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Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, and Kevin Rose. Welcome to new episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, but this episode is a random show episode. Kevin, nice to see you.
Dude, good to see you, brother. Been too long.
It has been a little while, and as I'm sitting here, you know, I'm holding this $80 mic in a probably what is a stand that cost 15 cents to manufacture, and we were laughing a little bit before recording because you mentioned that you had a family plan with some piece of software instead of the business plan because it saves you like $3 a month.
And I was wondering where are you unreasonably cheap or sensitive?
I still have a bunch of stupid completely outdated behaviors around saving, like I mean literally a dollar here, a dollar there, $20 here, $20 there.
And the reason I'm holding this mic is because my cable is too short to have power and this mic in this confined space at the same time. So, after 600 episodes maybe it's time for me to invest in a better rig.
Yeah, I mean you have budget for that I would imagine.
Of all of the things that I should put a little little coin into, that would be one. Is there anything that you're stupidly frugal about?
Oh, dude, there's a ton of things. Like, this is the weird thing is I think it comes down from like being raised with not a lot of cash and then having a little bit more disposable income as you get older. And when you think about like one of the things I did is I signed up for the Spotify couples plan cuz there's like a five-pack or something and they're the family plan, but there's a special couples plan which is just two people. And so I did that because it saved me like $3 a month, but the other thing though that sucks is like then you can't tie any other accounts to any of the other devices. So like for example, I have my Sonos as my account and my wife's account is in her Tesla and then in my Tesla's my account. And so like I'll be driving around and like it'll get switched off because somebody turns on the Sonos or something like that. It's all because I don't want to spend an extra $4 so I can have those extra just a couple of accounts.
I just want to point out for people who missed it. Two individual Teslas, but at least you're saving those $3 a month.
Right, exactly. Yeah, I'm saving that three bucks.
Old habits die hard. Old habits die hard, man.
We don't have the expensive Teslas. We have the inexpensive ones.
It's okay, you're allowed. I would also say, you know, I grew up where we would eat, we had a lot of TV dinners growing up.
We did not have a lot of money and I became very sensitive to wasting food. So I would say if I look back at the food poisoning or anything bordering on food poisoning that I've had in the last two years, I'd say at least 50% of it is self-inflicted and it's from saving, not wanting to throw away food and then like forgetting about some equivalent of like chicken tenders or something that I got in takeout and then I eat it like 4 days past the expiration date. And then I'm floored for 2 or 3 days. So stupid.
I used to love Dinty Moore beef stew. We did a lot of tuna helper at my house, which was odd cuz the hamburger helper was way better than that damn tuna helper.
Never heard of tuna helper. It was horrible. There was tuna helper back in the day. I hope they discontinued it cuz it was absolutely horrible. But for some reason my dad was like, "Oh, tuna's better for him than hamburger or something." So it was always when dad was cooking. When mom was cooking it was like a good meal. When dad had to like step in the kitchen like out came the tuna helper or Dinty Moore beef stew or you know, whatever that was in the cans.
All right. So we'll segue from outdated behaviors. We could do a whole episode on those. Where would you like to start? I could kick it off if you want with a bunch of books cuz I've been doing a lot of reading.
Awesome. Let's start with books and there's a little something for everybody here because I have been reading a lot and in some cases it's more of a show and tell than reading. So I'll show you the cover of one that I think you'll particularly like. This is a book called Visions of Japan. And the subtitle is Kawase, that's k a w a s e, Hasui, h a s u i, Kawase Hasui's Masterpieces. So I'll just show the cover here.
It's a beautiful collection of woodblock prints. And some people will recognize for instance at least one piece of art by Hokusai who has the very famous piece of these almost fractal-like waves coming over from left to right, these oarsmen in boats that are coming into these huge waves. And a lot of people would recognize this particular image. Kawase's style is very different. Specializes mostly in landscape, trees, and uses snow to tremendous effect. So, the assistance he had ultimately in his workshop were helping with the development of the wood blocks, had to develop new techniques to accommodate the complexity of the snow. And I was introduced to this particular artist through Maria Popova, who created Brain Pickings, which is now called The Marginalian, which doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but so it goes.
