#785: The Random Show — 2025 Predictions (AI, Aliens, BTC, and More), New Year’s Resolutions and Strategies, Smart Fitness, The Spinal Engine, New Apps, and Much More | The Tim Ferriss Show

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Need Tim Ferris. Kev Kev, nice to see you.

Tim Tim, happy holidays, brother.

Happy holidays. Another random show, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls brought to you by Kev Kev and Tim Tim.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Now, it's that time of the year.

It is. And can I say where you are?

Because you're not in a holiday place, you're in Hawaii.

But yeah, right. I'm not in a place with great seasonal variety.

I am in a place with wonderful sun and warmth, which is why.

Is it good? It's amazing.

Of course it's amazing.

You seem very chill right now.

I am chill right now.

I'm feeling very good.

And there are a bunch of reasons for that that I could talk about.

We'll get to that. But there are some contributing elements that you're actually very familiar with.

So we'll come back to that.

But I've had more comments in the last week or two from close friends of mine, people that know me, are like, you seem really chill.

You seem very grounded right now.

And I'm like, yeah.

I feel very chill and very grounded right now.

And there's still a lot going on.

It's not for absence of things going on.

It's actually somewhat amazing that given how many projects are in process right now, I'm getting those comments.

Which makes me feel like I must be doing something, right?

Or I'm just lucky because who knows?

I'm sleeping well in Hawaii.

Could be that. Set the AC to like negative 500 degrees, which I had to override every system in the hotel to do.

Yeah, they have those things on lockdown.

And then if you open the door, it shuts the AC off.

It's like, it's a whole thing.

Yeah, 70 degrees would be dangerously cold.

So it's sometimes hard to get the AC low.

But let's hop into it, man.

We have a lot to talk about.

Where should we begin?

Ah, man. Let's start off with, when I think about these urine specials, we've done a few of these.

And we typically do a little bit of like, what are you doing in the new year?

You know, like, what do you get the changes here?

And it's the same list every year for me.

During class exercise more.

Exactly. Exactly. But we'll talk about that.

But you know, there's a lot of stuff.

I thought some predictions would be fun because I have some good ones for next year.

Yeah, you're the right guy for that.

I might have some predictions, but you have a better track record than I do.

I don't know, you've got a few, right?

I mean, I occasionally get one, right?

It's not that my track record is bad.

I think you have such a 30 ,000 foot view on so many different sectors.

And also just as a general partner, a true and as a more active investor than yours truly, you get to see a lot that is coming down the pike, right?

You really get to observe patterns on a weekly basis that most humans do not, including me.

But I do see things occasionally.

So we'll see what, if I can riff off of some of your predictions.

So where would you like to start?

Let's start off with something that I just thought was a fun one to just really get your take on this because I think we're screwing up society.

So every year Apple does these, it's like, hey, you're the 15 apps that we love.

This is the best gaming app.

This is the best productivity app, all this stuff, right?

And I tend to go in there and poke around it.

I'm always checking out what the new hot thing is, especially on the gaming side or stuff where I really just don't pay attention.

I'm like, just tell me the best thing.

Go check it out, right?

And I noticed one thing that I keep seeing this over and over and it's driving me nuts because it dovetails into some of the videos that we send each other on a side thread.

But like, okay, so we've sent a couple of these videos back.

You mean the mutually assured destruction threads?

We could say soccer.

These are more civilized.

Okay, got it. Yeah, so you mean soccer.

We'll be like sending texts, this one of those threads, I don't know if this one's that bad, but we've been on some threads where there's a lot of pics going around.

Nothing horrible, but definitely I'll move on from there.

So there's basically these new AI videos of like MMA fighters and they'll get like knocked out.

And when they fall to the ground, they like getting go -karts and shit and start driving around.

Have you seen this where they like blend AI?

Yeah, I've seen them.

And it's like, it's messing with my head.

Like I look at that stuff and I'm like, this is like really bending reality.

I don't know if it's because like there's a psychedelics kind of component there where you're like, why am I seeing something that I would typically see in a different realm, like in this realm, like weird stuff's happening in the brain.

But one of the things I noticed in the app store as I said, the best app of the year was a Adobe app, which, you know, they make great stuff and they had Adobe Lightroom on there as winning the Apple App Store 2024 winner Mac app of the year.

And why they were so stoked on Lightroom.

When you think about Lightroom, you're like, oh, this is like software that's been around for like, you know, a couple of decades, like why is this anything new?

And they had a video there that showed these kids running around in their backyard.

And you've seen this thing where like, you can like erase shit, you know, like you can like drag your finger across it.

Like Google does all these ads where they're like, hey, is there someone weird standing in your photo?

Like erase them, dude, this video, we've gone too far.

So they're like, these kids play in the backyard.

There was like hedges.

And then they erased their like yard door to get out of their backyard.

And like, it made more hedges.

And I was just like, can you imagine when these kids are like 35 or 40 and they're like looking back in their photos and they're like, do we have like a backyard?

And they took the dog out and shit.

I'm like, why are you taking the dog out?

Like the dog's like part of the family.

Just like sowing the seeds for gaslighting yourself later.

Do you know what I mean?

Like what is going on?

They're racing all of our real memories and replacing them with almost imperceivable at this point, digital alternatives.

And it's really worrisome to me, I don't know.

Do you do any of this shit to erase anybody out of your photos?

I don't erase people out of my photos.

I also feel like a lot of that editing is for sharing outside of your immediate circle.

Like social media stuff.

Social media or effectively applying digital plastic surgery to your life so you can share highlights that look better than they actually do in real life.

And I am very cautious to play with that because I feel like it's similar to getting your first little dabble with itucks or facelift.

And then there is this creeping tendency to add more and more and more and more.

And similarly, I don't want to become delusionally dissatisfied with my life because there are little things that in my mind's eye aren't perfect for broadcast like a door in the hedges, right?

Because then what happens when you're doing that constantly and then you sit in your backyard and you're looking at that door, does it drive you insane?

Right. When it really shouldn't.

And then also, but think of the downstream effects too where your friends are like, okay, you just take something that is a mild visual nuisance out of the equation and it's like, they had that perfect beat shot.

They are so lucky. If only I could have that thing.

And then you go in, you're like, oh, it was crowded.

We didn't have the same thing they did, but in reality, they just like magic eraser and all their friends are all the people behind them out of it.

I'm just like, it's creating a fake everything.

I don't know. Something about it.

