Timothy Ferriss's Blog, page 18

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“You screw up your taxes, there’s a way out of it. You screw up your body, you might have a lifetime of pain.”

— Eric Cressey

Eric Cressey (@EricCressey), MA, CSCS, is president and co-founder of Cressey Sports Performance, with facilities in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and Hudson, Massachusetts. He has worked with clients from youth sports to the professional and Olympic ranks but is best known for his extensive work with baseball players; more than 100 professional players train at CSP each offseason. He also serves as Director of Player Health and Performance for the New York Yankees.

Eric double-majored in exercise science and sports and fitness management at the University of New England and then received his master’s degree in kinesiology with a concentration in exercise science at the University of Connecticut. He has published books and video resources that have been sold in more than 60 countries. He regularly lectures both nationally and internationally, and his research has been published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. He serves as a consultant to New Balance, Proteus Motion, and Athletic Greens.

Eric’s free blog and newsletter can be found at EricCressey.com. You can also find Eric’s podcast at EliteBaseballPodcast.com.

Please enjoy!

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Want to hear another episode with someone who understands the magic of movement and mobility? Listen to my most recent conversation with Dr. Kelly Starrett in which we discussed how our environment shapes us, optimizing vital signs and range of motion as we age, why we should be walking and fidgeting more, why balance training isn’t just for “old” people, how to extend the end range of motion, simple corrective exercises, cultivating timeless movement in a busy world, breath as a mobilization device, and much more.

#664: Dr. Kelly Starrett — The Magic of Movement and Mobility, Training for Range of Motion, Breathing for Back Pain, Improving Your Balance, and More

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODEConnect with Eric Cressey:

Website | Training Facilities | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Elite Baseball Development Podcast with Eric CresseyNew York Yankees | MLB.comCarl R. Rogers: “What Is Most Personal Is Most Universal.” | GoodreadsDr. Peter Attia — The Science and Art of Longevity, Optimizing Protein, Alcohol Rules, Lessons from Glucose Monitoring with CGMs, Boosting Your VO2 Max, Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease, Early Cancer Detection, How to Use DEXA Scans, Nature’s Longevity Drug, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #661Strength Exercise of the Week: Trap Bar Deadlift vs. Band | Eric Cressey660 Deadlift | Eric CresseyMuscles of the Back: Video, Anatomy, and Definition | OsmosisA Patient’s Guide to Anatomy and Function of the Spine | University of Maryland Medical CenterThe Five Types of Back Pain | Cornerstone PhysiotherapyThe Use of Imaging in Management of Patients with Low Back Pain | Journal of Clinical Imaging ScienceImaging Strategies for Low-Back Pain: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis | The LancetMagnetic Resonance Imaging of the Lumbar Spine in People without Back Pain | NEJMThe Prevalence of Spondylolysis in the Spanish Elite Athlete | The American Journal of Sports MedicineDon’t Take Back Pain Sitting Down | Harvard HealthPreventing Lower Back Pain: Assuming is Okay | Eric CresseyUltimate Back Fitness and Performance by Stuart McGill, PhD | AmazonIs Your Low Back Pain Flexion Biased or Extension Biased? | Cioffredi & AssociatesPinched Nerve Symptoms and Causes | Mayo ClinicThe Heel Drop Test | Advanced Physical Therapy Education InstituteThe Fascial Manipulation Technique and Its Biomechanical Model: A Guide to the Human Fascial System | International Journal of Therapeutic Massage and BodyworkAccutane | American Osteopathic College of DermatologyStatin Side Effects: Weigh the Benefits and Risks | Mayo ClinicHealth Sciences Researchers Study How Common Antibiotics Weaken Tendons | Health Sciences ConnectThe 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman by Timothy Ferriss | AmazonBuilt to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully by Kelly Starrett and Juliet Starrett | AmazonDr. Kelly Starrett — The Magic of Movement and Mobility, Training for Range of Motion, Breathing for Back Pain, Improving Your Balance, and More (#664) – The Blog of Author Tim FerrissDean Somerset Interviews Me – Part 1 | Eric CresseyPostural Restoration InstituteThe Painful Lumbar Spine by Stuart McGill, PhD | IDEA Health & Fitness AssociationPrevalence of Abnormal Findings in 230 Knees of Asymptomatic Adults Using 3.0 T MRI | Skeletal RadiologyPatellar Tendinopathy in Junior Basketball Players: A Controlled Clinical and Ultrasonographic Study of 268 Patellar Tendons in Players Aged 14-18 Years | Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in SportsHow Chronic, Prolonged Sitting Impacts Your Body — And What to Do About It | Eric CresseyThe Anatomy of a Strength Coach’s Desk | Eric CresseyDeskbound: Standing Up to a Sitting World by by Kelly Starrett, Juliet Starrett, and Glen Cordoza | AmazonCressey’s Favorite Exercises | T NationExercise(s) of the Week: Making the Most of Rotational Rows | Eric CresseyFascia | Physiopedia15 Ways to Foam Roll — Self-Myofascial Release: No Doctor Required! | T NationFoam Rollers | AmazonAcumobility Massage Balls | AmazonKieba Massage Lacrosse Balls for Myofascial Release | AmazonPRI Breathing Techniques | Postural Restoration InstituteAnatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual Therapists and Movement Professionals by Thomas W. Myers | AmazonFour Yoga Push-Up Progression Strategies | Eric CresseyCorrecting Common Landmine Press Mistakes | Eric CresseyBack Pain from Axial Loading | Sports ChiropracticThe Three Categories of Exercise: Isometric, Concentric, and Eccentric | Invictus FitnessCreative Conditioning: Installment 1 – Medicine Ball Medleys | Eric CresseyMeasure Strength & Power With Every Movement | ProteusCupping Aftermath | Tim Ferriss, InstagramFascia and Extra-Cellular Matrix (ECM): Defining Fascia | Anatomy TrainsTommy John Surgery (Ulnar Collateral Ligament Reconstruction) | Johns Hopkins MedicineLateral Intermuscular Septum of Arm | IMAIOSDan Pfaff on the SOMA Matrix, Fascia Slings, and Trains | SpeedEnduranceMaking Sense of Manual Therapy with Shane Rye | Elite Baseball Development PodcastWhat Is Dry Needling? | Cleveland ClinicPin and Stretch Manual Therapy Technique for Stretching | Learn MusclesActive Release Techniques (ART) | PhysiopediaCupping, Scraping, and Dry Needling Therapy | Dusty HanshawA Brief History of Massage Therapy | ProhealthsysWTF Is Gluteal Amnesia and How to Know If You Have It | SELFFive Warm-up Options to Improve Hip Extension | Eric CresseyAll About the Posterior Chain: Five Posterior Chain Exercises | MasterClassFixing the Flaws: Weak Posterior Chain | Eric CresseyMastering the Deadlift: Part 1 by Eric Cressey | T NationMastering the Deadlift: Part 2 by Eric Cressey | T NationMastering the Deadlift: Part 3 by Eric Cressey | T NationTip: Master the Kettlebell Deadlift by Dr John Rusin | T NationHow to Really Do a Kettlebell Swing by Dr John Rusin | T NationSingle Leg Romanian Deadlift: How, When, and Why It Should Be in Your Training | BarBendWhat’s More Important: Strength or Power? | Athletic LabWhy Hip Fractures in the Elderly Are Often a Death Sentence | The ConversationDiagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes by Shirley Sahrmann | AmazonUpstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath | AmazonOutlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia | AmazonMade to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath | AmazonThe 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss | AmazonDecisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath | AmazonPartial Rotator Cuff Tear | Johns Hopkins MedicineShoulder Labrum Tear | Johns Hopkins MedicinePNF Shoulder Internal Rotation | CFU EsportesCracking the Rotator Cuff Conundrum by Eric Cressey | T NationMost Throwers Demonstrate Considerable Humeral Retroversion | Eric Cressey, TwitterAthlete Body Size Changes Over Time | Topend SportsHip Flexors | PhysiopediaUlnar Nerve Subluxation: Clinical Anatomy | KenhubUlnar Nerve Transposition at the Elbow | Birmingham, AL – Spine and NeurosurgeryPosterior Labral Tear: Shoulder & Elbow | OrthobulletsThoracic Outlet Syndrome (TOS) Symptoms and Treatment | Cleveland ClinicAchilles Tendon Rupture Symptoms and Causes | Mayo ClinicThe Dating App Designed to Be Deleted | HingeQuantifying the Farmer’s Walk by Shon Grosse | T NationWhat Is Discogenic Pain? | Denver Spine SpecialistsMy New Obsession, the Infrasternal Angle | Alexis BoothHow to Measure the Infrasternal Angle to determine a Wide ISA or a Narrow ISA | Bill HartmanWhy You Struggle to Train Overhead — And What to Do About It | Eric CresseyCoach Chris Sommer — The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training, Part Two: Home Equipment, Weighted Stretches, and Muscle-Ups | The Tim Ferriss Show #180Dorsiflexion | HealthlineHookgrip | InstagramWalking Spiderman with Hip Lift and Overhead Reach | Eric CresseyMeniscus Surgery: Who Needs It, What to Expect Before and After | Cleveland ClinicCrossover Training Effects of Three Different Rehabilitation Programs After Arthroscopic Meniscectomy | International Journal of Sports MedicineNick Grantham: Bulletproof Athletes | Eric CresseyThe Joint-By-Joint Approach | OTP BooksExpanding on the Joint-By-Joint Approach | OTP BooksFollow Your Passion Is Terrible Advice | Robert GreeneSo Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport | AmazonIsometric Training | Sport ManitobaSplit Squat Iso Hold — Heel Pressed to Wall | Eric CresseyThoughts on Dead Hang | Eric Cressey, InstagramArm Care Lesson 10: Don’t Lose Tension in the “Dead Hang” Position on Pull-Ups | Eric Cressey(Vitamin) “D” is for Doping by Chris Shugart | T NationSagittal Plane: Definition and Examples | Biology Online DictionaryFive Reasons You Have Tight Hamstrings | Eric CresseyBecome a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) | NSCACertified Functional Strength CoachComplete Coach CertificationSHOW NOTES[06:08] The email responsible for this conversation.[09:19] Why pinpointing the cause of lower back pain can be so challenging.[20:22] Initial diagnosis through movement.[22:59] How seemingly unrelated meds can exacerbate pain.[24:38] Posture considerations.[26:55] Addressing and correcting suboptimal patterns of movement.[28:55] Resources for understanding movement screens.[30:00] Ingredients that make up a lower back pain cocktail.[34:42] Even with the greatest care, wear and tear over time is normal.[40:19] Improving thoracic mobility.[43:56] Conquering Quasimodo.[45:14] Defusing deskbound damage.[48:25] Practical exercises.[53:37] Shocking controversies surrounding fascial manipulation.[1:02:18] Role of the glutes.[1:04:02] Strengthening the posterior chain.[1:06:06] Power and strength vs. aging.[1:08:57] Recommended reading.[1:12:21] Medical diagnosis vs. movement diagnosis.[1:24:53] How to ask the right questions when seeking treatment.[1:34:00] Overrated exercises?[1:35:39] What a movement diagnosis will look like for me.[1:36:23] Infrasternal angle.[1:39:06] Age and injury predisposition.[1:41:58] “Get long, get strong, train hard.”[1:45:34] The downstream effects of orthopedic interventions.[1:48:21] Creating bulletproof athletes.[1:52:42] Worst advice given often.[1:55:29] What has Eric recently changed his mind about?[2:00:06] Important upstream variables.[2:02:38] Good stiffness. (Oh, behave!)[2:04:49] Vetting reliable sources of information.[2:11:39] How Brijesh Patel changed Eric’s career perspective and other parting thoughts.MORE ERIC CRESSEY QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“We are big bags of water. And probably what’s happening with fascial interventions is that we’re changing the way that fluids move so that folks do have better gliding of tissues that are adjacent to one another.”
— Eric Cressey

“I hate it when people say, ‘I failed rehab.’ It’s like, ‘No, sometimes rehab failed you. You were trying and you just didn’t get the right coaching cue or the right intervention that you needed.'”
— Eric Cressey

“The hardest part is sometimes you have to counsel athletes away from something that they might really enjoy.”
— Eric Cressey

“Don’t specialize young.”
— Eric Cressey

“Try to find a way to do a wide variety of movements well into adulthood.”
— Eric Cressey

“You screw up your taxes, there’s a way out of it. You screw up your body, you might have a lifetime of pain.”
— Eric Cressey

PEOPLE MENTIONEDPeter AttiaStuart McGillKelly StarrettJuliet StarrettQuasimodoThomas MyersTommy JohnMark McGwireDan PfaffShane RyeRoboCopShirley SahrmannChip and Dan HeathMichael ChangBill HartmanChristopher SommerCharlie WeingroffScot “Big Mendy” MendelsonNick GranthamGray CookMichael BoyleCal NewportKeith BaarBruce LeeMolly FerrissMike RobertsonAnna CresseyBrijesh PatelTeena MurrayChris WestAndrea Hudy

The post Eric Cressey, Cressey Sports Performance — Tactical Deep Dive on Back Pain, Movement Diagnosis, Training Principles, Developing Mobility, Building Power, Fascial Manipulation, and Rules for Athletes (#675) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

This is a guest post from Rachel Nuwer (@RachelNuwer), an award-winning science journalist who regularly contributes to the New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, and many other publications. Her reporting for the New York Times broke the news globally about the MDMA Phase III clinical trial and was highlighted by me, Michael Pollan, and Ezra Klein, among others. In 2022, Nuwer was among the inaugural recipients of the Ferriss–UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship. She holds masters degrees in applied ecology and in science journalism. Her first book, Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking, took her to a dozen countries to investigate the multibillion-dollar illegal wildlife trade.

What follows is an excerpt from her new book, I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World.

