#391: The Random Show — On Fasting, Forest Bathing, How to Say NO, Rebooting the Self, and Much More

Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now it is. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal emperoscellar. No

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This is Tim Ferris, and welcome to Kevin. Oh, he's cheating with a little sip. I'm just having a little sip of the uh the whiskey that we poured. Another random show. This is a random show slash crossover Tim Ferris of Wow, haven't even had any booze yet. Tim Ferris show slash wherever this gets cross posted. This is uh more like one of your Episodes that you do when people or where you drink and people call in?

Drop dial, yeah. Have you done one of those in a while? I have not done a drunk dial in quite a long time. So we can consider this a drunk dial among friends. Yeah. And you're here in person, like we're not in this remote, which is the same thing. Yeah. And it's our first time getting to check out your pad. And Portland. Undisclosed location. Okay, Portland. I wasn't sure how secret that was or not. And it made me think as we were prepping to sit down and do a random show How long I've known you because you mentioned that Toaster, your dog, just turned nine, is getting old. Yeah. Er

And I remember when he ate the cables. During one recording of The Random Show. I don't know if you remember that. Yeah. When he was a little pup. Oh dude, he was eating everything back then. He actually the scariest thing that ever happened with a toaster This shows you how what a bad parent I am. Um he ate through an actual entire plugged in outlet. No, sorry. It was not plugged in. It was a heating pad that had

Yeah, but he ate through the entire thing and I didn't even notice and I looked down and Can you imagine if that was plugged in? Like he there would be no toaster. It would have turned into a toas. Right, exactly. So we have we have a bunch of display items that are out. on this table in front of us, but w before we get to that Do you want to describe where we're

Sitting. Ah gosh, I would say that one of the things that I was um that is awesome about living in Portland, Oregon versus living in the Bay Area is that uh I was actually able to afford a place that is bigger than the size of a little apartment in San Francisco. So I built a house out here in Portland. So it took us took us three years to build it. Finally got it done.

And I think when you're like you know Well, not twelve,'cause I g I guess I would've wanted alcohol. When you're like eighteen years old You always think like how cool would it be to have like a secret passageway that leads into like a a bar or something, right? And speakeasy. Yeah, a little speakeasy. And you know, I always wanted uh something like that. And we were gonna put in a little entertainment room that would be bar slash, you know, listening to the vinyl, like a place to go and just kind of hang out anyway.

And so I talked to the architect and I was like, Can you put like a secret door to get in here? And so we built this like fake bookcase and uh it kinda swings open and then you have um a bar. So we're in our our little bar here. It's really Uh minimalists. Very Japanese in feel. Reminds me of some of the

Bars we've been to. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean that was definitely entirely. Yeah. And uh what was that one bar we went to Gen or something or other? Something Uh there's Bargen, which is It might be Bargen. Yeah. And the bartender has something like six or eight seats inside.

And Amazingly enough, I had met him many years before and we sat down. You might remember this a couple of years ago in Tokyo, and he's like I think I know you. And I was like, I think I know you. And it turned out that for the fo the food marathon that I did for the four hour chef, which was twenty six point two dishes in twenty four hours. These are large. portions generally. We went to a restaurant called Brush Stroke, I think it was called, and at the time he was their superstar master bartender who would

chip these softball sized uh ice spheres by hand with a little ice pick. That's one of the best parts of Japan is when they make their ice by hand with with a pick. Very high labor. Yeah. And this has that feel. And in fact, if you look at the wall, try to paint a picture for those of you listening. There is b this beautiful black wood. behind the bar where the floating shelves are, which have down lighting coming up onto these beautiful bottles of various types of alcohol.

And the liqueur and so on. What is the texture or the technique behind what I'm looking at. It has I'm not gonna say scalloped, but if you could imagine if you had pure black slate. In a In a shower on the wall and water

rivulets were running down that wall. It kinda has that look. It's shiny. What is that? Well it's uh this is a a wood that um I first learned about in Japan where they take this um these planks of wood and they actually use it for um the exterior of of houses and they Burn it. And so they actually take a torch to it, set it on fire, let it burn for a certain amount of time, it gets all the oils out and kind of just really hardens the wood.

They uh put it out and then it has this really beautiful age kind of burnt wood look to it. So We decide to use that rather than have like wallpaper or something in here, we decide to use that as um the backdrop. So it's all this like uh Japanese burnt wood. Um so it it does when you shine light on it, it looks like there's kinda like water coming down it or like a little scaly or but it's just really beautiful stuff. It's gorgeous. And we will put a link in the show notes to the actual technique and you can see how it's done because it's also used Obviously as you can see here.

Outside of Japan. I actually had this product. I don't know if they do it here. All right. Well, so if you want to go super honono, homono is like the real deal, the real McCoy in Japanese, they would say Homono. Uh and if so if you want to go real, real super homo, then you can bring the wood from Japan. Well the nice thing about doing it bringing it in from Japan, honestly, is that the cost? Well no. We were doing an entire house, right? This is not our exterior, it's one little room, right? So it really wasn't that expensive to bring it in. And what do we what are we drinking? I haven't had a sip yet. No, let's do it. So what is this? Um to kick things off, um, this is a very special Japanese whiskey.

Which I've never tried. Yeah, it's called the card series. And so um essentially what you're looking at here is this is the Joker. And it's done by um Ichiros Malt. And so this has um Basically what happened is they had all these whiskeys, fifty two different whiskeys that were put into barrels and then kind of forgotten about for a while. And then the uh distillery went Under

Um, they found the barrels and they decide to put it into fifty-two different bottles with different card faces. So this is the Joker right here. Um and essentially Every card has a different quantity. So this one here Um this is the least rare, um with three thousand six hundred and ninety bottles of the Joker that were produced. And the most rare I think were like fifty bottles or something like that.

Um so If you want to collect them, you can get the entire, you know, fifty two cards and they're really kinda hard to find because it became very culty and um sought after, and now you can find them up at auction and things like this. So This was um a little gift that uh to me that I tend to consume um rarely when I have good friends in town. Um because they are really expensive. But um you know, you always gotta have a couple of awesome ones in on the top shelf. Well cheers, man. Yeah. Cheers. It's uh it's so nice to see you and your family. Yeah.

And to see. grievously Irresponsible Kevin Rose. As a doting father. It's is quite a Twilight Zone experience. Well it's nice actually, like

Honestly. The other night when you guys got in Um You know, we like had a dinner. Like

You know, didn't go crazy on the wine, just had a little bit of wine, uh, jumped in the sauna. Uh, got in the hot tub and like called it a night at like ten, you know? Yeah. And so like that's kinda what you have to do when you have to wake up for kids at seven AM. So this is a spectacular. Isn't that amazing? Spectacular. Yeah, it's it's really good stuff. Single malt whiskey. This is really nice and I'm not a whiskey guy, I hate to admit, because that that makes me that sort of demotes me seventeen levels on the manliness scale for some people, but There are a few types of whiskey that I like.

This is one and then you happen to have the six of hearts up there. That one was another gift. Um where w I was went to a tasting where they were doing the card series tasting And they had you can see how much is left in that bottle. I mean, probably one finger worth, you know, in terms of height. Um

There was probably two fingers in total when I got it, and the lady that was doing the tasting was like you can just take the bottle with you, like take it home. And the bottles alone sell for a cr like that one I think is about a fifteen thousand dollar bottle, which is crazy. And um just take the bottle. You're like I will thank you. I'm like, that's like four grand right there. Like absolutely. Like thank you so much. So it was it was amazing. So Um those are the only two bottles. I I do not collect these. I think it's uh And the papy up there is is also Uh

That's that's good stuff as well. That is just incredible stuff. Yeah, I also started collecting the uh the Japanese whiskeys like the Hibiki aged Hibiki you can see up there as well. Um, so what's interesting about Habiki and and Tim, you probably remember this, but like when we were going to Japan back in the day. Japanese whiskies you could go in Tokyo and and down in the um the train station, there's actually one of my favorite places to buy Japanese whiskey. And you go in there and I was buying a bottles of Habiki thirty year.

for a right around you could get them for like four hundred dollars for an entire bottle. And it was I mean, that's a lot of money for a bottle. Like it's crazy, right? And you buy it. Um and you let your friends try it, and it's a crazy thirty year Japanese whiskey. And then probably about seven or eight years later. The

started running out of it because it became very popular and now they don't produce it at all. Did it become popular with Japanese people or was it West foreigners. Foreigners, yeah. So foreigners got like the they started realizing the Japanese were doing whiskey at a really high level Um and then they bought up all the thirty. And so they ran out. And so now What's crazy is that bottle that you know you know is just a few hundred dollars. And that same goes for the um The seventeen up there, which they also discontinued, which I heard they're bringing back for a short amount of time. Um, but anyway, the bottles went like ten X in price.

