The Tim Ferriss Show: #670: The Random Show with Kevin Rose — The $1M Bitcoin Bet, Japanophilia, Rare IPAs, Preventing Hangovers, AI Companions, Fringe Discords, Affordable Luxuries, High-Fidelity Audio, and Much More

This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep is a premium mattress brand that

provides tailored mattresses based on your sleep preferences. Their lineup includes 14 unique

mattresses, including a collection of luxury models, a mattress for big and tall sleepers,

that's not me, and even a mattress made specifically for kids. They have models with

memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on your side, as I often do,

and did last night on one of their beds. Models with more responsive foam to cradle your body

for essential support in stomach and back sleeping positions and on and on. They have you covered.

So how will you know which Helix mattress works best for you and your body? Take the Helix sleep

quiz at helixsleep.com slash tim and find your perfect mattress in less than two minutes.

Personally, for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Lux mattress. I also

have one of those in the guest bedroom and feedback from friends has always been fantastic.

They frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. It's something they

comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. Helix mattresses are American made and come with a

10 or 15 year warranty, depending on the model. Your mattress will be shipped straight to your

door free of charge, and there's no better way to test out a new mattress than by sleeping on it

in your own home. That's why they offer a 100 night risk free trial. If you decide it's not the

best fit, you're welcome to return it for a full refund. Helix has been awarded number one mattress

by both GQ and wired magazines. Helix is now offering 20% off on all mattress orders,

plus two free pillows for you, my dear listeners. On some mattresses, this can mean savings of more

than $500. So go to helixsleep.com slash tim. This is the best offer that they have made yet,

and it will not last forever. With Helix, better sleep starts now. So one more time,

check it out helixsleep.com slash tim. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is

one of my favorite companies out there, one of my favorite platforms ever. And let's get into it.

Shopify is a platform, as I mentioned, designed for anyone to sell anything anywhere, giving

entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. So what does that mean? That means in

no time flat, you can have a great looking online store that brings your ideas, products and so on

to life. And you can have the tools to manage your day to day business and drive sales. This is all

possible without any coding or design experience whatsoever. Shopify instantly lets you accept

all major payment methods. Shopify has thousands of integrations and third party apps from on-demand

printing to accounting to advanced chatbots, anything you can imagine, they probably have a

way to plug and play and make it happen. Shopify is what I wish I had had when I was venturing

into ecommerce way back in the early 2000s. What they've done is pretty remarkable. I first met

the founder Toby in 2008 when I became an advisor. And it's been spectacular. I've loved watching

Shopify go from roughly 10 to 15 employees at the time to 7000 plus today, serving customers in 175

countries with total sales on the platform exceeding $400 billion. They power millions of

entrepreneurs from their first sale all the way to full scale and you would recognize a lot of

large companies and also use them who started small. So get started by building and customizing

your online store again with no coding or design experience required. Access powerful tools to

help you find customers, drive sales and manage your day to day. Gain knowledge and confidence

with extensive resources to help you succeed. And I've actually been involved with some of that way

back in the day, which was awesome, the build a business competition and other things, plus

with 24 seven support, you're never alone. And let's face it, being an entrepreneur can be lonely,

but you have support, you have resources, you don't need to feel alone in this case,

more than a store, Shopify grows with you and they never stop innovating, providing more and

more tools to make your business better and your life easier. Go to Shopify.com slash Tim to sign

up for a $1 per month trial period. It is a great deal for a great service. So I encourage you to

check it out. Take your business to the next level today and learn more by visiting Shopify.com

slash Tim. One more time Shopify.com slash Tim all lowercase

living this year.

Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is stuff. I forgot there was a camera.

This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. We have yet again,

the random show. Yes. Kev Kev Rose Rose, Kevin Rose. Thank you for having me, Tim. It's good to

be here. It's good to be here in your home. We're in a home. We have our matching mini scooters.

We do. We also have a miniature kitchen set behind us. We were making pinto beans and

home style ice cream. Yes. You may or may not be able to see that. Their favorite topping for

pinto beans. And by then he means his progeny. I have a couple little ones that hopefully will

not be making an appearance and have gone to bed, but we shall see. We already had a princess on the

run. A little jailbreak who came flying through. So, Kevin, before recording, actually while

recording, you said, this is the important juice, but that was off mic. So I relayed it

into the mic. What is this important juice that we have before us? So I mean, we've been doing

these shows for a very long time and we've always, well not always, we've highlighted some of our

favorite drinks over the years. And one of the things that comes into my possession about once

a year is a limited edition run. You know, it's expensive when it's an passive sentence form.

It comes into my possession. That's right. It sounds very fancy. It's just a beer people.

So one of the things that I like to do, and we've talked about this before at some point, but

unlike wine, the cool thing about beer is you can buy the best beer in the world,

like the number one ranked beer, and it's going to cost you $100. That's not the case with wine,

obviously. So in terms of different styles of beer, it's typically not IPAs that win the number

one slot on that. It's some of the heavier stuff. But on the IPA front, the second highest ranked

IPA by beer advocate, and I would argue the harder to find version of the IPA is because the number

one ranked IPA is called Heddy Topper, and it is in production year round. This particular beer

by Russian River Brewing is called Pliny the Younger. Now, you may have heard of Pliny the Elder,

which is you typically find at Whole Foods and things like that. The Younger is a limited edition

run that they do once a year, and you used to have to go to Russian River Brewing to actually

consume it. And just recently, probably I'd say three or four years ago, they started putting it

in bottles. So this is it in bottle form. I would argue that this is probably the most sought after

IPA in the world. It is $75 a bottle. So it's not cheap. It is a 60 ounce bottle though. So

per ounce. Nope. It was one pint. Yeah, one pint. So it's expensive juice, but it is quite good.

And I wanted to share it with you. Thank you. And I also want to tell people out there how to

find the rarest beers in the world. Let's do it. I may have mentioned this at one crazy long ago

random show, but there is a place that I go to called MyBeerCollectables.com. This is an ad. I

have nothing to do with them. Every time I just mention any year old, you're in the same boat.

Exactly. Make sure you get my 20%. But one of the things that, this is what I'm probably going

to get them arrested, but one of the things that is very difficult to do is to sell alcohol online.

And so on the beer front, if you say, and this is true, if you were to drink this bottle,

you can sell the bottle by itself for let's just say $5 or whatever it may be, because

the bottle is just collectible in its own right. And so what they claim is that everything you're

buying is a collectible. And so you're not actually buying the beer. And so it's a peer-to-peer

marketplace. And so they have people that go and buy that. I've been using them for several years

now. They are going to have the best month of sales before they get shut down. It's going to

be really a blaze of glory. They've been okay. They've been okay. And I always find really good

sellers on there. And you see on the side of this, it says, you know, not packaged for resale.

So you have to know somebody to get this. And yeah, I love a good IPA. And I would say this is

up there. This is pretty good stuff. So you know the wine world. You know probably something

about the beer world. You also know the high end, I'm not even going to call them watches,

God forbid, timepiece world. Sure. Very well. How much of the fame that comes from being sought

after is derived from the quality of the product versus the scarcity versus the positioning, if

there is such a thing, marketing, other factors. I've become really interested in this question.

And there's actually a spectacular episode I haven't listened to yet on LVMH and the building of that

from its very meager beginnings to its insane current state. And there's a book called How

Luxury Lost Its Lusters. So a lot of alliteration, which I read a long time ago. I do find the study

of sort of scarcity and high end products very interesting. Have you read the book, The Luxury

Strategy? The Luxury of Strategies? No, Luxury Strategy. The Luxury Strategy. I was like,

the Luxury of Strategy seems like a necessity. No, I haven't. It's actually another really good one.

It talks about just brand positioning and just how to set yourself up as a really sought after,

yeah, premiere brand. And some of the mistakes that brands make where they go down market and they

become a commoditized kind of like raw stress for less. It's part of the reason why the fashion

industry goes and destroys so many clothes. They have leftover clothes. They could go and sell them.

It's what happened to gas, jeans, or any of these other brands where they said, hey,

we have this extra inventory. Let's discount it. Let's do outlet stores. Let's do these discounting

stores and it ruins the brand. Then they get anchored in the mid-market. Exactly. And then

you can't go back up. Right. Once you go down, you can't regain that.

And there's so many ways, different ways to differentiate. As one example,

we're in LA right now and I had never been to Erdogan. So for people who don't know,

Erdogan is a very famous, very expensive. It's not expensive. This is well watered.

Let me paint a picture. I went in and I went to their hot meal cafeteria line and I got a couple

of boxes. I mean, it's two meals, maybe two and a half meals for me. And I was like, oh,

I got a kombucha too and maybe a water. And I think that was about it. There wasn't much more to it.

And it was $147. I wanted to go there just for the spectacle because... I mean, there's a dating

scene there as well. There's this dating scene. Yeah. The point I was going to make is I was having

a conversation with someone and I told them the story and they said, wow, that's insane.

I imagine if you took the same inventory, you could sell it for 20% less and do really well.

And I said, you could, but if Erdogan lowered their prices, they would be dead. I think because

part of the allure, part of the story, part of the word of mouth is how expensive it is.

Yeah. I mean, it's that, but also we could get into Erdogan. They have other stuff that is,

I'm sure, of incredibly high quality and I respect that also. But it has become,

the reason I hear about Erdogan in a place like Austin or other places in the country

is highly exclusive, very expensive. Yeah. And I'm not saying that as a knock.

Well, I think it's what we've seen. Well, just talking about grocery stores,

even though this isn't that interesting of a topic, but...

But this maps to a bunch of other things. Oh, for sure.

But I think when you see Whole Foods get bought by Amazon and it becomes this kind of mass-scaled

enterprise, although it was, you could argue beforehand, when you go in there, it's not

the level of quality it was a decade ago. It's just not. It's been degraded. And this is now that

next new level. I would say that when you go into Erdogan, it doesn't feel bougie though. It doesn't

feel like crazy, like just luxury for luxury's sake. Is that what you mean by bougie? Because that

word gets... I've heard bougie said more times than I can count since I got to LA about a week ago.

I think it's just kind of like the one thing I've only been in LA a few months. And the one thing

that I love about it, actually, is that it's a choose your own adventure. So you can go as crazy,

high-end as you want to however you define that, or you can find an awesome little dive bar with

a great cocktail. And so I actually like that. And for me, I tend to float somewhere in the middle.

Don't get me wrong, I like a nice awesome steak at a great killer steakhouse, which they have a

lot of those out here. But at the same time, it's different than Portland. Like Portland,

we didn't have the high end. We had a lot of the middle. So Erdogan is very small. It's a very

small grocery store. It's super small. I was actually expecting it to be much larger. So I go there,

and I've been there since. And it is high quality. The food is high quality. I think the name is also

from getting this right, an anagram of nowhere for people who may be wondering about the name.

