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At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question?
Now would it seem like a perfect time?
I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to interview and deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply in your own lives. This episode is something different. It is an exploration of my creative process, how I think about first principles in a bunch of different areas, and how to get serious things done without being serious all the time and burning out. This is an unusual conversation. And in this case, I am the guest and Kevin Rose is the host. Who is Kevin? Besides being one of my best friends, Kevin is a technologist, serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, self-experimenter, and all-around wild and crazy guy. You can find him on Twitter, Kevin Rose. For more on the project discussed in this, and I can't believe I'm saying this on my podcast after six hundred plus episodes and nine hundred million plus downloads, whatever it might be at this point. For more on the project discussed, the legend of Cockpunch, that's right, folks, visit cockpunch.com and follow on Twitter cockpunch. Hwhat glee. Mint date is coming up soon and there's a lot of wink wink inside jokes here. So make sure to follow that Twitter account, meaning cockpunch, for news as well as tferris. That's my main Twitter account, T-F-E-R-R-I-S. And if you want extra credit, Timnifties, Nifties. I will also be announcing next steps via my newsletter. That's the Five Bullet Friday newsletter that has several million people in it, and you can sign up at tim.blog/friday.
Please note, before anyone goes crazy on the internet, one hundred percent of NFT primary sale proceeds from this project are being donated to the Sci Foundation. That is one of the main drivers behind the whole thing, is fundraising in a creative way. So all funds from the primary sales are going to Sci Foundation. scifoundation.org is where you can learn a lot more. It is a registered 501c3 nonprofit private foundation that funds cutting-edge scientific research and other initiatives related to psychedelic medicine, mental health therapeutics for conditions like complex PTSD, treatment-resistant depression, and so on, and much more. Again, you can find a list of projects including a lot of firsts that have been accomplished through various grants at scifoundation.org. The episode you're about to hear was originally published on the Proof podcast. It's a great podcast hosted by Kevin which provides in-depth NFT coverage. The Proof podcast is part of Proof. Broadly speaking, Proof is creating community-centric products that celebrate art, connect collectors, and activate creative entrepreneurship. Under the Proof umbrella, they have the Proof Collective, a private collective of one thousand dedicated NFT collectors and artists. There's also Grails, which I'm actually a part of, and I put out my first short fiction story ever as an NFT as part of Grails. There is Grails, which is the Proof curated collections with artists revealed post-mint. That'll mean something to some people out there and not much to others. Then there's Moonbirds, of course, a collection of ten thousand utility-enabled PFPs featuring a diverse pool of traits. There's more and then there's much more. Kevin is doing a phenomenal job. I suggest you check out what they are doing. Find Proof at proof.xyz and proof_xyz on Twitter. And now, after that long intro, thanks for sticking with it. Let's take a trip to crazy town, shall we? I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. And here goes nothing.
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Proof that covers all things NFTs, including a brand new project done by none other than Tim, Tim Ferriss. Tim, welcome to the show.
So great to be here. Good to see you, brother.
Dude, good to see you. Sorry, I have a new...
For those who have not seen what happened before we press record, I've been enjoying non-stop sound effects of every possible type because Kevin has a new toy.
That's right. I do. And, you know, investor dollars put to good work here. We have our own little soundboard now, which is awesome. You know, in all seriousness though, it is nice to actually have a somewhat professional studio. It'll be very professional once we actually have a real home. Although, this is coming together quite nicely. M's done a fantastic job setting it up and we actually have, you know, real mics, real lighting, things of that nature. So,
Looks great. I like the purple background effect that you have working for you. It brings out your eyes.
You know what's crazy? Thank you. First of all, and it's crazy that we just moved in here. This is actually a temporary space a couple days ago and Mal rushed to get this set up. So, it's...
Good job. Looks excellent.
But yeah, so dude, this is crazy because, you know, we've been talking NFTs for a long time now. You were very gracious to, you know, let me chat your ear off about NFTs on The Random Show and talk about, you know, the early stuff in the early Proof days and then obviously the chaos that became Moonbirds. But, you know, what people may not know is that you immediately went all in as one does, especially you, and went deep and we really started going crazy with NFTs. Especially around our trip to Marfa, Texas.
And remember when we went out there and you started buying some serious, like, Chromie Squiggles, like, you got some great NFTs as a collector first, right?
Collector first. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I haven't, and that has been for me, I mean, I really haven't showcased any collections of any type. I've just been collecting to scratch my own itch and to explore the world of NFTs, which I think for a lot of folks has been entered through the gateway drug of NFT artwork.
And as someone who's been very, not just interested in but involved in art from a production perspective, right, from an illustrator perspective, a lot of that background is or has been invisible to I think a lot of folks who have read my writing or have listened to the podcast, is that prior to all of that, my plan was to be a comic book penciler for ten plus years and...