And so now I I think those are like four grand a bottle or something like that. It's it's crazy. But if you were buying it back in the day, it was like nobody knew, you know. It was just like oh wow, this is just a really m uh crazy expensive, I'll just get one bottle, try and, you know. It makes me wonder also if there's something to be said for developing a taste for whatever is unpopular at the time or unrecognized. Right. If Japanese whiskey is really popular, you could you could look at whiskey from a much lesser known location and get the best of that. Or you could look at something that maybe has lost its sex appeal temporarily, like Sake. We did it.

a tasting trip through part of Japan, you must remember that. Of course. And we had You talk about for my birth. Yeah, yeah. And we had the sake sort of right out of the Oh god, that was not gonna say barrels, but uh right out of the containers. Yeah. And I still have the with the ladle. And It was stellar. And very, very, very reasonable in terms of price. Yeah. You could really get something that was

Only found in Japan. Beautifully done. Something that you could share with friends on a special occasion that would not break the bank. Right. I mean the thing about uh you know this Tim way better than I do, but like the thing about I think I love most about Japan is that You can take any hobby or any profession. And they do it at the highest level, right? So it can be aged coffee. Remember when we had that aged coffee? Yes, I do. Uh that's you know thirty year old aged coffee by a little guy in a shop and

And there's um You know, six or seven other people sitting around the table. Good news, delicious. Bad news, it's a 45 minute pour over. Right. It's a really long process. Like you have to sit there and wait. But there's something amazing about being able to relax and sit there and wait for it and appreciate that person for what their their craft. And we don't do that in the States, man. We don't have that appreciation for people. individual people doing something at a high level. And you know what's awesome about that? Is that guy is recession proof, right? Like there's nothing's gonna automate his job away. It's the commodity stuff that's getting completely destroyed by technology, you know? Well you know it's uh it makes me think of something that um As a general

theme I bring up a lot when I'm talking to people who are starting businesses or thinking of starting businesses, and they have a high level of skill in anything. And almost every person has A superpower. Something that is At at the very least easier for them to do than for other most other people. They may recognize it, they may not recognize it.

But When I I'm talking to friends or acquaintances who are thinking of, say, starting a business. It's part of the reason why I always like to start with the conversation of what if you charged more than everyone else? Like what would you have to create that is sort of based on the superpower related to it, that would then be worth a price that is at the highest end. In part because it makes you

recession proof, right? Like you have to look at things. Through such a different lens. And The market doesn't have to be large. To have

A successful coffee shop. like that. Right. Market isn't large. Right. But this guy is such a specialist and has ritualized something. Into sort of the plug and play cult format for people like you or like me. I mean you like that shit. You got like saddles and shit at your house. I do like it. You know that

Yeah, I do. I do. I I'm An unapologetic Japanophile. Uh and and I can see the the good, the beautiful, the bad, and the ugly. In Japan as I can say in the US, but uh the attention to detail. Mm-hmm. The

beautiful and bordering on pathological obsession to detail. just scratches every itch for me. Yeah. And for that reason you mentioned the saddles. I don't think I've ever talked about this, but when I I don't spend Uh a whole lot of money on

Toys. Uh and I I do spend money On Uh a handful of things. Uh, but it's been very slow in development just to growing up with uh a family that was very, very money.

uh sort of scarcity minded in in a way. Um But for the four hour body, when I was writing the four hour body I remember promising myself If Not if at that point it was when I finish writing this book.

If it is number one, New York Times, not number two, but if it's number one, I'll reward myself with buying A Japanese antique of some type. Which I'd never I'd never bought any antiques of any type. And Love Japan have this I have always had I mean for decades this obsessive fascination with martial arts and years before

Uh, around the same time actually I was exploring a television series that involved doing horseback archery in Japan, which people can find online actually if they search Trial by Fire. I think it's it was Trial by Fire, can find this weird video of me in Japan doing horseback archery. And so I decided to get A saddle. That was what I would reward myself with. And So I ended up with one of these saddles. And in fact one was really cheap. Some of these auctions are so weird. I haven't participated in many of them. But you'll see

the unpredictability of auction dynamics. where you'll you'll see one item that for whatever reason has like two Uh you know, big swinging dick, muckety mucks who are just punching each other in the face. To win or with

The the ego reward of having this item. And so it goes for you five times what was anticipated. And then there's another one because that happened like knocks out a bunch of folks and it's just empty. Like no one's doing anything. So I ended up getting two saddles kind of for the price of one. Because who the hell wants Japanese saddles, turns out. Not a large market. Wooden Japanese saddle. Yeah, wooden Japanese saddles. And I love them. They give me so much joy every day. And uh something I've been thinking about. I want to give

Uh someone credit. Uh And I th I think I'm getting the pronunciation right here, but Adeo Rossi, uh, who's been involved in the startup scene for a very long time. I think it's Founder Institute, am I getting that right? Maybe not. In any case, but Adeo was recently in Austin, where I live, and he was doing a panel with a number of folks Who were all very, very good. And it was discussion of mental health. And he said something that I wrote down because uh it makes sense to me and I think I've bumped into this occasionally and I'm like, oh, there is some truth to this and that is

to uh the benefits of looking at things in the world and decisions, things you create and so on, not just through the lens of is this good or bad. uh which can often be an ethical choice, right? Like is this good for me in the world, is this bad for me in the world, but also through the lens of is this beautiful or not? And I think the the Japanese pay a lot of attention to this, right? Like you can get a cup of coffee Perfectly

Great cup of coffee many places in Japan. this guy we're talking about, for instance, just create a beautiful, unusual experience. That you talk about. Ten years later. You know, case case in point.

And that's There's a value to that. It's hard to really l smack a label on it, but there's really there's something uh in the essence of that that that I've grown to appreciate more over time. I hope some of that starts to carry over more into the United States and our, you know, appreciation of that as a culture because I feel like You know, uh as a technologist, like I I can just see it ten, fifteen years from now, like automation in a serious way is coming to pretty much every industry and every job, right?

And if it's something that can be taught In a very easy predictable way, it will be automated, right? It's the stuff that is creative. The stuff that is unique, the stuff that is hard to do and produce at mass at scale, that will stand out and you'll always be secure. Now

You're not gonna make You know that guy that's doing the the thirty, forty year old age coffee. He's pouring, you know, fifteen of those a day or whatever. The guy's not in a mansion like living it up in Tokyo, right? But you know, he takes a lot of pride in that. I think that i if you can be content And and really

believe in and enjoy what you're what you're producing and it fulfills, then that's all you really need. Yeah. And uh Japan's a a great In a way, it's sort of like a An art exhibit or a zoo of

Pocket obsessions. Yeah. Exactly. You can walk through every alleyway. You can walk through exactly. You can walk through certain neighborhoods down alleyways and each shop is I mean the size of a broom closet. Right. But specializes in there's one that specializes in like I'm making this up, but like succulent. display containers that you put on the wall in a small room like a bathroom. And that's the entire shop. Right. That's all they do. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. They go really deep down one particular little avenue that is their own that they can own, you know? Yeah. Totally.

What else what else appeals to you most? about Japan because I think there are many things I could talk about that appeal to me about Japan. I've lived there I have uh well comp a total l love affair, longstanding love for the language.

What appeals to you about Japan? Uh well, I think the cleanliness is a huge piece of it. You could eat off the ground pretty much everywhere in Tokyo, right? And it's a massive city. It is unbelievably clean. Which not not to interrupt but at all. Which reflects not just a priority on the state or government level. But a collective behavior. Right. That doesn't happen Top down.