Interesting. The experience that I had actually yesterday brought a lot of this to top of mind

for me. And my experience yesterday was going to this place called the Magic Castle for the second

time ever. How nice you went. I did. And for those who don't know about the Magic Castle,

I'm not going to do it justice. But it is the mecca of magic in the sense that people from

all over the world, the kids who become obsessed with magic, sleight of hand, illusion, etc.

The one place, if they've heard of it, that everyone wants to go is the Magic Castle. And

anyone who's anyone more or less in that world blows through the doors probably once a year.

Did you dress up? You have to dress up. This is where I was going. You have to wear a suit and

tie. Not just tie, suit and tie. I did not come here with a suit and tie, nor did I come here

with dress shoes. So a friend of mine who is visiting who also didn't have any of the fancy

clothes because the opportunity to go came up very last minute. Men's warehouse. We went to

Hollywood suits on Hollywood Boulevard. You rented? No, we couldn't rent. So we bought suits.

But here's the thing. From the moment we walked in, and I know these are quality problems,

the fact that you can buy a suit that you never intend to wear again is kind of insane. But I

knew that it would cost close to the same to rent and that we didn't have time to rent because

literally we found out that we had the opportunity to go to this amazing show. It's a very small

show with an incredible magician who I'll mention here because the show is absolutely spectacular

and then I'll rewind. So I'm going to get his name, probably pronounced wrong, but Simon Coronel,

C-O-R-O-N-E-L. People, if you don't know this name, you are going to know this name. This guy

put on one of the best shows I've ever seen. Young person or? Yeah, he's young. I mean,

I don't know exactly how old he is. Maybe he's my age. So I'll call that young. Yeah,

just the older I get, the younger I think my current age is. But we went to Hollywood suits.

We had literally, I want to say 90 minutes and we walked in, we didn't even have 90 minutes,

we had an hour. We walked in, we just said, here are our sizes, wear your suits, went over,

grabbed whatever looked reasonably good off the rack. I hate that. Were they itchy?

Because I hate it. Well, hold on. So we get, then it's like, what size is your neck shirt? Boom,

the guy like throws it on top because it's sort of a rack and stack, high volume spot. And then

it's like shoes, belt, this, that and the other thing. And we walked out the door with everything

for between $150 and $200 a suit. That's insane. It's awesome. Yeah. So then they can't do the

hemming there. So you have to go down this alley around the corner and you think you might be

murdered, but no, you find somebody who's in this little room. You could staple it though. I've

done that before. You could staple it. We didn't have staplers though. We have to call an Uber

in 30 minutes to get to this place. And we get everything done. Literally,

we walk in the door and then 45 minutes later, we're in our suits. And we go to the Magic Castle

and my friend and I both have, I don't have a lot of suits, right? But I have one or two

nice suits for weddings and things like that. They're not cheap. And they're fitted in this,

then the other thing. And both of us looked at the suits and okay, these are not the best suits

in the world, but they are surprisingly fitting and surprisingly good. I got a compliment on

my suit while I was there and it raises questions. Okay, this was $150, $200. What differentiates?

And yes, they're better materials. Yes, there's better fitting, but then you're waiting like

five months for alterations or whatever when you get into the super fancy class and you're like,

okay, that's not about entirely quality. That's about the story of the weight. That's about being

able to tell your friends the process you went through to get the thing, which is not to diminish

its value. It's just to say it's really interesting that such a high percentage of the total cost

could be placed on that. So I think about these things. Do you think you're going to get into

any other high-end stuff? Although I want to back up to your comment that to get the equivalent

in terms of grade for wine would just be impossibly cost prohibitive. You're just

going to have to pay out the nose and take out a second mortgage. So affordable luxuries, right?

In terms of affordable luxuries, anything else that you enjoy, that you would sort of put in

this same class, for me, one would be chocolate. You can get what some would consider the best

chocolate in the world and if you're willing to spend even $20, $30, $50. What's your go-to?

I like Dick Taylor. I want to hear yours. I haven't been in this world for a long time,

but about 10 years ago, I really got into it. This is when I was actually, I guess, a little bit

earlier, maybe 11, 12 years when I was working on The 4-Hour Chef. I got into this and looked at it

very seriously. Coffee, you can really get incredible coffee if you're willing to pay up just a little

bit. Yeah, absolutely. The coffee is one that I do pay up for or a subscription, which is their

single origin high-end coffee from a roaster called Proud Mary and they're based in Australia,

but they have a location in Portland, Oregon as well. And so they have a varietal of coffee

called a geisha coffee. Have you ever had it before? No. So it is just like the most delicate,

awesome, floral, beautiful, elegant coffee you can consume. Whereas when you make it properly,

I do the whole measuring myself, 32 grams of coffee, 350 milliliters of water,

and do it via a pourover. And when you do it, you don't need to add anything. No sugar, no

butter. I was thinking of the old days. No pork chops. Remember when we did the

Bulletproof Coffee and so on. Yeah, exactly. Until I started getting my cardiac markers

regularly. Oh my God, dude. I used to do Bulletproof coffees all the time where I'd add

MCT oil and butter and then just, you basically drink that coffee and about a half hour later.

Disaster pants. You just shit your brains out. It's just like the worst. Why did we ever do that?

Then I got my numbers back from Atea and it's like freaking, my cholesterol is all jacked up over

the place. Do you have an IV bag full of triglycerides? Exactly. What's happening here?

You've nailed that. I think chocolate, coffee is another one. Coffee is something I do a cup

every day, so that's great. Tea's in the same camp. You can get really nice high-end teas

that are amazing for under $50. This is going to be maybe funny coming right after talking about

health stuff and metrics, but I think when I get quite a bit older, maybe I'm like,

okay, I'm on the tail end here. I think I might take up pipe smoking. No. My dad used to smoke a

pipe. I love just the, it looks so relaxing. But not in hail? And the smell of pipe tobacco

is so incredible. Oh, dude. I think I just want to be like a cantankerous old guy in a rocking chair

on a porch smoking my pipe reading my book. I don't know. I mean, maybe I wouldn't inhale. I guess

you're supposed to just bring it into your mouth and then puff away at it. I don't know. I don't

smoke pipes. I think most people would inhale. So I used to go into the old, they used to have

these old tobacco shops you could go into where they sell raw tobacco. And I used to go

with my dad and that's a good childhood memory because the smell is so amazing. It's incredible.

Yeah. It's really, really, really phenomenal. So what else would fit that? And actually,

people should also just ping us on Twitter and let us know if we're missing a category because I

enjoy thinking about affordable luxuries that most people could bring into their lives so they can

carve out a small piece of time, a small amount of cash to really feel like they're treating

themselves to something that is amazing. And there's just certain categories where that's not

possible because of how much demand there is and therefore how high the prices can escalate.

There's a bunch of stuff. I mean, for me, there's little tiny micro upgrades that you do

around your household when you think about this stuff. And there's, I live near a convenience

store and I had run out of body soap. And I went across the street and I bought some Dove body soap

and it was like Cedar or something. I'm like, oh, that sounds okay, whatever. And I got there,

but the time I got home, I flipped over the back of the label and it was a bunch of artificial

stuff in there. Like it wasn't all as pure as the outside had said it was on the front.

And I put it on and it was like a perfume bomb. It was like so nasty. And I was like,

why did I do this? And you go out and yes, you spend $25, $30 more and you get something from

ASOP or a similar brand. And it's just amazing. Speaking of those little luxuries, and I know

that's like, probably got one of the lamers side of luxuries, but I don't know. I like little things

like that, like little tiny micro upgrades around the house, you know, I have a very simple rule

when it comes to soap and shampoo and conditioning life though, you need to have upgraded shit.

Well, let me pause. I'll come, we can come back to that if we want to.

I know you want to.

But I actually get complimented on my skin a lot. Like people are like,

what do you use for this and this and that? Yeah, it's beautiful.

Yeah, it's, it's luscious. It's great. It's luscious. It's very supple, supple, moist.

And all I use, I have four years only use Dr. Bronner's baby soap, basically unscented baby soap.

Yeah, I'm getting a thumbs up from your wife. That stuff is so simple.

I never feel like I have dry skin. I'm bald, so it makes it easy, right? It's kind of one tool

for all things. And there you have it. It's not exactly a luxury, but I'm just saying. No, it's

great. No, I use that too. Actually, it's great stuff. And you can buy them in like gigantic

sizes. They last a long time. So that's my comment on personal hygiene and soap.

So dating life. No, we don't have to get into that.

Well, what are your questions? No, I was just curious, like, we haven't talked about this

in great detail, but I'm curious, like, how do you, do you change your house? Talking about

the upgrades, you have to like create a cozy change my house. Well, first of all, I'm, you know,

I'm paranoid and crazy about safety and security stuff. So generally, I mean, first meetings are

always out somewhere public. And for anyone who is currently in the fray of dating apps, they know

that it is by and large, just terrible. It's so bad. And I've found it interesting, what I would

say is if you're in a relationship and you're like, wow, this is hard, this is this, this is that.

And, you know, it would just be so much easier if I were single and I'd be having all the fun in

the world. And it's like, you're just trading a different set of problems. Now, that's not to

complain about it. But I don't think this subject is going to go anywhere. We can cut this.

No, we don't, we don't, we don't have to. I'm just curious. But have you changed anything in

terms of like your workout regimens or anything like that to get back into fighting shape?

Yes, I mean, I have been training. I mean, my training is pretty consistent. I would say that

one of the bigger challenges about dating is that I do not recover actually, this ties into

something. I don't recover from alcohol nearly as well as I used to. And the fact of the matter is

generally if you're going out, people are going to want to have a drink or it's just going to be

social to have a drink or two. Nothing crazy. I have no interest in that. But even two glasses of

wine can completely obliterate my sleep. So the jury is out on what I'm going to bring up. But

there is this product, which I think you have tried. Now, I have not tried it. This was introduced

to me by a friend who swears by it and said he was about to stop drinking, which might have been a

good thing, but he didn't because he started using this product called Zebiotics. Zebiotics is

pre-alcohol probiotic drink. And there are these, I keep hiccuping like the stork from

last Saturday morning cartoons after my like five sips of beer and two beers.

All right. So 12 bottles of this. And the basic selling point is that you are consuming a prebiotic

and I'm going to bring up the exact prebiotics. I would love to get some scientific input from

people who can assess this or who have tried it. Here is the selling point in the pamphlet.

So the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. I mean, first, world's first is

always a strong statement. So I'd be curious to hear if anybody can verify, but built by PhD

microbiologists, Zebiotics is the only product that actively breaks down acetyl aldehyde. Nope.