I love AI. I think there's a lot of fun.

There's so much I use it for every single day, but this is one of those things where I'm just like, I don't want my kids to grow up thinking they need perfection.

And that's what this is doing.

It's creating a better, perfect scene.

You know? Oh yeah. I mean, and people are already using that, of course.

I mean, it's like zoom filters on steroids, right?

Right, totally. And I think, I'll just throw this in there.

Not sure exactly what form this is going to take, but I do think there will be a pendulum swing away from certain digital environments when people realize just how contorted constant exposure will make your perception, your satisfaction, your dopamine reward system.

I really feel like the impact is going to be felt in a way that people could perhaps rationalize a way or brush aside in years past.

We're like, well, I know that Twitter's a cesspool on X, Y, and Z levels, but I get A, B, and C.

But once people are put into environments where what's up is down, what's left is right, what's fake is real, and what's real is fake, this psychological toll, the emotional toll, I think will become much harder to dismiss and people are going to look for things offline.

I think there are going to be a lot of opportunities for that.

You see that in, I think you see early indications of that with for instance, running clubs and various in real life activities that have become very popular in place of or as supplements to online dating and dating apps as an example.

Like those things are exploding in New York City and a lot of major cities.

You see that in potentially, certainly this is a trend at least in a few countries outside of the US, I'd have to look at the data.

I think it's mildly true.

We see some improving numbers in print book sales.

That could be attributed to a number of other factors outside of people moving from digital formats to print.

But at least as a thought exercise, I think we can explore different ways in which people are going to seek out something tangible they can hold and know is real, look at in person and know is real.

So that's certainly extrapolating from just what I see in a sort of small circle of people who are hyper exposed to a lot of this.

I feel like people like you who are perhaps way, it's called like prematurely saturated with exposure to these things, are canaries in the coal mines, where you're like, oof, holy shit, we need an exit.

We need a way to step off the stage.

So we're not looking at this manufactured reality.

It's funny you say that I was talking to another friend of mine that's deep in this stuff, you know, Chris Hutchins, where I was talking to him about raising daughters and the kids are getting older.

And he's like, dude, he's like, you know, what's funny?

He's like, when we got bullied as kids, somebody would be like, you know, I hooked up with your mom or whatever, right?

And it would just be like, they're like, they schoolyard slams or whatever, right?

And like, now in like three years, like I hooked up with their mom, look at this video and it'd be like the mom hooking up with a kid because it's AI and shit.

You'd be like, damn, like you're hooking up my mom, you know, but it won't be real, but it'll be like, just slams.

And you don't look real enough.

Like it's the bullying's going to get hardcore.

Yeah. Yeah, of course it will.

Or just sharing videos of the person you want to bully doing things they didn't do.

Right, exactly. It's going to get bad.

And there are plenty of upsides.

I mean, look, I've used Chad GPT and Claude for like 10 to 15 times today with my team.

I'm doing a company offsite here in Maui.

That's why I'm in Maui.

And there are reasons for the location we can get into, but it's very useful, but the dose makes the poison.

The application also makes the poison and it pays to just be cognizant of how you are using these things.

Yeah. So that's one.

All right, what else you got?

Are there any personal New Year's resolutions that come to mind or specific ones where you're like, okay, some of these might rhyme with things in the past, but here's how I'm going to approach them differently.

Yeah. Oh man. Okay.

So the exasperated exhale is always a good place to start.

Well, I mean, the hard thing for me is that like, I get into this really bad situation where come November, I just like let myself go.

Yeah, of course. It happens every single year.

I just go ham on shit.

Thanksgiving comes around and I hate too much nutmeg.

It's like, or not nutmeg, but eggnog.

Nutmeg too. You know what, I can't stand.

Let's talk about clothes for a minute.

No, but like I do like a little eggnog with a little at brandy in there.

You know, you put a little tone yak and your eggnog.

And so like, but that goes straight to your gut, you know?

Of course it does. And so I hate this cause this is like the freaking 70 year of random shows or whatever where it's like every December, it's like, I want to be less fat and drink less.

And like, it's like, you know, I get a good running start on the new year though.

So I am going to go into this.

Maybe we'll put together like a compilation.

Oh yeah. All the time.

All your like 10 years.

I don't have a drink.

Yeah, exactly. So I think I'm just going to lean into do the exact opposite.

Just keep eating him.

Just keep drinking.

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

That's horrible. No, but I think one of the things that you and I were trading links on a couple of days ago, which I really curious to get your take on this is like, there's like this movement, well not movement, it's called movement, but it's old people movement of like, you know, you and I, when we

first met, the name of the game is Bro Ease, this might sound is like we wanted to put muscle mass on.

Like we were like, you know, sure.

Meathead central. Yeah.

Like I wouldn't say full meathead, but there was a good amount of meat there.

That's pretty meathead.

So the transition from meathead to like somebody that actually just wants to like feel the like stretch.

Yeah. And do like functional stuff.

Like we were talking about functional patterns because, you know, it was an account that I had followed for a while and they had some kind of more non -traditional ways of approaching your gate and your movement and really setting you hopefully up for years of good solid longevity in terms of joint health,

back health, all these things.

And I sent you another one that you were checking out as well.

What's been your take here?

Cause I'm starting to make this move into like, okay, I want a lot of movement and a lot of core plus plus strength.

I'd love to be lean.

I don't need to be ripped.

Although did you see the new Hugh Jackman Wolverine with him?

Deadpool. He's a beast.

Do you think that was freaking animated or was that really Hugh Jackman's body at this stage?

I think it's really him.

That's insane. How can he freak out?

I have a pretty good authority that that is him.

Yeah. Dude. How does he get cut like that?

It was insane. He takes it seriously.

Follows the basics, follows the rules, doesn't waver.

He's very dedicated and he is a real athlete.

I mean you watch him move.

He moves like a dancer.

He can lift like a power lifter.

His endurance on sick on a rower, like a concept two is on be leavable like the wattage that he can sustain over periods of time would boggle the mind of even some people who've been former competitive rowers.

He is a, he is a true athlete.

Okay. So that's legitimate.

So anyway, my point being is that like there's this little micro trend I see occurring where a lot of people are making this move to a more functional holistic kind of movement based health and strength and training that is non traditional as we define it.

Where do you see that playing into your own routine?

Is that something that you're looking into?

Yeah, I've thought about this a lot to our texts were well timed and I want to give credit where credit is due first to you for introducing me to this account.

