bonds. And so I bonds —
Tim Ferriss: I, letter I.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, letter I. And so, I bonds —
Tim Ferriss: Dumb question.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I bonds.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly.
Tim Ferriss: E-Y-E.
Kevin Rose: Not the E-Y-E. So, the letter I bonds, you can buy directly on treasurydirect.gov, which is the government website. And I’ve done this over the last couple of years, and it’s great. They max out at 10k, so the most you can put in is 10 grand, and you could do it for you, your spouse could have one, and then also you can do it for your kids as well. And right now, the I bond is based on the current inflation plus interest on top of that, so you get 9.62 percent from the government. That’s good. Right? And granted, that can change with inflation and all of that, but I’ll lock in that rate any day. I’ll go for that for sure. So, if you have $100, you can do it. This is applicable to pretty much everyone. Right?
Tim Ferriss: Not investment advice, but —
Kevin Rose: No, it’s totally investment advice.
Tim Ferriss: — but if you use code KevKev —
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. The government website, use code KRO.
Tim Ferriss: And identify as child of —
Kevin Rose: No, it’s one of those things where it’s like — . when you talk about a good year in the stock market, you’re talking 10 percent is what you’re hoping for on average, and that’s with a lot of risk. Right? And the fact that you can get a US government bond and it’s going to yield you 9.62 right now, that’s just free money. I mean, listen, if the government defaults on their bonds, yes, come after me, but it’s not going to happen.
Tim Ferriss: Well, I mean, yeah. Well, yeah. We’ll have marauder trucks on the roads by that point. It’ll be hard to find Kevin.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. But anyway, I just thought it was worth bringing up.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Oh, for sure. Clearly if I’m asking if it’s I bond with an E-Y-E, I’ve never heard of it either. Right there with you, folks.
Kevin Rose: I got two today for my kids and I’m just going to put that as car money for the future, just let it go, and then when it expires, I’ll go and reinvest it. Yeah, it’s good.
Tim Ferriss: Cool.
Kevin Rose: I bond. I bonds. With an I.
Tim Ferriss: Cool hack. I’m not as sure this is kind of as a hack, but I’ll lump it in or include it because it relates to, thematically, the stuff that’s going on in my mind. And that is, I watched a MasterClass, so company’s MasterClass, they have all these various instructionals with people in every discipline you can imagine, including a number of, as I’ve already mentioned, like Neil Gaiman, and they had one with Amy Tan, who’s a very famous novelist. And the first few segments in particular I found incredibly compelling, and she’s so eloquent also. She seems to speak in finished prose, and I only know a few people like that. And it always just blows my mind that they’re able to do that. Sam Harris would be another one, Waking Up app.
Side note. I don’t think Sam would mind me asking. At one point, I was listening to his many meditations and I listened to one, and I texted him and I said, “Sam, is there any chance I could get the text for the X, Y, and Z episode?” And he’s like, “What do you mean the text?” And I’m like, “The script that you used for recording the A, B, and C part of that episode.” And he goes, “Oh, I don’t use scripts.” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, you and I are just different animals, different species entirely.” So, the —
Kevin Rose: That’s impressive he just wings it because it’s good content.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, man. Yeah. He just has different hardware. And it’s not just born that way. I recognize it’s also a skill that he’s developed. But Amy Tan, similar, very, very well-spoken and extremely good at explaining how she approaches different facets of fiction and how she has pulled from her own life. She also has an entire segment where she goes through all of the rejection letters, or at least some of the most notable of the rejection letters that she got in the beginning, just rejection after rejection after rejection. What was cool that you don’t see, at least I didn’t see, when I got a lot of my rejections, is fiction editors, in a number of cases, gave her great feedback on her manuscript. So they read the whole thing and then they were like, “This is what you could do to improve this part, and here are three other things you could do to really strengthen this aspect of it.” You just, at least in my experience, don’t get that from rejections in non-fiction. So, it was cool to see not just how she thought about responding to criticism, she’s actually really grateful for a lot of the letters, but also how much she gained from the feedback and then used to iterate her fiction, which is just fantastic.
Kevin Rose: Do you do the monthly on that MasterClass or do you do the yearly?
Tim Ferriss: I did neither. In this particular case, I got a —
Kevin Rose: A freebie?
Tim Ferriss: — a freebie on Delta Airlines or United or somewhere.