It's a collective behavior. I don't know how they they kind of cultivate that. Like how does that You know, at a young age, how do you how do you kind of like make sure that carries on to the next generation, right? Yeah, that's a great question. I I I I

I'm not I don't have a ready answer for that, but I would say that And very often I mentioned personal superpowers earlier. They're very often right next to our greatest defects. Like they're somehow also very close to our s our greatest weaknesses. It's very frequent. And I think in Japan There is this light and dark side to shame side. Shame. Exactly. I was gonna bring up shame. So embarrassment, losing face, shame, bringing shame upon your family. Very big deal.

Right. And like being in member, I don't know, like they're embarrassed for you, which is crazy. Like sometimes like when you do something that's like awkward, they'll like rush out to give you something so that you're not embarrassed'cause they're embarrassed for you. Oh yeah. There are multiple levels of like recursive humiliation in Japan. It's it's like the Just like the language and the the culture has so many complex etiquette rules around hierarchy and I there are there is

Uh honoring language there is uh what you would call in English, I guess, humbling language for yourself, which is self deprecating. There are all these different layers Uh grammar and words that change based on how you relate to someone else. And it's the same with embarrassment. I think that's Uh something that they've

like teased out into a very complex set of rules and awkward interactions. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I I think the thing that sealed it for me is one time I was waiting for an Uber out there and um in Tokyo and I was looking around and I saw this old man coming outside of his house. And he had a a rag in his hand and he was polishing his mailbox. Like Like seriously like putting and I was there waiting like twenty minutes for the Uber, and the guy's like polishing it nonstop, and I'm like

Wow. Yeah. I don't polish my mailbox. Ha ha You know, it's just like That that's like next level kind of like commitment to cleanliness and just respect for your items.

Like how often do we just like throw shit out and just like don't recycle and Oh. I wish we had more of that in our culture, but you know, uh you're right, it's a double edged sword. There's there's a shame component as well. Yeah, but it's it's worth exposing yourself to if you have the opportunity or the means to do so. Uh I I get asked a lot, what is your favorite place to travel? And it's an impossible question for me to answer because it really depends on China? Yeah. China. I love parts of China. I've had great trips to China. I've spent time in Taiwan, but there are also some really rough having lived in Beijing where I decided it was healthier not to run outside because

My I would just Blow soot out my nose afterwards. We had the worst trip. Well, we had we had a tricky trip. Yeah, where you got completely scammed with artwork. Yeah, well not only that, but think about w we were Tim and I went out to like the middle of the year. There is a random show. If you search for like Random Show China edition, that you you can flash back a couple of years. A couple years. That was like eight years ago or something. Anyway, there was maggots that we were having to shit into and it was really disgusting. It was a rough trip. It was rough. It was a rough trip. Yeah. Uh

And there are many answers that I could give, right? I mean I I have really enjoyed some trips in China. I've really enjoyed but it depends on what you want to get out of the trip. Right. Right. If you want to feel totally lost like an alien Yeah on a new planet. But at the same time be in almost no danger whatsoever. Japan's perfect. Yes. If if you want to visit an alien landscape and really feel like an alien. You will get off the plane and everything will be alien. And in all the right ways. Like people The cool thing about Japan is no one's a dick to you if you don't know Japanese.

Which is amazing. Which is amazing. If you think about it. Everybody's super friendly and you know, obviously if you're gonna be a good tourist as you should, you should pick up like, you know, a half dozen little phrases that you can say to people. But outside of that, you really don't need to know the language. And and uh they have the most um From a l linguistic perspective, the most layup friendly overreact uh encouragement you can imagine, right? Let's contrast this. I love Paris. It's one of my favorite cities in the world. Oh yeah. But

There are Certain people actually this is more common And uh in Montreal, not to throw them under the bus. But if if you don't speak really good French that you'll kinda get scoffed at.

And it's it's very and hard. Taxi drivers in Paris are dicks. Straight up. Like you know that. So right. So if you in other words, even if you speak If you're eighty percent of the way there, if you're a B plus student you're still gonna have a tough time impressing anyone. Or getting a pat on the back. Right. Whereas in Japan If you can and uh when we were there with a couple of friends, including uh our mutual friend Tony Conrad.

And Tony thought this was hilarious. I'm like imagine for a second what you sound like to them. If you can imagine somebody in the most broken English possible being like Can you hunger bathroom, please. You know, that's basically what you sound like in Japanese to them. And but you say that and you sound like sloth from the Goonies and they're like, oh Oh Jose d'un there!

Whoa. And they do give it this like hand clap for like performing like a seal at SeaWorld. And it's it feels really good. Yeah. But uh but yeah, all you need to know is is good morning and where's the bathroom. And you're you're you're like mu the Michael Jordan of Japanese. Two. Yeah, you're gonna encounter. What else do we have here? We got we got some other random items laid out. We've done these random shows where we talk about books that we're reading, we talk about products that we're liking, like things like that. So I mean I just grabbed a couple things that

Or actually there I th I might as well continue down the Japanese theme. So I moving to Portland have been into forest bathing. Which is started in Japan.

And the idea is that there are so many people because of the work culture out there that they actually prescribe doctors prescribe going into the forest and using it as a a way to walk and relax and unwind. And there's been a bunch of research that's been done in these forests. um trying to figure out what is it that's dropping people's cortisol levels that's dropping like uh increasing their um uh what is the killer cell count, like they they did all these studies where they drew blood and they checked on people that were walking in the forest and all these different biomarkers improved. And so there were a few things that they were able to conclude. One

There's this certain bacteria in the soil that's supposed to be really good for you. Um that's in Japan and Uh, the second is uh I'm sure just disconnecting and being in the forest is a big part of it, but also the scents and the aromas that the trees were putting off. And so Um there is a few trees in particular

that they pulled out um and distilled down into essential oils and then In the hospitals They would diffuse them out. So the and they saw a dramatic decrease in people getting sick at the hospitals in terms of like people getting f flues and colds and things like that. And so I basically read this entire book on forest bathing and decided to buy a few of these essential oils and use them

Um you know you can either diffuse them in your room. Or you can uh pour'em over, you know, hot coals and an asana. Um, Hanochi is obviously a a very um popular tree out there. So I got some Hanoki oil Um, and there's I think there's four or five different ones. Um another one is uh Heba wood.

This is another one here that you can smell. And they smell fantastic. I don't I'm not here to sell you essential oils. I don't have the I don't have the brands to recommend But they're I mean smell that. It smells like a Japanese spa. Which one is that? That's the Heba wood.

Hebowood. That does sm smell fantastic. Yeah. It's it's really cool stuff. But Um, anyway, so there's a a couple different books out there on forest bathing. You can just search Amazon for that. Um If you're really into just trying to figure out how to slow down a little bit.

And learn more about the kind of Japanese way of disappearing into the forest and walking in the forest for longevity and health. Um you can learn a lot about it in this book and they they outline all the different essential oils there. Do you remember which one you read? I do if you were to I can you know what I can pull it up and I just searched forest bathing on Google and the Third result. Well let's go in order four. These are the s suggested results. Force bathing. Force Bathing book. Forced Bathing Portland.

No way three. Well, that's because it knows you hear like it's using GPS. So creepy. Okay. Well We did some force bathing today, which was nice. We did. I have to say Portland is one of the certainly from a mycological

Right, from a fungi mushroom perspective, one of the most incredible force building opportunities out there. Yeah, this is the book that I I read right here, um, Forest Bathing, How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness. Um by Doctor Quing Li. And so that was one of the researchers that was um doing all this out in uh out in Tokyo. So force bathing in Japanese is Shinden Yoku. Shindin Yoku.

S H I N R I N Yoku. Yoku is the bath portion of that. What Uh what is is that one of your items right? Yeah, I don't really want to talk about that. We have so many oils. This is another oil. It's like a beard oil I use. It's great. So you know, one of the one of the books that I am rereading and I don't reread a lot of books, but this is one that I've read probably five or six times in the last Yeah.

Is one that came through a recommendation from someone you also know, Peter Maluk. And he was a podcast guest. Mostly involved in finance. And wealth management and things along those lines. Investing.

