#578: Tim Ferriss and Matt Mullenweg in Antarctica: Exploring Personal Fears, Bucket Lists, Facing Grief, Crafting Life Missions, and Tim’s Best Penguin Impressions

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Be your strongest. Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then I'll see you post some questions. No, it is. My cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and those galaxy. Well hello, boys and girls, lemurs and squirrels. This is Tim Ferris.

Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers from all different disciplines to tease out the lessons Habits. new tools, et cetera, that you can use. My guest today is one of my favorite guests and a good friend. Matt Mollenweg. Matt is a co-founder of the open source publishing platform WordPress.

Which now powers more than one third of all sites on the web. He is the founder and CEO of Automatic. M A T T. See what he did there? Automatic. The company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr. WPVIB Day One and Pocket Casts. Additionally, Matt runs Audrey Capital. Can you guess who that's named after? I'll give you three guesses. An investment and research company. He has been recognized for his leadership by Forbes.

Bloomberg Business Week, Inc. Tech Crunch, Fortune. Fast company. Wired, it keeps going. Vanity Fair and the University Philosophical Society. Matt is originally from Houston, Texas, where he attended the high school for the performing and visual arts and studied jazz saxophone. In his spare time, Matt is an avid photographer. I encourage you to check out.

M A dot T T He currently splits his time between Houston and Jackson Hole. For my first interview with Matt, way back in 2015, where he had very long hair. Go to Tim.blog slash Matt. There was some tequila. involved. As mentioned, you can find him online at MA dot. You can find him on Twitter at photomat that tells you

just how many photos he's taken and on Instagram at Photo Matt. Without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Matt. Mullenwig. This is a new acoustic environment for me.

So Matt Mollenweg. We'll get to you in just a minute, but we're sitting here. In a shell tent. Which has surprisingly good acoustics. Kind of like s sitting inside a

Spherical. curtain, I guess. To deaden the noise or deaden the echoes. And we are on top of Ice. Miles of it. Miles of ice. We have two layers.

In this shell tent. And inside Yeah, little fold out table on which we have Bluetooth. Speaker, we have some caffeine.

You have some water. We have how would you say this? Uh Glen Maring? Glenn Maran. Glenn Marangi. Somebody's gonna correct us here. Help us out there. G-L-E-N M O R A N G I E Highland single malt scotch. Whiskey. Legends the Cadball. Let somebody sort that out.

And uh then we have an Algae bottle full of water. And then we have a Nalgine bottle. That is colored. It is orange. And the reason that it is orange is it's currently full of twenty eight ounces of my urine.

Strong open Tim. Yeah. And does that need to be on the table? You know, this is a reminder that I need to dispose of it. So if you come to Antarctica, which is where we are right now. Everything that is brought in needs to be carried out. That includes all human waste, because if you pee in the snow here, it'll be here for hundreds of years or thousands of years. And uh in such case You need to if you have to pee when you're outside or you're in your tent and you're freezing your ass off and don't want to walk to one of the bathrooms. You need to pee into a bottle. So that's why I have a differently colored bottle, so I don't mistakenly assume, as you might,'cause there are no bubbles here, that this is my water. Which I guess it is in some sense.

Slightly used. Slightly used. So Last time we did podcasts. Guess we were doing some back of the napkin is what, five? Or so years ago? Five years ago.

And a lot has happened in the last five years. But before we get to that. Sure, sir. Cheers. So fun to spend time with you, as always. And thanks for coming to Antarctica. Well thank you for the invite. I'm so Excited to finally come.

Here. For a million reasons. The principle of which is just getting to spend more time together. Honestly. This is our fifth continent. So we got two more. That's uh and Australia and then we'll we'll have We'll have we'll have the hat trick of all seven. Yeah, we're we're day nine now in Antarctica.

Day nine. We've been off the internet for a while, which I'm a little shaky. It's like ninety eight percent of my brain. Some withdrawal symptoms. Wait, you have to you have to now we're gonna get to the bio, don't worry, folks. But so one of your coping mechanisms, like the methadone for the internet addict. Was downloading what? What did you download A lot of before you came here. Downloaded a good chunk of the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia, like the Facebook. The Wikipedia. Yes. And uh well I remember last I download a Scrabble dictionary too. I remember last time I was in Antarctica in twenty fourteen.

It was really just looking stuff up that I missed the most. And um and I've used it a number of times here. And also like I might have the fullest copy of the Wikipedia of our group. So that's like It came in handy. I wanted to look up a few factoids about Suriname and boom. There it was. There it was.

But then I found out that Ernesto Hust, who's one of my favorite kickboxers of all time, was born in Suriname uh later One K one a million times. People who know what that is will know and just Long story to explain. But

There were no f accompanying photographs. Of course. Yeah, I should say. Just given the bandwidth limitations. So Here we are, day nine. You I guess were

ruminating on what day it might be and I had no idea because it is daylight. All the time. Twenty four hours a day. And it is so bright. I had experienced Twenty four hour twilight once. above the Arctic Circle in Alaska. But this is Totally different. I mean, this is like laying on your back.

in Santa Barbara with the sun beating down on you at At ten AM on a perfectly bluebird day. It's so bright all the time. So Everything kinda blends together and you're not really sure when you should be tired or shouldn't be tired. You think it's one PM and we came back from an excursion today. And it was already six forty five, something like that.

It's really Strange. It's super strange and to not have A circadian rhythm. modulated by

Light change to Synchronized too. Super weird. It's been yeah, it feels very timeless when we've been here. And day of the week everything has been kind of lost. We also had a very special morning.

We did. So before we get to the morning, Matt Mullenweg. For people who don't know, who are you? Uh huh. Front of Tim? Uh but probably better known for co founding open source software called WordPress.

Which is logging. CMS, content management system. has over fifty thousand plugins and themes. And I'm the CEO of a company. It's a lot smaller last time we talked, called automatic. There's a mat in there. That's kind of a little pun.

And we make WordPress dot com. WooCommerce, which is e commerce built on top of WordPress. Tumblr. Jetpack. Also the uh day one, awesome journaling app, simple notes.

Pocket cast for podcasting. So check out Pocket Cast. Great up. So we uh basically we try to make the open web, make the web more open. And what percentage of the web uses one of those products or WordPress itself. At this point. Uh, the W three Text WordPress is now up to forty two percent. It's probably like ten last time we talked.

That's incredible. Yeah, it's it's coming up. And what would you guess five years ago roughly size of the company then and now? Then we were a couple hundred and now we're a couple of thousand. We're coming up on two thousand people. Which is

Been really amazing. Distributed before it was cool. Yeah. That's worth that's worth noting. That was kind of a a funny thing as well, as I I even started a podcast called Distributed. And I was like, Okay, my goal For the twenty twenties, basically the next ten years.

Well, as to get more remote work happening. Sorry about the virus, guys. Yeah, so just woke up one day and you know Of people who could. The numbers were incredible. How many people switched to distributed work.

Um but yeah, we've been distributed since the beginning. We're about Two thousand people, ninety two countries. Majority of the company first language is not English. And We communicate primarily asynchronously through blogging.

Now when you say blogging, you're referring to internal tools that resemble blogging? Yeah, we have this tool called P2. The letter P As in Penguin and the number two. And it's basically an internal blog. We have No email in the company.

The only email I get is HR stuff. And uh everything else. I'm guessing not a good day. No, I I I work a lot with HRs. So that'll happen privately, but everything else instead of sending email. We'll just kinda blog to each other. And so everything has a permalink, everything is archived, everything is searchable. And you can have Rich Embeds, like Figma Embeds, YouTube Embeds. What was that first embed?

Stigma? I don't know what that is. Uh Figma is Actually an awesome tool you should check out. Imagine a way to coordinate design.

Online. And in real time. So you and I could be working on the same wireframes or interaction design. And um Actually it's the latest episode. of the distributed podcast. And I didn't actually interview the founder, Dylan.

Kinda yanged. We're sure friend of ours. We owe Connie credit for another prop we have on the table we may or may not use. Which are the Holste H O L S T E E reflection cards.

And there are a lot of Decks of questions. that I've seen out and about and I've tried quite a few. My girlfriend loves these various decks. And there's the good, the bad and the ugly. And I'd say mostly fairly mediocre. And this is a DA that is is is quite good. So we might get to some questions here. So Connie, you were saying, interviewed the founder of Figma on the distributed. Yeah, latest episode. It's a cool tool.

I think you you might enjoy checking it out, actually. I will. Figma. I'm on it. And Let's see. This is such a lazy question, but

It kinda boggled my mind to think that it's been five years. Since we last did one of these. Yeah. Because you said what, the first episode we did was number sixty something. Sixty one. Sixty one. in the Bay area at my kitchen table or dining room table all the same. in Glenn Park.

Mm-hmm. Back when you had You had your golden locks. I think that was when you still had your golden locks. Every once in a while and and uh at the time The nectar of choice was tequila. And so that if that featured

Very uh heavily more ways than what I've got. Yeah, that was um That was a go to that was a good evening. That was a good evening. So this morning, if we switch from evening to morning, so we had a very interesting morning. And it started Well, it didn't really ever end, I guess. I mean it was continuous. Most people didn't sleep. But what what happened? This morning.

So Part of the reason we're in Antarctica. Besides the penguins, which I know you talked a lot about with Sue. Check out that episode with Sue Flood. Is the total solar eclipse.

That uh happened here in Antarctica. And it's uh Only one in the continent. Until twenty thirty nine, I think. That's total solar eclipse. See you and I.

But the we Hours of the morning. Very we very we Got to see. What was my first visible total solar eclipse?

Might be. Incredible. The landscape in Antarctica is so dramatic. Yeah. It's a it's a place that really makes you feel It's a very patient landscape and it makes you feel

Right. Your size in the cosmos. Interesting that you would use the word patient. Why do you use that adjective? I was anticipating you might say vast or majestic. Vast even more so than majestic. But why why patient? There's something to me about Ain't Arter that feels really timeless.