Kevin Rose: Oh, I just keep getting billed for that shit. It drives me nuts. I always think I’m going to watch a bunch of them and I sign up for it.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, I’m still paying for match.com because I could not figure how to cancel the thing. And it’s like I haven’t used Match in 20 years. So you’re welcome, match.com.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I still get fucked on —
Tim Ferriss: Sponsor some episodes.
Kevin Rose: There’s like two or three things I just can’t figure out how to cancel. Seriously. And you know what’s funny is — I figured it out. They only bill you close to midnight because they know the push notifications come through. The other night I was up late and it was like 11:30, and I had one of those pop down and it was the year thing.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, clever.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Clever.
Kevin Rose: And I’m like, “You fucker,” and then I went to bed. I don’t even know who it is. I forgot. But they got me. Sucks.
Tim Ferriss: Hey, that’s what growth hacking’s for.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly.
Tim Ferriss: Let’s see here. So, physical training, I’ve been thinking a lot about physical training. I have a —
Kevin Rose: You’ve got a gut now, dude.
Tim Ferriss: I have a little bit of a gut. Jeez. I mean, look at —
Kevin Rose: Don’t pinch! You’re as fat as I am.
Tim Ferriss: I’m like Fat Bas — I am not.
Kevin Rose: You’re definitely as fat as I am.
Tim Ferriss: I’m not. I’m not.
Kevin Rose: Are you kidding me?
Tim Ferriss: No, you’re like Fat —
Kevin Rose: Hold out your gut. Let me see.
Tim Ferriss: — you’re like Fat Bastard from —
Kevin Rose: Let me see. Let me see.
Tim Ferriss: — Austin Powers.
Kevin Rose: Let me see it. Let me see. Okay, I’m definitely skinnier than you, dude.
Tim Ferriss: What are you talking about? You won’t even — oh, no, no.
Kevin Rose: Let me feel that. Okay, you’re a little skinnier.
Kevin Rose: Like, I’m not proud of much!
Tim Ferriss: I’m not proud, and I’m not going to blame it on age, although I guess I will say things are slowing down, that’s for sure.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: But I have actually lost a decent amount of this baby fat using —
Kevin Rose: It’s not baby fat anymore.
Tim Ferriss: It’s geriatric fat. With a few simple things. One is a sled. So, I have something called the XPO Trainer that is a mechanically assisted, or I should say mechanically resisted sled so you don’t have to load it with plates. And it’s on inflatable — I think they’re inflatable, one may be solid rubber, tires, so you can use them on, say, a driveway. And I’ve been using the XPO Trainer plus some jump rope, which is very minimal.
Kevin Rose: Jump rope is hard, dude.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I do that for five or 10 minutes.
Kevin Rose: Doesn’t it kill you? I did jump rope recently. I was like dead afterwards.
Tim Ferriss: It’s hard. Yeah. That’s kind of the point in the beginning.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, I know, but I thought it was going to be like some schoolyard shit. That shit’s difficult.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, no, it’s hard. It’s hard. So, I’ll do the jump rope, then the XPO Trainer, and then kettlebells. And I have some alternation, but most mornings I will do some combination of those things. And I’ve been doing, I mean, it’s pretty easy for me to do intermittent fasting, so I’m just doing late lunch, early dinner, typically.
Kevin Rose: Do we get one of those croissants in the morning I was telling you about?
Tim Ferriss: I mean, look, man, I haven’t seen you in, what, 27 years so —
Kevin Rose: You’re on vacation.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, if I use travel as vacation equals I can eat butter cookies any time I want. I will turn into Fat Bastard from Austin Powers, which is not the look I’m going for, especially imagine bald Fat Bastard.
Kevin Rose: It’s not good.
Tim Ferriss: No, you don’t want that.
Kevin Rose: No.
Tim Ferriss: All right. What else you got here?
Kevin Rose: Yeah. So, I think the last thing from me was that I did one of these full body scans. What?
Darya: You can’t escape Supernatural.
Kevin Rose: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Darya is telling me, it is true. I do Super —
Darya: I have video we can cut in!
Kevin Rose: No, we’re not cutting in video of me doing Supernatural. I do a VR workout called Supernatural three times a week. Have you tried this?
Tim Ferriss: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Kevin Rose: Oh, my God. We have to get Tim to do it right after this. Right? Yes. You’re going to freak out, dude.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Kevin Rose: It’s really good. I hate VR. It’s stupid. This is amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Well, and I love that you’ve been short VR for the last 10 years —
Kevin Rose: And I’ve made big money being short VR.
