Everybody Kevin Rose here. Welcome back to another episode. I was going to say the Kevin Roche. Oh, but actually this is not the Kevin Roche. Oh, it is the camera show feed but it is actually the random show which is a podcast that I record with Tim Ferriss about all sorts of random topics. We've been doing this for a number of years now, we try to aim for about 1/4 or so depending on our schedules. So it ends up being, you know, three four five episodes a year. This is a fun podcast. We talk a lot about
See the huge mass of hype around Bitcoin right now talk about cryptocurrency at length and then also get into 2021 resolutions. Our favorite books recently. Tim's a big into lucid dreaming. So we talked about that and then also, you know, I think that covid is really stressed tested a lot of relationships both friendship-wise and obviously with anyone that you're living within close proximity of so, you know, significant others and roommates and all those things.
So we want to talk about couples therapy in the the benefits of that lots of topics really fun episode. I hope you enjoy it. But before we get started Tim's going to kick off our legal disclosure because we can't give investment advice. So here's that we have an important preface an important caveat and important disclaimer before we get started and here it is provided from my lovely lawyers. Here we go. I am not an investment advisor nor is Kevin Rose. All opinions are mine alone.
His there are risks involved in placing any investment and securities or in Bitcoin or in crypto currencies or anything. None of the information presented today or really any time since you might be listening to this anytime is intended to form the basis for any offer or recommendation or have any regard to the investment objectives financial situation or needs of any specific person that includes you my dear listener. So everything you're going to hear is for informational
entertainment purposes
only and with that said, please enjoy.
Welcome to another episode of
the random show. This is episode number seven thousand four hundred. Ninety-six. Kevin says
crazy. Good to see you my friend. You too. You too. Been too long. The when was the last time we actually saw each other in person you are important.
It would have been in Portland a hundred years ago because it was simultaneous with a think it was a crow love Festival where you had hundreds of people just smothering each other with
Contact one another with body-contact. So that is a pre covid activity. Yes.
It's probably a year and a half ago, huh? It's been about that. Yeah, it's crazy. It's
sad it is it's wild and what would a I'm reassured to see is you have your your Japanese podcasting robe on and you seem to have new eyeshadow our mascara, which really brings out your eyes
nice called. It's called five hours of sleep dude. It's called babies what it
is.
Like it your converging with the raccoon gods that you that so long ago by tossing one of their Brethren downstairs for people who want that security footage. You can search Kevin Rose raccoon and I'll
pop you're determined to make that like what's on My Grave like what I'm best known for is the rack your toss your Wikipedia Legacy.
Well, I want it in the first paragraph So we shared a Google spreadsheet that you created beforehand of things we might
Talk about I'm sure we'll talk about all sorts of stuff.
Where do you want to start man? Yeah. I mean we can start with the Bitcoin stuff because you were super excited about that which is odd because you're typically not like the biggest I've ever seen you as like a hardcore
crypto guy. I would definitely not self described as a hardcore crypto guy at all. I just happened to have this combination of ignorance and laziness which led me to hold on to the Bitcoin that I had.
Dad.
Oh, so you're so that's why I like why is Tim so excited about this because you've a boatload of money right now. Well, I
mean, I think it's a boatload but I've held on to it. I mean look anyone who is holding just to put a timestamp in this, it's January 8th 2021 Bitcoin, I believe for the first time ever just crossed $40,000 per
Bitcoin. It was sort of audience morning. Yeah.
Yes. So anyone who has ever bought Bitcoin to the unexamined or unexamined
a guy looks like a complete genius, right but it's not possible that everyone bought Bitcoin for the right reasons or through the right process, but nonetheless, here we are and it's exciting to watch even if it may implode and people are drawing comparisons and certainly pointing out the differences between 2017 and now where we saw this huge Spike several years ago and then a consequent crash now I shouldn't have happened a couple times now,
it's happened several times and I should also
So
point out that I got into crypto in a meaningful way right before that crash in 2017. So if I had consequently sold all of it, I would have done so at a pretty massive loss and I was like well, look I'm playing with house money in the sense that I can afford to lose whatever I am putting into crypto. So I'll just hold on to it and the premise the premise that I used or the set of assumptions. I used to get into crypto.
Ended up being totally wrong in a lot of ways at least in the sense that I was investing in crypto as a as a hedge specifically against say a huge drop in the stock market since I had a few different pending IPOs and so on with was looking for you were IPO, basically, yeah, exactly. And so I made a bunch of very tenuous leaps of faith in my logic to look for.
Different ways to to hedge against the possibility that a market collapse could drag Uber down with it, right? So nothing stock specific meaning nothing Uber specific in that case
and you literally could have just hedge the market though at the same time. Yeah. I mean look you there you could I could have
hedged the market. I don't know much about shorting or hedging or anything like that. And when I looked at it even in a cursory way looking at the stuff that's allowed no gray hat stuff it.
Very expensive to do it effectively. And so I decided to become involved crypto also because if you're in certain Social Circles with certain very smart people yourself included. I mean, you've played a lot in the crypto sandbox, so I want to hear from you more than me. It's easy to get intoxicated and it's easy to kind of walk into this reality Distortion field where you're like, you know, the world is going to Mad Max in the next
Eight hours and crypto will be all this survives not saying that's your argument. But the the point I wanted to make is that if you look at the Timeline, so 2017 boom, right the sort of tulip bulb craze of crypto the time sort of Tanks or at least Bitcoin and this time around with covid a lot of Bitcoin bowls and so on were expecting that Bitcoin which would be inversely correlated with these crashes and it shoots through the roof.
But that's not what happened. Right not what happened with gold either and I think what was underestimated was how many people would need cash right and when you need cash you sell whatever you happen to have and if if you have for instance as a lot of people got themselves into trouble by borrowing against assets. So they took out say lines of credit based on the value of their stocks. And then when the stocks Creator those all got called and you know bankers,
Everyone else calling up, you know Joe Smith. Like I just myth we want all our money right now and they had to sell anything they could sell that was liquid and that would include a lot of crypto. So it took a few months for crypto to recover to pre covid. Whereas gold kind of took off immediately after covid it did drop in the very short term like the kind of early March to early April and then
kind of back up. It wasn't a big run-up though. We never saw kind of massive like the crypto like gains that we've seen with
And write gold schools get up a bit, but not not a
ton. No, not that much and I'm referring GLD specifically for people interested. But what are what are your thoughts right now on all this? Crypto Mania. I mean there are differences huge differences between right now and 2017 namely the entry of at least one of them is the entry of institutional investors. And yes just a few months ago Paul Tudor Jones and some other Legends kind of Dipping their toe in the water.
Water and beginning to make some allocations in their portfolios fund portfolios, which is a big difference. Not just personal. I believe that's true. Somebody can fact check me, but what do you make of all this? This is a Terrain that you're much more familiar
with than yeah. I am. All he is my take is that with any new crazy wild idea come just a ton of Skeptics as there should be and
And Bitcoin was was first launched and we were all playing around with the very early wallets. And I remember just buying coins and picking them up and I wasn't really early early. Like I wasn't, you know the pennies but I was buying them around 10 12 dollars a coin something like that. And you know, it was it was the Wild West it was very difficult to do anything to to buy crypto to you know, we were all sitting up mining rigs back then and trying to mine our own.
Coin and then eventually pools came out so you could join in with other people to do it more efficiently, but this is fresh new technology. They hadn't been hammered and beat not and so, you know anytime there's something that is directly linked to your finances. It takes years or decades for people to get comfortable with a new emerging technology to where they'll commit any serious Capital to that technology. So I think largely what we're seeing here is well one, it's you know, there's a
Stimulus money hitting the market. There's a lot of people buying on square cash app. There's you know, it's much easier to purchase Bitcoin than it has ever been. You know, it used to be you have to go to some shady exchange somewhere hold up a picture of your driver's license with like literally, you're like date written underneath it to make sure it was you like shady stuff that I've been on some of the exchanges my identification has since been hacked on many of these exchanges. Thankfully, I don't live at any of those addresses that I had those ideas those old.
Being up front of the camera, but I do get text messages people trying to fish me all the time like trying to like get me to like so creepy. It's so crazy. It happens at least twice a week. It's insane because my information is out there so whatever but the point being is that it was extremely difficult to purchase Bitcoin. And now, you know PayPal came online just a couple months ago and is offering the ability to purchase Bitcoin and ethereum directly inside of PayPal like it's just insane how easy this is now, so you're unlocking.
Massive customer base is like hundreds of millions of users with PayPal, you know square cash is the I think the second or third largest buyer now of Bitcoin that
is on the retail side, right? This is just on the retail
side. Yeah, so it does not even talking about the institutional money going in right? So, you know, I work at true Ventures a venture capital firm several billion dollars under management. We have positions in Bitcoin, you know, we've been doing that for a while. So when you say you guys have
positions in Bitcoin, that means you've invested in
Startups that focus on
Bitcoin now, that means we actually own Bitcoin. How does that work as a venture capital
fund your operating the private
endowment? Yeah. I mean every fund is a little bit different, you know in our specific case there. We have allocated as part of our you know formation documents for the fund a certain percentage of the fund can be in crypto currency or cryptocurrency related companies so we can say I'm just throwing out a random number here. I'd have to go look at the dock see what the actual.
But let's just say 10 15 percent of the fund overall Fun Size, you know, we have 600 million dollar-plus fund that's you know, you can only invest that much from this specific fund into cryptocurrency. And so, you know, if we're going to go in to do a purchase typically dollar cost average your way in over a couple months and and and buy-in and in a place that that has really strong security. Like we don't hold this ourselves. It's not at our office like you're using like there's there's big Financial houses like Fidelity and coinbase custody.
A others that now provide these types of services
you don't just have a bunch of Hardware while it's sitting in your jacket
pocket. Yeah. It's right here in my house. No, I don't actually I don't I don't mess with that stuff anymore. I used to have wallets and I actually had a laptop that I would I bought specifically for cryptocurrency and I wanted to keep it in Cold Storage meaning that I back in the day when I was doing the craziest like coins. You've never heard of on these weird exchanges. I went out.
Bought a laptop was an apple hooked it up to the Internet did all the software updates like just put the walls on their transfer the funds and then immediately powered it down so that it wouldn't be online anywhere hackable and then put it in a safe and like that was the way I kept my cryptocurrency. It's crazy now. Yeah crazy, but but yeah, so there's been enough time has gone on this current run up though is just nuts. I mean the thing you have to do with all these things is just don't look at the the last three months because it looks like a decent grafting like
Oh, that looks reasonable. Maybe I should buy some look at the last year you had as much of the five-year view the tenure of you. That's when you see really what's happening here. And it's it's not even like a hockey stick. It's like it's even more it's like insane how the run-up has been and so I get nervous when you see, you know, it's always a good towel around. Well, in this case, it was like the the virtual Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner when Uncle Harry is asking you
They should be buying Bitcoin. Like that's when I like my Spidey Sense tingling a little bit and like huh? Everybody wants this now, you know, and there's it's just if I were going to enter the market now, I would do it in a way that is you pick the dollar amount. Let's say it's a thousand dollars and this is not investment advice. I'm just telling you what I would do pick a thousand dollars. I would say Okay. I want to own Bitcoin. I believe in the future of Bitcoin. I think this isn't going away which is all those things are true and the things that I believe it's a proven technology now, let's take that.