It's not too late. And worked in illustration and paid a lot of my way through college expenses and so on with illustrating books and magazines and acting as a graphics editor and so on. So I've been very, very interested in all of these intersections within the kind of Venn diagram of NFTs. And also our background goes way, way back in terms of early-stage tech experimenting with new tools and playing with these technologies. That goes, I mean, certainly way back even further than I, but for me 2007, 2008 at the latest. So this has provided a really fun opportunity to re-engage with all sorts of things that I'm interested in.
I feel like that is one of the things that you and I bonded over very early on, where, you know, I was more obviously on the tech side, on the angel investing side. You were just kicking off your career as an author and angel investor, and then you were big, big into biohacking, which I was always curious about, but you were like, you know, an order of magnitude more sophisticated in terms of, like, your understanding of published papers and the literature and all that stuff. So I would just kind of follow what you were doing except for the stuff that got you in the hospital or other things, but I'd kind of fast-follow where it was appropriate.
I could give you the do-not-try-at-home list also. I could save you some hospital visits, which, you know, that's what friends are for.
Yeah, exactly. And then we would, you know, do angel deals together, try out new technologies together, things like that. And so, you know, when I got into NFTs and all that, and knowing your love for art, it makes sense that you would then venture into the space and kick the tires. Now, that said, it's November eighth as of this recording. NFTs might be dead right now. We don't know because it's been a hell of a day. It's been a very few days.
Hell of a few days. Yeah. Very exciting. I mean, exciting in the way that, like, an avalanche is exciting, perhaps, but exciting nonetheless.
You like to watch kind of, but you should be far enough away. But sadly, we're right in the middle of it. So,
Yeah. Better on video instead of being on one ski going directly into the avalanche. But, you know, some people choose to ride the bear, some people choose to do something else. Dangerous hobby.
Great t-shirt for you. Ride the bear.
So let's talk about your project. Like, what would be a good, where would be a good place to start? Would it be with the kind of, the idea of a PFP, or if you consider this a PFP, or what can we say and what can't we say about the project right now?
Well, I think because ultimately you and I will sit around and have martinis and decide when pub date is, I can just go for it and we can get into the nitty-gritty and then we can release it when it makes sense. But I think it might make sense to start at the beginning, in so much as, let's see here. So early 2021, you and I were having a conversation and you're like, you got to look more closely at these NFT things. And I think maybe prior to that or maybe just after that, the timing is slightly lost on me. I think it would have been just before that. I don't remember the exact date. I'd had Coopa Han on the podcast and we talked about NFTs, and then you had encouraged me in early 2021 to roll up my sleeves and actually start using some of the tools and to buy NFTs.
The MetaMask support phone calls. Oh god, it's just like remedial, you know, walking your great-grandmother through buying the first NFT. Sorry about that, Kev. But I appreciated the...
Yeah. The one-oh-one, you sort of short school bus help there. And it made me very, very excited on a couple of levels. So to explain why, I need to give a bit of additional context. So there were a lot of things that came together for me at once. One was new tech always interesting to me, especially when there is some type of on-ramp, Trojan horse, that allows a lot of, let's just call them not obviously early tech candidates, to become involved with early tech, if that makes any sense. Right, if there's some type of like muggle pathway for someone like me to get involved, really interesting. The next was for, I would say, two or three years, probably two or three years at that point, I'd have to go back and look, I had been brainstorming, trying to brainstorm ways to run a, I suppose, let's call it contemporary art auction with donated artwork to raise money for my foundation, Sci Foundation, which supports a lot of the early-stage, it has supported and continues to support a lot of the early-stage cutting-edge science related to psychedelic therapeutics and addressing so-called intractable psychiatric conditions of all different types. So complex PTSD, OCD, anorexia nervosa, a pretty broad spectrum of difficult-to-treat conditions. I had been trying for a long time to try to put together something resembling a physical contemporary art auction.
And as soon as I saw the mechanics and the marketplaces involved with NFTs, I thought to myself, wait a second, there may be a bunch of other options here that don't involve putting on the knee pads and begging fill-in-the-blank agent of artist X to give me a canvas, which it turns out they hate doing generally. I was like, there may be a more elegant solution here that allows me to also experiment with the technology. And then on top of that, and if anybody goes back, if they've been following my Instagram for a while, they will have seen over the last two or three years various attempts on my behalf to get back into using my hands to produce artwork. So you'll see experimentations with charcoal, you'll see experimentations with pencil, with pastels, with different types of media to get back into the physical production of artwork. And so I saw in NFTs a great combination of excuses to engage firsthand. So that's when the wheels started to get moving. And I would say at that point began all of the most ridiculous ideas imaginable, right, popping into my head for what I might do if I were to do something in NFTs.