Tim Ferriss: But you now own a VR device.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, well I’ve had a VR device. You have to play with all the latest shit if you’re a technologist. I’m just saying that it’s dumb except for this app. This app’s amazing. So Supernatural is — you have two lightsabers and you have to slice shit in the air. And it sounds like — it’s not Fruit Ninja. It’s like way better than that. It’s done to music, it’s choreographed music. It’s amazing.
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Kevin Rose: Tim, you’re going love it.
Tim Ferriss: Sounds amazing. I mean, look, lightsabers, chopping things, choreographed to music, I mean, that’s three for three me.
Kevin Rose: Exactly. Anyway, Supernatural is how I get my hit in almost every other day pretty much.
Tim Ferriss: So, more slicing and less jump rope.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, you’ll like it. We’ll try it.
Tim Ferriss: More croissants.
Kevin Rose: We’re going to try it afterwards. So, that’s my big thing. The other thing I was going to say is I did one of those full-body MRI scans called Prenuvo.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, yeah, we should talk about this. This is something I need to get on.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. You know what? Honestly, it was like, I don’t know if it was my mom getting cancer, I think I did it before that, but I was just one of those things where I got to the stage in life where I had a couple little girls and I’m like — Attia was telling me, he was like, “Hey, you can do these. You’re at the age now where it makes sense. See if anything shows up.” It can detect like — it’s something like 80 percent of cancers at stage one, which is amazing. And so, I was like, “Okay, let’s do it.” So, I went and did it two years ago, came back. All the standard stuff like, “Oh, we see this here, but that’s normal, blah, blah, blah. This is a little bit weird. You have an extra vertebrae,” which I actually do, which is weird.
Tim Ferriss: So a little vestigial tail.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. A bunch of shit like that.
Tim Ferriss: Hey, ladies.
Kevin Rose: So I do that and then I go for year two, and I go and get the scan again and they call me up and they’re like, “Yeah, it turns out you have a little brain aneurysm, a little small brain aneurysm.” And I’m like, “What the fuck? This is crazy. Okay, tell me more.” And then after the fact, a month later, or not a month later but a few weeks later, my doctor calls them and says, “Hey, what do we see on the first scan?” They found it on the first scan as well. It hadn’t changed, which is great, and it’s super tiny. It’s the smallest — my doctor said if they hadn’t been using the latest tech, they wouldn’t even have detected it at all because it was so small.
So it’s only one millimeter and they don’t treat them until they get to seven millimeters, so it’s like, it’s totally fine. You want to keep your blood pressure low and all that, but it’s weird because in some sense you want to detect those stage one cancers, but there’s a lot of false positives. Not that this is a false positive, it’s something to pay attention to. Certainly changing my dietary actions in terms of keeping sodium low and lowering my blood pressure, but it’s something you should do.
Tim Ferriss: Which is why we’re having croissants and coffee tomorrow.
Kevin Rose: Exactly. Well, that’s not going to mess with my blood pressure.
Tim Ferriss: I’m just fucking with you.
Kevin Rose: But, you know, it’s like —
Tim Ferriss: I would imagine that to be terrifying.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. It’s 45 minutes, so it’s fast.
Tim Ferriss: Not the procedure. The review of the results.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, you go through it and I have a couple of spots in my brain, and they told me, “You’re allowed one per decade and so you’re fine. You have two or three or whatever, that’s fine.” I’m like, “Okay, this still doesn’t sound good.”
Tim Ferriss: Don’t worry.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like a bruised apple, but that’s fine.
Kevin Rose: And then they’re like, “Your lymph nodes,” this is the first scan. They’re like, “Your lymph nodes are really swollen on the left side.” I’m like, “Cool, what does that mean?” And they’re like, “Did you get your COVID vaccine on that side?” I’m like, “Yeah, I did.” And they’re like, “Okay, that’s why.” And then that would turn out to being fine. And then they found some other shit. There’s a little bit of a little —
Tim Ferriss: A little tail.
Kevin Rose: No, I have this little tiny bulge in my right nut sack. It’s the little stringy thing that connects to the sack, kind of bulged out a little bit. And they’re like, “That’s totally normal. It’s not cancer. You’re fine.” Blah, blah. So it’s just little shit like that where you’re just like, cool.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God. I can’t wait until our random shows when we’re in our sixties and seventies. It’s just going to be a litany of injuries and prostate complaints.
Kevin Rose: Exactly.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God. So —
Kevin Rose: I still recommend it.