It's a newsletter and a site that has millions and millions of subscribers now. She's been on the podcast a few times. Started as a casual email to I want to say six friends at a time and has grown into this behemoth. She's an incredible writer and prolific prolific writer. And she had a post on Kawase Hasui. So, that's number one. And it's almost all visual, as you can see here. It has beautiful pieces from every era, every chapter of his life, and every possible season and condition in Japan. So, this brought back a lot of wonderful memories. So, as a coffee table book, something that's easy to dip in and out of that you don't have to read start to finish, that's one.
I also recently finished a book called A Moral Man or Amoral Man, depending on how you read it, and I know that is deliberate, so it's one word, a m o r a l m a n, which was recommended to me by Mark Plotkin, Dr. Mark Plotkin, who's an ethnobotanist and expert primarily in Central and South American medicinal plants, but has a fantastic podcast where he goes into one plant or set of plants per episode.
Mhm. These aren't like psychedelic. These are like full medicinal like?
They're both. So, there are some psychedelics. He knows those very very well. But, he'll do an entire episode on tobacco. Then an entire episode on cannabis. Then an entire episode which will include hemp and the history of hemp in the United States. He'll do an entire episode on coca, an entire episode on wine, for instance. And it goes back and covers the entire history from sort of day one of human history as we have it recorded. Fascinating show. Really fun. Really really fun.
I want to hear that tobacco one. I wish tobacco was better for you. And I say that because I've never smoked at all.
But, I have had a tobacco infused cocktail one time.
Oh my god, dude. Those are amazing.
I was at this restaurant in San Francisco and they had taken tobacco leaves and they infused it in this bourbon. And they're not supposed to do this. This is like totally illegal. It was just like some kind of illegal thing.
And so I ordered. I'm like, "That sounds interesting. Like tobacco infused." And then they're like, "No, no, no. Like it's real tobacco leaves. Are you cool with that?" And I'm like, "Well, I'm not smoking it, I guess." But I then I later read, you know, obviously any form of like getting tobacco in you is bad for you. And so I drank it. One cocktail. And I stand up and I felt like my feet were sinking into the ground. I almost fell over. I was buzzed, like super high. I was like, "Oh my god." If you never do nicotine and then you hit that nicotine, it's real.
Just safety note. So, there's an entire book. It's a very academic and dense, so I don't recommend it necessarily, but there's an entire book and I'm going to come back to him, moral man. But, there's a book called something like Tobacco Use in South American Shamanism. And it's an older book. I want to say it was published in the '70s or '80s. The author has a name along the lines of like Johan or Yohan Wilbert, I want to say. I've read this entire book.
And tobacco use is highly prevalent across most of the Amazon. It's consumed in different ways. This is true in North America as well.
And if you look, ways, what do you mean by consumed in different ways? Like what are the different? There's oral?
There's smoking, but there are many different ways of smoking. There are snuffs, so you could have insufflation, so inhaling tobacco in one form or another, often combined with other things. You have blowing tobacco, either smoke or ground tobacco into the anus. That's one.
I'm being totally serious. You have drinking of tobacco juice, which is the one I wanted to mention as in addition to several others, very dangerous. A number of people have died in the last few years in South America as let's just call it psychedelic tourists who have ingested tobacco juice. I mean, you can end up with tachycardia and then heart attacks and all sorts of issues. It's very dangerous. You can die of nicotine poisoning. So, you need to be extremely cautious about it.
Have you tried any of these?
I have stayed away. I have experienced sort of insufflation. A lot of people now it's trendy. I think it's actually too trendy in the sense that it can do quite a bit of damage if you're overusing it, but people listening may recognize a word called rapé or hapé. Some people say it with the hapé like the Brazilian pronunciation because they don't want it to sound like rapey, rapé, but it is a pulverized tobacco often mixed with other things that people will blow into their own nostrils. So, there's a V-shaped joined pair of tubing, and you stick one end in your mouth, and you've already compressed some version of tobacco into the other side, and then you blow it into your nostril, and it shoots up into your sinuses.