And then I ended up doing a bunch of research on this account that I did not tell you about.

So I will probably pronounce the name incorrectly.

And for that I apologize, but I believe his name is Nseema Inyang.

Now the spelling on that will be more accurate than at my pronunciation, but N S I M a, that's probably all you need to find him on YouTube.

Inyang I N Y A N G.

So Nseema has this video, which you sent to me called the lie of traditional strength training.

Now, yes, that is YouTube clickbait on one hand, but he actually does deliver on that.

His production value is incredible.

His delivery is impeccable.

I was very, very impressed.

I went back and watched certain sections of this.

His agility too, just insane.

His agility is incredible in terms of power.

He's a Brazilian jiu -jitsu competitor as well at a very, very high level.

I think he won worlds or masters worlds at brown belt most recently is now black belt, which is no joke.

And I reached out to a friend of mine, Mark Bell, who is very well known in the power lifting community.

He also has a number of products that have done very, very well.

And I met, I realized Nseema at super training gym in Sacramento, like a decade ago, Oh crazy.

When he was still really focused on power lifting, met him very, very briefly.

I'm almost a hundred percent confident.

I remember he was doing deadlift band polls while I was there checking out the gym for the first time.

This was a long time ago.

So I chatted with Mark about Nseema who Mark reinforced is the real deal on every possible level.

And the piece that I took from that video specifically was paying attention to what he calls and others have called the spinal engine.

And there's a book actually by that title, the spinal engine, the name again, tough one.

I think it's Serge Grakowitsky, S -E -R -G -E, and we'll put a link in the show notes, but in effect, I'll actually pull this up because I think it's worth reading.

So the spinal engine, and you can watch the video and Sima does a great job with video of explaining this, but the book has in its Amazon description and there's no digital version.

You have to buy paperback for like 115 bucks.

So I'm not saying you should, I haven't read it, but this book deals with the human spine with particular emphasis on the lumbar spine.

Human gait is traditionally believed to be the exclusive function of the legs or say the swinging of the arms and the legs, which play a part of it.

Going back to the description, the book presents arguments and data that challenge that belief.

It proposes that the spine is the primary engine that makes us move and it goes on and on.

And what I think Sima does such a nice job of is showing that demonstrating the implications of that theory through video and also using tools like rope swings and other things to demonstrate how you can develop mobility through different planes of motion.

So you have various things, lateral flexion, you have flexion extension in terms of this type of forward backward plane.

And it really got me thinking, I started experimenting with some of the motions in that video primarily because his counter example, which is effectively the lie of traditional strength training is how if you're constantly bracing, you're constantly say holding your breath in certain portions of the lift

to increase intra -abdominal pressure, that ultimately as a side effect, you can produce a lot of rigidity in the spine.

And I really have never had an interest in being a power lifter or even an Olympic weight lifter, although I think they should more accurately be called power lifters.

I've always been focused on weight training in service of athleticism and have loved playing sports, have traditionally competed a lot.

And I may actually compete in 2025 in some form of sport.

I would like to have something on the calendar for that.

Number of cautionary notes, and then I'll come back to how I'm thinking about maybe framing exercise for myself.

The first is that you should not go from all fucked up and broken and stiff to I'm going to do the most exaggerated rotational movements possible.

Or pulling a sled backwards in this compromised rounded back position.

You will break yourself if you do that.

So I think the name of the game is micro progressions and progressive resistance, but being very, very smart about it.

Because as you have experienced, certainly as I have experienced as you get older and you accumulate injuries, it takes a lot longer to heal.

And sometimes those things do not heal completely, no matter what you do.

I got one of those splits machines where you can like put your legs in there and then you can heal.

Yeah, yeah, I had like the check nursing on the outside.

I was doing it and I was getting further and further and further each week.

And my applies instructor was like, what the hell are you doing?

And I'm like, I'm going to do the splits in like a couple months.

And she's like, you have no supporting muscles at all for any of this.

She's like, when you get done, you'll go down once and then you won't even be able to like, everything else will rip.

You know, and I was like, oh shit, that's a good call.

I'm glad you didn't take it that far.

Good point. Yeah. Yeah.

So for me, I am focused on a few things and I've actually made a lot of progress with this over the last handful of months.

And in 2025, I will be very focused on this for the first two months of the year.

I'll be focused on skiing.

So I'll be in the mountains for two months.

And that is a great motivator to develop, say different types of stability and strength, single legs, so good lifts and so on.

And having that context in which to test myself, right?

So if I'm carving in one direction and then in the other, say the inside leg is very unstable for some reason, it's chattering a lot.

Well, that's something to fix.

And the skiing serves as a fun, assuming you don't overdo it, and blow yourself apart diagnostic tool for bringing to awareness some of these things you need to work on.

And I'd say priorities, these aren't necessarily in ranked order, but number one, as you get older, you lose muscle mass.

You just do. And that's age -related muscle loss.

Sarcopenia is directly correlated to any number of issues, I'm sure, including all cause mortality.

So weight training, resistance training, building muscle mass is an undeniable priority for functional health span as you get older.

But for me, that means compound movements once or twice a week.

You really don't need to overdo it or do it five days a week.

A lot of people use five days a week or every day as an excuse to not get started.

You can make a lot of progress, especially if you haven't done much weight training with one day, one session per week.

If you're using, say, high intensity training, one set failure type protocol.

I recognize it's very simple.

I recognize there are some very experienced athletes who will say, well, now you wanna do five sets of three or five sets of five or whatever it might be with three to five minute rest intervals in between to replenish the creatine phosphate, da -da -da -da -da.

But complexity can be the enemy of execution as Tony Robbins and others say a lot.

And it's like, just scale down to what you can do.

If you're starting an exercise habit, if that means you go to the gym every day and you do five minutes on a treadmill, make the bar low enough that you can clear it and you are not tempted to make excuses.

Let me ask you a question.

If you're like, okay, I don't wanna be a meathead, but I want a little muscle mass.

So I want like some tones and definition, a little muscle mass.

You know, and I've seen the pros and cons of one set to failure and the data around it.

It seems to be that it's good but not as good as multiple sets of failure for a single muscle group.

Would you say that you believe that to be true?

Or are you doing one set to failure with, if you're doing bicep, let's just take bicep for example.

If you're doing one set to failure, are you doing several exercises on the bicep, one set to failure, or are you just talking about, you're just doing hammer curls until you fail and that's it for biceps a day.