And at first it was what could I do that would be really easy, that would be exciting for me, lightweight, fun. And then as it went on, my desire I guess got more and more ambitious and elaborate in terms of folding into a potential art project, which is how I viewed it, these things I wanted to explore but had never really had the incentive to explore in a real way, like fiction and world-building, and last but not least, kind of revisiting all the things that made me happy as a twelve and thirteen-year-old. So, I've spent a lot of time with a bunch of people I respect recently, and almost all of them have been discovering and resurrecting joys of theirs later in life that were core to their enjoyment as a twelve or thirteen-year-old.
So when all of these ingredients in the cocktail then got kind of shaken up and stirred over the last, let's just call it, I guess, what the hell is it now, a year and a half,
that has led, I guess, in the last nine months and especially in the last six months, to this project that is going to launch now in the next few weeks, which is pretty crazy to think about at arguably the worst possible time to launch anything ever in NFTs, which I'm actually very pleased by in a way, because number one, if I were doing it just for a money grab, this would be the worst time imaginable to do it. I could have done, you know, I could have farted out some really terrible artwork and done something long ago. I decided not to do that. And I should say up front, like, one hundred percent of the primary proceeds are going to my foundation. So that's that piece of the experiment is important to me. Also, when the markets are really bad, and you think back to when I first got involved with the angel investing, like 2008 to 2010, I mean, that was kind of a dot-com depression, and it was just the best time to be in the game because it was when the true believers were left on the field. Do you know what I mean? Like, all the fair-weather folks had to split. They just took off.
Oh. Oh yeah. No, I mean, all of the sort of, I shouldn't say weak, but all of the casual tourists in the herd have been culled already. And it forces you, and by you I just, I guess I'll just say me, to think about all of this much more creatively and to come back to first principles and think about, like, okay, why am I doing this? How can I make sure that I stay true to certain priorities like fun and play being the absolute core of all of my decisions around this? So I'm having a hell of a time, man. And you've seen it. You've seen it in me because we've hung out so much and had so many conversations. Like, it has been, let's see here, since publishing Tribe of Mentors that came out, I want to say 2016, 2017. It's been five years since I've been this energized by anything as a public-facing project.
It's great to see that in you. But I'm curious, like, what does this mean for you? Where does this fit in your career in the sense that, let's assume you get everything you want out of this project. Obviously you have some primary sales coming in that goes to your foundation. One hundred percent of that money goes in. That's great. That's awesome for the foundation, but we know royalties are up in the air right now. Who knows what the heck happens with royalties, you know? So what is a win for Tim over the long term here? Like, what does this project turn into? Because I think if I'm putting my devil's advocate hat on, which I love that Onion post, devil's advocate turns out to be just BS, put on your BS hat. Please do that. Yeah. Put my BS hat. I'm ready. People will say like, okay, celebrity NFTs, we've seen this playbook before. PFPs, we've seen this playbook before.
But what I know, and the reason I'm asking this question is because I know what you're doing behind the scenes, which I think you're ready to share today, is a lot cooler than just checking boxes. And obviously you're not doing this for the money. So, what's the creative win for you?
Yeah. So much work. Oh my god. If I did, like, my hourly on this, I'm working at Burger King. It's hilarious. Anyway, so the win for me is continuing to play the game.
So that is effectively a quote from Carse and sort of the finite versus infinite games side of things. So the game here is giving myself compelling excuses, reasons to engage with creative muscles that I have but I haven't exercised in a very long time. And one way to do that is through something that I'm reasonably comfortable with but that I haven't done in a very long time. And that's visual art. Right? I have very, very, very acute visual senses. I have pretty good fine motor control, and I can also, I've realized through this process, work with artists really well. That's new for me. I've always been the artist when I've designed, say, all of my book covers with the exception of Tools of Titans. Like, I designed all of those book covers through sketches and then had them professionalized and polished obviously to get ready for actual printing. But the visual piece is something I feel, I feel like a whole human being again when I'm engaged with. And it feels so good. It feels so good.
But I need reasons to do that because when all I'm trying to do is, say, take a lesson with a teacher once a week, other things crowd it out, right? Other things crowd it out. Life gets in the way. And I'm, you know, trying to adult my life as best as possible, I'm like, oh, well, that's not important. That's optional. But when I have a team and when I have a project and when I have deadlines, the magic is that stuff gets done and I actually do a lot more art. So, I mean, I have in my bag right now, I took it with me to a coffee shop, a huge sketchbook. I have an iPad with Procreate on it that I have still not figured out how to use. I've just been putting it off because I'm enjoying scribbling in my notebook so much. So, that's part of the game that I want to continue, is the visual art. The other side of, and there are many pieces to this game, but one of the games that I want to really continue to engage with is fiction.