When you say mixed with other things, what is it typically mixed with?
It really depends on, it's like a cocktail. It depends on who you're purchasing it from, which tribe. A lot of these are of dubious origin in the sense that many psychedelic or psychedelic-related paraphernalia and compounds are spun a yarn of this incredible history of indigenous use, whereas, for instance, toad, so sometimes referred to as Bufo, the molecule in question is 5-MeO-DMT, 5-methoxy-DMT. There's this entire story now, versions of a story spun about indigenous use, and there seems to be no compelling evidence that there's actual indigenous use of the Bufo alvarius toad, goes by a number of other Latin names, but the Sonoran Desert Toad. There seems to be no compelling evidence that this specific toad was used as a source of 5-MeO by any indigenous group.
And in fact, it was Ken Nelson, an amateur biochemist who was a genius in many respects, who ultimately, through trial and error, developed smoked venom from Bufo alvarius as one means of consuming 5-MeO-DMT. Now, 5-MeO-DMT is found in other things. It's found in other plant species, many plant species, in different types of tree nuts, for instance, something called Yopo. There are many different sources, but I guess the point I want to make, which is a long answer to your question, is that a lot of these tobacco cocktails that are being sold to blow up your own nostril or nostrils, I don't think have any basis in indigenous use.
But sometimes it's mixed with things that are not psychotropic. I advise generally against this. I mean, there are potential uses, blah, blah, blah, but I know people who, just as you can with cigarettes, become addicted to rapé. But because they're in Venice and, you know, doing like a yoga waska retreat and everyone's talking about how highly evolved they are by blowing it up their nostril instead of smoking it, suddenly it's socially reinforced. And then you have people who are going through like an entire canister of this stuff every week because they're addicted to nicotine.
Well, and it's still, they've still proven that this is like bad for the heart and like causes cancer. Like this different delivery mechanism doesn't get around that in any way, right?
Yeah, I mean, you can definitely do plenty of damage. I don't know. There may in fact be medical applications. I am not well enough versed in sort of contemporary medical applications of nicotine. I know that there are almost certainly potential medical applications which would be administered in some way that is not smoking, right? Because lung cancer will kill you. Let's be clear.
I had read something around a study that was done on the nicotine patches and it was more around heart health and there being some potential negative effects around that, but I know a lot of the biohacker community, at least a few people that I bumped into, they like the nicotine patches. They'll just slap them on and it's a nice little booster, you know, you take it with your coffee in the morning and it's like you did a rail or something.
Oh, it'll let you up and it will also put you on the ground. I mean, I've experienced rapé a number of times. It's not my go to of Tuesday wake me up or anything. And I remember doing it with someone who at the time was using it probably 10 to 15 times a week. Somewhere in that range, like twice a day.
And he had a really high tolerance and he packed my tube with, and he's also like mid-200s probably in body weight. So, he packed his tube and I blew it up my nostrils. And I immediately broke out into like a cold sweat. Room is spinning and I needed to lay on my back for like 45 minutes. It was awful. It was absolutely terrible. So, don't take it lightly.
This is a detour we took off of Mark Plotkin. Check out his podcast Plant of the Gods. He also wrote a book called either The or A Shaman's Apprentice, which is very very good about his adventures in places like Suriname. Really knows his stuff. He was a protege of an incredible sort of father of ethnobotany in the United States called Richard Evans Schultes, who was at Harvard. I've had Mark on the podcast before. Fascinating guy. Also runs a nonprofit called the Amazon Conservation Team, which does really interesting work in helping indigenous communities in particular not only to secure their land as protected, but also to monitor it using Raspberry Pi and technology and so on because you can't enforce the boundaries and prevent poachers and illegal logging and so on. There's not really much value to a place being protected, if that makes any sense.
