Black Holes, Denny’s Fist Fights, Japanese Handjob Culture & Microplastics - Rabbit Hole #4

Speaking of shiny heads. >> Yeah. >> Tim, have you ever been to South Korea? >> Yes, I have. >> Okay. Uh, would you like to go back? >> I would. Yeah. >> Well, South Korean president calls for hair loss treatment to be covered by insurance, suggesting that government funded Luxmaxing may increase the birth rate. >> His interesting proposal characterizes hair loss as quote a matter of survival. >> How do you feel about that, Tim? >> I think that is not the right solution to the problem. They have they have tried a lot in South Korea. So I I have spent time there. I would love to go back. >> Topic that is often very distressful to people living with it. How do you feel? >> I I am not distressed cuz I shaved my head starting with wrestling at like age 12. So I got used to it thankfully. >> Oh, you opted in. >> As soon as I saw the option to white knuckle or shave my head, I decided to shave my head. But the I think the stickier part here is actually some systemic issues related to things like rent in South Korea because they tried a stimulus of something like $2 billion to encourage procreation didn't work. And when you look at some of the issues in South Korea that are not obvious originally because people point to idiocracy like comps where they're like well everybody's waiting later they're getting more educated da da da. But in South Korea, for instance, if you want to build a family, meaning you're going to need a larger apartment, there are very straightforward things that are a problem like your safety deposit for or security deposit for the apartment is like 12 months rent and people can't afford it. So they're like, I can't afford afford that's so much so many months rent versus it is. And they're like, I can't afford it. Therefore, I can't have kids. who can who can afford a year of rent if they're renting >> and I may be getting the months slightly wrong but I talked to some creators and they're like no it's like I want to have a kid and here are the reasons I can't so I don't think fixing hair loss is going to actually solve that type of >> look Tim we're playing in the margins here because we can't get into the housing problem okay and the margins happen to be the top of the head that's what matters most the the most interesting explanation I've heard for South Korea is K-pop in order to become a K-pop star you have to sign uh your agreement your artist agreement says that you're not going to be in a relationship while you're doing So they have created the most popular cultural export and import I guess or internal stars have no families, no kids. Think about what happens when you do that. Like it's just so inversion easy as [ __ ] The only way you can become a K-pop star is if you've already got kids. >> Mhm. >> That's that's how that's my solution anyway. That's >> also these become [ __ ] dumb >> role models. And now these role models have no kids. >> Those kids don't need rooms. What are we talking about here? >> Yeah. No, they can go on the road on the tour bus right with the Well, there was that guy in Georgia. So, uh to try and fix the >> country or the state >> uh the country of Georgia uh in an attempt to try and improve the birth rate there. It's very religious. I think it's very Roman Catholic and there's a rockstar bapt uh um uh uh preacher guy and he said, "I will personally baptize the third child of [clears throat] any family in the country." All of these families speedrun children to get to the third. and he's it's had a meaningful increase in the birth rate because these families wanted this guy that was basically like the most popular person on in the entire country to like do the do the thing on the kid. So >> or you could just do what certain billionaires like the CEO of Telegram has done and say I will pay for IVF for as many women who would like to have my >> sperm donoring his way to >> 100 plus. >> Yeah. He's a 2026 Genghask Khan. >> Yeah. Yeah. He's doing it the nicer way. weird that most people don't do that, you know? So, programmed to it's like you're it's like we're programmed for the instrumental part of it, like the sex, but like not actually the actual like evolutionary goal is not part of the programming, >> right? >> And if it were, it would be insane. You'd have every rich person would be sperm sperm donating so crazy would be like all these scandals. It would be >> you people with thousands of kids. It's more ideas guys than operations guys, I guess. You know, one of the um Have you seen the documentary of the guy who had a thousand children? No. >> So he started off as a sperm. >> The doctor or No, >> I know it's not a doctor. It's >> one of those too. >> If you could search it, Jar, it's this big thick like um Dutch looking guy and he started off local sperm doning, but I think in the Netherlands the limit's 20 and he just started going to different jurisdictions like playing around with it in the Netherlands. >> Was it not a guy that switched out the sperm for his own? >> There was a doctor. He's like Harold Shipman of >> We've got two guys trying to achieve the same thing but very different routes in >> correct. Correct. And this guy cuz there's a limit in the Netherlands of I think of 20 children that you're allowed to do it because they're then concerned of >> inbreeding. Inbreeding that may happen and this guy ranked it all the way up to a thousand. Then when he got banned from the Netherlands, he started going I believe to Kenya just to >> You're really going to stand out in Kenya if you're a guy from the Netherlands, aren't you? >> Yeah. >> And when the kids when the kids come out, you're really going to know that that's not somebody from Yes. Yeah. There's a Mr. beast of everything >> when you [laughter] >> guys got to win, you know. >> But like when you have a guy like that, you really want him to be have a really really good DNA. You want to be like high IQ and good disposition. >> You're Formula One drivers to be doing this. We need Max Vstafen to be like a spur. >> You're having a meaningful effect on like the whole human gene pool when you do that. especially like three or four generations later when there's a hundred thousand of your descendants in the world and they're procreating and >> well what does the future look like if it's the progyny of billionaires plus the hyper religious right like what does that mix look like you look at certain countries and birth rates by kind of subop say in certain places in the Middle East and stuff and it's very much the hyper religious right so what does that mean in 20 years time >> I don't know it's also the really impoverished people who are in an environment where a lot of kids used to die die in child birth but now they don't anymore but the adjustment of >> of uh you know fertility goes goes takes l a lag generation so you have this huge ballooning usually you know so that's also >> Tim Urban I want to know what's on your mind man what have you been what have you been obsessed with I mean we'll get to pianos I'm sure but maybe maybe that's for later after a few toothpicks >> I I uh I'm I'm very when I'm writing a book I'm just like in it and immersed in it so I've been working on a book for three It's the story of everything and it goes from the big bang to the end of the universe. >> You know, I've always wanted to say I think you should be just a little more ambitious. You know, [laughter] reach for the brass ring. >> You know, it's like secretly kind of not as hard as it seems because you don't have to go that indepth on anything. >> So, it's little dips. It's like a kind of like 100 blog posts in in one. >> You're like World War II, that was a bummer, but it worked out. >> No, no, no. So, so for example, [laughter] >> one sentence. >> No, no. Literally like So, World War Sorry, Japan. we'll make it up to you. >> I was like, what do I do? I have the world wars. I can't not mention them. But like there's certain I want to focus on things that people are like, I never knew that. Or like that's so mind-blowing. Like I'm not going to go I'm not we're not going to go deep enough. Everyone knows the basics of World War, right? So >> I decided instead I'm going to make it like a two-page story that's going to be an an allegory, which is um a brawl at Denny's cuz I used I because I got hooked on YouTube spiral of brawls at Denny's. It's very entertaining. And so then I came to my mind I was like hooked on one that week when I was writing this and I was like okay so you've got like um you know you've got uh a bunch of tension in the room and then finally like you know Austria Hungary goes over and just like you know slaps Serbia guy in the face and then and then you know a bunch of you know then you have Russia and France kind of are like you know these big guys who are friends with the Serbia guy you know I just I just did this and >> and I don't know I don't a lot of times I'm like we I don't know if that's good. I don't know if people will like this. That's what I just did. I guess that's how we're doing the World Wars. and then I move on cuz I had to move on. >> Allegree of Danny's. >> Yeah. Cuz everything I have to think about how do I get this in there in a way that's still fun and new and different. I don't want I don't want you to feel like you're reading a textbook or an encyclopedia. >> I would love ones sentence historical event recaps. I think that would be a [ __ ] wonderful idea. >> It's like fortune cookie history. >> Yeah, cuz uh Barcel Sports Dave Porto does the one bite pizza review and this is just a historical equivalent. >> It's like that Elton John uh diary entry. Oh. Oh, I think it's bor. >> No, no, no, no. I mean, you you taught me about this. It's the single it's a single grade that or the Hunter Thompson one which like tracked I guess that wasn't a diary entry that tracked what his daily routine was that woke up at 12 midday two cigarettes. Cocaine whiskey cocaine whiskey MVMA D. Um, but yeah. >> Oh, here it is. got up, tidied the house, bought a Rolls-Royce, had dinner, wrote Candle in the Wind, had dinner with Ringo Star. [laughter] That was one day. Bought a Rolls-Royce, wrote Candle in the Wind, had dinner with Ringo. >> I wonder if tidying the house was meaningful to him. Was that like soothing therapy or was that just buying time before he could justify walking to the Rolls-Royce dealership? >> Deal opened. >> I will never know. >> There's also two dinners in there. That's true. I think I think one of those is an error. I think the middle dinner didn't exist. >> We also use lunch and dinner. We use lunch and dinner interchangeably in the UK. >> Dinner is supper or something, right? >> You can throw that. You can throw tea in the mix as well, Tim. Yeah. >> After is also not bad. >> Yeah. >> After is dessert >> completely completely gets mixed up. >> I I had to So I also had to get speaking in one sentence. that I had to get from, you know, cuz I'm going I I did like ancient Mesopotamia pretty thoroughly cuz that's so like important. Um, and like, you know, the first empire, which was the Arcticians, and you have Sargon the Great, the first emperor, and I did all that. And then I'm like, now I want to get to like the Bronze Age collapse and that stuff, but there's a thousand years in between. So, I decided again, I'm like, what do I do? So, I just wrote a So, I'm going to do this in one sentence. And it ended up being a paragraph pretty long. It had probably be a full page, but it's a one run-on sentence that goes through 2200 BC to,200 BC. So you you got, you know, >> you really speedrun it. >> Well, but not usually. Sometimes then I would slow down and, you know, spend 20 pages on, you know, the Bronze Age collapse or whatever. But like um but like Yeah, I think >> speed run Rome. You did you did Rome in a single sentence. >> No, Rome. Rome is later >> separate treatment. Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. room I had to say a little bit more about but um uh but you know you can't not going to go through the whole >> how did you choose this book project >> because so I write blog posts about anything and it's a great format >> just so people understand what we're talking about cuz I have more context than some people listening how long are some of your blog posts >> so the the short ones are like 3,000 words which is like I don't know I don't know 10 10 yeah something like that >> um and then early on I was like I can't go over you know 2,000 words and I was like okay I can't get over 3,000 4,000 and then it kept going up and then I did one that was like 8,000 but like it got some traffic and I was like people liked it. Okay. And then the next one and then so I just had a problem where it was like one of these uh you know it's like someone who keeps taking like you know more drugs to get the same high like so I would just start like then getting more thorough and more thorough and by the end I was writing 40,000 word >> would count in a book for like 50,000 words as a >> it's like 120 150 page book something like that. Um and but but so I have this format where I can write any length blog post. So I'm like why would I do a book? I'm right I write I have a and then I was like okay if I'm doing a book it has to be a topic that I could never do as a blog post like what's the ultimate topic that like is so big it has to be >> so the answer was everything [laughter] >> as a topic >> now I I'm just going to pat your back a little bit because I know you're not going to do it yourself one of your longer posts is it fair to say I hesitate to even call it a post but man of the hour right SpaceX is on a lot of mines I checked today it's like 2.5 trillion market cap right Yeah. So Elon liked your stuff so much that he gave you exclusive access to what? >> Yeah. So um he read my AI post and was like, "Hey, I like how this >> circle went." >> This is 2015. Beginning of 2015. >> 2015. >> So this is really early days with AI and with Elon really. I mean a lot of he was very he was a huge deal. But a lot of people I told him my life they didn't know who he was at that time. >> Yeah. >> And SpaceX was some people knew about it, some people didn't. Um and uh and basically he said you know how how he is. is he's very like uh he he likes to trust people and not and be hands off in in a lot of those cases. So he would say he said um would you like to write about Tesla or SpaceX ever? Normally if someone's like you want to write about my company I would say no but like Tesla and SpaceX are as fascinating as any blog post could be because they're about such bigger things than a company right >> also with the access that you could get. So then he basically said, "You can talk to me as much as you want and also any engineer you want and they don't have to be media ready." But and I said because I I said to him like and then on my side I was like I'll I'm not like a journalist who's like that you can't change anything. I'm like I'll send you the post at the end and if there's something like some proprietary thing someone said that's not supposed to be in there, you can take it out. And they really almost took nothing out. It was like it was like the the uh the cost of like a Starling Starling was an idea at that time. It was like they you know little things like that the bandwidth of a Starling satellite things like random numbers they were like two or three of those you can't put that in. Um Elon had like criticized someone that later they were like nah we don't want that in there. I was like okay I'll take that out. Other than that like they let they let let it go and it was obviously I'm like the space in SpaceX you know the factory in um in Hawthorne and just looking at the rocket up close. I got to like sit in in a dragon and like talk to them. >> This is 2015 201 >> 2015. They had never landed a rocket yet. That was the big thing at the time. Can No one has ever landed a rocket. SpaceX is trying to. People think they're crazy. >> Um and I actually I did one of these cuz they they started broadcasting their launches and I did the very, you know, it was like one of the very first ones they were like, "You want to do one when we're trying to land a rocket?" I was like, "Sure." So I was like a guest broadcaster on the time when they landed for the first time with us. So like the the the seven-year-old in me was like, "I can't believe this is real." It was like the it was very exciting for me. Um and then later I wrote a big big post about Neuralink which they launched the company alongside that post. So it was like and then and then the scariest thing ever was >> the whole company now is kind of waiting on me and I'm a procrastinator with Neurolink. >> Yeah. And like we're talking about how my post always go longer. They thought it was going to be like a 6,000word post. This one was 40. And Elon, by the way, I think this chill. He was like, "It's so long, bro." And I was like, "This is how I am, dude. This is I I don't know what to tell you. This I can't not do it. There's so many I can't talk about neural without talking about other brain computer interfaces. I can't talk about those talk about evolution and then I have to talk about the brain brain the nervous system. How did it evolve in the first place? You go we end up back in like the most ancient part of like origin of life. Um but that's how I do it and and it was such a complicated story to tell because it was the concept of a brain computer interface but then the reason for it which was like merging with AI and what the hell. So, it was long, but he sends out a a a tweet that was like uh like uh we'll be launching in a week, you know, wait but wide post will be ready like in a week and I was like no it won't so scary. [laughter] So, I ended up um I ended up like furiously trying to finish and it finished in 3 weeks and I was like talk about like good external pressure that's helpful to have like >> Elon Musk publicly putting pressure on you. So, >> that was that. Uh but yeah and it's it's just great because you get to like by by writing that post you end up just fully understanding like a whole industry you didn't understand before right so it was it was fun >> so amazing yeah >> yeah there are blog posts and then there are blog posts >> right but yeah so that's why a book had to be something even bigger than something like that >> you got the uh mo most watched TED talk of all time as well >> uh [sighs] second most >> oh who beat you >> Ken Robinson well he he was the first one posted like back in 2006 mine was 2016. So, he's got a decade on me. But I'm like I think he has like 80 million and I have like 78. And I'm like, "Come on, man. Like, just get to first. It's >> paid behind it. Just put some paid advertising behind it to just >> I don't think that'll I don't think that'll you could rip make it rip in Bangladesh. You could get that." >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. >> You got one of those watching, you know, maybe for your Kindle version of your book or all your books, you just have it's almost like signing up for Wi-Fi at the airport. like you have to watch an ad, but in this case, they have to watch your TED talk. >> 30 seconds, just [laughter] enough just enough to trigger a play. That's all I need. >> Out of with the new book, let's say history is kind of like a stock market and everything's priced. I feel like World War II is very much um it's like Apple right now, right? Like people talk about World War II. What parts of history from your research do you think is like way more fascinating than people give it credit? >> Oh my god. So, I mean, almost everything. I mean, everything once you dig in, you you just I mean, >> I was just writing about the black hole era. Do you know what that is? Like, uh, >> it's I I'm not going to get like I might like have an existential crisis if I talk about this, but so basically there's the the star era goes on for like a hundred trillion years or something like that. So, that the last stars will be born around 100 trillion years from now and then like 20 trillion years later, the last stars are gone and we're in the degenerate era and there's just nothing except for little white dwarfs and then that ends and all that's left is black holes. And so how long is the black hole error? Cuz the black holes decay really really slowly. Really slowly. But and some of them are going to be huge. But there'll be a point at some point when the last black hole it's hulking radiation, right? >> Hawking radiation. Exactly. It's like the tiniest little right around the edge. The antimatter, you know, whatever. Um so I was like, how do I explain how long this is? It's 10 to the 106 years. Okay. So what how do you what does that mean? How do you put that into context? And the way I thought about it is, okay, imagine if we make a timeline where every centimeter is a billion years. So, so far it's this is this is how long we've gone. Big bang today, right? And it's 13 centimeters. And now I was like, so how long would this timeline have to be to to to get all the way to the end of the black hole era? And I said, okay, well, let's just actually get I want I always want to like actually do the calculations. And so I was like, let's imagine this is a