Thousand dollars and invested over six months and so just divide it up by 6. And this do those say the first of every month and just go in no doesn't matter what the price is. You don't care. He's by that set amount and that way, you know, at least you're averaging your way in over over six
months. How do you personally think about crypto for yourself as part of your portfolio or percentage of your total in your kind of famous for telling tell not famous? Well, you're famous to me for telling me when I should
Stuff in the not telling me when you've sold stuff which I print which I appreciate so that call by the way you like. Are you still
holding this? I'm like no, I sold it for like a 10x like six months ago and you're like I'm down or something bad will happen. You've been screwed by the fact that we didn't
talk. Yep that happens with some Fair frequency. But what is what what is your current thinking in terms of cryptocurrencies? Are you steering clear? Do you do use do you still have a certain position is?
It an investment for you. Is it an insurance policy for you? Some people have drawn that distinction just sort of philosophically as looking at cryptocurrencies insurance
policy. I think hedge. I think that over time as well a few things one. Let's talk about the ecosystem in general. I think that 99% still today of the coins that you see on the market out. There are described age. I think a lot of them and it's hard for them really to go away the just the volumes of the
Human trades that happened just decrease over time, but they still have these, you know, someone impressive-looking market caps this sitting out there very stagnant developers kind of drop off. It's just kind of like there left for dead, but they're still around. So there's a lot of that a lot of interesting Innovation happening in the kind of decentralized Finance space. So they call like defy it's mostly happening on a theory. Mm. There's a handful of projects where I say, that's really interesting. It's almost like an angel investment now, I want to hold some of that.
At but with the understanding that this could go to 10% of the value it is today and so extremely high risk, but you know still has the ability to have a 50 x upside, right? So or at least a 20 or 30 x upside if you just look at the market cap of a Bitcoin today, there's not another 20 or 30 x anytime soon coming to company to pick coin. It's just too big right like the market cap is too large
you'd be why do you now what how do you come to that
conclusion? Well, I mean
First of all, there's a few ways you can do and I think that you had just have to look at the market cap in general which I don't have in front of me right now, but I can I can type it in. The other thing is just look at the proxies for this. So like what is the market cap of gold right of all gold out there and it's in the trillions. Let me see here. If I did this the other day. So Bitcoin right now the market cap is eighty two point four nine billion.
So, you know, where would we be at it that's a 10x from now like I mean, that's just Insanity. That's that's I can't imagine that happening anytime soon. It would just now that's insane because of the
cuz verbals that you might put
next to it like an old Apple is worth 2 trillion, right? And so, you know, you just kind of have to and I know it's not the same in that we're not talking about corporations here with with, you know, cash flows and Pease and things that we would typically used to
To value a company that is not this the closest proxy that I think most people draw the comparison to is to just gold. You know, what what is how much gold is in mind? How much is do we believe is there and then the Earth what are people holding for an investment? How much of it is actually being worn? Like there's a lot of other ways so there is a lot of potential upside and in Bitcoin, but I don't think you know for me I it's not that I wouldn't hold it. I would definitely hold it. I think it's going to be a rocky.
Here I'd given the run-up that's had recently like it's been forever. Like this is always been the case of Bitcoin. It's been very bumpy, but the new low is higher than the last low and the discontinues to kind of like it wouldn't surprise me to see this drop down to 25 or 30 again, but I don't think it's going to get back to 10 and there's just too many institutional buyers coming in. So I like it because there are a lot of governments the u.s. Included are probably one of the biggest offenders just printing money right now. It's really
hard to understand what the value of a dollar is or what it will be in the future. This is a fixed number of coins forever that will never change. It's universally accepted, you know, even more so every month all over the world. So it's kind of a global Reserve currency that I am comfortable with so I do like it for that. I think there's a lot of new interesting projects that are probably have more
upside.
That also require more due diligence and expertise for absolute attention to detail. So let's if we talk about Bitcoin just to continue on this thread. It's currently at let's just call it $40,000 of Bitcoin and you're saying well it's hard to see a 20x upside if we look at proxies or comparisons to gold or certainly if we draw comparisons to Apple that's a little bit categorically, I guess a different comparison, but
If we're looking at certain.
Trends or growth trends that have been accelerated thanks to or due to covid right if we look at a Amazon or Shopify or Peloton, you know companies that were both quite familiar with and or investors in a lot has been accelerated and the growth trajectory of the graph has changed dramatically for for a lot of companies SAS companies right adoption of remote work. It's
Sarah could someone make an argument that that is why in part at least we are seeing this adoption of Bitcoin and that it is on some level reasonable or I guess in your mind when you're thinking of how much this price can be explained via factors external happenings storming the capital Etc. Certainly, you know, mmt and all this kind of stuff versus
Pure Mania, right because the the Bitcoin bowls will sort of layout often regurgitated but sometimes cogent Arguments for why this is explainable and reasonable and then the Bears will say Here's the the tulip bulb craze of such and such a year and this is exactly what's happening. It's just pure Mania. There's nothing to it besides greed and
In Psychology run amok where do you fall and thinking about explaining the price? Because if you look at institutional adoption, we're still super early. We are in Institute super early and institutional adoption and by institutional, I mean there are wide ranges of Institutions. And certainly I think at the more conservative end if we're talking about endowments and Pension funds and so on it's super early not to mention Sovereign wealth funds and so on right the really like
Ganic the kind of nation state players. So yeah, what do you think? I mean it from an Institutional adoption perspective. It's super super early that does not mean though that the tiny amount of adoption up to this point plus square plus PayPal have organically produced $40,000 per Bitcoin prices, right? That's that's a lot of word salad. I just threw it your face videos. Yeah, so maybe
speak to that. Well, I think that it is really hard. If you look at the people that are actually looking at the blockchain and watching where assets are moving some promising and also some really scary things start to emerge and so I think the promising side is just the average consumer now has access to
purchase this with just a couple clicks and Apple pay and everything else.
Like that's the ease of purchase is gone is as we mentioned earlier.
Is it simple now? So that has unlocked certainly a
lot of demand especially around a hype
cycle. We know about the institutional side. I agree with you then it's very early days there and there's been several proposals and there are new ones out there for a Bitcoin ETF. I think that happens and we start seeing these appear and people's 401 k accounts and things just go bonkers. The scary side of things is some of the price manipulation that's going on. And so
You know, there are ways to manipulate the price and this is well. I'll bring it up in with the caveat that it's being talked about on the internet. So I'm bringing it up here. It is not my view that this is happening but it is being talked on the internet. So it's worth mentioning. So I say that from a news perspective not from an accusatory perspective and that is that
there is a lot of Preamble for Kevin was
just about to say that because I don't want them to come after me and I do sue the shit.
Basically, so so there's there's a there's a stable coin out there when I mean stable coin for those people who don't know there are a bunch of coins out there that you can hold his cryptocurrency that are pegged to an asset like a Fiat asset that
we know. It's like say the US dollar.
So if you hold USD sees what it's called The Coin and you hold one of those coins it is worth one dollar and that never changes just pegged at that price. And so there are a bunch of these and one
of the larger ones is called tether. And so tether is we don't have well, here's the thing. There's been some analysis of some of these transactions and tether if you can imagine if you control and it is centralized if you control the way the tether is supposed to work is this if you send tether $1,000 the issue you a thousand dollars worth
of tether coins,
right? That's make sense. If you go to redeem them, they give you back the thousand dollars.
Right and so it kind of grew and well I shouldn't say kind of grew its massive now
and let me ask an obvious question. What is the use case for that? Why would someone do that? They want a mobile they want sodomized they want
stability. Yeah. So imagine you're sending your aunt in Costa Rica hundred dollars. You want to make sure a hundred dollars gets they're not $92 because Bitcoin dropped, you know, or maybe she's like if it went up but you know, it's like it's
you need the stability and can also be used for a whole slew of other things. They do lending with it where you can earn interest on it. That's what a lot of the decentralized finance comes from anyway, so a tether coin for example is one of the first ones one of the first stable coins and it has a 23.93 billion dollar market cap. Now there are currently some ongoing investigations into what's going on behind the scenes at tether because there are some allegations that they are just issuing new tether and buying Bitcoin.
Without there being the reserve USD to actually back it up. So there's been a handful of Articles. You can search tether, whatever you want to call it like Scandal or whatever. You may be in the Google news and you'll see that people are looking at this and saying huh? And there's several organizations that government organizations that are looking at this they're saying okay. We need to peer inside here and make sure everything is kosher because if it's not they could be just propping up the Bitcoin market and buying Bitcoin with fake minted Ted.
Whether a stable coins and if that's the case and that comes out, it's going to be a shitshow for a few days the best way I could just
do you think yeah, that's probably worth transcription this shit show. Do you think not knowing anything about it that they have sufficient volume to prop up so to speak the Bitcoin price?
Our to inflate
it. Well, I mean just give you a sense and last 24 hours. They've done a hundred and fourteen point three 1 billion in volume. It's heavily used on some exchanges. Some exchanges won't touch it. There's something there's some changes that you want to even you can't even purchased other if you wanted to so it is the one piece that I look at I just say gosh, I don't like where this is trending and some of the people that are looking into this this could really put
put a big black eye on the market. It doesn't mean that Bitcoin is a fraud it has nothing to do with Bitcoin Bitcoin is a legitimate technology. That works. Well, it's well secured. It's been hammered on like there's right. It doesn't mean this doesn't mean Bitcoin goes away, but it does mean that if there's books that spook the
hell out of lots of
people supposed to have a lot of people and it also shuts down ETF talks and all those other things because a lot of the reasons why these ETFs for Bitcoin aren't being approved is because of these claims.
Of this type of Market manipulation. So it's a but to your early ask around. Like what do you how do you think of this when it comes to portfolio construction? And again, I'm a venture capitalist not a registered investment advisor. This is not a financial advice. But for me personally, I think informational purposes only this is informational and entertainment purposes of temp says that
Doc. Oh you bastard that's not true.
You're gonna cut that out. You rat bastard. So so basically I would say for me personally, I think okay, maybe up to 5% of My overall portfolio and consider. It's super high risk, but I like your strategy Tim. It's like you is what kind of one you have to take with cryptocurrency if this gets cut in half or cutting 3/4, you just have to say uh, okay bad day bad week bad month and just ride it out.
Next ten years because you know in 10 years it will bounce back in the returns were going to look better than ever. So, you know, that's kind of how you have to play
it. Yeah, and it's a test of conviction and process also right in the sense that I've been talking to your friends and like you sort of the kind of Uncle Harry equivalents are like I want to put money into Bitcoin and a theory and I'm like, can you tell me what Bitcoin is and they can't even Hazard a guess. It's just
just something that's going up in value very quickly and the sort of observation I've made because usually is your uncle actually Harry. I don't know throw this kind of us. That's made up. Okay, good. Okay, so, okay. So Uncle Harry usually will have a story that is something like this. My friend Bob has invested in crypto and over the last seven months. He's made let's just make up a number five hundred thousand dollars.
And my question is always did he sell all of his Bitcoin and pull out $500,000 and the answer is no and my my follow-up to that as well.