And also just unconcerned with human welfare. And timescales. Yeah. Yeah, things here happen over huge timescales and it's so cool. To see like mountains. Buried by glaciers essentially. Like they they look like they're like have a blanket over them. And that Was over how many. Tens or hundreds of thousands of years. It's pretty incredible. It is. And we were we were chatting

with a a gentleman yesterday. I don't know if he would want to be named, so I I won't name him, but He had Mentioned How deep an impact I guess his first full totality.

as it's known. First total solar eclipse had affected him and how he had always on some intellectual level understood our relative insignificance from a cosmic perspective. But the first time that he viscerally felt that, which actually was Deeply therapeutic for him. Was seeing. a totality with his daughter in his arms and somebody behind him caught this amazing photograph of his daughter, tiny little daughter, pointing up at the totality as it's happening. I mean you couldn't have scripted a better photograph. And

Then uh This morning it still feels like Well, like it was two days ago. I mean every everything blurs and blends together, which is We've lived lifetimes. We've lived life lifetimes. It was around what, four forty four, I wanna say. Mm-hmm. Okay.

And leading up to it and the days leading up to it. I was looking forward to it, but I wasn't jumping up and down with excitement. I just assumed okay. It gets progressively darker, then it's dark, and then it gets progressively lighter. I got That's

Blown away by phenomenon. Yeah, yeah, cool story, bro. And uh had to be there, had to be there. And it turns out you really do have to be there. And When it actually started creeping up and you're watching this happen and you're observing the progression through these eclipse glasses. 'Cause otherwise you'll blow your eyes out, of course, especially if something's magnified through equipment.

And When it actually fully overlapped and you're able to take off your glasses and look at it directly. It was stunning. Stunning and

The effects on the horizon and on the visibility of stars, the things happening around it, the shadow bands as people refer to them as. Traveling across the ground. Did you see the wavy ones? That was so surreal. Yeah. And Just everything about it. almost harken back for me to Prehistoric.

humanoid times. Like it touched something very old, if that makes any sense. It felt like it touched something In species or racial memory going back. thousands of years where you can imagine the impact that this would have on

any sentient being who's observing it and really paying attention and watching it. Difficult to put into words. That was the most common sentence probably some variation of that that I heard afterwards. People were giddy. People were euphoric. And The expression was you just can't put it into words, or I can't put it into words. And I encourage people to look up the history of eclipses. There's been some cool

Historical moments. Yeah. Predicting eclipse or not protecting eclipse or Think two kings died after seeing them. And then that was part of the creation of Europe. Uh, King the Pious of John. King John the Pious, you were saying, and then Europe was split up into

What became France, what became Italy, and what became Germany that has three sons. Seem to figure pretty strongly into The shaping of history and the shaping of national borders. What's more reliable than the sun? Yeah. And for that to be blotted out for a moment.

Is uh Yeah. Awe inspiring. Let's do it again. Yeah, I don't say this lightly. I mean once it once it happened though, I immediately turned to a few friends that that were with and I was and I said I get it. I see why people chase this because we have people here in this camp because you have these shell tents.

Arranged in rows of sorts. And then they have snow piled around them to brace against the wind. And it does get really, really Fucking cold here. Surprise, surprise. It's Antarctica. It's also very, very dry and People get a lot of sun damage even more so than desert in the world. It is dry. It is dry. It's part of the reason you can dry the surface of, say, your steak by putting it in a freezer on an elevated rack for a short period of time. It's the driest place in your house is a good freezer. So

And you just expand that a gazillion times. Over eons, and uh here you are in Antarctica. It's also interesting that where we are on Union Glacier There's no birds. No animals, no insects. Literally nothing living except us.

Yeah. It's I was gonna say disturbingly, but it's not disturbingly. It is Oddly quiet. When you go to certain parts of the camp if you're not within sort of shouting distance or

Within uh hearing distance of the mess hall or something like that. And especially after we spent seven days with the penguins. Yeah. Which have kind of a constant din. Yeah. And it was really cute. They would walk into camp. And just walk past your tent. The tents have no noise isolation. Or right up to the tent. Right up to the tent. You're you're better than noises. Thank you. You although that is actually the pairing call that you hear more at the colony, but they're just going. Mm. Tim's been practicing this. I have been practicing much to the chagrin of my travel traveling companions. I've been doing that like a hundred times a day. If you can cut in some of that field audio you took would be pretty cool. Oh we will.

Oh. There will be magic in the editing room. I have no idea if you'll be able to hear me or not.

But Those are the sounds of thousands of empire penguins. Adults. In there. Business formal.

Black and white the tire. the largest of the penguin species, so I would guess I'm no biologist, but probably let's just call it two and a half to maybe three and a half feet tall. Probably twenty five to forty-five. Maybe twenty-five to fifty pounds. And then their chicks. who have gray downy feathers or certainly appear to. The adults have I think roughly 15 feathers per square centimeter. And you're hearing many different calls.

And I don't know the meaning. I assume there certainly are meanings of the different calls, but There's a. Which they make when they point their beaks basically straight down flat against their chests. So I imagine that's straightening their trachea somehow, but it's the opposite of what you would see with say a coyote or a wolf howling. And here I am.

Holy shit. Antarctica. So Matt, where should we where should we go next? What do you think? You wanna you wanna should we pull out the deck, see what happens? Should we go somewhere else? Are there other things in the last five years maybe we'll roll into that? I mean five years. Recorded. our other episodes. And it's not that recent. I mean it's not. It's like if you live eighty

Let's just say we live eighty, eighty five years. It's like five years is a meaningful percentage of that. It's true. Yeah. Makes me think of that essay, um The great one from Tim Urban. The talent. Yeah. Which you introduced me to and I have Shared with so many people. Put an edited

Or I don't think it was highly edited, but like a slightly shortened version in I think it was Tools of Titans because that had such an impact on me. And that's all thanks to Mr Mullenweg. Yeah, that was one of the big things since our last episode was my father passing. Yeah. You're a great friend throw that's a thank you, but

That taught me a lot about this. Grief and the ephemerality of life and everything, so That was a big one. Yeah, e pretty much everything in my life has changed a lot in the past five years.

We hadn't even acquired WooCommerce when we last spoke. And this year it's gonna do it. What's the number that we say I think twenty one billion of transactions. You know, we're hoping to do for e commerce what we did for Websites.

And I think there's a chance and the the web wants an open source Commerce. Think what's been exciting for me Is everything is always changing.

I'm not good at staying still. Everything is always changing, not in a macro world sense, although I guess that's true you're saying for you personally. Yeah. You asked me the other day, do I have like a weekly routine where like Mondays are staff meetings, Tuesdays are just a little bit. Yeah, if you have an inf infrastructure for your week, because people like Jack Dorse have talked about this. I don't know if he he he does it any longer. But I I I did ask you and your answer was Every day's different. And that's part of what keeps it super exciting for me.

Because I feel like I'm always learning. Knew nothing about podcasting software, or journaling software, or e commerce software, or anything. But I love making tools that people use. It's very, very satisfying.

If you don't mind, let's just come back for a second to your dad's passing. And I know that was it. Understandably extremely tough. Period. And I don't even know if it's something you've ever fully metabolized. If that's something you even view in the past tense is like something you went through or if it's something that you continue to live with. But my question is if there are any

Resources, tools, books. Or just simply advice that you would give to someone who is experience grief or has lost someone or maybe is On the cusp of Losing someone.

Yeah. The book that I found most helpful during that was co authored by Elizabeth Kubler Ross. Came up with the Kubleras scale, I think. That's the five stages. Denial, anger. Acceptance of the five stages of grief.

The book was called I think grief and grieving. Yeah, on grief and grieving. On grief and grieving. That one was really powerful. Might be just grief and grieving. I shouldn't be so definitive, but yeah, one of the two. Yeah. So that one was very, very helpful for me. Was how personal.

the processes and how different it is. Like for example for me and my sister. Grieved completely differently. And I've seen other friends go through this. Since then.

And so Or to say one thing I really learned is just That everyone has their own way of processing. And it'll happen at different times. And it's very easy.

Annoyed or mad. Or angry or disappointed. Uh. How someone else is grieving. If it's different from yours.

How did the book help you? But did it explain or help you to accept or clarify or otherwise? I'd heard of those five stages. But I thought they happened seriously. Like he went in order.

Well that's what I would assume. And it turns out you You can have'em Out of order and multiple ones at the same time. And in the same day. In the same hour.

And so that was really helpful. Pre-craving. Was something I learned a lot from the book. So I did that. If you have a sense that someone's going to pass.

A whole grieving process that happens. Before then. And uh my father was in the hospital for about five weeks, so That was One of the most intense periods of my life.

That pre-grieving I hadn't really Understood. Those those are some big ones. Yeah. And it's been Helpful as well. I think

Talk about death? Yeah. We don't think about it and we like to pretend it doesn't happen, but it's the one thing that for certain is gonna happen to every single one of us. And we're all gonna lose someone we love and we'll all pass some day. And very much like the stoics. I think that The more you think about it.

The better you are able to Handle it yourself and help others when they're going through it. I have an app for my phone. I think it's What is it? Bhutanese? It's called My Croak. Or We Croak? We Croak. Yeah. I've used We Croak. And five times a day it just send you a notification. It's like

Just reminder, we're all gonna die. Gives you a quote. And then it gives you a quote that you can open the app. That one's been a little bit more. Yeah, I've got that going. I also um

I think we might have talked about this before, but on my Chrome new tab. I sort of calculated. Yeah. average number of days I'm probably gonna live. So every time I open a new tab.

How's that? Countdown. Is that something that's something you did manually, or is that something other people can do reasonably easily? Yeah, use a Tab thing called momentum. Uh, which allows you to customize your new tab screen.

And it can do countdowns. And so I think the dates was something like twenty sixty, two thousand uh January eleventh, I've had my birthday. And then it just counts down. And so that's also really interesting. And I find it also a good interrupt to remind me when

I'm starting a new tab, which is usually the beginning of distraction or something. Totally. That um That it just has momentum or The countdown. Mm. Do you

Find that you begin to tune that out. So I've used momentum. I like it a lot. But do you end up at some point becoming Immune. to the reminder.

You experience that or not so much? Is there anything you do to prevent that? Yeah definitely. Develop like a selective blindness to it. I was actually just thinking today, like if I just used every app on my own screen regularly, my life would probably be much better. I've got call and FitBot and all these sorts of things that I put on the like smart mats. Smart mats. But I'll still scroll the four screens over to get to Twitter or Instagram or something. Hard to win that one outgunned as we are. I actually deleted all apps from my phone. Uh excuse me, that would not make any sense. That would make my phone very hard to use. Deleted all social apps from my phone about a a year and a half ago and haven't installed, haven't reinstalled.