So, I've spent so much time as a non-fiction writer. I mean, a thousand plus blog posts, right? Thousands of pages of published material in the books, let alone the other thousands upon thousands of pages that were cut from those and the drafts that were thrown out and so on. Non-fiction is an incredible craft. It is super interesting and challenging in a million ways. However, I think when it's done best, generally you're a really good architect and then you do a ton of research and you assemble all the materials and then a lot of it is carpentry, right? Like, you're just putting together what you laid out in the blueprint. And that has its own creative challenges. But what I really have enjoyed about playing with fiction and what back in the day I enjoyed so much in D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, right? By the way, I still have all of my modules, all of my books, all of my maps, all of my twenty-sided die and four-sided die from when I was a kid playing D&D. I kept all of it. I still have it to this day.
That's awesome. I wish I would have kept some of mine.
I have all of it. It's literally in a room about twenty feet away from me right now. And what I enjoyed so much about D&D, whether I was the dungeon master or a player, and what I have enjoyed so much about art, and what I have enjoyed so much about now doing fictional world-building, this is coming back to the question of what game I want to continue playing, is that you can set these initial conditions or set a situation, say with a character or with two warring clans, or with, in the case of dungeon master, it might just be a setting in a particular campaign with different characters and here's the opening scene and then you go from there. So even I, in this case, as the writer per se, do not know what the ending is going to be. I have no idea what's going to be around corner number seven. And that is fun for me, right? I'm not just putting together brick by brick the building that I already know the finished look of. That's not the case at all.
So what I would like... Can I ask you a question about that though? I mean, what you're saying is you're talking about writing, but we're also talking about NFTs. So I think what we're missing is how that thread is connected. Yeah, totally. Like, because I would say most NFT projects they'll say, hey, we're the crazy, you know, buff squirrels or whatever, and then you've got, like, the squirrel page, and then there's some copy about the lore of the squirrels and how they got their anabolics and, like, all these things that go down, and then that's kind of it, right? It's like a page and you're like, okay, that's all. You're talking, this isn't just a one-pager. This is the characters, I buy this and I'm done.
No, it's not a one-pager. Now, you know, I want to be clear, I'm not committing to writing, you know, the half version of Game of Thrones or something. Yeah, it's not twelve novels, but I have spent hundreds of hours thinking about world-building. So, what are the NFTs here for me? They are a project with deadlines, with deliverables, that keep me on track in thinking and engaging with art and fiction writing. So, what this means in practical terms is that this project when it comes out will have, I'll give you some of the specifics. It's going to have eight primary great houses. These are like clans, and they're going to have different characteristics, different strengths, different weaknesses, different cultures, different religions, different natural resources. I mean, there's going to be a lot of detail. And this has been written. I've already written this. And furthermore, I've already hired a primary voice actor.
There will probably, hopefully be more to perform these as well.
This is an exclusive news flash. I'll do the sound effect myself.
It will also be a podcast. So limited edition, season one of a podcast that will have this lore performed, and that will come out in drips and drabs so that people can slowly sort of look through the haze and begin to piece this world together. There's going to be a lot of embedded secrets and mysteries and mythologies that folks, if they're interested, will really be able to explore and in some cases will have to piece together. So all of that writing is being done and that's already in process. So, you've got these houses, you have maps, like, I have art to review right now related to refinements to a map, like a lay of the land of the known territory per se. And the writing then thus far has been related to a lot of the backstory and the histories.
But the conditions are now set in sort of the present day and there will be at least one primary figure character who's going to be very nebulous in a way, I shouldn't say nebulous, but physically he will be at this point sort of unknown, who will be telling the story or rather trying to piece together the story himself. And he's a stand-in in a way for the listener or the reader.
So how did NFTs figure into all of this?
It keeps me on track because if I were just writing this, I don't have any desire to write a fiction book right now.
Putting it out as a blog post or a series of blog posts could be interesting, but it's kind of like a fart on a crowded train. Like, will anybody notice? Maybe somebody will notice, but it doesn't have the gravitas or the connective tissue to really hold collective attention and to foster sort of collective imagination. Whereas if you have an NFT, you have people with skin in the game, you certainly have me with skin in the game, you have a team, I mean, a team, I have a very small team is focused on this right now. The game I want to continue playing is really engaging with developing the art. And if I look at, for instance, like the first history that I wrote for one of these clans and I look at the last, I can see a tremendous, and this is not my words, this is from a number of proof readers, like a tremendous amount of progress. Like, I am getting better at doing this and that's super exciting. I don't think I'm the world's best or anything close to a great fiction writer right now. But I have been studying it. I've been going back. I've been reading the classics. I've been listening to podcasts and listening to lectures on world-building, on systems of magic, all sorts of things. I've been paying attention and so it's getting better and I know there's so much room left for improvement. So basically that is the game I want to continue to play.
I have so many questions.
Yeah, let me throw in a huge caveat, right. So,
Let me, all right, go for it.
Give me the caveat first. Well, the caveat is if by engaging with NFTs and Web3 I just need to deal with a bunch of dicks on the internet all the time, then all bets are off. Then I'm like, all right, fine. Like, I'm not going to continue to just take, you know, body shots on the internet.