I added an A. I knew I was going to do it, Daria. Acetyl aldehyde. I'm just saying it really

quickly. Acetyl aldehyde. Acetyl aldehyde. One of these why we're talking. In any case,

means when you drink booze, it is intended to help you metabolize or neutralize at least some of the

things that will cause you to feel terrible. So this is back to the pamphlet. We started with a

natural probiotic, which humans have been eating for centuries. Then we altered its DNA to produce

an enzyme that breaks down the aforementioned word that I shall not repeat. This enzyme is just

like the one your liver uses, but our prebiotic is designed to deliver it to your gut, a place where

your liver can access and where you need it most. So that last paragraph is where I'd love to have

people help me understand if there's any credible science to back this up. I went on PubMed. I

looked at some of the studies related to the actual strain of probiotic, which is bacillus,

either sutillus or subtillus. So it's either bacillus sutillus or subtillus, and that is

spelled B-A-C-I-L-L-U-S, space, S-U-B-T-I-L-L-I-S, Z-B-1-83. The reason I mentioned that is when I

looked it up, the study seemed to show that it could mitigate some liver damage with excessive

alcohol consumption and so on. But I didn't see much on the gut. Most of the studies seem to be

in different strains of animals and insects, like silkworms, of all things. I think we're included.

So who knows how that transfers? So we'd love to know what people think.

What does your buddy say? Is it like preventing hangovers?

He said that this has completely changed his life from the perspective.

But he changed it one way, like is he waking up?

He wakes up without the type of hangover and costs that have come with drinking prior.

It's like credit cards. He hasn't been charged as much.

So other people might bring up something like activated charcoal. I would be curious to hear

if you found anything helpful. You have more mileage than I do with drinking booze.

I love this episode. You're like, hey, you fancy rich shit? Tell me some of the stuff

commerce can use. But first get started. Dude, you do more rich shit than I do.

Oh, what? Oh, you're going to cut that.

You'd lose that one.

All right. Yeah, you like to drink a lot. Tell me more, Kevin. You alcoholic.

You have a broader spectrum of expertise. Oh, thank you.

When it comes to... Oh, well, then you put it that way.

Yeah. When it comes to training in the dark arts of dark consumption.

So, Tim, thank you for mentioning that. I did get my PhD.

Now, I would say that I did try this at a party about four or five months ago,

and I think you had made a joke before the show started where like

is something about car accidents in a helmet. It's like, if you're going to drive fast enough...

Oh, no. What I said was there's a point at which it doesn't really help.

When you're like, band-aids are great if you cut your finger. Like you want band-aids,

but if you just like chop off your finger...

Chop off your arm. Right.

That's been my problem is every time I'm trying one of these, I've chopped my arm up.

I was at a party where it was like everyone was passing them out, and I'm like,

the hangover cure, like I'm in. And then I have like five drinks.

It was our big annual NFT party, not this year, but last year,

and it ended up being a lot of drinks. And so, I woke up a little hungover. So, anyway,

didn't work for me.

Happy product.

No, it could be great. Dari, if you've tried it, have you had any success?

No, no success there.

All right. So, I'd be curious to hear what people think. And this is really broadly to

lob a question into the audience, which is, what have you found helpful for hangovers?

And you can just hit us on Twitter with hashtag hangover. And I'm sure they're going

to be a bunch of sanctimonious people who are like, I don't drink. That's what I do.

But you guys can not reply because we don't need those.

I've cut back a lot on booze, but occasionally there's a place for it.

And by the way, all you folks are like, I'm enlightened. I don't drink anymore.

I just use ketamine five times a week.

You guys are going to have a rude awakening in a handful of years.

Did you hear that they're finding fentanyl mixed in with ketamine now?

Of course they are.

Yeah. Fentanyl is mixed in with everything. And by the way, folks,

two milligrams overdose, you're dead.

Yeah.

If you get stuff mixed in.

It's just don't mess around.

Yet another reason not to play around with miscellaneous powders.

Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.

This episode is brought to you by AG1 by Athletic Greens.

I get asked all the time, what I would take if I could only take one supplement.

The answer is invariably AG1.

I view it as my all in one nutritional insurance.

I recommended it long ago in my 2010 number one New York Times bestseller,

the four hour body, and I did not get paid to do so.

With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients,

you'd be very hard pressed to find a more nutrient dense formula on the market.

It has a multi vitamin, a multi mineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health,

an immune support formula, digestive enzymes and adaptogens.

AG1 makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when good whole foods simply aren't at hand,

or when you just want to ensure you are covering your bases.

AG1 is the ultimate all in one nutritional supplement bundle in one easy scoop.

And Athletic Greens is giving you a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs

with your first subscription purchase.

Go to athleticgreens.com slash Tim.

You can check it out, athleticgreens.com slash Tim.

They also offer a 90 day money back guarantee.

If you are not 100% satisfied, learn more, try it out, athleticgreens.com slash Tim.

What's up next, Dr. Kevin?

I want to talk a little bit about my obsession with AI.

Yeah, let's do it.

Because it's changed a lot.

So let me just put it to you this way.

You know how I always track new shit?

Like I pride myself in always being someone to want to play with whatever is kind of halfway

working slash breaking.

If it means that five years from now, I was able to spot something early on,

and hopefully identify a trend before it really took off.

So I would say that GBT, when it came out, the chat GBT,

it was one of those things where the first few versions were just fun for me.

It was kind of like, oh, I'm having a conversation with AI.

Wow, it's actually producing a real result when I'm typing to it.

It can help me rephrase or rewrite a paragraph or it can summarize some bullet point.

It was doing a lot of little, small, meaningless, more or less tasks, but quite well.

And then 4.0 came out.

Yeah.

So when 4.0 came out, my consumption of and usage of chat GBT went from about,

let's call it 30 minutes a week to probably about five hours a week now.

No kidding.

So I use it a lot.

What are you using it for now?

I'm using it to code.

It can code for me now.

So you know my background here.

Like I studied computer science, but I dropped out and part of the reason,

I don't know how much I mentioned this publicly, but part of the reason I dropped out

was that I could understand code a lot faster than I could write it.

Yeah.

And so still to this day, I can read code just fine.

Granted, sometimes there's some syntax.

I would have to look up or figure out, but like more or less I'm there.

The issue was that if I'm thinking through a problem, it would take me three to four times

as long as anyone else to figure out the same problem.

I just didn't have the brain for it.

Yeah.

GPT, I can come in and as I start to have little hiccups or I want to think through

a problem, I can just ask it to figure it out for me.

And it writes code that is like 99% ready to go.

Could you give an example of a problem?

I'll give you an example.

Let's say you're a WordPress user, right?

That's what your blog's powered on.

And you're like, I want to write a new WordPress plugin.

And I want it to do this with my audience, segment it like this,

do this only one and someone is coming from this country and make it appear like this.

And you know, you could change anything you want.

You just describe it in a couple of paragraphs and say go.

It literally will print out all the code for you.

You copy and paste it and save it as a script and you're good to go.

And it works.

It's insane.

So what does that mean for, say, five years from now?

Well, a couple of things.

Practically speaking, right now, my engineering team,

I had one of my developers tell me, hey, I had this, what they would call a kind of

laborious kind of task of just something you don't want to code.

You're like, ah, God, I got to resort this data in a certain way.

And like, yeah, this is going to take me 45 minutes.

It was done in five.

Using chat.

Yes.

And so like all of those little meaningless coding tasks, they're just gone.

It's done.

It's done.

And so I've been using it to create art.

And I can tell it to go and write P5JS scripts for me,

which is what Artblocks is based on for all the NFTs.

So art meaning you're using code to generate art.

Exactly.

And so I can describe it visually and it comes back with something that's amazing.

That's cool.

I'll show you some examples after the podcast.

I'd love to see it.

And it's crazy addicting because you start getting into it and you're like,

oh, what if you take it in this direction, in this direction?

You're limited no longer by your skill, but your own internal creativity of your brain.

And your ability to prompt well.

Yes.

Yes.

But you can even help write you.

So I'll give an example.

This is about to get super meta.

Yeah, exactly.

You can tell it.

I'm having a hard time writing a prompt.

How might it be more efficient?

And it'll give you 10 ways to rewrite the prompt.

It's helping itself.

It's so nuts.

And so once you realize that it's so much more than just rewriting a paragraph

where you are helping put together an essay,

but it can actually create real software for you,

I realize now that what's going to happen is that Mark Andreessen was very famous venture

capitalist maybe a decade ago of saying software is eating the world.

Yeah.

Right.

And so it was this idea that we had all of these old systems that were largely

pen and paper based or weren't connected or weren't efficient.

And software would come in and be connected the data we put in the cloud

and we would have this new type of in cloud infrastructure, right?

That would power everything and be connected like it never was before.

All of that is still continuing to happen.

But this next generation is what I believe is AI is going to eat the software.

So if software ate the world, AI is going to eat the software,

meaning that AI is going to come in and reimagine every single tool that we use.

So every single productivity tool that we use,

it will be a part of almost every application that we use

in really meaningful ways.

I've seen it sort data and create...

I don't know about you, but when I use Excel,

the hardest thing for me to always wrap my head around and figure out were pivot tables.

Did you ever get good at pivot tables?

No.

No, I got good at Excel, period.

Oh, my God.

Pivot tables were one of those things where it was just like,

they're a nightmare.

I use notebooks and then I lose my notebooks and I'm screwed.

So anyway, you don't have to learn it any longer.

You just tell it what you want, how you want the data sliced and diced.

And it just like, what I don't mean is output from chat GBT.

But I mean, it will be working in Excel or in Google Sheets

and just automatically rewrite the tables for you.

You're just going to give it a little prompt and that's it.

And I'm telling you this, this is coming a lot faster than I had thought.

So two years ago, it was very linear to me.

I was like, a month of a month, like, oh yeah, chat GBT threes out now,

now 3.5 and I see a little bit of an upgrade.

When four hit, oh my God, like it seems like it's just gone vertical.

It's gone vertical.

It's exponential now.

And so the next couple of years are going to be insane, just insane.

Yeah, I think the next 12 months are going to be.

Yeah, you're probably right.

Full cuckoo bananas.

I've been not to the extent that you have probably, but experimenting here and there,

having my team experiment also to see if people who are non-technical,

I'm non-technical, but I can figure out quite a few things.

People who really have maybe even an allergy to a lot of tech tools,

like what they can do with chat GBT, just to try to peek around that corner.

Like, okay, what is this going to look like when there's more mass adoption?

And I ran an art competition, which was an AI art competition a while back,

and was absolutely low.

This is for the punch of cock.

This is for the punch of cock.

The punch, the cock.

That's what they say.

Yes, as they say.

It's been translated so many languages now.