Enter Rachel…

One group of people who are particularly at risk of missing out on social benefits—and who serve as a sort of canary in the coal mine for the insidious effects of increasing disconnection—are autistic individuals.

Autistic adults are more likely to experience high levels of loneliness than their neurotypical peers. While 7 percent of the general adult U.S. population meets the diagnostic criteria for social anxiety disorder, one in four autistic adults do. Autistic people are also four times more likely to suffer from depression and eleven times more likely to have suicidal thoughts—problems that frequently both stem from and exacerbate social isolation—and they are 2.5 times as likely to die early.

Despite the serious setbacks that many people on the spectrum face due to living in a society that discriminates against those who are different, social anxiety, loneliness, and lack of connection are not inevitable parts of being autistic. According to a 2022 meta-analysis of thirty-four scientific papers, autistic adults are less likely to be lonely if—somewhat obviously— they have relationships, experience fewer difficulties with social skills, and have positive views and acceptance of themselves. While there are many different ways to achieve these things, some autistics have gravitated toward a certain particularly potent molecular tool.

Aaron Paul Orsini grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and as a teenager he remembers oscillating between being on the periphery of social gatherings and being “overly performative and needing to take over a situation.” At parties or at professional conferences as a young adult, he’d often feel overwhelmed by the bombardment of incoming sensory information. 

When he was twenty-three, Aaron started seeing a psychologist for depression, anxiety, and what he described as “feeling that I would never ‘get it,’ and not really having any answers about how or why that might be.” During one session, the psychologist handed him a questionnaire to fill out without really explaining what it was for. After evaluating Aaron’s answers, the psychologist announced that Aaron was autistic.

In some ways, this news came as a relief. Knowing that he was autistic provided Aaron with a new way to conceive of his specific challenges and potential strengths. Yet even with this revelation—and to his distress—his lifelong habit of focusing on his deficits and limitations proved stubbornly resilient to change. “Even though I could tell myself, ‘Oh, I have superpowers,’ I was still feeling down and feeling a bit like, for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t be able to do things,” he said.

When Aaron was twenty-seven, he experienced something of a quarter-life crisis and wound up on a train from Chicago to the West Coast with only a backpack in hand. He befriended a group of free-spirited fellow travelers who gave him a tab of LSD—a chance encounter that changed his life. Sitting on a tree stump in a forest, Aaron felt his mind go still; his awareness widened, and his sensory issues suddenly seemed manageable. The LSD also bestowed him with an ability to better read between the lines of social interactions and emotions in ways “I quite literally could never have imagined,” he writes in Autism on Acid, a book he published in 2019.

Aaron discovered MDMA shortly after LSD, when he was invited to a gathering of artists, musicians, and other creative types. By this time, he was an old hand at classic psychedelics, but MDMA was unique, he found, in that the experience never strayed beyond the realm of his own narrative, “with my ego fully intact,” he said. “It was like taking a crystallized form of intuition.”

MDMA’s use as a tool for reducing social anxiety was also made clear to Aaron that night, when he sat down next to a stranger and unhesitatingly struck up a conversation. He felt comfortable, he found, not only chatting but also just being silent with the other person and enjoying the shared moment. “In that instance, I struggled to feel like I had a problem, and I struggled to feel like, if a problem came up, it would be bad,” Aaron recalled. “Everything seemed endurable, just because of how much love I felt for being alive. And for the other people with me as well.”

Aaron has taken MDMA around seven times since then, adhering to a general rule of giving himself at least three months in between sessions. “I’ve intentionally kept myself at a distance from something that can be so great,” he noted. But even the handful of times he’s tried it, he said, it “feels like a lot of learning,” especially with regard to social situations. As he explained, “I’ve been able to witness myself being social, rather than just contemplate why I am socially anxious.”

Aaron isn’t the only autistic person to have serendipitously discovered MDMA’s usefulness for overcoming social anxiety. “We’re a diverse bunch, but one of the traits that seems to be fairly universal for us is how curiosity-driven we are,” said Nick Walker, a professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. “A lot of autistic people do end up experimenting with psychedelics,” she added. “I’ve certainly encountered people in the autistic community who have said they’d gone to a party, done MDMA, and felt much more comfortable than usual.”

In 2012 Walker was presented with an opportunity to dig more deeply into these intriguing anecdotal accounts when Alicia Danforth—then a clinician at the Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and a colleague of Charles Grob—reached out to her about collaborating. Danforth was also in communication with MAPS, which had received some funds from a donor earmarked for research on MDMA and autism. Based on published data showing that MDMA could increase empathy in typically developing individuals, the MAPS team had originally thought about carrying out a study to test whether MDMA could also help autistic people feel more empathy. Both Danforth and Walker pointed out that for autistic people, however, this was misguided. As Walker said, “It’s starting from false premises that the autistic community has been pushing back against for a couple decades now.” Indeed, since autism became a diagnosis in 1943, mainstream psychology and academia have pathologized autism and cast autistic individuals as being emotionally deficient, including lacking in empathy. Those flawed assumptions spring in part from neurological and behavioral differences that can exist between autistic and nonautistic people, creating communication difficulties. Because neurotypical people are in the majority, though, misunderstandings have traditionally been blamed entirely on autistic people, Walker said, and autistics have also been expected to shoulder the full burden of trying to fit into a world not built by or for them. While a rising tide of autistic academics such as Walker are working to change this—as is the autistic community at large—for now the dominant discourse still treats autism as a disorder in need of curing.

Danforth is not autistic, but her PhD research includes an analysis of data she collected from autistic individuals who had used MDMA. The hundred accounts shared with her revealed a wide array of benefits people perceived from taking MDMA, such as increasing their courage, communication skills, and feelings of connection. Many people also reported lasting healing with regard to trauma and social anxiety. Given Danforth’s dissertation findings and Walker’s real-world experience, they proposed that MAPS pursue a study trying to address something that autistic people themselves tend to identify as a problem and that MDMA seemed to have a high likelihood of being able to help with: social anxiety. While social anxiety isn’t an intrinsic aspect of autism, Walker emphasized, it is “something a lot of autistic people have because they have a lifelong history of social rejection.”

The twelve autistic adults who wound up taking part in the MAPS-sponsored double-blind, placebo-controlled study all had very severe social anxiety, and most also had a history of trauma—a common occurrence for autistic people. Working in an autism-friendly space that Walker helped design, Danforth and Grob oversaw two eight-hour therapy sessions with participants who were given either a placebo or MDMA (75 to 125 milligrams, sourced from the original David Nichols batch). During the active sessions, Danforth and Grob guided participants through various methods for exploring and communicating their feelings, including art therapy and the use of a deck of around fifty cards that visually depicted emotions. After each active treatment session, participants received daily phone calls for a week and three in-person integration meetings.

As Danforth, Walker, Grob, and their colleagues reported in 2018 in Psychopharmacology, at the end of the trial, participants who had received therapy paired with MDMA had significantly greater reduction in their social anxiety symptoms compared to those who had received therapy and a placebo. In a six-month follow-up after the sessions, the social anxiety scores for people in the MDMA group had either remained at the same lowered level or improved slightly—results, Walker said, that “fit our most optimistic hypothesis.”

Berra Yazar-Klosinski, MAPS PBC’s chief scientific officer and a coauthor on the social anxiety study, said she was most heartened to hear personal stories from participants about how their lives had improved in the months and years after the trial. One individual who initially presented with obesity lost eighty pounds after treatment; another moved out from their parents’ house, got married, and had kids; and another joined a soccer club and finished their college degree. One participant even attended a scientific conference with Danforth and gave a presentation about their experience in the trial. “The fact that this person went from having severe social anxiety to talking onstage is amazing,” said Yazar-Klosinski, who has a brother on the autism spectrum. “It’s really those kinds of events that are the true measure of improvement.”

*

Aaron already credits MDMA and other psychedelics with dramatically changing and improving his life. After his book came out, and as he continued to post about his experiences online, he began receiving more and more emails from other autistic people looking to compare notes and share their own stories about psychedelics. In response, in 2020 Aaron cofounded the Autistic Psychedelic Community, an online group for people interested in the intersection of psychedelics and neurodivergence. The group sponsors weekly Sunday Zoom discussions that have attracted some eighteen hundred attendees, including people from as far away as Australia, Kenya, and Israel. Around four thousand people have participated on the group’s messaging forums, and Aaron also maintains an “Autistic Psychedelic Wiki” of peer-reviewed literature pertaining to psychedelics and autism. While education is important, Aaron’s main goal, he said, “is really bringing autistics together to accept one another and to demonstrate radical acceptance outwardly, because most of us are acclimated to radical rejection.”

Aaron is now collaborating as a coinvestigator with researchers at University College London to conduct a qualitative survey with autistic people about their use of psychedelics, and he is also working on an audio documentary on the same topic. Relatedly, in 2021 he published Autistic Psychedelic, a compilation of community essays and survey responses. Some of the stories people shared provided anecdotal support for the research findings about social anxiety and MDMA and mirrored Aaron’s own experiences. Shae, for example, described herself as a twenty-seven-year-old who thinks in colors, shapes, and sounds rather than words. When she tried MDMA, she said, she experienced “effortless and fluid verbal communication” for the first time in her life. Suzanne, a thirty-two-year-old who also has ADHD, wrote that MDMA made her feel “seen and understood by my neurotypical friends in a way that I hadn’t experienced previously and vice versa. I learned more about actively listening to other people and that at the end of the day, neurodivergent and neurotypical people both want to connect, to be understood, and to love and be loved.”

The valuable lessons MDMA can impart about communication, connection, and acceptance can apply just as well to people who are not on the spectrum, too. My neurotypical friend John Allison, for example, is the type of guy who isn’t afraid to go to a bar by himself on a Friday night, because he knows he can just start a conversation with whoever is sitting next to him. He wasn’t always like this, though. John described himself as being “not that well socially calibrated” growing up in Arkansas—a wallflower at parties and the quiet kid at school. “I wanted to be social and be able to make more friends, to have better connections and have a good time with other people,” he said. “But I didn’t really know how to get out of my shell.”

As he got older John pushed himself to be more outgoing, but he still frequently felt anxious and awkward, especially in groups. When he was thirty-four, however, he tried Molly [MDMA] for the first time at a warehouse somewhere in Brooklyn and “just exploded,” he said. “I could talk to anyone and express myself in ways I hadn’t been able to before, and I could empathize more openly with strangers. I was surprised at how many different conversations I had, and how well they went. It was something I’d been trying to do, but I didn’t know how to do it until Molly just brought it out of me.” After the Molly-induced “jolt” to John’s system, he started making a point of trying to access that version of himself in his sober life. When he did, he found that he got the same positive reactions from friends and strangers alike. As these experiences built, so too did John’s confidence. Today, his practiced friendliness comes across as effortless and natural.

MDMA seems to be an especially effective tool for facilitating communication and overcoming social anxiety, Lieberman said, because it “resets your expectations about other people and the reaction you’re going to get from them.” The drug also changes how people express and respond to emotions, a feature that researchers think could help them identify the fundamental components of meaningful connection. “We can use MDMA as a tool to bottle that sense of deep, instant connection and study it in the lab, and also as a tool to directly improve people’s lives,” said Sonja Lyubomirsky, a social psychologist at UC Riverside who specializes in happiness. In 2022 Lyubomirsky published a paper proposing a new field of study, psychedelic social psychology, that would incorporate psychoactive substances like MDMA into research investigating topics varying from how to foster a connection to nature to how to reduce prejudice and intergroup conflict. This “exciting new frontier” is only in its infancy, Lyubomirsky wrote to her colleagues, and she fully expects “an avalanche of ideas for relevant research questions and paradigms to emerge.”

Studies have already shown, for example, that individuals on MDMA are slower to pick up on angry facial expressions, but that they react with extra enthusiasm to happy expressions. The drug also lowers fear of being judged or rejected, freeing people up to experiment with different modes of interacting. There are hints that these lab-based findings might translate for some MDMA users into real-life gains. According to a 2023 analysis of data collected from 214,505 U.S. adults for the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, people who have taken MDMA at least once in their lives, compared to those who have never taken the drug, have lower odds of difficulty interacting with strangers; of difficulty engaging in social activities, such as visiting with friends or going to parties; and of being prevented from being social due to a mental health issue. “A lot of social anxiety is about the idea of, if I put myself out there, I will be shamed, humiliated, and judged, and that’s terrifying to think about,” Lieberman said. “MDMA can move the needle on that by allowing you to have different experiences than you typically do.”

In best cases, he added, the drug can help “transform your understanding of yourself, the world, and your relationship to it, and give you new beliefs moving forward.”

***

Excerpted from I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World. Used with the permission of the publisher, Bloomsbury. Copyright © 2023 by Rachel Nuwer. 

The post I Feel Love: MDMA for Autism and Social Anxiety appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Illustration via 99designs

“Question your truth.”

— David Eagleman

David Eagleman (@davideagleman) is a neuroscientist, New York Times bestselling author, TED speaker, and Guggenheim Fellow. He is the writer and presenter of the Emmy-nominated series The Brain on PBS, as well as the podcast Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman. In Palo Alto, California, he teaches at Stanford University, runs a startup neurotech company called Neosensory, and directs the Center for Science and Law. Dr. Eagleman also runs a film and television production company, Cognito Entertainment, to bring scientific themes (fiction and nonfiction) to the screen. He is the author of eight books, including the international bestsellers Sum, Incognito, and his newest book, Livewired.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

Brought to you by  Vuori  comfortable and durable performance apparel,  Athletic Greens’s AG1  all-in-one nutritional supplement, and  AeroPress  3-in-1 coffee press for delicious brews.