Tim Ferriss: Let me just rewind so I make sure I’m hearing you currently. So were you pissed that they did not —
Kevin Rose: Tell me the first time?
Tim Ferriss: It hadn’t changed? Yeah. That they didn’t spot it the first time around?
Kevin Rose: I think it was so small that they have different — it’s not a radiologist, whoever it is that reviews it.
Tim Ferriss: It’s probably a radiologist.
Kevin Rose: Is it? I think it is. I think the first one was like, this is so insignificant, I don’t even need to call it out, and the second one called it out. And then they compared the notes and it was fine. This is the story I haven’t told. A friend of mine went in, had a scan. They found a growth in his brain, non-cancerous, a decent size. Operated, removed it, he’s fine, but he didn’t even know he had it, and he was just going in for a thing and it was growing, and it saved his life most likely.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. That’s wild.
Kevin Rose: And so it’s shit like that. And the radiologist, when I talked to him, he said the number, he goes, “I don’t really drink,” he goes, “But the number of bottles of wine I get in the mail from people that are like, ‘You saved my life because you found this at stage one or stage two…'” I don’t know. It’s just one of those things where —
Tim Ferriss: Get your diagnostics, folks, and I do it more — I hesitate to say this but don’t push out the interval. If you’re supposed to get something every five years, if anything, get it more frequently. Don’t push it out. So I have recently had the opposite experience with a friend of mine who went in for a routine exam, stage four cancer, terminal.
Kevin Rose: Holy shit.
Tim Ferriss: And I just spent several days with him, and —
Kevin Rose: What type of cancer?
Tim Ferriss: I don’t want to give specifics just in case people triangulate stuff, but it’s metastasized. And at this point, surgery, at least some type of surgery don’t make any sense. And man, if you want a proof point for what someone can do with decades of meditation practice, he is incredibly upbeat. He’s super happy. He is as productive as he can be. He’s spending a lot of time with loved ones of course, but he is consciously choosing, of all the decision trees, a path of gratitude, and not naive optimism but optimism in the sense of looking at everything as the glass half full.
And I was so inspired by this because I’m going through some hard stuff myself, and to see someone in those circumstances able to demonstrate that, it just blew my mind. And I know him well enough and we’ve had enough interactions, I know it is not an act. It is not an act. And I’m really impressed because that’s not automatically the case. There are people, including famous, famous meditators who are world-famous teachers, who on their deathbeds or in the process of going through hospice, just say over and over again to their closest friends, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.” And they’re afraid, which is understandable. I might be that person. Certainly, I have no confidence that I would end up responding the way my friend is responding, but it’s been incredibly inspiring.
Kevin Rose: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, and it certainly is sad in its own way but a real gift that he’s also giving those around him. It’s incredible.
Kevin Rose: How are you doing with dealing with all that?
Tim Ferriss: You mean with his situation?
Kevin Rose: It’s got to be hard being a friend and having a friend go through something like that. Are you going to see him again do you think before he passes or is it something you would like to?
Tim Ferriss: I would like to. I don’t know how long the time horizon is. It may not be that long. I am doing well with it because of how he is able to choose to respond to this unfolding story. Of course, it’s sad on a number of levels, but we all have a one-way ticket as far as we know.
Kevin Rose: My dad, before he passed, said, “There’s no lease on life.” He just wanted to remind me of that. It’s coming for all of us.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s not something you want to think about all the time, but if you think about it none of the time, you also have a problem. And this has been a very strong reminder for me. It’s like, yeah, get it together.
Kevin Rose: When I had —
Tim Ferriss: Don’t dick around too much. Have fun, don’t take everything seriously, but also realize that every moment you have like this, not to get all cheesy but these are precious, amazing moments.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Everybody’s healthy.
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I think about that with my girls every day, dude, with the kids. I had Sam Harris on on the podcast a while ago, a couple years ago, and we talked about the Buddhist monk that was sitting in a meditative pose on the cover of Rage Against the Machine that had doused himself in gasoline in defiance of local government, and lit himself on fire and did not flinch. And this has been recorded, and there was pictures and everything else.
Tim Ferriss: Video. Video too.
Kevin Rose: Did not move.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Holy shit. You want to talk about meditation really working? Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I can’t do that. I could barely stay in a cold plunge this morning for three minutes, so —
Kevin Rose: Yeah. I was in the sauna today. I was like, “Oh, 15 minutes to go. Am I going to make it to 20? Okay, won’t even go for it.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. All these things are kind of pointing at — by all these things, I guess I’m bookending some of our earlier discussion that touched on psychedelics, and I mentioned psychiatry and these tectonic plate shifts that I think are currently underway, but will be most noticeable five, 10 years from now. And the types of feats that we’re describing all point to severe I think underappreciation for what we are capable of in terms of shaping mind and consciousness, because lighting yourself on fire and not flinching should not be possible.