Oh yeah, no, it's a massive global.

How do you say that in Japanese, by the way?

Cock punch.

Yes, that was for the cock punch NFT, which raised two million bucks,

something like that, maybe 1.7 to two million bucks for the foundation,

which is great.

All that's been deployed, and that's all fantastic for scientific research.

But the point I was going to make, the art competition following that,

where fan art was being generated using AI,

people could also use Photoshop and other tools to fine tune,

or to manipulate anything that came out of, say, a mid-journey,

or dolly, or something like that.

The results absolutely blew my mind.

And I'm going to be, you heard it here first, folks,

so I'm going to be running some more competitions,

which will have different formats,

because a prerequisite or a condition of valid submission for the competition

was you had to capture your entire process well enough

that somebody could stand a good chance of replicating your result.

And by capturing that, now we have, let's just say, top 10 finalists,

you have 10 extremely good tutorials for people who want to step into the ring

and play with it themselves.

So you've heard of stable diffusion, right?

I have, yeah.

Okay, so stable diffusion is one mid-journey,

it's one like any of these dolly that can create imagery out of prompts, right?

Stable diffusion went open source, which was a big Maverick move.

Yeah, but it was like, oh, shit, because once you release it,

open source, everybody's got it, and they're running with it in different directions, right?

So Buddy of Mine gave me a discord to go into,

and he's like, you got to check this shit out, this is crazy, right?

And it's called unstable diffusion.

And so they basically took all the guardrails off of stable diffusion.

You know all the protections and shit?

Oh my god.

What kind of stuff do you see?

Dude, what do you think you see?

I don't know, a deep, fake Taylor Swift porn?

Imagine anything you can imagine in its ultra-realistic state,

where you're almost like, you look at it and you're like, is that an image?

You don't even know.

It's tricked you already.

It's like porn done in its finest.

Very tasteful AI porn.

No, no, no, but like you can do whatever you want.

So like there's all these different channels.

And so you can go into some channels and see aliens with six breasts and like weird shit

where you're like, that looks real.

Not like not the movie a Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger was in with the three breasted

woman.

You know what I'm talking about?

Totally real.

Totally cool.

Yeah, not that.

Like this looks real.

Like it's disturbingly real stuff, right?

Teenage boys are screwed.

They're not going to get anything done in the next 10 years.

No, but they're screwed in terms of relationships, dude.

I'm telling you, this is what worries me.

Remember the movie, Her, right?

Yeah, I do.

So great movie.

One of the things about her for people that haven't watched it,

you got to go and watch this because it's going to become a reality.

This man has a relationship with his phone and the phone has a very serious AI on it.

Yeah.

Phone or laptop when he's at work.

Right.

There's this ubiquitous AI companion.

Just following him around, right?

And one of the things about open AI that you can do now is you can save and train

model data to be persistent.

What you can do is you can go in and you can say,

here are the properties of who I want you to be.

And people are doing this.

There's this website that has all these AI hacks, prompt hacks, they call it.

And you can go in and say, you are this personality type, you're a little bit bitchy,

you're sassy, like blah, blah, blah.

And you can save this and it will respond to you and learn from you.

And you can have what appears to be a human conversation with your perfect,

like polar opposite or whatever you're looking for in life.

Dude, I'm telling you, we're three years out from that being conversation based.

Have you heard of replica with a K?

Of course.

I looked at that.

I almost invested in that company years ago.

All right.

All right.

So you should explain replicas.

They claim to have 10 million registered users.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this is a company that was raising capital quite a while ago and I saw them,

but it was before the AI thing really took off.

But yeah, I mean, this is this idea.

And I worry because you think of countries...

Replica is her, just so you guys know.

I mean, there's more to it, but that's basically it.

You would know this better than I would.

But in Japan, there's been this decrease in dating.

And I've heard about...

There's the shame of whether or not you have a high quality job enough.

There's this disconnect between the male and female population.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

There was a report that came out on how dating was in the decline.

Well, dating and fertility and just reproduction in general is on the decline.

And they're in a very problematic situation from birth rate like replacement rates.

They're in a really sticky, terrible situation.

Okay.

So now...

Which I think China could be in in like 20, 30 years.

20 years probably.

But I think we were all going to be there because of population implosion.

I think you might just have a partner online, like an AI.

Like we might just have AI partners, you know?

I was talking to someone about this because, as you mentioned,

I'm single now.

And they said, oh, you should hop on Replica, just like check it out.

And I was like, I don't actually want...

It scared you?

Well, it scared me in the sense that I was like, okay,

there are times when I'm really lonely.

Yeah.

And humans are messy.

Humans are difficult.

And if you get close to someone that's great for a while,

you have the honeymoon phase, and things are great, and puppy love,

and like, everything you do is so funny.

And then things change.

And it gets a little more complex.

But if you had an AI companion who, especially if it were compelling voice,

which is going to happen immediately, I mean, it's already...

Like I've seen AI, I can't remember the company names,

but that have been trained on voice data.

To mimic.

And I actually know podcasts that are being produced right now.

Using AI.

We're not even here.

AI to read scripts that are sort of pieced together from celebrity sample data.

And listeners have no idea.

Yeah.

They have no idea.

It's so crazy.

Like these podcasts are not quote unquote real,

because it's not what you think it is.

And we are so close to there being the equivalent of like

the Scarlett Johansson, her, right?

Like sexy, smoky voice, like sassy, funny, getting there.

Gives you a little shit from time to time,

but doesn't ask you to pick up your socks.

Yeah, right.

Right, that kind of thing.

Darryl is looking at me.

I'm just, I'm kidding.

I didn't want to dig into replica, because I was like,

you know, there's a chance that it's better than I think it's going to be.

Yes.

And then I start playing the game because I'm like,

oh, I'm just testing the service.

And then I start getting my human needs met by this AI.

And it takes the pressure off of,

which maybe sometimes could be a good thing,

but takes the pressure off of human interaction.

Dude, this is my point.

This is why I wanted to bring this up.

I think this is going to happen.

The question is, if I...

Children of men, here we go.

Actually, I have a question for Daria.

If I start having a AI, I'm talking to someone on AI

that is a female AI person, is that cheating?

It is?

Yes.

What?

No, no, I'm just repeating what she said.

That doesn't surprise me.

I've thought about this a lot too.

I'm like, is cheating if I talk to AI?

Well, I mean, especially if it's like sexting and this, then the other thing.

Why is that cheating?

It's an AI.

What did she say?

She said, well, you don't talk to me.

Well, stop bitching about my socks.

I think that this will become an absolute issue.

It's going to be a huge issue.

It's going to be a huge issue.

This is one of the things that it really, truly keeps me up being like,

I either need to invest in this company or avoid it or a combination of thereof.

Invest in it so that you can have your bug out bag and your bunker.

Everything prepared for the apocalypse.

Okay, speaking of the apocalypse, do you mind if we switch to...

Yeah, let's do it.

Let's do it.

That was a fun one though.

Apology bet.

That was a fun one.

I'm glad you brought that up.

So I'm a spectator mostly at this point.

Maybe I'll serve as a stand-in for the audience,

for those who are not deeply intimate with crypto or this world.

But what bet?

So Apology Srinivasan, what bet did he make?

Roughly.

We don't have to get all the dates right or anything like that.

And what do you think of it?

Yeah, so basically for people that don't know,

this is an individual, Apology is really well known.

Former CTO of Coinbase.

Yes, and also just insanely well known for nailing a lot of the COVID predictions.

Like he came out and said, really intimate details,

like masks will be a fashion statement, really early on,

where if you read this stuff and we all have a historically going back,

you'd be like, bravo, really precious stuff.

So when he talks about the future, a lot of people pay attention.

And so one of the things that happened with the collapse of a lot of regional banks with SVB

and then First Republic and others, is he said, this is not an isolated event.

There's going to be a triggering that's going to lead to hyperinflation,

the devaluing of the dollar.

And in the next 90 days, Bitcoin is going to be worth $1 million a coin.

And I'm willing to stake and bet $1 million that that is the case.

So somebody else had challenged that.

I think he responded to someone who said,

I'll put $1 million online.

He's like, I'll take that bet.

Okay, there you go.

So I think June 17th or something.

So you're more active than I am.

But that was essentially it.

So that led me to pay attention.

I was like, okay, well, that's interesting.

Let's dive into this and figure out what's going on with Bitcoin.

And honestly, what it caused me to do personally is I hadn't

paid attention to Bitcoin in a long time.

I've been in the world of Ethereum with NFTs and everything else.

And there's something nice about how scalable and green Ethereum is,

that now that it's moved to proof of stake,

and there's just a lot more activity there day to day than there is, say, Bitcoin, right?

But I started digging into Bitcoin.

And one of the things I realized is that in a world

where the press cycles are always coming back to, oftentimes,

they're hitting Ethereum pretty hard and that their NFTs go up,

they go down, they go left, they go right.

That's like a bad look for Ethereum.

In some cases, people get hacked.

It's a bad look.

Like lose a certain amount of money.

I know, yeah, I know that quite well.

But I'm just saying that there's these certain black eyes

and there's something about the simplicity of Bitcoin

and the store of value that is still attractive because it's the OG cryptocurrency.

It's still trading at over $30,000 at the time of this podcast.

And every year that goes on, it seems to be a more legitimate asset.

Recording on April 16th.

Yeah, but every year that goes on, it seems to me a more legitimate asset

that is going to stay on the test of time.

It's not going to zero.

It's a digital currency.

It was the first of its kind.

So I started playing around with some of the layer two that's built on top of that

with the Lightning network.

And notice that some of the pain points have been smoothed down a little bit.

Do you explain to people who don't know what that is?

So Bitcoin is notorious for being just a very low transaction per second blockchain.

So if you threw, like say, the Visa scale at it,

like how many times a Visa card gets swiped every day, it's laughable.

It's like they can do singular low double digit transactions per second,

whereas Visa can do 40,000 plus or whatever it may be.

I'm just, these are rough estimates, but you get what I'm saying.

It's along those orders of magnitude.

So Bitcoin had to figure out a solution that would scale,

help it scale that infrastructure so that more payments could happen.

And so they created a layer two that kind of sits on top of it.

It resolves back to the main coin.

So it has the security and safety of Bitcoin.

It's much how Ethereum is scaling right now with some of the layer two networks

that sit on top of it.

So their main one is called Lightning.

It's the Lightning network.

And so it allows you to do ultra fast transactions.

It can scale up to, they say,

I think it's up to a million transactions a second or something.

It's something crazy.

They haven't tested it at those limits, but that's what the paper is written as anyway.

So I tried a bunch of this stuff out.

I kicked the tires on a few things.

And then I realized that Bitcoin, unlike Ethereum, the nice thing about it,

has this finite supply that is slowly coming to an end, like over time, right?