Listen onApple Podcasts[image error]Listen onSpotify[image error]Listen onOvercast#674: Neuroscientist David Eagleman — Exploring Consciousness, Sensory Augmentation, The Lazy Susan Method of Extraordinary Productivity, Dreaming, Improving Hearing with a Wristband, Synesthesia, Stretching Time with Novelty, Lessons from Titans of Science, and Much More

This episode is brought to you by Vuori Clothing! Vuori is a new and fresh perspective on performance apparel, perfect if you are sick and tired of traditional, old workout gear. Everything is designed for maximum comfort and versatility so that you look and feel as good in everyday life as you do working out.

Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at VuoriClothing.com/Tim. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but you’ll also enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and free returns.

This episode is brought to you by AeroPress! If you haven’t tried coffee made with an AeroPress, you’re in for a treat. With more than 45,000 five-star reviews and customers in more than 60 countries, it might be the highest-rated coffee maker on the planet. This press uses a patented 3-in-1 technology that combines the best of several brew methods into one, easy-to-use, very portable device. Because it combines the best of 3 methods, you get a cup that is full bodied like a French press, smooth and complex like when using the pour-over method and rich in flavor like espresso.

As I wrote in The 4-Hour Chef: “This is now, bar none, my favorite brewing method.” And now they have a new Crystal Clear version—sleek enough for display and tough enough for the road. Pick one up at AeroPress.com/Tim for less than $50.

This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 by Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. 

Right now, Athletic Greens is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and 5 free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product.

Want to hear another episode that ponders the nature of reality? Have a listen to my conversation with Professor Donald Hoffman here, in which we discuss the science of consciousness, how perception may influence the physical world, the holographic model of the universe, panpsychism (and influential panpsychists), cosmological polytope, the use of hallucinogenic drugs to tap into deeper reality and interact with conscious agents, QBism, the probability of zero that humans evolved to see reality in full, and much more wild stuff.

#585: Professor Donald Hoffman — The Case Against Reality, Beyond Spacetime, Rethinking Death, Panpsychism, QBism, and More

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Connect with David Eagleman:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok

Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain by David Eagleman | AmazonIncognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman | AmazonSum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman | AmazonThe Brain with David Eagleman | Prime VideoInner Cosmos with David EaglemanWhere Science Meets Story | Cognito EntertainmentBridging the Gap between Neuroscience and the Law | Center for Science & LawThe Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory by A.R. Luria | AmazonMnemonist | WikipediaQ & A About Synesthesia | David EaglemanHyper Memory, Synaesthesia, Savants Luria and Borges Revisited | Dementia & NeuropsychologiaHow to Build a Memory Palace | Art of MemoryWelcome to 5-Bullet Friday | Tim FerrissPink Floyd “Time” Laser Show | Laser PicturesDavid Eagleman: Can We Create New Senses for Humans? | TED 2015Could This Futuristic Vest Give Us a Sixth Sense? | Smithsonian MagazineThe Next Generation of Hearing Science | NeosensoryBinaural Beats: Sleep, Therapy, and Meditation | HealthlineMoonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer | AmazonTinnitus Symptoms and Causes | Mayo ClinicMicrowave Sensing of Water Quality | IEEE AccessProtect Your Autistic Child from Sensory Meltdowns | Abrace.aiFinance and Sensory Addition: Feeling the System and Perceiving the Stock Market by Iona Sharp Casas | Academia.eduWhy Ebbinghaus’ Savings Method from 1885 Is a Very ‘Pure’ Measure of Memory Performance | Psychonomic Bulletin & ReviewHow Accurate Are Memories of 9/11? | Scientific AmericanSalk Institute for Biological Studies10 Unsolved Mysteries Of The Brain by David Eagleman | Discover MagazineConsciousness | Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyIs Human Consciousness Creating Reality? | Big ThinkPanpsychism | Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyProfessor Donald Hoffman — The Case Against Reality, Beyond Spacetime, Rethinking Death, Panpsychism, QBism, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #585The Neural Correlates of Consciousness and Attention: Two Sister Processes of the Brain | Frontiers in NeuroscienceXPRIZE FoundationWhy Do We Dream? A New Theory on How It Protects Our Brains | David EaglemanThe Gray Mouse Lemur (Microcebus Murinus) As a Model for Early Primate Brain Evolution | Current Opinion in NeurobiologyWhat Do Blind People Dream About? | Sleep FoundationRichard Turner — The Magical Phenom Who Will Blow Your Mind | The Tim Ferriss Show #411Dealt | Prime VideoCosmos with Carl Sagan | AmazonEagleman and Eno Perform Sum | David EaglemanSum at the Royal Opera House | David EaglemanStray Questions for: David Eagleman | The New York TimesInvisible Cities by Italo Calvino | Amazon11 Questions You’re Too Embarrassed to Ask about Magical Realism | VoxOne Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez | AmazonLabyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges | AmazonBeloved by Toni Morrison | AmazonSpotted Horses, Old Man, The Bear by William Faulkner | AmazonThe Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino | AmazonNeuroscientist David Eagleman on What Is Possible in the Cosmos | Smithsonian MagazineHypothesis Testing: A Step-by-Step Guide with Easy Examples | ScribbrRabaha Lazy Susan Organizer | AmazonPancakes 24/7 | IHOPThe 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss | AmazonMotion Aftereffect | WikipediaMartin Heidegger Quotes | GoodreadsWhat is Possibilianism? | PossibilianSherlock | Prime VideoPotemkin Village | WikipediaIntroducing ChatGPT | OpenAIBrain Time by David Eatleman | EdgeSHOW NOTES[07:10] Mnemonists and synesthetes.[12:13] Creating new senses.[17:39] Practical applications in practice.[24:36] Five years from now.[28:26] The curious resilience and vulnerability of memory.[32:25] Testing the accuracy of memory.[34:50] Meeting Francis Crick.[36:25] The dangerous lumberjack.[39:43] Dream projects.[41:23] Exploring consciousness.[44:38] Dreaming and brain plasticity.[54:13] Influences.[57:23] Why neuroscience?[1:00:22] Sum: An extended failure that became a wild success.[1:05:36] The Don Vaughn method.[1:07:02] Recommended reading.[1:08:50] Hypothesis testing.[1:09:40] Lazy Susan advice.[1:11:18] A week in the life of David.[1:16:28] Livewired.[1:20:48] Assumptions ripe for challenging.[1:25:34] Possibilianism.[1:27:35] David’s billboard.[1:30:28] Empire of the Invisible.[1:32:11] Learning from AI.[1:34:42] Perception of time.[1:39:47] Idiotheses.[1:40:59] Parting thoughts.MORE DAVID EAGLEMAN QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“The brain is locked in silence and darkness inside the skull, and all it ever sees are these little electrical signals … yet when you open your eyes and look at the world, you see everything in full color and it looks so rich and you’re hearing music and you’re feeling things on your fingertips and you’re smelling cinnamon. All these things seem like very distinct senses to you, but they’re all made of exactly the same stuff, which is these electrochemical spikes. And so I got really interested in this idea of could we feed information into the brain via an unusual source, and would the brain just figure it out?”

— David Eagleman

“We experience lots of data. When you’re a kid, when you’re a baby, you don’t know how the heck to use your eyes or ears or whatever. You’re just getting all this data going into the darkness there and you figure stuff out. You figure out correlations.”

— David Eagleman

“Memory is a myth-making machine, and we’re constantly reinventing our past, especially as we tell the stories over and over again.”

— David Eagleman

“I think the notion of how plastic the brain actually is is something that’s totally underappreciated. There’s an idea that I think many people have, which is, “Oh, you’re just born with the brain. The brain unpacks and then you’re who you are,” but really, we are totally functions of our culture and our society. And one of the things that’s amazing to me is, imagine, Tim, that you and I were born 10,000 years ago, exactly the same DNA, but we wouldn’t be anything like what we are now. Even though with the same DNA we might look vaguely like we do now, but my God, the culture, everything we’re pulling in would be so different. And that’s what actually shapes a human being.”

— David Eagleman

“The beauty of science is that it’s always willing to knock down its own walls.”

— David Eagleman

“Question your truth.”

— David Eagleman

PEOPLE MENTIONEDAlexander Romanovich LuriaMnemosyneKim PeekEd CookeElizabeth A. PhelpsFrancis CrickChristof KochRichard TurnerRead MontagueCarl SaganBrian EnoMax RichterDon VaughnGabriel García MárquezItalo CalvinoJorge Luis BorgesToni MorrisonWilliam FaulknerMarco PoloKublai KhanWalt WhitmanEd ZschauAnnaka HarrisMartin HeideggerJames WatsonVoltaireSherlock HolmesBenedict CumberbatchGregory House

The post Neuroscientist David Eagleman — Exploring Consciousness, Sensory Augmentation, The Lazy Susan Method of Extraordinary Productivity, Dreaming, Improving Hearing with a Wristband, Synesthesia, Stretching Time with Novelty, Lessons from Titans of Science, and Much More (#674) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Illustration via 99designs

“I do not take no for an answer. And this is a message that I say to young people: ‘You should dare to do things. And no one has the right to say you cannot bring a new perspective into things.’ And so I always say, ‘Be daring and persevere.'”

— Dr. Nora Volkow

Nora D. Volkow, MD, is Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health. NIDA is the world’s largest funder of scientific research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction. Dr. Volkow’s work has been instrumental in demonstrating that drug addiction is a brain disorder. As a research psychiatrist, Dr. Volkow pioneered the use of brain imaging to investigate how substance use affects brain functions. In particular, her studies have documented how changes in the dopamine system affect the functions of brain regions involved with reward and self-control in addiction. She has also made important contributions to the neurobiology of obesity, ADHD, and aging.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

Brought to you by  Athletic Greens’s AG1  all-in-one nutritional supplement,  House of Macadamias  delicious and nutritious nuts, and  Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover  sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating.

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Listen onApple Podcasts[image error]Listen onSpotify[image error]Listen onOvercast#673: Dr. Nora Volkow — Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep! Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature.

Go to EightSleep.com/Tim and save $250 on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia.

This episode is brought to you by House of Macadamias delicious and nutritious nuts! I love macadamia nuts and have been enjoying them often since keto expert Dr. Dominic D’Agostino recommended them on the podcast in 2015. They taste great, and with more healthy, monounsaturated fat than both olive oil and avocados, 27% fewer carbs than almonds, and more than 50% fewer carbs than cashews, they’re the perfect low-carb, keto-friendly, nutty snack. In fact, I just ate a handful of lightly white-chocolate-covered macadamias about an hour ago to keep me going through the afternoon until dinner. And I will say this: ​House of Macadamias produces the best-tasting macadamia nuts I’ve ever eaten… by far.

​Now, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast can use code TIM20 to get 20% off all orders and a free box of their best-selling Namibian sea-salted macadamia nuts worth $35! If these are not the best macadamia nuts you have ever eaten, House of Macadamias will give a full 100% refund, guaranteed.

This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 by Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. 

Right now, Athletic Greens is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and 5 free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product.

Want to hear another episode with someone on the front lines of drug research? Listen to my conversation with Dr. Suresh Muthukumaraswamy, in which we discuss the durability of antidepressant effects from certain psychedelic therapies, improving the impact of scientific research, the obstacles to getting ketamine labeled as an antidepressant, the difficulty of applying placebo controls to psychedelic research, the training of clinical personnel in new science as it becomes available, avoiding another 50 years of psychedelic research darkness, and much more.

#619: Dr. Suresh Muthukumaraswamy — LSD Microdosing, Classical Psychedelics vs. Ketamine, Science and Speed in New Zealand, Placebo Options, and The Infinite Possibilities of Studying Mind-Altering Compounds

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODEFollow the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA):