Kevin Rose: No.
Tim Ferriss: Clearly —
Kevin Rose: Yeah. Not even David Blaine can do it.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. No one wants to end up having to test that, but there are a lot of outcomes that we’re seeing, say, in treating various diagnoses related to, I don’t want to say mental illness but psychiatric conditions that are considered intractable or extremely difficult to treat. And some of the outcomes that we’re seeing, which are not solely produced through psychedelics. I don’t want to make psychedelics sound like panacea of any type, they’re not. They have in some cases very significant risks. But it’s clear that many of the paradigms through which we’ve treated patients, specifically with any type of what we would consider mental illness, is likely resting on a number of assumptions that are completely untrue.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And that’s exciting. It’s really exciting.
Kevin Rose: I remember our friend Dr. Weil, 20 years ago, was speaking about chemotherapy and said how barbaric it will look in the future, and it turns out that it’s actually true. We have immunotherapy now, my mom’s going through it. There’s a lot of these things that are very, very promising, and we’re just a few years away from some really exciting breakthroughs. I’m not sure if you saw that New York Times article about, it was eight out of eight patients cured with this new type of immunotherapy in cancer.
Tim Ferriss: No.
Kevin Rose: Didn’t you see that? It was a groundbreaking, crazy study about this new type of immunotherapy that’s just now coming out here soon. But I’d imagine the same is true for psychedelics. 20 years from now, they’ll have honed it and figured out the right dose. They may even modify those molecules. Who knows where it’s going to go? But it’s going to be exciting.
Tim Ferriss: It is going to be exciting. I think we’re all driven by our beliefs, these thoughts we take to be true, and assumptions. Even scientists are subject to this. Scientists are not robots, and so you have anyone doing anything comes in with a certain set of biases or biases. And in psychedelics, you see also in the psychedelic for-profit sector, you see a lot of motivated reasoning where you have a number of split camps and different kind of schisms within these communities.
And one of them is between camp A, and camp A believes that many of the clinical outcomes for depression and PTSD and so on are driven by the content of an experience and the narrative that you can restructure after you observe it for the first time perhaps, the software that’s behind many of your decisions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They think it’s the content. In which case, if that is your belief, and in an ideal world, you would be able to test these things definitively, and many people are making attempts at this but it’s really challenging, then you want enough workspace to allow all that to play out. So let’s just say psilocybin and having a session of four to six hours would be viewed as a feature and not a bug.
Then you have camp B, which is saying, oh, yeah, all those hallucinations, terrible side effects. Really, what’s happening is on this structural level and this type of X, Y, Z is happening to this receptor, and da, da, da. And we can do all of that if we change the molecule without the psychedelic effects and also press it into a 30-minute session, and that will copy and paste into our current medical formatting much more easily. But there’s a profit motive there, because if you can scale something in that way and reduce some of the, quote, unquote, side effects —
Kevin Rose: And also patent it.
Tim Ferriss: — and absolutely patent it, and then also make it a drug that you need to take at least twice a week or maybe even every day instead of once a month or once every three months, that there are —
Kevin Rose: Is that necessarily a bad thing, though?
Tim Ferriss: It’s not automatically a bad thing, but I just think it’s important for folks to be aware of incentives and to track incentives.
Kevin Rose: Sure. Because then it just turns into a better antidepressant, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Tim Ferriss: It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on how the antidepressant is achieving its effects. And there are immediate changes that can be beneficial in a whole host of different situations with medicine generally speaking. So with the pharmacological intervention, if you’re bleeding out and you need a coagulant, you don’t want to have to wait a long time for that to work. And similarly, if you are suffering from suicidal ideation and are at risk of harming or killing yourself, you need something that’s going to work really quickly, in which case, just putting this out there, intravenous ketamine treatment may be —
Kevin Rose: It’s the number one thing, right?
Tim Ferriss: — may be something you consider. It’s not going to fix all of your problems but it’s going to stop the immediate bleeding, so to speak.
Kevin Rose: Isn’t that what they do? If someone comes in and they’re about to commit suicide, don’t they give them IV ketamine? I’ve heard that’s a thing.