Mm. Any of them. And it's been liberating in some ways and also frustrating in others to see how addictive these tools are and how I will find workarounds by using the browser. Yeah, the browser. Right. And and it it it provides a hurdle, right? So it's like the candy isn't

within reach. Like I have to like open a door and walk through to another room, metaphorically speaking, to get the candy, but still I end up as you've seen on this trip with the uh chocolate covered almonds. It's amazing how much chocolate covered almonds Tim has consumed. So horrifying. So horrifying. Well, it's a good reminder we're all human. Even like for our body to em Paris. Definitely especially for our body to Paris. Uh oh. Once he goes off the rails, it's it's very, very off the rails. Oh man. So Anything else that you'd like to add within uh the context of the last Last five years? And one more thing on the on the parents is one thing I wish is that had more recordings of my dad.

Mm. Just remembering his voice, or Even some video, though, people are more self conscious about video. So I think it's great if there's people you love. Do something like this. Have a conversation with them. Yeah. Record it. I think it's uh

Something you'll both probably appreciate. Well you've been part of the A big part of the impetus for me to Upset. time aside and schedule time to do this with my parents. We had it scheduled and then there were some

calendar and travel issues, of course, with Covid and everything else going on. But That is something that I'm you know planning on doing in the next few months. And I'm looking forward to it. I think they're at different points I've had various reservations, but

As I think more and more about Kids. Mm. I think it becomes it dawns on me. More and more.

Clearly how valuable. Or how treasured that could be at some point. To have that. Yeah. And just what our parents, our loved ones might remember about our life. It's so different s from sometimes what we remember.

Yeah. And could be really enlightening sometimes. Yeah. 'Cause memory's so fallible, right? Yeah. Super fallible. So it's interesting to see the different perspectives on it and triangulate maybe how we turned out the way we did or Things that might have been very influential on us. So Question for you then. Any recommendations for my conversations with my parents? Are there any particular types of questions that you would ask?

Or angles of inquiry or Anything at all. No fly zones. Anything that comes to mind. You know, this is where being offline is gonna

What's the The project it's like on MPR where they interview people. There's an app for it's Story Core. Story Core. Story and then C O R

P. S. Alright. And I think they even have an app with questions. And part of what they do is try to get an oral history. of Americans. People around the country. I don't know anything about this. But people can record their own. And they have a really great set of questions that kinda walk people through their life history. So those would be the experts and check it out. There might maybe be some things that could be a good framework. I will. And for what it's worth since we're talking about recording.

we can just mention briefly what I have right here in front of us, which is The sophisticated grand podcasting studio of Tim Ferris Enterprises, which is Very, very, very simple, it turns out. There have only been a few minor changes since our recording five years ago. And the first recording being number sixty one of the podcast. And now we have whatever it is, close to six hundred episodes. So we've got the

Zoom. H six recorder. in front of me. And then we have Two XLR cables, one going to a handheld mic for Matt, another going to handheld mic in my hand.

One of the upgrades that I made is when I do in person recording. I have two different color the default is going to be black cabling. I get colored cables. So for video this would be horrible on the eyes, but practically for recording it's great because it makes it very easy for me to see which levels I need to adjust. Oh cool. That's why the cables are different colors. So we have yellow and orange. And

Then I have rechargeable batteries. Which are Panasonic. Rechargeable BQC five five. is going to probably take you to the to the proper

Make and model. And then we have an iPhone with a shore. MV eight eight. microphone that it that attaches to the iPhone uh through a

Lightning. port and captures really good audio. So we have that running as backup. And then the handheld mics are also sure. And I usually use SM fifty eight mics. These are slightly better for voice. And if I could just see yours for a second. This is the

K S M eight. And uh they're very nice. work really, really well. And that's it. And it this all fits into A well there's a small bag, but it all fits into a Banya hat. I have a Russian sauna hat that is perfect padding and insulation for

the recorder itself, then everything else fits easily, easily, easily into a backpack. You could probably fit most of it into a big jacket. And you can record anywhere you've now recorded. Two in Antarctica, which is amazing. It is kind of amazing. And so we've had two hundred plus degrees Fahrenheit with Rick Rubin, the incredible music producer, although he does a lot more

in his sauna'cause that was a condition for doing the interview. It was so hot. And uh Hilariously so, because we ended up having to take breaks and do ice baths and the mics got so hot. That was the one thing we didn't budget for. I was so worried about the recorder. being damaged or going non functional. that I didn't pay attention to the simple fact that when you have the mic at body height in the sauna, it's gonna get ripping hot. Wow. So the equivalent was fine on the floor, but the mics got so hot we had to wrap them in towels and do it that way. So we've done like plus

Two hundred degrees and with windshield. Probably. That I think they were saying it was negative thirty five. Negative this morning. Yeah, negative thirty five. Maybe even a little bit colder, but negative thirty five, maybe a little bit colder. At Gold Bay.

With Zoo. Uh because we were outside. Oh yeah. We have a we have a bit of shelter here, but there we had an open sided tent with wind ripping through and a and a table made of ice instead of this nice fold out table. Why didn't you close the door? The tent. It was a lounge that had been created by the staff. And one was like up over the top.

Uh and I suppose we could have closed it, but we were all wrapped up and reasonably cozy. I took a picture of you off the show. That's right, that's right. Yes, you have a good photo. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealth Front. Did you know if you missed 10 of the best performing days after the 2008 crisis, you would have missed out on fifty percent, five zero percent of your returns. Don't miss out on the best days in the market. Stay invested in a long-term automated investment portfolio. Wealthfront pioneer the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as RoboAdvising, and they currently oversee$20 billion of assets for their clients.

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Tim. I Would you mind opening the non pea bottles so I can have some of the water? I'm I'm pleased that they have the color coding. And I'm going to Open this deck. Yeah. Come a long way from Casa Jagona's. Cheers, by the way. Yeah, cheers. Let me uh let me do that with the booze.

How much would you give me to drink a swig of that urine right now? What would what would you trade? I I like you too much, Ted. I wouldn't do that. I don't know how this came about, but I ended up This is only for you, my fine listeners. No such thing as TMI. I remember at some point

I don't know what it was. That was good. That was good. So let me take a break from the pea bottle. I'm gonna come back to drinking my own urine story. Matt is the master. Of what is known in Japanese as Oyajigu. Oyajigu. Okay. So

O Yadji. Oyadji is like Pops. It's like saying dad, but in a really informal way. And then Gagu is gag. And uh As it turns out, cross culturally

Dad's love. pun and wordplay. So like if the shitty pun comes up and and often did in my host family when I was fifteen in Japan, then the host brother would be like Oiadi Oyaji Yagi Yamite. And Matt is the master. So yeah, you can't spell you can't spell Tim without T M I. That is actually very, very good. That's very, very good. I did take in that same apartment in San Francisco. I remember at one point Just deciding.

You know what? I think I should sample my own urine. For what reason, I can't recall. And I did, and you've seen how much water I consume. So it's actually totally fine. It was it was it was totally fine. It wasn't oversaturated with B vitamins or anything that will affect the taste, I suspect. Not that I've had many samplings. But uh

I will say I don't make a regular practice of drinking my urine or I recommend it. This is not medical advice. It's actually pretty stupid uh as a story to begin with. But you did it so others don't have to. I did it so others don't have to. Yeah. It wasn't the most delicious thing I've ever had. All right. So let me uh let me offer you You want me to choose a card or do you want to choose a card? Uh, go for it. All right. So let's see.

And you can always refuse. Would you say your recordings in Antarctica have been intense? Intense. Is that another pun? Oh intense Oh my God, that was so bad. That was good. That was good. That was good. You can't bat a thousand. Intense.

You know? Tru fact. As my friend Kelly Starred likes to say. True fact. True fact in Paris. Uh here's one. What is one fear you would like to conquer?

Hm. You're gonna answer the same one? I can or you could choose another one. Yeah. I think that'd be it'd be fun if we both answer it.

Inspire. A different way of thinking about it in each other. You know, I have a hang up Around Body issues.

Mm. And Exercise and stuff. Yeah. And it kinda got

bigger in like the past six months. And as I'm thirty-seven now. Ooh. Not the old man young age. Mollenweg. And um Yeah, I think that's a fear I like to conquer'cause it's totally irrational. What is the fear exactly?

I don't know how to articulate it, but there's something where I don't know how to articulate it.'Cause it's it's a fear. It's not it's not rational, it's not something I can put into words. Well, I mean there are there are a lot of fears that are rational, right? So just because it's a fear doesn't automatically make it ir irrational. I think this is probably irrational one. Yeah. All right. Um Yeah, something around

It's like an insecurity. I'm not gonna let you go. So is it an insecurity around Appearance? I think it's something. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I'm sorry, I don't know how to go deeper. We can this is this is where I should do Do some heavy lifting or help do some heavy lifting. What would be an example of a time when it shows up for you? The resistance

I feel around Sort of exercise. That's been growing. I would say. Where

It's It shows up like a fear in that I can think of so many Excuses why? Including like I'm gonna injure myself again or I'm gonna hurt my knee or Uh my wrists are bad right now, so I shouldn't be doing this or like

Things like that. But which really just add up to be a bunch of excuses. What do you think that is protecting you? From Like if you did not have

It seems like Yeah, you're a smart guy. Mm-hmm. So there's probably some part of you not to like go too far into like IFS Dick Schwartz type stuff, but Like your subconscious is trying to protect you from something.

Actually. What is it protecting you from? What do you think it is? I don't know. I mean it could be injury, right? It could be Performing below your expectations? Perhaps like if you exercise that you're not going to meet some standard you've said for yourself in your mind. I have no idea.

Mm. So it sounds like a it's a hesitancy. That you can't fully explain. Therefore it's kind of falling into the category of fear for you? Yeah.

Okay. Have I for you? What's a fear you would like to overcome? Man, how much time do we have? Uh I don't I I think that's a bit of an an an overstatement, but I I mean

Shit. If we're drinking Drinking our single malt. And really going for it, I would say The fear that I am just hardwired. And

Also just software coded through DNA. To be depressed and unhappy. And that that is a baseline I cannot escape. Like there is the gravitational pull. Two Out of the box settings is so strong.