Website | Nora’s Blog | Twitter | Facebook

Addiction: A Disease of Free Will by Dr. Nora Volkow | APA 2015Leon Trotsky Was My Grandfather: An Interview With Esteban Volkov | JacobinThe Trotsky Assassination | HistoryBloodstained Ice Axe Used to Kill Trotsky Emerges After Decades in the Shadows | The GuardianA Theory on the Nature of Physiologic Opiate Dependence: A Formal Statement | NIDA Research MonographUnderstanding Quantitative Analysis in Chemistry | ThoughtCo.Revolutionary Thinker | The Washington PostThe University Health Science Center at HoustonCerebral Blood Flow in Chronic Cocaine Users: A Study with Positron Emission Tomography | The British Journal of PsychiatryThe Scientist Battling the Addiction Crisis | NatureDemerol (Meperidine Hydrochloride, USP) | FDAWhy Fentanyl is a Drug Dealer’s Dream — But a Family’s Nightmare | NarcononWhy Xylazine, the Veterinary Drug That Federal Officials Call an “Emerging Threat,” Doesn’t Respond to Naloxone | CBS NewsAmerica’s War on Drugs — 50 Years Later | The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human RightsThe Drug War’s Deepest Failure: Making Users the Enemy | Mother JonesUndoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction Is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction by Maia Szalavitz | AmazonDr. Nora D. Volkow: A General in the Drug War | The New York TimesPsychedelic and Dissociative Drugs | NIDAPsychedelics May Lessen Fear of Death and Dying, Similar to Feelings Reported by Those Who’ve Had Near Death Experiences | Johns Hopkins MedicineWhy Psychedelic Drugs May Become a Key Treatment for PTSD and Depression | Smithsonian MagazineNIH-Funded Psychedelic Trial Will Study Whether Hallucinogen Can Help Smokers Quit | NBC NewsStudy Design 101 | Himmelfarb Health Sciences LibraryFunding Cutting-Edge Scientific Research | Saisei FoundationErik Vance — The Magic and Power of Placebo | The Tim Ferriss Show #194The Problem at the Heart of Modern Psychedelic Clinical Research | New AtlasDr. Suresh Muthukumaraswamy — LSD Microdosing, Classical Psychedelics vs. Ketamine, Science and Speed in New Zealand, Placebo Options, and The Infinite Possibilities of Studying Mind-Altering Compounds | The Tim Ferriss Show #619Increased Global Integration in the Brain after Psilocybin Therapy for Depression | Nature MedicineNo Hallucinations? LSD Relatives Appear to Treat Depression in Mice without Obvious Side Effects | SciencePsychoplastogens: A Promising Class of Plasticity-Promoting Neurotherapeutics | Journal of Experimental NeurosciencePsilocybin Mushrooms Found to Help People with Alcohol Use Disorder | NBC NewsPsilocybin Therapy Sharply Reduces Excessive Drinking, Small Study Shows | The New York TimesHow Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick the Habit | Short WaveNeurocircuitry of Addiction | NeuropsychopharmacologyDr. Gül Dölen on Rethinking Psychedelics, New Applications (Autism, Stroke, and Allergies), The Neurobiology of Beginner’s Mind, Octopuses on MDMA, and The Master Key of Metaplasticity | The Tim Ferriss Show #667Dr. John Krystal — All Things Ketamine, The Most Comprehensive Podcast Episode Ever | The Tim Ferriss Show #625How Does Ketamine Work Differently from Other Psychedelics? | Psychology TodayIntranasal Salvinorin A Improves Neurological Outcome in Rhesus Monkey Ischemic Stroke Model Using Autologous Blood Clot | Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & MetabolismTranscranial Magnetic Stimulation: A Review of Its Evolution and Current Applications | Industrial Psychiatry JournalDeep Brain Stimulation | Johns Hopkins MedicineUltrasound as a Neurotherapeutic: A Circuit- and System-Based Interrogation | FocusLow-Intensity Continuous Ultrasound Therapies — A Systematic Review of Current State-of-the-Art and Future Perspectives | Journal of Clinical MedicineFocused Ultrasound for Parkinson’s Disease | The Michael J. Fox FoundationAn Investigation of Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound for Addiction | NIH ReporterIs It Too Soon To Start Talking about a Cure for Addiction? | Nora’s Blog at NIDAWhy Is There Comorbidity between Substance Use Disorders and Mental Illnesses? | NIDASuicide Deaths Are a Major Component of the Opioid Crisis that Must Be Addressed | NIDA ArchivesSHOW NOTES[06:09] Cadaver homework.[09:07] The Trotsky connection.[17:07] How Nora’s father viewed the role of science.[20:59] Julian Villarreal.[27:38] A perspective of perseverance.[33:48] Instilling perseverance in younger scientists.[35:08] Dancing with Demerol.[40:05] The current state of addiction in the US.[44:28] The War on Drugs.[49:42] Increasing societal confidence in therapeutic psychedelics.[55:38] Advice for researchers seeking more federal funding.[1:02:12] Gauging the value of the hallucinogenic experience.[1:06:04] Implications for multiple applications of one compound.[1:13:36] Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and a promising alternative.[1:19:49] New hope for Parkinson’s disease sufferers?[1:23:51] Comorbidities, addiction considerations, and other parting thoughts.MORE DR. NORA VOLKOW QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“Science should be guided by data, but science has a religious nature to it also. And once a model is created, it becomes very difficult to change it. And it takes a long, long time for concepts that have been consolidated, as accepted as the truth, to be questioned.”
— Dr. Nora Volkow

“I do not take no for an answer. And this is a message that I say to young people: ‘You should dare to do things. And no one has the right to say you cannot bring a new perspective into things.’ And so, I always say, ‘Be daring and persevere.'”
— Dr. Nora Volkow

“In terms of the war on drugs, I think that basically what it did was it created a mechanism that could perpetuate structural racism. It is very tragic to see how its enforcement led to the incarceration of young black Americans.”
— Dr. Nora Volkow

PEOPLE MENTIONEDEsteban VolkovLeon TrotskyFrancisco FrancoJoseph StalinRamón MercaderNatalia SedovaJulian VillarrealRuy Pérez TamayoRichard M. NixonJohn EhrlichmanMatthew W. JohnsonRobin Carhart-HarrisMichael BogenschutzPeter HendricksGül DölenJohn Krystal

The post Dr. Nora Volkow — Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) (#673) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Illustration via 99designs

“It is entirely possible that you work in a place where you have no options. You have no agency. You have no significance. If that is actually true, you should quit, because you don’t get tomorrow over again. My guess: it is not actually true. My guess is you have more agency than you are prepared to embrace.”

— Seth Godin

Seth Godin is the author of 21 international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about work. His books have been translated into 38 languages and Seth’s books include Tribes, Purple Cow, Linchpin, The Dip, and This Is Marketing. Seth writes one of the most popular marketing blogs in the world, and two of his TED talks are among the most popular of all time. He is the founder of the altMBA; the social media pioneer Squidoo; and Yoyodyne, one of the first internet companies.

His new book is The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

Brought to you by  AeroPress  3-in-1 coffee press for delicious brews,  Allbirds  incredibly comfortable shoes, and  Shopify  global commerce platform providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business. 

Listen onApple Podcasts[image error]Listen onSpotify[image error]Listen onOvercast#672: Seth Godin — The Pursuit of Meaning, The Life-Changing Power of Choosing Your Attitude, Overcoming Rejection, Life Lessons from Zig Ziglar, and Committing to Making Positive Change

This episode is brought to you by AeroPress! If you haven’t tried coffee made with an AeroPress, you’re in for a treat. With more than 45,000 five-star reviews and customers in more than 60 countries, it might be the highest-rated coffee maker on the planet. This press uses a patented 3-in-1 technology that combines the best of several brew methods into one, easy-to-use, very portable device. Because it combines the best of 3 methods, you get a cup that is full bodied like a French press, smooth and complex like when using the pour-over method and rich in flavor like espresso.

As I wrote in The 4-Hour Chef: “This is now, bar none, my favorite brewing method.” And now they have a new Crystal Clear version—sleek enough for display and tough enough for the road. Pick one up at AeroPress.com/Tim for less than $50.

This episode is brought to you by Allbirds! Allbirds are incredibly comfortable shoes, sustainably made, with design rooted in simplicity. I’ve been wearing Allbirds for the last several months, and I’ve been alternating between two pairs. I started with the Tree Runners (in marine blue, if you’re curious), and now I’m wearing the Tree Dashers, and the Tree Dashers are my current “daily driver.” I stick with the blue hues, and the Dashers are in buoyant blue. The color pops, and I’ve received a ton of compliments.

The Tree Dasher is an everyday running and walking shoe that’s also great for light workouts. It’s super comfortable, and I’ve been testing it on long walks in Austin and New Zealand on both trails and pavement. Find your perfect pair at Allbirds.com today and use code TIM for free socks with a purchase of $48 or more. Just add a pair of socks to your shopping cart and apply code TIM to make the pair free.

This episode is brought to you by Shopify! Shopify is one of my favorite platforms and one of my favorite companies. Shopify is designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. In no time flat, you can have a great-looking online store that brings your ideas to life, and you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day and drive sales. No coding or design experience required.

Go to  shopify.com/Tim  to sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period. It’s a great deal for a great service, so I encourage you to check it out. Take your business to the next level today by visiting  shopify.com/Tim .

Want to hear the last time Seth was on the show? Have a listen to our conversation here in which we discussed the etymology of the word “hack,” the making of magic, why hiding behind words like “quality” or “perfection” as a means of postponing action to avoid risk is a cop-out, what Isaac Asimov and Gary Gilmore can teach us about writer’s block, skills with a disproportionate return on investment that entrepreneurs and creatives should consider cultivating, the importance of applying constraints and boundaries to the learning process, and much more.

#476: Seth Godin on The Game of Life, The Value of Hacks, and Overcoming Anxiety

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODEConnect with Seth Godin:

Website | Seth’s Blog | Instagram | Facebook

Seth’s previous appearances on the podcast: 476, 402, 343, 177, 138 The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams by Seth Godin | Amazon Other Books by Seth Godin | AmazonBe Better Here | Sugarbush ResortThe Ups and Downs of Telemark Skiing (And 5 Reasons Why You Should Give It a Try) | Appalachian Mountain ClubWhat is Skate Skiing? | AdvntureBoomer Effect (Baby Boomer Factor) | InvestopediaThe Carbon Almanac: It’s Not Too Late by The Carbon Almanac Network, Edited by Seth Godin | AmazonMan’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl | AmazonAn Overview of Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy | Simply PsychologyPermission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers by Seth Godin | AmazonPurple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin | AmazonThe Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson | AmazonThe Place to Build Civilized Communities | DiscourseIs Plastic Recycling A Lie? Oil Companies Touted Recycling To Sell More Plastic | NPRExxon Scientists Predicted Global Warming with ‘Shocking Skill and Accuracy,’ Harvard Researchers Say | Harvard GazetteBig Oil Coined ‘Carbon Footprints’ to Blame Us for Their Greed. Keep Them on the Hook. | The GuardianWhat Is Nihilism? | Verywell MindThe Last Policeman: A Novel by Ben H. Winters | AmazonDon’t Look Up | NetflixExclusive: Amazon’s Attrition Costs $8 Billion Annually According to Leaked Documents. And It Gets Worse. | EngadgetThe Best Job You Ever Had | Seth’s BlogThe 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss | AmazonMechanical Turk | WikipediaAmazon Mechanical Turk | WikipediaNow is the Best Time | altMBA15 Bridezillas Who Made Me Disgusted By Wedding Culture | BuzzFeedSong of Increase: Listening to the Wisdom of Honeybees for Kinder Beekeeping and a Better World by Jacqueline Freeman | AmazonHow Do Honeybees Survive the Winter? | Suburban SodbusterSolitary Confinement: A Brief History | Mother JonesWhat Does the Panopticon Mean in the Age of Digital Surveillance? | The GuardianTrain, Track, and Share | StravaHere’s Why Apple Is Flying a Pirate Flag to Celebrate Its 40th Anniversary | MashableShark Tank | ABCPersonalized Videos Featuring Your Favorite Stars | CameoThe Complete I Ching | AmazonEmpowering the World to Develop Technology through Collective Knowledge | Stack OverflowWork With Us | AutomatticCreating the Most Frightening Company on Earth | Harvard Business ReviewSaatchi & SaatchiLet’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play: Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship by Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig | AmazonGoals Take You to The Top!: How to Get What You Want by Zig Ziglar | AmazonSecrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar | AmazonSee You at the Top by Zig Ziglar | AmazonBusiness Rules of Thumb by Seth Godin and Chip Conley | AmazonThe Rise and Fall of Squidoo | WizzleySteinway Model D | Steinway GrandCreate Your Online Store Today | ShopifyOne Platform to Connect | ZoomWe Are What You Read | Penguin PublishingSHOW NOTES[05:42] The changes of aging.[10:07] How Seth gets over momentary lapses of optimism.[16:13] The Carbon Almanac.[18:40] Addressing 21st-century nihilism.[26:23] Finding significance and making a difference.[35:34] The boss and the bees.[44:47] Ethically reclaiming meaning from work in the Quaker surveillance state.[51:50] Seth’s impression of my efforts over the years.[56:21] Circumnavigating false proxies.[1:02:17] Employee retention.[1:05:54] Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play.[1:08:07] Zig Ziglar.[1:12:12] Seth’s early career life.[1:13:45] Seth’s current career life.[1:17:01] The 140-year-old piano.[1:19:35] Meetings.[1:24:04] Page 19 thinking.[1:27:37] Soliciting useful writing feedback.[1:31:36] Parting thoughts.MORE SETH GODIN QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“What a gift I have today to be in the shoes of somebody who, at 62, gets to do things well, but only because I’m walking away from things I can’t do anymore. And instead of focusing on what I used to have, I’m really working hard and getting satisfaction out of focusing on what I do have and what I can do.”
— Seth Godin

“We are living in a culture where there’s an overhang of all these people with loud voices talking about the end of the world because it’s the end of their world, but it’s not the end of the world.”
— Seth Godin

“Some people believe that the purpose of business is to enable culture, to enable humanity. And some people believe that the purpose of humanity and culture is to enable business. And I think those people have too much influence right now, and they’re wrong.”
— Seth Godin

“When we think about tomorrow or the tomorrow after that, given the damage we’ve all done, we still live in culture, we still have this miracle. You and I are talking while thousands of miles apart, we have access to every piece of information. We have magical computers that can understand us and talk back. We can reach out to someone in need. We can connect to people who need to hear from us. And if you want to just give up because the world is going to be different in 20 years, that’s your choice. But given that we’ve got this window, it feels to me like we need to up our focus on humanity and connection and possibility and improvement of the condition, and maybe not worry so much about public demonstrations of power, firing people online, being brutal in the service of profit. Because we don’t have a profit shortage, we have a meaning shortage.”
— Seth Godin

“If you can figure out how to get five or 10 people together, you can probably ban gas-powered leaf blowers in your village. And that will have 50 times the impact of you switching to an electric car. Plus the idea of banding together with five or 10 or 15 other people, creating the conditions for other people to find something to care about and succeed at it, will fill you with meaning, not with despair.”
— Seth Godin

“Milton Friedman just made up this nonsense about the only purpose of a corporation is to maximize its profit. It lets people off the hook and they become tools of a system that grinds stuff out.”
— Seth Godin

“It is entirely possible that you work in a place where you have no options. You have no agency. You have no significance. If that is actually true, you should quit, because you don’t get tomorrow over again. My guess: it is not actually true. My guess is you have more agency than you are prepared to embrace.”
— Seth Godin

PEOPLE MENTIONEDZig ZiglarViktor FranklSigmund FreudAlfred AdlerKim Stanley RobinsonMilton FriedmanFrederick Winslow TaylorHenry FordJacqueline FreemanCesar ChavezSusan KareMatt MullenwegMahan KhalsaArthur C. ClarkeMichael CrichtonRay BradburyChip ConleyTobi LütkeSergey BrinDanny MeyerUrsula K. Le GuinNiki Papadopoulos

The post Seth Godin — The Pursuit of Meaning, The Life-Changing Power of Choosing Your Attitude, Overcoming Rejection, Life Lessons from Zig Ziglar, and Committing to Making Positive Change (#672) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Roughly five months ago, I held an AI art competition related to the fantasy world I’ve been building. I was trying to peek around corners, as I often do with new technologies.