Let's just take skiing as an example.

So my priority is gonna be skiing and there are actually a few other sports I'll be training for at the same time.

So I will be a busy, busy boy for the first two months of the year, which is great.

So I'll need to lose all this fat that I accumulated over Thanksgiving and Christmas because I know those Danish butter cookies and my mom bought at Costco or just wait for me.

I know it, I know they're sitting there.

So the one set to failure or multiple sets to failure, training to failure can inhibit your ability to train something sports specific, like skiing if you overdo it.

For instance, I would not, even though you could pack on tons of muscle doing 20 rep set to failure for squats, if you do that and then you try to go skiing the next two or three days, you're gonna be garbage from a sort of fine motor control perspective.

But to answer your question directly, I have not looked at the most recent data on any of this.

I'm not sure there exists data comparing these in meaningful ways that do not bias towards one method or another because I have volunteered to be a participant, a subject in certain weightlifting trials.

I'm not gonna mention the university because I don't wanna throw them under the bus.

But when I went in there, the protocol required us to do 10 reps of bench press for X number of sets.

And I went in there and you'd see one guy get on the bench cause there was a circuit, right?

They're trying to make use of basically an open class period for volunteers.

You'd see one person who's basically dropping the weight onto his chest at a risk of breaking every one of his ribs and bouncing it off using terrible form, terrible form, very, very little time under tension.

And then you'd see someone else who's doing like two seconds up, four seconds down, pause at the chest.

Those are not the same 10 repetitions, right?

So I do think - Time under tension is completely different.

Yeah, so I think garbage in, garbage out for a lot of the studies.

So I don't weigh them too heavily.

But what I will say is if you are reasonably novice, even intermediate for training, and by the way, if you've been training for a bunch of years and you haven't made a lot of progress, I would consider you novice.

If you do a single set to concentric failure per exercise, and I'll come back and then I answer the, what type of exercise and so on that you asked, you will see excellent results.

And there may be some incremental gain from doing multiple sets, but it's going to dig into your recovery ability.

So you're saying one set?

Yeah, and now let me tell you what the one set means.

Yeah, exactly, that's what I was going to say.

What the one set means.

And I've gone back to all of my books kind of function this way.

Like all of my books are sort of reference books for myself.

I go around, I gather these best practices that I've tested, and then I refer back to them.

So in the case of say the four hour body, the Occam's protocol and a handful of compound movements still does the trick for the vast majority of the population.

I'm sure people are going to take issue with this, but I have now like hundreds of thousands, millions of people who have tried these things.

And I've seen the success studies, like it does work.

Yes, it's simple. Yes, it could be more sophisticated.

It is idiot proof for a reason.

That if I go into lift, I'm not going to be doing direct bicep work.

I'm going to be doing something like a seated row and then a pull down.

And if I'm hitting the back from a few different angles, that's it.

I might honestly just do one of those.

Like I might do one compound pulling movement, one compound pressing movement, and then one or two leg movements.

That's the whole workout.

The whole workout should take less than 20 minutes.

People will say, what about warmup sets?

Well, if you're tracking your progress while you're using the same equipment and you're lifting at a slow cadence, this is key.

The first handful of reps effectively function as your warmup.

Now what I'll often do is take like 30 % of the target working weight that I'm going to use for my one set failure.

And I'll do three, four, five reps, just to make sure my joints aren't flared up, that I'm not feeling any pain.

And then I would have say an A workout and a B workout.

So let's just say hypothetically, I'm making this up, but you might have something like a close grip incline bench press to just avoid issues with your shoulders.

Let's just say then you have pull downs, like close grip supinated.

So palm facing you pull downs and then a leg press or split squats holding dumbbells on either side.

So you're also hitting your traps on that one, right?

That's your whole workout.

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

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One thing we didn't cover that thing is really important is you say one step to failure but what's your target reps here?

Are you going for like, you know, some people say lift heavy and do eight to 10.

Some people say go a little bit lighter, you get to 20 to where you fail at 20.

What are you aiming for here?

For safety purposes and again, everybody's got a fucking opinion with this stuff but use something akin to a super slow protocol which is like five seconds up, five seconds down and then you can do six to 10 reps but I wouldn't increase the weight until you get to like an eight to 10 rep range.

You can increase that for the legs, blah, blah, blah, blah, but I wouldn't make it complicated.

I would say five seconds up, five seconds down.

That's one 1000 to 1000 slow and let's call it six to 10 reps to failure.

Positive or concentric failure means you're on the in the case of the pull -down, the pulling motion, this is when the muscle is overlapping and shortening.

In the case of the leg press, let's just say or the squats would be when you're pushing out not when you're lowering.

In the case of the close grip bench press, it would be when you're lifting the weight up.

That's the positive portion and then you get to the point where you stick, you can't move it.

All right, push for another 10 seconds.

As hard as you can try to move it a millimeter at a time and then lower for 10 seconds, you're done.

And then you have to log the entire workout.

It's not hard to do.

You need to take notes.

If you don't take notes, you're not going to make the progress you wanna make.

And then the second workout, just to again, hypothetical, it doesn't really matter that much.

As long as it's safe and it's a compound movement, you're doing it to failure, you're gonna make progress.

So let's just say that your shoulders are healthy enough to do this.

It could be like overhead press or a military press and I'm equipment agnostic.

People can argue about free weights versus machines.

My position now is whatever is safest and whatever you can do consistently.

So if you're traveling a lot, then hire a personal trainer or a power lifter or someone with a very good technique to coach you on how to use free weights because those are going to be uniform around the country or around the world instead of equipment, which is gonna be highly variable.

So on the next one might be like overhead press or seated overhead press.

Then we already did the pull down.

So maybe it's a seated row or a bent row with a barbell.

Then for legs we already did, I think I was talking about split squats with dumbbells so maybe this time it's leg press.

I have, for instance, my right leg is 1 .1 centimeters.

I had full leg x -rays done a year ago because a number of doctors thought I was full of shit with this and I was like, I really think one leg is longer than the other.

I've looked at it a number of different ways.

My right leg is about like femur length is like 0 .8 centimeters to 1 .1 centimeters.

I did two takes of x -rays.

So what happens if I'm doing say a back squat is it introduces a rotational force and that is how I initially turned my mildly bad back pain into really acute horrifying back pain that has persisted now for two years or so.

I've made a lot of progress and I can talk about what's contributed to that.

Actually an experiment recently with stem cells seem to be delivering some very interesting results.