That no matter what I do, no matter how many morning routines I tweak, no matter how much I exercise, no matter how much I program meticulously different areas of my life. Exact. regression to the mean is always going to be to a place of Depression or

This is a strong word, but like self loathing. Something that is not quite self loathing. at a ten out of ten intensity, but like a discontent and disappointment with Myself. That's right.

That locked in something about mine, which is Make a fear of being bigger. Bigger. Yeah, my family's bigger. Bigger meaning. I feel like obese. Yeah. Like I have some pre built settings. Proclivity towards that. Yeah.

Hm. Do you believe that? That's your Do I believe you overcome that or Depends on the day. Depends on whether I've had a good stretch.

Or a bad stretch or An average stretch? I mean Even if it is Deluding myself.

I want to believe that it is Something I can overcome. I don't See. how the alternative plays out.

Is terrifying to me. If I truly, truly believe that a hundred percent of the time. The consequences of that are like staggeringly Scary. So

I don't want to believe that. But If I were a scientist just looking at the data set, I'd be like, Yeah, like if we're if we're rating days like negative two, negative one, zero, plus one. Plus two. Somewhat like Jim Collins does. If people want more on that, you can just listen to the first

But I would say I probably average out. Negative one? Mm.

Just on an emotional tone. The gestalt of the day being sort of Positive energy, negative energy. Not no way. That'd be interesting to do. I should do it also because I do think and my girlfriend has certainly pointed this out and I I recognize it as true that I have a

negative selection bias. I think a lot of humans have negative selection bias because you get rewarded by overreacting to Threats. You feel a dollar you lose seven times more than a dollar you you gain or keep? Yeah. I mean they've done studies around this. Yeah, like how hard would you work to make a hundred dollars versus how hard would you work to avoid having like a hundred dollars stolen or taken from you, right? Yeah. So

That is one of my macro fears. Tied to that would be a fear I don't know if people can hear that. Because there's no there are no birds. There's no insects. The Footsteps on the snow are like deafeningly loud. The foot traffic is so loud, which makes it even harder to sleep around here. Where was that going? Or was I? Uh the macro fear. That's related. Yeah, that is related is that I will never have enough energy. So and I think

Some of that ties back to undiagnosed Lyme when I was a kid, which has been verified because I then later had confirmed Lime and I grew up on Long Island where it's very, very, very common. And when I was properly diagnosed after very severe symptoms The second time, which was I don't know, two thousand twelve or thirteen or fourteen. When they did the Elisa

I think it's the at least a blot test and other testing. They gave me my results and the first thing they said was, Well, you realize like you've had Lyme disease before, right? Wow. Because I was showing I guess the long term antibodies, like the serologic testing. I might I might not be getting the details right, but suffice to say I'd already had Lyme, but it had gone undiagnosed. Which meant it was untreated for a long, long time. So I don't know how much to attribute to that versus a family history of depression versus other things, but I've always struggled with

energy level. So as like the currency in which I am poorest. Hm. And it doesn't matter how much time you have, attention. Or otherwise, like if you don't have just the battery. To execute. Your

S O L. Do you think people who listen to your podcasts? Would cast that about you? I don't think so because They're getting one percent of my time. Not one percent, but it's like I don't spend all of my time recording conversations. Right. So they get to hear me.

When I'm having fun usually, right? Like I I enjoy the podcast. Like it is very n deeply nourishing. To me and when it starts to feel anything other than that, I change something, right? Like I decrease the frequency. Like I could do it three times, four times, five times a week, but it would start to feel like a burden or a chore. And I don't want that to be the case. So I don't think most people would guess that.

You know, you did share with me. I don't know if you're willing to share here or want to share here. That you um Got a lot of comfort. From A revelation.

Oh, is this the existential piece? Yeah. Yeah, I'm willing to share. This is a weird one. So This is kinda ties into another fear. Which is I don't know if it's a fear, I mean it's a belief.

The consequences of which are really Unpleasant. Although I've started to look at it s in a slightly different way. And I and I'll back into it by saying like I think meaninglessness can be Terrifying, but in a way it can also be Liberating'cause it frees you to kinda do.

Hm whatever you choose to pursue. And Over the last year. We've we've been talking about this on this trip. I we agree on a lot of things. The one not trivial, very non trivial thing that I think we have differing opinions on is just like inherent human nature. Right. I have a I don't want to call it dystopian, but

I tend to think we are closer to chimps than not, right? Like like one percent of our data. Hobbsian. Exactly. Yeah. Nasty brutish short. N Nasty Brutish short, right. Hobbsian is the is the right way to put it. And I'm a little more Pinker esque, you know, better at Angels of our Nature. Yeah, exactly. So And as such. I have been involved. In a bunch of things over the last handful of years.

including the psychedelic therapeutics, especially on the nonprofit research side. I haven't done any for profit. And you've been a huge supporter. Uh of that world as well. So Thanks for that.

Thank you. It's a big deal. And Then also with different conservation work in the Amazon and North America and so on and have just run into what I view as this kind of I know I know one could argue against it, but like

Almost for me like an irrefutable truth. Just based on Overwhelming evidence. that I've faced over and over again, that like humans cannot resist pissing in the pool. Like they can't help themselves. Like they're so competitive. And driven by incentives, which of course all animals are.

And It has been um For me I have I'll make it active, right? Like I have Depressed myself.

And upset myself. So I'll make it transitive here. Right. So that I have some agency. To repeatedly run into what I view as like Unavoidable self destructive. Tancies.

Which on smaller scales aren't necessarily self destructive, but at larger scales with billions and billions of people become just untenable. I was just like, What's the point? I found it very difficult to get up and muster any kind of enthusiasm or motivation to like knock out these Just like bullshit items that might be very interesting, but I'm like, okay, I'm gonna like invest in some like the whatever the fuck app that does something that really isn't.

making a dent and like what's the point of all this?'Cause like ultimately we're all like just careening towards this incineration that I don't see as particularly avoidable. And then I was reading this book. Which does punch the four hour work week in the balls a little bit, which I found kind of funny, honestly. So it's a it does make a reference to the four hour work week and not in a terribly kind way. Which is fine. Because what do you expect if you title a book The Four Hour Work Week, but the book also has a four in the title, but it's called Four Thousand Weeks. That refers to the average lifespan of humans. And there's actually a lot of great exploration in this book looking at the

frailty and the fallacies of time management and productivity. And a kind of to-do list obsession and Optimization of different types. And One of the chapters

I think it's called something like Cosmic Insignificance. Therapy. Which I think this morning was a great example of. Where You actually find it liberating to realize how much

It doesn't matter. It's so you end up finding it kind of inspiring and freeing instead of debilitating and crushing. Which is I find hard to do because I tilt towards the darkness. And so the realization was like, Well, okay, look, even if people are just hell bent on self destruction and

We head that way. At the end of the day. Our son is going to Red giant, white dwarf. Caplooe.

And then the earth is gone anyway. All life on earth is gone at that point. Or as certainly as far as I know, all life on earth. So even if like we kill our own species and all sorts of other species, off on this planet, the life per se of Earth is finite. Regardless. And I was like oh Actually. That brings some peace to me. Sunshine Tim. Yeah, it's yeah, I mean God, this sounds so depressing, but

Like this is kinda the A lot of the shit that I think about in part because And or this is supposed to be me asking you questions. We're gonna get to another question, but it's like I don't know if you've experienced it,'cause like you didn't grow up rich. I didn't grow up rich.

And uh At least for me. in my group of friends and their families growing up, like lower middle class, it was like, if only we had money. Our problems would be solved. Like here are these problems. If we just had money, it doesn't grow on trees, and like, oh that rich person, wouldn't that be nice? Everything is

Smooth as gravy over there, I'm sure. And then you pursue, you pursue, you pursue, and you can kind of Push your issues to the side. In pursuit of becoming quote unquote successful because the assumption underlying it is

When I have X or Y or Z, whatever that amount is. Then I'll be happy. Then I'll be happy. And then you like then you like run through. One of those finish lines and you're like Well, wait a fucking second, like this is a false bill of lading. That didn't work at all. And uh Which, you know, by the way, when some people ask like what

would you change or emphasize if you wrote the four hour work week again? It's the filling the void chapter. Which is a chapter that people kinda skip over'cause it's not this like hyper practical tactical nuts and bolts chapter, but it's really important. So Yeah, that's my very, very, very long rambling. Answer to the existential realization, which is like, Oh yeah, this planet's got a finite life span anyway, as far as like

Organic. Life goes. So That's something I always find interesting, is sometimes relief. Um What seems like existential.

Problems. We come from the most unusual places. Yeah. And so I was surprised that this came. for you that that was a comforting thought. But I do I do Believe in the cosmic. Insignificance. It's very humbling to think like

our time span. Even All of human recorded history. It's just a speck of dust of the universe's time span. Yeah.

One thing I really appreciate about you, Tim. Is that you engage. With Work and thinkers. that

Some people might assume are the opposite of you. Or Advocate for different things. But it's all part of your your growth and your journey and Like firming up things. So I like that you went and write this book and how cool that it provided this relief for you, you know. Thanks, man.

It's a solid book. And uh the the way that I parsed it online was I put it on I guess Twitter and I said, uh, for people who have read this such and such book, you know, four thousand weeks How much would you recommend it to a friend?

From one to ten, no seven allowed. Which is something I learned from a person named Kyle Maynard because it forces people to like Pick a barely passing or pretty strong recommendation at eight. And the vast majority of recommendations or the vast majority of answers, and there could be a selection bias, obviously, right? People read the book in the first place. Yeah, exactly.

Came back at like nine eight nine ten. The vast majority. Uh which was certainly enough. to convince me to get it on Kindle and read a few chapters.

And uh ended up liking it a lot. I mean he In just because I can't I can't resist just a little jab. The author does use a lot of like ten dollar words where a ten cent word would work. So I think I'm pretty well educated, but I still had to look some words up. It's okay. He apparently punched a four-hour work week. He did punch the four hour work week in the nuts, but that's okay because uh you know, get in line. So How many years has it been since four hour work week?

It's published in April of 2007. So fourteen. It's It's a teenager. It's a teenage. It's going to college. It's starting high school. It's going to college in a few years. Yeah.

Incredible. Let's try another card. Let's try another card. All right. So You want me to read this one first?