So every, I think it's four, four and a half years, they do a half thing event

where they decrease the total number of issued coins in half.

They chop it right in half as in terms of the number of new coins issued.

And they're about to do another cycle here in a little over a year.

So when this next happening event happens,

there's even less currency coming out of that faucet.

So these happening events, I went back and looked historically, and they're typically

the year before the happening event and the year after the happening event,

you typically see a pretty substantial... How many happenings have there been?

Quite a few, five now or something like that.

So you typically see, don't get me wrong, like I'm not saying this is not investment advice,

this is not always going to hold true.

But obviously, if there's more demand and less supply,

meaning less Bitcoin's being issued, you're going to see a change of price.

That's just obviously, we know these markets out and how they play out.

So no one's talking about the happening yet.

It typically, people start raising chatter around this time.

And so when every single other time when a happening event start to happen,

and the chatter starts to spin up, the price has always gone up.

And I've watched this happen time and time again.

So for me, I was like, you know what, classic cryptocurrency,

I hate that it's not green, that kills me.

I'm happy that more mining services are going green,

and they're moving to cheaper energy sources,

which are typically by thermodynamic and a whole bunch of the nuclear energy in a...

But they try to wind, there's a ton in Texas.

Yeah, so they're trying to move closer to these energy sources,

they can get cheaper power.

That said, I still think there's obviously a lot of dirty energy

that's being wasted here on Bitcoin mining.

It's a big bummer.

That is the one part that just gives me a little bit of pause

that kind of hurts my soul.

But I did purchase a little position there because I do like it,

especially in times where we see the devaluing of the dollar.

We see Russia and China buying more gold.

And I'm just like, I want a nice hedge that's decoupled from the dollar

that's sitting out there that, I'm not saying it should be a big double digit

percentage of your overall asset allocation,

but for me personally, I don't mind having a little that parked instead on the side.

So maybe you could repeat for the audience what you said to me.

This is a while back, but when we were talking about this,

we were talking about what might happen if the dollar is just massively devalued.

Or if we experience hyper hyper hyper inflation,

we're like carting around dollar bills and wheel barrows to buy

a KitKat at the local 7-Eleven.

Well, you and I were talking about this and we're like,

oh, this crazy bet happened.

This was probably like a month ago or something.

And we're like, this crazy bet happened.

It's a million dollars.

And if Bitcoin goes to a million and I was like, wait a second,

if Bitcoin goes to a million dollars and there's hyper inflation,

then a million dollars is worth.

And you said, yeah, like the price of a sandwich or something like that.

And I was like, yeah, so it doesn't really matter.

Bitcoin's a hard one because when you traditionally think about currencies,

you always think of them pegged to somebody else's GDP, right?

So you think of the pound being pegged to what's going on in the UK.

And it's like, what do you peg Bitcoin to?

Yeah.

Well, also there's the question of what is its value

in the absence of a reliable peg.

Right.

I mean, this is to be clear.

I'm sure the Maxis are going to just have a field day with this one.

But there are some people I respect and admire among that crowd,

but there are also a lot of very aggressive religious fundamentalists in there,

which I prefer not to spend so much time with.

But there are a bunch of questions that I have,

which I don't have great answers to, but they're just questions.

One would be what you just described.

If the dollar experiences this massive hyper inflation,

how does one establish the value of Bitcoin for the exchange of services or goods?

Right.

The second, I think, is for me, what happens in a place like Europe?

What happens in a place like Japan?

What happens in a place like fill in the blank if the US collapses?

Right.

So where is the sort of currency safe haven if there is one?

And then the next question is, if things were to get that bad,

if we assume for the moment that the rise in Bitcoin price to, let's just say,

biology's bet of a million is predicated on a similar increase in hyperinflation for the dollar,

which would just not be sustainable, right?

The whole country just blows to pieces.

Do you not have more pressing problems than Bitcoin?

Right.

Like, are you going to be able to get on your United Flight to escape the US

to fill in the blank location?

You're going to have such a series of questions that are more fundamental,

perhaps, than money, that if you think that is a likely outcome, you should be

in full-blown advanced prepper mode right now.

Right.

Well, the question I think I have is, are the rails in place for the preppers to get into Bitcoin?

Or are the Bitcoiners to get into prepping properly?

But we can deal with the first.

Yeah.

So the first one, I would say it's like, we take a look at, this is two of us playing

economists on TV, on podcasts, which is never sound advice.

But yeah, this is not economic advice.

If any central bankers are listening.

Right, exactly.

Please come on, join us.

So the one thing that I think is interesting is when you think about what's happening

worldwide right now with China and with Russia, and we take a look at the data,

what does the data tell us over the last few months?

And what has been reported is that China and Russia right now are not buying Bitcoin,

but they're buying a lot of gold.

And so that to me doesn't signal as though we have an emergent new world currency

as much as it does instability and a flight to safety.

And so if there's instability in a flight to safety and gold is still the kind of safe haven

for that, which it appears to be, that would explain why, I mean, there's been,

since November, there's been a 40% run up on the price of gold.

And so I don't know that Bitcoin is that safe haven, but there's one chart,

there's one graphic that blew my mind and it made me rethink everything.

And that is when the day that SVB came out and said we're potentially insolvent and all

the regional banks took a hit. There was a screenshot, did you see the screenshot?

Do you know what I'm about? There was a screenshot where someone saved to their iPhone,

all the regional banks, all the major banks even as well.

And it was a list of all of them in the stocks app, right? You know how you can list them and

like it just goes down the screen. It's like negative 20%, negative 15%,

negative 30%, like just going down the screen. FRB was like negative 60 or something.

It was just bloody all the way down. And then there was two at the top.

It was Bitcoin and Ethereum and they were both green, like heavy green.

And that was the first time where I was like, oh, shit, because every single time there has

always been, at least this is someone's observational data, like I'm just like, from what I can recall,

the market has been more or less tightly coupled with Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Like the markets down super tightly coupled at the markets down there down.

It's a speculative asset. And when people start to feel their pocket books hurting,

they pull out of cryptocurrency. This was the first time where I was like, oh,

shit, some people are moving into cryptocurrency as the banks start to collapse.

Now in fairness, that is a subset of stocks, especially if you're looking at regional banks

and not the S&P 500, right? Yes. I'm pretty sure the S&P was down that day too.

Let me ask you this. And you know that I'm pretty heavily vested in these things.

So I'm very deeply interested in Bitcoin. But just to act as a stand in, let us assume that

based on at least the homework that I've done, which your mileage may vary, but

the S&P has been very highly correlated to Bitcoin and Ethereum for that matter.

These are treated as risk on assets. And when things go down, people sell, especially when

they're most risky, when you can sell it whenever you want to sell it. And it's not just market

hours. Yada, yada, yada. What is different this time around? Because I do think there are two

issues with the bet. One is that, and this is, this happens to everybody, right? You develop a,

it's not quite a sunk cost fallacy. You develop a confirmation bias. You begin

to find reasons to support your book, your existing positions. And just one more thing,

and that is, I do think the biology bet can't be viewed solely as a prediction, because people

pay attention to him, people purchase or sell based also, some people do, biologies, predictions,

and so on. And it makes me think of this section in Liars Poker by Michael Lewis. It's the book

that made Michael Lewis famous. It's a great book. I think it's mostly about bond trading. And

there's some big swing and dick top dog inside. I think it was Solomon Brothers. And he bought

some position, he was like, the market's going up for X, and he bought like $500,000 worth.

And it started to go down and people were laughing and he had lost a bet and people were making fun

of him. And he's like, Oh yeah. And then he bought like $500,000,000 worth of it and the market

freaked out and went skyrocketing because they're like, Oh my God, somebody knows something we don't

know. So he was able to move the market, right? Right. He made a prediction, but he also moved

the market. And I think that I don't think biology is bad. Biology can't move the market. It's too

big. Well, I'm not saying he can't move the market, but it became global news. Yes. You don't think

he can move the market even if it affects larger institutional players and so on. I'm not saying

that biology single-handedly can move the market. I don't think it's fair to say that it has zero

impact on the buying and selling behaviors. Oh, no doubt. I mean, I think anyone can temporarily

move the market if Tim Ferriss tweets out, Oh my God, one of my best friends is an insane researcher

just found a hole in Bitcoin. We're all fucked. You know, I have a strong feeling that there would

be some movement in prices. But you're saying it would recalibrate. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There's

just too much volume going through it every single day. Like it's a hype cycle. Kramer's going to

talk about it. It's going to spread. It's going to have its 48 hour window and then there's going

to be a bump, which we, I think we saw. And then it'll just recalibrate from there. I thought it

was irresponsible to make that type of public pronouncement. I would be shocked if it gets to

a million by mid June. I don't know if that it's irresponsible. I just think it's like

there are people who cannot afford to take their savings and put into Bitcoin who are going to do

it. Well, the good news has gone up since he said that. So they're regardless. Well, yeah,

it's one thing to get into a position. Yeah, that's a great point. You famously know, because you're

like, I'm buying this and then you never tell me when you fucking sell things. You more famously know

if we can talk about your Bitcoin. Oh, Jesus Christ. I mean, yeah. Yeah, good Lord. All right.

So let's move on from there. I have some fun stuff to talk about. Let's do it.

I guarantee you you're going to love this next little segment. All right. I'm excited. Okay.

Yes. We talked about New Year's resolutions before. Oh, God. But I have one that I didn't tell you

about. Okay. I want to show you something here. All right. You see this for the first time. You

can go ahead and read this for the audience here. What does that say? It says ABC letter tracing

practice workbook for kids. Ages what? Ages three plus. Okay. And then when you open the first page,

what does it say? Oh, Kevin Rose, age 45, February 9, 2023. And then what do you see from here?

Oh, your letter tracing. Yes. So I'm learning how to write with my right hand. Amazing. This is

incredible. It's pretty shaky. Your hands are a little shaky. You can see that I'm having some

issues here. Please, love, stop laughing in the background. My wife is like dying out.

It's so good. It's funny. It's funny. She didn't know about this. This is the first she's hearing

about by the way. This is great. I have started to learn how to write with my right hand. Yeah. And

I decided to see these cute bunnies and acorns and mushrooms and puppies making it interesting.

So I'm just now getting started. I got a ways to go. But this is one of those things where I was

watching my kids do it and I'm watching their brains kind of activate as they're like learning

how to trace and how to, and Zelda's really, actually her letters were flopped and turned

around at one point and now they're straight. That's what I did. You did the same thing? Yeah.

I still do it. Disagraphia. My letters end up backwards and upside down and stuff when I write

some letters. Yeah. And handwriting. Sometimes I skip a letter and then I come back and rewrite it.