It all looks good on paper. But if it's not enough to just buy something that is going up in value unless you believe it's going to go up in value in definitely. You also have to have a plan for if and when you are going to sell that asset and redeem now some pure believer or True Believers would say you never sell Bitcoin and that's one option. But unless you unless you have deliberately conscientiously decided that and you have that as a bulletproof emotion.
Strategy you sure as hell better have a plan for if and when you are going to redeem to some type of Fiat and if you don't have a defined time Horizon the likelihood of you losing money because you sell in a panic when it plummets is pretty goddamn High.
That's why I like the lower percentage points of your overall portfolio because it has to be money. That doesn't matter so you can hold it for the long term.
Term if you want to do hold it for the next 20 years, but I guess what you're saying is it does get to meaningful money at some point right? Because naturally if it if it does 5x from here to next from here, then it's going to be no longer five percent of your portfolio. Right? So, you know in that case like I would force myself to every year or every other year just rebalance. So like if you do you
actually do that though
because there are hundreds to do I did it all time.
Okay. All right, so you so now you would do that regardless of the the duration of holding that investment or do you wait for long long term cap gains, right. I mean like is
there I would wait for long term cat gains and less it is something just absolute Bonkers. So if it's if it's absolute Bonkers and you're just like I mean look at Tesla right now just like look at that chart click on the five-year and and your
Apple stocks app is it's just like the you're like, how is it not bending over if you like fall let you fall backwards as well as though - I guess not it's ridiculous. And so you if you if I'm holding short term Katniss are I just want to point out that you're
also you are also a lover of Tesla products, right? So like you're not saying this is as a Tesla hater you love their
stuff. I have I have listen I have to Teslas. They're fantastic Vehicles there. They're my favorite. I have a truck on order. I can't wait to get that thing.
And yet when it's a straight line
yeah, yeah, so it's you know, it's just one of those things where if it is getting an outsized percentage of your portfolio then it just it's absolutely smart too and I kind of have this thing where I mean we talked about I think you and I traded some text on this but we talked about just like your overall mixture of Assets in everything that you have kind of put together like what is your allocations for multiple things look like and I'm
Most of my stuff is just fully Diversified set it and forget it forever like wealthfront Style just put it in there and have it be fully Diversified in safe. And then I have a category that is like let's just call it 25 percent of My overall assets that will say these are 5x capable stocks or greater and those I know they're super risky. Well somewhat risky and they have real cash flow and all that, but I'm going to invest in those and I would put like, you know peloton's in that kind of camp.
The more riskier stuff like the NEOS like the Chinese Tesla, you know a few other things that I've bought over the last couple years so you know it but then always going and pruning and readjusting and saying, oh actually my 5x stocks are now 40 percent of my portfolio. Let's trim that back to
25. Yeah. I appreciated your strong by recommendation on PornHub. That was that was genius. Well your code for that your co-owner now, which
is odd but it's it's your thing the acroyoga
Among the team. I'm on the team tab
free premium for the next two months. Use code tim tim tim tim Kev
Kev. I really did they make that code that would be
fantastic. That is a joke people joke joke joke joke Kev Kev. Now I had a follow-up to that. Oh, the follow-up is really more commentary because I think some people will be very interested in this conversation and others will find it inside baseball.
Or just they'll think that it's kind of.
rarified air investment talk and I would on one level agree with that and on one level disagree with it because
we're sitting here at the beginning of 2021 2020 has been such a fascinating and punishing laboratory for looking at the consequences of good and bad decisions and
There are many places where it's difficult in many ways to quantify those upsides and downsides and risks certainly with covid with certain information available other information on available or pending. It's been challenging but one of the playing fields in which you can look at decision-making as sort of a microcosm of the macro, right?
Like you get to see how decision-making that transcends investing shows itself with stocks crypto, whatever. It might be right in other words. If you are able to observe and hone your decision-making with even very small Investments. I believe that that transfers into if you're if you're self-aware that can transfer into better decision-making in other areas, right because we're all investors.
Of time energy capital and you can choose to become better at those things or you can remain blissfully unaware but one way or another you are making decisions about investment every day. So that's that's another reason why I've paid attention to this a lot in the last year. I mean, I think there have been some incredible opportunities also in the last 12 months, but more than that, it's just a
lens through which you can look at how rational you are how subject to emotional swings and corresponding bad decisions you are and it tells you a lot about how you might make decisions or more concretely make rules for yourself in 2021.
So it's going to give me an example of that. Like, I'm really curious. Yeah outside of Finance. How have you applied this to others if your
life? Well, this is for instance in in 2020 one of the
Lessons or takeaways that I had for myself in investing then I'll talk about how I would apply that is that this is going to sound so rudimentary, but you know, I've been very lucky and also I think very good at picking things to invest in overtime, right? If you just look at the last 10 years 12 years net-net things have worked out pretty well and there are
Are a lot of
circumstances there are certain
trends that I accidentally took advantage of some that. I deliberately take advantage of but blah blah blah blah blah. I'm pretty good at placing bets. I am very weak. I would say on exit strategy and knowing when to get out of positions and this past year. I realized that three years looking at a three year time Horizon for anything publicly traded seems to be a
Comfortable for me in the sense that I can't predict what things are going to do. What what companies are going to do? What in the next three months six months. I have no fucking idea. No idea. Right? I mean, they're just so many curve balls that can be served to any company five years. I mean geez five years now we're talking about like Google starting to usurp Yahoo. Right. I mean that's like a long enough period of time especially with exponentially developing technologies. That five years is
Very hard to call but like three years if I'm looking at certain types of companies that I feel like I understand pretty well Amazon Shopify would be two examples I think Spotify also I'm investors and all those four and again, this is not investment advice. I don't know how many times we have to say this to cover our asses but this is you know, your mileage may vary and I only invest in things that I feel like I really really
Understand deeply yeah, and I'm the same way. Yes, just three years. I'm looking at certain Trends. I have an audience fortunately and a lot of friends who are kind of the tip of the spear with early adoption. Not all those things work out. But when you see then it begin to kind of hop, like hop, the fence from say my friends are my audience to people one degree removed. I'm like, okay that
that I think is worth paying a lot of attention to so that is that is been a a new rule that I have established for myself specifically for publicly traded equities. Yeah, and the way that that's applied to my life more broadly and we're going to we're going to don't worry folks are going to get two other points besides crypto and investing is looking at doing a full review of 2020 and then looking for 2021.
Thinking
out three years as opposed to just 20 21 and thinking about what types of sort of regularly occurring practices. I want to have and I can give some examples when we get into it over a three-year period is is really calming for me. It's
yeah, like ten years ten years
ago. Like I don't know man. I mean there's just so much that could change I mean
Who knows if you know Cal you know, it's like Texas is going to secede along like maybe Texas and Montreal will become sister cities and you
know, whatever sister
provinces and they'll secede from the nation. I'm the I'm being a bit ridiculous with that but like 10 years is a long long time and a lot can happen three years. I just find that to be a very calm place for me when it comes to planning now, but also thinking about
Development and building a family and so on and so forth. So it's kind of like if you were to paddle out in the ocean at like a surf break right you would you when you first paddle out. Let's just say it's a beach break for Simplicity. Like you're going to have to get through these first sets of waves and then you're going to have some calm and then you're going to get to like the outer Breakers and you're going to be in the Impact Zone again, and it's going to be exciting but it's also can be really stressful and I find like 3 years for me is just kind of comfortably in between those two. Yeah.
I like what you said about also doing these kind of somatic investing where you say. Okay, I don't know. I like you just named off the exact same companies that I pay attention to around e-commerce because like obviously we know e-commerce is well, it's more so online these days than ever but it's still a fraction of in-person Commerce, right? So if we believe that trend is going to continue which it will you know, who are the players in that space and and so
Rather than say, well, actually I think it's going to be Amazon and not Shopify or Square. You know, it's like I just would rather own the entire bucket, right? So, you know, I go in get Amazon Shopify Square PayPal and I think that pretty much covers, you know, the future of payments when I think about like mobile payments and and just happening on your phone and eventually when coinbase goes public. I'll probably pick some of that up as well. But like
just having that and sitting on those and then is watching and kind of As Leaders start to emerge kind of dollar cost averaging a little bit more to get a little bit more upside in the in the clear winners. If there are going to be any then that's that's kind of what what I've done historically that's proved to be pretty successful.
Yeah, and it's you know, we're talking about kind of pickaxes and shovels right? I mean in the sense that a lot of these companies not all of them, but a lot of these companies offer
Services that other companies capitalize on or other creators and my choice is also were based on different scenarios related to covid so it's like okay, let's say covid like wave a magic wand I get solved tomorrow, but we were decimated behaviors changed growth trajectories changed for let's just call it severely for like 6 to 12 months. Okay. What is that?
It look like for an Amazon. What does that look like for Shopify? Okay, and then let's say covid continues. Let's say there's a new strain and a b and c happens and rather than best case. It's it's certainly maybe not worst case but a terrible case, what does that look like for these various companies? Okay and just came to the conclusion personally that
In most scenarios, you could play out as an exercise these companies still seem to do well and right in the can you also have
to play off the other side to write like what happens when the vaccine happens and coconut subsides? This is why I'm not holding Zoom right now mm Zoom, maybe a great. It's a great company great product. We're using it right now, but it's like it's I just don't see, you know, when people start to return to work what gets hit the hardest and it
so that's that's part of the reason why I had me I missed out on a ton of upside with the climb of in Rise of Zoom, but it doesn't pass that post vaccine test. I want to I want to have to believe in my heart of hearts that I will close my eyes and hold this thing for five years and before doing an investment. Otherwise, it's just it's gambling at that point. Yeah. Well, I mean, it depends
on how you define your time Horizon and if you have the skills and the emotional control
Or stoicism to be able to stick to your plan, right? So for me one of the reasons I came to three years is again five years. I just don't have confidence that I can look into the crystal ball and understand where technology is going to be in five years. There are companies. I expect we'll still be around certainly but let's just take in the case of Spotify for instance. You know, I looked at Spotify really closely and I'm on Spotify. Like I understand the technology I use the product. I saw them investing incredibly heavily.
In non-music audio content and certainly at the top of that list in terms of their Capital expenditures would be podcasts and you have Rogan you've got all these different folks and for Spotify compared to say Amazon. There are people who would argue that podcasts are an existential priority, right? Like they have to
Really heavily invest and be the a player high bidder for a lot of this core talent and these teams who can create content because their economic model is in some is in some respect dependent on the improved margins through non-music audio, right Amazon sells everything right? You can Amazon sells a million things and Amazon music.
And you know the team who's on podcasts with Amazon is a is a fantastic team. But within Amazon itself, it's hard for me to imagine that that has the same level of urgency and priority that it would have for Spotify. Just given the range of options agree for me. What about Apple? Yeah apples huge, but Apple also is I think apples amazing they have by far.
Far the most market share right now and they're also they have I would expect like certain constraints. Right? Like I don't think they're going to pursue anything incorporating advertising models at least not in the short term, right? They just haven't had a lot of luck with that. They don't seem inclined to pursue it. Also again just because the what is the Lion's Share of Apple Revenue? I have to imagine it's hardware and AppleCare and so on. I mean the sort of
For mental Revenue ad is pretty nominal when it is compared to say Spotify who is like absolutely has to make this work. So for me, I'm like, all right. Apple Amazon are going to be really deliberate. They're not going to rush they have endless powder in The Keg right? Like they just have once they find things that work they can they can make them ubiquitous.