God. It's more no that's a that's a fear's one. Here, I'll let you choose. And uh let me just Grab a few cards off the top. And again, for people interested, I don't even know if these are made anymore because I recall them being sold out or discontinued at some point. Holsty H O L S T E E reflection cards. I got these on Amazon. Dealer's choice. There's choice. And what's the light and dark side mean? Is one a tougher question? Yes.

half of the card is intended to be a more Difficult question. It's not always the case, but that's what it's intended to be. The crystal ball. Could tell you the truth about your life, the world, or anything else, what would you want to know?

I think you should answer that first,'cause I just finished a TED talk. What would I want to know? I wanna know what is before life and after life. I have the s I had the same answer. Really? Yeah. I had the same answer.

Yeah, it's it's one of those things I think is very difficult. To truly know. And it's very difficult, yeah. It's something humanity's grappled with in a million different ways. Yeah.

Probably as long as we've been conscious. And um Yeah. Curious about that. I need more, Matt. You gotta do more than just whisper to me about generalities. Wait more about what's interesting about the afterlife or the pre life.

This is this is obviously a big one, but like what do you You had to speculate. What do you think happens? I mean if you want to go with pre birth, we could do that. That's definitely a unusual way to approach it, but Well it's one I think why I thought of that is'cause I've done meditations before.

Where they say like Fe what it was like before you were born. That's what it'll be like after you're you're done. So like meditations on death. And so Yeah, in theory there's something before if there's something after, right? Yeah.

I'm gonna plug two books here. Um Annika Harris. Consciousness. Yep, this is after areas of consciousness. After our conversations on this trip, like that it's absolutely on my to read list. Great book. And I think it

It kinda gets this question. of pre life and after life as well because Where does the consciousness come from? When does it start? Where does it go? How is it suspended? One where under suspended. Yeah.

It's such it's such a interesting what turns it on and off. Yeah. What does it even really mean? And this book is a A fantastic kind of and brief. Um so very dense.

Uh densely packed. Or very valuable, I'd say. Not longer than it needs to be. Hab? And then David Eagleman. Hell.

Just some. Yeah. So good. Have we talked about that? Was it I Maybe you recommended it to me? It might have been. I think I did one of your books I recommend thing. Ah, books I've loved. Yeah. And uh Forty Tales of Afterlives. And each one starts

Basically at the moment of death. And then it's uh It's kind of something that happens afterwards and they're hilarious and it's a great bedtime read. Yeah. Short chapters, like three to two to five pages. Yeah. And it's nice to break it up nightly.

And some of them I've even read aloud to friends. When when you're a Burning Man, I did it as a gift I would read. One of these short stories to people. Some of my favorites are Descent of species. It was really great. And um and the opening one some is actually pretty fun.

Can you give a teaser? I think it'd be helpful to give people an example, since each of these short chapters is a hypothetical Manifestation of the afterlife. So what what might one be? So the opener, some, and I'll tell a little without giving away the amazing ending. You relive life.

But Ser really? So all the things that you did at different points broken up in your life, you do all at the same time. So you shower for like Eighty hours.

You sleep for thirty years. You cut your nails for like you know, your Trying to remember a word for like Two days. You're standing in line for you know fourteen days. And so it kinda goes through this almost laundry list of it.

Yeah. And um Yeah. Beautiful, I think it is. This is a great book. It is an exceptional book.

After the plugging these two books. What do you think? What happens? Or it doesn't happen. Unplug computer, lights out, that's it.

I'm looking forward to finding out some day. Not too soon. But um You said you had the same answer, so Wait, which answer? Yeah. Well I I just think it would help. I do think and maybe I'll yeah, I'd be open to a counter argument, but I do think it would just help you

Decide how to Spend your time. Better. in this particular iteration. If it's the one and only.

Thank you. Getting a little booze from a flask. Class. Uh And I mean it would answer so many Questions, right. I think the interesting thing was would humans truly be different.

What do you think by that? Would they how would they act differently? If we had a defendant answer. One, a lot of people think They do have a definitive answer. That's kind of the basis of many religions and things. So Not unusual.

And You know, a lot of people You could say that How would Anthony DeMello put it? They're not truly living.

Yeah. They need to wake up. They need to pay attention. Yeah. And that's Even though they might think there's This happening in the afterlife or Well, if you knew for sure though, I mean let's just say it's all right.

Hellfire and Brimstone. That's one thing. Right. Sins in the whole nine yards. Purgatory. Yeah, like the Judeo Christian model. But then if you had say karma and you're like reincarnated as a

Hamster or a corpus or a demigod, depending on your behavior, then that that would that would certainly Well, you would think would affect some choices. Right. If you knew what happened afterwards, definitively It would also affect how you viewed things. This is gonna get dark, folks, sorry, but like things like suicide. So the stoics Didn't have a particularly negative view of suicide.

But then once you get into the Judeo Christian Lens. It is most certainly. Negative. Right. And

That is one of many different things that would be Clarified. If you knew I mean if you were just simply zeroing out a character like ready player one. Yeah. That's one thing.

Right, insert coin. But would that make people less responsible with the lives they have right now? Defined responsible. Reckless, careless because they thought they could just insert another coin and play again. Well, if they knew they could, then it wouldn't be reckless. Yeah. I think um that's an interesting area of of thought. And it also reminds me of something I think

Which I hope expands a lot. In the coming years is um Ethical assisted euthanasia. Yeah. People end of life with waiting periods and all these sorts of things.

I know Hawaii is a place where you can do it. In a few different countries. Yeah, going back to some Seeing people pass away. Yeah. Past five years.

I understand why some people might choose to do that if they had a terminal illness illness or something. Yeah. Interesting we had the same answer. Mm-hmm. And not

All together completely. Unsurprising. Oh boy, that's a good one. Can I tell you what I'd like it to be? What you would like your answer to be? Yeah.

Yeah. Um Oh well you'd like the afterlife to be, okay. I think it'd be kinda cool if Our brains are like antennas to some deeper consciousness. And we reconnected with it.

Sort of went back to that non dual nature. Uh enlightenment. You mean like a drop of the ocean, returning to the ocean type situation? Yeah. I I find that comforting. Yeah.

I do too. All right. Here's one. Got one for you. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly. Would you change anything about the way you are living now? Why?

I'm gonna modify that question. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, what would you change about the way you are living now? Why? Mm. Nicely related. So our previous camera.

What I would change. Well what I did change after that tail end essay. Well. Spending more time with loved ones.

If I knew I had one year. Gosh, I've got so much left to do. You know? What's funny is Let's assume it's perfect health for a year and then just lights up. Yeah, yeah. I think I would

This is kind of a funny answer. I wouldn't have Thought of this before, but I'd write more. You'd write more. I did not see that coming. Tell me more.

It brings up for me like what's the legacy. How do I pass on the things I care about, like democratizing publishing and the web? So the generations that are gonna carry the torch there. And how much of what motivates me towards that lifelong mission.

Right, open source. I don't know if I've I've written about particularly well or articulated well that in a way that might inspire others. I mean WordPress is open source has Tens of thousands of contributors. So Like there are a good number of people involved, but I like

Yeah, I feel like for open source to truly win, we need millions of contributors. We need most of the world working on it. Because the alternative is proprietary. Bad for humanity things. So Yeah, I think I'd write and really try to write something that

Or write as much as possible. Things to bring more people contributing to open source. Mm. Tell me more. What else? If anything else.

I think that's really'cause that's my life mission. It really is. And so if my life was ending I think how do I Keep that mission going. I'm so

Envious. That that is so clear. I don't think most people Could sit here. I can't. Let's say.

X is my life mission. That's pretty fucking amazing. I mean Thank you. Well I I I mean it is. Liberating to have that defined. That can I want to say constraint, but not in a bad way, right? Like you've Kind of defined.

The target in the bullseye. in such a way that makes I would think it makes decision making Like your decision fatigue must be less, if that's clear. Does really help. Really helps clarify things.

You know that in the Memento Mori? Yeah. Memento more being meditating on death in the finite. Give or take a couple hundred. Left.

Try to move this You know, mission forward as much as to death. Right. That's not necessarily Firing on all cylinders. Yeah, I feel like I'm gonna keep working until I croak. Yeah.

Yeah, and also, you know, sometimes it's really hard. And there's days and weeks and months where A job. WordPress, automatic, everything could be very, very challenging. And also helps keep it going.

But I would say that it probably I think you do have that. Actually. Yeah. Oh.

Please fill me in. How do you spend your time? God, this is gonna be a good thing. Doing things like this. Yeah. And why did they do it?

Why do you share it? Why don't you keep all this amazing information for yourself? Because it's too I mean so Self aggrandising. I mean I I just I think that's

It's too humanizing and valuable to keep private if it's so easy to make public. Like it's nourishing to me, number one. And I know how much conversations like this I mean, if you and I were sitting here with no mics Bullshitting and drinking.

Single malt Scotch whiskey. We'd be having a similar conversation anyway. You know what I mean? We've had lots of these days, yeah. And The reason I started the podcast because I'd be having these conversations with friends. They would end and I'd be like, God, what a waste. Like it would be so That conversation was so helpful to me. I have to imagine it would be helpful to other people.

I think that's Drive to share. To learn and share, which I've seen. Entire Ten plus years I've known you.

It is a life mission. I can't imagine you ever stopping that. Yeah, I can't either. Like you're gonna be an old person's home and be like, I figured out this new way to like move the wheelchair. Like look what I can do. Like this is like just something that so I think you do have that and I think you should play with that to maybe our Yep. Find what's words resonate for you. And describing that around that learning and sharing.

Do you think you'll do this the rest of your life? Some form of this? Oh yeah, yeah. Some form of this. I mean, uh I just uh when people ask me like How long do you think you'll do the podcast? I'm like I can't. It's the first thing I've done. This consistently. Over an extended period of time.

And I can't think of a compelling reason. for why I would stop, right? Which is another reason why Even though I've had a bunch of conversations, I haven't Seriously considered. I mean you'll obviously support this, I think.

Doing anything that would put me b in a walled garden. Because it's just it's so kinda antithetical. If I were to sacrifice A large part of my ріch. or distribution. It just doesn't make sense, right? Like to have shackles on in any form or fashion.

would like suck. the soul out of what I'm doing. Which is not to say there couldn't be interesting collaborations with large platforms or companies. But to make any sacrifice

on the creative side or the editorial freedom side or Anything like that, it just wouldn't make any sense. So And you would do it even if you made no money. Yeah. You would pay to do it. You do pay to do it. I do pay to do it. So this is something something around that, I think, uh Interesting for

To find out. Because I can't imagine ever growing Stopping learning. And then not sharing it to whoever will listen. Ha ha

So you do that, I'll democratize publishing in the web. And commerce and I think that'll be fun. Yeah. One year. One year's really short. It's a short period of time. You know?