I don't know what the fuck that is, but that's something I got. I don't know. I get too crazy

and I just jump in early on set to mention. Thank you. But the thing here is I have no

scientific reason other than to say I realize that this is activating somewhere in my brain,

something new. And it's just like one of those things where I'm left-handed. So I've always smudged

the shit out of everything I do. It's just like a streak of ink across the page because my hand

and I was like, you know what? My kids are learning. Why don't I learn at the same time? And so that's

something I started recently. That's awesome. Anyway, I thought you thought it was amazing.

Yeah, it's fun. Actually, my hand gets really fatigued and so I have to start. So I set a timer

for 10 minutes and I just go to town and start doing my numbers and my letters and then I got

two workbooks in my office. That's amazing. I thought you would like that because as a lifelong

learner, this is something that you'd be into. I'm totally into it. Do you know what it's doing

for me? Is it helping a certain part of my brain? Dari would know. Dari would have more credibility

in discussing this in any capacity. There is something kind of similar that when did you

start this? Just at the beginning. Have you tried writing with your left hand?

I have because I've broken so many things so many times. So when I shattered my right wrist one of

several times, I had to do all my writing in school with my left hand and for the first week

it was terrible. I was also just thrown into baptism by fire because it was like, okay,

now you get to write for like several hours a day with your non-dominant hand. So I just got

so are you good? Are you can you? Oh, I don't think I'm good.

Especially because left handed is I say it's weird. I'm sure right handed is equally weird for

you but just like the whole like hook claw. So I wanted to pull up the name of an artist

who got me back into penciling and she was not aware of this but she published a book

that I ended up grabbing which was unbeknownst to me a guide to her toolkit and approach

to much of her art work. Art work. Art work. I'm so tired folks. It's not any booze.

Stop terribly last night. Maybe we'll talk about my low back. I have all sorts of low

back. I had low back this morning. So this woman I might be pronouncing her first name

incorrectly but I'm going to say Elisa Ivanova and her account on Instagram is Elisa E L E E Z A.

One of my favorite artists out there. She's spectacular. Can I see some of her stuff? Yeah,

yeah. Formally at Pixar and her ability to draw animals and portraits is just spectacular and

there's a certain like surreal feel to it and she's what she's using here. I'm showing an Instagram

video. She's using a smudging stick instead of say cross hatching which can be really rough

on the wrists and the hands to very quickly create amazing pieces of art and she has a

number of books. I bought her most recent book which gives sort of an overview of her technique

and approach to artwork and so I have been like this type of stuff for instance rather than starting

with sort of a stick figure or a not quite mannequin. That's not the word I'm looking.

Not maquette but rather than starting with the bones of someone starting with the outline

of the figure then adding the shading then adding the details and going back and forth.

Don't you just wish you had that skill set? I mean you're really good but you're not that good.

Oh, she's better. Yeah, she's obviously much better. Do you have a screen protector on by the way?

Yeah, I do. I can't see a certain angle. This is a new thing. All right. Want to hear a story?

You're going to love this. Protecting your screen. Yeah. But while this is a privacy screen

and I went to a restaurant here in LA and sit down at the bar because that's what's available.

Huge bar. It's like 75 feet wide. By yourself? Yeah. Was this a date? No, I just finished a

workout. Oh, she just texted me up when you're doing a show like this. I didn't come join you

for a drink. That's horseshit. You're always super busy. We're in the same neighborhood.

I will text you next time. Please do. Seriously. Yeah, so I had done a workout. I finished and

then I was just like looking for a place to eat. What can you guys recommend? Ended up at this

restaurant. I was sitting there, ordered my food, having a great time, beautiful venue,

flirting a little bit with the waitress. Like that's not going to go anywhere, but it was fun.

Like she was just good vibes. It clearly wasn't going to go anywhere, but it was just fun.

And then somebody comes and sits right next to me. There's like 20 empty seats at the bar. Oh,

Jesus. I had this one when I was pissing one time at a movie theater. All right.

Well, there was 30 year olds and a dude walks all the way down and stands right next to me.

And I'm like, yeah, thanks buddy. So it's not right next to me. And

ultimately ended up being a fan of mine and he was very cool. But the fact that he was sitting

right next to me meant I felt very self conscious looking at my phone. I was like, if I look at

anything on my phone or I try to text someone or anything, this is incredibly visible to everyone

around me. And so I ended up getting a privacy screen for my iPhone, which is fantastic.

I mean, such a simple solution also protects the screen works quite well. And there you have it.

That's my story. That's my story about the privacy screen. Yeah, cool. Cool story, bro.

Yeah, Jesus Christ. It works quite well. I'm actually kind of shocked because I can't see

shit from you and I'm sitting like a foot from you. Yeah, I really can't see anything. It's amazing.

It's amazing. It's really helpful. So let me let me try to find this and it's going to

right. I'll start with the next story. Why you're there is a well, hold on. There's a brand. It

starts with a B. It's not Belcom, Belsky. It's not Belsky. Belkin. Belkin. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you,

Daria. I initially was looking for a Belkin because those are well known and I ended up being

unable to get it quickly. So I just have something made in China that is a similar design. So there

you have it. The key term is iPhone protector slash privacy screen. And if you search for that,

you'll find something. All right, now that your privacy is covered, let's move on to

my next story, which is Nintendo. Nothing about you. Let's talk about me. So let me ask you a

question. When do you think what Nintendo was founded? Oh, I have maybe some unfair advantages

here. I'm going to say 1880. Yes. How did you know that? Was I close? Yeah, it's in the late 1800s.

Because 1830. No, it was like later 1880. So the reason I know that, actually, you probably

don't even know this. So there's a Japanese card game. There's tiny little cards that are like

half the size of a business card. And one of my favorite games I played when I was an exchange

student is called Hana Fuda. Hana Fuda has these beautiful drawings and it's a matching game in

a sense. And Nintendo became famous for first making these card games. Oh, crazy. Can you still

buy them when they're like collectible? Yeah, you can still get them. That's so cool. It's super

cool. Super super cool. Does it say Nintendo on them? It must be in Japanese. It's in Japanese. Yeah,

yeah. Absolutely. Is it little Mario characters? No Mario characters. But yeah, that would be

amazing. Nintendo. I don't know what the Nin is. Ten is heaven and then Do is like place of,

so like Shokudo is a cafeteria. I thought Do is the way. It's a homonym. So Do is the same. Do

is the same like Aikido. Do is the way. Different character. Okay. Yeah. Katakana. No Kanji. Kanji.

Different Kanji. Different character. But Nin is probably Sekinen no Nin. We can come back to that.

All right. Speaking of Nintendo. So Nintendo. As you know, my first born is named Zelda.

There's a new legend of Zelda. The Tears of the Kingdom opening May 12th, which is soon. That is

soon. I'm very excited for this release. And I started playing the old original Zelda, like the

very first one. Cool. So you can play it on the Switch. They have emulators now that you can get

on the Switch. Now the Switch has the old school classic, the traditional Switch controllers,

but Nintendo released the original and these are charging. So they slide off. Check this out.

This is the original Nintendo controller that you can get. So that's awesome. Yeah. Exactly. So

it's this brings back so many memories. That's official from Nintendo. Not because you could

always find like the clone USB Nintendo controllers that were the fakes and all that. That has the

same feel like you push the buttons. Like everything about it is legit. And then they charge when

you slide them on the side of the Switch. They charge. That's really USB. It's so cool. That's

brilliant. It's not awesome. It's super awesome. They have their past now where you can get all

the original Nintendo games. That's fun. It's crazy. I was on the marketplace and you know,

my dad's passed away. And one of the things that I remember as a child is there was the original

Nintendo pinball game. And yeah, my dad used to watch me play and he had actually had a little

tiny TV for me so I could like play next to him as he's watching his shows or whatever. I remember

he never wanted to play any games with me like he was an older dad and he didn't really like get

into Nintendo. But when pinball came up, he was like, okay, let me the grab the controller. And

so he played Nintendo with me. So when I saw that, I was like, oh my god, like he gets it. I mean,

it's so much nostalgia. Yeah, exactly. I'll just teach a word for for folks who may be interested

in Japanese. They use it a lot more than we say nostalgia. But they would say,

that's sort of got the same feel as nostalgic. But they use it kind of like Saudi and Brazilian

Portuguese, but it's roughly like, ah, like how nice, like, ah, that's really nostalgic. That

brings back the memories. There was a blog post that I saw where it was like 25 words that exist

in Japanese that don't have English meanings, you know, yeah, and they're so beautiful. They

capture these like amazing just like moments in time. Like there was this one that was like

the sunlight as it falls between branches branches. Yes. Komorebi. Yes. Komorebi is like

dappled sunlight coming through tree branches and leaves. It's so good. It's so good. So amazing.

Like they have a word for that. Komorebi. That's so amazing. Yeah, super beautiful. Oh, so I was

I was in Tokyo. Yeah, so I celebrated my 10 year wedding anniversary on graduations again. Yes.

That was amazing. And we had a ton of fun. Daria met me out there. We did a Moonbirds meet up.

So we had over a hundred Japanese speaking Moonbirds collectors out there, which was

challenging and awesome at the same time. And then Henry, my Zen instructor here,

Shikman, here in the United States, introduced me to the head of his lineage of Zen,

who I got to go out and meet with and sit down with and have a little private. Yeah, exactly.

We went drinking and just to carry together all night long. No, but we had a little private

gathering and sit down and did a private tent. He lays hands on you, exercise the demons.

He helped me with my practice in game. His English is quite good. It was very intimidating.

Very intimidating. I bet. This is the head of Sambo Zen, three treasures, like a big lineage of

Zen. And I'm sitting here with this guy, you know, and he's just like asking me very pointed

questions about my intention in Zen. What is your intention with my daughter?

Yeah, no, more or less. Like it was, but it was like very cutting questions to you. Like what?

Like a surgeon just coming in and just, I don't know if I should say the things because it's

private interview, you know? I'll give you an example. It's more or less like, why are you here?

Where are you? You know how in Zen, they have these, we've talked about these cons before,

you've done interviews with Henry and thank you for doing those where it's like these

moments where a really good Zen master can come in and look at a student and know kind of exactly

the little nudge they need to give them. There's these like moments where they

grabbed your coat and yank you in a certain direction just to kind of get you to like

snap, like boom, they want you to pop. Yeah. And it was very much that. Why are you here?

What do you want from this? Like boom, boom, boom. I think the guy who's

stealing, I walked back to my Airbnb and Dennis asked me those questions.

Exactly. But less fentanyl driven, but yeah. So it was amazing. It was very,

very special. I hear the Zen masters have cut back on their fentanyl a lot.

Yeah. This guy was operating in a different way. So what did that feel like for you? Like what was,

why did you want to do it first of all? You know, Henry had said such great things about him.