But, Mark recommended this book Amoral Man by a guy named Derek DelGaudio. So, Derek DelGaudio, d e l g a u d i o. I recognized because there is a one-man show that he did on Hulu or it was available on Hulu. It was performed in New York City with storytelling slight of hand, kind of stage mentalism, although a lot of it was just like brute force incredible memorization, called In and of Itself. So, if anyone hasn't seen Derek DelGaudio's show In and of Itself, Kevin, you would love this.
It's so good. So, Derek DelGaudio In and of Itself, I recognize the one-man show and Amoral Man goes into his entire life story of growing up with a single mom and then learning about magic, ultimately becoming a card mechanic in illegal games, like high-stakes card games. And the whole story is really good. I was very impressed with the writing.
So, that's one and then the last one I'll mention is a novel. It's called Ka, just k a by John Crowley and it is a long book. I would guess I read it on Kindle, but probably 400 to 500 pages about a single crow who basically I don't think I'll give away too much here by saying it's reincarnated over and over and over again and develops the ability to communicate with humans. And it's a cool book. I will warn you in advance that it takes literally 100 pages probably to get warmed up to the point where you're like, "Oh, this is actually now interesting." So, there's a lot of setup involved, so be forewarned.
But John Crowley is interesting to me because he wrote another book that takes about 100 pages to get warmed up with called Little, Big. And that is one of the best novels I've ever read in my life. It leaves you in an altered state for at least, left me and I know several other people in an altered state for a few weeks after you read this book.
Wow. Wait, which one was that called? I'm taking notes here. What are you saying?
It's so good. Little, Big.
And I think an alternate subtitle or a sometimes included subtitle is like The Fairies Parliament or something like that. But the pro tip with Little, Big, it's so good. I'm just telling people in advance, it's like some heavy lifting in the beginning because you have to establish a bunch of context. Once you get to the talking fish, you'll know that you're about to turn a corner into the really wild, fascinating stuff.
But there is a family tree in the beginning of the paperback edition, which was given to me as a gift by my brother, and I put it down. I tried to read it and put it down like three times. And I'm just like, why did my brother give this to me? Like it's not that interesting in the beginning. And then when it finally turns the corner, you're like, "Oh my god, this is one of the best books I've ever read."
Wow, so you're back in. You gave up reading new books for a while.
Well, I gave up, this is like a technical point that I think is worth underscoring. I gave up and I still am giving up reading new books, meaning books that are published in this year. But I am reading books. So I'm reading books, but John Crowley's book Little, Big as well as DelGaudio's were published many years ago.
And the reason I made that decision and policy is because I get deluged with like dozens of books a week that I don't request. They get sent to me and then people want you to plug them. You get them in the mail and you're just like, yeah. And sometimes they're friends, right? And very often they're friends. I mean, it's like I've done 600 episodes. So it's like of those 600 people, how many of them write continuously and have books coming out? A lot, right? So I can't accommodate all of them.
Even if I can have one of them on the podcast, if all I did was read one out of every 10 books sent to me, I would never have time to do anything else. So there's this blog post I wrote a while back called I think it's like the one finding the one decision that removes a thousand decisions, something like that. If people search it, they can find it. If they go to tim.blog/newbooks, they'll see it because I send that now to people, so it doesn't feel like a personalized decline.
12 months, people. Don't send him books all in December and expect it to happen.
Well, I actually put something at the beginning of it, which was like this has been extended indefinitely. So, basically, if you're about to send me a book that is like sent in any new year, like forget about it, right? So, it's going to be a tough sell. But, those are some of the books that I've been enjoying, and I will probably go into, I think John Crowley has a collection like a three-part series that is Egypt or AEgypt, Egypt spelled with an AE. So, I may dig into that next, but I think the book that kind of mesmerized the most people that I'm aware of is Little, Big. And I left something out. So, in the beginning, there's a family tree. Do yourself a huge favor and take a photograph of that, or shit's going to get really confusing. So, take a photograph, even if it's on Kindle, like take your phone out and take a photograph of the family tree cuz you're going to want to refer back to it. Fantastic book.
That is some of my information diet at the moment.