You think about the last year. interminably long and also Unbelievably short at the same time. Yeah. And Yeah, I think for me.

I don't know if she'd be game for this, but probably having kids. With my girlfriend. Mm-hmm. Like just to at least I mean, God, it's depressing to think about, but Also incredible to think about, like just e being there for the birth, like for a few months and then

Adios, amigo. Off I go. Uh but to have that experience. I th I think that would be Core to the next one. to the remaining year.

Uh I remember uh I d I don't know if he'd want his name mentioned, but a very famous scientist and I were chatting at one point and he mentioned having a kid pretty late in life. And his brother the first thing his brother said to him was Congratulations and welcome to the human race. He was like you're just and uh you know, we we chatted about that quite a bit.

But it just seems like So On some level. I'm not saying it's required, but like fundamental to a lot of obviously human existence, right? And our programming pointed towards procreation. Yeah. It's incredible how strong that drive is. Yeah, and it's like you talk to people who get like They g they have the most incredibly sophisticated rationalizations and at the end of the day it's like you're just on doing what you're programmed to do. And maybe there's a beauty in that. Maybe there's a real beauty in

kinda just fulfilling that. Like, yeah, you're a cutter ant, you carry fucking leaves around and you build shit and you're gigantic, you know, hand collin. And like that's just what you do and I have to imagine like it feels good to them to do that, or at least it would feel bad for them not to do that. Yeah. It's interesting you bring that up'cause that's something that changed for me in the past five years. Yeah. Okay. Wow. If we're willing to go there, let's let's go there. After my father passed.

I really w decided I went down a path of like okay. Have a kid. Yeah. And I think part of that was just thinking, Oh, I wish he had known

A grandchildren, uh a grandchild or something. And Part of that process was later. Deciding that that's not gonna be How I leave an impact on the world.

Mm. And so I I decided To not have kids. Yeah. And made that a very explicit. Communication and everything like that.

Because WordPress and this other work I'm doing. I want to be the thing that I I leave. And I don't feel like there's anything particularly good about my genetics that needs to be passed on or that I would be

A world unique. Parent. But I do think I'm I'm one of The people in the world that does have a chance to shape the future of the web. And uh

I just wanna focus all of my energy. Into that. Where would you put If you were a betting man, which of course you are, we're all betting people. We're all placing bets. Like everything's probability. Except for death and taxes, I guess. Maybe a few other things.

Where would you put the likelihood that that changes? I think you had an answer in mind when you asked me that. I No, this is this is not a leading question. I'm just curious. Yeah. And

As a guy, we do have some more optionality. Yeah. Uh around these things. You know? Never say never.

But that is That is my working Sort of software and firmware right now. Okay. So let's uh say twenty percent chance.

Maybe less. And That's an eight percent chance. Eight Oh wow, that's very precise. I like that. Eight percent. So next five years. Child being born.

Eight percent. Yeah. I fucking love that. That's gonna be the that's gonna be the headline of this podcast episode. Oh wow, you wanna try another one? Do you wanna Yeah, I'm seeing. Give it a go.

Wow, this is actually a question you ask all the time, which is kinda funny. We won't do that one. That's funny. What message would you put on a billboard for thousands of people to see every day? I did not get it from this deck, but yes, that is a question that I do ask. Don't drink your piss because I said it on a podcast. That's what I would put on my board. Okay, here we go. What are two things still on your bucket list? God. You know, part of me we had enough whiskey I just want to mention all these.

Like Ridiculous sexual fantasies, but we're not gonna get there. We need we need uh it's just just you and me and our few million of my best friends listening. Let's see.

Two on the bucket list. I'm not gonna count the kid. Because that's we already discussed it, so I'm gonna I'm gonna put that out of bounds. I might need some time to think about that, which is actually disturbing to me that I need time to think about it. Does anything immediately come to mind for you? Yeah, you know what once comes to mind. What's that? That could be a fun trip for us to do actually is the um

Aurora Borealis. So actually this comes full circle. You will like this. And I think I've told you this, but

Of course, catalyzed by the passing of your father, but you recommend the talent to me. And I'm with you during this I mean not with you, but we're in contact during this entire process. I read the tail end, I go, holy fucking shit. And by the way, everybody, just look up the tail end Tim Urban and read it. Do yourself a favor. And so I made a commitment.

Two Take my family on a trip once a year. And we haven't done it in the last two years. But the I think it was the first trip. My mom had always wanted to see the Aurora Borealis. I took my whole family to Iceland.

And went to the middle of nowhere. In the middle of winter, it's dark all the time, so it's the opposite of what we're experiencing right now. And we had Best Luck.

Ever And we just saw the most incredible displays of the Aurora Breales, and I have to say Much like what we experienced this morning. You cannot currently capture it.

At all. On video or camera. It just it Doesn't bear any resemblance to the

feeling and the experience of doing it in person. So I would definitely do that again. I was actually looking for it this morning because while the totality is happening, you can actually see stars. Yeah. Uh when the sun's totally covered by the moon. And um there's a different word for the southern borealis, I think. Or Southern or But um Yeah.

Wonder what that's called. The Aurora Borealis, the Australian Borealis. I'm making up words now. This is we don't have the internet. Does that be one thing on the bucket list? Does that remind you of anything on your bucket list? There's so many things I would like to do. I would really like to, for instance, this isn't a discrete item on a bucket list, but get back into scuba diving. Like s yeah. Scuba diving is one of my great loves. I haven't done it in so long and it is

really truly If you get to the point where where you're reasonably comfortable and you can do wall dives and really kinda hover Using your buoyancy. What's a wall dive?

Uh or like a cliff dive. So you where where you Let's say you're swimming over coral that's I'm just making this up thirty feet. Below the surface. Colours are still really

Vibrant At that depth. And then there's just a cliff. And you drop off of this cliff and you just go down this wall. So you're looking at

Let's just call it a coral reef, but it's vertical instead of horizontal, and you look down and it's just into the abyss. And so you swim along a wall. And you can drop down, go up and down looking at Everything there is to see and I often use scuba diving and it doesn't work for everyone, of course, but as a

Metaphor for Psychedelic experiences. Because In the beginning, like the first time you die of the first One, two or three times you dive.

You're just getting used to the equipment. you don't know necessarily reflexively how to grab your like octopus or if you lose your respirator, how to deal with that. You're constantly checking your gauge, you're screwing with your B C D. I think it's a B C D buoyancy control device. Yeah, B C D, where you're inf over inflating your vest and letting the air out. So you really don't have much control in your discombobulated, but you you might only notice a really large fish or a turtle or a shark.

Yeah. Senior peripheral vision. a school of fish, but you're you're really not seeing very much. And then as you get more comfortable. You see more and more, you notice more and more.

And then you get to a point where Let's just say on a wall dive. It doesn't have to be a wall dive, but where you can control your buoyancy, you're just at less at risk of smashing stuff with your feet, obviously, because you're looking down and it might be hundreds of thousands of feet. And you can just hover and look at like A square meter, right? Like three by three feet. And it is an entire universe of life and activity. And you could spend an hour just looking at that.

tiny patch. That wonder. This is something I thought about. This morning. I was like I think it's really hard to go wrong.

If you Chase. Chase might be too strong a word, but like pursue Wonder and Awe? You can probably overdo it.

And Dull your senses and your appreciation of that. But I think there's a wonder deficiency. And Most lives.

Not that you should have it three times a week. What's the line about a a universe and a grain of sand or something? Yeah. And So I think part of that Is what is there to wonder that's all around us all the time. Yeah. In your backyard, on a tree, and like Yeah. It's one of those things that we sometimes get reminded of. Yeah. And I always it always feels like the most obvious trait thing.

But also the most profound and meaningful. And the the scuba diving for me. Reinvigorates my powers of Fixed attention. Like my attention to detail. So when I

And I haven't gone scuba diving in quite a long time, but When you're underwater and you're really noticing all the details. If you try to maintain that as you come out of the water, you still notice more. There's a transfer. I just love that floating. So for me the buoyancy I actually got certified with another one of your guests, Adam Gazali. Oh really? And um

Adam. That point when if you breathe in you've got six pack PhD. You disgust me as new father. I know. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful fella. I'm just jealous. Of his pee bar workouts. And uh incredible, you know, really engaged dad too. It's been so fun to see. How much he's gotten out of that and given, obviously, but it's

Anyway, not to interrupt. So you got certified with Adam. Yeah. When you breathe in and you float up a little bit and you breathe out and you go down a little bit, when you can kinda control your buoyancy with like the air in your lungs. That's so meditative. Yeah. And I've actually like Gone to that space sometimes while meditating, or sometimes in dreams. I really, really appreciate it.

But it also reminds me, like, I wish we had like a Elon Musk of the ocean. Like some like crazy awesome billionaire who was like Exploring The ocean as much as Bezos and Musk are going to space.

I mean the first name that comes to mind Controversial guy, but He's really good at getting shit done. It's James Cameron. I was gonna say, but that's that's all we got. That's that's what we'll We need two billionaires fighting. Yeah, competing. And then that will uh we'll finally map the oceans and understand things. Yeah, I wonder who else is out there. There's gotta be somebody else out there. Well, we'll do we'll do some recon and put in the show notes. Hopefully one of your listeners can two of your listeners can start competing for conquering the ocean. I know there are a few of you billionaires out there listening to this right now, so

Please. I would like to spend more time with Especially after doing work with the Amazon conservation team. Which you've also contributed to

Co founded by Mark Plotkin. Famous ethnobotanist. One of the proteges of Richard Evan Schalty's out of Harvard.

I would like to spend some more time I have spent some, but I would like to spend much more time with some of the Indigenous groups. In this case in South America, it wouldn't have to be in South America, but because I have access. Before those ways.