He will never say this publicly, but I believe he is one. I'll say it for him.

No, I will, because I think it's important. Like he's such a modest guy. Henry is one of,

I think it's like five or so fully sanctions and masters in this lineage. And then that's

a big deal when there's, you know, hundreds of teachers in this realm. So this is his master,

his teacher. If you get a chance to take that meeting, you take it, you know? And so,

you know, I went in there like, nah, I'm busy. Yeah. I'm going to try on some issues.

I'm too busy. Going to try some fancy Japanese coffee, but which I did, which was amazing.

And Kevin Mamea out there is fantastic. But honestly, though, the one thing that I took away

from it for people that I will share is that one of the things that he asked me is, he's like,

how often do you practice and how long do you practice? And I said, you know, I practice 25

minutes a day, probably five days a week. And he goes, what about the other two days? And I go,

well, I got a startup, I got this and I got that. And he goes, and I'm paraphrasing everybody,

because I don't care if you practice five minutes a day. He goes, don't miss a day.

Don't break a day. Continue to do it. Don't miss a day. And since then, I have not missed a day.

And I will say it's kind of amazing, because even if you can sit down for five minutes,

it just keeps that continuity going. And it actually keeps me at a slightly elevated more,

I don't know, it keeps the commitment stronger, like it feels better. And that was sound advice.

That's great advice. Sorry, can I trouble you for just a little bit of water, please?

Thank you so much.

Wait, what's water? You can do it.

Hold on. Hold on, don't tell me.

Yeah, you got it.

Oh, it's so good.

What?

Oh, it's good. No, that's tasty.

Yeah, I know the water is tasty.

What?

Mizzu, mizzu, mizzu, oh, mizzu, oh, mizzu.

Yeah, oh, mizzu, like, mizzu, tani, mizzu. There are a lot of mizzus out there.

So let's stay on the Japanese kick for a second.

This is a book in front of me, which I'm just digging into Japanese death poems.

Let's talk about Japanese death poems. I did not actually, I'm embarrassed to admit, know this was

the thing. This was given to me by a friend who has spent a lot of time in military and has

developed a rather unique perspective, unique perspectives on death from the vantage point

of a lay person, right, of a civilian. And so this book is, I'll just read the quote on the back.

This is one of the blurbs, a wonderful introduction to the Japanese tradition of Jisei.

This volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy often hilarious descriptions

of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems. So these poems are written on the verge

of death and literally the subtitle is written by Zen monks and haiku poets on the verge of death.

Yes.

And it's incredibly well researched. You have not just the English versions, you have the

introduction and all the context you have the Japanese, and then you have footnotes describing

what these various words might mean, what the metaphors allude to. And it's really

just a phenomenal window into an aspect of Japanese culture that I had no exposure to.

I would have expected that I would have been exposed to this before, but I'm looking forward

to diving into this and I've already read perhaps the first 10 pages. So this is Japanese death

poems, so fun by title publishing, compiled in with an introduction by Joel Hoffman.

So I have a handful, I don't know if I told you this, but I have a handful of haiku books

that I've read by Japanese masters. Yeah. And one of the things I always felt was just so beautiful

about them is they always include their kind of death poems like at the very end. It's oftentimes

like on their deathbed when they're about to pass, what is the last thing that they wrote down,

right? And it's often in haiku form if they're a haiku master.

Yeah, totally.

And so it's just beautiful stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, there's some really Japanese stuff in here. Like this is died 1698 for not honoring

my parents while I lived in my last hour, I feel remorse. That is super Japanese. The autumn hues

of knotweed seem like cups of wine. Are you a big fan of haiku?

I am. This is my first time really being exposed to a lot of Japanese,

and it does sound better in Japanese. There's a certain cadence to it. So I'm not going to get

the pronunciation quite perfectly here, but if you have, OK, so Hakuro is this person, died on

the 19th day of the 12th month, 1766. So the English, and I'm going to fuck this up in Japanese,

so I apologize to any Japanese speakers out there, but the English just listen to the sounds like

the cadence. So the English is an ailing mallard falls through the chilly night and teeters off.

OK, the Japanese is YAMUKARI NO YOSAMU NI ODITE OBOTSUKANA, right? So it just like has a cleaner

crisper cadence to it, which doesn't mean you shouldn't do the English, but this is my first

time being exposed to a lot of haiku in Japanese, which is fun for me. Number one makes it very

hard for me to decipher in many cases, but they have a beautiful sound to them. That's awesome.

I have to pick that book up. Death Poems. There's a great poem about haiku and about the master.

It's called Three Simple Lines. Have you ever read that? No. It's a fantastic book that is written

by a Zen practitioner that covers a lot of the Zen masters of haiku and along with a really

beautiful personal story. So very short read, definitely worth picking up along with this.

Yeah. I mean, how Japanese relate to death, which is something I have some exposure to,

but not to the poems, this particular Jisei format, tells you a lot about how they live. I mean, it

does provide sort of a prism through which you can appreciate how they navigate a lot of life as

well in addressing the final hours and thinking about dying, death, the path to death. When you

get a better understanding of that, many of the things that you observe in Japanese culture

make more sense. Yeah. In a way. Have you ever done an escape room? Yes. You have? Yes. How many?

Multiple. Really? Multiple. What does that mean? Like a hundred? Like four. They're so stupid. The

fatigued way. So I did my first escape room today. I had a fucking blast. I don't know what's wrong

with you. You're getting old and boring. No, it's just like you're going in there and it's like,

what are you doing? Like, you can get out if you want to. Are they really locking you up? No.

It's called a game, Kevin. Yeah, I know. When you're playing Zelda,

you're trying to do shit in a video game. You don't actually need to do those things.

No, but I just, sorry, I can't explain it. Like, you know what I'm talking about? Like,

you go in there and they lock you up. It's a little room and they're like,

we really quick grab the book and like open up the book and turn to chapter 12 and people are

yelling shit out and you're just like, I don't want to do this. I just want to have a drink.

All right. So I'm going to provide a contrast and styles here. So Kevin, who got so outraged that

I implied that he drank alcohol earlier. No, I just, all my friends want me to do it sober. And

I'm like, why are we doing this sober? And they're like, you can get through it faster. We could

break a world record. Well, yeah, I'm doing it in a hyper competitive way. I think it's probably

not my jam, but I had the chance to do escape rooms for the first time today. I went to this place

called the escape revolution, which is here in LA and Lon Lee, who is one of the co-founders of

Exploding Kittens was kind enough to invite me. I don't want to name other people who are there

because maybe they don't want to be named, but it was a small group and I thought it was

absolutely fantastic. You have an hour. There's some type of pretext or story. There's a narrative

arc. So in our first instance, I'm not going to give away any of the tools. So I won't provide

any teasers, but we had a real armored car that's locked in a garage. That's cool. And

you're robbers and you need to get the money out of the car. But the mechanic who set up all the

security systems ran off because the police are on the way. So you have 60 minutes to figure it

out. And we had a blast. And this place is built in such a way that the set design and the sound

effects and the entire experience makes it, I don't want to say cinematic, but it's just a very

compelling way to become immersed in a story. And you have to collaborate. I also, part of what

made it fun is that I have a game designer right in the Lon Lee. I had a number of other people who

were very accustomed to mechanics of different types, not car mechanics, but like game mechanics

and so on. A woman who had done almost 2000 escape rooms herself, which is all to say,

it was a cool group of people to interact with. They were into it, but then there were two newbies.

I was one of those two newbies who'd never done this before. And then the second one was a jail

break. And we were locked in cells, which were like legitimate cells with was that so low?

What do you do? Like, did you have to figure out how to get out of your own cell?

It was three people to a cell. And then you needed to figure it out. I kind of wish it was so low.

I don't know. I just have this hard thing where it's like, we're all yelling shit. And I'm just

like, can we just relax for a second? I don't know what your group was like. There's no yelling.

Maybe there's no yelling. There's no yelling in this group. Yeah, no, this this. Do you like it?

Yeah, Dari doesn't like it either. All right. She hates games. It's one of those things where I

just maybe I haven't had the right experience because the ones in Portland were kind of jank.

I don't remember much. I just remember that we went in there and they were just like

shit hidden in like little bookcases and stuff. And I'm just like,

why am I looking through these bookcases? There's other things to do. I've got emails

that I haven't checked. Oh my God. It felt like work. It felt like work. It felt like work.

Where I'm like, why am I working to figure out this thing when it's not even a thing?

Well, I mean, you don't need to work out in the gym to like outrun hyenas on the street.

So what are you doing in the gym? Suns out, guns out, that kind of thing.

Well, I'm glad you had a good time. I had a fucking great time. One other thing I did this

weekend, which I'd never experienced. And if people have the chance, I would recommend

is experiencing high fidelity, immersive sound for the first time, like actually listening to music

in a store or a location where they're paying attention to all the variables.

Yes. The most I have ever done is really to the extent that I personally can set up a few

sonos speakers in a house. Yeah, that's it. That's as fancy as I have ever gotten. And I was

having dinner with a few friends, well, one close friend and a few new friends who are

professional musicians. And they heard me say this and they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa,

okay, we need to go to a good location and put you in a seat to let you listen to some of the

music you think you know, where did they take you in super high fidelity? This place called Common

Wave. And the staff there were exceptional. We went from one setup to another setup to another

setup to another setup. And it was spectacular. It was like having a full blown psychedelic

experience in some respects. So for those who may have the opportunity, if you have the opportunity,

I really came to appreciate just how much goes into music I thought I knew, but it only listened to

at in hindsight, relatively low bit rates. Yes. And it is just a different experience altogether

because this came about initially at dinner because I asked somebody at dinner who's a

who's a TV writer, I asked him if he ever watches TV and has trouble immersing himself in TV. And

he said, I don't really watch TV. And I was like, well, what do you spend your time doing if you're

just having fun? He said, I listened to music. And I was like, you listen to music while you're

doing something else or you listen to music as a dedicated activity. And he said, I listened to

music as a dedicated activity. And I was like, okay, tell me more about that. Yeah. And that's how we

ended up. So one thing you might want to consider, I've been down this path a couple of times.

And there's two ways to approach it. One, you either go high fidelity system for your house,

or you go really high end headphones. And I recently realized that back even just two years ago,

to do a high end headphone setup required its own dedicated amp, there's a whole rig that you have

to get. More recently, there are now lossless over the air audio codecs that can go to headphones

that sound amazing. So over the air, you're saying Bluetooth? Yeah. So I got a Bowers and Wilkins,

I think it's the PX7, it's something along those lines. And these are sub $1,000, but they're

still pricey. I mean, I think they're like $800 or something like that. And they can do a lossless

codec from your software, from your iPhone to your headphones. And so there's no bit degradation

in quality. And Apple Music now supports lossless as well. And so you can listen to insanely high

fidelity audio and just sit back and relax and enjoy the music. And the headphones, I mean,

you'll see the reviews out there, but they're fantastic. Okay, well, yeah, that would be

substantially less expensive. Oh my God, dude, I've seen some setups and I'm sure you have too,

are you talk to these people? I mean, you're a couple hundred thousand dollars in. Oh, exactly.