Awesome. I've got one book to mention.
Peter Thiel, a mutual friend, obviously been on your show a bunch, turned me on. He actually had an episode of his podcast, The Peter Thiel Drive, where he interviewed Terry Real, which is this fantastic therapist mainly focused on actually male therapy and issues around that males run into. And I got invited to join a men's group with Terry, actually. I'd never done one of these. I don't know if you've done men's groups before. Have you done men's groups? It's really interesting. Yeah, so I had neither and I was invited to join one of these men's groups and essentially it is, picture eight people over Zoom. Terry's there as well, so you have your therapist in the room and I'd never done any type of group therapy thing before. I've done individual therapy and couples therapy, but never group.
And he kicks it off by saying, "Okay, we're going to go around the room and everyone gets 10 minutes to just tell me what's on your mind, what's going on?" And there's none of this like, "Well, I took my kids out and all of that." It's like, "No, no, no. What is it hitting you at a deep level that you are struggling with?" And he calls you on your shit. Like if it's such generic answers, cuz everybody has their thing that they're struggling with. Like, "My spouse did this" or, you know, it could be any slew of different things that you're running into, you know? Like right now for me, it's my mom's dealing with cancer, right? So that was the thing that my wife went into. And you spend those 10-15 minutes and it's really eye-opening.
And they put you in a group of like peers that when you look around the room, you're kind of in a similar stage in life. And you have these really deep conversations and one person can be, you know, got caught cheating on their wife or whatever it may be. And you realize instantly like, "Oh my god, like so many people actually struggle with the same things that I struggle with every single day in my head." Which is nice, it's refreshing.
And then the people that are having the most pain for that particular session, he does it a couple times a month. It's a 2-hour long session. Then he'll go deep with those people. So he'll say, "Okay, you're the two people today we're going to go deep with." And then you just watch as he dissects and just ninjas around and gets them often times to tears by the end of it. And really, really goes in deep into some of these issues that these men are bringing up.
And I had never really thought about doing that. And it was really a really beautiful thing. And you're very supportive. They always say, "Does anyone want to comment on what this person just said?" And it's never about judging them or saying, "Well, I think you're doing this wrong." It's more like, "This is how this landed on me."
Is that a rule that was established up front?
It is a rule. There's no opinions.
You can, yeah, what are the rules?
You comment on how it landed on you and how you see it through your lens, but this is only applicable to you. You can say general supportive things like, "I thought you were really courageous for saying that. Thank you for sharing it with me." Things like that. You can always pass at any time. So, if anything makes you uncomfortable, you can always pass. There is 100% what happens in this room stays in this room. We're talking about some very crazy topics here that maybe some people haven't disclosed to their even closest friends or partners, right? There's all kinds of issues that I heard
Came up where I was just like, I can't believe we're talking about this. But it's nice. It's nice to know that other men are struggling with this stuff. And so, that was fantastic. And I've been doing that for a few months now. And it's led me to just, I don't know. There was some great insights in there that I just came away with. But then it led me actually to Terry's books as well. Because, you know, these are quite expensive kind of groups. Cuz Terry's a pretty sought-after type of individual therapist. And so, he has this book that he turned us on to called Fierce Intimacy.
Yes, Fierce Intimacy. And it's great. He reads his own audiobooks. So, it's on Audible. And it's how to communicate with love and respect even when you argue. And this has been just a game-changer for me when it comes to how I can relate, how I can prevent self-sabotaging habits, just how to deal with your partner in a way that is constructive and moving forward and not judging. And being able to know when to let information in and take it in and digest it and let it hit your stuff like internally, and when to know that the other person is just venting and that actually is coming more from them and it's okay to put a wall up sometimes and block that information because it's where they're coming from and it shouldn't land and hit you in the wrong way. It's such a beautiful simple framework that I absolutely love it. And the other thing I love about him is he was kind of a pioneer in the space. He's not a therapist that just sits there and listens to both sides and he's like, It sounds like what you're saying is this. He takes sides in therapy. He's like, No, that's wrong. Like you're doing this like she's right here. Or you know, like the And so you hear a lot of that happening in this conversation. And I'm like, Finally, you know? Like I like a therapist to take sides cuz sometimes I know I'm right sometimes, you know?