Yeah. And I think it's uh somewhat and again, this is maybe where you and I differ, but I think it's kind of inevitable. Like I d I do think the march of so called progress and the introduction of Western goods and consumerism and So on the You know, once you have And

Big screen TVs and so on. There's a tremendous amount of erosion. That takes place and I'm not implying or saying that I Idolize

the old ways. I mean there's there's a lot of writing around the you know, this is like the so called noble savage and like, oh if we could all just revert to like living in communities of of fifty with the bare essentials, like everything would be wonderful. And I don't agree with that. I don't think that's true, but There is a lot of Medical knowledge and also Knowledge of how to treat

The whole person instead of just suppress symptoms. Especially not not despite, but especially including what we would consider Placebo effect. It's like harnessing the power of ritual and myth.

The back of the mind and narrative belief exactly to Basically Co opt. the power of the patient to help them heal themselves. Is

Dramatically underexplored. by Western scientists in those communities. Not to say that would be my job because I'm not a Western scientist. I'm not a scientist. But certainly on my bucket list would be spending time with with some of those groups.'Cause I do I do think And this gets into some pretty strange territory, but there are Other ways of knowing.

Tell me more. Well You're gonna give me a hard time. I'm gonna turn it around. Yeah, yeah. Uh gonna let you get away with that. Yeah, yeah. There are I do think there are other ways of knowing outside of things that are easy to put into a cube of a laboratory and test with Yeah, placebo controlled randomized.

Trials and it's I think it's Easy to become Dogmatic with scientism with like a capital S in the same way that it is easy to become dogmatic with. religion.

Without truly having even a basic literacy or understanding of What we're talking about when one discusses science, which is a scientific method, a structured way of testing a hypothesis. That's all it is. It's a journey, not a endpoint. Yeah, exactly. So so for instance, I mean the scientific method it i itself is not good at generating hypotheses. Let's go to testing hypotheses. And it's a framework for doing our best not to fool ourselves, in a sense.

But there are then observable phenomena. I'm just fingering this pile of ginger chews here. Might I might have a ginger chew. This is gonna it's gonna be terrible for audio. So don't take this as an indication of uh podcasting professionalism. But I am gonna have a ginger chew because I love ginger. Um I'll have this after I ask my next question instead of while talking. But There is a book I think it is actually called Another Way of Knowing. That

Just discuss this it's a discussion. It's basically an anthropological Exploration of a handful of tribes, I believe in Malaysia, so certainly not in South America in this instance. And uh phenomena that were

Repeatedly observed. that seem to Be very odd, for instance. when this particular anthropologist would head towards this village to visit and he would be going by boat and than trail and so on and so forth.

That there would always be Someone waiting. at a trailhead to meet him. As if they were expecting him, but But they had no prior notification that he was on his way.

So What's happening here, right? Is it repeated coincidence? Sure it could be, right? And like the self avowed hyper rationalists would be like, Well, come on now. Right. And then and uh That would be the default. But I think it's

perhaps helpful to ask like what might other possibilities be, right? Like let's generate a bunch of different hypotheses before we edit. Like what are a bunch of other I don't even want to say plausible. It could be outrageous, but like what are some other Hypotheses, theories for how this might happen. And In these tight knit.

Groups. Let's just call them tribes for simplicity. You see a lot of these behaviors that mimic some phenomena you see in the natural. world with other species. So if you read, say, of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez, he talks about wolves being tracked like by scientists that head off in a specific direction.

Traveling in a straight line. And They intersect with a herd of caribou that started like Three hundred miles away. And they perfectly intersect at at a given point where they're known to hunt. And it's like okay.

That's cool. What's happening? Like is it coincidence? Maybe, sure. You can't rule that out. It could be. And you know, I th I think about As I say this, I have some trepidation in saying it because there are people listening who be like, Oh my God, that's so ridiculous. Or they might even say that's so unscientific. Mm-hmm.

And what they mean by that is I can't provide Definitive proof or some like framework that provides perfect explanatory power. But as I was thinking about this morning.

If You have say an eclipse. Let's just think about thousands of years. before this morning. Eclipses were still happening.

Humanoids have been around for a long time, right? If the crossing of the Bering Strait supposedly was whatever it was twenty, thirty, forty thousand years ago, I don't really know. You know, humanoids uh even just in the North and South American contents have have been around for a long time and prior to that even longer. So they've been looking up and seeing these things. How would they have explained them thousands and thousands of years ago? Certain not the way that we explain them today. Nonetheless, The eclipses were happening.

It was kinda cool. We saw a a little presentation from The people here on different cultures and You know, I think in China it was a dragon eating the sun. In Vietnam is a frog. There was like

Different sort of thing. Miss and and Like every culture had a version of it. Which is pretty cool. And uh I'll give another example. Uh during but how's that connected to No, I'm gonna connect it. So what what I mean is I think you can observe and record phenomena.

And even in the absence of perfect explanatory power, some theory that holds up to Modern Scrutiny. Just the fact that someone can't explain how something works doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

That's what I'm trying to say. So for instance While we were in lockdown during Covid. There was this video that went. kind of viral of a coyote and a badger. Going out on a on a hunt together.

And like the coyote would like trail out in front. 'cause it wasn't trailing, it was leading in front and then like stop and like wag its tail and look like a dog playing with another dog. and then pull the badger along. And that from a naturalist or field bi biological perspective. least according to some people shouldn't happen, right? Like that. That was always a myth.

And in some of the the native northern native American They talked about The coyote and badger hunting together is talked about. Right. But it was considered a myth. And then boom, now you have some video footage and it's like uh Look at that.

Okay. So I do think that just because Cultures have superstitions and beliefs that are not founded on hard evidence. And let's not fool ourselves. We we still have a lot of that. Even the most technologically advanced among us have plenty of those.

That somehow a phenomenon can't exist. Mm. Right, if if you don't have perfect explanatory parents. That's just kinda ridiculous. Like if you study the history of scientific discovery. You observe a lot of things far before you can Radio waves, germs. Yeah, radio waves, germs we like so many invisible things happening all around us all the time. Yeah, we look back like

twenty years from whatever point in time. Or let's say fifty years, just to make it a little easier. fifty years before whatever point in time the discussion is taking place is like the dark ages, right? Like, oh my God, I can't believe we didn't know this. Oh my God, look how ridiculous that is in hindsight. sort of neglecting all the while the fact that of course If we were to be looking back at today, fifty years from now.

As some doctors say, like half of what we know is wrong, we just don't know which half. Yeah. That's why I think it's so important to make space for people to update their views. I think it's so silly when we like get mad at someone. Something I said thirty years ago. It's like yeah. You're waffling. No, like when I get new information, I change my mind. What do you do? Yeah. And that'll be I'm sure this thing's on your early podcast, maybe our last podcast that I no longer agree with.

Um That's beautiful. Like uh in programming we talk about like if you're not embarrassed by your old code. You're not learning. You should feel bad when you look at your light code. If you think it's better than you can do now, or great. That means you haven't grown as a developer.

So I think it's really important to to always be evolving in that way. But what you brought up does make me think about how much communication is happening. all around us all the time. Yeah. That we don't understand. Yeah.

Bird calls or what we heard with the penguins. How they're able to connect with each other and identify each other. I just saw the documentary Fantastic Fungi. Yeah. Yeah, great film. Stamets. Yeah, super fun. Yeah, Louis Schwartzburg. Yeah, and the the mycelium networks. Like there's so much

Communication that's happening all around us. And That's another thing that I think is so interesting to explore. Yeah. If we can't understand dogs.

Although I heard there's a startup around this that's trying to do like machine learning around dog barks. Oh God, machine learning. Machine is it machine learning or deep learning? Yeah. There are all these terms. Slap it on. When I'm AI, you can raise more money. Yeah, AI. Although I you know? Hey, if someone can help me I'll send my second bucket list and then we'll do a question. Better communicate with Molly. I'm into it. So what else would be on my bucket list? I want you know, it's it's such a simple thing. I wanna get another dog. Oh. Yeah, to to accompany Molly.

And also to have some overlap so that I I think if Molly passes away. It'll be very hard for me to get another dog. Would you clone Molly? No. You wanna share anything about cloning?

I I might know something about cloning. You you can clone cats, dogs, and horses now. In America. Well let's let's get more specific. I think the company's called Via Gen. And uh And yeah. You can pay and they will cl they take a skin sample. From the a living animal.

And uh they make an embryo from it and embed it in a surrogate. And Do you know anything about this? No comment. No comment. All right. Well I'll let the audience draw from that what they may. Uh I would not clone Molly. I think the uncanny valley I I I don't think I would do that.

Uh for myself. No. I wouldn't try to do like Molly two point oh. I think I'd feel very

Ethically conflicted about that. And it's like emotionally conflicted too. So I don't think I would do that. But I would get Yeah, like

Mini me to play with Molly. Yeah. Carries on the torch. I would definitely do that. Yeah. It was at the I was

But the person who who wanted to do the cloning. I was very, very surprised. You were surprised. I was incredibly surprised.

Uh that this person wanted to do it. Why were you suppressed? Religious backgrounds. She's Catholic. Are Catholics against cloning?

I don't know for sure, but it seems like it should be on that list. I don't know. Um I guess if it's skin it's okay, huh? Yeah. And um I was surprised, but it's been I I now have met this clone. Uh the first of the clones. Like a congressional hearing. I love your wording. And uh I've met said clone. Sa Mr. Sender. A beautiful thing about it is that the previous dog

Who's past? had had some was a rescue and had had like a difficult early life. And so even though I knew this dog for You know, fifteen years. She would always be pretty skittish with me or or any man in the room.

Which is just so heartbreaking to think like. What happened to her when she was younger. And this new dog with the same genetic material, the genetic twin. They're so excited to see me. It's like a six sigma excitement event.

uh when I walk through the door and it's uh kind of amazing. So Yeah. But but completely different. So I would say that It's not it's just like a twin. Genetic twin. Colouring will be different, personality's totally different. I think really shows you nature versus nurture as well. Mm-hmm.

Oh, that's for sure. Which I think for dogs would be huge. Although you know way more about dogs than I do. I spent so much time training Molly. And another reason I would like to have another dog is that she'll help train the other dog. Mm. Yeah, they'll pass on good and bad behavior, right? Yeah. She doesn't have too many baby hairs. She has a few but not too many. And um For people who want to look at

The communication side, you can Google I think there's a radio lab episode on the The wood wide web. as they call it. Which talks about inter I think it's inter. I always mix up inter and intra, but inter tree communication. Oh yeah.