So the reason I'm doing it right now is because I am getting so much energy from it. It's so fun. And it's been a long time since I have felt that. And I so, so I pay attention to that just in terms of like, why this, why that. It's like, what is giving me energy? Which people are giving me energy?
Let me double down on that.
So right now it means doubling down on this.
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The thing about the NFT space that is so challenging for me and everyone else building in it is that, you know, a year ago or close to a year ago if you'd have asked me as someone that's a builder how far out do you plan when you're building product in general, I would have told you, you know, kind of eight to twelve months type world. That's very much a Web2 kind of thing, right? And then when I got into NFTs I was like, oh, well, we shouldn't be planning more than six months out. That's just chaos, right?
Then I cut that down to three months and now I'm at about thirty days. So, I feel like anything above and beyond and that far out is dangerous because you promise something the community, the people that are NFT collectors, maybe it's because the blockchain is just so transparent in general, they tend to, and this isn't everyone, but the folks I interact with, they want a level of transparency and understanding about where the project is going, how ambitious is the project, and, you know, what do you hope to build eventually? And so I think that's the challenging part is, like, figuring out, especially with you, Tim, because Tim you have such a massive podcast, a massive following on the other end of the spectrum, which is the more kind of like normies, not the Web3 folks, right?
But if you go in and say, hey, every single episode is going to be plugging this NFT collection and, you know, it's like, I'm going to put a lot of effort in this, because there is a world where Tim Ferriss has the power to release comic books, to release graphic novels, to do, you know, a miniature series on Netflix. Like, there is a world where you could pull that off because you are the type of human that has the wherewithal, the knowledge, the fan base, all of that to make this happen.
I guess, like, the really difficult question is, like, how serious are you with this? Because you just mentioned if I don't like the crowd I might pull back a bit. Like, that's going to be the number one question you get, right?
Yeah. So, let me take a stab. This is one of my favorite topics because I get to be the salty, cantankerous old man, which I'm really embracing these days. So, all of those considerations that you just mentioned, right? Like, what's your roadmap? How's this? How's this? Comes down to, if we don't want to call it by too fancy a name, people just wanting to know if they're guaranteed to make a quick buck, right? By and large they're like, can I buy this and then flip it for point two ETH more two seconds later, or five. I mean, you can push back but let me just say,
I will say ninety percent of people in this environment are exactly that. There are ten percent of us that will say, I want to bet on Tim Ferriss for the long term. So, I want to come in and own this because I know he's going to create something great.
I agree. So, there are exceptions. I will say the default is a lot of folks who just want free money for no effort. And that world sometimes exists. There are windows of opportunity, but really that dynamic rarely turns out very well for the individual or collectively speaking. So to come back to how serious I am. I am so serious about what I am creating right now. But I am not in any way afraid of the mob in the sense that I am going to let all of my creative decisions be dictated by what the lowest common denominator of day traders wants. Does that make sense? I have zero interest in that. And also I don't need it. Like, I don't need, there's, I mean, just based on the amount of work I've put into this I could figure out a way to do, like, a compilation interview-based book and call it a day with far less work. Right. So the drivers for this are different.
Less people complaining for sure.
Oh my god. Yeah. Because people who buy a book aren't like, how is this going to pay for my car down payment or whatever. My kid's college, which nobody, I don't think anybody should put money into speculative anything for any type of important output, right? It's just too risky. And there are risks intrinsic to a project. There are risks also inherent to just macro factors that are beyond anyone's control. I mean, aka look at the last week. I mean, for sake. So, you know, look, if you want something safe, NFTs ain't it, folks. So, with that having been said, so I'm very, very serious and I got some sage advice early on which was from a different friend, although you
My default with almost every project I've ever done is to set expectations low, because if I set expectations low, there's nothing but upside surprise for people.
Except that you just told them that and now they're like, 'Oh, he's setting the expectations low. Buy it.'
Well, I mean, I am setting expectations low. But here, let me... This will be fun. So, there's going to be an FAQ on some kind of mint page or website dedicated to the project, right? Here are a few of the drafts of my FAQs. You can ask questions.
Do these NFDs come with utility, a roadmap, and a Discord? There's no planned utility, no planned roadmap, and no planned Discord, but there might be a few surprises. It's a big experiment that I've been thinking about and planning for the better part of a year. And then there's some other stuff. Right now, I've given away a couple of things I wasn't going to mention to anybody prior to launch. I was actually going to make these surprises after the mint, like the podcast and so on, but I've had a number of people say, 'Hey, look, you're really excited about this. If you just hedge and say nothing, it's a kind of disservice to the whole thing, so you might as well mention a couple of them.'