Once it wrapped up, I felt a strange combination of things. It was something like one part falling in love; one part kid in a candy store; and two parts watching metaphorical birds flying overhead, harbingers of a massive forest fire on its way.

This post will share some learnings, art winners with highlights, and more.

There were a handful of rules for submissions, but the bolded portions below are the most important to me:

You can use any AI tools or combination of tools that you like, including DALL·E 2 (@OpenAI), Midjourney (@midjourney), Stable Diffusion (@StableDiffusion), Lexica (@LexicaArt,) NightCafe Studio (@NightcafeStudio), etc. You are also allowed to do manual touch-ups and fine-tuning. IMPORTANT: You *must* use Loom (@loom) or other tech to capture your full process.
…

Selections will be based on quality, creativity, presentation of process, and more. Process is important. People should at least be able to attempt to replicate what you did.

The entire point of the competition was to create this blog post, a simple collection of how-to tutorials that can get anyone up-skilled in a short period of time. Even if you hate everything about AI, here’s why I think it’s worth spending time on this…

The AI genie is out of the bottle. The more true experts I speak with, the clearer this is.

No matter how one feels about AI—and I have plenty of misgivings—the genie cannot be put back in the bottle. This is true for hundreds of sectors and millions of people, including artists. I’ve watched family members work their asses off as artists, I wanted to be a comic book penciler for 10+ years, and I’ve paid traditional artists hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. It’s a world that is near and dear to my heart.

But… there is no going back to the way things used to be. In fact, there is no compelling way to stall things for long. So the question for me isn’t “How can we stop AI art?,” as I don’t think it’s possible, but rather something like:

“What can artists do to get ahead of the curve?” or “How might proactive artists position themselves to benefit from this?” or “How can artists limit the damage of AI and carve out, or preserve, good niches for themselves?”

There are dozens of other similar questions we could ask, but I think the initial answer is the same for all of them: Learn to use AI tools.

To kickstart your art career, and even if you plan on using more traditional methods… learn to use AI tools.

To turbocharge your own art by streamlining mundane tasks… learn to use AI tools.

To learn the current weaknesses and blindspots of AI tools so you can plan around them… learn to use AI tools.

Most high-calibre artists have nothing to fear, many would-be artists have a lot to look forward to, and all artists have something to learn. If you would spend 10 hours at a weekend course that promised to improve the odds of a good living for the next decade, I think you should commit to spending 10 hours seriously using and scrutinizing the better AI tools. Even if you hate everything this represents, even if it’s an opponent you want to defeat, this is akin to watching tape of an opponent before a boxing match. Whether you want to surf the tsunami, dive through it, or get the hell out of the way, you need to understand the wave. To do that, you need to study it, and the sooner the better. The best defense is sometimes an early offense.

I hope you find this post helpful, and please leave comments with other recommendations. I’m sure I’ll get a few gems and a boatload of screeds, but such is the spice of the Internet.

This blog post is a rough draft and merely a starting point. And if you think the pace of AI development has been fast in the last six months, the next 12 months are going to make your head spin. I think the key is always returning your eyes to the road ahead of you instead of the rear-view mirror.

Just a few notes on structure before we dive in:

We included both “Winners” and “Honorable Mentions,” but all are included because they offered unique value or a unique approach.

I heavily weighed the incorporation of character traits. As I mention again below, it’s easy to make *something* pretty with AI, but to make a very *specific thing* with parameters and characteristics is much harder. For that reason, I tended to reward rougher art with better trait matching vs. polished art that used fewer traits.

Some tweets are no longer live, and we’ve indicated that with a comment.

Special Honorable Mention

I am putting the below Twitter thread by @JPEGHODL first, as the thread itself represents an excellent Midjourney 101 tutorial for people who haven’t used Discord much. This is placed here upfront, as many of the submissions use Midjourney:

Entry #2… pic.twitter.com/ZgauVCMbCG

— JPΞG HODL (@JPEGHODL) December 21, 2022

Winners

Tim’s comments on the below: This fella’s how-to blog post is fantastic. Highly recommend.
Original tweet by @ironclawai: https://twitter.com/ironclawai/status/1604528121360826373
Blog post with all process videos: https://ironclaw.me/2022/12/18/cockpunch-ai-characters-contest/

Tim’s comments on the below: Love this one. If you expand the Loom and watch and pause carefully, you can see the iterative process and also how disobedient AI is with some descriptors/prompts.
Original tweet by @Roof_boy_6ix: https://twitter.com/Roof_boy_6ix/status/1604672157744877568
Process video: https://www.loom.com/share/3b395c838e8e4e098e7a2c633aa88f24

Tim’s comments on the below: Matches the below character well. Good touch-ups at the end, plus use of Photopea.com.
Original tweet by @FPOkenny: https://twitter.com/FPOkenny/status/1605265213808599040
Process video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA-Xsk-WkbM

Tim’s comments on the below: Great showcase of Midjourney + DALL·E for removing features vs. inpainting, plus shows some common limitations (e.g., hands), though those limitations have been improved recently. Good matching.
Original tweet by @nat_sharpe_: https://twitter.com/nat_sharpe_/status/1605267590670082048
Video process: https://www.loom.com/share/c91e8b09c0c54fb3bedcd1804996db26

Tim’s comments on the below: This process video is amazing. I love the AI + physical art chops, especially starting with absolutely no experience with AI.
Original tweet by @shizudelphia: https://twitter.com/shizudelphia/status/1605316934631051264
Process video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H3hurVusN4

Tim’s comments on the below: Excellent at incorporating the actual character elements! His faithful inclusion of traits is quite likely the best of the bunch. That was one of the biggest challenges for everyone who competed. Making something pretty with AI is easy, but getting it to make something with well-defined characteristics is much harder.
Original tweet by @PSHoudini: https://twitter.com/PSHoudini/status/1604796676182532096
Process video: https://www.loom.com/share/8558d7597d3e414f8c69e0afb5810182

Tim’s comments on the below: Great explanation of Midjourney and fine tuning with Photoshop. I suspect that, more and more, both artists and writers will use AI to brainstorm rough drafts or starting points for heavy manual polishing.
Original tweet by @blockheim: https://twitter.com/blockheim/status/1605044205906165760
Video process: https://www.loom.com/share/1c6fe71de9b040dc97a8b46090d61941

Tim’s comments on the below: Fun use of traits and incorporated lore (e.g., Dakus), and the process video is also well done.
Original tweet by @WriterInVerse: https://twitter.com/WriterInVerse/status/1605387722033893378
Process video: https://www.loom.com/share/3d5bfe11e4634c889c5ea5546dc7a18c?t=6

Tim’s comments on the below: Thematically strong, rapid iteration, great narration.
Original tweet by @FLitz: https://twitter.com/FLitz/status/1605380881039773696
Process video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQv5Xr2qJVA

Honorable Mentions

Tim’s notes on the below: This is a good demo of quick Midjourney use, as well as use of variations and upscaling options. Most honorable mentions are honorable mentions because fewer traits were incorporated. Nonetheless, this end product really ended up eye-catching.
Original tweet by @Shakkas_Art: https://twitter.com/Shakkas_Art/status/1605029397710667776?s=20&t=mZHz0kVbGrVT4NMVPR7ACw
Process video: https://www.loom.com/share/2832c4abc7ad4ff0bc5de81959d2d031

Tim’s notes: Good process post, which I appreciate, as I sometimes digest things better via text. This is sometimes easier than freeze-framing the videos.
Original tweet by @BMAotC: https://twitter.com/BMAotC/status/1605157342550573057
Process blog post: https://medium.com/@BMAotC/the-ai-art-competition-beginneth-8d8d7cf70531

Original tweet by @gojeanyn: https://twitter.com/gojeanyn/status/1605397341875277824
Process video: https://www.loom.com/share/1a87f89388104fc791a483cb07f2df10

Tim’s notes on the below: The manual addition of the nose/earring is great.
Original tweet by @moonordust007: https://twitter.com/moonordust007/status/1605375068624019456

Tim’s notes: Excellent process video and shows the refinement of prompts, batching variations, then the finishing in Photoshop. I’m a sucker for Japanophilia.
Original tweet by @FLitz: https://twitter.com/FLitz/status/1605394944075567104
Process video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgHbP9XfDBQ

Going Off-Menu

Tim’s comments on the below: This one simply made me and Kevin Rose laugh, so I’m including it for fun.
Original tweet by @PiratePorter_: https://twitter.com/PiratePorter_/status/1604349855878459393
Process video: https://www.loom.com/share/998d7fc1d65940cc88d57eda258703c3

Tim notes on the below: This is clever. If you make it hard to see the attributes, you can dodge one challenge. I’ve seen some comic book artists do this with very dark styles that use a lot of black fills (e.g., shadows).
Original tweet by @Whisky_McTavish: https://twitter.com/Whisky_McTavish/status/1604187262253948929 [Note: This tweet is no longer available.]

Original tweet by @marluco: https://twitter.com/marluco/status/1605336280543375361?s=20&t=2XzfqZNP6tX-i1ut5Zt0Ng
Process video: https://www.loom.com/share/fee0cced51744de48bb66986d19027eb

Original tweet by @Shakkas_Art: https://twitter.com/Shakkas_Art/status/1605036430019133440?s=20&t=GY4IKGAVA5NqcoYIDD1K4A
Process video: https://www.loom.com/share/8874d9bc0bd94a09b548275b63e399f

Tim’s comments on the below: Everyone loves a good steampunk samurai…
Original tweet by @flamesbria02: https://twitter.com/flamesbria02/status/1605162558683746306
Process video: https://www.loom.com/share/27959b7fe1ff42828bae5e43fa301949

Tim’s comments on the below: This one is very good for including detailed gauntlets, which seemed to be one of the hardest parts of the assignment.
Original tweet by @FromInfinityTV: https://twitter.com/FromInfinityTV/status/1604899487088246784
Process video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-G1cZLMM1Y

Tim’s comments on the below: Great combo of AI and manual tweaking. Too fast to replicate, but it was still worth including.
Original tweet by @Singularifica: https://twitter.com/Singularifica/status/1605090514167943168 [Editor note: This tweet is no longer available.]
Process video: https://www.loom.com/share/ec460d28935b4ac3a93389958332db4e

Tim’s comments on the below: Funny “boomerang” story; great “let me go off menu” experiments. Cityscapes, coliseums, etc.
Original tweet by @DanSchoonmaker: https://twitter.com/DanSchoonmaker/status/1605331136783204355
Process blog post: https://www.schoon.me/blog/cockpunch-ai-art

Screenshot of prompts by @shmichael_eth: https://twitter.com/shmichael_eth/status/1604612837036490752/photo/2

The post So You Love (or Hate) AI Art… Here’s the Same Recommendation appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Illustration via 99designs

“Koreans are known to have this emotional repression, which then manifests and converts into brilliant art, romance, and passion—and also violence—and it’s called han.”

— Bobby Hundreds

Bobby Hundreds (@bobbyhundreds) is an artist, designer, and storyteller based in Los Angeles. He is best known as the co-founder and chief creative officer of global streetwear brand The Hundreds. He is also behind the Family Style Food Festival and the NFT project Adam Bomb Squad. Bobby is also the bestselling author of This Is Not a T-Shirt, a memoir about his life and how he built a brand around community.

His new book, NFTs Are a Scam / NFTs Are the Future, about his two-year journey into Web3, will publish through Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Brought to you by  Wealthfront  high-yield savings account,  Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover  sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating, and  LMNT  electrolyte supplement.

Listen onApple Podcasts[image error]Listen onSpotify[image error]Listen onOvercast#671: Bobby Hundreds — Building an Iconic Streetwear Brand, Making $7 Million in 40 Minutes, The Power of Garfield, Why Korean Entertainment is Taking Over the World, Maintaining the Mystery, The Fickleness of Fortune, and Developing Nunchi

This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 4.55% APY—that’s the Annual Percentage Yield—with the Wealthfront Cash Account. That’s more than eleven times more interest than if you left your money in a savings account at the average bank, according to FDIC.gov. 

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This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep! Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature.

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This episode is brought to you by LMNT! What is LMNT? It’s a delicious, sugar-free electrolyte drink mix. I’ve stocked up on boxes and boxes of this and usually use it 1–2 times per day. LMNT is formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs and perfectly suited to folks following a keto, low-carb, or Paleo diet. If you are on a low-carb diet or fasting, electrolytes play a key role in relieving hunger, cramps, headaches, tiredness, and dizziness.

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Want to hear an episode with another world-building artist who also doesn’t allow himself to be outsmarted by corporations? Have a listen to my first conversation with legendary comic book artist and writer Todd McFarlane in which we discussed rejection letters, meeting deadlines, compelling storytelling, leading a corporate exodus, bucking the status quo to become the status quo, and much more.