So I just found this guy to be really refreshing and probably people that are, some people are laughing cuz they know this is a really popular person. At first I hadn't heard of him was 6 months ago, but he's a very famous therapist. But anyway, highly recommend Fierce Intimacy. Daria and I both listen to it. My wife and I both listen to it. And it's already improved the way that we communicate with each other, the way we have conversations, the way we let information flow in and actually land on us. So I'd put it in there in terms of books to recommend.
I did it on Audible, so I think it was like 7 hours or something like that.
It's probably like 250 pages, something like that. Pretty easy. Do you think you have found it helpful because you are also in the group or is it, do you think it's effective as a standalone, the book?
Absolutely, cuz Daria listened to it not being in the group obviously and she found it effective as a standalone as well. And the reason I like it is it just doesn't dance around this like we always have to be head over heels in love. It's like every single day that you wake up, one person might be up, one person might be down, and it's always about finding your way back to that middle, safe, like comfort zone. And relationships are nothing but you have these moments of beautiful things and bliss happening, but largely it's about the other points, right? And like how you get back to those states. Yeah, and returning back to that state of health and understanding and how to both know that you're on the same team and have the same goals in mind and working with a framework that supports that. So, I don't know, I really loved it. I've really struggled. I listened to a couple other relationship books because, you know, I'm always trying to improve. I've been married 9 years now and Daria and I are in a really good place now, but you know me, Tim, we've had these conversations like a one-on-one. There's bumps with all these relationships, right?
And it's like, you know, Daria and I had to do couples therapy for a bit and especially when you introduce kids into the equation, my god, that changes everything. And so, it's like this is the first time I read a book where I was like, this is speaking to me and working. So,
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You know, I have considered men's groups a number of times. I think I probably have, on one hand, like an unfair judgment of, Oh, I've seen this before. So, it's not totally unfair. Like, some men's groups are like, All right, we're going to go in the woods and like wear furs and bang on drums and like yell and scream. And I'm like, Uh, not sure that's the medicine I need right now. And then, you know, I've had some misgivings at different points, but the kind of meta commentary that I would make, and this has been a conversation and it's a conversation I've had actually with quite a few women because I've just observed that women I think are in general, again, I'm painting with a broad brush, but better at kind of social cohesion and gathering and that type of communal intimacy. And there are very few places, you know, outside of like a sports team or the bar or fill in the blank option C, where men have those communal experiences, but if you look back at our history, right? If we look back hundreds of years, thousands of years, that wasn't an inbuilt feature of different communities. And I think that society at large ends up in a very precarious volatile situation when men, especially younger men, don't have that, right? It's like, okay. If you have somebody who is feeling alienated, who is pumped full of hormones, like let's just say like kind of 16 to 22, right?
With no sense of social belonging and a lot of physiologically driven or at least informed aggression, that is a significant societal problem, right? And I have thought about that.
The other thing I'll add on top of that is, you know, traditionally when you think about men getting together and shooting the it is that bar setting, is that sports game, is whatever it may be, and it's very high level, right? Like at that point you're just like, Ah, how are things? Like, Ah, you know, wife's doing this, blah blah. You don't have the permission really, like in my group I was like, My mom had her cancer return. I'm going to miss her when she's gone because I'm her little boy. I will miss the feeling of my head on her shoulder. Stuff that I'm just as like so deep and intimate to me because I love her so deeply.
You don't get that over a beer necessarily to be able to go and to see other men around the table doing the same thing because we all at that point have set the ground rules, it's a safe space, we can just really, really let it out. And lots of tears come. And one of the things Terry always says that's really interesting during it, people will start to cry, men will start to cry, and tears will start to come, and he goes, What are those tears saying? What are those tears saying right now? Give me more. Give me more. Open that door a little bit further than you're comfortable opening up. Like you, yeah, I triggered something. Here come the tears. But unpack that further. And then it just goes from there and it's deeper and deeper layers. And it's release, man. I mean, you know how this is. Psychedelics help with this a lot. When I did my high-dose mushroom experience, I was sobbing after, you know, cuz my father had passed away. It gave me that permission to let that stuff go.