Okay, so here's another one. Should I consider this an investment? That's a question. And my draft so far is: absolutely not. No, this is an art experiment and you're getting funny and highly stylized JPEGs that are part of a fictional world. That's it. And then it goes on and on and on. And I just basically say, come into it expecting as you might if you were to go to a casino and spend a hundred dollars as entertainment money, much like you would spend money at a movie theater. You don't expect to get your money back. You expect to have fun watching a movie, eat some popcorn, and then go home. And hopefully I give people some soul-enriching laughs along the way as well as provide a fictional world that people engage with. But I do not want, nor am I positioning... I don't want this to be viewed as an investment and I'm definitely not positioning it that way.
Yeah. Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but some of these come with free dinners with you and jam sessions. Is that correct?
No, I don't promise any of these things. There's another one. Wait, can I read a few more of these? Now, I might have to change some of these, but there's another question on my frequently asked questions: can I be a dick and expect benefits? If you're a dick, I reserve the right to ban or block you from anything I do in the future. And then it goes on and on to basically say, I'm not planning on running an online preschool for children with behavioral problems. So if you're an idiot, I don't want you to be part of this world. I don't want you to have any benefits if there are any. So I will block you in whatever way I can.
I just think the sort of norm of being in a community such as online Twitter, which is like one of the most unfriendly neighborhoods of the internet, and just pissing on people's heads as they walk by on the sidewalk and throwing potted plants at them is not acceptable to me. That's not the culture that I want to foster. If culture is a byproduct in part of the worst behavior you're willing to accept, I want to set the rules really early and I think you can do that. It'll be a challenge certainly, but I was able to do that with blog comments on my blog a long time ago. I was like, we're going to be cool. If you're not cool, you're going to get blocked. That's it. There's no second chance. This isn't like three strikes you're out. It's like, no, you get one chance. It's like if I invite you to dinner at my house and you put your balls on the table and spit in my food, I'm like, okay, yeah, you're not coming back to dinner. That's one strike.
I think I've done that once at your house, actually.
That's true. I didn't want to name this. It was a lot of tequila. I did give Kevin one pass on that.
That's right. That's right.
But here's another one. Okay, so one more FAQ and then I'll stop because I don't want to kind of rain on my own parade and undersell it. I'm trying to be very careful of that. But here's another one: will you be involved with this forever? Forever. Ever. Forever. And then I said, probably not. I'm not pounding the pavement for any of my books or TV shows anymore. And I wouldn't expect this to be all that different. I'll be involved for as long as I'm super stoked and it's massively energy giving instead of energy draining. If I have to deal with a lot of idiots online and it's just non-stop punishment, I'll peace out and move on. My goal is always to create something that can thrive without me. But TBD, right? What I would love as a dream outcome, coming back to your question, is for this to go really well, for me to enjoy it, and then to say, you know what, I want to keep writing fiction. I want to keep producing artwork. Like, I already have all these ideas for possible extensions and all sorts of stuff. And you know me, I've thought about the possibilities for derivative creations, right? I've thought a lot about these things. It doesn't mean they're going to happen. It absolutely doesn't mean they're going to happen, but it could.
How do you think about... there has to be some fans of yours out there that'll tune into this and say, this sounds really cool and I'm a fan of Tim's. I'm sure his fantasy writing will be really interesting. I too am into this because there's of course a lot of geeks out there that might be into fanfiction-type stuff. Is there a world where anyone can kind of help out or do you see a world where you involve any community-type involvement or collaboration?
This is an excellent question and I have not figured out where I land on it. I've talked to a ton of people about it and I don't know where I land yet. I don't know exactly where I land yet because there is such a broad spectrum of options and on one hand you've got kind of the Disney super-enforcement. But as a result of that, I think they have very tight controls on quality, narrative, and character in such a way that these worlds have incredible longevity. I mean, some of their characters and so on have just unbelievable multiple-decade longevity.
If they oversaturate — so I'll use Disney as an example in this too. Like if suddenly there's five Star Wars properties coming out every week, I think personally, okay, if you're someone on the exec team who's incentivized by shorter-term stock performance and that's going to benefit you and maybe your shareholders over the short term, that's fine. But you can also corrupt and damage a fictional world and characters very quickly by that oversaturation.
Now. There are other examples of folks like, for instance, Hugh Howey with his book Wool which was this huge sleeper bestseller who is really supportive of all fanfiction. He's the opposite end of the spectrum. And I think that both sides could make very compelling arguments as to why they're doing what they're doing. And then there's a lot in the middle. So you might have for instance — and this is where NFTs get so tricky — and somebody had asked me like if you could go long in web3 on anything what would it be? And I said if I could go long on new-generation intellectual property lawyers, if there were a way to do that I would do that, because this stuff is so complicated. It is unbelievably complicated, let alone the accounting and tax and all that. I mean it is so bleeding edge that very few people have any idea where the puck is going on the IP side. You have situations where for instance certain holders of an NFT will have the commercial rights or not to their particular image, but they do not have commercial rights to say the name of the project, right? Because then what's the incentive of the project owner to create a lot of brand equity value if it's just getting sliced and diced into a million pieces? That can cause all sorts of problems and you see this with a lot of the larger projects in the NFT space today. So how do you thread the needle on that — these are sets of questions that consume so much thinking, for me at least. They're invisible from the outside when you just see the output. But yeah, I'm doing a lot of reading on this and I'm talking to a lot of people about it. I'm not sure where I land yet.