I think that's going to take
time. Is it going to happen in one year maybe but I think pretty unlikely which is why I think Spotify will continue. I mean if I had to guess to invest very heavily and trying to solidify their position as the go-to platform for sort of talent and content creation within the kind of predefined parameters of non-music audio
And so for that reason this is not the only reason but for that reason also looking at potential upside, right? I mean in the sense that like if you want to Amazon to double what needs to happen for that to for that to happen, right? And then if you look at Spotify for Spotify to double what might need to happen in order for that to be the reward that the market and Retail investors sort of bestow upon it and the answer is I mean, I feel like a lot less needs to
Happen for Spotify right? I'm not saying Spotify would ever do this. But like if Spotify were just to read domicile and avoid all of these various problems that they have with their current situation. Not that they would do that. But like certainly there are steps they could take if they needed to that would dramatically change their financials. And again, what the hell do I know right? Like I'm not an analyst but
yeah, but this is your world though. I mean podcasting is like that's your
So I feel like you would yeah a lot when it comes to
that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I just ice and I also see and you and I have texted about this where people you wouldn't have expected to use Spotify or Now using spotify. Yeah, right and it's made that hop over the fence in the United States and Europe. The behaviors are very different in Spanish-speaking countries and regions.
Spotify is extremely dominant. It would appear based on polling my own audience and just a lot of root. There's a lot of room to grow. I
think yeah, I agree with that. Like I think Spotify is interesting from that standpoint. It is certainly it's a really crappy razor thin margin business on the music side any time they can get you anywhere where way from one of the major labels. They're making money right? Because your pet you're paying that $15 a month or whatever it is.
Dollars a month. I just found out they have a downgraded from a family plan to the duo plan which is just for two people. So my wife and I just use the do planned say my bucks myself three bucks a month. Well done. Thank you Kevin. Thank
you.
Anyway. Yes, it's a great product to I love the technology. I think that they have invested heavily on the kind of AI and machine learning side of things to get recommendations better than anyone has which is so key for music Discovery. I'm a
Fan on that front as
well. Yeah, and I
was gonna say one more thing. Yeah. I was more thing on the finance side as well fire fire fire clothes off finance and move on because I know we had a few more things to hit but I spent a crap ton of time researching and doing my due diligence on the various Financial applications for tracking finances. So I just wanted to share this with people because I let my work benefit you in some way so, you know
I feel that what I've done is I you know, all of us are most of us we dabble in a bunch of things whether it be cryptocurrency or a little bit of like, you know E-Trade or whatever your broker is or wealthfront or you know have a little bit of stuff here. You have a maybe you have a home or not or a car payment or not and I want a universal dashboard to bring all that stuff together. It's like one place where you can see holistically what's going on with all of your finances everywhere credit cards all that stuff and I've tried all of the stuff out there.
Real quick quick and sucks. It's horrible. It doesn't work with like it have the crap out there. I want I to wealthfront it will tied a bunch of stuff is just horrible. So avoid that at all costs even though that's like the old school one the sounds like oh maybe quickens better now, it's not better. It sucks. They now I have this theory that a bunch of the quick end Engineers got together and we're like, yeah this place kind of sucks. But let's go create a new product. So quick in came out with a new product. That is actually quite good. It says it's called.
I so it's simplify money.com SI MPL IFI, you can just Google it don't like try and spell out it weighs simplify from its by the makers of Quicken. So it is actually a fantastic product and it's somehow competing against Quicken their own product, which is very weird. I think what happened is as with any old piece of software, you've got an old-school audience. It's been baked in four decades that if you
Change any user interface element that go apeshit and they freak out on you right? Like that's the case with why all these software packages like Word and Excel and all these others. They just turn into bloatware. You know, you look at them. You're like why so many icons and it's because people will complain if you remove anything it's always hard to take features out. So this is just a really streamlined beautiful. It's like three bucks a month. It's fantastic. Now, if you don't like this one thing I do like about this. I'll just tell you one of the features I thought was really cool and I use this for over the holidays.
You know how like you you go on your return something like you got a sweater you return it, but you'd like never know if it really hits your account again, you don't pay attention like in became there's a way to say I return this and notify me when I get the credit back or not. If the credit doesn't come back like just a little like cool little features like that. So anyway, I was pretty impressed with it does link with a lot of the stuff very confusing wildlings with a lot of the places that quick and doesn't even though they're the same company. But anyway, that's that I think personal Capital though is the best one that's out there if you use personal Capital before no,
I don't use them on the investing side. Like I don't put my money with them because they also have like an investing thing. I use wealthfront for that but personal Capitals in terms of the interphase the holistic interface to bring together all the counts. It's completely free. You don't have to spend any money on it and it kind of brings everything into One dashboard for you. So anyway, I and I've looked at like ten others that I won't even bore you with but those are my picks for the show
sweet. What what now you are. How would I put it?
Have a financial dashboard fetish like
some people like tentacle porn some people like she like Japanese Japanese coffee, which you also like, but you have a
financial dashboard fetish. So what I'm curious about is do you
just does it just tickle your
balls and you get a little feeling in your butterfly in your ocean having wine
makes makes you makes you really happy
to look at this. Is it just like a zen garden?
Or you or do you actually learn anything? Does it inform your decisions has it changed how you behave in any
way it has because what it does is it does a pretty good job at kind of categorizing everything that's going on in my life. And so it has a beautiful cash flow feature where I can see I've spent this much this was my budget and this is how much income I have coming in. So I like to kind of track that and watch the trends over time.
And overall net worth is cool because it lets you tie in your house in there. Let's put your cars in there like anything else that you may have any jewelry anything and you can kind of like watch a certain things appreciate or they don't and they go down. It's just like I like the idea of being able to pull all this stuff together and do like one interface because if you think about okay now I got to go log into coinbase now, I got to go log into wealthfront and now I got to go log into my bank to see my checking account when I have a credit card.
Covert Chase and I have an Apple pay card in like there's a bunch of stuff to check you know, and and that means in terms of transactions transactions as well. I mean, I've caught some fraud on these in the learner be two things where I was like, I didn't buy that I went and canceled the card. So just having a way that I can go and every couple days just see that and just do a quick gut-check like is everything saying here. It's nice and there's no I don't have to log in to multiple places and it's free. So, I don't know it's
cool. So you avoid logging into multiple places?
Is by giving all of your login information to one entity or is there some type of auth that allows you to circumvent that like ulcer producing centralization which is make me nervous. Yes. So plaid is it
Powers all of this on the back end. So Platt is a company you may or may not have heard of it was one that we invested in when I was at Google Ventures, they work with all the financial institutions to connect and provide data to apps like personal Capital. So you're
actually not sharing your login credentials with plaid are with a personal Capital you're sharing them with plaid plaid secures them. They issue like a token to personal Capital. So personal Capital never actually has your credentials and then they can view your data that through that one like secured Vault so cool. It is nice like that. Yeah. I was worried about that as
well.
So to completely so the I will add one more thing on the finance front, which is I'm fucking tired of thinking about anything related to finance or investing. That's been you forever. Dude. Yeah. I first five years. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But especially especially in the last I would say six to twelve months. So my one of my goals is to do as much possible in terms of
Any activities or setting rules for myself like strict rules, like you can't eat Bagels. I don't eat Bagels. Anyway, although they're delicious but like making very binary rules for myself because I think it is very easy. And if we look at just human behavior, I think it's very natural, but often harmful to one's Health if you have something that is moving up or down or an up and down.
If you have something easily quantifiable that to your mind seems like points on the scoreboard whether positive or negative. It's really easy to spend a lot of time being distracted by these things and looking at these things. I'm thinking a lot more about energy management over the next year than time management. I feel like time management should be a downstream decision based on your energy management.
Current priorities and roles and that is how I'm approaching it. So I am hoping to do effectively zero investing unless I have to make defensive moves or disaster befalls me which I hope will not be the case. So that is all to say I kind of crammed a lot of decisions because as you know, Kevin I was sitting on the sidelines since mostly sitting on the sidelines since I don't know 2015 with the exception of that Krypto.
Position and I don't enjoy it in the same way that that some of my friends do and maybe you do just the like the tracking of all of it. I think it's more. I feel like it's kind of a leaching of energy for me, even though it is very addictive. So I'm looking forward to doing things that have nothing to do with investing and we were talking about in prep for this conversation talking about or I guess in the in the Google spreadsheet talking.
About this year meaning 20 20 21 Years resolutions last year and I do every year for the last handful of years a past year review where I go through my calendar week by week from the previous year and look at the things that gave me the most energy took the most energy. Some of them are worth it. Most of them are not and trying to identify the kind of peak emotional.
Experiences positive and negative and who the people in activities are on both of those lists. So sorry to say Kevin you ended up on my negative sub connects and and that's how I then go through and look at scheduling things and spending time or not spending time with activities and people for the next year and the most consistent energy Giver was time.
In nature and activities in nature and it was part of the reason I was so thrilled and we can kind of go in a Direction but to get as a gift this book which is of wolves and Men by Barry Holsten Lopez and it is probably the best non-fiction book. I've read in the last five years it is so cool. Unbelievably good and I have
Highlights on almost certainly in every chapter and it's just I had to modify the way I highlighted because I highlighted so much. His writing is as crisp and clear as Michael Lewis the structure of his writing is right up there with like John McPhee and the the beauty of his prose and just the word smithing and use of metaphor is right up there. I would say
say with Mary Oliver. I was blown away. I kept stopping my friends and wanting to read them paragraphs and chapters and they got pretty annoyed after a while but it is a spectacular non-fiction book. Very coolant. Yeah it
and he's funny Timmy. I don't know if you remember telling me this but you told me I don't know maybe was it six months ago. You were like, I'm not reading any new books. What was it you were saying something like that. What was the guy out so well
for 2020 I read know.
Books that were printed in 20 that were published in 2020. So I was reading books but I put up a blog post as a policy and I think the title of the blog post was making the single decision that removes a thousand decisions and that relates to the burden of getting hit up by hundreds of people a year who want me to read their books that are coming out, you know, we
Later or two months later, and it's not that they're bad people but they very often have a book coming out. They want to be on the podcast and I end up oftentimes. I have ended up which is stacks of hundreds of books. And the fact of the matter is we don't have that much time on the planet, you know, unless we figure out how to you know recycle, you know, 20 year old blood like vampires like some people do Who Shall Not Be Named or whatever using fancy drugs or
Mice and Metformin etcetera, like maybe you get you eke out a few more years. Okay, that's possible. But if I look at the average age of death of males in my family going back many generations as far as I could like easily do the math. It's about 85 like it doesn't really matter what you do as long as you don't get hit by a bus or fall off a cliff like you're probably going to die around 85. So I'm 43. That means I've crossed the 50% Mark. I think it's helpful to just assume that and you can sit down and do the
With like how many really good books do you read per year and people do the math and maybe they end up at 5:00. Maybe they end up at 20. It's hard to read 20 amazing books. Unless you're really deliberate about it. You probably read a fair amount of garbage. So you figure out like okay this you know, this book took me a long time to find and it was gifted to me even though it had been recommended many times. I still didn't read it and he
said a long time to find meaning you just hadn't heard of it or it's out of
print. No.