I mean, they're, if you really want to get up to the nerdiest of the nerdy and the most expensive,

the expensive, and I do think there's a dramatic drop off. We're talking about wine and all that

right now. There's a point of diminishing returns, but there are people out there who spend,

you know, $100,000 on a cable. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. You can get as expensive as you want to get,

but I would say the in-home systems are certainly going to be more expensive than the headset you're

describing. It's funny, we met with someone recently that was an audio video person. So Dari and I are,

you know, we're in an apartment now and we're moving into a home at some point here in the

future. And there was this person that was like, hey, I can come do your home audio video stuff.

And like, I literally told the person, I was like, I just want Sonos. I just want Sonos and a decent

pair of speakers. Because for me, I don't want to spend insane amounts of money when I can just

put on an amazing pair of headphones and kick back anywhere in the house and, you know, either read

a book or just relax and like listen to, you know, I'm not going to spend several hundred

thousand dollars when you can probably spend 10 grand and have an amazing setup. It's going to

sound great. Movies, all that stuff is going to sound fantastic. I don't know. For me, audio is not

one of those things that I want to blow money on. Yeah, well, you know, I've got my relationship

with my replica and single life ahead of me. So I can just sit in the house by myself in a dark

corner listening to Pink Floyd crying and eating ho-ho's as your replica whispers to you.

I got to try this replica now. Is it that good now? I haven't dared set foot. You haven't.

You haven't even dabbled. It's like, no, no, no, I haven't. I have not. I have not. Although a

few friends have really, if they like it, do they get into sexual encounters with the replica?

I haven't heard that yet. Okay. I don't think it's there. I don't get there. Oh, sure.

If they're not going to build it, they're silly. Somebody's going to build that in very short order.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm just imagining NeuroLink type. I don't think virtual sex,

which will ultimately debilitate all males on the planet. Once that is actually a real thing,

but nothing will get done ever by any men ever again. But there's been a lot of attention

paid to haptic suits and that type of feedback. Let's say VR. Adam Ghazali loves this. Yeah,

haptic suits. They just all, they're... It's like the thing we always bring up Adam in every

podcast. That's right. We talked about his chin hair last time.

The haptic suits I always have found interesting, but kind of dissatisfying because it doesn't

replicate your human experience, right? It feels like something vibrating on your chest

by and large. You're like, I'm wearing a suit. I'm wearing a suit that's right. Darry's doing

chest and ear quads. Well, so, okay, let's say I had like a haptic glove on my shlong, right?

It's still not going to feel like the real McCoy. It's not going to be...

Have you tried all the crazy things they have out now? Because they have those like ones that

look like they have different types of materials that supposed to feel more realistic.

I have not. What are we talking about? Well, they have like those...

In concrete terms.

In concrete terms. Okay. I've heard that they have those like, those skin like ones that like...

They're locked down and they're supposed to feel really...

You should work in a Foley studio. That was great.

But they're supposed to lock down and feel really realistic.

Don't act like you've never heard of that shit.

You know more about the stuff than I do.

I don't. I would... Look, let me just be clear. I would try that. Like, I have nothing against it.

I would try it. I just think at some point, I'm going to be like,

I feel like I'm boning a Mattel toy or something.

Right. Right. So where I was going with the neural link,

is I think rather than the haptic suit, there's probably going to be quite a bit.

Well, at some point, I could envision just having a direct link in where you can simulate.

I mean, I guess generate really the type of sensation that you would have.

So I think it's going to be the opposite. So here's what I think is going to happen.

I think we're going to have essentially AI that comes in and we'll have a relationship with.

And then earpieces will go into real humans that will play the role.

Like her. That's exactly what happened in her.

Oh, remember? Is that what happened at the end? I don't remember.

Yeah. Yeah. So they arranged to have like a normal person come in.

Person come in. Like this woman comes in.

Yes. She's got an earpiece and he's got an earpiece.

And it'll play on the thing.

And the idea is they don't communicate. He's just communicating with Scarlett Johansson,

who's his AI. I got to watch this movie and it's been decades since I've seen it.

And then they have sex and he has a camera. I think they had cameras so that like the AI

could also see what was going on and comment on that.

Darius saying that Diamond Age book by Neil Stevenson.

Yeah. The VR is basically played out by like actual actors and like that's a job.

I've heard great things about Diamond Age. I have never read it.

But Neil Stevenson, author of Snow Crash, some people read it.

Yeah. My favorite book actually Cryptonomicon.

And a lot of people hate on Cryptonomicon, but I just absolutely loved it.

I couldn't go back and listen to Snow Crash.

All right. I think I'm done with my stuff. You covered everything?

I feel like if, you know, we're stopping on the Mattel toys, that's fine.

Exactly.

We've covered a lot. Oh, I have a gift for you.

You have a gift for me.

Here's my last story. My last story is that when I was in Tokyo,

I realized that Lego is obviously pretty popular phenomenon amongst a bunch of

my Silicon Valley friends. Actually, it's like a time they can get off the computer and build

Legos. They have something called Nanoblock out in Japan, which are really tiny.

I don't know how they got around the patent of Legos.

They're really tiny little baby Legos. And I got you this little castle.

He made you castle. Look at that.

Yes. It's a little tiny castle. And these are small.

They do very traditional Japanese structures in more or less Lego.

They even say the original micro-sized building block.

All right. So anyway, if people want to eBay it or check it out,

it's actually really cool because, you know, just recently Lego started adding

like things like bonsai trees and stuff like that.

When I was walking down the aisles in Tokyo of this store, these Nanoblocks,

they had all these traditional beautiful Japanese structures.

And so if you're looking for something, if you're into Lego or know somebody that's

into this whole thing, and I have a lot of friends that built, you know,

back to the future cars and every other Lego that's out there,

check out Nanoblock because they have a bunch of stuff that has very, you know,

obviously Japanese influence that you might be really into.

Small blocks, big fun. I'm just reading the side here.

Nanoblock is a micro-sized building block designed in Japan since 2008.

Fun to build, attractive to display, interesting to collect.

Something tells me that Lego was around before 2008.

Yeah, it was definitely around before 2008.

Well, like the original 2008.

Anyway, dude, this is something to get out the computer and just like do it.

It's tiny. So it's like a little fun little thing. I got a couple for friends.

Oh, my girlfriend, I built you a Himeji castle with Nanoblock.

Thank you, Tim. That's my favorite. You know how to please me.

All right. With that.

God save us all.

All right. Thank you, everyone.

Thanks, everybody.

Hey guys, this is Tim again.

Just one more thing before you take off and that is Five Bullet Friday.

Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun

before the weekend between one and a half and two million people subscribed to my free newsletter,

my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.

Easy to sign up. Easy to cancel.

It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest

things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.

It's kind of like my diary of cool things.

It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos,

all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast

guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field.

And then I test them and then I share them with you.

So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short.

A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.

If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog.friday.

Type that into your browser, tim.blog.friday.

Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.

Thanks for listening.

This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

Shopify is one of my favorite companies out there, one of my favorite platforms ever.

And let's get into it.

Shopify is a platform, as I mentioned, designed for anyone to sell anything anywhere,

giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business.

So what does that mean?

That means in no time flat, you can have a great looking online store

that brings your ideas, products and so on to life.

And you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day business and drive sales.

This is all possible without any coding or design experience whatsoever.

Shopify instantly lets you accept all major payment methods.

Shopify has thousands of integrations and third-party apps,

from on-demand printing to accounting to advanced chatbots,

anything you can imagine.

They probably have a way to plug and play and make it happen.

Shopify is what I wish I had had when I was venturing into e-commerce way back in the early 2000s.

What they've done is pretty remarkable.

I first met the founder, Toby, in 2008 when I became an advisor, and it's been spectacular.

I've loved watching Shopify go from roughly 10 to 15 employees at the time to 7,000 plus today,

serving customers in 175 countries with total sales on the platform exceeding $400 billion.

They power millions of entrepreneurs from their first sale all the way to full scale,

and you would recognize a lot of large companies that also use them who started small.

So get started by building and customizing your online store,

again with no coding or design experience required.

Access powerful tools to help you find customers, drive sales, and manage your day to day.

Gain knowledge and confidence with extensive resources to help you succeed,

and I've actually been involved with some of that way back in the day,

which was awesome, the build a business competition and other things.

Plus, with 24-7 support, you're never alone.

And let's face it, being an entrepreneur can be lonely, but you have support,

you have resources, you don't need to feel alone in this case.

More than a store, Shopify grows with you, and they never stop innovating, providing more and

more tools to make your business better and your life easier.

Go to Shopify.com slash Tim to sign up for a $1 per month trial period.

It is a great deal for a great service, so I encourage you to check it out.

Take your business to the next level today and learn more by visiting Shopify.com slash Tim.

One more time, Shopify.com slash Tim, all lowercase.

This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep.

Helix Sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your

sleep preferences. Their lineup includes 14 unique mattresses, including a collection of luxury

models, a mattress for big and tall sleepers, that's not me, and even a mattress made specifically

for kids. They have models with memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief

if you sleep on your side, as I often do and did last night on one of their beds.

Models with more responsive foam to cradle your body for essential support in stomach

and back sleeping positions and on and on, they have you covered.

So how will you know which Helix mattress works best for you and your body?

Take the Helix Sleep Quiz at helixsleep.com slash Tim and find your perfect mattress in less

than two minutes. Personally, for the last few years, I have been sleeping on a Helix

Midnight Lux mattress. I also have one of those in the guest bedroom, and feedback from friends

has always been fantastic. They frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in

ages. It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. Helix mattresses

are American made and come with a 10 or 15 year warranty, depending on the model. Your mattress

will be shipped straight to your door free of charge, and there's no better way to test out

a new mattress than by sleeping on it in your own home. That's why they offer a 100 night risk-free

trial. If you decide it's not the best fit, you're welcome to return it for a full refund.

Helix has been awarded number one mattress by both GQ and Wired Magazines. Helix is now offering

20% off on all mattress orders, plus two three pillows for you, my dear listeners. On some mattresses,

this can mean savings of more than $500. So go to helixsleep.com slash Tim. This is the best

offer that they have made yet, and it will not last forever. With Helix, better sleep starts now.

So one more time, check it out helixsleep.com slash Tim.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.