ribbon with a half a millimeter thickness and it's 1 centimeter th uh wide and then every centimeter of it is of length is a billion years. So how long would it have to be? Turns out you'd have to if you could pack like okay if you imagine you packed this room >> tightly with ribbon. So it's just like this block hard rock >> of of ribbon just packed as much as you possibly could in you know and every centimeter is a billion years. Okay. Would that be enough time? No. No, you'd have to pack the entire observable universe to the brim with ribbon and that would get you nowhere close. You'd have to have packs and the final number I came to is 1.4 billion observable universes with this this ribbon to have by the end of the last universe to get to the end of the ribbon that's the end of the black hole era. So there's [ __ ] like that that I just I'm going to put a wrinkle into it because after that you still have quantum fluctuations. >> Oh yeah. Oh no. The dark era >> and that goes on that goes on for even longer. So the five the five stages of the un five ages of the universe sorry book from 1996 goes through this they had to come up with their own numbering convention to be able to name it they didn't use ribbon yours is much more inventive is way more nerdy >> the dark era which just comes after the observable universe sorry after the black hole era is way more upsetting because now >> imagine you have an entire you wrote a book that in that that contains the history of the universe right and every page is an equal amount of time [laughter] you could pack and it's like something like 16 of these so a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion observable universes but 16 trillions um to the brim with pages and the from the big bang to the end of the black hole era that whole thing with the ribbon I just talked about is not even the first proton and the first atom of the first letter of the first word of the first page of the first book. So I get upset about this. This is the kind of thing that when I think about then I'm like in bed and I literally can't sleep and I'm tossing and turning and the next day my wife is like why are you so tired? And I'm like, it's too like embarrassing to explain, but like I I >> I'm having an existential crisis about how long the universe >> won't be here, but that amount of time will pass. And that is weird. Like no one should want to turn a life. >> There's a an interesting theory about super advanced alien civilizations shutting down because toward the end of that era, you end up with an unbelievably cold universe, one that's significantly colder than ours. Now, now it's not much, but on the margins, this makes a big difference because almost all energy usage blows off heat. And if you were doing simulations, ancestor simulations, future simulations, if you had, if you'd gone into the metaverse and decided to make this your new place, it's way more efficient to do this the later that we go. So, I'm going to guess that you came across this, too. It's one of the explanations for the Fermy paradox, which is the paradox that asks why have we not seen aliens when there's should be lots of them out there. We should see something. There should be some that are far more advanced than us. So, they should really be noticeable out there building Dyson spheres and stuff. And there's many explanations. One of them is they're all hibernating because they've all figured this out. And they're going on this thing that will feel like a second to them, but they're just going to go past a few, I don't know, whatever it is, 100 few hundred billion years. And we're just in this era where it doesn't make sense for an advanced species to be conscious. So, they just are all hibernating. >> It's like waiting for the ventilation guy to come and fit the AC before installing a new computer tower. That's why it's like it's going to get it's too hot. It's going to make the apartment too too hot. We just go chill. Let's go play pickle ball for a while. He'll come in in a bit and then once we once he stop it'll just be like a blink. Okay, we're here now. Let's keep going. But to us, we're just like it's empty. No one's here. >> Yeah. [ __ ] while. >> It's really cool, dude. I got obsessed with that and supervoid. The beet supervoid. Now that if you want an ex >> another Yes. Another crisis. >> Yeah. It's like a So you should have a relatively uniform universe, right? A cosmic microwave background, but you don't. You have little fluctuations. This even within little fluctuations, it should still broadly be pretty uniform. But it's not. There's these huge things called supervoids that are like millions of light years. >> Some of them are the biggest ones are a billion lighty years across. >> Beta's one might be a billion light years, a few billion lighty years across. And it's almost entirely bereft of material for billions and billions of light years. It's insane. It's so [ __ ] There are some theories that even we are in somewhat of a void potentially like that there that that we're in a very uncrowded part of the the observable universe perhaps. Um it's unclear but and of course by the way this everything we're talking about the voids we see everything that's all within the observable universe which might be like a grain of sand compared to the earthsized full universe. Like >> this is just what we can see and like that's also freaks me out. Before we continue most people in their 30s are still training hard. Their protein is dialed in. They sleep better than they did in their 20s. Discipline is not the issue, but recovery feels somewhat different. Strength gains take a little longer. The margin for error starts to shrink. And that is why I'm such a huge fan of timeline. You see, mitochondria are the energy producers inside of your muscle cells. 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That's timeline.com/modernwisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. >> Have you ever watched Power of 10? >> Of course. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have you watched Powerof 10? Maybe Jared, you can get it on the screen on YouTube, but it's I because as you give me that kind of conversation there, I start zooming out of myself and I realize, oh, like I am essentially nothing. And the power of 10. It starts with people in a park and it just zooms out by the power of 10 I think every 3 seconds. So it goes from them in the park like zoomed in on their face to above to above to above and you realize how quickly it goes all the way out to to the earth just essentially being nothing. But then what's the most fascinating part of this video is they then zoom in. So then zooms in all the way. Yeah, it's that top one there. This is the nearest I found to doing any psychedelic drugs without having to ingest anything. >> This is a staple of American schools. We watch this. This was in school. Serious. I never saw that. >> This is how you ended up like how you end up cuz this made a huge impression on 10 times as wide. Our picture will center on the picnicers even after they've been lost to sight. 100 m wide. >> It's nice that basically this is making those picnicers the center of the universe. That's pretty fun. >> Way power boats lie at their docks. This must have been difficult to do without uh >> much computer technology. >> I know. I'm impressed. >> Dude, fire up the autism engine. This is [ __ ] great. >> It's actually a beautiful uh like meditation technique to sit there and do this and then start realizing how many other people out there have their own faults. >> First the rounded end of Lake Michigan. >> This is something that um >> I don't if you guys recognize this name Ed Cook who was a memory competitive memory champion. He's he's from your motherland. He's a Brit. And then he trained I think it was Jonah in a book called Moonwalking with Einstein. So he took a lay person in this case journalist and trained him up to be >> memory champion in the US where they have to memorize a >> shuffled deck of cards for time and things like this. There are various events like kind of like a mental decathlon but as a meditative tool he does this zooming out right. And there's also a really, this is like the Brit roll call here, but I think Oliver Burkeman is also one of your countrymen, wrote a great book called 4,000 weeks, which is tremendous. And one of the chapters is called cosmic insignificance therapy. >> And it's some version of this. But that is partially why I wanted to ask you like to what extent do you find it helpful to think about this stuff where perhaps it puts problems in perspective versus overwhelming in its magnifi magnification of your insignificance. >> There's a there's a great cartoon, I think it's by Asher Pullman, and it's a guy saying, not only are your problems insignificant, you're insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe. So, it's like this guy who's dealing with like nihilism, and then it's like the reframe is you also don't matter in in the whole universe as well. >> Yeah. >> So, you can have that effect that happens to people. >> Yeah. So, I'm curious for you, Tim, personally. Um, I I I think it does make me feel kind of cozy in a way. Like I I I I think it makes me feel better because it makes me feel just like lucky to be conscious here for a second as opposed to thinking like this is the baseline and oh my god, I'm going to like die and that's going to I'm like it's so cool that I that for a moment in this universe like my consciousness formed. >> It's so improbable, right? >> Yeah. And like this tiny little also. So again, we just talked about time is really scary. Space is really right crazy. >> And like you said, it then goes down to the small and like it gets even smaller than it does big. And that's cool. I'm like a, you know, Fineman has this great quote like, you know, I a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe. And it's like both of those, right? And it's like, >> uh, it does just make me feel like very lucky to be here. And then that then then it feels like I'm playing with house money a little bit. And then like suddenly debt doesn't I'm like whatever, man. It's like I'm this is so cool. like and just like I don't know one you know I I I I'm tickled by these thoughts. I find it like endlessly I get the dopamine hits I get from them. So to me it just uh it's a it's usually a positive. Um I don't like reading about like the rise and fall of empires. You know there's other parts of the book that I'm like that's not a nice thought cuz a lot of these empires at their peak they were really sure or even on their way up or even on the early way down they were just they were this is it. We finally are here in the modern times and we figured it out. And like those empires of the past like they they made mistakes that we won't make and every single one they had a catastrophic fall. I don't like that. Um yeah. Well, I was was joking with Chris when we did an episode recently that as I think we spoke about this as well that as every empire falls, nobody announces that the empire has fallen. So it's obviously up for debate, but Rome uh most mainstream historians will say that Rome fell in about 476 AD. And it's almost because it's quite poetic because you have Romulus saw the rise of the Roman Empire. He was the first Roman Emperor and then young Romulus was disposed and that was the end of the Roman Empire. But the next day there was no big announcement that the Roman Empire had fallen. So much so it go you obviously have the split of the Roman Empire. Um I think in the 700s AD Charlemagne is announced as the official Roman emperor. So 300 years later it was still going on. Voltater said the empire that calls it calls itself holy Roman and empire is neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. He said that in 1700 AD. So the actual when it came to everybody deciding that the Roman Empire had fallen when it was officially announced I think by Francis II was the mid700s. So, I joke that the most powerful empire today when it falls, there'll be people that still think it's gone. People in 3000 will be like, "Well, of course, the US empire collapsed in 1994 uh AD." And we'll be like, "Huh? What?" >> It's like a punch drunk boxer that can't admit that he's failing, but dude, your career's over. It's time to go. >> Me and Chris can confirm that there was no moment that certainly in our lifetimes that the BBC announced the British Empire had fallen. It's like, when did it happen? It happened. But when did it happen? >> Yeah. Uh, speaking of stuff that you learned in school, have you seen the retro codeex? Have you seen this? Really, really cool website. So, it's a website that teaches you things that you learned in school that are now disproven. So, you can go in and look at what year you graduated high school >> and it'll tell you what you learned in school and have now been disproven. Jared, can you pull this up for me? So, um, I put this in as 2000s, which would be for me and George. Uh, lightning never strikes the same place twice. Uh, lightning has struck several places, multiple times. Empire State Building is struck approximately 25 times a year. Uh, wearing red near a bull will cause it to charge. Bulls may not be able to distinguish the color red from other colors. What triggers the bull is movement and physical provocation, not color. The red cape is to conceal blood stains. Uh, goldfish have a 3-second memory. Goldfish retain memories for weeks, months, and possibly years. George Washington had wooden teeth. He did wear dentures, but they were made of other materials such as tin, gold, and lead. Human teeth from enslaved individuals. It's a bit gnarly. Uh, you need to wait 20 to 30 minutes after you eat to swim or you'll get stomach cramps and drown. There's no clinical evidence for that. There's another one. Go a bit further down. I see. Oh, if you roll your eyes and folk wisdom checked on the top left. I was like, I don't recall getting >> Go down. If you pee in the pool, everyone will know cuz it'll turn water green. >> Hot water, washing hands is not >> cold water. Yeah, right there. Interesting. I'm learning a few things. >> Water temperature has not been found to impact the antibacterial efficacy of handwashing. I didn't even know that. After a person dyes, their hair or fingernails can keep growing. >> Who Who thinks Earth is the only planet with water? I don't I don't know about that. >> But in the 2000s, might you have thought that? Cuz Pluto being a planet would have been true when we went to high school. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. True. >> Uh brown sugar is healthier than white sugar. Yeah. I just thought it's it's nice to and then obviously all of this stuff with the food pyramid that's got turned literally upside down. So some of these will end up being overturned too but yeah um Oh for sure. I I think when I was thinking about you know the way kids are educated I think that schools do something that I think in some cases like they at least they traditionally that is that is maybe the right thing to do which is you teach the wrong story the simple wrong story first just to like let the concepts and then later you start to build the nuance and you realize that the but that's in kind of like like Thanksgiving I think it's I I think it's I learned early on that Thanksgiving was this like wonderful thing and the pilgrims came and the the Indians at the time the Indians were like and everyone was happy and they had this nice feast and uh or you know just like Columbus discovered the new world but I'm like no he didn't but like and just like keep it um let let the basic story seep in and then later you can be like actually like this is like an allegory kind of for that that represents like a much larger more complicated much nastier story often and I think sometimes right now what they're doing is they're you know out of kind of I don't know you know kind of political reasons or whatever they're they're they're teaching kind of very very like you know um you know kind of a hardcore first story to really young kids right away that um they're frontloading the gnarly version. >> Yeah, exactly. And maybe going too far even in that direction. Um when uh like I think I I mean this is a whole other can of worms, but I think that maybe I want to >> but put the disguise on >> but like I I know I think that um >> I do think American children should be taught first all these great things about America. they should learn that they're in this great country that's has complicated that it's not been perfect but they've done a lot of great things um and it's this wonderful thing and patriotism and be really proud and then later later then you can learn a lot more nuance or it's the same reason that I think you shouldn't be teaching your kid you know that like you think your dad's a good person but actually you know he cheated when in his 20s like you you know that he like did that you know he got fired like you don't do that you start with the dad that's great of course and then later in life when the kid's an adult you start I don't know if this is partisan controversy anymore you start to then say uh you know dad uh you know dad can say to you you know yeah I'm not perfect I did this and this but like >> yeah just >> you don't need to frontload >> kids are kids and like it's a very different kind of person to teach >> well also because I mean I remember talking to >> very close friend of mine who's got a bunch of kids wonderful guy very successful in what he does >> and I asked him what his parenting advice would be and his first rule was you need to teach your kids to be optimists because action flows from optimism and agent flows from opto, right? And so what you're describing sort of creates a picture that you don't want to aspire to engage with and seems antithetical to that. >> They're like, you know, second, third, fourth graders just climate change, climate change, the your future's destroyed. Like why? Why? Who thinks this is a good idea, >> right? Little little kids. >> Well, and then the older generations are like, "Oh my god, these younger generations so apathetic." I'm like, "Yeah, you're getting waterboarded with existential threat all day." Yeah, you would be too. I guess it makes sense that the younger you are, the more neuroplastic you are, right? And even like statements like that are quite reflexive. So if if you go on if I go on the news tomorrow and say it's it's going to be a sunny day, I have no impact on whether it's going to be a sunny day. But a reflexive system is if I go on the news tomorrow and say there's going to be a bank run, I have an impact on whether there's going to be a bank run. And if you go in thinking America is a terrible country, that's going to be quite a reflexive thing for your entire youth. I mean, it's quite funny listening to an not that you were complaining to him, but an American talk about the lack of patriotism in their country. >> Two Brits next to the >> Yeah. It's kind of like Chris talking to me about like how he's frustrated with the size of his forearms right now. You know what I mean? Like I'm like, "Okay, okay, I understand." But uh yeah, I think it's interesting for America to be going through that when you're still by far the tallest [ __ ] in the room. >> Right. Totally. >> And and by the way, there's so much British history to be proud of. >> Oh, don't get me started. >> This negative lens. >> Don't get me started, Tim. I I I declare I I said this to Chris previously like we are the most insecure in terms of internal reputation versus external. So if you travel anywhere else in the world apart from a few places they often like love the UK. Um but internally they often criticize themselves the most. I'll never forget a friend of mine um uh came uh his sister came home one day and she said, "You know what?" She goes, "Britain is the racist country on earth." And he paused for a second and he just said, "Compared to where?" >> She couldn't answer. [laughter] >> That line about capitalism. It's the worst system apart from all of the other ones. >> It's just a crazy distortion lens and it's so self-defeating. And it's like this crazy Yeah. >> Jack Butcher's got this great line. He says, "Unlearning is a hundred times harder than learning." And if you're laying down those milein sheets and some kid who's 5 years old, six, seven, I don't know when you start to understand what climate is and what power structures look like. But >> yeah, you're probably best starting off with generalized optimism and getting into specific pessimism or specific scrutiny as opposed to generaliz high school maybe, you know, like maybe a little middle school, elementary school is just it's just Yeah. Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance. Which is why for the last 5 years, I've started pretty much every morning with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. This orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a sweet, salty, orangey nectar, and I really tell the difference when I take it versus when I don't. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue. helps to optimize brain health and regulate your appetite while also curbing cravings. Best of all, they have a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. So, you can buy it and try it for as long as you want. And if you don't like it for any reason, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklnt.com/modernwisdom. Well, think about now the uh UK it looks like I don't know whether this is actually going to happen. The UK is proposing a social media ban for under 16s the same as Australia's had. And I haven't seen much of the fallout of this. I steered clear of X for the last couple of days. But I I really struggled to see how this is a bad thing. >> So to steal the other side before you even get on to the 16-year-old is also a you have to use identification now to use social media for anybody over the age as well. >> Is that a bad idea? It's an interesting discussion. >> I Everybody's got >> okay with it. >> Everyone's got a concern about digital safety. I I I understand that. But >> why have you abstained for the last few days from X? >> Busy. >> Okay. Okay. >> It [laughter] wasn't a choice. >> I was like, what was the catalyzing event? >> It wasn't a choice. It was literally just busy. >> Yeah. Uh >> touching grass. >> Get trying to get trying to I was looking at photos of grass on X actually. [laughter] It was It was better. He was too he was too busy doom scrolling on TikTok was the actual thing. >> Few bugs. >> Uh but the Australia thing. Um you're right. What? >> You're such a [ __ ] technical. >> Carry on. Carry on. What? Can I come? >> No. Don't interrupt. Don't interrupt. Is Winston Church stop interrupting my interruption? >> Winston Churchill once said to Rand Church's son at dinner the best thing ever, which is like, "Can you stop interrupting my interruption?" [laughter] >> Go on. You go. You go for it. I just don't understand what the what the counterargument is. I don't understand what it's such anchoring bias because we developed the technology before we put the guardrails around it. And I think if you were to invent it today having known the impact of social media if it had been worked inside of a Faraday cage lab for a long time to look at what the impacts are. It would be like releasing cigarettes into the world knowing the impact of them. I something I imagine that kids were able to smoke 70 years ago or something. I don't know whether there was ever an age restriction on smoking. I I imagine the same would be for alcohol. And you start to tick this up over time. The UK's introduced that uh lagging law for vapes now. So I think anybody born like after 2010 will never be able to smoke and the age just keeps tracking up. >> So it's if you were born what 2006 or earlier, you're allowed to and it's never going to change. It's you're never going to be able to smoke. That's just their attempt at you didn't learn to do it in the first instance, therefore we're gonna you're never going to need to do it in the future. But yeah, I mean I I I'm I'm in support of the I'm interested to hear what criticisms push back against it are, but I don't see any reason why it's a bad idea to put under 16s put a ban on the smart ones that want to start a business and really need to learn the internet are going to be able to get around it. They can still be entrepreneurial and the ones that don't, I don't think they're going to miss out on much. What do you guys think >> in terms of age verification and identification? >> Is there is there an issue stopping kids under 16 from going on social media? Would you be in support of it? >> I would be in support of curtailing or forbidding it for sure. 100%. >> 100%. >> Yeah. I mean, spending time with Jonathan height and so on. I I just think the evidence is so compelling. Yeah. I would I would for sure. >> I wonder how much of an impact he's had. >> He has had >> just Jonathan Height as a guy. He's had an impact with his small team on a with stateby-state legislation changes. They've been very effective for uh for a small crack team of researchers and people. >> He also before I mean I in my last book was about political polarization and wokeness and all of this. And he was you know the chapters ranged from kind of like evolutionary psychology to his you know political history to kind of modern current stuff. And I had different kind of gurus for each chapter that were different thinkers that I would like, you know, be be sourcing from. And he's the only one who was who's who was one of those people in every chapter. >> Yeah. >> Um he he's kind of a, you know, I I don't agree with everything he says. Um he's a he's a giant. Um and this is before any of the met. Yeah. Yeah. >> He's an actual giant. >> No. No. >> Oh, yeah. He's very tall. >> Oh, he is? >> Yeah. >> Oh, I don't I don't remember. He's tall compared to us, but he's not that tall. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. >> But he Yeah. for people. You mentioned Anxious Generation. >> Happiness right last name. Yeah. H A I D T and >> Happiness Hypothesis is one of my favorite books of all time. >> He's also just such such a sweet sincere guy. Also, >> I think if you're going to talk about stuff like that, you the potential for you to be rightcoded, if you want to be effective, you need to signal a lot of um uh placid, peaceful, empathetic, understanding, both sidesy energy. Because if you even begin to lean right and center, it immediately looks like >> to my friend and I argue about this because I have a friend who's very conservative. Um, and he's very smart. I he changes my mind about things sometimes. Sometimes he's over the top, but he the he the people he can't stand the most are kind of Jonathan Height, Coleman Hughes, these people who agree with who are who are, you know, I argue to him, these people are fighting the causes you care about, but they're doing it way more effectively than you would because they're actually reaching center-left people. Um, and and if you start immediately being like, you know, super tribal and super rightcoded, >> um, you'll you'll never reach any of them. And he just sees them as such he calls them media kiss-ups. you know, these people just they still want to be, you know, they they they they need to uh they always need to make sure that that the polite society approves of them. And and I I totally disagree with him cuz I think that John Height is un has done unbelievable impact against those kind of over-the-top left causes that he really doesn't like. >> Way more effective. >> Yeah. I don't Yeah. And I don't even view it. It's not a partisan >> issue, right? I mean, I would just because Jonathan's so terrible at asking for money, I would say as someone who plays with scientific funding and stuff like that, if people are looking for ways to kind of bend the arc of history and undo some of the wrongs and ills of social media and so on, I think funding some of what Jonathan is up to with very small sums of money has a hugely disproportionate impact. Just coming back to what has he done with his small team, >> I just wanted to throw that out there. The ripple effects of being able to genuinely, you know, push the needle with changing policy with kids in social media is >> one of the biggest impacts you could make, I think, on the planet right now for you. You won't even know there the effects of it, but 30 years from now, I mean, >> yeah. >> Yeah. Tim, what have you brought from home? You've got a bag that's looking. >> Yeah. I brought I've just to this conversation down a little bit. I brought a bunch of show and tell items. Um, >> it's got adult show and tell. I like it. Fire up the autism engine. [laughter] >> So, let's see. I'll I'll I'll start I'll start with you >> have a little engine that's even >> I'll I'll start with this. So this is called bite. >> Okay. >> And the subtitle is pretty simple. It's 124 bits, but it's bits as in little pieces of what look like candy. Mouthwash bits. And this was recommended to me by Dr. Tommy Wood. He's a neuroscientist, also a beast of an athlete, but a very credible scientist, very well published. and he and I were having a conversation about different approaches for neurop protection hopefully mitigating the risk of neurodeenerative disease and oral health is a really big one and yes you can brush your teeth yes you can use like a water pick or something like that but xylitol is really really compelling as an intervention so you could chew xylitol gum you could do this that and the other thing but I found ultimately everything I read so compelling that I started using these, which he recommended. And these are really simple. You just well, you're going to need water if you chew on it. So, you basically for travel, but also at home, rather than having mouthwash, you take one of these. I'll show you what they look like. I mean, literally just looks like a little piece of candy or like an aspirin. >> And do we have water here? >> Well, I'm going to have to spit it out. You can't swallow it. So, or you probably shouldn't swallow it. So, you just you chew on it, take like a couple tablespoons of water in your mouth, swish it around for 30, 60 seconds, then spit it out, and that's it. And you just do that. >> Why is that better than normal m mouthwash? >> Because of the xylitol content along with a couple of other things. So for sort of antibacterial effects and I know people I'm not going to mention this person by name but MDPhD who had cavities started using xylitol twice a day and went back to the doctor or the dentist rather no cavities. It's like it's pretty interesting. That's end of one. Of course, I don't know what's out there in the literature with respect to that, but found it interesting enough and it's so lightweight as an intervention that I was like, "Okay, I will I will start doing that." >> And anything that you can kind of just like have on your desk and just like pop one in and you know, while you're is is you'll do a lot more. >> Yeah. I mean, my compliance with this also with the amount of travel that I do is really Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just tastes like kind of like candy. A friend of mine wanted me to get into organ meat and I'm like I'm not I'm not going to grind organ meat into my smoothie. I'm sorry. He does this. >> That sounds great. >> And then he got me these these pills. Uh >> oh man, >> desicated liver. >> I need to supplement. >> Yes. Something like that and it's it's like I take five or six and whatever a day and I just because it's on my desk and I just see it there. I pop it in and I do it every day now. Now I have work. >> This is so I understand when people are designing their workspace that you're supposed to keep it relatively undistracted. Like if you're going to be in creative flow mode, maybe you do want some newspaper cutings and like some cool art on the wall, but for the most part, we're trying to lock in and not get distracted. You're so right. Having a an environment that pushes you toward behaviors that you want to do. Um Sean Puri has a basketball on his desk and he thinks better when he's tossing. I played ball sports as a kid. It's the same. My best ideas almost always come when I've got a tennis ball in my hands or some sort of and I'm just able to throw. I don't know what's going on. Maybe it just distracts the front of my brain a little bit. The other one is that ohm lamp that me and you have got. So this is a lamp around about this big and there's a little stone on the top of it and the stone is an FDA quality HRV sensor. You just pick it up, hold it in your hand and the light goes up and down and there's sounds and it's using an algorithm to maximize your heart rate variability. So it's resonance breathing that you can do in three minute chunks. But the best thing is you can turn off all of the settings on it and it vibrates. It's like haptic vibrates in your hand. pick it up and hold it and you can watch a movie. I've accumul I went and checked because I talked about it on my newsletter this week. I've done 160 hours of resonance breathing in six months. Just this year I've done 160 hours cuz I just grab it next to my I've got one in my office, one one here, one there. Grab it and I just breathe in time with this vibrating thing. So if you're watching something with >> just like subconscious >> and you're just tracking it up and down and it's it's adjusting based on what your heart rate is doing. It's linked in with the Wi-Fi. So it's link it once, never think about it again. And the algorithm is cutting edge and all you do is you just grab this stone and hold it and breathe with it and it vibrates and there's one on my desk. So if I'm about to sit on a call where I need to be quiet for ages, I'll just grab it and have it. I mean, I don't hold it too close, but you know what I mean. Uh yeah, I have hundreds of fidget toys uh like of all different kinds and I get like I put I have a certain like dish on my desk that's that these are the ones that are in the rotation right now and I have all the whole archive back. >> Where did you get your fidget toys? >> Oh my god. Well, for Instagram ads is deadly for me. It figured me out. >> Um specs. this there's a sp aks.com I think um is just that they have amazing like like soft silicone covered magnets and like stretchy things and uh I have silly putty and I've got mechanical toys and uh you know it's it's an important thing for me that's why >> if I don't have those I'll bite my nails too >> that's why these uh toothpick things or an equivalent but the neutonic neutropics are just a bit of an oral fixation if you're working away writing something your business partner Josh uh because he's a real caffeine fiend like ex M white fighter now Brazilian jiu-jitsu dude like kind of hardcore guy um just started stacking them on a morning and gone to a call I think it was with you and he had six in his mouth cuz he'd never taken any of the old ones out. He just kept adding them in. So he looked like a a camel that was chewing on a bit of straw and he had all of these things poking out the front of his mouth. >> Yeah. I I I find that if you've ever, you know, I don't know if you're like me, but if I'm on a if I I'm sitting at my desk and a friend calls me and we're talking and then I get really like animated. He I say something, I'm like, "Yes." And I want to make this point 100% I'm up and I'm walking pacing, right? And I'll even if I'm driving and I get home and I'm in a good phone call, I'll just keep looping around because it's something about the movement. Um and then so I think, well, why am I sitting at my desk when I'm writing? Like it's probably something about my mind really lights up. Like it wants to physically move. It's all tied together. So, like, you know, I'll just do a standing desk with one of those rockers or a treadmill. You know, they have these like little rockers and it's just kind of like I don't know, it just keeps you moving. But, I don't know. I just feel like, yeah, if I'm physically engaged. >> Have you ever played with dictation, any AI dictation or anything as a way of brainstorming while walking? I've been doing that recently. >> I I've done it for brainstorming like outlines of posts, talking through it. Yeah. Um, but even better for me, if there's someone on the other end, especially someone I like respect. So, this is my assistant Alicia who's been working with me for 10 years. she knows exactly what I'm working on and she's like, you know, really tapped in obviously. So I will just sometimes say I'm stuck and we will do a call and she will basically say nothing but her being there and we she'll she will give feedback at the end sometimes but that's not she knows the game is he's going to talk to me now and he's going to crack his own thing by the end of this convers this conversation. >> So you don't record them or you do? >> Um I usually what I'll do is while I'm talking to her I'll say a line. I'm like yes and I'll write it down. And I'm like, where the hell was that? When I was thinking alone, I wasn't talking to someone. So, what my weirdest new habit that I've done is I've tried to essentially give up all thought by the brain. >> So, like sounds. >> So, let me explain. Let me explain. So, >> lots of nitrous. [laughter] >> So, most people or my former self existed in the kind of simmering six. So the the middle kind of ambient rumination, rumination, rumination, and the the big trend at the minute is the whole like [ __ ] maxing to stop thinking, which I think is a bit ridiculous. I think what you actually want is a barbell. So you want sometimes you do the [ __ ] maxing mode and then sometimes you're doing the Einstein maxing mode, but that bit in the middle disappears. So for me, I stopped thinking in my brain. I only by what I mean by thinking, by the way, is if it's like, oh, Tim's got denim jeans on, that's a thought, that's okay. But if as soon as I get into a Wow, I've got this thing tomorrow. You got to do the thing tomorrow and it's replaying the thing tomorrow. It's doing the thing about tomorrow. It's doing the thing. If I catch that going more than two or three loops, it's okay. I can either think with my hands, so write it down. And Ralph Auto Emerson described it as when you would write rather than think in your head, you go from being drunk to sobering up. >> Cuz even the the working memory that we have in our head is what like seven plus or minus two. I'm probably at the five mark. So you that's one of the reasons why you look you almost I got advised once by a cognitive behavioral therapist who said you would never do like even a moderate equation in your head yet we will do the most complex life decisions just there for years ruminating ruminating ruminating and it's an example of where the 10,000 hour rule actually doesn't work if anything you get worse and worse and worse. So either think with my hands as or as you mentioned then think with your mouth or think with your feet so as you're walking. So, as soon as I get in one of those loops, I'm like, it has to be no brain, hands, mouth, feet. >> I like that, right? Yeah. the uh story you just told resonated because when I was totally stuck on my first book for months like could not figure out how to crack this really important section and hired a woman who worked as a ghostriter but I wasn't going to use her that way to interview me on a phone call >> and effectively just ended up talking and cracked it by the end of the conversation and I was like oh I just need to get out of >> I'm like what is it so it's like self referential >> there's a part of your brain that is capable of this thing and for some reason when you weren't talking and you're thinking it's just not you're not accessing it like it's strange but it really >> well it I assume if I had to think about from a neuroscience perspective you're probably using more of your default mode network as you're ruminating as you're moving your lips as you're moving your hands you're activating a different part of the brain and through the activity it's almost like you're just releasing the taps >> you must know from like Kelly Sarah's stuff and just the way that the human body and brain works. Why is it that we want to locomote as soon as we start thinking about something deeply or we have that conversation? Cuz it's the same for me. If I get on a good call, like even if I I now have a habit that if somebody just rings and I've got nothing to do, I'll get up and go for a walk because hooray, it's good to get steps in. But there's other times where you start to get really animated and you just find yourself walking like what is it about the act of walking that makes thinking easier? >> I'm not sure. I I don't know. I mean, Kelly Starret, people should look up uh becoming the supple celebrity. He's very famous PT, performance coach. >> Really knows what if you've ever used like a lacrosse ball to loosen up or like distraction with a band or something like that. He popularized a lot of that stuff. The couch stretch named by Kelly, etc. >> So, he's worth looking up. I don't know. There are people who do really well sitting still. Uh my fidget fix is like Japanese/ East Asian like pen spinning. That's a whole thing. Um, so if people can find like a 20-year-old YouTube video of me showing like the basics of this, but I'll just sit there doing different types of spinning with a pen. That's my move. Pacing also. >> Mhm. >> Huge pacer for me. I think it could be I'm just speculating here, but occupying a part of your mind that is for instance like the monkey mind, right? I think this is part of the reason why flow states often include some kinesthetic component, right? Whether it's music, playing violin or something like that, surfing, whatever it might be. >> Uh I think that there is an occupying of certain cognitive faculties or looping mechanisms that is aided with physical movement. But that's just >> that's like when my my 15-month-old is annoying me and I'm trying to do something. I'll just like hand her something to occupy her and then she's like and it's like a little like there's like a 15-month-old in my head that's like ah and I'm like shut up and I just give something and then it's >> fiddle the fidget spinner. Hurry up and fiddle the fidget spinner. >> Did you know your gut controls your energy, your recovery, how well you absorb everything that you eat and the one nutrient that keeps it all running properly is fiber. Well, it turns out that 95% of Americans don't get enough of it. which is why I'm such a huge fan of Momen's Fiber Plus. Most fiber supplements are a one-trick pony, one type of fiber solving one part of the problem. Fiber Plus is a threein-one formula built to tackle digestion, gut barrier strength, and blood sugar stability all at once. I use this every single day. It is kind of hard to get enough fiber just through food alone. And best of all, Momentous offers a 30-day money back guarantee. So, you can buy it, try it every single day for 29 days, and if you don't love it, they will just give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemus.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom. >> A check out >> question for you, Tim. >> Yeah. >> Question. As you was talking earlier about the treadmills and all the fidget spinner devices and the Instagram ads and you're buying stuff, >> I had like a I was thinking in my head of if you was born 10 years ago. >> Did you say if you was born? If sorry if you were born [laughter] again British English coming in that's not really >> I liked it. >> British people talk so much more cool than [laughter] >> if you was born around about 10 years ago. >> Yes. Listen. >> Would you be my diagnosed with ADHD? [snorts] >> Yeah. This is like the age-old question in my mind is do I have AD? Am I a classic example of it or not? And like I guess I don't know. Um, I wonder if I were born, yes, in that age whether I would have been like medicated because I was a class clown and but I did well in school and it was never hard for me to like I always assume think of like real ADHD is like you're sitting during a test and you're just like you can't focus on the test. You need extra time. That was once I had adrenaline like oh [ __ ] I was like I could focus really well. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what happened. >> Do you get calmer with stimulants? Are there certain stimulants where you end up like actually calming down and focusing or do you get agitated with stimulants or something? For me, what it is is like there's like a perfectionism that is is if if once I is I can't transition. I'm awful at transitioning. I will procrastinate from starting work for hours and once I get have to start once I'm in it now, I'll get going and then someone will interrupt like and I'll miss dinner cuz I just want to keep working. >> So, it's like it's it's it's this weird like I I'm very a lot of inertia for whatever I'm doing. And that to me is a huge thing is just like uh there's no adult around making me start work and I grew up with that as a crutch always. I had to go to class. I had to finish this. I had to and now there's no one. So I will just self-defeat for hours and waste a good part of the day and then finally so that's why again another thing I do with my with Alicia is uh Alicia is your sister. >> Yes. I will share my screen with her at like 10:00 a.m. and she >> You got to be very careful with that depending on how your day goes. >> Yeah, you have spaces. You go to a safe space. Um and and she uh is working on her own thing. I don't know when she's looking at my screen and when she's not. She's probably not usually, but she might be. And so I'm not going to procrastinate in front of someone that's more mortifying. >> Create you created a digital panopticon. >> Yeah, it's it's great. >> There are services that allow you to do this. They'll pair you with someone else and you work at the same and you work at the same time. I can't recall. >> It has to be someone that really knows like if if I'm on a certain research page, they might not know. Is he procrastinating now? She'll be like, "That's not relevant. What are you doing?" You know, like you're going too far. >> Will she actually police you? >> Um she she usually she's very like >> Tim No Pornhub until 2 p.m. >> Yeah, she uh she will say something about that [laughter] that that will not accept. It's just World War II. I tell you what, I've got two things. Uh, number one, I mean, we've discussed this earlier. I'm always trying to um create new vocabulary for myself. I feel it activates a certain part of the brain. Do you remember my favorite word that I uh invented five, six years ago that you love? >> Fly dripping. >> Yeah, fly dripping. So, I was I was once stood at a a toilet and you know men do this where they piss around the seat and I was like, >> what's the word for that? Wait, piss around the seat. >> Yes. You know when somebody urinates on the toilet seat? I usually try to avoid this. >> Well, exactly. Well, yeah, >> public toilets is a bit of a public toilet. You may see it sometimes. >> Um, so I kind of came up with the term fly dripping for that. And what's useful about beginning to create your own language is I mean I have to talk about the benefits of language as I'm using language is >> interesting. This is the first word that you developed. >> That's the first word that I developed or terms as a whole. So, one of the things that worked with the high agency piece that I did or even just having that language meant that I had a name for essentially an idea that people already knew or that I already knew, but it compressed like 5,000 words into two words. And then I was like, hold on, I don't have a term for that. >> It's quite meta. I don't have a term for that. And then Scott Alexander had this term called an idea handle. So, an idea handle, you can kind of pick up ideas by like coining terms. So, the two ones I've been trying to coin last week um are the following. So, number one, Kesher's law, >> the artist Kesher. >> Kesher's law is whenever you're creating art, >> try not to use any modern references cuz it may come back to bite you in the ass. So, the the artist Kesher, I love I love by the way, this this may not be the best podcast in the world, but we had the highest range. We've gone from Black P. [laughter] Say what you want about the quality, but you can't knock the range. Um Kesha her number one song was started with wake up in the morning feeling like P Diddy. >> Ah >> so that's tough now. So what she did so what do you do if you hold >> she had to reccon her own song. >> Yeah. So so what she did was wake up in the morning feeling like me flopped. So now >> when did she do that? >> So um quite recently in terms of the rebrand around the whole PD escapades. Now she's come out and done wake up in the morning, [ __ ] P. Diddy, which is a little bit better, but she doesn't fit the story. >> But ultimately, if you put a P Diddy bottleneck in there, [laughter] >> where is the comma in that sentence? Wake up in the morning, comma, PD. >> Kesha's law. So whenever you're creating things, you've got to avoid modern things. [laughter] >> Another law I've tried to create recently. >> I was watching I don't know if you guys have seen the new Michael Jackson documentary on Netflix, and there's a scene in there. It's only so much Neverland I can handle. [laughter] >> Yes. Yeah. I forgot. I forgot, Tim. Sorry to bring it up. You can walk out if you need to. >> Um there's a scene in there that's explained some stuff that we've discussed of imagine you have an axis like here. So you have um essentially being a awful person or crimes that you might be able to commit. And I'm not even going to discuss Michael's ones just yet. And then you have talent. So as you go the talent can essentially get out of that axis and >> MJ people are like he's too funny it's fine. Well, MJ, and there's something about music that like, for example, no offense to you, Chris, I think you're a lovely podcaster. Okay. >> But if you started nons, right, if you became like a >> I'm not talented enough to get away with. >> Nobody's like, nobody is like going, you know what I mean? Like people, but music. So, this is the crazy thing. So, Michael is in the defense for this pedophilia charge and there's the um the guy who did a documentary on him and they're showing the documentary. So, it's where Michael's kind of got his hand around a child and they're like talking about the child's talking about how he didn't want to go into Michael's bed, but Michael uh asked him to come into his bed. So, they're playing the whole documentary as proof of potentially his crimes. But within the documentary, it plays some of his music. So, what's interesting, you have both the defense, um, the judge, the jury, and even the defense said when they played Billy Jean, >> Yeah. >> saw [clears throat] himself doing that. He saw the judge >> Yeah. >> nodding his head. >> I was like, "Wow, >> MJ's law, you could be the defense could hear your music and still bob their head. >> You're still get you're giving them like actual like pleasurable dopamine hits and that makes that disindearing." Yes. There's some, we talk about this a lot, uh, of people that are in the pop culture, thinkers, speakers, artists, whatever. How who is it that's got the largest bank account that they could withdraw from before they go into >> Bill Cosby social was probably number one and and he he if you would asked me before all the the Bill Cosby scandal came out. Um >> I would have been like Bill Cosby is the number one like like least likely to be cancelled person. And it turns out what he did was so bad >> that it if if you're going to, you know, like actually like roofy dozens and dozens of like young women that you're uh promising like career breaks to that is so bad that like even Bill Cosby that you can't even you know >> correct you didn't have a mama mama like I think that's it true. If Bill Cosby had released a banger, I think music weirdly, it's almost comedy before, music seems to destroy the human brain more than comedy. So, for example, if you really dislike a comedian or they've done something awful, you can almost not find them funny. Which is why I use the example then if Chris was in court, again, I'm not planting these rumors, but if Chris was in court for doing something horrific and they pulled up his 4K set with Matthew McConnA, it doesn't do anything. But there's something about music, someone really funny, I think it does have some of the same effects, but not to the level. >> Not to the level. Now another example would be and this doesn't work for the whole population but political tribalism is like this just powerful drug that just makes brains crazy and so if your political tribe you're really tri if you're a really politically tribal person and the person that you are that is you know part of your team you'll forgive like anything and you can see this with a lot of famous politicians today you can like uh and it's uh I I think that the the people of the that tribe Or you can see with like you know other kinds of tribalism like there are many people who reflet is innocent. He was and there's every bit of evidence but like because it get taps into a really tribal thing. The people that see him as like on our side and the people criticizing him are the bad guys like there's nothing that could make them turn on it. >> Could I workshop a new word with you guys right now? Shoot. >> All right. >> I've been struggling with this because I like doing the same thing. I like these the invention of words. All right. And so like I I'll give two examples of ones that that I'm I'm proud of rightly or wrongly. One is a word telladultery. So tell adultery is when you and your partner have watched a show together and then someone separately watches more episodes without you. >> Oh, that's good. >> Television. Exactly what it feels like. >> Yeah. Tell adultery. You're like, "How could you?" Right. Yeah. And then uh the the newer one which is like ah it's not quite as good but I like it. There's something there is hallucinatives like the first generations to assume that LLM responses are fact to do no cross-checking. >> Hallucinatives right? It's like ah it's not bad. I mean it's not as good as >> adultery is going to stick in the lexicon. >> That one I put up this like probably 10 years ago on Twitter. So back when it was Twitter so so we'll see. I st >> fly dripping. >> I I st fly dripping is not bad. Um, it's such a niche issue. >> Oh, the one I want to tell you to McDonald's in the northwest of England. That's the Dennis. If you fight, >> start niche. Start niche. The the one that I've been trying to figure out is, and this maybe I'm the only one, I don't think I am, where everyone is so overwhelmed with notifications and [ __ ] on their phones that at least most of my friends have do not disturb on. So, they'll be like, "Sure, man. Call me." And then you call them and it goes straight to voicemail. And they're like, "No problem. I'll call you straight back." They call you back and it goes straight to voicemail. So, it's this like do not disturb death loop >> and but I have not been able to come up with like a pathy >> word for this. >> I I always joked that if I could have a job, it would essentially be this. So, if if I could have any job in the world that I would do for free, >> coming up with these words. >> Yeah. The the one I So, this type of thing or it would be like you probably don't get it as much in America, but in the UK you have the proper British red tops. So it'll be they and they do horrific things about where they work. Red top will be like the newspap like proper like scummy newspapers, but they'll have something like Wayne Rooney's shacked a prostitute that's a grandma and they're running the story tomorrow and they need someone to write the headline. New York Post. Yeah. New York. Like the ability I actually hate the articles, but the ability for just somebody to give me a story and then just say we need four words. >> We need some horrible pun. [laughter] Yeah. >> Yeah. I'm thinking about like disturb loop like or do not loop or uh >> disturbed which makes me think about like the human centipede. >> Centipede >> uh like oraoros like playing something into that could be fun >> or something with a boomerang. We could throw that one out to the audience too. Yeah, best ones in the comments below for when you ring someone and it's do not disturb and they all >> I will say like in as a blogger >> do not disturb all the way down >> like explaining things and coming up with like terms and stuff like that and it's like most of the terms don't stick and the the the like the posts or ideas of mine that have gone most viral or just stuck around the most are almost always like where I nailed the term and it really is like it is such an important thing because if you can really I mean look look at like cancel culture >> it was concept. >> People said, you know, where people are there's too much political correctness or like, you know, or it's a little bit, you know, it's like it feels like there's witch hunts. It wasn't quite getting it. And then this one term >> it labeled it >> and it exposes it. Now you're acting kind of like that and it just it it did a number on it. It was really like it was it was a powerful it changed the the the culture war this term. I mean, so you can examples like that are just so and people who can do that really well. >> Oh, can I throw out one more related to that >> bigoteer like a racketeer? someone who labels others for profit or gain of some type of >> bigoter. That's great. Very nice. That's great. >> Uh so what are some of the blog posts that have really nailed the terminology? like you you mentioned the TED talk that's gone really viral and I think part of what was successful there was procrastination is something that so many people experience and was just again putting labels to things like I called that that when you are procrastinating I said you know I describe you're in the the dark playground >> and it's a specific thing where you're you're you're you're digging around social media you're you're texting with your friends >> looking up one of your blog posts >> you're you're you're texting with your friends and you're you're doing whatever and and it is you're in the playground. You're having fun, right? It's leisure time, but it's not fun at all. This is just dread and guilt and stress and anxiety that you're here and you know you should start working and you feel this. It's not fun. That's why it's the dark playground. But now I get messages from, you know, mothers that are saying, "My son, my nine-year-old son said, "Oh, mom, I'm in the dark playground. I need to get out." And it's like, okay, you know, that was a successful term. And it's like, >> you know, it's interesting the leverage. The leverage that exists is what about the tail end? >> Yeah. Is that am I uniquely affected by that or is that >> No, that one. And that's this. >> Do you guys know this blog post? >> Yes, I think so. Yeah, I've read it a lot. >> You should describe it because this was sent to me by a friend Matt Mullenwag and like it's I still think about it constantly. >> You remember the guy that sent it to you? >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You want if Yeah. >> So, this was this is why I like blogging because I want to take lots of swings at the bat. Swing. Swings at the bat because >> then you might hit a home run once in a while and you don't know which ones. But if you're just doing That's why books is like one giant swing over three years. I don't like that. Um, and this is an example of one where I was procrastinating during the SpaceX post. I was writing the SpaceX post and I was like, >> you know what I should really do is write another blog post. [laughter] >> Classic classic thing. I was like, I have an idea. I'm just going to do instead of doing this like big giant mountain, I'm just going to kind of like, oh, I'm just going to do this little idea that I've had for a long time, but then I like thought about it in bed in the morning and I was like, oh, okay. I know how I want to do it. And then I just got up and did it in a couple hours and it made a it one of those that really made a big impact. Um, and the idea is that um, so one of the things I like to do is just like use visuals or whatever to look at how much time we have. I like to zoom out and I don't I don't want to just unconsciously go through life and then be like, "Oh wow, like look how much time pass." I never I want to be like how let's just look at it. How many weeks are there left if I live to 90? Like let's just let's just see this for what it is and so I'm not like caught, you know, I'm not blindsided by it later. Um, and so I would think about, okay, you know, even just watching the World Cup, I'm like, I maybe I have 12 World Cups left, depending on like longevity research. Um, and that's if I'm lucky, you know, and >> how many Christmases, how many >> Exactly. So, I I do this kind of thing. But then I kind of had a disturbing thought, which was not all of the important things in life are evenly distributed. World Cups are, Christmases are. >> Um, I grew up spending 350 days a year with my parents or whatever. you know, when I got older, went to camp maybe 3:30, over 300 days a year with my parents um and my sisters and um and then you graduate and you know, you you you you either go to college or whatever you're doing, you know, if if you if you move out of the city especially, you might see your parents, I don't know, 10 days a year, 20 days a year, I don't know. Uh if they live in your city, maybe you see them 80 days a year, whatever. But either way, the number is much smaller. And so then I, you know, I was like, well, what if you actually add up the total number if just say I'm seeing them 15 days a year right now. So that's I need 20 years now to capture one year of parent time when I was a kid. I was like, wow. If you look at the whole number, I'm 95% way of the way through with my in-person relationship with my parents. And oh, this was I had this thought when you gradu Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. When you graduate. So now I'm even older, right? And so um and this is if you're lucky, if your parents live long lives. Um, and it was super depressing and also one of those things where I'm like, I need to there some thoughts I have that are, you know, or ideas that are depressing and don't serve any positive purpose. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to just share my misery and spread it. Um, this I was like, "No, this is important. We need to look at this. We need to look at this." Uh, for, you know, two reasons. one, if you are living in California and your parents are in New York or whatever and you are seeing them 10 days a year and that's just a reality. Um, or again with a friend, there's some friends I saw all the time in high school that I I'll see once every 5 years now, once every 5 years sometimes. These are close friends. Um, I might see that friend 10 more times, period. I might see my parents only, I don't know, 200 more times, 150, 100 more times. And so if that's the reality, being like staring it in the face and being aware of it will at least make you treat those times you are together as what they are, which is precious. >> Or also, you can maybe make a big change. I've had people tell me they move back home to where their parents are because of this post. Because if you go from living in California to you move back home and you see them now 60 days a year, you actually just brought that percentage down. Oh, instead of being 94% done, I'm only 81% done. Like what? That's a you can change the equation. So, it's this actually really empowering thing or at least, you know, I'm not living in the same city as my parents, but I'm I become like so adamant about like we need to all see each other every 8 weeks like somewhere. It needs to be we visit we visit my sisters there, then we visit home, then we have Thanksgiving, then you should all come here for this. So, it's like it's helped motivate me to I mean, and again, it's not pleasant, but having the delusion that we have endless time together uh is not helpful. >> It encourages a bias for action. Yeah. >> One of the worst things to do is to identify something uncomfortable that it feels like you can't change or fix. That is where people really don't like. You know, this is how bad social media is for you. And people push back against that a lot because I I feel feel like it's out of my control. I kind of agree with the problem, but you haven't yet given me or the solution feels a little bit more out of reach than that. I mean, I just start I personally started taking my whole family on a family trip every like year to two years >> and did that up until my parents were physically in incapable of doing it. But like that [snorts] post was a real catalyst. Conversations that I had with Matt and other people about it and I was like, okay, like look, I'm not going to move back home. I don't have any desire to live in the middle of nowhere, but at least we can block out like 2 to 3 weeks of concentrated time where we're sharing these adventures together. We have the anticipation of the trip leading up to it which is a big piece of it. We have the memories and photos. >> Is that from you? That from you is one of my favorite ideas. Look at this. Just mutually felating each other. Um one of my favorite things from you is that most >> you promised it in the text to me. So that's true. >> Uh like Bonnie Blue. Um >> range. >> You're right. Your insight range, dude. It's the most the highest range on the planet. um your idea that the holiday that you go on you should book them as far out in advance as possible because so much of the enjoyment is done in anticipation. So there was this great study done a while ago. I did uh my master's dissertation on the effectiveness of anti-alcohol advertising on students at Newcastle University. I wanted to see what sort of interventions we could do to try and reduce this is when uh drinking was a problem not not drinking which is now the new problem. Uh but the uh thing that I realized as doing a little bit of reading and a bit of research around this was a study was done looking at when people enjoy nights out the most. And this included people that were drinking. So you'd think how many drinks deep is it? Is it when you arrive at the nightclub? Is it when the music the the mainline DJ comes on, the headline DJ and every everyone's there and they're having a great time. No, it was in the flat in the apartment as you were getting ready for the night out. Like the middle of the bullseye of dopamine and human satisfaction is things are about to get a little bit better than >> Friday at 3 p.m. at work is the happier moment than like mid midday Saturday. >> Correct. >> And by the way, the alt the the the inverse of that is if you if something shitty is if that I'm going to dread is on my plate. I want to know about it as late as possible. >> I I had six months to think about that I have a TED talk hanging over that's going to this horrifying thing over the horizon. I wish someone had just told me a month before you have to if you want me to speak at your wedding tell me freaking 10 days before do not give me six months where I'm like ah after that wedding I have to come up with a really good speed >> oh that's so good yeah because you're frontloading the pain exactly >> as well as front lo >> you want to know about good things way ahead and you want to know about >> tell me about the gang bang a year in advance but tell me about the tax return one week before >> depends on the details if which side of the gang bang you want to leave >> that's true that's true you know um the the most depressing version of um your kind tail end thing. It's this old proverb in um China and it's essentially goes along the lines of like the saddest feeling in the world >> is to grow the desire to take care of your parents only to realize they're no longer there. >> This proverb in Chinese culture I'm like Jesus Christ. >> Jared, you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem? >> I don't consider a lot, Chris. Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brew and Cole last night. >> But they're non-alcoholic, >> and that's not a problem. >> Sorry, man. I I just kept chugging. Wait for the regret to creep in. Never happened. See, most people like Jared don't want to change what they drink. They just don't want the next day to be a complete write-off. And that is why I'm such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co. They make the best NA brews on the planet. You can find Athletic Brewing Co.'s bestselling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you. Or best option, get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped direct to your door right now. Get 15% off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbwing.com/modernwisdom using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's athleticbwing.com/modernwisdom at modernwisdom at checkout. Nearbeer terms and conditions apply. Athletic brewing company fit for all times. Bottoms up. >> [laughter] >> There's a a great line that I came across I wanted to read to you guys. It's from Salhi Gun. It says, "You'll regret it if you get married. You'll regret it if you don't get married. You'll regret it if you have kids. And you'll regret it if you don't. Kagod said this 200 years ago as follows. Whatever you choose, you'll regret it because the problem isn't in your choices. It's in romanticizing your life. >> Is always greener. >> A person always finds an untraveled path alluring and mysterious. That's why the issue isn't making the right choice. It's choosing and deciding which regret you'll live with. And that was that Douglas Murray line. In life, we must choose our regrets. >> And you go, okay, in advance of a big decision, you might want to think which decision do I want to live with? But the better question is which regret could I not bear living with? >> Yeah, that's the one. >> It's a little like if you're, you know, someone who you can't be too perfectionist about finding your life partner. It's like which flawed person and flawed relationship are you going to choose? and and each one is going to have a different set of flaws. And like I think in both of these cases, internalizing that is very helpful because it can make you realize that if I have regrets, it doesn't mean something horribly wrong happened. >> If this if marriage is imperfect, it doesn't mean I did something wrong. Like it's and and so it can help you accept which is half the battle. I mean it's like regret is only really painful when you feel like I wish I could I I I made a huge mistake as opposed to like this is part of >> this is a call that I made. Yeah. So thinking about uh pendulum swinging in one direction or the other going from we were worried about binge drinking in 2010 when I wrote my dissertation and now in 2026 we're worried about sobriety culture coming and taking away the way that people are able to communicate and spend time and socialize. an equivalent for this, I think, and I've messaged Scott Galloway about this too, uh, as a a famously unmarried man in his 30s, the conversation of you don't need to think that deeply about your life partner to now a lot of the biggest reels that Scott's done and and Warren Buffett. Um, the single most important decision that you're going to make in your life is your life partner. This is a piece of advice that distributes unevenly to people. It makes people who are already prone to overthinking feel even more pressure. Meanwhile, the people that were just blas making decisions on vibes are just coasting through it and it's applying even more pressure. I think this is it's a a noble insight which is hey this is an important decision and if you choose if you choose wrong it can make your life hell. But the don't choose wrong turns into I must perfect I must become a perfectionist in choosing right and it creates paralysis of analysis. This is David Epste's new book, Inside the Box. [ __ ] money, by the way. Really, really good. Um, but yeah, that that that um >> what's the basic premise >> that >> I have an old one to recommend, too. >> Constraints breed uh creativity. >> Oh, yeah. >> If if I mean, he he is really great at bringing stories together, but he has this uh what was it called? The magic company. What was that? Uh it was all of the engineers from Apple. Um, and it was the the first ever Goldman Sachs idea IPO. So, they didn't even have a product, but they just had such an amazing team that they IPOed just with ideas. And they were able to do they had unlimited budget. They'd before they had a product. And he gives this example of a story where they were going to create basically the iPhone before the iPhone. And one of the engineers said, "I'm going to run it from uh 1904, let's say. It was going to be 100 years, something like that. let's say and another engineering team came in and said well why do it from then why not do it from further back cuz people might be doing using apps for historical recording and stuff okay well I'll do it from year zero and we'll get up to 2004 whenever it is and another team came in and said well that's stupid why don't you go all the way back to the beginning of time so that we've got a full calendar that people can and it ended up what could have been four lines of code turned into this huge unwieldy project >> this is general magic >> if you don't general magic that was it >> there's a great documentary on And it's also like, if I can interject for a second, it's like uh Yoda's Dune. I don't know if you guys have ever seen this documentary. It's about this ill- fated attempt to make a Dune movie, which was just like I guess it was made by this crazy man named Yodorski. And it goes through all these disasters and it didn't work out, but the team ended up being Guyger who designed the alien. And so on the the talent density of that failed project was so high it's hard to believe. This is true of General Magic too, right? You had like very very young Tony Fidel who went on to create the iPod and the iPhone. You've got person who went on to create Android. >> Uh it's it's kind of nuts. And despite that or in des I say >> in spite of it >> in spite of having this incredible talent density it's like if you don't have constraints well if you have a lot of brilliant people with a lot of ideas that could actually be a fatal recipe right >> correct yeah constraints >> this is another you say coming up with the term is really important well it's also just like >> I don't know just getting a certain like uh anchor concept that can help anchor your rationality so like one of the things I've always thought about with relationships for perfection cuz I'm I'm like this and the and one of the times when I was able to kind of like finally, you know, pull the pin. Yeah. Is because I I think I grew up a little bit and was in enough relationships and I was like again the fact that like every they're all flawed. Every single one. So, but you also don't want to be like, well, they're all flawed, so this relationship is fine when it's actually really bad. Like, right. So, it's it's more like what are of there if there's 30 things you would love to have in a partner. Um, you're 100% going to be missing a bunch of those in every partner, but what are your deal breakers? Like actually think about two or three or four. Don't get too much for these that are like this is critical to me. Like I I I will not marry someone who does not, you know, whatever. >> I was going to say on both sides of the fence because there can be things that you must not have and things that you must have. >> Exactly. And and I think it's a mistake. It's not being perfectionist enough to sacrifice on those deal breakers. And I think it's being way too much of a perfectionist to be like h you know, it's like she's not, you know, she doesn't love to uh jam music with me. And I did that with my previous, you know, girlfriend. And that's a must. Like you can't have a ton of those or you're never going to ever no one's ever going to be enough. >> One of the biggest issues in relationships that uh people don't talk about enough are uh bedtime lag issues. Like if you don't go to bed and wake up within maybe an hour of your partner, I think that there's a lot that you're missing. Like just literally, you're missing out on a lot of time together. But I think it causes an awful lot of uh friction between you and your partner because like you're going to be woken up when they get into bed. They're going to be woken up when you get out of bed. Sleep's really important. There's health effects. Going to begin to resent them if they come in at a different time. Maybe some people are lazy fair enough or a deep enough sleeper that it doesn't really matter. But I think aligning the sleep rhythm is probably one of the sort of unseen that should be uh in order to get into the conversation. That's probably across the board a piece of advice that most people should. >> I'll play devil's advocate just cuz I have historically had very strange >> gap relationship. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean in some very good relationships including my current relationship but it's a few hours I would say very often it's like one to two hour gap. She'll get up before I do. Uh, I think it can work if you are okay with going to bed at different times. Also, as soon as you have a puppy or a child, like you're on the same schedule, >> right? >> Or or someone's doing the morning, the other person's going to sleep. So, actually, it's >> might actually be adaptive. >> Yeah. >> If you've got someone that goes to bed at 3:00 in the morning typically, and you're like, "Okay, well, you're obviously going to do the night shift up until 3:00." And then if you're MS is usually getting up at 5:00, it's like, "All right, we'll just run that back a little bit earlier." And then >> I usually up a little later and I'll usually like close down the house and like clean up the kitchen a little bit and like turn off all the lights and like she'll be more likely to wake up and do stuff. >> Before we move on from terms, we are still struggling to [ __ ] name this podcast series. It's currently Rabbit Hole, which is the the working title, but we're still struggling. Was it uh [ __ ] me, good dudes, good vibe, rabbit hole? >> [ __ ] me is pretty good. >> [ __ ] me. Yeah. Yeah. Autis fire up the autism engine was another one obviously [laughter] but uh >> yeah what's wrong with this this rabbit hole described what we've done today which is gone down 20 20 rabbit holes and meet >> you go underground burrow to a different rabbit hole and then come back up. >> It's funny the uh the power of a name though, right? You know here's a little here's a little test for you. >> Here we go. >> Have you ever heard of a book called Women Love and Relationships? >> No. No. Cuz nobody [ __ ] did. Right. So this book released I think it was in the 80s or the '90s. sold nothing. So he came along, changed the title and just jazzed it up a little bit to Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and it was the bestselling book of the '90s >> and just it was the basically the same book. >> Mhm. >> Different title. >> Well, it's like uh when was the last time you had Patagonian Toothfish? >> Not recently, right? Chilean sea bass. [laughter] >> Yeah. Now we're talking >> two question given that we've got we've got two authors and one fledgling author at the table. What is a book that you think is amazing but failed because of its name? >> Oo, great question. >> So mine my my kind of go-to for this is a little bit niche, but it's Mate by Tucker Max and Jeffrey Miller. to uh become the man women want the evolutionary psychology inspired dating book for men. >> Is that a bad title or is it just too generic? >> It I just think it should have done cuz models by Mark Manson also I reckon had he have given it a little bit more magic would have been because it's still great and sold like relatively well but could have been significantly better for what it was. Mate by Tucker Max and Jeffrey Miller is one of the best if not the best book for guys to understand understand how women think, understand what their fears are. It's very like sort of both sides of the spectrum in terms of being understanding about women, being pro men without being too apologetic. And it [ __ ] rips. And I think they even renamed it once. I'm not sure why. Uh but it's that's just one that comes to mind. Like [ __ ] that book was so good and it it didn't take off. And I feel like there was a big unlock in in the name. >> I think with a book it helps. I think with like certain things like a company or even even like a blog maybe it's like like XKCD. I think if I were advising my friend before that started I would have been like no one's four random letters like what is someone will be like you should you should read that blog it has the four letters and they like what >> it's obviously a massive success. Um >> you want to explain what it is for people? >> Um XKCD is Randall Monroes. Uh he's this you know brilliant com he's you know he does he does a three comic Monday, Wednesday, Friday. He also puts out books. It's like comic strip. >> It's a comic strip, but it's like nerdy and science and it's just it's amazing. Um >> and uh it has a giant >> been around forever. >> Yeah. Cult following. Yeah. He's been doing it forever and um >> and he probably gets more reads than like anything in like the the you know the comics of the newspapers these day means probably bigger than um but um so I I think although maybe the fact that not everyone's heard of him maybe maybe it would be even bigger. I mean that that's that's true. I don't know. Um uh I I think I say people say what's your blog name? Wait, but why? And they go what? And I'm like, it's just I'm sorry. And it's I just was looking on I was looking on GoDaddy and I was like, I need a domain that has a com. And I had my hundth idea and I was like, okay, that's one. And I had like a small list of ones that actually had dots and I was like, sure. I think like it it names in certain situations are overrated. I think with books probably not. I think books maybe is something that it's uh but I think you know I think company names I think if there's a lot of really dumb company names there. I think it depends a lot on the nature of the company. I'm literally having this conversation with one startup right now like whether to keep or change. And in their case, I don't think it matters because they're B2B and selling in a very like long sales cycle to sophisticated buyers as opposed to a product that is like B to C where it's like a consumerf facing product where you want people to be able to easily say, "Hey, have you tried X?" And if they can't remember X, >> you're kind of dead in the water. >> Uh I do have a book example. >> Uh there are a lot of books that didn't do particularly well, but I don't think it was solely due to the title. This one I think might be title related. I've probably sold half the copies that this book has sold in total at this point because I've talked about it and I have a bookshelf in my guest bedroom with just this book for people to yank. But awareness, >> Anthony Dlo. >> Anthony Dlo. Yeah. And it's got, you know, the subtitle is the perils and opportunities of reality. That's the better subtitle. They they changed the subtitle to conversations with the masters, which is makes no sense to me cuz it's conversation with one guy and transcribed uh conversations, but uh that book, [snorts] if I had to pick one book to read on an annual basis, that would probably be the one. >> I mean, I have some other close runner-ups, but that that one for sure. And it's so short. >> Why? What's the kind of reflections from the >> I I would say this is the I mean the it it is honing your ability to observe your own thinking and your own state and without that meta ability I think your your striving to develop other faculties is severely if not wholly handicapped right you you have to be able to sort of observe to the extent that you can without enhancing And there are certain drugs and so on that help with this or practices like different types of meditation. But without any augmentation, it's very hard to look at your operating system, right? What are the biases? What are the weights? Almost as if you were an AI model, right? Like what has been built into like the confirmation bias and the narratives over time that you inherited from parents or whoever it might be that have not actually been stress tested that you didn't arrive at through any type of firsthand experience. Or maybe there was one outlying experience that was tremendously painful and