Yeah. So, I mean, you've got like Gary Vee, for example, protects all of his IP. So, like the Sacred Sardine or whatever, only he can use that. I don't know if Sacred Sardines is a thing, but I'll just say it is.
I like it. Probably is. That might be my DJ name.
You've got that fully protected. You know, I've gone the CC0 route, which is, you know, like Nouns and Cryptos and a few other projects out there where we say the remixes, the meme culture, the extension of the brand into a thousand different nooks and crannies is going to be what gets us more visibility long term. Which, you know, experiment. We'll see what happens.
Experiment. And middle of the road, kind of Board Apes — like, we'll give you a little bit of, you know, you can go sell a coffee mug, just don't call it Board Apes, call it number 65 or whatever.
So any sense on which way you're leaning or no, not yet?
Yeah, I would say I probably lean — and this is nothing new to me, right? I want to just maybe backstep for a second and say I've had to think about this stuff before. This is not new. I've had to think about it with respect to my books. I've had to think about it with respect to the podcast and what do I do when people are slicing and dicing the podcast? What do I do when people are creating summary books of one of my books? What do I do when there are various types of derivative products that get put out that are associated with my books or my name or whatever it might be? How do you respond to that? And when do you need to respond to it? Because there are laws established around say trademarks. If you never enforce your trademarks, you get yourself into trouble. So trust me, I know this very well.
You know this really well. So as much as the web3 world is the wild west, we live in a society governed by laws. And if you're going to think about — here's what I would say: if you're going to think about — if people are investing in a person or a team because they hope that person or team has a long-term focus, anyone with a long-term focus has to take this stuff seriously and think about it.
Otherwise, they're not thinking long term. They're just flying by the seat of their pants and their stuff could, you know, the floor could fall out. Not the floor in the NFT sense, although I guess that could be the case as well. The metaphorical floor upon which the entire project stands could just disintegrate unexpectedly if they're not minding these details. So where am I right now? Am I thinking probably somewhere closer to Board Ape Yacht Club and Disney? I'm probably closer to that end of the spectrum.
Yeah. For me, I think that...
For this type of project.
For this type of project. And also it's like if folks want me to try to craft a world that they can engage with in some way, whatever that sum is is kind of TBD, right? There need to be certain pieces that are reliable for me as foundational pieces of this world. So I can create, let's call it, physics that are reliable. I can create lineages that interweave in a way that makes sense. And we'll see if that changes. I've also for instance come across — I have put so much time into this Kevin. Oh my god. I mean, you know that I've done a lot of it, but the number of case studies that I have read and case law related to different types of IP is unbelievable. The number of cases I've looked at related to almost every major NFT project you can think of is mind-boggling. And there are some cases of folks who are, for instance, opening up to certain types of fanfiction and then they'll have their community, whether it's a DAO or otherwise, vote on pieces of fanfiction that are created that should be incorporated into the canon.
Right. Sort of the... That's interesting.
Which is interesting. However, one of my governing principles for this entire thing is actually a quote that I borrowed — a principle from Morgan Spurlock, the documentary filmmaker who made Super Size Me and so on — which is: once you get fancy, fancy gets broken. I've seen a lot of projects become so complex, especially around mechanics, that I think a lot of people opt out because it just looks like a grind to figure this stuff out on any level. So for me, I'm like, look, it's art. Like, what you're buying is art. And what that then gives you is some skin in the game as a playing piece in a world that you can then engage with. The form of that fictional world is not going to be 27 different mechanics. It's going to be writing and it's going to be probably spoken word at least initially in the form of a podcast, and then we see where it goes.
I think that's brilliant. By the way, I'm very, very excited for the podcast because I just know it's going to be fun.
I'm excited. So now you and I have had this cat and mouse game about the name of this project and the specifics because one of the things that I love about you is you're so supportive of things that you believe in and get excited about, and one of the most hilarious aspects of your personality is what goes hand-in-hand with that — you man, you have a big mouth, and so I'm always worried about you blowing my cover with secrets.
Listen, okay, you want to talk some stuff — you're the most paranoid person I know, dude. You're like so concerned. It could be like something that you've already announced and you're like, don't say a word. I'm like, Tim, you tweeted about it like two days ago and you're like, 'Oh, okay. You're good now.'
Yeah. I mean, look, I agree. We are on — you know, this is — we're on opposite ends of the spectrum, which is why we get along. I'm the kind of paranoid squirrel minding the nuts, you know, like that guy from Ice Age. And you're more like the Hakuna Matata warthog from Lion King. And so, you know, we get along.