But the book he recommended was Awareness by A Jesuit priest also as I Call. A

psychotherapist named Anthony De Mello. Have you ever read this book? No, I haven't. And he but the the sales pitch, which wasn't intended to be a pitch, that got me was Every time I read this book for For T a few weeks afterwards, I feel an incredible sense of peace. And I'm paraphrasing what he said something like that, and I was like

That's an odd statement. coming out coming from the rest of the conversation. Yeah. It was a a sharp contrast to a lot of the subject matter, and I thought Interesting. All right. Well, awareness. And I looked it up and I think the subtitle, there are two different subtitles for some reason, but one of the subtitles is the the promises and perils of reality or something like that. Interesting subtitle. and read this book pairs very well with Sam Harris's Waking Up app, actually. But uh

has a lot of sort of oh fuck caliber aha moments in this book. From a from the perspective of self awareness and distinguishing between, say, the labels and stories you use from yourself and the self. Uh it's also a very funny book. It's uh effectively a transcript of lessons or Uh weekend courses that were given by Anthony DeMello. And

As I am always, I was very skeptical going into this book because I thought it might just be another collection of woo-woo. hand wavy bullshit because a lot of these books are. Yeah. And it it really had an impact on my life immediately and uh has become this sort of uh reboot in the sense that occcasionally I'm sure everyone has has had the experience that the f your phone is just kinda slow, things aren't working, maybe your bars are dropping. Shit's just going kinda wonky and you're like, you know what?

I need to restart my phone. Yeah, you have real phone issues. Like I'm in outside of that, like I can't text you. It turns into like those green text. Oh yeah, my phone needs an update. This is very old phone. I tend I'm very dull edge when it comes to phones. I wait until I want all as many bugs to be fixed Found and fixed with new versions of iOS new man thing to say. Give me the old I have an iPhone six S or whatever this is. It's ancient. Yeah um so eventually I'll get a new phone. But the but the the point that I'm making is

when your phone isn't working, when you're having trouble with your computer when you're in trouble with ICAL, the f with one of the first things that someone is going to ask you. If you go to a genius bar or deal the tech, um sort of tech savvy person is when's the last time you rebooted this? When's the last time you quit and restarted? And for me.

This book, Awareness by Anthony DeMelo, has that effect. That's awesome. Saying this sounds awesome. And I'm happy to. This this is one of a handful of books that I now buy by the dozen in paperback. It's a short book. It's very fast read. that I buy by the dozen to have in my house so I can give them to friends. I'm I I literally have an entire shelf in my guest bedroom. I can tell you what the other books are. Well, I appreciate you. I this is the first time I'm hearing that. Where's my copy, dude? It's like my friends. You don't understand I've been My friends who visit Austin. I know you have an entire brood, uh you know, sort of pending soccer team that you need to cart around the world, but The uh

Oh, audible, dude it's not unaudible. You'll see that. If it's not on Audible, I probably tried to get the rights at some point. But Awareness by Anthony DeMelo You can get it on Kindle. That much I know. Well, I have the new Kindle right there. I was that's one of the things I was gonna talk about. This book has a probably ninety percent hit rate.

with people I recommend it too. That's awesome. It it's really good. The other books that I have are How to Change Your Mind. Michael Holland. I have a whole rack of that book. And then also The Gift, which is a collection of poems by Hafez. H A F I Z, which Uh, which is just a a wonderful and very funny collection.

of of poems and uh I'm not the person historically who has read poetry. Yeah. By any stretch. Are you starting to get into poetry? Uh I in the last few years.

I've been reading a few poets, not many. and also become very open to Uh it seems it seems like maybe unrefined poetry in the sense that I I I've been turned off of poetry many times in the past. Yeah. I think

because there's a there's a breed of poet or a breed of poetry fan. Who seems to be similar to the Hoidey choidey. fan of say abstract art where it's like if if it if you need an explanation then you don't get it. Right kind of thing. There's a lot of poetry where I read it and I'm like, I don't fucking get it. Right. And I'm not into that kind of poetry. Right. But hafez is makes perfect sense to me.

Yeah. Yeah, maybe spending a little bit of time in psychedelic space helps with that. Uh And then poetry like Mary Oliver. Mary Oliver's amazing. I've really become a huge fan of of her work. A handful of folks. I I I don't have a lot of exposure. But w have you been reading poetry? Well, I just got a book on how to read poetry, actually. Um that I thought was pretty interesting. I went down to Powell's um probably just a month or so ago.

And I was uh Powell's is a for people that don't know. It's it's like one of the best well, I I would say it's the best bookstore in the United States for sure. Um that's actually a still a bookstore that's independent bookstore that's thriving and doing really well here in Portland. Uh it's massive. It's like the size of like a Costco or something. Um Enormous. Yeah, and they ha they have a they have a whole poetry section.

And you know, for me, I've I've always been a fan of I I invested in a company called Jor, um, that it does um guided journaling on iOS and iPad. How do you spell it? J O U R short for journaling. Um so they do these like encrypted guided journals that you can do. Um, and the reason I wanted to uh get into that is I've just read about the benefits of actually Kind of just opening up your heart and pouring out a little bit of what's going on inside. as a way to be very uh therapeutic and just kinda release certain things that you may be holding on to

Um, and there's a lot of uh obviously that's a big part of poetry as well. And so I was like, Well, I'd like to read what other people are how they're releasing their emotions and also maybe eventually get into this myself. Um, not in a way that I would ever share publicly, but you know. Just something like that Yeah. Yeah, I think that you and I are the same and that we're both like

wanna experiment with different things, like all the time. Right. Trying new things. And so this is just one of those things where I was walking down the aisle and I was like Sure, I'm gonna pick up a book on poetry, why not? You know? Grab grab the gift. It's it's really good. Cool. And it's funny. The guy is a really Funny fucker. Like he's

Very funny. And Uh very irreverent. uh actually got into a lot of a fair amount of trouble uh back in the day. Uh from present day Iran.

And Just Y you read you read fifty pages and you're like If this guy were alive today He would be my top ten people I would want to have.

drinks with. That's awesome. Yeah. He's very, very funny and profound and it's it requires a a very high level of sensitivity and artistry and wordsmithing. Of course these are translated by Daniel Ledensky. In this case. Uh to achieve that. It's a very hard effect to produce in such a short format well, I think. Yeah.

Uh What else are you reading? Ah well I will say the thing in the last three months that probably well it just consume me this summer. Um, was a course on by Michael Singer.

Uh who wrote The Untethered Soul. So he um has a course over um that was on uh Sounds true. You know that that they're like a publisher. Yeah. So he has a course, uh it's a video course, um and it's a five uh session, like hour and a half, two hours per per video. Uh no, sorry, eight session, eight or nine session, hour and a half, two hours per video. Um, on surrender. and just really how to embrace surrender and incorporate it in your everyday life and how that is one of the most powerful things that you can do.

And how it just really, really simplified Um letting things unfold for me. How do you How do you

Or could you give an example of how you might use This concept of surrender. uh without being becoming driftwood in the flow of life. Sure. Sure. Because it sort of in for some people, myself included, has a a connotation which is from

my own experience, I suppose, or just perception. Of passivity. Sure. Right. that like all you've lost your free will and you're just sort of

an impassive creature taking whatever life throws at you. Yeah, well I think it's well, there's a couple of things. One of the things that I I appreciated about the course and wanna I'm still continuing to learn because I'm going back and listen to it. You know it's good when you're going back and listen to it like two or three times. And One of the things that he talks about is just this idea. That I think we can all agree on that. We have these little um programs that are essentially

In us. that uh have been either handed down to us by teachers or parents or whatever it may be. That are how we interpret the world as it hits us. So

Uh, for example, if you were um cheated on uh by a girl in the past and something kind of Comes close to that. Um by a new person that you're dating. Um, maybe they're stayed out too late and didn't call you or something like just like happens that

that activates that little scar that you have. Um, you can then go and really work yourself up, right? And that applies to so many different things. I mean it's like, you know, we were talking about coffee earlier. I can enjoy an amazing single origin coffee from a Japanese artisan, but you hand that same cup of coffee to someone that's Mormon that has been told that coffee is a sin and it's against your religion you're gonna have a completely different experience right when when trying to consume that beverage, right? So there are all these little things, these little programs that have been installed, whether we know it or not, you know, and a lot of them we don't know. Um, so it can just be a reaction to something that has previously happened to us in our childhood or even, you know, w w through our parents yelling at us, like uh I'm

Thankfully I'm the opposite of my father. My father was a very verbally aggressive thing. Uh uh And so Um when I hear certain types of aggression like that, I tend to kinda back away from it because it it h it's hitting that stuff inside of me. Yeah.