#639: Todd McFarlane, Legendary Comic Book Artist — How to Make Iconic Art, Reinvent Spider-Man, Live Life on Your Own Terms, and Meet Every Deadline

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODEConnect with Bobby Hundreds:

Substack | Twitter | Instagram | TikTok

NFTs Are a Scam / NFTs Are the Future: The Early Years: 2020-2023 by Bobby Hundreds | Amazon This Is Not a T-Shirt: A Brand, a Culture, a Community — A Life in Streetwear by Bobby Hundreds | AmazonThe HundredsFamily Style Food FestivalAdam Bomb Squad | The HundredsFarrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG)Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi | AmazonShoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight | AmazonCity of Arts & Innovation | Riverside, CaliforniaConfucianism | National GeographicAnna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy | AmazonLes Miserables by Victor Hugo | AmazonGarfield | WikipediaCalvin and Hobbes | WikipediaTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles | WikipediaA Bathing Ape (BAPE)NeighborhoodWTAPSA Beautiful Mind | Prime VideoTrapper Keeper | MeadBloggerGrowing Up with Gorilla Biscuits & Revelation Records: How Hardcore Influenced The Hundreds | The HundredsA Brief History of Zines | Punktuation!Odd Future (OFWGKTA)’90s and 2000s Fashion Brands That Will Make You Nostalgic | POPSUGAR FashionAmerican ApparelGone with the Wind | Prime VideoEvery Look From Fear of God’s Hollywood Fashion Show | High SnobietyTommy HilfigerWayback Week: A Brief Tour of The Hundreds’ History | The Hundreds10 Celebs You Didn’t Know… Love the Hundreds (Or Wore It Once) | The HundredsThe Hundreds Los Angeles | The HundredsMemento | Prime VideoWARP Magazine | Holden NowA Beginner’s Guide to Backpack Hip-Hop | Anywhere The Dope GoThe Rise and Fall of Rawkus Records (Documentary) | Def GoldblumBreak Down The Walls by Youth Of Today | Amazon MusicJapan’s Influence on Denim | Kiriko MadeEdwin Jeans Brad Pitt (Guitar) (Long) Japanese Commercial | YouTubeCafe De L’ambre: Legendary | Tokyo CoffeeJiro Dreams of Sushi | Prime VideoSquid Game | NetflixParasite | Prime VideoK-Everything: The Rise and Rise of Korean Culture | The GuardianEverything Everywhere All At Once | Prime VideoWho Is Bibigo, the Latest Los Angeles Lakers Jersey Sponsor Company? | NBC Sports Bay AreaFarmer JohnKorean BBQ & Hot Pot | KPOTLeague of Legends: Origins | YouTubeCrazy Rich Asians | Prime VideoHYBEBigHit MusicGangnam Style | Psy‘Gangnam Style’ Brought K-Pop to the World, but Haunted Its Creator | The New York Times1988 Summer Olympics, Seoul | WikipediaThere’s a Uniquely Korean Word for Rage and Regret. So Why Had I Never Heard of It? | CBC RadioFull History of Korea in 5 Minutes | History on MapsPhysical: 100 | NetflixCherry General Store | Cherry L.A.Runnin’ Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley | McCombs School, University of TexasHow Fairfax Ave. Became the Mecca of Streetwear | ComplexHUF WorldwideDiamond Supply Co.SupremeThe 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss | AmazonWhat Is ‘Nunchi’, the Korean Secret to Happiness? | The GuardianPachinko by Min Jin Lee | AmazonPachinko | Apple TVWhat Is the Game Pachinko? | POPSUGAR EntertainmentOrange Is the New Black | Prime VideoMission: Impossible | Prime VideoCatch Me If You Can | Prime VideoWhat Is RRR? All About the Award-Winning Indian Film Getting Oscar Buzz | PeopleThe Phantom of the Opera | The HundredsWhy ‘Phantom of the Opera’ is Closing on Broadway — And How It Will Rise Again | VarietyPeter Pan | Prime VideoThe Lost Boys | The HundredsMAGIC Fashion Trade Show Las VegasDark Horse ComicsUsagi YojimboThe Jacket | Andrew Lloyd Webber, InstagramPokémonThe Official Home of Harry Potter | Wizarding WorldHappy Earth Day T-Shirt | The HundredsBlue the Great | The HundredsRoald Dahl | The HundredsStar WarsCoachella Valley Music and Arts FestivalFrank Ocean: “It Came to Me in a Dream” | i-DFrank Ocean (In Our “Arch” T-Shirt) | The Hundreds, InstagramEpitaph RecordsHope, Revolution, and Dedication: My Life with Epitaph Records | The HundredsWho Framed Roger Rabbit | Prime Video‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ Creators on How They Broke All the Rules | The WrapDakin Garfield Stuck On You Commercial | YouTubeThe Tasteless History of the Peeing Calvin Decal | Trivia HappyDear Mr. Watterson | Prime VideoSnow Leopards 101 | National GeographicThe Brethren vs. Freeganism | Memoirs on a Rainy DayABC Primetime: The Brethren (AKA Garbage Eaters) | YouTubeWhat Is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT)? | InvestopediaNFTs Are Forever | The HundredsSneakers, Streetwear, Trading Cards, Handbags, Watches | StockXOnline Marketplace to Buy Fashion | GrailedBored Ape Yacht Club Sells $96 Million of Mutant Ape NFTs in One Hour | DecryptCryptoPunks — The NFTs That Started It All — Their Origin Story and Future Plans | PROOFLorcana by Ravensburger | DisneyDoodlesCult Digital Artist Beeple Raises Record $3.5 Million in NFT Auction | Crypto BriefingAn NFT Artwork by Beeple Just Sold for an Unbelievable $69 Million at Christie’s—Making Him the Third Most Expensive Living Artist at Auction | ARTnetNFT Royalties: What Are They and How Do They Work? | Cyber ScrillaThe Fall — And Arrest — Of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried | VoxThe Manson Family Story That Should’ve Been Turned Into a Movie | W MagazineWhat Are the Safest Ways To Store Bitcoin? | InvestopediaLessons From Proof Founder Kevin Rose’s $1.4M NFT Phishing Experience | BlockworksSmart Contracts: The Blockchain Technology That Will Replace Lawyers | BlockgeeksStarbucks Brewing Revolutionary Web3 Experience for its Starbucks Rewards Members | StarbucksAbout .SWOOSH | Nike‘Michael Jordan Changed the World’: The True Story behind Nike Movie Air | The GuardianNFT Royalties: Why Artists Love Them, and Traders Don’t | CNBC TV18Minimum 10% NFT Royalties: Letter to Platforms | Matt KaneOpenSea Just Cut Fees and Creator Royalties | NFT NowFEWOCiOUS Writes Emotional Letter to OpenSea Regarding Artist Royalties | NFT LatelyDeadfellaz’s Betty on Defending Artist Royalties | NFT NowIs Removal of Royalties a ‘Race to the Bottom?’ | HypemoonOpenSea’s Royalty Controversy Created a Unionization Movement in Web3 | NFT NowThe MeebitsThe Hundreds Badam Bomb Squad Launches NFT Mint | HypemoonDetective Comics #27 Value & Price Guide | QualityComixFull, Sealed Box of First Ed. Booster Packs Nearly $250k at Auction | Rally Rd.Gerhard Richter Surprises the Art World Again | Design MilkA Fictional World Built for These Chaotic Times | The Legend of CØCKPUNCHFunding Cutting-Edge Scientific Research | Saisei FoundationGold by Rumi | AmazonThe Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz | AmazonStart with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek | AmazonLeaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek | AmazonDeep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free by Héctor Tobar | AmazonThe Godfather by Mario Puzo | AmazonThe Godfather | Prime VideoShades of Grey: My Conversation with Mister Cartoon | The HundredsSHOW NOTES

Editor’s Note: Timestamps will be added shortly.

Signing to the prestigious Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG).Bobby’s black sheep origin story.When art entered the picture.Who was Abram Edelman?The double life of a parent-pleasing law student and clandestine artist.The Hundreds: from early days to 20 years on.The cosmic intervention of WARP magazine.Japan.The Korean Wave.Getting on the radar of tastemakers.Collaboration over competition makes a movement.Curating creatives assisted by nunchi.Necessary disconnections.Korea’s a creative hotspot today. Where should we look next?Rolling with the tides of fickle fashion.Collaborations, corporations, and the reason for limited editions.The current state of The Hundreds.Frank Ocean maintains the mystery.Getting collaboration deals without almost being sued or selling out.Hermit north stars.How to make $7 million in 40 minutes with NFTs (sort of not really).Making NFTs more useful than just another set of playing cards for wannabe day traders.Why did Bobby write NFTs Are a Scam / NFTs Are the Future?Charles Manson vs. SBF and subcultural security.Notable Web3 innovations emerging.A rumble over royalties and a counterintuitive lesson about collectible value.Recommended reading.Bobby’s billboard.Two tattoos.Parting thoughts.MORE BOBBY HUNDREDS QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“Koreans are known to have this emotional repression, which then manifests and converts into brilliant art, romance, and passion—and also violence—and it’s called han.”
— Bobby Hundreds

“I’ve never looked at anyone else as a competitor. I have always believed that I’m competing against myself. If any other brand is winning or getting one over on us, that’s our fault if we want to play that game. And so I’ve never looked at anyone as an enemy or going against or mitigating our success in any way. We have to work collaboratively in order to build the entire platform so all can be seen.”
— Bobby Hundreds

“Being a little bit far ahead, we’re always the harbingers of the bad storm approaching.”
— Bobby Hundreds

“It’s not about making money. It’s about making noise.”
— Bobby Hundreds

“If you’re going to work with a big dog, always make it look like you got one up on them, whether you got paid or you just came out on top.”
— Bobby Hundreds

“So much of what we do in streetwear is theater, and that’s the message that I want to send to the audience: that it’s all one and the same.”
— Bobby Hundreds

“Branding is all about saying ‘No,’ but I like saying ‘Yes’ to so much.”
— Bobby Hundreds

“Be slow to judgment.”
— Bobby Hundreds

“Everyone is in such a rush to be right, and definite, and have such a cemented idea of what truth is, or what the reality is, that they don’t want to give anything room to grow.”
— Bobby Hundreds

“Technology and science are all about making mistakes. Correcting, getting closer and closer to truth, which you never quite achieve. We should be doing that with people too, but we abbreviate them all the time, and we stunt them in our minds and say, ‘This is what that person is. Now I can move on to the next one.’ We’re collecting them as JPEGs. And people evolve, and they live, and they grow, and they change. They become different. We have to allow people to become different.”
— Bobby Hundreds

PEOPLE MENTIONEDJohn McPheeAndre AgassiJ.R. MoehringerBill WattersonKevin EastmanPeter LairdAbram EdelmanJonny KimWilliam J. ClintonBatman/Bruce WayneSuperman/Clark KentTyler, The CreatorParis HiltonTommy HilfigerJay-ZRick RubinLL Cool JBeastie BoysTaylor SwiftBlack FlagSlayerKool-Aid ManNigoBrad PittNeil StraussBTSBlackpinkPsyBob DylanBob KnightBill GurleyTofer ChinJames DeanMin Jin LeeYung KaziMachine Gun KellyRita OraOlivia MunnKarrueche TranRuby RoseBen HundredsSeth RogenKanye WestAndrew Lloyd WebberMickey MouseLost BoysStan SakaiMiyamoto UsagiBlue the GreatRoald DahlFrank OceanBad BunnyRosalíaKendall JennerHailey BieberGigi HadidBella HadidBrett GurewitzSteven SpielbergBugs BunnyJackson PollockJim DavisJon ArbuckleJ.D. SalingerDon BusweilerDaniel Day-LewisDave ChappelleTrevor McFedriesBeepleSam Bankman-FriedCharles MansonJoan DidionMichael JordanBen AffleckMatt DamonFEWOCiOUSBettyFvckrenderGerhard RichterJalal al-Din RumiPablo NerudaBen HorowitzPhil KnightSimon SinekHéctor TobarMario PuzoMister Cartoon

The post Bobby Hundreds — Building an Iconic Streetwear Brand, Making $7 Million in 40 Minutes, The Power of Garfield, Why Korean Entertainment is Taking Over the World, Maintaining the Mystery, The Fickleness of Fortune, and Developing “Nunchi” (#671) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Illustration via 99designs

Technologist, serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, self-experimenter, and all-around wild and crazy guy Kevin Rose (@KevinRose) rejoins me for another episode of The Random Show.

In this one, we discuss affordable luxuries for priceless lives, suiting up for a visit to the Magic Castle, Eliza Ivanova’s art, my secret for supple skin, nineteenth-century Nintendo, Balaji’s bet, the science of #hangover remedies, Moonbirds over Tokyo, an unexpected Sanbo Zen inquisition, Japanese death poems, escape rooms, high-fidelity immersive sound, Nanoblocks, and much more!

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

Brought to you by Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business; Helix Sleep premium mattresses; and Athletic Greens’s AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement.

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Listen onApple Podcasts[image error]Listen onSpotify[image error]Listen onOvercast#670: The Random Show with Kevin Rose — The $1M Bitcoin Bet, Japanophilia, Rare IPAs, Preventing Hangovers, AI Companions, Fringe Discords, Affordable Luxuries, High-Fidelity Audio, and Much More

This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 by Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. 

Right now, Athletic Greens is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and 5 free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product.

This episode is brought to you by Shopify! Shopify is one of my favorite platforms and one of my favorite companies. Shopify is designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. In no time flat, you can have a great-looking online store that brings your ideas to life, and you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day and drive sales. No coding or design experience required.

Go to  shopify.com/Tim  to sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period. It’s a great deal for a great service, so I encourage you to check it out. Take your business to the next level today by visiting  shopify.com/Tim .

This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep! Helix was selected as the best overall mattress of 2022 by GQ magazine, Wired, and Apartment Therapy. With Helix, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk-free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, Helix is offering 20% off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim.

Want to hear the last time Kevin and I let our random flag fly? Check out the conversation we had here in which we discussed tasty grapes and hard ketones, Kevin’s fear of flying vs. my fear of heights, the joy of unstuffing, living rich instead of dying rich, the ethics and implications of AI-generated art, building NFT communities for the long haul, meditation retreats, diabetic horse urine, and much more.