therefore you lived from that point forward for 15 years with this filter on reality which actually isn't defensible >> but it's sitting in the background governing how you make decisions. Uh and it's it's incredibly colloquial. It's lectures that were transcribed and cleaned up and it's unforgiving in its delivery. It's like it's very uh harsh. So some people don't like it. It's very in-your-face in some ways, but uh I have had so many people, friends of mine, including people who are very very accomplished, either get either get more done or like feel like they have removed like gauze from their eyes or pain from their life or all of the above after reading this book. It's like 150 pages. >> It's called Awareness. >> Awareness. Yeah. It's a red cover by Anthony Dillo. He was a he was a Jesuit priest also a psychotherapist and uh he's pulling from a lot of different traditions but it's it's very pathy you would I mean I think all you guys would like it but I was thinking of you George because of the naming right his sort of idea handles that you then carry forward the stories that he tells I mean I've read it like 20 times so of course I've had some reps but even after one reading the stories that stick with people are so compelling and funny. It's a funny book. >> It's a really sticky effective book. >> I think that windzip file of I say that one word and it unlocks this entire, you know, we I still have an obsession with language. I've always loved language since I was a kid. And one of the problems if you do 1,100 podcast episodes where you're kind of obsessed with language is you can sometimes get nerdy on it and you can start apherism maxing maxim maxing and uh but for me it's really important if I've got a single sentence that explains a huge concept. One of the best ones I came up with last year was idea uh advice hyper respponders. So advice doesn't land evenly. People who have a predisposition toward it tend to take it on board a lot while the people that didn't already pay attention to it just coast pasted unchanged. I'm like, [ __ ] Like, that explains so much of why certain people have their traits exaggerated while the people that the advice is actually for, like the prescription to work harder seems to be absorbed much more by people who are already working too hard than people who don't work hard enough. And [ __ ] that now explains it opens up this entire world for me. And it was a term that I needed for myself. And then if you're super successful author who's got like ton of readers and distributes all of this stuff out like you can move the entire sort of cognitive topography of everybody that comes into contact with it and then people who don't even know the book or don't even know where it comes from spreads even bigger meme being one of them catches on too and and starts to change the world. for the advice hyperresponder. Was there any examples of some maybe bad advice that you hyperresponded to and then some good advice that you have ignored or still ignore to this day? >> I think the one about working harder is is is a good example of that as a a person whose proclivity predisposition was always to lean into I'm not doing enough. I should be working more. I need to be more diligent. I already pay way too much attention to stuff. And it sounded to me like type A advice for type B people. I just took that advice on for me as a type A person and it made it worsened my imbalances as opposed to correcting them. Uh but it's the thing that's interesting about that the type A advice for type B people or type A people have type B problems and type B people have type A problems. The reason that's particularly interesting is that on average maybe more people do need David Gogggin screaming in their face to go harder than Echart Holly whispering in their ear that they're already enough. perhaps that across the whole world, it would be better for more people to pay more attention and work harder. But for a certain cohort of people, mostly people that listen to podcasts like this one, they actually need to hear the opposite message. They need to be rest day maxing, not work day maxing. >> And uh which ties into awareness. I mean, that's I think like the most important possible skill you can develop is self-awareness and just being able to see I go too far here. I'm not going to listen to that advice. And if you if you see that about yourself, you're not going to fall into that trap as much. Um, >> one of the problems with that prescription though is that people who are already self-aware will take more self-awareness on >> Yeah. And then too much self-awareness is not great. >> Is restricting. >> Yeah. Just Yeah. You're too self-conscious in everything you do. And >> Bingo. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> It's true. >> Yeah. You also The problem with self-awareness is Yeah. when you think too much about yourself. One of the exercises I was trying to write about the other day for the book, it's interesting little thought experiment for you two gentlemen, which is imagine we have >> gentlemen. Hold on now. >> Definitely. [laughter] >> Imagine we have a room here, okay? And there's 10 people inside the room, but one of them is secretly miserable, but they're keeping it together. Everybody else is moderately happy. Now, think of everybody in your life that you know. Who do you think you could send in that room and have the best probability of figuring it out? >> Figuring out which >> and who would be the worst? Obviously, don't answer the worst one publicly. Um, but who But if you think of those two people in your head, who would be the best person? >> Esther Pel. Why? What is it about them? >> I don't know. I just feel like she is so unbelievably perceptive of and I I mean I know this I mean of her talks and stuff but I I know her personally and I just feel like she just like sees what I'm actually trying to say or what I'm actually feeling like really really well which is part of why I think she's so magnetic in her >> also an amazing podcast with couples work. >> Oh yeah, >> which is I mean and that's who's who's better at doing a podcast with couples. couples therapies usually this person who barely knows you two can within a few minutes start to see stuff that you don't see with each other >> it's like it's incredible power yeah >> there there also I mean I would think of for instance my friend Kevin Rose super close friend serial entrepreneur amazing investor great guy EQ off the charts off the charts so he would walk in and observe the room and I think with millions of years of evolution tilting in his favor I don't think it's necessarily something he could verbalize, but he would pick it out. >> It's an interesting idea of is it a trainable skill? What's also interesting is that you could kind of replace secretly miserable person with psychopath conman having an affair and you'd probably pick loosely the same people to be able to go in to do that. >> And it appears that it's closely related to theory of mind, which seems to come online at like four years old. So, a three-year-old almost has no theory of mind. They can't understand that Tim has thoughts or thinks differently to me. And it happens at four years old. >> I think that's when lying starts as well. >> Yes. So, this ability to be able to think, oh, think how Tim thinks and then sometimes think how Tim's think I'm thinking. Yeah. I know. >> It's funny watching up close like it there's a there's stages before that. First is like I am the only person and everyone else is like a is like a here for my per my everyone's a figment of my imagination and then there like oh like other people are here and they're real like they actually have their own consciousness but they're all here for me. They're all here and then there starts to be you're like a kid and everyone smiles at you in the grocery store and it's oh everyone's doing their own thing. They're not here for me but everyone likes me. Everyone's good. everyone loves me, you know, and then you start to realize like, oh, I'm just a random person and like I'm not a kid anymore and people aren't like all smile. >> The first existential crisis about 5 years old. And actually the the there's a lot of theories uh I forget who originated but it's you know this this oceanic feeling that you have when you think everyone is there for you and that everyone loves you and everyone knows you is some people get can cannot let that go and there that the desire the deep desire some people have for fame is forever chasing >> oceanic. Yeah. The oceanic feeling uh is this feeling this like this, you know, that you're in this ocean of like love and and then later you feel this very cold loneliness and fame is like if I could be famous and everyone knows me again and everyone loves me, I'm admired, you know, and it's this and I think a lot of people have a real like 13 to 15 year olds have like this a lot of them people go through I think I went through this at that age like this you want fame more than anything in the world because it's the ultimate like being popular in school but like it's like them you know and then most people grow out of that but I and some people don't. >> Mhm. >> To to your question about trainability, I think I think it is trainable, but different people have better raw materials or some people, right? It's like vertical jump, muscle mass. Like, sure, you can improve on those metrics a lot with really thoughtful training. And I think that's true, but some people just get it. And I think it goes beyond humanto human interactions, too, right? like I'm very uh very very interested in dog training and mammal training at large. Actually, it goes beyond uh mammal training. That's like a whole >> Why? >> Uh because I think that it interspecies communication, however primitive it might be, is fascinating in and of itself. I think that I mean dogs in particular, like the relationship between dogs and humans is kind of crazy. Like if you start to look past the familiarity of seeing dogs everywhere, we're like, "Yeah, dogs." And you're like, "Wait a second." >> Like, think about how unusual it is that we have effectively co-evolved over time. >> There's an animal that lives in my house. >> Yeah, it's an animal lives in your house. Actually, this is like this is like a companion/guardian. I grew up with four cats. I love Look, cats are great, but like cat cats are animals that live in your house. Dogs are sort of in a separate category if they're trained. Uh, and I think a certain different type of awareness and consciousness comes online for dogs visav training um, as you develop kind of labels for different things. Uh, so for for all of those reasons, but it extends to ecoin training and how that could be apply like animal interactions to people with autism or PTSD like you see some wild stuff. And this doesn't end up being limited to to to horses. For instance, in the case of the therapy, you I've seen instances I volunteered at a uh wolf sanctuary in Colorado for a period of time, which is a long story, but wolves that had either been injured, trapped by ranchers, or raised in captivity, which is a terrible idea. Please people don't get like wolf dogs or anything like that. It's really it's really really awful on a lot of levels. But uh there are these ambassador wolves that they have. I think it's just called mission wolf in Colorado if people want to look at it and possibly support it. But uh these civilians can come in and visit and like donate money if they want. And the ambassador wolves will go straight up to people who are seemingly having the most pain in the room. It's weird. It's weird. Yeah. Or the people who are most withdrawn like autistic and autistic kids and things like that. And uh it just raises a lot of really fascinating questions. >> I've seen I've seen some videos of dogs that are there to stop seizures. If people are about to fall and have seizures, maybe people have got epilepsy, epilepsy, and these dogs, they're >> giving out some pheromone. >> They can use them for autoimmune disorders. >> They jump up before someone has the collapse. It's be there and it jumps up and cuz when they're shaking, the dog sort of lies on them like a weighted blanket or make sure that they're not going to fall over. There was a woman that was taking some food. There's a I don't know why there's a video. Maybe it was a Ring doorbell camera or like internal doorbell camera or something. And she's taking food out of the oven and the dog jumps up and pulls her back. So, you know, when you sort of crouching down, she's already halfway down. Grabs her in the back of the collar and pulls her to the ground and lies on her and she's fine. And she's thinking, "What is this dog doing? Is it okay? Is there something that's going to go on?" And then >> seizure. >> She has a seizure after the dog's been so insane. >> So, this raises Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if we want to get into like crazy town territory, >> let's go, Tim. >> Well, I'll do let me let me do non crazy town and then we'll segue to crazy town. So, the non crazy town is the reason I bring up the dogs is that you will I I've noticed that the same people who have the highest EQ around humans often have the highest EQ around animals, right? So, they like intuitively know how to interact with animals or be guarded around the right type of animals. Say a dog that's really quiet may actually be really afraid and could be aggressive or they can read that type of body language even though it's a different species. Whereas some people have no awareness, right? They'll walk up to a dog that is clearly uncomfortable and they'll come top down to like put their hand on the dog's head. It's just like, oh my god, you're just asking for trouble or they're not paying any attention to their kids. Like why do so many little girls have dog bites on the faces? Because little boys are kind of [ __ ] They like to like poke dogs and stuff, but little girls like to hug dogs around the face and neck. >> Dogs don't like that, right? And parents aren't paying attention. So, it's not actually necessarily the dog's fault. It's the parents fault. So, I think that EQ >> is not limited to human to human. Um, and that just relates to the theory of mind, which maybe maybe the theory of mind can be expanded to dogs. >> Dogs are like pattern recognition machines on four legs. And that's part of why I I think like I noticed with my dog like >> she can if I'm about to leave but I haven't even started getting ready yet. She can tell something's different the way he's you know um but but you know I I'm interested in dog training. I'm not a good dog trainer. My dog is not very well trained. But I training a mammal will make you realize um an important skill which is uh you are a mammal. >> Mhm. >> And your brain if you treat treat your brain like a dog um and great things can happen. >> You just become a behaviorist. >> Yeah. Well because your you know this idea that well I'm a person. And it's like no no you have a you might be a person with like you know this higher consciousness in your head is a mammal brain >> and teaches you about how to train yourself for sure >> Seinfeld talks about this in training his mind like a dumb little puppy. >> Yeah. >> I shouldn't say dumb little puppy. It's just like a blank slate puppy. It doesn't know what to do and what not. >> It's a primate brain. We're all like this consciousness is stuck inside of a of an ancient primate. I mean that's what it is. And so it's like if you realize that and you're like like you said you want to have positive you want to have things on your desk that encourage I mean that's what is that? That's because you're a dumb primate that is going to be the person sitting at the desk. >> How else have you applied this behaviorist dog training lens to yourself? >> I mean ju just just reward. Yeah. Uh, I mean really [sighs and gasps] it's it's so I I should say like if we're talking about like BF Skinner and Skinner boxes like we're getting you can get into territory where you you don't you basically assume and I'm simplifying here that something does not exist if you can't observe it externally right but this is how you get into like oh animals don't feel pain oh blah blah which by the way we assumed about infants for a very long time that it's not that long ago that people were operating on infants without anesthesia right crazy. So, uh I I mean there there I I'm careful with the Skinner stuff, but when you get into like classical conditioning, operant conditioning, there's an amazing book called Don't Shoot the Dog, which has a terrible title. Maybe this is a good example of a book that failed, Don't Shoot the Dog, but it's written by this woman Karen Prior, who worked in training marine mammals, right? Dolphins and so on. And uh a lot I think she and her colleague also worked with the military like training cats. Like the military's trained cockroaches to like turn light switches on and off. I mean this is this is not science fiction. This is real stuff. >> [ __ ] a crazy town now. >> So it's like how do you do that? Right. Oh, I'm not even I'm just getting warmed up. Oh yeah. >> Uh but this is well documented. Like that's that's not fiction. >> Um sidebar. The mosquito sized or the fly drones out of China, right? I don't if you guys have seen these videos. Holy [ __ ] Terrifying. >> Yeah. Anyway, yeah, worse than Neil Stevenson when we need him to make some predictions, but um I took myself completely off the rails [laughter] here. >> Don't shoot the dog. >> Don't shoot the dog. Karen Prior when you're training say a marine mammal, right? Okay. Dolphin doesn't do what you want to do. You can't hit it with a rolled up newspaper. You can't chastise the dolphin. Just swims away from you, right? So, you end up focusing on positive reinforcement, right? providing rewards for the behavior that you're trying to shape. And behavioral shaping is also just an interesting concept I could explain in a second. And she started using different auditory cues and that converted into clicker training for dogs. So to teach a dog what to do or not do. >> Hang on. Sorry. The training of dolphins is where the clicker for dogs comes from. >> Yes. From aquatic mammals. >> No [ __ ] way. >> Yeah. Cuz they would use whistles. clicking at dogs because we clicked at dolphins. >> They used I think they used whistles but it's the same idea and because you're trying to indicate to this dog and this applies to humans too like what is the right behavior? What is the wrong behavior? But for instance, like the dog shits in the house, you come home 2 hours later and then you punish the dog. It's so temporally dislocated the dog has no idea, >> right? It's it's not effective. It's just going to make the dog less likely to offer behaviors because it doesn't know when it's going to get punished, right? Uh and I look, I understand approaches to e-collars and I think they have their place and so on, but u this is just to say that when you start digging into this and you start thinking about behavioral shaping, so I'll give an example of behavioral shaping, a simple example. And look, I'm not a professional dog trainer, but I do find it really interesting. So, for instance, if you're trying to get a dog to sit is really easy, but if you have a treat, right? So, you're using a lure and you start with a motion that's let's say the dog's right here. It's standing and you do this. You push it back behind its head. It sits down to get its mouth closer to the tree, right? And then over time, you lose the treat because now it has figured out how this dance works. And then you get to a point where you're using like the international sign language for sit. And then you're then you start to pair that with sit and then this and then you can actually remove the manual signal al together and just use the rubble Q, right? But if you're trying to get like a dog to turn around and do a spin, which is more of like a vanity trick than a safety thing or a functional thing, but as soon as it turns slightly, it might it's not going to get it on the first go round. You click, you give it a treat, and so you're basically encouraging it to continue that behavior. And you can shape really complex behaviors over time as long as you're not trying to boil the ocean at once. So how does that pertain to humans, all of it pertains to humans, whether you're trying to train yourself, whether you know as you're building a family, you're thinking about, you know, like you're not going to crate train your kid, although you kind of do, I guess, with a crib in a sense. But, >> uh, I think a lot of this applies and people get upset and they're like, "Oh my god, I can't believe you're comparing a baby to a dog." And I'm like, guys, evolutionarily speaking, like, we're not that different. I mean, there are some important differences. It's like, yeah, we got more, you know, white matter and so on, but >> go breastfeed a dog. >> Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Don't [gasps] Yeah. I was I've been fostering a dog for the last 6 months who uh was going to get euthanized. She was on the she was on the street. And so it's been so I've been very much in the thick of it with a dog that was effectively