No, no, it's not out of print. It's it's a long time to find it took a long time for it to happen. I guess is what I'm saying. It had been recommended many times but we get bombarded with reading assignments all day long, right? Maybe it's just something on Tick Tock or Instagram or Twitter or whatever. Although I deleted all of this from my phone. I deleted yeah, all of those have been deleted from my phone for about six months now, which is great.
Wait. I saw you post on Instagram the other day.
Day, I didn't see a ghost. Are you told me you did because I don't have it. I don't go on Instagram. Yeah. Yeah, I'd you know, she told me to keep you posted our
chocolate bar that we got you I did. Yeah, so I have a workaround. So the way that I post to Instagram without using Instagram. There's this is I you know, I use I use and while I'm in that sometimes happens to but I use an app called only Pulte and only pulse like catapult but only
Pulp ult allows me to post to Instagram without having the application on my phone. So I'm sure there are other things that allow you to do this maybe HootSuite or others, but I've used only pulse and it's it's really kind of a it is not a Swiss army knife. It is
force. What is it looks just like Instagram and a ski like your likes going. I like to think that your your assistants calling you up and being like
Kevin is wearing a red shirt today and Dario seems to be holding their dog like describing you posed by Pas the AA black take out the semicolon. He is the
semicolons now I use only polt it think of it as a buffer for Instagram specifically so you can schedule social media posts or post immediately using this application and it posts to your Instagram account for you. So what that allows me to do is I can take a photo of something I think is beautiful or
Useful put it on Instagram and do so without ever being exposed to my feed in any way. So I'm it is it is in other words it is right only instead of read
only. I mean you could just unfollow everyone to and then when you go bolt, there's like a blank feed. Yeah. I mean I could do that, but then you don't get idms and stuff I guess but I like yams.
I don't really use GM's. Yeah, I don't either. Yeah, it's just it's just
Just over the volume isn't manageable. So the point being with these books is like look at your track record of reading books. And I remember Tim Urban wrote about this. So the the creator of wait, but why in an amazing piece called The Tail End, which everyone should read and it talks about how precious time actually is everybody listening to this. If you haven't read the tail end by Tim Urban read it reread it. I
Read it regularly and the fact the matter is like I don't know. Maybe I have a few a few hundred books left to read like good ones. So I don't want to be reading stuff generally speaking that hasn't stood some test of time right like this guy Barry Lopez won the national book award. He was nominated for the national book award for this book of wolves in men. I mean this this is a very high bar, right? They just published the 25th Anniversary Edition.
Ian it changed how people wrote about nature or how people thought about constructing nature writing and nonfiction period like the guy completely reshaped an entire genre of writing. It's incredible. And if you have that high a bar, there are still too many books. So I'm trying to be much more purposeful about my reading and that was why in 2020. I had I'm not reading any books published this year, which I am going to extend.
For 2021 so I'm not going to read any books published in 2021
either. That's awesome. I love that.
Yeah feels good. And once you make the rule it depersonalizes it this is really important because it's hard to say no when you're making one off decisions, right if somebody comes to you and they're like, hey, can you contribute to my GoFundMe because you know, I lost my shoes and I want to buy a nice pair of shoes or whatever. You just get hit up with so much stuff and if it is
They personal know it's hard for people to receive if it is a policy and you can point them somewhere even if you say it's a policy it often takes the sting out, but I could just point to if you go to Tim dot blog /nu books. I think it is. I get it. It's a short URL it takes people directly to that post on the finding single decisions that remove hundreds or thousands of of decisions and
Yeah, there it is. Yes, if you just go to Tim double OG /nu books, then it takes you to finding the one decision that removes a hundred decisions. And so if I get hit up via email via text via fill in the blank by someone actually know who wants me to read a book. I'm just like, you know, I wish I could but I can't I've set this public policy. So I don't have to choose among friends. Boom. And I send a link and that's that's it. That's the template
response. Can I ask you most yeah how you well.
I'll tell you why I'm asking this question messes question because one of the as part of the training that I'm doing with with Henry who we talked about in previous podcasts who's at the Zen master that I study with. One of the things that I do is when I go for walks in nature and you mentioned enjoying nature as one of the big highlights the easy thing to do is to put on a podcast or an audio book, right? And on top of that is to set it at two and a half speed so you can get there as fast as possible. My instructions have been
been to take out my headphones and just treat it as a way to listen. Just listen to Nature just like let it all come in and put your focus and attention on the sounds that are happening around you I found that to be a much more. It's like a amplifier on top of the already awesome walk just as idea of really being there rather than try and do extra things.
While you're on that walk, right? And so my question is, you know, when I've been listening to audiobooks. I've actually said okay 1X speed because I really if I'm going to do a book. I'm going to give it my full attention. Are you doing anything like that or do you jam through books? Did you read them at night? Like how do you consume? Well,
so there are few things. I'd love to reflect on the you just said the first as far as nature goes, I would say that and I try to think about
Out much like the energy management leading then to time management. I think a lot as you know about the the sequencing of things like what is the natural kind of waterfall Cascade order in which these things belong and for me spending time in nature is about cultivating and a a very detailed awareness of nature or acute awareness of nature first and foremost if I do that,
The enjoyment or the contentment that I feel in nature automatically goes up dramatically. So I spent in part of the reason I'm thinking about this so much that I've had a very hard time re-acclimating to Austin and it's not because of just all the Swarms of locusts AKA Californians descending upon this Fair City. Although I'm hypocritical to say that obviously
it's it's because it's a city
it's a city and I spent a lot of time in the wilderness.
Wilderness on a feet on a farm I want to mention locations, but for the entire summer, so, you know, I spent several months walking through the woods every day where there are black bears and coyotes and so on and seeing the changes I would walk for hours and I got to recognize these very minor or I should say my Newt changes on my walks. I would see which trees changed color first as we got closer to.
Autumn
I would see how tracks presented themselves in certain places at certain times of the day dependent on weather and when I came back to Austin, I want to say one thing also one of the ways that I increased my appreciation for what was around me because I think if the walk isn't interesting enough for you, you're probably just not interested enough. So I asked and I'm going to be
finding someone to pay to help me with this in Austin found Wildlife biologists and Specialists or even people who work at say garden shops and things like that to walk with me through the woods to identify things to point things out to me and the recommendation they gave me at one point was start with trees because Flowers and wildflowers are very complex there. There are going to be dozens. If not,
Hundreds of different varieties start with the trees because in any given location you might have at least where I was let's just call it eight to twelve trees and if you learn the classifications and how to tell them apart and how to describe the different characteristics that separate them or distinguish them you're going to be able to identify 90% of the trees that you see how cool is that, you know, before that point in time. They're just trees you might identify a major.
Maple let's say because the leaf looks like the game is something you'd see in Canada, but by and large, it's just trees it's green stuff. That's really high. And after that you suddenly kind of click the dial a few notches towards high def and your experience of the Walk changes tremendously. So I would occasionally take phone calls when I was walking, but I spent I would say at least seventy eighty percent of my time listening to bird calls learning to identify.
Birds are
now. Are you about a murder? I'm not a bird. It's okay, if you
are no no, I'm not a bird or someone would be able to find this there is actually an app on Android sadly. Not last I checked it wasn't on iOS that is like Shazam for bird calls. It's amazing. In other words. You can hold your phone up click a button and it will identify which bird is calling, which is
awesome. Are you young missing? Are you doing Shazam for birds out in the
forest know because I use
iOS, I use iOS so I had to do it the old-fashioned way and like go online and listen to different bird calls and try to compare them the the the other thing that I that I found really fun to do because not everyone's going to have access to someone who can point out different plants is to use the Google app to do image searches on different plants and it is incredibly accurate most of the time I was stunned
It's so cool. I just walk around your house. Like how many people and I'm going to plead guilty here know the names or the types of all the plants. They might have in in or around their houses. Very very few. Yeah, I would guess right and using the Google app and image search which is very easy. You can pretty quickly identify the vast majority of plants trees and so on. It's awesome. I've used it on walks here in Austin to identify trees. I'd love that.
That yeah. So those are a few of the ways that I think about nature of which we are part right? It's very easy to feel separate from nature. And I think that feeling of separateness is intensified. If you have earbuds in and you're listening to something at rapid speed nature doesn't really Rush right? So to meet it at its own Cadence without listening to anything, but what is around you I find
Really therapeutic as far as reading these days. I definitely don't rush like if I'm rushing through a book I should generally just drop the book. It's not good enough. This book like you should be you should only be choosing books that you are sad to see end. Hmm, right? Like if you're not like,
ah, man, what am I going to do
now that I finished? No. No, I have to find another book. If you don't have that feeling then you're not reading the right books. I'll give you another example, so
So this book is one that I was given by my girlfriend for Christmas and it's an awesome book. I hadn't read it in probably 20 years and it's it's this it's called exploring the world of lucid dreaming by Stephen Laberge La ber GE and Howard rheingold. This is an incredibly detailed tactical how to book about lucid dreaming and
Galloping the different skills related to lucid dreaming lucid dreaming. I was really really dedicated to a lot of these practices towards the very end of high school or certainly the first few years of college and I actually reached out to Stephen Colbert's or his team when I was in college. I couldn't get ahold of him, but I did get the attention of his team because I said you may want to look at if you haven't already huperzine a
A huperzine a is a supplement. You can get it anywhere but certainly online which acts as an acetyl cholinesterase inhibitor. And this is just very long-winded way of sad
well in his it's not just holding in the brain. Well, it's
not turning off acetylcholine production. But it it has anecdotally the ability to help one induce Lucidity how and why that happens? I don't know at the time. I had a very
You know well developed pet theory for why this sort of mechanistically in plausibly why it worked but the point being that Stephen Colbert's came out of Stanford lucid dreaming to Define. That is the phenomenon of realizing that you are dreaming when you are dreaming you effectively wake up in your dream and you're like, holy shit. I'm dreaming and normally you get excited and then you wake up. Yeah, they call that they call that in Zen they call that
Enlightenment, but it's
Not when you're dreaming we go, it's your away. So wake up and you really have this is a dream. Yeah, so you can start with you could start with the lucid dream.
Yeah, how you doing with that? This is actually a phenomenon that can be demonstrated in laboratory settings because your eye movements during REM sleep correspond to your eye movements in dreams, so you could hook someone up to a supposed to be an EEG in a sleep lab. You will know when
They are sleeping and in rem States and so on based on brain wave activity and then if they have agreed with the experimenter on a predefined set of eye movements, let's just say like right right left right right left or something like that when they become Lucid in their dream, they could look if following that pattern and indicate to someone who is in the lab that they are. In fact aware. They're dreaming is pretty good is because in their eyes and doing that
well, they
wouldn't be able to pull that off because they easy wouldn't show
it right? That's right. The G wouldn't would just show that there have been dickheads and Tracy but the the lucid dreaming is
it it makes you more aware in your normal Waking Life because
You develop the habit of doing what some people might call reality checks and that is asking yourself the question. Am I dreaming or am I awake while you're awake and you would and then you would test it the way you test that for instance if you had a book cover like this with text on it in a dream. You looked at the cover at the text. You look away. You look back. The text is generally going to change because your brain is producing the entire experience Moment by moment, so that
D1 test we like looking at text looking away looking back. Another would be looking at patterns. Like I'm looking at the wall in front of me in my kitchen and the tiles are laid a certain way. If I looked away and looked back at those tiles. They might be running the opposite direction or at a
diagonal are your dreams that Vivid like my REM dreams are just kind of like I never really believe that they're real. Do you actually like
well if you never believed they were real you would always be Lucid, right?