It's been a while since I've watched that one. What? I mean, I remember he was fat. Other than that, I don't know much.
Oh, no. He's just like everything's going to be great. Hakuna Matata, no worries, man. Things are fantastic.
No worries. Peace out. And I will say, not that I have any personal experience, but I went — oh, I just blew my cover — someone went to see the Lion King show, like the actual theater show with a friend of theirs and their friend's whole family, including a bunch of little kids. And that someone was a little concerned that they just might not be able to sit through whatever 90 minutes or 2 hours of this performance really not knowing anything about it. So that said person took a handful of gummies and it was one of the most spectacular experiences of said person's life. I mean it was just beyond description in how amazing and hilarious, especially hilarious it was. So thank you for coming to my TED talk on Lion King and edibles. The point was that I'm paranoid. You're very much the opposite of paranoid. And what I wanted to offer is to share with you for the first time ever. This is not — people — I've actually not told Kevin the real name. There was a placeholder though. Do you remember the placeholder?
Yeah, of course. So, I was going to say the only reason — I'm going to agree to even publish this episode as long as we can say what the placeholder name was.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So...
Oh, I remember the placeholder name.
All right. So, what was the placeholder name?
You got a hold of me and said, 'I have this idea for an NFT project.'
Can I tell the real story?
Okay. So, the real story in this... Okay, let me put it this way. In the spirit of ideation and through working through new ideas, it's come a long way.
Because when you first mentioned it, it was very much like...
Imagine a couple of guys having a couple of drinks like bullshitting about what would be hilarious if they saw this on the blockchain. And that's how I feel like it kind of started.
Oh yeah. And then you turn it into something where when I first saw the art I was like, man, these are good. These are like — and I wasn't joking — they're really good. You did a good job with this crew. And so I was pleasantly surprised with everything and how it's come together. Like it was clear to me at some point in your head it went from, 'Haha, wouldn't this be funny?' to like, 'I'm going to build something pretty badass.'
Yeah. Yeah. All my friends were like, 'Wow, this got really elaborate very quickly.'
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, it started off with Tim being like, 'Wouldn't it be funny just to mess with people and just create an NFT project that was just a bunch of roosters and like have it be [__] and Balls, just call it [__] and Balls and you could do like blue balls and you could do like...' And I'm just like, 'Oh god, Tim, Godspeed.' Like, please make that happen. I just want to sit there with my Michael Jackson popcorn being like...
Like watching the stuff go down.
And so that's how it started.
Yes. So it was [__] and Balls initially, which I immediately registered all the domains so you buy them from me.
Which I knew you would do. So I'm glad — you're suing me now.
Red herring. Just so — I'm going to take Moon Birds from you now.
Exactly. I win. There's no NFT project. I just — oh, your birds. All the birds. That's right.
So that was actually one of several initial spitball ideas where I was like, okay, what is something that would just be really fun. Now, all the other things are also true, right? Like the engaging with tech, the engaging with art, raising money for the foundation. Those are all in play already at this point. But I was starting with how can I make this fun for me? For me, for me, for me. Because when I make things fun or interesting for me, it always comes across to — I mean, in the case of the books, my readers, or in the podcast case, my listeners. When I'm not stoked about something, it is very hard for me to hide that. So I was like, all right, how can I make this hilarious and fun for me? So [__] and Balls was definitely one idea. There were other ideas. One other idea was going to be I was going to see if I could crowdsource eyes, meaning photographs of eyes from my audience. And then this was before DALL-E actually. I mean now you could really do some crazy stuff. Although I think DALL-E by default the outputs are owned by — is it open?
They're changing that now.
Okay, they are changing that. And then you have Stable Diffusion and so on which I think by default makes everything public domain or CC0.
So that would be compatible assuming that somebody had an approach like you have potentially.
Potentially, right? I mean there are a lot of details but I had this idea of doing something very interesting with eyes. And initially the eyes as the, let's call it, the window into the soul was going to be tied into consciousness and then like a crypto for consciousness type fundraiser.
Oh man, you should still do this. By the way, you should talk to Platon if you chat with him at all.
Do you know him? His photography is amazing. I love his photography. I don't think he and I have ever met.
His photos are amazing. I mean, the stories behind, for instance, his profile pick pointing up of Putin sitting in this throne basically and the backstory with the question about the Beatles. It's incredible. So I haven't iced this idea completely, but this was one of the other ideas was like, okay, I'm going to do eyes and do this and then have this spin on stylizing the eyes. I had all these ideas. Another idea which was kind of — I don't want to say too on the nose — but it was going to be for raising money for the foundation again and it was going to be taking molecules of current and lesser known, also novel psychedelics. That could be tryptamines, that could be phenethylamines, it could be any...