I'm not ready to recommend any laboratories related to the production or harvesting of the stem cells nor any clinics because I want to wait until I see more longitudinal results for myself.

But the early indications are very positive and the TLDR on that is that I did not want to inject anything intradiscal.

I didn't want to puncture any discs and there are many reasons for that.

I've spoken to a lot of spine mechanic experts and so on.

It seems that the long -term risk of having some type of issue with your disc or a rupture is higher if you ever puncture the disc.

So I didn't want to do that and rather than do that because my pain is localized like the SI joint and L4, L5 where I do have a bunch of structural issues.

We did something maybe a little unorthodox in a sense and there's something called the iliolumbar ligament and you have two of them and people can look this up.

But I used to think and I do still think this like you're effectively as old as your joints feel.

I really think there's something to that.

Especially when you throw your back out and you're like walk, you've never felt older than your life and when you have to crawl to your bed on your hands and knees because your back is thrown out.

Or lay on your bed or like you have to constantly fidget so your back is bothering you.

Where I've started to think there may be for me some interesting interventions because what we did is we did an injection.

I mean the needle's huge, it's like five to eight inches long but an injection in the SI joint but then also bathing the, I didn't want an injection directly into the ligament just because I couldn't take the recovery time for that but to bathe around the ligament with these stem cells, MSCs and within literally

within a day I felt relief in that area.

So it raises questions for me around how you diagnose back pain or look at structural issues and what's visible versus less visible.

So in other words, when you look at back pain oftentimes you do imaging, you look at the spine and you fixate on the set joints and the vertebral bodies the segments and so on.

And if you're over the age of 40 your back's gonna look fucked in some way.

Like it's gonna not stuck to look great.

Like as you get older, just like you get wrinkles on your face, like your back is gonna show degenerative changes almost a hundred percent especially if you've done any lifting or athletic anything.

And what is less obvious though is the health or inflammation associated with some of these ligaments.

So I've become super interested based on my recent experience.

And I know friends from friction massage you have seen tremendous back pain relief.

What is friction massage?

You could use like a Gua Sha tool.

There are different ways to do it.

Like cupping and shit, like where they break the fascia up.

It's like a rapid pressure movement back and forth.

So you could use a Gua Sha tool.

It's probably gonna be too big for this particular area.

You might use probably using manual therapy but I have friends who have seen incredible relief in what appears to be the case is that if I address those ligaments, a lot of my low back pain goes away.

Now the contrast between my right side which was treated my left side, which was untreated but my left side I considered the healthy side.

I now realize it's actually in a lot of pain.

So what I may do, I'm part of a clinical trial and you have to take a six month break between stem cells for a host of reasons.

I may actually do PRP platelet rich plasma on that left side.

We'll see. Get the vampire facial while you're at it.

I'll get a two for one vampire facial while I'm there.

Get the package deal.

So hopefully that helps.

And we only talked about one aspect of how I'm thinking about health, which is the muscle mass.

For me, since I am doing the skiing training and other things, I will probably not do extended sets to failure because it'll inhibit my training.

I will probably do something in the order of more like the three to five rep range.

Still doing it slowly enough that I feel like it is very under control and nothing ballistic.

I'm going to get plenty of ballistic and dynamic movements from the skiing itself.

One question on the recovery side, you know, is back in the day it was like one gram of protein per pound of body weight to get any type of like muscle growth, what's your current regimen look like for something like this?

Cause I mean, you're not going for massive gains here.

So it's not like it'd be perfect.

Are you still getting adequate protein?

Are you putting a lot of protein in there when you're doing these training days?

Yeah, I will. I mean, especially because I'll be training, I'll basically be training at the gym at night before dinner and I will be skiing and taking very serious technical lessons and trying some pretty gnarly stuff for me in terms of reasonably intense training.

Like slips and shit?

No, no, no, no. Not that intense.

You doing a half pipe?

No, not half pipe. I'm just talking about like bumps and backcountry stuff.

Oh, backcountry stuff, yeah.

Also like ski touring.

I'll be skinning basically you work your way up the mountain and then you ski down and stuff.

So it's going to be physically intensive.

I'll also be eating quite a lot of carbs, but probably I will almost certainly get at least one gram of protein per pound body weight.

I don't think that's overkill.

All right. Yeah, and I'll show you one more thing that's kind of fun.

Yeah. And I've been looking very closely at this.

I don't feel comfortable promoting any brands yet because I have some technical questions, but I have been experimenting with something called, the acronym is LICUS, L -I -C -U -S, which is, so I've got this and then another one over here.

If you're not seeing the video, it looks like he's part cyborg now.

He's patches with electrodes and cables coming off.

And then you set how many hours you want on this thing.

And it is low intensity, continuous ultrasound.

Is this why you're so chill right now?

What's going on? What is this thing doing?

No, no, this is not why I'm so chill.

I mean, who knows? I don't think so.

This is a device that safely administers low intensity ultrasound over a period of one to four hours per site of treatment.

So I currently have two of these coupling patches, one on the front of my shoulder, one at the rear of the shoulder.

I have a bunch of tendonitis around the insertion points.

Oh, so this has nothing to do with your Hawaii trip.

It's not like for us swimming or talking to dolphins.

No, no, this is for recovery, but also the low intensity continuous ultrasound.

So like is LACUS, you can find a lot of interesting studies on this.

And I'll mention a site.

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but consensus .app, which uses AI to assess published literature from reputable journals to determine if something is a thumbs up, thumbs down, or inconclusive.

So you could put something in like, is there any evidence that low intensity continuous ultrasound helps with tissue remodeling or sports recovery?

You'll get an answer.

It's not perfect, but it's actually very helpful to get an initial indication.

Part of what I find interesting about this is unlike some other types of, say for instance, electrical stimulation, like there are tens of units that you can use that will effectively reduce pain by, and this is not scientific description, but they're effectively overriding your nerves or overstimulating

your nerves with certain frequencies to turn off or mute the pain signaling.

That's not what this is doing.

This technology seems to actually help with tissue remodeling and proliferation of different growth factors.

And I really remember the first time I used this within an hour, this acute pain in my shoulder just vanished crazy.

Now, could that be placebo?

Like could be placebo.

What's the cost on this?

It's not cheap. Which is why most people go into a clinic to use something like this.

But they get you with the razor blades approach.

So the device itself, who knows, but these coupling patches are very expensive.

So to get, if I'm using it once a day or twice a day, I've been using it a lot.