a wild animal. >> Wow. >> Off the streets. Uh a really adorable dog. Uh looks to be haven't done the genetic testing, but like an Anatolian shepherd mix. So very tawny colored with a black muzzle. Uh >> this isn't the one that I meant. No, that's your >> different dog. Different dog. Yeah. The rear feet are slightly externally rotated, so could be some great Pyrenees in there. Uh, but much smaller. The Anatolian shepherds can get huge. They're found in Turkey. They're found in the, you know, the Caucus region. They can get up to like 150 lb, 200 lb, at least 150. They're huge. She's a lot smaller. She's about 60 lb. So, I would guess that she's a mix with something else. Possibly German Shepherd or Belgian Shepherd, something like that. Uh but man, when you're starting with something that is really feral, it's different. >> And what's the original dog trainer? Like the the actual dog trainer is the dog's brain offering dopamine treats. So when you give food, it's not the food. It's the dopamine hit that the brain gives that makes the dog want. And so this is what before humans were there to train dogs, animals across the animal kingdom for millions of years have been trained by their genes >> to act a certain way using dopamine treats. >> Yeah. And and then and so it's just and then so all we're doing is leveraging this system that's already in place in the dog's brain and we're saying oh we can we can get the brain to do a dopamine hit >> when for that and tie that that and then the dog can tie that hit to this behavior instead of the thing it's programmed to be tied to which is get food. >> Yeah. So a big part of it is figuring out right because humans have been selectively breeding dogs into all these weird shapes for millennia. >> Yeah. is what does this dog respond to? Right? Cuz some dogs are really food driven. >> But then then your brain is also giving you dopamine treats. >> Sure. >> And this is what social media platforms do is they are geared towards flooding your brain with dopamine treats when you give it attention and therefore ad dollars. >> Well, we also think of ourselves as like the masters of the universe, but it's like to what extent did we domesticate certain plants and to what extent did they domesticate us? for propagation, right? I mean, it's like it's it's it's a fun question. >> Say more on the tumble down the >> rabbit hole here. >> Yeah. I mean, it's it's just like if you look at like wheat, corn, soy, etc. I mean, they've been very effective at propagating themselves as a species. And I don't want to attribute like anthropomorphizing the >> wheat >> the the wheat necessarily, but just from an evolutionary imp just from a evolutionary and um sort of propagation imperative, it's like >> how did they end up being so ubiquitous? >> Um I just think it's a fun question to poke around. >> Well, when I was studying like history and you're looking at, oh, we domesticated not just plants, we domesticated the horse, we domesticated the dog. Um, and now the ca the modern cow, the modern, you know, house dog, they couldn't survive in the wild because they've been domesticated. So now they rely on this artificial structure. And then I, you know, you read more about humans and oh [ __ ] what a civilization. We domesticated ourselves. We cannot survive as if you bring us back to 50,000 BC, pluck any, I mean, maybe you're like one of these people that might most of people I know, we would die. We don't we're not our natural habitat. We cannot live in it. Just like the the Maltese cannot live out in the natural wolf habit habitat, we can't live there because we domesticated ourselves. And this is one of these weird things where we now live within this structure that we only can live in. Just like a house, it's like a a dog can only live in a human house, a dog pet, we can only live in this civilizational house. >> Uh none of us know how to again few of us know how to hunt and and truly gather and do the things. Would that not be different slightly that we have like um genetically, anatomically in terms of our features and our functions, humans are not too dissimilar to what would have been around 50,000 years ago, but dogs would be very different to what was around previously. If if we had been born back then, culture would have been >> we haven't gone to the full extent that yes, that that is that I mean, I'm sure there are some little changes, but yes, like maybe we're less aggressive than we would need to be back then or something like that, but you're right. We haven't domesticated our our biology, but when we are now raised in this world, we have totally domesticated ourselves psychologically and and intellectually um and just in the skills we have. Uh and it just it kind of um you know it it just it explains a lot. And you then you see interesting clashes back in, you know, when first civilizations were developing where you have these wild people essentially um clashing with domesticated people. And that doesn't always go, you know, sometimes that when the weapons got good enough eventually that the domesticated people couldn't be [ __ ] with. But for a long time, these, you know, uh, step hordes, Mongols and others, you know, whatever they the Huns and many, many others, >> um, would come down with no technology at all, but they were essentially wild people. Uh, again, they they had horses for horseback archers. >> Yes, they had horses. >> They were pretty good. >> They had horses, but like on the wild to domesticated scale, they weren't very far. And when they would clash, it wasn't just that they were really great with their weapons. They had this level of kind of wild brutality and and you know, you know, and and kind of a lack of um um a civilizational notion of empathy for human lives or whatever are worth something. I mean, the Mongols thought of humans as cattle as as another, you know, whatever. Killing them was not a moral wrong. And that was this huge advantage. So it's just interesting to like when you you know and that this is what scares this very scary when you think about civilizational collapse talk about AI apocalypse things like this. I mean what's scary is um just the power goes out that means the internet goes out. I mean you'd see a lot of very domesticated people in a total chaotic situation and it would be yeah >> people lose their [ __ ] really quickly. Uh I was in uh San Francisco and I was volunteering for something called NERT which is the Northern California Emergency Response Team and it's a volunteer coalition of people who are distributed throughout in this case San Francisco and it's done in collaboration with the police and fire department to train volunteers to respond in the case of a highly destructive earthquake or natural disaster of some type and I remember in the very beginning they they effectively said okay San the broader San Francisco area has population of X whatever it was 1.2 2 million people. Guess how many fire engines we have. And they defined like what a fire engine was and so on. They're like 10. Okay. So what happens if we have a conflration which I think is a square block on fire of x magnitude and they're like you should expect to be without water and electricity in these following areas for this period of time like 7 to 10 days. I remember I was living in Glenn Park in San Francisco and PG& had a rolling blackout and was like, "Okay, power's out." And for like the first few hours, people were like wandering around outside. It was a Saturday and they're like, "Hey, your power out." Yeah. Wow. Nice to see you, Bob. You know, everyone was very civil. >> And [snorts] then it's like five or six hours and then people start to realize, "Oh, all of my food in my freezer is going to thaw >> at some point." And I think the water may have also been off. And around like 10 hours post, there's one guy in the neighborhood who had a little Honda generator because he was a burner. He went to Burning Man and he was like keeping his stuff frozen. And one or two people wandered over and they're like, "Hey Joe, could I borrow that after you're done with it?" Clearly, he's not going to be done with it because he's using it. And I think it was at like hour 15 or 18, there was an entire throng of people who are these like hyper liberal peace, you know, live long and prosper, live and let live types who are getting openly hostile about who would get to use his generator next. This is less than 24 hours. So the the basic courtesies of >> wow >> modern life fall away very quickly. There's a whole wild person in every human that is completely contained in a normal situation. Some I'm in a coffee shop and I see all these people standing in line. So, and I just like suddenly have a split screen to like those people like stabbing each other for food and I was like I come back here and I'm like, you know, it's a [laughter] little like it's the you know, we're it's all fine when it's fine and you know, I don't know. >> So, let me say a couple things real quick. So, >> uh [snorts] this is going to sound strange. Not not to like defend uh you know Gangaskhan and and the step hordes but >> steelman pillaging for a second >> not pillaging there's a book I won't recommended to be by one of the I mean a name everybody would know uh there's a book called Genghaskhan in the making of the modern world it is remar from like modern postal systems to infrastructure to rel uh religious freedom they did kill and rape a lot of people um but uh that book is is worth reading, especially the first half of it, uh, just to get a full grasp of the historic implications. The second, just to give an OG podcast shout out, uh, Wrath of the Cons by Dan Carlin. >> Oh my god, >> listen to every Dan Carlin episode. >> I mean, honestly, still maybe the best, no offense, no offense, no offense. Best podcast of all time. Dan Carlin, Hardcore History, Wrath of the Cons. It's like a five-part series. Each one is four to five hours long. >> Oh, so you will not be bored. You will rip through it. >> They are. I mean, this is a whole other topic, but >> yeah, but like the history of podcasts are one of my favorites. And he is the the goat. >> I heard that he used to do them in a single take and if he messed up, he'd just restart again. >> Oh god. It wouldn't surprise me. He's a perfectionist. I mean, that's why they took so long. >> He's still doing I haven't seen >> I'm not sure. But part of the reason I also love Dan as an example is that wherever you are, whenever you are, you run into whatever industry, these things that are taken to be true because they get repeated a lot, right? You have to post X times per week. You have to do this. You have to do that. No one's going to listen to a podcast that's longer than 60 minutes. And and Dan was like, I'm going to do one six-hour podcast or 5 hour podcast once every six months. and he was top of the charts forever for years upon years. >> Not many people are doing A+ work. And when you are, none of those rules apply. >> Yes. Yeah. The rules just didn't apply. The best tagline that we found for this is there will always be room for better. >> Yeah. >> There will always be room for better. >> It doesn't matter what the industry is. Uh you know, uh you know, it just it's something really great. There's just not very much of it. Doesn't matter how many podcasters, there are very few people are doing A+. Feels like that's accelerating now that you because you have LLMs churning more [ __ ] out and you're going to have more video models turnurning more [ __ ] out. It feels that >> whether there's less quality today or is there it just feels maybe there's less quality relative to the the amount of quantity. So it's also everyone to average back to the mean, right? it regresses the the aggregate of content that's being >> then people get discouraged and think oh there's so much content like what's the point of it's like no no no if you can do something great it will just rise above this and the world will see it speaking of novel content the Japan and USA algo crossover because of the translate mode that happened is resulted in some pretty spectacular outcomes none more so than Keny kids account you seen this guy okay so he uh describes in his bio on X says, "A company employee living in Yokohama's Canai area. Originally from Yokohama, born in 1985, currently 41 years old, single, 41 years with no girlfriend history, non-appealing to the opposite sex, unattractive, amateur virgin, likes sex services, hobbies of watching soccer, overseas travel, planning to retire early from the company at age 50, has given up on marriage, and is currently seeking a comfortable single life." So, it's interesting about this guy. He's been tweeting about >> one hell of a bio. How did he end up picking so many characters? >> I think you're able to compress things down on in Japanese. Impressive for a dog as well. Uh he's been tweeting about visiting [laughter] different hand job parlor in Japan and is using the revenue paid out from X to fund his future trips. He's essentially unlocked an infinite hand job glitch in reality. >> Chelsea Sabora. >> It's also just no one in in in the in the Western world talks like this. It's just a very specific like Japanese >> uh so there's a quote to it. Go to the quote tweet, Jared. Uh, it's where he says, "Today, both my regular [ __ ] spot and the married woman place are running discount events, and I'm torn about which one to go to." That's quote tweeted by an American saying, "Americans be like, I can't even get some chopped foid from a dating app to go on a $250 date with me, while the Japan bros are like, "Damn, the hand job parlor and the milk joint are both on sale tonight. I don't know which one to pick." [laughter] >> And he is using the X revenue in order to fund his hand job. >> He's like the most honest man in the world. >> It's unbelievable. Is that a calendar reminder for Black Friday? [laughter] Just checking. >> Hanky Kids, >> dude. Unbelievable. Yeah, the crossover from uh American people finally being able to see Japanese content on X has resulted. >> I mean, I I did love the I don't know if you've seen these split videos of like Japanese cleaning the stadium after a game and fans, >> you brought this up. Yes, they do. Even what's interesting when the Japanese team played at Wembley against England, they cleaned the changing rooms afterwards. the players even did it. Completely different cultural difference. What's interesting though is you have these languages merge online. I'm assuming you're gonna have podcast >> language merge. Do you actually lose >> less um the cultural differences as much? One of the reasons why Japan is so unique is because they did that suku right where they whilst the rest of the world was all mixing ideas. If you left Japan killed, if you tried to enter Japan, killed. So it's so unique. It's so like the Galopagos of culture. >> Yes. And I wonder with >> it's a great way to put it. Yeah. with the internet now, do you actually have cuz I I can feel it already that English culture is becoming a bit more American >> or even like this internet culture. It's not even American now. It feels like it's post American. It's becoming more >> it's just global. It's just the online culture. >> The internet is like the anti-Japanese isolationist culture effect on the dark web. And and then what you what's unfortunate is then what's nice is when you have all these independent cultures and each one does something really well and you can kind when it all starts to blend you really lose the variet the variety is where like variety is the in both evolution and cultural evolution is the engine of creativity and growth and you know and it's it's like instead of having you know a bunch of different brains in a room brainstorming you just have kind of like one one thinker and it's it's a shame. Someone uh wrote a blog post a few years ago about where did emos and goths go. And the question was that subcultures need time to oify. And if you've got this sort of global permaculture thing that's always moving and any bit that moves in one side of the membrane affects another bit over here, it's like everybody being on a bouncy castle at the same time and somebody that jumps up and down over there impacts everybody else. So you don't have time to silo off to create this sort of weird niche trends, music, tastes, language. Now you see subcultures on the internet with language. But very quickly, like look at looks maxing. All of that immediately now has become common vernacular because one part of the bouncy castle is now affected. >> I'm just pulling from words you're throwing out. You want a podcast name idea? >> Yes. >> Bouncy castle gang bang. >> Bouncy castle gang bang. I'm actually not far. [laughter] >> That's not That's >> It's evocative. It's very visual. >> It's either that or fire up the autism engine. It's one of those [laughter] two. >> It is visual. >> Yeah. >> I'm Why do you mention goths and emos then? >> When was the last time you thought about goss? >> Yeah. And I always ask Chris this question. I ask you two guys this which is when the fascinating thing about something fading away is that you don't notice it fading away because by definition it's fading away. Is there anything that's currently fading away or has faded away that you think we would have forgotten about until you mention it? Like a good example is the voicemail. the voicemail. If you watch I was watching Breaking Bad and the there's about five minutes every episode of like a voicemail scene where it'll be the voicemail will be playing across the house and it's just disappeared. It doesn't exist. But nobody really discussed it because by definition if something's fading away. >> Yeah. >> There's stuff that's fading in too like mullets. >> Mullets are back and >> mullets are very very bad. That's >> mustaches came back. >> Yeah. you you're actually only able to grow. >> I don't know if I could make a Well, I can't do like the flat top mullet, which would be my sort of like aspiration. >> Mhm. >> Cuz I It's just not going to work. So, I could do like a power donut >> rat tail. >> Power donut. >> Power donut. Power donut rat tail. Also not a bad podcast name. >> Yeah, that's true. >> Um, yeah. >> Not a bad grinder name as well. Power donut. >> Power donut rat. >> Yeah, >> you know what I'm talking about, right? Like Professor X. Like that's That sounds like a wonderful couple that could be born out of Grinder. Power Doner and Rat Tail would get together very well. Tim, what else have you brought from home? You've got this bag. >> I brought lots of stuff. >> I'm going to throw out some fun stuff. Uh, you're talking about like humans, modern humans in the wild dead, right? Domesticated dogs in the wild dead. One exception. If you take domestic domesticated pigs and release them into the wild, they rapidly undergo physical and behavioral transformations. Within just a few months, they develop thicker bristly hair, longer snouts, and tusks. Like they literally revert back into savage animals within months. >> Does anyone study what's happening to them? >> Cool. >> They call it phenotypic reversion. >> Wow. >> And have you brought one? >> There's a there's there's a small brought a feral pig. >> I did not bring a wild boar. >> I brought a whole stack of things. >> This is exciting. >> Oh wow. >> And then uh so we can talk about these. >> Oh, drugs. You brought drugs. >> I brought drugs. Uh so this this one is I'm still like jury's out but the data are are pretty interesting. This is so this is a call. >> I know exactly what this is. >> You know what this is? So some people have heard of something called sulforophane and I'm going to pull this up so I don't misquote here. Uh let's see if I can find it. Bear with me here. I love when my uh autistic newsfeed and Tim's autistic newsfeed come together. They merge together. Yeah. So, >> all right. >> Just say it. Just go get Tim to get you one. >> What's that? >> He needs He needs more frosty beverages. >> Yeah. Okay. So, this this stuff So, sulfur fan people might have heard about like broccoli sprouts were kind of making the rounds a couple years ago and I think Rhonda Patrick uh should be giving credit for bringing this to light for a lot of folks. And this is does not contain sulforophane. in itself, but a precursor and an enzyme. So, your body then produces sulforophane. And I'll explain why I'm bringing this up, cuz I I've been taking this for probably 9 months. And predominantly because there is some possibility that it could help with mitigating the risk of neuro degeneration. Uh so that that's again whether it's the xylitol or this stuff having multiple family members with Alzheimer's uh I'm paying a lot of attention to prevention. >> You have done your uh genetic testing as well, right? >> Oh yeah. Yeah. >> Cool. Yeah. Uh what's what's interesting is is quite a few people in my family and I know this isn't the only risk factor but they're APOE3 which should be the lowest risk at of uh Alzheimer's could be protected >> and yet so there's other dysfunction uh and in this case you know sulforophane reliably activates NRF2 related pathways in humans. All right. So the it's promising but not proven. Slowing aging, preventing cancer, preventing dementia, extending lifespan, treating