And trees will privilege ones that are that are closely related to its property. Yeah. Yeah. And as they're gonna die, they'll basically like drop the resources into the root system and distribute to Direct descendants and pretty cool. It's so wild. And the uh

reciprocal relationship with The Functional networks. It's just just incredible. So You can look at that. Let's not forget also, it wasn't that long ago.

I don't know the exact dates, but I think it's within the last hundred years that doctors or surgeons would operate on infants without anesthesia. Wow. It's not that long ago. I might be getting it slightly off, but Our assumptions about consciousness. And communication.

and perception have been so consistently Off. That I think it's fair to assume that we're still pretty off. A lot to learn. Yeah. I think my second bucket I mean, honestly this trip has been a bucket list, I know. The Emperor, Penguins. Hope we were gonna hopefully see the

Totality over them, but it was too cloudy so that's why we came to this Union Glacier Camp. Seeing the totality. And so I'll I'll put a travel thing as the second one, which is I love to go to Egypt with my sister. Why Egypt? She wants to go.

And I Think it'd be pretty incredible. So Here's a bucket list for me is taking a bunch of my closest friends to Japan. Now's a huge snow cap.

In the background. Is it showing up on the levels? It showed up on the levels, so that it would be the The Tucker Five. Which the staff used to refer to because it was the largest Tucker snow cap that had ever been custom built.

And they would refer to it as the on radio, they would refer to it as the mother tucker. But then that got That was not PC apparently, so God V to it at some point. Now it's the Tucker five. How boring. I prefer the mother tucker. That might be part of this podcast episode title as well. Uh Which is funny'cause you always make fun of me for not cursing.

I do. I do. Yeah, Matt does not curse. Why don't you curse? Don't give me that I have so many vices I need to get rid of one. Nonsense. You always use that. You know, we don't have the internet, so I can't come but I think the English language has more words than any other language. Has a lot of words.

And I just love finding that really great word. To match things. Except for curse words. Except for curse words. Why not? And it's that a religious thing? I actually I had a um

One of the first WordPress blogs actually was a a private Blog myself and four friends. Had out of high school. And I was looking back at an entry from like ninety nine or something, and it had a curs word in it.

From you. From me. Ooh, what? I don't remember which one. Oh nor could I say But I was so shocked because I I think I've forgotten when I stopped. But I think it was influenced by reading someone or something. Around um Just expressness of the English language.

Finding the right word for things. And other ways so I I don't exclaim much. You don't have a very ejaculatory style to your speaking. What do you mean you don't exclaim much? What does that even mean? Um Yeah, I don't exclaim much. We have someone else on the trip who exclaims a lot, not me. Like an exclamation would be like if I stub my toe. Or something. Like I'm not gonna So what do you say when you stub your toe? You just bite your you just grin like bite your tongue and I probably just make a noise, like a yelp.

So if someone like cuts you off in traffic I guess I mean you may be so Zan that you just don't get annoyed, but if you get annoyed Did you say anything? I like to tell myself that they Uh doing something urgent.

Or have something in their life that like You know, they they really need to get that spot. When does when does Matt get upset? What are some Matt triggers? Ah, Matt triggers besides people Spelling WordPress with lyric as P. You know where I'm nodzing at all is I get upset on behalf of others. Oh yeah, I've seen this. You've seen it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so I'm more likely

To be probably to like a A fault. Like overly protective sometimes or the a person themselves might not be mad, but I'll like get mad on their behalf. Injustice.

Yeah. Really bugs me. So what's your response then? So most people are like, God fucking damn it. They Most people would curse to let some steam out. What do you do? Oh get even. Oh, this soft spoken weapon incredible

Menace. You gotta be careful with them all in wig. Or the Mullenberg, as one of the staff here referred to him as we did our drone test earlier. It's better than Mulletwig. Which I used to get in school. You're welcome. Mullet Weg. Or Adam Gazali calls you Mulle Legs. Mully legs. Yeah. It's another good one. Sometimes I get Mullin Web, which I actually kinda like. That's good. Get some web in there. Mullen Web? I like that. Okay, we'll come back to the get even part another time. Uh Let's see.

This is just the one that I pulled out. Say we do maybe one more,'cause my bladder's about to explode, but my fucking pee bottle is full. So I got nowhere to put it. Well, I guess I could try to pee into the uh Scotch whiskey bottle that we've now Sorry, Glen Maranji. I oh my god, that's like the worst. Yank pronunciation of that ever. But if I have to pee on your bottle, I apologize in advance. Uh do intentions matter more or less than actions? Hmm.

Yeah, what's the um legal word for this means ray or something? Oh, I don't know. Yes, I think they do. Intentions matter more. Oh.

Mm-hmm. Tell me more. Matt Mullenweb. Your intentions matter more. What I like about intentions is the intentionality. It's a choosing. It's the

Deliberatleness. Uh A decision. Go. to do something. And I think that's

Super important. For us to do. Maybe that sounded a little abstract. What you choose to do. Yeah. I think is more important than what necessarily happens along the way. But you have less control over. You have complete control over your choice.

So I'm gonna say intentions matter more than actions. Hm. But I'm defining actions in a certain way. How are you defining access? Things that happen.

The fuck are we talking about? Okay. Actions are things that happen. Yeah. So For example. You intend

Mm. Right. Your action on the way is you stumble and On my step on my foot. Okay. Your intention to me matters more than the fact you stepped on my foot and broke a toe.

So let's say. There's a Someone who decides I want to give back and do the right thing, but they have no money, no resources, no network, no leverage. And then there's So they have this pure intention.

But they don't end up being effective. In Impact, let's just say. And I I know that's kind of a broad broad statement. Then there's some person who just Cold blooded capitalist killer.

Takes no prisoners. Racks up. Incredible wealth. And then says I'm gonna give to a bunch of charities because that's the right social move.

Yeah, these boards. Create really good optics. Have a conversation. At these dinner parties. Blah blah blah blah blah. So it's it's not coming from virtuous intention, per se.

But Hasn't outsized. Impact just because of the sheer resources behind it. I'll take it. You'll take you. You'll take the second one.

I think doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still the right thing. Which I guess takes us more to actions than intention. Yeah. Mm. What's your answer to that one? I think actions count more.

Yeah. So it's the right thing for the wrong reason would still be the right thing and that matters more. Yeah. Yeah. For me. Which isn't to say I would like people to do the right thing for the wrong. Right. But Yeah, I was chatting with uh

I can't remember who it was I was chatting with, but they were saying Might've been when I got I got a tour of Bethlehem. From it. Arab Christian.

Which is definitely a minority. And I don't know if if it was him. It might've been someone else who was saying, you know, Jews and And Muslims should really get along on some level because they care more about actions than they do what's in your heart what you believe. Whereas Christians care about like

What you believe. Like you can do all these atrocious things, but then Truly believe and repent and Be saved. And I thought about how much

All of that has likely shaped. Cultures and empires and civilizations, right? Just that. Different lens on things. If it's like we don't care what you believe, it's all about what you do. Like follow these rituals, do these things, don't eat this thing on this date.

A B C D E Versus like the belief slash maybe intention is what matters. Even if you fuck up and make these terrible mistakes, that's okay. Of course. I'm gonna offend like pretty much everybody on the planet by what I just said. I think you missed a few. I am dramatically oversimplifying and sorry if if uh if I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. But I do think this question, though, that I threw out from

This deck of cards is an interesting one, right? Intention versus action. I'm glad that we disagreed on it too. Interesting things to mind. All right. Last question because my bladder is about to explode.

And the uh the neck of this uh Scotch whiskey bottle is way too narrow. For any attempt at reasonable accuracy. Jim is sharing again. You know, cook and like girth, who were kidding, we're in Antarctica. But in any case somebody with us was like, Let's say let's all take a naked shot together. And we're like, No. No, no. Not the most flattering shot we could do right now. What are you grateful for right now?

Hm. Give you a easy answer. And a harder answer. I mean, I'm so grateful. The time we spent together. Yeah. Me too. Me too.

The bigger and hard answer, I would say Is I'm so Astounded. And um The creation and roll out of the vaccines.

Mm. And Like gives me hope for maybe humanity solving other big problems if we can All kind of focus on the same thing at the same time.

And uh Yeah. So everyone who worked on Covet. We're grateful for. Hm. I'm also really grateful.

for the time that we've been able to spend. On this trip. It's been a while. Since we've done one of these. And We've been disconnected, which has been

Yeah. Twitchy for me. I I tried to download and scroll half the internet before we went offline. Let me just read about US postal service. I am grateful for this trip. It's been a great trip. I've had a lot of people ask me why I came to Antarctica. Like why am I interested in Antarctica? And I am interested in Antarctica, but the main reason is just to spend time With you. We've had so many great trips before. Yeah, include it in now this one.

Adding it to the list. So super grateful for that. Super grateful for my girlfriend. Honestly, she's uh Incredible. Puts up with a lot of nonsense.

I'm I don't think I'm the hardest person to And uh she's just She's just been such a wonderful compliment and I think we are so different yet our values are so similar. That it allows us to really stretch.

In ways that It's a good thing to look for in a partner, I would say. Are different in many ways, but then Exactly the same on a few key. Yeah, use goals.

Fighting style, communication. Yes, she is the cleanest fighter. I would say the cleanest fighter I've ever been with, probably. Influence on you too. I would say that. Yeah, I would say so. You know, hopefully she would say the same about me. I think so. Yeah, so I'm very, very grateful for that. And I'm grateful for having the bladder capacity of a camel.

Uh so I don't even know what time it is. God, what time is it? It's probably like ten or eleven, or God knows. It is now yeah, almost eleven. So probably a good time for the camp. It is eleven PM around. It is bright as high noon as we speak. Hey, also thank you. You know, we both shared a lot of personal stuff on this one. Yeah, we do. Thanks for that vulnerability. Yeah, thank you too, man.

Yeah, really great to do this. And uh let's not wait another five years. Alright. All right, man. Love you, bud. And uh to everybody Who is listening? You can find links to anything we've talked about, books and so on. I don't know what else.

We'll find a bunch of random links and put them in the show notes for you to peruse at timd blog. Thanks for that also. Recommendation from Mr. Mullin Web. Tim.blog slash podcast. And until next time. Yeah Just ever so s slightly kinder than you think necessary, and that includes to yourself. And thanks for tuning in. 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 Bold 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. 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.

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