#645: The Random Show, Mega-Holiday Edition — 2023 Resolutions and New Tools, Extensive Bullshitting, Booze and Ethanol Alternatives, The “Yearly Delete,” A Million Sidebars, Ayahuasca Revisited, Recapping the COCKPUNCH Saga, and Much More

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODEHeady Topper by The Alchemist | BeerAdvocatePliny The Younger by Russian River Brewing Company | BeerAdvocatePliny The Elder by Russian River Brewing Company | BeerAdvocateAward Winning Beers in the Bay Area | Russian River BrewingMy Beer Collectibles | MBCThe World’s Leading Online Wristwatch Magazine | HodinkeeMoët Hennessy Louis Vuitton | LVMHLVMH: The Complete History and Strategy | AcquiredDeluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster by Dana Thomas | AmazonThe Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands by Jean-Noël Kapferer and Vincent Bastien | AmazonRoss Dress For LessGUESS History: Founding, Timeline, and Milestones | ZippiaErewhon Market | Los AngelesWhat Does ‘Bougie’ Mean? Does It Come From ‘Bourgeois’? | Quick and Dirty TipsThe Magic Castle | The Academy of Magical ArtsBest Suits for Men | Hollywood SuitsCan Simon Coronel Fool Penn and Teller a Second Time? | YouTubeCraft Chocolate | Dick TaylorThe 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life by Timothy Ferriss | AmazonCrown Jewels of the Coffee World | Proud Mary Coffee USAWhat is Geisha Coffee? And Why Is It $75 A Cup? | Home GroundsWhat is Bulletproof Coffee? | BBC Good FoodFormulations for Skin, Hair, & Body | AesopDr. Bronner’s Pure-Castile Liquid Soap (Baby, Unscented) | AmazonZBiotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic Drink | AmazonThe Boozy Underbelly of Saturday Morning Cartoons | EaterThe Science Behind ZBiotics Probiotic Drink | ZBioticsThree Weird Things About Acetaldehyde | CDC BlogsGenetically Modified Probiotic? The Controversy in Science and Commerc | BioImmersion Inc.Why Fentanyl is a Drug Dealer’s Dream — But a Family’s Nightmare | NarcononHow to Test Your Drugs Using Fentanyl Test Strips | NYC HealthIntroducing ChatGPT | OpenAIWhy Software Is Eating the World | Andreessen HorowitzExcel Pivot Tables Explained in 10 Minutes | Leila GharaniA Fictional World Built for These Chaotic Times | The Legend of CØCKPUNCHFunding Cutting-Edge Scientific Research | Saisei FoundationScale, Explore, and Build Humanist Infrastructure | MidjourneyDALL·E 2 | OpenAIStable Diffusion Public Release | Stability.AIUnstable DiffusionThe Terminator | Prime VideoTotal Recall | Prime VideoHer | Prime Video9 ChatGPT Prompt Hacks You Need to Know by SM Raiyyan | MediumThe AI Companion Who Cares | ReplikaJapan’s Shrinking Population Faces Point of No Return | NewsweekChildren of Men | Prime VideoBalaji Explains His Bitcoin Bet | ReasonTVWhat’s a Better Buy: Bitcoin or Ethereum? | The Motley FoolKevin Rose’s NFT Wallet with 40 High-Value Collectibles Hacked | CoinDeskScalable, Instant Bitcoin/Blockchain Transactions | Lightning NetworkLayer 1 vs. Layer 2 : What You Need to Know About Different Blockchain Layer Solutions | MediumWhat Is Bitcoin Halving? | InvestopediaBitcoin Maximalism | InvestopediaThe New Global Gold Rush | All Things ConsideredTop Crypto App Downloads Rise over 15% Following SVB Collapse | TechCrunchLiar’s Poker: RIsing Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis | AmazonThree Ways to Write With Your Opposite Hand | wikiHowWriting with Non-Dominant Hand Good for Brain Health | Woman’s WorldDysgraphia | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and StrokeEleeza: The Art of Eliza Ivanova by Eliza Ivanova | AmazonRaw Material by Eliza Ivanova Volume 1 | AmazoniPhone Protectors/Privacy Screens | AmazonNintendo History | NintendoHanafuda: The History and Popularity of the Japanese Flower Card Game | JapanbasedThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom | AmazonArcade Archives Pinball for Nintendo Switch | Nintendo25 Words and Phrases That Can’t Be Translated from Japanese | TankenJapanThe Official PROOF PFP | MoonbirdsGlobal Community for Japanese Creators | Rising BirdsSanbo Zen Lineage | Mountain Cloud Zen CenterZen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans | The Tim Ferriss Show #560Top Tokyo Cafes | Tokyo CoffeeKoffee Mameya Kakeru | Time OutJapanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death by Yoel Hoffmann | AmazonJisei: The Art of Japanese Death Poems | Tokyo WeekenderThree Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku by Natalie Goldberg | Amazon#1 Rated Escape Room Los Angeles | The Escape RevolutionExploding Kittens NSFW Edition | AmazonWhat Is Immersive Audio? | High Fidelity BlogCome By, Say Hi-Fi | Common Wave Hi-FiBowers & Wilkins PX7 Bluetooth Headphone | AmazonArnold Layne by Pink Floyd (Official Music Video) | YouTubeHostess Ho-Hos | AmazonBreakthrough Technology for the Brain | NeuralinkThe Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson | AmazonSnow Crash by Neal Stephenson | AmazonCryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson | AmazonThe Battle Is On! Nanoblocks vs. LEGO | Nanoblocks USHimeji Castle Nanoblock Set Review | Nanoblock USSHOW NOTES[04:44] The important juice.[08:37] Discount downfalls and luxury lettuce.[13:16] Becoming suitable for The Magic Castle.[17:12] Affordable luxuries for a priceless life.[19:47] A pipe dream.[22:04] A skincare secret.[23:08] Later life dating and alcohol abating (#hangover).[31:35] The current and anticipated state of AI.[46:15] Balaji’s bet.[1:02:00] Kevin practices his ABCs.[1:05:17] Eliza Ivanova.[1:07:10] TimTimsPrivacyScreens dot com.[1:09:38] Nintendo: Hanafuda to Zelda.[1:12:52] Untranslatables.[1:13:48] Tokyo Moonbirds and Zen karaoke.[1:18:10] Japanese Death Poems and other uplifting reading.[1:22:44] Some escape rooms are better than others.[1:26:51] High-fidelity immersive sound.[1:31:26] A whispering Replika and a vibrating “chest.”[1:35:28] Nanoblocks!PEOPLE MENTIONEDSimon CoronelPeter AttiaDarya RoseScarlett JohanssonMarc AndreessenTaylor SwiftArnold SchwarzeneggerBalaji SrinivasanMichael LewisJim CramerEliza IvanovaPrincess ZeldaHenry ShukmanRyoun YamadaElan LeeAdam GazzaleyNeal Stephenson

The post The Random Show with Kevin Rose — The $1M Bitcoin Bet, Japanophilia, Rare IPAs, Preventing Hangovers, AI Companions, Fringe Discords, Affordable Luxuries, High-Fidelity Audio, and Much More (#670) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Illustration via 99designs

Technologist, serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, self-experimenter, and all-around wild and crazy guy Kevin Rose (@KevinRose) rejoins me for another episode of The Random Show.

In this one, we discuss affordable luxuries for priceless lives, suiting up for a visit to the Magic Castle, Eliza Ivanova’s art, my secret for supple skin, nineteenth-century Nintendo, Balaji’s bet, the science of #hangover remedies, Moonbirds over Tokyo, an unexpected Sanbo Zen inquisition, Japanese death poems, escape rooms, high-fidelity immersive sound, Nanoblocks, and much more!

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

Brought to you by Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business; Helix Sleep premium mattresses; and Athletic Greens’s AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement.

Listen onApple Podcasts[image error]Listen onSpotify[image error]Listen onOvercast#670: The Random Show with Kevin Rose — The $1M Bitcoin Bet, Japanophilia, Rare IPAs, Preventing Hangovers, AI Companions, Fringe Discords, Affordable Luxuries, High-Fidelity Audio, and Much More

This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 by Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. 

Right now, Athletic Greens is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and 5 free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product.

This episode is brought to you by Shopify! Shopify is one of my favorite platforms and one of my favorite companies. Shopify is designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. In no time flat, you can have a great-looking online store that brings your ideas to life, and you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day and drive sales. No coding or design experience required.

Go to  shopify.com/Tim  to sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period. It’s a great deal for a great service, so I encourage you to check it out. Take your business to the next level today by visiting  shopify.com/Tim .

This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep! Helix was selected as the best overall mattress of 2022 by GQ magazine, Wired, and Apartment Therapy. With Helix, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk-free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, Helix is offering 20% off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim.

Want to hear the last time Kevin and I let our random flag fly? Check out the conversation we had here in which we discussed tasty grapes and hard ketones, Kevin’s fear of flying vs. my fear of heights, the joy of unstuffing, living rich instead of dying rich, the ethics and implications of AI-generated art, building NFT communities for the long haul, meditation retreats, diabetic horse urine, and much more.

#645: The Random Show, Mega-Holiday Edition — 2023 Resolutions and New Tools, Extensive Bullshitting, Booze and Ethanol Alternatives, The “Yearly Delete,” A Million Sidebars, Ayahuasca Revisited, Recapping the COCKPUNCH Saga, and Much More

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODEHeady Topper by The Alchemist | BeerAdvocatePliny The Younger by Russian River Brewing Company | BeerAdvocatePliny The Elder by Russian River Brewing Company | BeerAdvocateAward Winning Beers in the Bay Area | Russian River BrewingMy Beer Collectibles | MBCThe World’s Leading Online Wristwatch Magazine | HodinkeeMoët Hennessy Louis Vuitton | LVMHLVMH: The Complete History and Strategy | AcquiredDeluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster by Dana Thomas | AmazonThe Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands by Jean-Noël Kapferer and Vincent Bastien | AmazonRoss Dress For LessGUESS History: Founding, Timeline, and Milestones | ZippiaErewhon Market | Los AngelesWhat Does ‘Bougie’ Mean? Does It Come From ‘Bourgeois’? | Quick and Dirty TipsThe Magic Castle | The Academy of Magical ArtsBest Suits for Men | Hollywood SuitsCan Simon Coronel Fool Penn and Teller a Second Time? | YouTubeCraft Chocolate | Dick TaylorThe 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life by Timothy Ferriss | AmazonCrown Jewels of the Coffee World | Proud Mary Coffee USAWhat is Geisha Coffee? And Why Is It $75 A Cup? | Home GroundsWhat is Bulletproof Coffee? | BBC Good FoodFormulations for Skin, Hair, & Body | AesopDr. Bronner’s Pure-Castile Liquid Soap (Baby, Unscented) | AmazonZBiotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic Drink | AmazonThe Boozy Underbelly of Saturday Morning Cartoons | EaterThe Science Behind ZBiotics Probiotic Drink | ZBioticsThree Weird Things About Acetaldehyde | CDC BlogsGenetically Modified Probiotic? The Controversy in Science and Commerc | BioImmersion Inc.Why Fentanyl is a Drug Dealer’s Dream — But a Family’s Nightmare | NarcononHow to Test Your Drugs Using Fentanyl Test Strips | NYC HealthIntroducing ChatGPT | OpenAIWhy Software Is Eating the World | Andreessen HorowitzExcel Pivot Tables Explained in 10 Minutes | Leila GharaniA Fictional World Built for These Chaotic Times | The Legend of CØCKPUNCHFunding Cutting-Edge Scientific Research | Saisei FoundationScale, Explore, and Build Humanist Infrastructure | MidjourneyDALL·E 2 | OpenAIStable Diffusion Public Release | Stability.AIUnstable DiffusionThe Terminator | Prime VideoTotal Recall | Prime VideoHer | Prime Video9 ChatGPT Prompt Hacks You Need to Know by SM Raiyyan | MediumThe AI Companion Who Cares | ReplikaJapan’s Shrinking Population Faces Point of No Return | NewsweekChildren of Men | Prime VideoBalaji Explains His Bitcoin Bet | ReasonTVWhat’s a Better Buy: Bitcoin or Ethereum? | The Motley FoolKevin Rose’s NFT Wallet with 40 High-Value Collectibles Hacked | CoinDeskScalable, Instant Bitcoin/Blockchain Transactions | Lightning NetworkLayer 1 vs. Layer 2 : What You Need to Know About Different Blockchain Layer Solutions | MediumWhat Is Bitcoin Halving? | InvestopediaBitcoin Maximalism | InvestopediaThe New Global Gold Rush | All Things ConsideredTop Crypto App Downloads Rise over 15% Following SVB Collapse | TechCrunchLiar’s Poker: RIsing Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis | AmazonThree Ways to Write With Your Opposite Hand | wikiHowWriting with Non-Dominant Hand Good for Brain Health | Woman’s WorldDysgraphia | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and StrokeEleeza: The Art of Eliza Ivanova by Eliza Ivanova | AmazonRaw Material by Eliza Ivanova Volume 1 | AmazoniPhone Protectors/Privacy Screens | AmazonNintendo History | NintendoHanafuda: The History and Popularity of the Japanese Flower Card Game | JapanbasedThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom | AmazonArcade Archives Pinball for Nintendo Switch | Nintendo25 Words and Phrases That Can’t Be Translated from Japanese | TankenJapanThe Official PROOF PFP | MoonbirdsGlobal Community for Japanese Creators | Rising BirdsSanbo Zen Lineage | Mountain Cloud Zen CenterZen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans | The Tim Ferriss Show #560Top Tokyo Cafes | Tokyo CoffeeKoffee Mameya Kakeru | Time OutJapanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death by Yoel Hoffmann | AmazonJisei: The Art of Japanese Death Poems | Tokyo WeekenderThree Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku by Natalie Goldberg | Amazon#1 Rated Escape Room Los Angeles | The Escape RevolutionExploding Kittens NSFW Edition | AmazonWhat Is Immersive Audio? | High Fidelity BlogCome By, Say Hi-Fi | Common Wave Hi-FiBowers & Wilkins PX7 Bluetooth Headphone | AmazonArnold Layne by Pink Floyd (Official Music Video) | YouTubeHostess Ho-Hos | AmazonBreakthrough Technology for the Brain | NeuralinkThe Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson | AmazonSnow Crash by Neal Stephenson | AmazonCryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson | AmazonThe Battle Is On! Nanoblocks vs. LEGO | Nanoblocks USHimeji Castle Nanoblock Set Review | Nanoblock USSHOW NOTES[04:44] The important juice.[08:37] Discount downfalls and luxury lettuce.[13:16] Becoming suitable for The Magic Castle.[17:12] Affordable luxuries for a priceless life.[19:47] A pipe dream.[22:04] A skincare secret.[23:08] Later life dating and alcohol abating (#hangover).[31:35] The current and anticipated state of AI.[46:15] Balaji’s bet.[1:02:00] Kevin practices his ABCs.[1:05:17] Eliza Ivanova.[1:07:10] TimTimsPrivacyScreens dot com.[1:09:38] Nintendo: Hanafuda to Zelda.[1:12:52] Untranslatables.[1:13:48] Tokyo Moonbirds and Zen karaoke.[1:18:10] Japanese Death Poems and other uplifting reading.[1:22:44] Some escape rooms are better than others.[1:26:51] High-fidelity immersive sound.[1:31:26] A whispering Replika and a vibrating “chest.”[1:35:28] Nanoblocks!PEOPLE MENTIONEDSimon CoronelPeter AttiaDarya RoseScarlett JohanssonMarc AndreessenTaylor SwiftArnold SchwarzeneggerBalaji SrinivasanMichael LewisJim CramerEliza IvanovaPrincess ZeldaHenry ShukmanRyoun YamadaElan LeeAdam GazzaleyNeal Stephenson