It's like 10 grand for two months.

It's expensive. How much of the patches?

Like a grand a pop, like one box of four.

I think it's 4444. So it'd be like 16 patches, something like 900 bucks.

It's very expensive.

But there are some people out there for whom this will be out of reach, but you may be able to find a clinic where you could do this on sort of an as needed basis.

Who knows? Once a week, there may be some minimum cadence necessary to see the results that you would want.

But there are also people out there for whom this may make sense.

And hopefully as this technology, and you've seen this happen a million times.

So as it becomes more popular, as the technology gets more developed, as there's more competition, the price drops tremendously.

You know, what's funny is I've seen them podcasts.

You know, you and I have been part of this world.

Like you mentioned something that's like three grand or whatever, or something crazy.

And they're just like, well, that Tim fucking rich guy can like afford all these things, blah, blah, blah.

But honestly, what happens that I think is so beautiful about this stuff is like, if you can get the higher end folks to like that want to go and experiment at the edges here that have the disposable income, they're doing nothing but dropping the prices for the masses because they have to ramp up production over

time. And it's like, it's funny.

I've seen this happen so many times, even in drugs stuff as well.

Like when I first started taking Rapata as an alternative to cholesterol meds, and it wasn't covered out of pocket, it was like $2 ,500 a month.

It was like ridiculous.

And now Amazon has it for 500.

That's no insurance, you know?

And it's like, it just, it takes time for these things to come down and hit the masses.

And with those VO2 max machines too, that you can get home now.

I don't know if you messed around with those.

I just got one of those.

It's insane. It's insane, but it's great because you say you don't have to go to the clinic and you can save the time, then eventually these would be less expensive for everyone.

Yeah, I mean, we've seen it with Uber, right?

Uber Black in the beginning was definitely kind of a one percenter thing, but it subsidized the development of.

I mean, that was jet travel though as well.

UberX, Tesla, same thing.

There I mean, there are many, many examples.

I would say I'll get people some recommendations that are not expensive at all, which I'm equally focused on, actually more focused on.

This is a nice bonus and I'm still experimenting with it.

Jury's out. It seems to be very helpful, but I want to see longer term.

There is a chapter in, and I'll see if I can share some of this.

I'll put a link in the show notes for people.

I'll share at least some of this.

There's a chapter in the four hour body called Reversing Permanent Injuries.

I will link to it for folks, but the exercises in that still deliver so much, like the bang for the buck in doing some of the gray cook exercises, the chop and lift with cable machines, the Turkish get up, even if you're just doing the first portion of that on the ground for shoulder health.

I mean, there's so many benefits to a handful of exercises in terms of injury prevention.

And you have to invest in that stuff as you get older, if you want to be active, if you want to be athletic, your body just does not have the elasticity and the regenerative ability that it used to.

And that, for instance, part of the reason I went back to that chapter is that the chop and lift exercise have a slow under control rotational component that I felt was not dynamically, but still compatible with getting me closer to developing or redeveloping the spinal engine that Nsima and Yang talks about.

I was like, okay, look, let me take small, safe steps towards incorporating some very mild rotational exercises.

And that's where I'm starting.

It feels good. It feels great.

And I'm doing it first thing in the morning, wake up cold brew coffee right now, and then the Hawaiian coffee's incredible.

So yeah, this has been my re -entry.

After my 30, 40 days of abstinence, wake up, immediately have a cold brew, and then go to the gym.

That's a big shot. Like, the Hawaiian coffee's no joke.

That's like some strong stuff.

It's so good. It's delicious.

Some of my favorite coffee on the planet.

There's something about how it is dark and dense, and it feels very nutrient rich, like antioxidant rich to me, you know?

It's good stuff. A cone of coffee's good.

All right, so we get a few other predictions and fun things?

Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so - We got tons.

I just gave several TED talks, so you should - Yeah, so I'll do some rapid fire fun stuff here.

So, damp January, I'm gonna drink six or less drinks per month.

Moving on to investments.

I like how you ran through that one.

Listen, the drinking thing.

Well, I actually am cutting back a ton.

You know what else I'm not drinking tonight?

Look at that. Look at that.

Hey, baby steps. Baby steps.

One of the things I've realized, especially as you get older, is that as life gets more complex, there has to be this kind of continual, especially as you have kids and other things, because continual reevaluating of your processes.

Like every year, how can you turn down the knob and automate more things than you had the previous year?

Just for my own sanity.

Or eliminate more things, too.

Yes, yes, and so in that theme, I've gotten really simple in the investing front.

Like, the vast majority of my exposure is at True Ventures where we take on a lot of risk.

So that's what we do for our day jobs.

I'm gonna try a new app called Monarch.

It's not new, but it's been around a while.

If I track my finances and finally get a budget under control starting January.

You've been using it, right, for a bit?

Yeah, but it's great.

What do you like about it?

So there's a couple of them out there that I really like.

I like for holistic net worth, just where am I in the world?

There's a bunch of tools out there.

Projection Lab is good.

Where am I in the world, meaning like big picture, what does my whole thing look like?

Yeah, exactly. And so I would say that, you know, Projection Lab is good at kind of looking where you're spending in terms of like, how soon can I retire and what does my retirement look like in planning for different scenarios?

I think that's probably the best app out there.

What was it called?

Projection Lab. Copilot has always been my favorite on mobile.

But Monarch is now just, it ties together all my accounts in a view that I think is more data rich, especially on the budgeting side, than Copilot.

So I've kind of started to move over to Monarch more full time, which is great.

Those two, and then, gosh, I'm drawing a blink of it, the last one for the kind of like overview of everything, you're gonna kill me.

Cause it's a fantastic app.

What's that? Pornhub Premium?

Exactly. So there's Tim, he's back.

He's back, everybody.

Now I can't even blame it on the booze.

Yeah, exactly. Before you were like, I'm married.

Do you actually buy their premium?

No, no, no, no. Not you answer.

Seems like you did.

Yeah, I'm not sure of my public favorites.

Yeah, exactly. Pornhub .com slash Tim Tim.

20 % off. Kubera. Kubera is my overview app that I think is the best for like tracking off kind of your larger investments and like, oh, that works.

Why was the name? No wonder you forgot it.

Kubera, K -U -B -E -R -A.

I love Kubera. I think it's really high quality software.

So anyway, that's that.

So let me just go quickly down the investment front.

VTI because it gives you global exposure.