So
right but I don't think like I don't ever remember like picking up a book and being like Oh has text on it. Like that doesn't I don't get to that High Fidelity like do do you
you work on dream recall first? Okay, you would cult cultivate dream recall and it is your grasp on the sort of coattails of details of these dreams. This is so tenuous that you there are there's definitely
A protocol and an etiquette to maximizing dream recall. If you don't do it immediately upon waking, you know, if you move around if you brush your teeth, if you go take a piss like it's gone. All of your dreams are gone. You have to be really methodical strict about it, but it is incredible how quickly your dream recall ramps up and you get to the point where you're remembering oftentimes 345 dreams and night and taking them down. There are ways to improve that you can wake up in the middle.
Nola nightstand for two three hours go back to bed. I mean there are all these different techniques that are outlined in this book that really really work. So in high school when I first became reasonably good at this. I'm not going to say great but I could usually induced Lucidity in dreams at least every other night and I was in my final wrestling season and I would Manifest this guy John Smith who was a famous gold medalist and at a particular type of wrestling with low leg attacks.
I think he was out of Oklahoma and I would train with him. I'd never met him and I never I never have met him but I would train with him. I'd seen a lot of his video footage I would train with him in my dreams and wrestling and found that to carry over into my normal practices. So there are all sorts of things. If you're let's say you have stage fright. There are all sorts of anecdotes / case studies of people who will then create.
In style, right they'll create the environment of performing in front of a crowd they practice this in their dreams and it gives them an opportunity to rehearse facing their fears. Right? So I'm really interested in lucid dreaming and you know, there are some commonalities between the neurological or biochemical responses to
REM sleep as compared to the the the effects produced by like lsd-25 right? There are some really spooky similarities. And so this
this came back to me. This is a
book. I've read many times in late High School. Certainly Early College my own copy, which is covered in highlights is somewhere and then it was it was just gifted to me again. So I have
have many books in my house. Now that I would willingly read a second time. I think that should be the bar for reading anything once it has to be that good.
That's awesome. Yeah, that's I have many books that I've never touched you like you must have a do but I want to get to you know, it's just like I tend to like clean out all the because like I know what you mean, if anyone that has a podcast that has more than 10 viewers that you just get books into you. Like if you get on some Publishers list and all of a sudden like a new book the worst. Yeah, it's crazy. So I tend to give those away mostly away to friends and whatnot. Cool. So I what else we're going to cover today. There was a couple things
I wanted to hit I
was young. I mean I be just I'd be curious to know what your how you're thinking about 20 21 and what kind of resolutions you have if any or how you think about planning for the new
year? Yeah. I mean, I think there was there was two things looking I similar to you in that I spent, you know a good chunk of time looking back on the year and and I didn't go through a calendar, but I did look at my New Year's resolutions from last year which were I feel that all of them.
I just I mean I look at what I want to do differently this year. And so I've set up some procedures in place and then there were some things that some wins that I did have mid-year, but they weren't resolutions because I didn't want no we're going to be in covid and so, you know, I think that covid what it did for me is immediately caused me to start drinking more, you know, it was like very easy to finish a bottle of wine with my wife like, you know, and we're you typically baekho we have some left over from last night's sleep or little it's like
You know, we cleared a bottle out no problem and then went for a beer or something, you know, it was just like because we were like we're gonna die and it's like and I might as well drink. So I was I was basically just freaking out there for the first couple months and you know that that kicked off a point to where I got to and I said, I'm fat. I feel like I've drank too much and I need to course, correct. And so if I'm honest with myself, I felt really depressed, you know, not in a clinical way.
But in a just this is really beat me down. I miss my friends. I miss traveling I miss like, you know, there's things that and then part of me is like, well, you know, we have clean drinking water. We have food. We have jobs like life is good. So but but I think it and it's impacted everyone a little bit differently. And what I meet Ali went to is said well, how can I stop and cut back on drinking and then
given that I only have so much free time with two little girls. What can I introduce that is new that gives me some relief and brings my spirits back to into a positive place. And so I tried a bunch of stuff, you know, I tried, you know walking through the the forest because I live in Oregon and we got a forest my backyard tried sauna tried cold plunge meditation Pilates working out lifting weights, like all those things and I would do a couple weeks them and say, okay.
Each one of these if you had like stack rank them, which ones are having the biggest impact on me because I can't do them all which ones can I do that are having the biggest impact and without a doubt. I would say the two things are walking and and and sauna. Those are the two things that that are just Sookie and I walk every single day now and it is a no phone no earpods like are pods like kind of walk and it is it's crazy what 45 minutes
in the forest will will get you an in terms of just like a mood boost, you know, like swinging the arms moving the legs like it's fantastic. So so that's been huge also in being totally transparent. I did some couples therapy, which I thought was fantastic like and it's not because I thought I was going to end my marriage like I never got that crazy, but it's just something, you know, you're cooped up with somebody else with a couple of like little toddlers And
It gets chaotic sometimes you know, and it's like your there's no work Escape work is in the home like, you know, there's no there's no way to have that natural kind of break that you get whether it be grabbing a beer with another friend and then coming back to your spouse or like there's none of that if you're just on top of each other and so, you know, we had done couples therapy back before and after we got married is kind of like a give us a toolkit to deal with issues and it's fantastic.
Highly recommend it. It's every single time. I've done I've never been always one recommendation.
You give to people who are listening to this and considering it as an option. What's any best practices or recommendations for
people?
Well, I would say that first. I was curious like are there any new tech plays that I can get into here like these talk spaces and some of these other things that are out there and I find that those are really kind of like lightweight not really meant for couples. That was just like, you know texture therapist. I was like, I don't I don't need this. So I found someone that I could actually meet with over like a secure Zoom type connection that is a real license therapist. Not that they aren't on that but a dedicated person to you that's going to give you a full hour, you know, it is
Not texting back and forth and I would say, you know, I have another buddy that did the same thing and he had to get to a second therapist to find the right one. So it's not like just because you find one that you're you go to and you're like, oh this this isn't what I expected. It doesn't mean that the idea of the practice is wrong. You might just not have the right person. And so we found a fantastic woman. That is just really good at driving me back to the source of why am I feeling this way?
Sway and just opening up the lines of communication to let us and remind us that we're both on the same team. We both want what's best for each other and to support each other and help each other because we're coming from a loving place. But sometimes we get caught up and in other things and other loops and cycles and scorekeeping. I'm a big score keeper because I'm I have always avoided confrontation. Like my dad was a very verbally aggressive abusive guy to my mom and
Had many many many good traits. I was like to say that about my dad because he did but definitely not teaching me on the relationship side fantastic father horrible husband confusing for me as all hell, right. It is a kid, you know, I think that I tend to avoid confrontation and then just kind of keep track of things and then not then I get upset and I have something that there's like, I've all these things ah, you know, just come out and so just like trying to address things in more real time has been a
a big help for me. And yeah, there's been a ton of little things that I picked up. But anyway, I just wanted to tell people out there if you're going through rough times because I hear divorce divorce rates are like through the roof right now is like the courts are backlogged. It's it doesn't mean necessarily you found the wrong person. You might just need a little help and that's
okay. Yeah, I think the real time versus dropping the mother lode of like 17.
Complaints and yes freeze-framed infractions is is really
important. Would you share that line that you told me that you use that I think is really
helpful. Which one well, so I think yeah, I mean so my oh my girlfriend for all of these because certainly I didn't come up with these on my own and I think she's been she is very conscientious about how she uses wording and language and you would expect that I would
Have that as as a writer or a supposedly, but when I get upset, I think I I tend to to throw Haymakers right? Not literally, but I'm less care. I'm Les I'm less careful with my wording when I'm upset, and it usually escalates or damages things more than it helps and I'm not like I'm not a yeller. I never yell, but I can be very blunt and the
Doing that she used and I noted it and I have also used is really simple. It's it's just the story I am making up in my head is
Right, and then you have that the dishes are left in the sink because you expect me to clean them up. And when I when I believe that thought I feel
X right so you're not saying this arms it quite a bit, doesn't it? Yeah, it's really
and it's not just being nice. I mean it's being more effective because as soon as someone is put on the defense
It's game over like you're just not going to you're not going to get where he wanted to go and by saying and this is this is also something if people wanted to study nonviolent communication, I think Marshall something around there. You can find it if you just search Marshall nonviolent communication. I can't remember the last name, but there is an audio course that is quite good and that's one structure and you would think as I did I was like well if we're constantly both saying the story time
Can I have in my head is that it's going to be so formulaic that we're going to be I come on what the fuck you know and it's just it's not going to work and I have not found that to be the case. It just continues to be really helpful.
Even if it is, it's true though. That's why because it is a story you're making up in your head. Right? I mean, it's always what it is. Yeah and having
I don't know a lot about couples therapy. I had we have my girlfriend and I have worked with people before we're going to likely work with someone again, just because
I have phone calls in a week. They basis with someone who kind of looks after me. My girlfriend has phone calls at least once or twice a week with people who look after her, but there is no one currently whose sole priority is to be a sort of Midwife even if mail for the relationship right like the cultivator of the relationship us together and you my feeling is even if they're not the Jedi Master.
Of relationship coaches just having someone who can create a neutral safe space where each person can get whatever they need to get off. Their chest off. Their chest is a huge service so that it doesn't bottle up bottle up bottle up and then explode into this like 20 exhibit assault on someone which they just can't easily recover from they can't easily defend themselves against
And it's really
jarring. Yeah intimately for everyone
involved and it can force people to kind
of throw their hands up and be like well fuck I don't feel
like I can win here. Like I just can't win right I think this has happened a lot during covid-19 that my girlfriend and I have both felt that way different points. It's like well shit man like this is set up in a way like I don't feel like there's any way I can win here. Like there's nothing I can do that is is going to lead to me feeling like I'm being successful and I think that is much more likely to happen when
It's bottled up and given out as like a massive dosage of 10 or 20 things instead of like on a weekly basis having someone else say well Tim like is there anything else on your mind or anything on your heart that is that you're withholding right now and then I'm responding to a question as opposed to like snapping over something stupid and then letting all this stuff fly out of
my face.
That's great. Yeah, I think that the thing that she's helped me with that. I forgot to mention is that really just identify who the cast of characters are in your head and how they react to certain situations because we all have triggers. We all have these little rough patches that if you just poke the right way, it's going to it's going to put you in an angry or upset or frightened or scared State and you know, I certainly have those as well and so
I can come at something defensively or offensively from a place that is one of these cast of characters that is taken over my brain at that moment. And when you can name them Define them their wants their needs their fears their hopes, you can say, oh, that's so and so appearing that has a fear of this and she is triggering that right now and so just just that bringing awareness to that just like if you can catch
Yourself a little bit it just not that it makes it go away but you're like, oh, okay. Here's who's making an appearance. I know how to deescalate this person this this type of my personality a little bit better than
before. Yeah.