The post The Random Show with Kevin Rose — The $1M Bitcoin Bet, Japanophilia, Rare IPAs, Preventing Hangovers, AI Companions, Fringe Discords, Affordable Luxuries, High-Fidelity Audio, and Much More (#670) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Illustration via 99designs | Photo originally by Christopher Michel

“Your goal in life is to be able to say on the day before you die that you have fully become yourself.”

— Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) helped launch and edit Wired magazine. He has written for The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications.

He is the author of the new book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier. Other books by Kevin Kelly include Out of Control, the 1994 classic book on decentralized emergent systems; The Silver Cord, a graphic novel about robots and angels; What Technology Wants, a robust theory of technology; Vanishing Asia, his 50-year project to photograph the disappearing cultures of Asia, and The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, a New York Times bestseller.

Kevin is currently co-chair of The Long Now Foundation, which is building a clock in a mountain that will tick for 10,000 years. He also has a daily blog; a weekly podcast about cool tools; and a weekly newsletter, Recomendo, a free, one-page list of six very brief recommendations of cool stuff. He is also a Senior Maverick at Wired. He lives in Pacifica, California.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

Brought to you by  LinkedIn Jobs  recruitment platform with 900M+ users,  Pique  premium pu’er tea crystals, and  Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover  sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating.

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Listen onApple Podcasts[image error]Listen onSpotify[image error]Listen onOvercast#669: Kevin Kelly — Excellent Advice for Living

This episode is brought to you by Pique! I first learned about Pique through my friends Dr. Peter Attia and Kevin Rose, and now Pique’s fermented pu’er tea crystals have become my daily go-to. I often kickstart my mornings with their Pu’er Green Tea and Pu’er Black Tea, and I alternate between the two. This rare type of naturally fermented tea is more concentrated in polyphenol antioxidants than any other tea. It supports focus and mental clarity, healthy digestion, metabolism, and a healthy immune system. Their crystals are cold extracted, using only wild-harvested leaves from 250-year-old tea trees. Plus, they triple toxin screen for heavy metals, pesticides, and toxic mold—contaminants commonly found in tea. I also use the crystals for iced tea, which saves a ton of time and hassle. 

Pique is offering up to 20% off of their pu’er teas, exclusively to my listeners. To sweeten the deal even more, you’ll get a free sampler pack with 6 of their best-selling teas. Simply visit PiqueLife.com/Tim, and the discount will be automatically applied. They also offer a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, so your purchase is completely risk-free. Just go to PiqueLife.com/Tim to learn more.

This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep! Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature.

Go to EightSleep.com/Tim and save $250 on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia.

This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer.

Using LinkedIn’s active community of more than 900 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim.

Want to hear one of my favorite conversations with Kevin? Listen to this interview (recorded in three short parts), in which we discussed population implosions, The Long Now Foundation, organizational methods for learning, Amish technology assimilation, why you don’t want to be a billionaire, the greatest gift you can give to your child, and much more!

#25: Interview of Kevin Kelly, Co-Founder of WIRED, Polymath, Most Interesting Man In The World?#26: Interview of Kevin Kelly, Co-Founder of WIRED, Polymath, Most Interesting Man In The World?#27: Interview of Kevin Kelly, Co-Founder of WIRED, Polymath, Most Interesting Man In The World?

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Erratum: In the interview, Nova Scotia was named as the setting for Anne of Green Gables, whereas the setting is Prince Edward Island.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODEConnect with Kevin Kelly:

Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube

Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly | AmazonSix Brief Personal Recommendations of Cool Stuff | RecomendoOut of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World by Kevin Kelly | AmazonThe Silver Cord by Kevin Kelly and Steve Masseroni | AmazonWhat Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly | AmazonVanishing Asia: Three Volume Set: West, Central, and East by Kevin Kelly | AmazonAmazon.com: The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future eBook : Kelly, Kevin: Kindle StoreThe Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly | AmazonFostering Long-Term Thinking | The Long Now FoundationThe Latest in Technology, Science, Culture, and Business | WiredInterview of Kevin Kelly, Co-Founder of WIRED, Polymath, Most Interesting Man In The World? | The Tim Ferriss Show #25, #26, & #27Kevin Kelly on Artificial Intelligence and Designer Babies | The Tim Ferriss Show #96Kevin Kelly – AI, Virtual Reality, and The Inevitable | The Tim Ferriss Show #164Cool Tools for Travel – Tim Ferriss and Kevin Kelly | The Tim Ferriss Show #247By 02060 the Total Population of Humans on Earth Will Be Less than It Is Today. | Long BetsScience for a Complex World | Santa Fe InstituteManhattan Project National Historical Park | US National Park ServicePixar Animation StudiosIndustrial Light & MagicLord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien | Amazon1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly | The TechniumBring a Creative Project to Life | KickstarterBest Way for Artists and Creators to Get Sustainable Income and Connect with Fans | PatreonWhole Earth Catalog | WikipediaThe WELL (The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link)Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand by John Markoff | AmazonForrest Gump | Prime VideoThe Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich | AmazonAll Species | The Long Now FoundationFree, Instant Bird Identification | Merlin Bird IDOpen Your Camera and Start Seeking! | Seek by iNaturalistGlobal Access to Knowledge about Life on Earth | Encyclopedia of LifeJurassic Park | Prime VideoWoolly Mammoth Revival | Revive & RestoreKevin Kelly: The Future Will Be Shaped by Optimists | TED TalkComplex Systems Theory | Santa Fe InstituteTaking Responsibility for Our Future, Together | B612 FoundationThe Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | AmazonTransforming Societies to Ensure Environmental Justice | DegrowthHow to Start a Fire with a Magnifying Glass | Food Storage and SurvivalKevin Kelly and the Golden Age of World Travel | Craig ModComing to America | Prime VideoWhat AI-Generated Art Really Means for Human Creativity | WiredWhy AI Won’t Cause Unemployment | Marc Andreessen SubstackHow DeviantArt Is Navigating the AI Art Minefield | The VergeArtists Protest As ArtStation Allows AI-Generated Art On Site | Kotaku“Dumbsmarten” | Kevin Kelly, TwitterScale, Explore, and Build Humanist Infrastructure | MidjourneyIntroducing ChatGPT | OpenAIThinkism | The TechniumHow to Unleash the Wisdom of Crowds | The ConversationAI as Intern | Austin KleonReady Player One | Prime VideoVR Games, Apps, & More | OculusStyrobot Built by Father & Son | Make:Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery | AmazonStatue Of Liberty National Monument | US National Park ServiceThe #1 Attraction in the US | Empire State BuildingA Guide to Riding San Francisco’s Cable Cars | Visit CaliforniaThe 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss | AmazonGenentechDNA Testing Kit for Health and Ancestry | 23andMeWhat is a Sabbatical? | The Sabbatical GuideHistorical Libraries: The Library of Alexandria | Mid-Continent Public LibraryGetting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen | AmazonCrypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government — Saving Privacy in the Digital Age by Steven Levy | AmazonSHOW NOTES[05:51] Is Kevin Kelly the most interesting man in the world?[08:37] Kevin’s long bet against the human population.[15:00] Out Of Control.[19:34] Why did it take 11 years to complete The Silver Cord?[24:28] 1,000 True Fans.[29:48] Kevin’s failed campaign to discover all the species of life on Earth.[31:31] Stewart Brand.[36:20] Resurrecting extinct species.[39:38] Why Kevin believes optimists shape the future.[42:48] Active optimism vs. passive optimism.[46:39] What constitutes progress?[48:18] Is regression inevitable if we don’t embrace “degrowth?”[52:38] Kevin’s $20 time machine.[55:27] Will AI take our jobs?[1:07:58] The future of AI is dumbsmarten.[1:10:50] What’s currently underhyped?[1:13:20] Posting an AI picture a day keeps Kevin at play.[1:15:29] How Kevin uses AI chatbots to help write first drafts.[1:21:40] Potential scenarios for where AI will be going soon.[1:24:38] What prompted Kevin to write Excellent Advice for Living?[1:28:46] Examples of Kevin’s simple, tweetable advice.[1:32:02] Don’t aim to be the best. Be the only.[1:35:32] Good uses of time spent with one’s children.[1:38:47] Tips for traveling with children.[1:42:22] Being a tourist in your own town and troubleshooting advice.[1:45:06] What Kevin hopes readers will take away from Excellent Advice for Living.[1:46:37] Sabbaticals.[1:52:17] How Kevin uses YouTube.[1:56:03] Why is Kevin huge in China?[1:59:16] Fully becoming yourself and other parting thoughts.MORE KEVIN KELLY QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“It isn’t as if these mechanical systems are imitating biology. I’m saying they actually have the same dynamics. The dynamics that are powering biology are powering the technium and the technology. It’s the same.”
— Kevin Kelly

“It’s very hard to make good, complicated things work because generally there’s more ways things can fail than they can succeed, and it’s very unlikely that we’re going to make something really good that’s complicated, inadvertently. They’re hard to do. So we have to see it and believe that it can be done, and that is where the optimism comes in, is envisioning something and then believing that you could make it real.”
— Kevin Kelly

“Exotropy is this idea of this increasing order that comes at the cost of increasing entropy.”
— Kevin Kelly

“Tools will get specialized. They will become so embedded that we will cease to think about them.”
— Kevin Kelly

“There’s something I call thinkism, which is this reliance on trying to solve problems by thinking about them.”
— Kevin Kelly

“You can find no better medicine for your family than regular meals together without screens.”
— Kevin Kelly

“What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.”
— Kevin Kelly

“Greatness is incompatible with optimizing in the short term.”
— Kevin Kelly

“You don’t marry a person, you marry a family.”
— Kevin Kelly

“If you can’t tell what you desperately need, it’s probably sleep.”
— Kevin Kelly

“Don’t aim to have others like you, aim to have them respect you.”
— Kevin Kelly

“A balcony or porch needs to be at least six feet deep or it won’t be used.”
— Kevin Kelly

“Learn to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark with one hand for the rest of your life. You’ll use this knot more times than you could ever believe.”
— Kevin Kelly

“When you feel pressure to pick a choice, don’t forget the choice of not choosing any.”
— Kevin Kelly

“When you’re in your twenties, you should spend a little bit of time doing something that’s sort of crazy, insane, unprofitable, unorthodox, orthogonal, because that’s going to be your touchstone and the foundation of your success later on.”
— Kevin Kelly

“Don’t aim to be the best. Be the only.”
— Kevin Kelly

“You want to be doing something where it’s hard to explain to your mother what it is that you do.”
— Kevin Kelly

“Your enjoyment of travel is inversely proportional to the size of your luggage.”
— Kevin Kelly

“For the best results with your children, spend only half the money you think you should but double the time with them.”
— Kevin Kelly

“A vacation plus a disaster equals an adventure.”
— Kevin Kelly

“If an elementary school student is struggling, first thing, check their eyesight.”
— Kevin Kelly

“Purchase the most recent tourist guidebook to your hometown or region. You’ll learn a lot by playing the tourist once a year.”
— Kevin Kelly

“To signal an emergency, use the rule of three: Three shouts, three horn blasts, or three whistles.”
— Kevin Kelly

“When you’re stuck, explain your problem to others. Often simply laying out a problem will present a solution. Make ‘explaining the problem’ part of your troubleshooting process.”
— Kevin Kelly

“Your goal in life is to be able to say on the day before you die that you have fully become yourself.”
— Kevin Kelly

PEOPLE MENTIONEDEdward R. MurrowHarley FinkelsteinWarren BuffettBill GurleyOrville and Wilbur WrightMurray Gell-MannRichard P. FeynmanJaron LanierStewart BrandSteve JobsJohn MarkoffForrest GumpPaul R. EhrlichDanny HillisPeter SchwartzE.O. WilsonRyan PhelanGregor MendelBarack ObamaGeorge ChurchMarc AndreessenPablo PicassoSpockYodaJohn VervaekeGia-Miin FuhMatt MullenwegDavid AllenDavid HasselhoffSteven LevyJack MaPony Ma Huateng

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