So his whole thing is this this idea of surrender is really being able to identify when that is happening and seeing when that's happening and understanding which programs aren't really serving you any longer and being able to just to release and let them go. And when you can release and let go of those little scars that we've been accumulating over, you know, decades. We can just become free.

And it's so Amazing when you can finally just rest. And let the world kind of unfold and not get pissed off about the person that cuts you off in traffic or any number of little events that happen throughout the day. Um And

he has really some amazing, really compelling examples to throughout this entire course, but it's it's helped me really examine my reactions and it goes hand in hand with meditation in that that way, you know? You're gonna love Awareness. Awesome. Yeah, I sounded like these these sound like Yeah. very complimentary ways of of feeding your mind and emotions and

Uh you've been talking about this this surrender course for a while now in our conversations. So I'm definitely uh intending to check it out. And the un the Untethered Soul, his book has been recommended to me on a number of occasions. So I'm gonna I think you've really gonna take this course. Because it's it's you gonna sit back and it's it's video and I would just let it play when I had some downtime and Um, there's just it's funny what people think of it the your reaction was the exact same one that I had initially where Um surrender is this this this kind of passive thing and it's like

Gosh, it seems like it feels like a weak thing actually. If you think about it. Like you're surrendering. Oh, that's a that's the weakest thing. But think about it this way. It is the hardest thing to do. someone cuts you off in traffic and you're like that mother f right? Like What's harder to get angry at them or to surrender and just let that pass through you? Rather than hit you.

Yeah. It's hitting you in some way, right? And so it's not this course is not about like having people step all over you, because obviously that would be a horrible thing and no one wants that. But it's it's really about understanding and being able to choose and let go of Of probably ninety eight percent of it, right? Like there's still th things that I get amped up about it.

um well in our country or there's certain things that you know people are getting mistreated or you know there's things that will really still charge me to do things, but I realize now after taking this course and kind of revisiting it that most things you realized really don't have a whole lot to do with you. If someone's really pissed off at you They're dealing with something. Why should it then come out and affect you and your being, you know? You should have compassion for that person'cause they're going through a rough time, you know? There's a way to flip this stuff that gets really interesting. Yeah. And even if you don't have compassion, just taking the second to pause and recognize that that

It's not serving you. Like there's it's not gonna translate into any action that is productive. Yeah. Like what are you gonna do? Chase the guy down to cut you off and like get out of your car at his office that he's running into because he got into a fight with his wife and punch him in the throat. I mean people do that. People do. But it's It's not Uh like that that's especially bad energy allocation. And something that's predictable. Like that's gonna always happen to you. It's like that's like y getting cut off is gonna happen to you for the rest of your life, you know, hundreds of times.

Like why are you gonna get so charged up about it every single time? It's ridiculous, you know? Yeah, for sure. I'm excited to hear what you think of awareness. Yeah. It'll pair very well with that. Yeah, I I love stuff like that. It's just like uh, you know, any way that we can just kind of uh get a little better understanding. And to your point earlier about Sam Harris's course, um I think that Sam

has the best uh meditation course for people that want to take it seriously. You know, I made a meditation app with it the thinking of just doing a a free unguided timer and some very basic instructions, but like That's great if you want something that's free. Like Sam's is a paid course and I think that he goes deeper And uh I I l I love it. It's not it's not just window dressing. It's like really taking meditation seriously. I know you completed the fifty days as well. Yeah. Yeah. I I just finished up the fifty days and I I thought it was uh phenomenal.

Yeah, it's super strong. And uh you know they're different different different strokes for different folks in terms of meditation styles and so And it's you know, his his style is not for everybody. Uh But

for the right person it It's it's really helpful as a skill progression. as a as a sort of logical progression of skill development. What am what am I Holding up here. Might as well talk about it. Oh, yes. Might as well can we talk about this? Yeah, let's talk about it. Might as well talk about it. Uh this is something that I've been downing

Since you've been a lot of since I got to your house. But uh and it and on it on the can it says DRAM D R A M and then the particulars, that's the brand, and then cardamom and black tea. Blow it z no sugar, zero calories. What is this thing that I'm holding? Yeah, so this is interesting and um This is a company that Actually someone

that I know here in Portland was like you gotta try the sparkling'cause it she's a chef. She knows, yeah, she's a chef and she knows that I drink sparkling water and she's like, You gotta try the sparkling beverage, like it'll change your world And I was like, Well why? There's so many of them out there Like every Whole foods aisle or whatever has uh you know. Up to a hundred of these, right?

And she goes, No, this is different. They're actually bitters makers. So member like bitters and cocktails And they create these concentrates um from real herbs and spices and like very bitters focused and then put them in sparkling water. So it's not like you're you're never gonna see on the side of like one of these cans like natural flavorings. Like that's not what they do. Like they're they're hand pressing their ginger, they're doing all they make these zero calor beverages. I would say I don't know if you agree with me, but it's like An order of magnitude better than anything you find in the store.

Really good. They're really good. And the black tea and cartomb's my favorite, by the way, I think that's Yeah, this one I tried a bunch. This is my this is the my the current fave. You have an entire refrigerator full of these. And you and Tony, who I mentioned earlier, brought this to my attention, I'd never tried it before that. And we should say, just in full disclosure, we're looking at it and I've talked to the founders and we're we're considering investing. I neither you or I have invest in this company. We haven't. Uh but yeah, whether whether I invest

Or not. Uh It's really good stuff. Yeah, it's really good stuff. And they do a C B D one. Can I say that you tried it? Sure, yeah. I said you do psychedelic. Like you're saying you did a little C B D at my house. They make a C B D one that has twenty five milligrams of C B D, which is what Michael or Michael Singer Michael Singer loves C B D cardamone. Oh wait, no, I take that back. Um don't zo us. Yeah, exactly. Uh Matthew Walker, um from Why Why We Sleep, uh the Berkeley scientist out of um uh that has a sleep lab in Berkeley, he recommends twenty five milligrams of CBD for sleep.

And they do Some of the best. There's one called Beauty Bubbles. That is the best CBD. You wouldn't even know there's C B D in it. That's how you know it's good. You have no idea. There's from a taste perspective. It doesn't taste like weed. No. Be terrible. Yeah, it'd be terrible. And it has a bunch of different ad adapted gens in there as well, but these things are awesome. You can buy them on their website. Um, you can just search like Dram D R A M Sparkle Ramage. Dramapothecary dot com. Yeah.

From Colorado. Anyway, it's it's my favorite sparkling beverage and they do direct to consumer. They're not in all the stores yet, but it's really good. I mean I I've had Sorry, Kevin. Like nine of these in the last it's all good. Twenty four hours. Fantastic. What else is on your mind, man? Ah gosh. Um Just trying to kind of like

uh do less work stuff. Um not in terms of like taking on less startups, like not actually building stuff, more just investing. And so I've been doing that through True Ventures. Um and then also just exploring Um, rather than do

You know twenty things at once that I want to explore and get excited about. Picking two or three and then just really following through on them and doing them really deep. So You know, this summer for me was all about um because I live in the Pacific Northwest now it was all about mushrooms. And so, you know, I went out and bought

Um a couple thousand mushrooms, um cut down some uh oak trees not oak not big oak trees, but branches, and then inoculated Um those branches with lion's mane and a couple other specimens. That means just Just to paint a picture. You're drilling holes into these logs that kinda simulate branches that would have fallen exact in the forest. Exactly. And then your your

You're drinking. mushroom spores into this wood. Right. So you drill about a inch into the wood. Um and then you get these little wooden dowels that are inoculated, so they look like little, you know, pieces of w round peg wood and they are all frosty with like, you know, fungi growing on them. Um or mycelium, I guess.

And then you pound it into the log with like just a w a rubber mallet. And then you put a thin layer of wax on the outside of that to prevent um anything else from getting in there. Um and then you cover them mostly in the summer with like'cause it gets does get a little hot here and so we cover them with some like some shade cloth and I went out there and watered them kinda once a day just kinda keep the logs a little moist. And then in the fall, either this year or next year in the fall, um the lion's mane will really start to just come out of them and I'll have these massive lion's mane that'll turn into uh chop em up, uh saute it with a little bit of uh garlic and butter, and you'll have just an amazing um uh mushroom that is also really good for the brain. There's been a lot of studies done on lines made in the brain and brain health.