So have a rational conversation where you actually have an outcome that is one that is that puts that person away for good right or at least for that that
time so yeah, definitely there's something there's something it's not helpful for everyone and
Different formats for it some of it I've found very clunky some of it I've found depending on the facilitator quite helpful for couples and that is a Mago therapy. I am a Geo people can look it up and very quickly to decide whether it's helpful or not. But it it does help you to convey in a non-violent non-aggressive way some of the parts work that you're referring to that certainly for my girlfriend and I were was very impactful.
Oh Kevin, if you had to choose a word for 2021 for you, like a theme patience patience.
Yes. Okay, it's something I'm really trying to cultivate. I feel like you're pretty patient
guy. Are you in impatient guy?
Well, I mean, I just think about what we have ahead of us in terms of vaccines that who knows when we're going to get them, you know, the crazy scariness of potential mutations of a virus new incoming Administration.
The all the anxiety and unrest out in the streets. Like there's a lot of things where I just I'm very anxious and so I want things to be resolved and I'm a Problem Solver and it's like I just need to have a little bit more patients just like slow down and just let things unfold the way they're going to unfold and stop trying to project my mind into the future and to some crazy scenario, you know. Yeah, that's a big one for me and
The other thing for 2021 is is just really asking myself like the for the drinking thing that I've been really really good lately. This is covid drinking. So it's like, you know, I'm not going crazy but like it more than I'd like to drink so our new kind of well my new kind of framework that I put together for myself blackouts only on Tuesdays. Tuesday's no less than 10. No no, no.
Yeah. No, so what I'm doing is no more than two. I have found that anything above and beyond to drinks just does not serve me. Well, I'm too old. I did wake up like hot in the middle of the night for no reason Wars so bad like hot red wine sweats, you know, and then the other thing is never never two nights in a row, so I may say to myself I may be on night number two, and I say, you know like our want to drink the second night, and I just tell myself like can you go one day? Of course I can and then you go one day and it turns out the next day you
Not want a drink. Yeah, it's two nights in a row. So it's funny how just separating drinks by a night will help a ton. And then the the last thing and I think this is the most important thing and that the one I don't have a good answer for but I'm working on this is part of my zen friend who's coaching me on some of this stuff is really asking yourself when you're having a drink like really who's getting nourished right now.
Likes a good that's a good one. It's a really good one because what's happening? What part of me is? Is there something that because there's there's something inside this getting nourished and just trying to like and I don't have an answer for that yet. But it's it's a deep one to sit with you
know, yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. So question for you. When you look at your graph of drink consumption as it goes down is your consumption of edible gum. He's going through the
roof.
No, you know although I will tell you I did try something new called CBN we heard of this CB Ni Hao. Yeah, I
have heard of actually from a grower but I've never consumed.
So there's a herein described described it for folks. Yeah. Yeah. So there's there's a gummy manufacturer out here. And by the way Tim is saying this but you know, I'm not like I'm not a big user of gummies. Like I'm oh no, I'm
just fucking with you, but I do feel I
can win.
When you have had gummies, it is exceptionally clear in our text messages. That's
probably accurate probably pictures of me eating
pizza fucking touch typing with your elbows.
Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. So basically on the gummy side, there's one company called wild w yl d they make fantastic
wait like w yl y
LD. Yeah, and so they think they have Mall in the West Coast.
And then they're starting to spread all over the place, but they do a CBN. It's not really psychoactive but it really makes you sleep like it is I'm telling you. It's the closest thing. I've had to like, I don't know. It just feels like you're you took like a sleeping pill or something. Like I take it and it does have a little bit of THC in there like they do put some with it but wild makes a sleeping gummy. So, you know for me drinks, it's like especially when I mean God meme the news over the last few weeks and the
Months, it's just been insane. So when you're stressed out and that's the nice thing about a glass of wine that it but a gummy with with either CBD or CBN, but CBN more so these days fantastic sleep with it and I wear the aura ring and I just got the the Fitbit to try out the new sleep data on here. And so I'm tracking you have to see how see how it's doing. If you have more than two
drinks, you see it so clearly in your or data. It is irrefutable. It's just it turns your sleep into such.
Garbage, it's unreal.
Well resting heart rate goes up by 10 points and it's elevated all throughout the night HRV goes down. Like there's this so many bad things that
happen. Yeah
speaking of which in terms of like awesome Little finds that have been helping us get through these times this right here. I'm going to send you some of this time you got to try it. All right. What is it? So this is hinoki wood in here. Okay, and so I do key wood is one of the seven sacred trees of
N and when they talk about all the health benefits that come from forest bathing in Japan because you know walking in the forest can be prescribed at their from a physician. It's typically attributed to a lot of the fragrance from hinoki and this is hinoki oil right here. I found a fantastic manufacturer in Japan of high-quality like cold pressed to Nokia oil and I will tell you what it is. I have zero. I don't know any of these people. They're all in Japan.
It is an Okie lab.com. So hiÃn. Okay, I lab.com these oils is smells. So I mean you've been to like a Japanese like proper bath house where they have like the essential oils and all this is the stuff gold. Oh when I put it in the sauna to so you can put it in some water and then I poured over the coals in
the South awesome. Yeah. It's a type of Cypress. It's a beautiful beautiful tree really dense foliage cool. I have invited a few of them here my
It
actually oh, no kidding.
Yeah, so I got some I had some braudy
Jesus Christ. I love it. It's good to be kept from Japan
to qualify.
Like
II flew them via Freight from behind. Hey, man, you know all that and all those group to all that crypto gold. I don't know. Yeah goes I can almost a hundred percent guarantee you that
you have more crypto than ideas. So if you're looking to ransack,
oh Jesus Christ, it's it's yeah. Well, that's not saying much because you kind of DV divested yourself of everything. Yeah or our Yang's for
sure. I'm definitely more. I'm scared. The markets are just like super overvalued right now. So I tend to
go save her. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's I think there's there's a good good argument to be made for that. If I were to pick a word for 2021. What is
Right this moment it would be mischievous. I think that I've taken a lot of things and myself way too seriously in 2020 and I think I want to bring more coyote energy and kind of prankster mischievousness into
2021 interesting. So what does that look like in you like like like no mask wearing kind of thing or
no? No, that's just being it dickface.
I don't want to do that. No a coyote.
It's more. Yeah, it's more
I think a playfulness and a irreverence not taking things too. Seriously, you know, I'll give you an example. I just the other day threw up. I love the original Willy Wonka movie with Gene Wilder. And so I threw up this animated gif that is Gene Wilder sort of eating candy.
Saying the suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last and I just threw that up and it was hilarious to see how people responded and because it's so kind of oblique and vague that it acts as a Rorschach test for
wait a second. Did you throw this up like during the Trump like Capital take over
today? I know I threw I threw it up right afterwards. Geez.
You wanna fire dude?
Well, you say yes, I mean you say terrible timing. I think that I want to cultivate a insensitivity to personality by consensus what I mean what I mean by that is if you look at a lot of people I'm not going to name names man. You look yeah. No. No, I'm not gonna
cure it no manicured like feeds and
stuff. Well, you just look at
Personalities online over time you spend a lot of time with social and they become caricatures of themselves because they have certain behaviors rewarded certain behaviors punished certain behaviors left on applauded and they start to warp and bend their behavior to fit the most Applause and they turn into these kind of creepy caricatures.
I think that that ends up inevitably bleeding over into their real lives, right? I mean, they're they're off-screen lives. And I think that's really something I want to be hyper aware of which is why I don't have the social on the phone. I'm using these like workarounds like only Paltz post stuff and I want to kind of hold up a mirror that allows people to look at their own reactions also, right so
I think that a lot of what I'll put up in 2021 will be Rorschach tests. And for people who don't know that those are the inkblot tests or they would put lots of ink fold a piece of paper show it to someone and say what do you see and you know, they might see a murderer. They might see a butterfly they might be something else and then that is used as kind of a jumping off point for psychoanalysis and that's not going to be everything I put up but I just think that life.
Is too short to take yourself too seriously, and so first and foremost, it's for me but doing things that don't seem to have a point doing things that are beautiful just because I think they're beautiful. They don't need to have some targeted outcome Roi or fill in the blank, right and just to kind of loosen my grip on whatever I think my
Identity is that's been constructed over such a long period of time and let's not kid ourselves like identity can be revealed but it's largely constructed right and it's just you I think we get so attached to our labels of what we are what we are and what we do and what we don't do that. It's just a think it's a very socially reinforced trap that kind of constrains your awareness and sensitivity and openness to the world. So
so yeah more coyote that's
good. I mean the world needs I think the problem that we've fallen into is social media and part of the reason why I don't like having an account there is it just becomes it makes me sad in some sense and that I see it's always the best version of someone's self. Like there's never any if he feels very manufacturer at often times and it's like it doesn't feel authentic in the way that it's always about Good Times. There's never any like
Any I guess there has been more lately with some of the protests of the stuff that's come out on there. But I mean people myself included tend to put just the best version of yourself on there versus just letting it all hang out which I guess is what kind of what you're saying in a sense that you're you just going to have more fun with it than just trying to create the Tim Ferriss image up on on social media. Yeah, and you know, I don't
feel like I've done
Too much of that. I mean I do. I very deliberately put out stuff that is true to me that I think could irritate some percentage of my followers just because I want to have some countervailing Force against becoming this like dancing sock puppet on the internet. I do that to not become too attached to social feedback, but, you know not to turn this into a discussion of
The social dilemma, but if you are constantly exposed to these Technologies like you are completely outgunned.
you're just you're completely outgunned by engineers and neuroscientists and research and development teams who have for all intensive purposes infinite resources to
Turn you into a little is getting a little gasket and a Skinner box you well. Yeah, I want to keep
I love that like the the AI is going to look at your feet. And like I think Tim would like this. They're like, oh shit. He posted a yellow pony. What was he like? Damn it?
I want to keep myself guessing to right? Okay. Yeah, I don't want love it. Yeah follow less of a script
and you've always been good at that though. You've always been like every like one in every ten of your Instagram posts.
Everyone's like what the hell is he? Why is it picture of that? Like, it's not it's clearly not that manufactured feed which I've always
appreciated. Yeah. Well, I thought it was a camera with a navy. I don't remember what it was but I had back when we were both on the apps. I remember one of yours was like and deleting in 132. Well, thank you to your to your credit. Sometimes when I get a little far afield you're like I think
You should probably delete that. I'll get a text from you which I appreciate.
Well, I can just tell well you speaking of like you said about my gummies I can tell when you're a little ham to everyone's all one will sneak out there.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's true. It's dangerous dangerous to drink and drink and post. That's a day to have it. Well, it's good to see you man. It's been too
long. Good to see you too. Last little thing. I know we always like to throw a bunch of nuggets out there for people to to
Check out I want to recommend a documentary since we have still so much time in months ahead of us at home. My octopus teacher. I thought work was
great. Yes second that yeah cool fantastic beautifully shot now
flakes.
What else you
got? I liked the
Last Dance the Michael Jordan series and I know it's a little bit old now, but it was
fantastic Timeless though. Yeah, if you're like, yeah, I'm a competitor like okay watch that watch that. Yeah,
exactly.
Yeah. That's any one of the best miniseries I've seen in years if you want another documentary, which is actually very uplifting doesn't sound uplifting based on the name, but it's called crip camp and it's it begins.