I love that. I get the total stock market index there.

It's Vanguard. It's low cost.

It's like, I want to have the majority of my stuff in there.

I have moved my crypto allocation to 10 % of overall net worth from about 4 to 5%.

Oh, you increased your holdings.

I increased. Now, okay.

Did you increase it?

Or is that just reflective of an increase in value?

No, I increased it.

Yes, I've been buying more the last few months.

I had this feeling that Trump was going to win and I started buying more crypto when I had that gut feeling.

Just because I think that he's going to push a massive crypto agenda.

And I believe that if this is the probably in the more prediction side, I think in the next couple of years, we're going to see for the very first time the US government is going to start adding crypto to our reserves.

We'll treat it as a currency that we hold in our reserves.

And when that happens, it's going to be nuts.

I think we're going to hit, my gut says 250 ,000 or more a coin in the next couple of years.

So we'll see where that goes.

Now, if somebody listening's like, Kevin's just shilling his bags, what would you say to that?

I would say a lot of people said this.

I don't know, like I was talking about I'm not saying that.

No, no, I get it. But like, this isn't.

Here's the deal about shilling your bags.

I'm giving you PTSD five bags.

No, but this is the real truth.

Okay, let's go and take a look at how much Bitcoin traded today in terms of volume.

Okay, so I love our podcasts that we're both going to syndicate this episode on our respective feeds, but like we're not moving trillions of dollars of Bitcoin because I say it's going to 250 Bitcoin.

I could go right now on Coinbase right now and say sell 20 million in Bitcoin, press a button at market and it would hardly even like tick, tick, tick, like a little tiny tick.

Because there's so much volume, no amount of shilling could move it in any meaningful way.

It just can't happen.

Now, 10 years ago, you and I go on here talking about Bitcoin and we just made ourselves like, you know, five million bucks.

But you know what I mean?

Like that's not the case anymore.

It's just too massive.

So anyway, there's no such thing as shilling anymore.

At least when it comes to Bitcoin, if we're talking about shit coins, which are happening a lot right now, that's the stuff that's like just so stupid.

I don't even get involved in it.

So anyway, I hold Bitcoin, I purposely hold it in an account that I can't touch.

So I like this because like Coinbase has a feature called custody where you can't withdraw it for like three days, enterprise level, self -control.

Yeah, exactly. It's like a forced hold.

I like doing it and I've now stopped trading it.

So I don't even look at the price.

I'm like, it's just part of my overall holdings.

I'm gonna hold it for the next 50 plus years.

I want to hand my kids Bitcoin.

It's gone from like, when do I sell it?

Like, oh, is it too high?

Should I sell right now?

Like those days are over.

Now it's just like part of the portfolio.

So it goes, it's digital assets.

It's not going away.

You can't put digital assets back in the box, like back in the tube or wherever the genie comes out of.

Back in the tube? Gotta put the genie back in the toothpaste tube.

Yeah, exactly. So last thing I will say now I do like to play, do little one -off stock buys every now and then.

I got really lucky because we called Nvidia pretty early on your podcast before, which was good.

But I have enough friends that are large executives at major companies in the tech arena that they are all talking about nuclear power.

And I don't know how to play it, but my gut tells me over the next decade, there's gonna be, I'm pretty bullish on the return of nuclear to the United States, just out of our sheer capacity for power that we need for data centers on the AI side.

Like we need alternatives forms of energy.

Especially if coal plants are shut down.

Well, I mean, I don't think that's gonna happen.

I'm not saying all, I'm not saying all.

If you want to play the broad basket and you're thinking about this over the long -term, and I was speaking for myself, this is not investment advice, but I did find there's a fund that like holds like uranium manufacturers and some like nuclear plants and some of the companies that are thinking about doing

these new smaller plants.

And so it's like a basket of public nuclear stocks right now and they will add to it as other nuclear companies go public.

And so like, I'm not in the game of going and saying, hey, this is the nuclear future.

It's just one company, right?

Because that to me would be like, it seems too much like angel investing or something else.

So anyway, the one I look at is the only one I could really find was NLR, which is the VANEC ETF Trust Uranium and Nuclear Basket of Stocks.

It's got a pretty high expense ratio, but like I'm doing a really small piece into it just because I think over the next decade, it's gonna outperform the S &P.

That's all. That's what's for fun on the kind of investment going into the new year.

And then I got a bunch of predictions.

Yeah, throw some of the predictions up.

Okay, so prediction number one, Bitcoin hits 250 US government starts adding into reserves.

Do you think that's in 2025?

I think that is in the next two years.

So I'll kick that out, say within the next two years.

I think several AI companies next year struggle to raise capital and go under.

And I'm talking some of the bigs that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars because I think what's gonna happen is that, I shouldn't say the bigs.

The big players that are in the startup space now, I think the quote unquote bigs, like the Alphabet companies are just gonna run the table when it comes to most AI related things.

And if that's the case, I kind of just want to hold those stocks.

OpenAI, I'm still like, they're so intertwined with Microsoft, I think that they'll be fine.

Plus they're working on other devices as well.

Speaking of which, one of my predictions it will be that OpenAI launches some type of mobile device, maybe some type of smart headphones this coming year, because they have to be at the metal level, meaning like they have to be at the device level that we all carry around.

And when you have press and hold Apple intelligence, just by holding on the side of your phone now, and you have press and hold like, how you used to query like Siri or whatever, and now you have that same going on with Gemini with Google.

Now you've got AI at the phone level already carried by the big providers to get someone to think like, oh, I got to go download chat GPT, so I can go and switch it out, and set up shortcuts and all that.

And it's like, if it's like 90 % is good, people won't care, you know what I mean?

It's like, I don't care if I'm streaming Lord of the Rings off of freaking Hulu or Prime or Apple TV, I just want to watch the movie, right?

And so it's like, I think AI's gonna be kind of like that where we'll just like, oh, I have an Apple phone, so I use Apple intelligence.

Like, that's kind of where it's at.

That's interesting, yeah.

So you think of like, where could they get the wedge in the door?

I think the headset's interesting, right?

Because if they made a really good set of basically AirPod clones of some type.

But intelligent with AI built in, yeah.

That had that built in, but basically they're not gonna replace the iPhone, right?

They're not gonna replace good Android phones for people who already use those, but they could replace wireless AirPods.

The only way I think they would have a chance at replacing, not replacing the iPhone, but being a top seller would be that they do something so first principles oriented, where it's like a type of UI, UX that we just haven't even imagined yet.