chronic disease. It's basically detoxification. But the re the reason I brought it is that my supplement regimen has been very consistent for at least 2 or 3 years. And I do constant blood tests and so on. Just did a blood draw this morning actually. And in the last maybe 6 months, I've been getting could be coincidence, but more compliments and questions about my skin than ever before. And I was like, what is going on? Is this just coincidence or is something going on? And so I looked at the two things that I've added >> just out of curiosity. Nothing new otherwise. I was like, okay, diet's the same. There is the Ammaol and then there is uralith uraliththna and >> using timeline >> timeline and >> uh and it turns out that it is plausible that this stuff helps with skin tone >> Rhonda's thing was that was for microplastics right after >> yeah well yeah I mean there's there's a bunch that does but yes like >> did you see so I brought this up last time but I didn't get a chance to actually say it had it ready for last time so the microplastics numbers were wrong the gloves were the source So, University of Michigan researchers just abandoned a core consumption assumption about microplastic science. Latex and nitrial gloves worn by the scientists doing the measuring shed sterate particles that look chemically identical to polyethylene. >> Polyethylene. >> Oops. >> Sanded infrared and ramen instruments couldn't tell them apart. The gloves were counting as plastic. So, you know that every American consumes a credit card sized amount of microplastics every year. Like when you pick up the little petri dish to it's human blood and feces and tissue samples and stuff, they're picking it up. But the way that it bends, the reason that gloves are able to bend is that tiny teeny teeny teeny tiny bits break off. That's why it's malleable. They switched from that to some other type of glove and it just went through the floor. >> I like that. I was happy to see that. All the microplastic research looks like it could be wrong. >> Wow. >> That's not to say that we're not consuming it. We probably are. But the numbers, I think, are 100x. >> Credit card doesn't sound that bad. I mean, I'll eat a credit card once a year. [laughter] >> How bad could it be? >> Just I I'd frontload it. I'd get it all done January 1st. Just get the AMX in. >> Yeah. I got to grind it up. >> So, just to be clear, not a doctor, don't play one on the internet. This stuff, right, the abacol biologically plausible, reasonably safe, interesting human data, but not yet a slam dunk clinical intervention, but still interesting because it activates your own detoxification pathways as opposed to being an external antioxidant that you consume. So, the sort of hormatic stress response could be really interesting and have broader benefits. So, that's why >> you do have cred with these kind of things cuz you're like annoyingly healthy looking. You're like the healthiest looking person. >> Thank you. You seem very like robust and unsicky all the time. So, >> thank you. Yeah, I'll be 50. Take your advice. I'll be 50 before you know it, which is crazy. >> The the key is to go bald early so your photos look remarkably similar. Uh >> I think as you get older, bald is an asset. You end up like it's hard to age you. >> Yeah. No, exactly. What I'm saying people, oh, hair is the giveaway. Yeah. If you're trying to do like the dead squirrel combover or whatever, white knuckling. >> Mhm. >> Dead giveaway. Uh should I talk about these things real quick? >> Yeah. So, uh, I have when I was a kid, I collected I mean comic books. That was kind of my first business was buying and selling comic books. Wanted to be a comic book pencellor forever. Um, was an illustrator throughout school. Paid a lot of my bills in college as an illustrator. So, I love graphic novels. And what I found as I'm being domesticated, not domesticated, but trained through LLMs and everything else to have uh shorter and shorter attention span effectively, right? I'm trying to offset that. But another insight that I've had for me personally, I am, and we talked about the um aphantasia, I guess it was, and hyper vvisualization. I'm so visual that often as I read or even if I meditate, we could talk about how meditation factors into this, but I'm conjuring these images constantly, which can be very distracting. >> Conjuring what images? >> Images just visualization in my head or scenes or whatever. Like there's constantly as I'm here, there's like another movie playing in my mind. It's like watching a like two screens with different movies like >> it tend to be like a past event or a future event or is it completely random? could be just random bits and bobs. Uh so I've taken to going back to graphic novels because once you are reading a story with visual accompaniment, it occupies that part of my brain and I just love graphic novels. So I thought I would share after reading like dozens and dozens over the last couple years some of my favorites. This is Something is Killing the Children. Real uplifting. Uh, this is going to be made into a very expensive series by Netflix, but basic premise, the artwork is amazing, story is really fun, and basic premise is monsters are real, only children can see them, and there are these cabals of of monster hunters. It's like a it's a beautifully simple premise and >> looks very light. >> Yeah, it's uh it's it's it's great. If you're into the sci-fi stuff, this is Lazarus, uh, which is kind of a post-apocalyptic um, these cartel-like families run giant swaths of the United States and the world that it's about their kind of geopolitical battles and how technology factors into it. uh if you want something more fantasy. Uh and this this gets into some deep psychological terrain and inner turmoil, but it also throws in lots of fantasy tropes. So, it's kind of like fantasy plus a bit of steampunk monstrous, which just based on the cover, I was like, I'm not going to like this at all. Uh in full uh disclosure, I like the first maybe like 200 pages the most of what I read. Uh but the the testimonials and stuff are insane. So this is another one that is beautiful. Uh I tend to be very biased towards the stuff with really gorgeous penciling. Uh Day Tripper. This is from Brazil and is does not have any sci-fi any fantasy. It's sort of a reflection on mortality. It's about this young man who has a star author as a father who's whose shadow he's constantly living in who as his job writes obituaries at a local newspaper. But it gets much more interesting for >> So how long like does that take you to read compared to like a book? How many page how many page book is that to read? >> Yeah, this you'll rip through this which is part of the reason why I'd say like if you're going to get in like this is 250 pages. I read this in 3 hours. >> Yeah, I like that. >> Yeah, you you get through it very quickly. It's also an expensive habit if you're using hard copy, right? I mean, this is going to be >> 20 25 bucks. >> As someone who takes forever to do the simplest stick drawing, and granted these people are far more talented artists, like >> I mean, I mean, today maybe they're using AI, but like when I look at this, I'm like, >> no, these are all >> It took so just this one picture. >> Yeah. Yeah. The artwork in all of these is tremendous. >> Amazing. How >> Have you ever read a comic book? >> Not in a while. >> Yeah. Since I was a child. >> Yeah. >> I've never basically never. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, there's >> I think I could get into it. >> There are some iconic >> uh >> Calvin and Hobbs. I used to >> Calvin Hobbs is amazing to be actual like >> Calvin Hobs is amazing. Look, I mean Sandman, there's some real like genre busting >> graphic novels. This one is from France, Amma, which I'm currently reading, really deeply philosophical, very psychedelic. This one also gets pretty trippy as you would guess by the name. Uh what I'd suggest, though, this is impossible to get as a hard copy. It's very, very challenging. Just get the Kindle. Get the Kindle versions. And Kindle or I should say Amazon acquired a company that allows you to read these graphic novels panel by panel. And it has this like zooming in zooming out function that is beautifully designed. >> That's why they put the new uh fullcolor Kindle together, I think, to try and encourage people to get more. >> It's beautiful. And I'll actually I'll actually just >> bode well for all of my >> Yeah. the the graph the graphic novels are not easy to read on mobile. But on say laptop or iPad or something. It's >> what I want is and I don't know if it would apply to this but for my books and for a lot of others that have a lot of visuals is I want audio. I want audible or some to be like you're you're listening and then it's like ding and you look and the screen just has the current drawing the current image and then you put you see you put it back in your pocket and it's like ding. Oh graph. >> Yeah. >> Right. And it should why supplementary materials available. >> Here's your attached PDF. Such a game changer for me. Yeah, that's what I do. Attach from PDF. It sucks. >> Uh I've got into Dungeon Crawler Carl. Have you read this book? >> That's a fun one. >> [ __ ] me. >> That's a fun one. >> It's I mean, so Red Red Rising is the most addictive fiction series that I've found pretty much ever. And they're about to release Pierce is about to release book eight, I think, soon. Uh, and I got told, you know, when you get a book suggestion from two or three different people who don't know each other. Yeah. All right. I just I obviously need to do that. I've triangulated. They've triangulated me as a and uh >> even the second recommendation. I'm like, okay. >> Yeah. Dungeon Crawler Carl. So, it's a a lit RPG, literary RPG. So, you're basically reading, imagine somebody played a video game and you read a description of what happened. That's kind of what it's like. And it is [ __ ] unbelievable. And this guy is on book eight or nine now and he released the first one in 2020. >> Yeah. When are the what? And I remember the number of reviews was insane. It was >> it's [ __ ] wild. This the dungeon crawler Carl for me is up there with Red Rise. Very different. It's very edgy. Uh it's really light-hearted and fun. Like it's there's a lot of inner monologue. There's interplay. You can tell that the story is going to get huge and unwieldy. There's progress. What's interesting is because he's leveling up. he's playing the game or he he is the game and uh as he goes along he levels up skills and he's got to make a choice between which class he wants to be or this one and he do I want to make this particular sacrifice in terms of my strength and my dexterity or my intelligence or what should we upgrade this pet that we've got as and what armor should I put on and you'd think ah that sounds so dry and boring but it is it's got me it's got me >> the captain did the same thing that makes those games addictive to play probably right without watching someone upgrade >> yeah whilst getting to 82 few thousand reviews on Amazon. 4.7 stars. Good >> reads. I bet good readads is 427,000. It's insane. It's really >> since 2020. >> Yeah, it's it's pretty fun. I only got through book one and I I enjoyed it. Um so I didn't make it. >> I don't know how you stopped at book one. >> Yeah, >> he was about to choose his class. How did you stop at book one? I know. >> What have you been reading recently? Anything good? Um, so I I I for a long time I've been alternating between like cuz for for my writing I'm constantly reading like non-fiction, history or science, you know, whatever things like that. I'm for for right now I was just reading a book called um uh what's it called? Something with time by uh Carla Relli. The order of things. >> The order of time. >> Yeah. Benedict Cumberbatch. >> Oh my god, dude. The audio. >> I would listen to him read anything. So Benedict Cumberbatch is so good and he's reading it and that's a book where talk about like people who listen to books on like 2x or whatever. I want to do that in like 4x because I have to constantly pause and just like think about what he just said. Try to absorb and then I go back. I I I'm going through this short 4-hour book over like so slow. But that's for work. That's like for my book. Um I usually alternate between like history podcasts and sci-fi. Uh those are my right now. So, I read the first book in the um Expanse series, uh, which I I liked. I didn't love, I liked, so I didn't keep going. Um, and then I read my my wife like an Instagram post of her favorite of the books she read in the year with the favorite to the least favorite stacked. And I I usually don't cross over that much, but I was like, that top one, it's her top book. So, I read it and it was so good. It was called A Fraction of the Hole by Steve Toltz. He's this Australian author. takes place in Australia and it is so funny and it's such an adventure and it's this just fantastic fiction book. Um, and uh, it's not that well known and I it was just such a joy and it was a that's a I would never have just picked that up on my own, but I I loved that. Um, and then um and then I um, more recently obviously I read the whole Three Body Problem trilogy which is by the way an example of one of those times when >> I couldn't do that either. >> You know Oh, really? Oh, no. Here. Okay. I love the bailed out. Let me tell you, let me just this is very important. So the there's three there's three books. The first book is only a sixth of the length of the whole thing cuz the second and third book are much longer. The first book is a BB B+. It's it's the it's the appetizer to the whole thing. The second book, the first third of it is slow. So it is it's really if you don't lose people there, you're going to lose people there. When you get 200 pages into the second book, [laughter] >> the rest No, no, no, no, no. I know that sounds bad. remind this is 1400 pages 75 and it all works out. >> This is 400400 pages the series and you're only 500 total pages in now the next 900 pages is the greatest thing I've ever read. It's the biggest adventure and it's not like the first part's bad. It's just a little slow and it's then it it just takes you on this ride you've never been I so if you haven't gotten this it's so worth >> I'm halfway through the first book and I'm not kidding. It's taken me 10 attempts. Ju >> just just just move. I need to grind it out. >> You got You have to. >> My My thought process with things like this and particularly as I'm writing now. >> Good news. This takes an hour. >> Great. I like high octane. And maybe it's just like my standard as a writer that I try and apply to somebody else, but I'm like, why did you have to wait to two and a half pages? Why? Like if you watch Breaking Bad, the first scene of Breaking Bad, some trousers land in an air. There's an RV driving. Walter White's got a mask on with three people passed out looking dead in the back. and he's got a gun in his pocket that comes out in the first five minutes. That's what I want. >> I don't listen. That's ideal. That's ideal. Uh in this case, first of all, it's like when once you get to the end, you also like the beginning has more meaning to you. >> I totally agree. And and but it's this has managed to be so popular despite the things I'm saying. >> Um and this is by the way an example of an author who actually I think didn't do a great job with the title which was not threebody problem. The title is Remembrance of Earth's Past. That's the title of the full series. And no one knows that because basically readers were like, >> "We're going to pretend you didn't say that. We're going to come up with a little bit like Game of Thron." They didn't name Game of Thrones: A Song of Fire and Ice, which is the actual title. They're like, >> "Game of thrones, the first book. That's going to be the title of the whole thing cuz it's it's just I like when a certain you know the fans kind of decide for you that we're not going to >> it's interesting when something succeeds and then the real like nuance conversation is how much of it it succeeded despite all these variables because often and you could look at Steve Jobs and go >> the answer is turtlenecks and carrot juice but I mean those are either either completely irrelevant or in despite of and it tends to be like one power lawation and not causation. >> Yeah. And that's a real constant IQ test. >> Yes. >> So you're saying threebody problem could be your vote for book that succeeded in spite of a bad real title >> and and a slow first 500 pages of the 1400. >> I've heard Dune I've never read Dune but I've heard that Dune goes real. >> So my problem is I just stuck with the first one. >> Yeah. I read the first Dune. It was good. After Three Body Problem to me it's just like I read six Ian Banks books from the Culture series and they were really good. It's just I it'll never be >> What makes it so good? >> The the the three body problem. >> Yeah, >> it the I mean I think I think Dune is I think Dune is a masterpiece, right? I think Herbert was a genius. >> The writing is not great. It's very like kind of just like literal. No, it's not funny. It had to be translated as well too. Had to be translated. >> The characters are super like boring people like plain, you know, there's no character development. >> This is a threebody real world. >> Yes. The plot. >> You're selling me well. No, the plot the plot is the best plot I've ever read in my life for anything. The the it is the most gripping, rich plot, and the concepts in the plot are so mindbending and delicious and everything that I've ever thought was cool. You know how like Interstellar, which I don't think was actually that great a movie, but they had some killer concepts like you go to this planet and and time is different and you come back and your seven-year-old daughter or whatever is is 25 and it's like whoa, right? It has so much of things like that. Like the coolest thing I've ever heard like he now weaves it into the plot. Um and and and again it's really one big game theory. I don't want to blow it for anyone but like in the first you know two you know 20% of the very first book the the the plot is launched and it's one it's not a a bunch of things. It's one thing happens in the early part of the first book and then the rest of the book is basically playing out game theory. What would happen? How could this play out? and it's 1400 pages of this is one story that's happening, this one thing that happens and then what goes on from there. So I I just think anyone who likes sci-fi or like space or like just uh uh it it is you got to get through. >> So the first book the first book in the series is threebody problem. >> It's called three body problem. Then there's the dark forest and then death's end. And again once the dark forest is one of my favorite books of all time and the death end is also one of my these are like two of my favorite absolute books. And again, people also it's like, oh, the first book is slow, but that's only a six of the whole series. So, that's what I would say. >> Well, I mean, Seven Eves by Neil Stevenson, the moon explodes. In the first line, >> the first line of the book, the moon explodes. >> I love that. >> It was It was something like it was just after midday on a Sunday when the moon exploded. >> That's the first line of the book. >> Wow. >> It's pretty good, boys. I appreciate you all. You're all [ __ ] awesome. Tim, you're going traveling for a bit, so I'm not going to see you for a while. >> Yeah, shame. >> What have you got going on? Where should people go to keep up to date with the [ __ ] that you've got happening? >> Uh, just go to tim.blog. blog just put up a blog post talking about how non-fiction is imploding thanks to L. Do you want to see real sales numbers on disruption that's there? Yeah, Tim.blog sign up for the newsletter tim.blog/fr. It's got 2 million subscribers. It's fun. It's free. >> Um so right until my book is out. Uh that can't no one can buy that. So um that's some fall of 27. So for you we all be who knows. Um, [laughter] wait.com is my homeland on the internet and all my posts are up and they're usually pretty evergreen, so that's still fun, I think. Um, but likewise, I would say newsletter is the thing to do because I don't post that often and I only send an email out when I post something, so it's not annoying and I always encourage people to get on board there. >> Uh, hiag.com/books. um find out about Oblavv who I spoke last time my 400page Russian novel where a man spends the first 50 pages worrying about how he's gonna get out of bed. Now that's a >> having just criticized a man 500 [laughter] pages read it and see like it watch sit there the most exciting time in bed. All right my beauties I appreciate you all. I'll see you again soon. Go >> boys. Yes. Fun as [ __ ] >> Boom. >> Good job everyone. The amount of treats was such a >> [ __ ] >> I had so much fun. These are incredible. >> Thank you. >> Take some away. Take some away with >> that was so much fun. Congratulations. You made it to the end of a full podcast episode. You are not so Tik Tok brain [music] that you've completely dissolved into nothingness. Why not watch another one right here? Go on. Press it.