Um and uh helping you with memories and recall and it's yeah, it's good stuff. You are also doing a lot of fasting. Yes. You wanna talk about that? Yeah. I mean, I talked to you, you know, when we checked in when I first got here And uh we're we're chatting about fasting and you're like, Yeah, I've been fasting for eighteen hours now And I was like, Oh really? Like how often are you doing that? And then we had a whole discussion about it. Yeah. How often Yeah, what what are you using?

Well I you know I sold at Zero, the fasting app, um about two years ago. And that really has has taken off. We've had Um Gosh, close to I think over forty million fast now or something like that. It's really wild. Yeah, and we've we've got uh a million people fasting on a a month, um and it's growing like crazy. Zero. Um yeah, and it's completely free. Um Peter Tia just joined as the chief medical officer to really help put some medical rigor around what you should be doing, especially with extended fasting. You know, there's like magnesium and some other supplements and things you want to be considering when you're doing longer, especially water only fasts. So um you know, for me I do a quarterly uh five day fast.

Um, and then I will try and do uh at least five days a week of eighteen hours. Um and that for me I can find you know, I I I gotta tell you I still do love those these Portland beers out here are really good. And I know it's I well This is this is the hell that I have to face, right? Because I love like meditation and all these things, but I also like to have a couple beers. So so on on the other side Kevin is fasting eighteen hours a day. All of his other calories he consumes are from beer. Right. Exactly. Uh I have a window of two hours where I just get hammered. No, it's No, seriously though, w um

Mm. in the summertime then beers are beers are so amazing that I will just become a little piggy and I'll just get super fat. Um because I'm just having these amazing beers and they go right to my gut. I find that at eighteen hours Um I can pretty much throw anything at me, not that I I want to,'cause I want to try and eat healthy and and pretty well rounded, but um I can slim up quite well um and not

And not have issues with weight, which um the dad's my my dad's side of the family was all obese and had heart disease and all that stuff. So it's something I take pretty pretty seriously and try and maintain um you know a pretty lean physique. So Um, eighteen hours is kinda my sweet spot there. When you do your five day fasts once a quarter, are those water fasts? Are they fastment making diet fasts? I did only one uh five day water fast and it was so brutal. It was it was brutal not because of the hunger, but because of the sleep.

Yeah. I had a really hard time sleeping and I got rapid heart rate. Yeah, exactly. Rapid heart rate, all that good stuff. And magnesium will help with a little bit of that stuff, but um Yeah, you you really wanna if you ever do anything like that, you wanna talk to a doctor, be under their supervision. A hundred percent. So I'm doing something called a um fasting uh mimetic, which is like you do

Um limited calories, about five hundred calories a day. This is like the Valter Longo FMD fast fast mimicking diet. Exactly. So this is uh Valter Longo's a scientist out of uh USC, um and he basically develop this protocol for cancer patients. Um it really helps reduce um the effects of uh chemotherapy. So you're not getting a lot of the nausea and things of that nature. Um and makes makes it more effective, too. I understand it. Yeah, and we know friends. I mean I'm gonna mention names, but the CEO of Zero. Right now Mike Mazer has come out and talked about this. He had stage four cancer and used uh this this fasting as part of his regimen with in conjunction with chemotherapy. You would do the three day fast or something along those lines. Yeah, I think it was two days prior to chemo and then during chemo and then two days after. So that was his five days.

And he was uh a in a lot better shape. I remember one time He called me up and he's like, I didn't fast for my last round of chemo and I'm just obliterated. Like he could really tell the difference. And they have Valter has done some amazing work and um you can go and and search his work on YouTube and you'll see The the videos of of the rats and mice that he's he's uh inoculated with chemotherapy and he does the fasting ones with the non fasting ones, and the the ones that fast it are running around the cages, same dose of chemotherapy, and the ones that are that are uh have e eaten food are just like on their sides. Just like I wanna say that that was also If I'm re remembering correctly, Mike's experience where he did the fasting and

uh other folks he got to know who were undergoing treatment at the same time were like laid out on the couch having a tough time moving and he was doing like ten mile runs. Yeah, he was running, which is crazy. Um so it's you know There's the one piece of actually the one study that I really love was this one that um they had these women um that had had breast cancer but were in remission. And it was something like twenty five hundred women. It was a decent sized pool.

Um they have them do just a very simple circadian rhythm kind of fast, which is You know, you don't have any food after sunset and then you fast for thirteen hours. So it's mostly just kind of like, you know, sleeping. Sun up you're allowed to eat. Yeah. Basically. Basically. And um of those women that that followed the protocol, they had a thirty six or thirty eight percent um reduction in reoccurrence of breast cancer just by fasting 13 hours, which is nothing. That is the easiest fast you could do. So um there's a lot of benefits to it in terms of inflammation markers, in terms of your obviously better glucose levels if you're not nighttime snacking.

You don't have elevated glucose when you go to bed, which is huge. I think we blew the nighttime snacking yesterday. Well, you went whole hog on that tub of ice cream. I went Hulk. What is It was I would say it was we we split it. Yes. Engage in some behaviors that make it.

Make one. Eat ice cream. Uh that ice cream was amazing. Yeah. I don't know what that is, but it has this layer of like ganach. Ganache the chocolate. It's got about a quarter inch of ganache on the top. With sea salt on top of that. And then it's a caramel ice cream underneath it. It is.

Unbelievable to if you don't want to eat an entire pint of ice cream, do not buy it because It will not last. Yeah, that's the problem I have. I I I'cause it's local here and they always come out with these summer flavors with like the strawberries and stuff and So you can see why I do the eighteen hour fast. I really am good most of the time. I but I do go off the rails. I'm like you, dude. You used to do those cheat days. And I remember going with you in the morning to the bakery and you get these massive bear claws. Oh yeah, they're delicious. And just put those those

Those were like huge. Those were like nine inch bear claws. Oh, I missed those. They're so good. Yeah. Uh man. Yeah, I think we've got to go to dinner soon. Anything else to to plug or talk about? Ah well, I would say someone posts this on my podcast too. You have any like could you talk about the fact that you're doing anything with the new book or anything or no? Oh well no, I can talk about it. And actually I'm surprised I haven't told you this. So I was working on a new book. I'm not gonna Oh my God, you pulled the plug on it? I pulled the plug.

Oh my god. So this is a book about I'll give this is an an exclusive. So I was working on a book entirely about saying no. Right. And gathering I know you knew that. No, there's other people listening. A book on saying no. And uh gathering tactics and systems and rules and language and so on from many, many people who are good at this. And Uh one of the challenges of writing a book on no, at least for me, is that I kept on coming up with all these reasons why I shouldn't write the book. And so I said no to the book. I returned The advance. I canceled the contract.

And I could I could go into the well let me go into it. Let me I think this is maybe we're talking about for a minute. What I realized was it was putting a real strain on my relationship with my girlfriend, who I love dearly. And she's awesome, by the way. This is the first time I've met her, which is crazy. She's great. And uh really, really wonderful and I was putting a strain on the relationship uh and particularly I'd misjudged how long the book would take to do. I thought I could sprint over the summer and do it in three to four months. Turned out it was gonna be much more complex, r would require a lot more writing on my part.

And would have to be extended at least six months. And that would require canceling the vast majority of things in my calendar. and uh disappointing my girlfriend on a number of levels that were important. To me and her that

Um that I not bend on. And I was like, for what? For what? Write a book for Uh the world, broadly speaking, to jeopardize this relationship. No. Like that's that's a d that's a decision that young Tim would have been like fucking say that. Yeah. Young Tim w Younger Tim. I mean I'm embarrassed to say probably not that much younger Tim, but younger Tim

Uh would have viewed returning in advance and canceling a book as a h it's a h gigantic Sign of weakness. and quitting and I've spent a lot of my life developing a very high pain tolerance and being able to just in out endure. And

I would have forced it. But I was able to zoom out and it's I mean it sounds like this is right along the lines of the surrender course, right along the lines of the awareness. I was able to zoom out and say, Wait a second. I'm viewing this as a very binary thing. Maybe this isn't a binary thing. And what I realized was at this point in my career I'm very fortunate that I don't have to

Publish anything on any given timeline. And by returning the advance and canceling the book, I still have two hundred pages of material. That's a lot of material. And I'll I'll give a teaser for folks. Uh I'm going to completely redesign and relaunch Uh the website, the Tim Dot Log website, which hasn't been done in for Ever you have a designer?