The story of a summer camp for crippled I guess young adults and one. I want to see the grand jury award at Sundance a year or two ago and it's it's really outstanding. So that's what I would recommend crip Camp also tends to it just puts a lot in perspective also, so I really enjoyed that Hamilton's pharmacopoeia or pharmacopoeia just has a season 3 coming out now for those who don't know Hamilton Morris he's been
On my podcast exceptional biochemist really good at synthesizing all sorts of things. Also a very good Storyteller and a hilarious hilarious character unlike any other also happens to be the son of Errol Morris of fog of war fame and he's a really really good narrator and editor of the series called Hamilton's pharmacopoeia, which you can find on Amazon Prime. You can find it on I want to save up.
Ace and season 3 just came out and in each episode he describes the history of the culture and the biochemistry of a psychoactive drug, so it could be it could be it could be method could be angel dust. It could be LSD. It could be five Meo DMT ketamine ibogaine and in each episode. He also then consumes or
Ders, each of these drugs to himself or has them administering my God and Records the entire experience and describes the entire experience. So it's it's a really well-done series and that is crazy will certainly also put some fear of God and healthy respect into the conversations around these compounds to not everything turns out well and although he's usually fine. He's very
Isn't but there are also other people who agree to have their experiences filmed and they don't always turn out fantastically.
Well that ibogaine stuff man. That scares
me. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think you should be very very very very very exceptionally cautious with ibogaine and I bogut's one of the few psychedelics that can kill you with cardiac complications. So that that is definitely as far as I'm concerned.
And personally off-menu although it does have some incredible possible applications to opioid dependence and
addiction. Yeah, I've heard that yeah, that's exactly
it. Yeah. There's if you want to see there's a documentary called Dost D osed. I saw early versions of it, which I want to say came out in the last six to nine months, which does a good Showcase in a sense or provides an exploration of specifically opioid addiction and possible intervention with
Psychedelic assisted Psychotherapy thinks of along those lines and I began or I BOGO. I'm not sure which they used. I BOGO would be the route. I want to say the root bark itself. Ibogaine would be the isolated alkaloid or synthesized depending on how they approach it. So Hamilton's pharmacopoeia is worth a gander if you're interested in such things cool anything else.
I think that's it. That's all that I have. Oh,
No, I do that. I have one more. Have you seen the new Jazz movie the cartoon when we'd run by Jazz movie? No, you don't have to talk about the cartoon. There was talk about
jazz movie. I have no idea what you're talking about. It's called on
cut out the extra space on this
on the audio side. I wanted to be as awkward as
possible. No shells are tuned takes our
soul soul. Yes.
Silence. Yes, I've wholeheartedly recommend people check that out. Yeah, I didn't say gusts. It's fantastic. I twisted my friends arm into signing up for Disney plus to watch Saul because it's the only place that I believe you can watch it. Let's find and we watched it and then I ended up watching the Mandalorian and I was like, you know, if I had had the forethought to just use Disney plus I absolutely would have invested in Disney when it got smashed post covid. Yeah. I mean it's talking about the
franchises they are.
One is just a marble natgeo Pixar. I mean Star Wars the lineup is just absurd. Yeah, that's crazy. Also a lot of fun. Yeah Mandalorian Jon Favreau. Congratulations. Everybody involved graduate tastic show. Yeah. It's a great show and let's see. I'll also mention you're looking for a healthy snack. I'll mention a company that that I'm involved with just because I love their stuff and have had a chance to spend time.
With the co-founders who are husband and wife Jake and cool on emu's in the Hawaii who run now inui venison. So, how do you got
thank you for the
Box by the way. Yeah. You're welcome your
why Tim Tim sent me a box and I have been I highly recommend the the jerky. It's fantastic. Not the dog jerky toaster likes the dog dry almost almost broke into that because it that came with everything else. I just saw jerky and I almost went for it and it
Good enough to eat but a dog the dog
treats are Molly's favorite the human jerky the bars and everything are fantastic and the leg medallions are just incredible.
So it's haven't eaten that yet, but I'm going to house the bone broth, by the way, because I haven't tried it yet bone broth is
exceptional. It's extremely high protein and it's all outstanding. I mean, this is the as far as I'm concerned. And as far as I can tell the most nutrient-dense meet you can possibly imagine
it is all wild harvested. Although it's for those people who might be worried about game harvesting on public lands. It's all done on private lands on these large ranches because Axis deer in Hawaii are massively damaging as an invasive species and they actually not just destroy the vegetation where it looks so bad that people think it's caused by wildfires in that amount of Destruction, but that that leads to erosion and runoff that also
Damages the the coral reef in the marine life on the Hawaiian islands and this is specifically Maui. So the ecological cost is huge. And so they work with USDA inspectors. They hunt at night at long range with rifles. They only take head shots to make the kill as stress-free as possible for the animals. The entire operation is like something out of Special Operations. It's unbelievable.
Sounds like they're like night vision snipers with
hatchets. Yeah, they use infrared cameras and have you
hunted them? I have I didn't see one up there.
I did. Yeah, I hunted with bow also with rifle, but I feel and I don't hunt often, but I think it is a profoundly profoundly impactful way to reconnect with food. So
if you'd if you kill an animal and you are you even sorry if you eat an animal, but you won't
Kill it you have way disconnected from nature. Yeah, you know, I mean like I've always told myself. I've never killed a cow, but like I do eat cows. So if I if there was a way that I could do it in a Humane fashion at a place that like I would I would probably have to do it just because I'd be I feel like a
hypocrite otherwise, oh you shouldn't have said that I'm going to find you a cow.
I don't want to do it. I don't really
Ali want to do it at all but I'm just saying that like I just I I don't know. Do you know what I'm talking about? I just would feel awkward saying I'm willing to eat you at someone else's hand but not might be willing to do it myself. Yeah, and it's
it's you know, hunting's not for everybody. I was I was strongly strongly militantly anti Hunter and hunting up until I worked on the 4-Hour chef and I decided for a portion of it that I
Wanted to do my best to learn to hunt and forage to consume only those things that I procured myself and had the opportunity while doing that deep dive to spend time with really hyper intelligent responsible Hunters like Steven. Rinella who's written books on the American Bison. He's written all sorts of incredible books on multiple topics to see that it
as far as I'm concerned can be approached in an extremely responsible extremely eco-aware and thoughtful conscientious manner. It really can't so, you know the meat that I have here and the meat that I ate when I was when I was hunting in Hawaii was from what we got that day and it and I feel very good about that. I
feel very that's that's the that's the evil side of hunting obviously is both on the
Species that that are in low numbers, which obviously is just a huge massive. No, no and then also for the trophy of it, you know, like like I I really respect the people that have learned how to do the full, you know, nose-to-tail processing of an animal and make use of everything they possibly can. It's really it's really quite cool.
Yeah. So so people interested check out the video on Maui Nui venison.com. The video is incredibly well done. It's done with
award-winning cinematographer and it shows the kind of ethos and Mission and how they approach all this stuff. It's incredible. So Maui Mau, I knew--i and UI Venison.com and people can check it out its it is the startup and and you know, Kevin I've made basically no direct startup investments in the last handful of years and I've been helping these guys. It's a very tough business. It's the best product in the world as far as
I'm concerned and I am so enamored of this company and the family and the people behind it and the ethos. It's just like it checks all the boxes for me. So that's awesome. Hope you enjoy your food
investing is hilarious to me, by the way, because like I would say on Tech fantastic track record. Yeah, then the cricket protein, who are you did that bars but think the funny thing about that is and they went and started a new
company. Yeah, that's killing it magic that is
killing it magic screen.
Is killing it and you unfortunately missed out on that
one. I did I did miss but you know, it's I'm doing okay with food man. I'm doing actually
really well. That's the only Investments. I know you have so maybe you have a
well more. Well bluebottle did file there because of us, right bluebottle did fantastically well and Hugh the chocolate makers were just acquired. I think the announcement was last week by Mondelez, and I was an adviser to well I suppose I still am an adviser.
Your to you so that was also that's really
fantastic. I'm just giving you shit. I mean like literally 90% of the deals that we do like go to zero then that's totally fine. That's the name of the game on the early stage investing. Yeah, but if I could if I could
choose one that I really want to not just survive but Thrive like now inui would be at the very top of the list just because the sort of benefits to community and ecology and like the way that they're walking the talk.
Talk in a beautiful philosophical sense is just it's rare. It's super super rare.
So that's awesome. I will say that in with the product that I have tried so far. I haven't tried it all if you're scared of the idea of venison, you shouldn't because it's very damn tasty Jerky like you would if you would be it's not gamey at all. This surprise not gave me at all and then I will say magic spoon for people that are like old-school cereal like Fruity Loops, but want to Quito friendly snack. Do you safe?
D
Loops, you ninety-year-old know
they have like Fruity Loops like Flavor bread loaves fruity. Sorry Fruity Fruity lives was the DJ software to remember that how you can make it was like you made a Loops. It was something. Okay. I got it. Yeah, they so magic spoon.
I mean, I have an entire Pantry full their stuff and I'm really thrilled for the founders. They've done extremely good job of making a great product. So yeah if you if you like
Like Cocoa Puffs Fruit Loops, these types of cereals is a kid, you can have cereal that tastes very much the same that is basically zero carbs super low net carb with high protein and enjoy it with your real milk or fake milk of choice. And yeah, it's fantastic. My favorite is the chocolate. I really like the chocolate favor
the yeah. Yes. They had one too. That was like a cinnamon one. That was quite good.
Anyway, yeah good stuff Coolidge expend
Coolio Coolio, man. Well you want to tell people where they can find
you. Yeah, I mean eventually this year. I'm going to start up on the Instagram again. It's probably the best place. I'm just at Kevin Rose. You can find me there and I also have a podcast that I put out one episode about every three months. It's not that regular but I do have really good guess. I just had some great ones. I had Andy Ratcliffe On most recently whose founder of Benchmark and also,
With front Benchmark Capital being one of the most successful Venture Capital firms of all time and fantastic interview about the importance of diversification. And yeah just like it's he's a brilliant brilliant man. Have you ever had an D on your
show? You know I have but I had it via Mike Maples show and he did an episode where Andy was featured and so we published that audio on my pockets. Yeah. Yeah, smart guy extremely smart guy. I
She would write a book man. He's one of those guys you just sit down and talk to and everything that you throw at him. He has a different take on and most the time he's right and he's like this needs to be something like you know how Ray dalio put out his principles book like Andy needs his version of that. You know, it's like well
when I tried to talk
him into it, he wouldn't do it. He just wanted to looks books are a pain in the ass, but he could get a
ghost writer / collaborator and that person would just interview him like a few hours a day for a week straight and then they would have all the needed
so
There we go. Andy, if you're listening make it happen. All right, Kev,
Kev. Well, it's lovely to see
you. Yeah good to see you as well as hanging in person this year man. Let's make it happen.
Let's make it work long road trip. I'll get in my armored Marauder vehicle and make my way across country to visit you in the forest. Maybe that's the next move
do some Source bathing together just me that walking in the forest. That sounds
sounds exotic and erotic. I can't wait. I
mean we've done some of that in Japan that's
We need that. We need to get back to Japan. That
would help my man. Well step by step. Let's figure out domestic travel first and then we can hang out your pen fair enough. Yeah.
All right nuts Kashi and okay man fall to be continued and
much love to you in the family of a man
same to you and everyone out there. Please stay safe and healthy and take care of yourselves, bye-bye.