And it's a very special thing when you can do it because it's so healthy.
I'd love to actually ask you cuz you can probably correct or at least inform my initial impression. So, I listened to that episode on Peter's podcast. Or I listened to the first half. So, maybe I didn't give it enough time. I listened to the first half and other people I know have listened to that episode and immediately bought a bunch of books. So, I may be peculiar in this way, but I listened to the first half and he seemed, my impression was that Terry had a real axe to grind maybe on masculine strength, if this makes any sense. So, he talked a lot about like toxic masculinity. Okay, fine. Talked about sort of the counterparts to that and it seems like he didn't grow up with say a kind of healthy interaction with exemplars of male strength, right? Didn't seem to have this like the sports background. Like he mentions his dad wanted him to be this like jocular athletic kid and he wasn't that. But I came away feeling that he had maybe a very partial view of masculine strength. And I think it is a mistake and it's also kind of conformist group think to automatically like excise male strength from like the topics that we can discuss as important. I do think there's a place for that. So I'd be curious to hear your thoughts because my impression in listening to the first half I was like, oh wow, this guy's like raw raw kind of feminine energy, the future is feminine. That's fine, but if it's to the exclusion of trying to cultivate strength in men, even if that does look on some level traditional, even cross-culturally. I mean, we see certain sort of typified behaviors. Not saying they're all good. Like all things in excess can become sort of the opposite of what we're aiming for. How would you speak to that? Because that turned me off and it probably says more about me than about Terry.
No, it's actually funny you should mention that because when I listened to that episode, I immediately thought I don't want to go any further here. It wasn't necessarily for me either, but I trust Peter, right? And I know that Peter's a very masculine dude. Yeah. I mean, I watch videos of him shooting his bow out of his house like into the backyard from the center of his house. I'm like, who shoots bows in their house into the backyard? Like he's crazy. So Peter is as masculine as they come and I listened to that episode and I think we unfairly got a very small slice of what Terry's all about. And when I listened to this book, I was like, oh thank God in some sense. Like I'm so glad it's much more, it was a little one-sided there. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Got it. All right, that's helpful.
I felt the same thing you did, dude. I absolutely felt the same thing you did. I was like, okay, is this like, I'm not going to say what I'm going to say.
Yeah, I did. I was worried.
Yeah, and you know, I think also, you know, for those people who are interested, you can kind of look at Marc Andreessen's commentary on the current thing, right? He has a lot of thoughts on the current thing in quotation marks and I don't want to speak for Mark, but I used to start every presentation I did with a quote from Mark Twain. And in this case I do think it's actually verified. I know it's like Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, and like Gandhi and Groucho Marx get like 90% of all quotes on the internet, but or Mae West, but the quote was, and I think I'm getting this right, you know, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. And just to identify like how much of what I'm actually not just saying, but believing are conclusions I've come to from like first principles, or actually following some kind of logical process, or from direct experience, and how much of it is just conditioning. How much of it is a subconscious or conscious fear response because I see people getting, you know, having gasoline poured on them and being lit on fire on the internet, metaphorically speaking, whenever they voice the opposite. And I think it's very, very important to pay attention to that, not just with respect to, you know, where we segued from with Terry, but it's like whenever you're too in line with kind of what the majority are saying. Like it might be true, but very often we're absorbing beliefs or perspectives or positions that we haven't earned, if that makes sense. Like we haven't earned these positions.
I mean, the same goes true for food. Like you're like, oh, I'm eating McDonald's, everyone else is eating McDonald's, maybe this isn't the best thing for my body.
Yeah, it's certainly one way to...
Yeah, that would be one example.
So, speaking of herd behavior, this I'll go the other direction. Should I talk about my first ever NFT?