It's all it's basically done. Wow. It's basically done. You do it yourself. HTML looks great. Looks like GeoCities. And uh great great help great help from Matt Mollenweg and the folks at Automatic. And Mm-hmm.

I am actually going to get back to writing on a regular schedule. Oh, that's awesome. I'm gonna start putting stuff out. That's the plan at least. in a way that mimics how this all started. I mean before the book, before the four hour work week even. The blog was what help launch things. I was just gonna ask you th if you were gonna like why not use this content. I mean it's gonna be great content. I'm gonna I'm gonna use a bunch of it. And there's some fantastic stuff. And Uh I I can say there's some fantastic stuff because it's not dependent on me. I I really found some people who are just

Fucking incredible with this. And give me a little hint on the book though. I wanna know like since we're already in a little exclusive exclusive here. Um What is one thing that you learned? Well okay, let me put let me phrase it uh put it to you this way. What was the aha moment for you where you realized like, wow, I have something that is new and unique enough that I need to go write a book about this? Like what did you

What was that? Moments. It is a bit Lateral. Uh I decided to write the book not because I said I know the magic sauce.

for giving the answer that people need. It was because I wanted to gather more tools and resources for myself to become better at it myself. Pretty good at it.

Um in other words, I would go to a lot of friends asking them for advice and they're like, Dude, you're the best person I know at doing this. You should be writing that And in some cases uh th that was true. In other cases there are folks like our friend Josh who's incredible at it, but he doesn't view himself that way. Right. Oh cook? Yeah. Oh he's really good. He's really good, but yeah. But it i his vr his per his p in his position in His work

relative to maybe some other Michael Jordan's of saying no, he wouldn't cons he did he he didn't consider himself to be very good, even though he is. Mm-hmm. Uh looking at any Normal. sort of group of people. He's excellent.

Uh So it started out as almost all my books do as a very Personal journey. to learn how other people do this. Yeah. So that I could borrow. their principles and techniques and so on.

The aha moment I would say that I had, and this also coincided with realizing, oh shit, this is gonna take at least another six to nine months. This is not a sprint for three months. And I can do a lot in three months. I mean I did two hundred pages in three months, but I was like to get it right to make it a'cause I have no interest in writing good books. And I'm not saying my books are the best thing since sliced bread. I'm not saying they're good literature compared to Tolstoy or anyone you might pull out of a hat. But my goal at least is not to write a good book. Because uh

If you're gonna put in that much effort. That's like running twenty miles of a marathon. It's like no, do the last six point two, which is really like the second half of the marathon. Right, which is the hardest. Because you want to put out a great book. And I was like, all right, to do a good book, I could do a good book and my fans would buy it. And it would be helpful.

But it wouldn't be enough. And I'll tell you What that means. You can get the best language in the world template emails. Auto responses. And so on.

to give people an that's part of what I thought I needed. And it's it's necessary but not sufficient. If you don't do a pretty major psychological overhaul. And develop this awareness that we've been talking about, like the observer status of your own patterns and stories and codependence also. Where you feel like you're responsible for managing the emotional states and responses of other people. Right.

The templates and so on. are g are going to seem really attractive and then a week later you're gonna be back in your email doing all the same shit. Just not gonna work. And crazy, you should write this book. This sounds awesome. I I wrote a lot of it. I wrote a lot of it and uh uh uh uh it there were there were some really important pieces to touch upon Uh

And what I realized is that you have topics that are sort of independently treated well in like five different genres, and to write a book on saying no that actually works, like a the that provides a systematic approach that really, really, really works. you kinda have to take those five genres and put them all into a book. Yeah. I'm I'm curious, was this um did you plan on having this be something that you could apply to things outside of say a work scenario. Cause I I know a lot of people would say, Tim, like, dude, that's nice that you have a hundred thousand people wanting things from you. I don't have those demands on me. But I think there's even even more power in saying no to things like

Netflix. Or saying no to something else and and just sitting. And it's not it's not that you have to fill the time with something. That's like I feel like that's what we're always trying to do. Like how can I fill the time with something better? Right. But it really is Alright, so you you're You're also touching on something that made this book very difficult, which is when you start to really investigate and know and the re and

A book on saying no is also uh has to be a book on why people have trouble saying no. Mm-hmm. Which is also a book on why people say yes to too many things. Right. And before you know it, the book is about everything in the fucking universe. It bloats. Sure. And very quickly I and I put I put in a quote in actually the first chapter. from John Muir, I think it was, which was in effect like whenever you try to separate out one thing. in the world you real you find it hitched to the rest of the universe.

And uh constraining this book was very, very challenging. I bet. Uh because as you pointed out, there are many different types of very there are many different types of temptations to which you s should say no. Broadly speaking, they could be put into two categories. Internally generated.

Distractions. and then sort of externally imposed invitations, distractions, requests, et cetera. And They both depend on certain types of Psychological reformatting.

And I decided to focus on some of the the commonalities. But the book That's not gonna be a book. But when I say it it's not gonna be a book, here's the thing. I could st I could put a bunch of stuff on the blog, fine tune it, make it better, and then publish it as a book a year from now. Well, that's the plan. Yeah. That'll be great. And then if I decide to do a book, it's gonna be a better book if I do it later. It'll be more refined. And Uh the the saying no is is really not limited.

or specific to work or personal. Some of the scripts are specific to worker personal. But It's like the because say declining going to

a work meeting where someone of a similar level in the hierarchy as yourself or below is requesting your attendance is very different from say declining The baby shower invitation from someone who thinks that you're their best friend or one of their best friends and you don't have different emotions and you don't feel the same about them. Yeah.

That's different. Right. And the language you're gonna use is probably very different. the consequences could be very different. The way you might have to do damage control on those consequences, which is also a chapter that I started working on, is like If shit really goes sideways and you feel like you need to fix it, what do you do? What's the cleanup procedure? How how do you become Like the uh the Harvey Keitel character in Pulp Fiction. Like the the cleaner. What do you need to do? And uh

A lot of those skill sets apply not only to work situations. I think that work is actually the easiest, even though many people may not view it that way. Uh Even in the beginning stages of your career or you when you feel like you don't have many options. Uh the fact of the matter is you always now I'm like getting into it, but you always have options. You always have options. They might just not be very attractive to you.

Right. You always have options. Always. And uh so the bo the book is also was intended to explore that. Like why do we artificially constrain our options and If you are seeing a binary choice of A versus B and both are unattractive, What are you missing?

And can you zoom out? What are the tools for zooming out so you can see the other paths you could take. Uh so there there were aspects of it that were really fun to work on that were really, really useful to me immediately. Right. I would I would and that was that was part of the litmus test for each chapter was like, All right, is this something that I can literally use in the next twelve hours? Yeah. I want these templates, dude. I mean I really need no templates. I've I've got a bunch of them. I've got tons. That's awesome. So just template pack. Tim Tim's template pack of like saying that. Tim Tums template pack, upsell when all that fails when you come back and you have all of your old behavior still intact. Here's the psychological makeover. Uh so yeah, that's that's something I'm really excited about. And uh I'll just give a shout out also and a congratulations to the entire team at Johns Hopkins.

for uh the successful launch of the world's largest psychedelic research center. That's awesome. And the first psychedelic research and consciousness research center. in the United States ever. Which just launched at Johns Hopkins. And we should definitely mention y you Probably won't, but you dude you you've helped fund a lot of this. Which is a big deal. Thank you for doing that. It's I know so many people

um that had reached out to me being like I can't believe Tim did this. People are freaking out about it, dude. It's a big deal. It was it was uh It's a it is a big deal symbolically and practically for the field. A lot of conditions that are poorly treated or viewed as untreatable currently, whether that is say end of life anxiety, after terminal cancer diagnoses, treatment resistant depression, eating disorders like anorexia nervosa, which has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder a lot of people don't realize that nicotine addiction, opioid dependence, et cetera. PTSD from the PTSD from war sexual trauma.

uh these uh conditions Seem to be treatable through Paradigm shifting. Frameworks.