Tim Ferriss: I don’t know what it looks like. Actually, I’d love to hear from people in the audience who know how something like that is triaged in an ER. If somebody shows up and maybe a loved one brought them and they’re like, “I’m going to blow my head off,” I would have to imagine there’s sedation, maybe they use some hypnotics. They might use ketamine. I don’t know, but in a —
Kevin Rose: I had heard that once.
Tim Ferriss: I know a number of people who were on the verge of blowing their heads off, who with competent, supervised ketamine-assisted therapy, literally within one or two sessions were able to say, “I don’t know what I was so upset about. I can’t even believe I was so wound up about that.” And that’s incredible. It’s not an indefinite fix, but to answer your question, to come back, there are cases in which I think it makes sense to have some type of maintenance dose. So let’s just say you’re able to strip out a bunch of the hallucinogenic or psychedelic effects from LSD and it remains incredibly effective for cluster headaches, which is actually one indication. And the best combination of effect and minimizing side effects is to have some small dose four or five days a week. Great, fantastic.
But if you’re trying to process or contend with some type of childhood trauma that has been plaguing your automatic behaviors and maybe addictions, perhaps self-destructive or otherwise destructive behaviors, then I don’t know if what we need is a maintenance drug. There may be more psychological surgery required for that, in which case, perhaps the content does play a meaningful role. I happen to believe that’s the case in many instances. But 10 years from now, yes, psychedelics is going to be crazy because it’s subject to these market forces and these incentives, so don’t ask a barber if you need a haircut kind of situation. If you go to an orthopedic surgeon and you’re like, “Do I need surgery?” They’re not all going to say you need surgery, but they have a certain incentive to do surgery, so realizing that in advance is important.
But I do think what we will find through the study of psychedelics is even if psychedelics as compounds were to disappear 10 years from now, let’s just say. Let’s just say they go back to being — they are reclassified, rescheduled, and then all over the place, and then who knows? Some senator’s kid jumps off a balcony and then the whole thing goes kaput and it’s thrown back into psychedelic scientific winter. Even if that’s the case, within the next 10 to 15 years, I think we will learn so many new things about the functioning of the mind and processing of trauma, metabolizing of difficult experience, and issues such as treatment-resistant depression, complex PTSD, that the treatment paradigms will shift even if the compounds disappear, which I don’t think they will. And I also think there are so many indications that do not require high doses of psychedelics which will be well treated with lower doses of psychedelics, so I’m excited to see what bears out.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Awesome. Anything else you wanted to cover?
Tim Ferriss: I think that’s it for me. Yeah.
Kevin Rose: I’m good as well. That was awesome. Yeah. Good to see you, brother.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, good to see you too, man. Thanks for having me over for dinner.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, sitting on our couch here. Mr. Toast is in the background for those watching in the audience.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Rose: 12 and doing well.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Passed out.
Tim Ferriss: So not that long — well, it is long ago. Not in historical evolutionary terms, but in our lifetime terms, a while ago, we had a shot very much like this in San Francisco in one your, I don’t want to say first apartments, but —
Kevin Rose: A shitty apartment.
Tim Ferriss: Earlier apartments with a couch like this, and Toast walked by as a puppy and chewed through one of these —
Kevin Rose: Audio cables.
Tim Ferriss: XLR cables.
Kevin Rose: Totally.
Tim Ferriss: Back then, I had a little bit of hair.
Kevin Rose: That’s right. Isn’t it crazy that you had a hair back then?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s weird. It’s weird. Somebody was asking me and they’re like, “Yeah, but you could probably figure out how to regrow hair.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but if I just suddenly disappeared for six months and then reappeared with a huge mop on my head.”
Kevin Rose: I mean, that’s what Elon Musk did. Did you see the early Elon Musk pictures where he was bald?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, you could do it.
Tim Ferriss: I could do it, but A, I don’t feel the need. B, I just think, especially from my friends, I would get so much endless shit.
Kevin Rose: Do you think he should do it? We’re asking Darya right now. She said no.
Tim Ferriss: No, no.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: No.
Kevin Rose: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: It’s Tim, Tim. Yeah.
Kevin Rose: No.
Tim Ferriss: Mr. Clean. I’ve grown into the Mr. Clean look. I’m good. I’m good with it.
Kevin Rose: All right, brother.
Tim Ferriss: All right. We’ll do this again in a few months.
Kevin Rose: Yeah, for sure.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Kevin Rose: See more of each other in person.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Peace.
Kevin Rose: Peace.
The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than 900 million downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.
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