utilizing psychedelic compounds. And Uh the the the results thus far are are are pretty staggering. I mean they're they're they're very unlike anything that's been seen in the world of psychiatry up to this point. And The center at Hopkins w uh for me

was about a year and a half in the making. So it was it was very uh a very involved process and Uh there were uh a couple of uh of folks who well Who along with with my contribution

Uh were able to The foundation who provided the most money was the uh the Steven and Alexandra Cohn Foundation. They've done a lot of incredible work with veterans and uh they put in a a large slug about half, maybe a little bit more than half of the total required, which is seventeen million, uh for this center, which is a five year commitment. Very important because it allows

Hopkins to not only uh attract but also retain some of the best people uh in the country for doing this type of research. And then you have Uh yours truly, Matt Mollenweg, just a beautiful human being, CEO of Automatic, which I mentioned earlier, Auto M A T T. I see. If you see what he did there. Uh Blake Mykowski, founder of Tom's. Oh, awesome. I didn't know Blake was involved. That's good. Yeah, Blake's involved. And then uh Craig Nuremberg, who's an investor. Uh

uh who's who's done some incredible things. He he he's very shy, so I won't get into to much, but it was important that everybody be willing to allow their names to be used for this. I do not want any anonymous donors. Yeah. Uh because it just reinforces uh undeserved stigma for these compounds that have so much therapeutic potential and very, very demonstrated low toxicity at this point and antiaddictive properties. So Uh that was a year and a half and it's it's you've had this feeling, I'm sure, but it's kind of like after so much work. And so much looking forward to this moment. off in the distant future.

After shipping it, there's this Kind of uh it's an odd feeling. There's this kind of like postpartum what now. Yeah. Oh shit. Like we kinda kinda shipped it. And of course the scientists now get to do the fun stuff and the exciting stuff on their side. But my job is mostly done. And uh

Let me ask you a question before we before we wrap up. Um This is uh I know they had been doing some research there. Mm-hmm. Um, was it just a very small scale? Like what did this funding enable them to do? Yeah, that's a different one than what they were doing before. So the Hopkins has done a lot of of research. when you consider how many sessions say they've administered of psilocybin, which is in the hundreds, so probably somewhere between I'm guessing here, but between five hundred and seven hundred sessions, uh, that is really

reinvigorated the entire space. Some of their early studies. uh helped to galvanize the resurgence of scientific research. What the center allows them to do is is dedicate their full attention to this field.

Uh up to this point, and this is true at other places like NYU U CLA uh U C S F Uh yell. Uh people who've wanted to do psychedelic research have generally need to spend Anywhere from let's just call it thirty to seventy five percent of their time writing grants.

We have a scientist in the room. My wife. Your wife, Daria. Uh Yeah, so she's seeing this firsthand, I'm sure. that uh people need to write grants to Ensure they have.

Salaries. Right. Uh and in the case of psychedelics, because there is Uh effectively zero federal funding. From agencies like the NIH or NIMH. uh there's there's a a relative lack of funding, and therefore these people who truly in their heart of hearts would like to spend a hundred percent of their time

unlocking the full potential of psychedelics and understanding the mechanisms, need to write grants for other studies that don't involve psychedelics. Right. And so you have the most productive teams in the world, including Hopkins, who are spending only a fraction of their time On psychedelic research. Yeah, because writing grants is a a whole job by itself. It's a whole job by itself. So when you h create a center that has, say, five years of salary support.

You just open the floodgates. And um I think the I think the quote was from uh perhaps the uh the chair of the psychiatry department, but but one of the higher ups at Hopkins who said this should allow a quanta bleep forward in the in the productivity of of scientific researchers in the world in in the realm of psychedelics. What it also allows And this is this is why I hope that The center is

is it catalyzes multiple centers around the country. And more ambitious thinking. around building big things in this space is that it also allows huge cost savings per study. So let's just say this opio dependent study by itself done piecemeal. because there's no sharing of resources. It you have to recruit and staff each study independently, otherwise. Let's say that might cost and I am kinda pulling these numbers out of my ass, but something like three point two, and then within the structure of the center, it's like one point seven, one point eight. The cost savings are enormous. So you just get

a lot more done much more quickly. Right. And if you look at the opioid crisis, you look at depression, you look at the costs associated with some of these conditions. These are problems that are compounding. Right. And I think it pays to be ambitious and aggressive with funding. tools that could identify completely new pathways and mechanisms of action by which we can treat these things that up until this point have been largely untreatable.

Yeah, I mean uh I think that this is a very noble cause and something that I've been tracking for the last few years and watching these kind of studies come out and um as someone that has benefited from a high dose um psilocybin guided session. I I can tell you that all of the uh or a large chunk of the kind of uh trauma that I was dealing with with my father being so verbally aggressive over the years and causing like that impression upon me, I was able just to release in

six hours, which was amazing. And the lightness you feel from that afterwards Um sticks with you. Yeah. And so I mean, and I have it easy. Like think about the people that are addicted to opioids or, you know, all these other people that came back from uh fighting wars and at PTSD and uh yeah, I mean There's so many applications for it. Yeah. It's really exciting.

Yeah, the and the there's some organizations if you're if you're not interested, uh in engaging directly with the universities, although if if if you happen to have a close relationship with one and are say an alumni or trustee providing funding, then consider this as an avenue of exploration. It's it's remarkable. And Yeah, how can people help out? Like is is it d I mean, obviously the funding is done for this next five years, but can people actually still donate and get involved and extend that runway some more? They can. And they can do it at other universities. What I'm gonna do uh one of my f my top priorities when I relaunch the entire site is to put out a post which is effectively the top

Ten options. for supporting the psychedelic Scientific. Renaissance. And there will I point out the targets that I think are extremely high leverage. In different places. And just keep that up to date. Right. So it'll be a resource for people basically.org.

And Uh I would also recommend that people check out a documentary if you want to see what these sessions actually look like, actual session footage. Go to Tim.blog forward slash trip. And that will take you to a documentary called Trip of Compassion. It's very intense, uh, but but worth checking out and you can learn more.

Sweet. Dude, well thank you for doing that. That's uh I know that you got a massive New York Times article out of out of that as well. Yeah, it was wild. Uh thanks to uh thanks to everybody who helped make that happen. Um Benedict Carey, the writer who really took the time to to ask a lot of questions of a lot of people and look at the nuances. Uh Alan Burdick. Uh the the editor.

And um certainly all the people kinda behind the scenes. Uh Michael Pollan also for his great work and ongoing work. And the credibility that he added to the space by watching that book is so massive. Just added so much. Momentum. Two

uh to the scientific research and uh increased The interest level. Of potential funders and allies and so on who recognize that we have we have a lot of problems that are are not being well addressed. And in in uh oncology and neurolog and immunology, all these other fields there have been these massive breakthroughs over the last few decades. And in psychiatry there have been v uh relatively few Uh

discoveries that would be considered breakthroughs, very few. And If we look at the costs. uh of mental illness, the prevalence of mental illness, the number of people that I'm sure people listening know who take antidepressants and nonetheless are still depressed. uh those affected by opioid dependents and addiction. Uh i the the scale of these problems is so gigantic that if there are tools that have demonstrated low toxicity and anti-addictive properties,

They're worth investigating. So I'm uh as gung ho as ever. And uh they're not panaceas, there are risks involved, but I think the risk benefit ratio is is is incredibly compelling. Yeah. So to be continued. Awesome. Well, that is it for this uh episode of the Random Show.

Yes, it is. Slash Tim Show, slash Kevin Show. What depending on what feed you're listening to. Where can people find you? Yeah, so people can find me uh at Kevin Rose on Instagram. Kevin Rose.com also links to my podcast there. Um that I do every few weeks. Um And I think that's it. Yeah. Cool. People can find me at Tim Dog. Podcast Tim Ferriss show. And uh the newsletter.

I have a free newsletter that goes out every Friday to about one somewhere between one point six and two million people now. And uh Five Bullet Friday is the five coolest things or most interesting things I've found. That week. Uh a lot of them get recommended to me by you. Well done. I mean uh like every once in a while some of them make in. Yeah. Uh so Fible Friday you can just find at Tim dot blog forward slash Friday. That's free. It'll always be free. And that's uh

One of the things I enjoy doing each week. Sweet. Awesome. Alright, let's get some food. Off to food. Later, guys. See ya. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share

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