I heard they were working with Johnny Ive on some of this stuff.

And so you got the former industrial designer, head of design for Apple, coming to the table with OpenAI saying, hey, let's go back to the drawing board and say, if we had to build a phone today, would it be with a series of app icons on here?

Or might there be a different interface that makes this way more sexy, more fun?

Because the future is not gonna be, hey, I'm gonna go launch hotels .com app and say, get me a room in Japan in two weeks, negotiate all the things, put in my credit card credentials.

It's gonna be literally you open your AI and you say, hey, can you get me a room for Japan at this hotel in two weeks?

And they'll be like, which room do you want?

These three things, blah, blah, blah.

And you're like, this room is like, boom, it's already got my information.

It's all API's behind the scenes.

It hands all that data over.

The exchange is done, the payment is done.

And it's just like, it's finalized within 30 seconds versus a 15 minute thing.

I mean, I guess what someone like OpenAI could do is something along the lines of a fantasy I've had for a long time, which is like a very dumb phone that I remember last, this is almost a year ago, I was telling my friends, it'd be great to have a one button phone.

And the one button phone at that time would have basically sent voice or routed a phone call to a virtual assistant or someone who handles everything for me outside of like Google maps.

It's like, all right, I have maps and then I have one request button for everything.

And that's it. Just to avoid the metastasized mess of having a thousand apps and so many people want thousand notifications and all that bullshit.

And I know some very accomplished professionals who have stopped taking their iPhone into their office.

Like they leave it in some type of locker or maybe they leave it someplace safe at like the reception and they take their dumb phone into say the office where they're doing their real work and their family has that number.

Ringer is on for emergencies, it has maps and that's it.

There's nothing else.

So you could envision something that is effectively the one button phone, but it's using an AI assistant through OpenAI.

100%. Yeah, I think you're exactly right in that like, there's probably the two or three things that you still need and it's not Instagram.

It's not a full suite of things.

It's like, okay, maybe I still need to call or hail an Uber at this corner and see when it's pulling up, right?

Like maps, maybe Uber and then music probably.

Yeah, music and like credit cards, like that's it.

Right. You don't need anything else.

And like AI could serve up music.

I mean, I don't know exactly how they would do it, but there'd be a way to do it.

But they'll have APIs with all that stuff.

They'll have APIs for everything.

And coming back to what we were saying earlier too, it's like, okay, well, most people are not gonna replace their phone with that, but could they get a 100 ,000, 200 ,000 techies to overpay for that to do the basically field testing for them?

Sure, they could. 100%, almost certainly.

As the technology kind of matures behind the scenes.

I mean, this is the playbook that I think is finally starting to work for Meta, where they have these Ray -Ban glasses that it's the first time I've seen a Meta product where I've said, okay, I mean, we've been talking about VR and AR for so long and how stupid it is.

As long as this show has been around.

I know Adam Gazzali still owes me a bottle of whiskey cause he thought it was gonna win out, but that's in your book.

Yeah, so Ray -Ban's finally is really starting to hit for Meta in that like, you know, you can walk up to people now in Japan and like get real -time translations, right?

Like, and you don't even look like you're wearing anything.

Real -time doxxing too.

You see the Harvard student who figured out how to use the Ray -Ban glasses to immediately doxx everyone.

You'd be like, oh, hey, are you so -and -so who researched so -and -so?

They're like, oh my God, how do you know?

And it's like, cause they're getting a Terminator readout.

Yeah, you get the Terminator readout, totally.

Little higher fidelity than those graphics back then, but.

Yeah, so a couple things real quick on the prediction front, and then I'm done, but I think Microsoft releases an Android phone largely because they have the suite there.

They have Word, they have Excel, they have PowerPoint.

They have Drive, they have all the stuff, Outlook, you name it.

I think it'll be Android -based.

And they have chat GPT.

So I think on the open AI side, that will probably be integrated into the Microsoft phone.

My gut tells me that it's a no -brainer for them.

So Microsoft would subsidize the development and all that of this hardware as opposed to.

But it'd also be Android -based.

Okay. It's almost like getting a Google phone.

You know when you get a Google phone, you open it up and it's like got Gmail and Chrome and everything like baked in?

If it is Android -based, this is such a luddite question, I should know the answer, but does Gemini automatically come along for the ride?

In which case that would be built -in competition for open AI if they used an Android phone?

It's a great question because I know that Google had some funky things back in the day.

If you wanted to use Android, you had to include certain types of Google services behind the scenes, even though it's open source.

I don't know to what extent and what you have to bundle, but I believe because if I look at Samsung phones and they have their own browsers and they have their own email and everything else and they're based on Android, that they could do the swap here because Samsung already does it on the AI side

and everything else.

Lastly, I think we'll get some type of confirmation of aliens.

And then one last thing, which I think we'll see, is we're gonna see a very massive unlock in creativity around music creation happening in the next couple of years.

So the same way that we're able to prompt and type in like show me a fox swimming underwater, grabbing an apple and now you can't even tell it wasn't shot.

And it's like, it's just being generated these little 4K snippets.

I think there's gonna be a way to prompt music creation in a very fun and exciting explosion of creativity that will make an average consumer a sound and that they can be a real producer for the first time.

Just because I've seen some of these early betas and they're a lot of fun.

I think that's the next 12 months, maybe 18 max.

Yeah, I think 18 sounds about right, yeah.

So you skipped over damp January, which is fine.

We'll let that sit.

Yeah, yeah, it was aliens.

So tell me more about the aliens.

And what the hell is going on in New Jersey?

Honestly, I just think it had been ignoring most of the news.

Yeah, I have to. There's been this, I feel in the last three years and I got a really awesome chance to sit down with that navy fighter pilot that saw some of these things and there has been so much inquiry now and then there also is a new change in government obviously that's pushing for so much more

transparency. And I think that when you have someone like, and we don't have to get in the politics whether you love them or hate them or anything else, but when you have someone like Elon Musk in there being Elon, I can see this shaking free or at least the uncovering of whatever we know in this domain being

kind of declassified.

And that to me is just horribly scary slash exciting at the same time.

Yeah, who knows, crazy.

Yeah, I mean, what are the odds that you would place honestly, in my head, it's like 90%, there's aliens out there and then we know about it as a government.

Guess we haven't talked about this because I don't want to sound like a fucking crazy person but there was a point where this conversation was in the air enough.

I was like, okay, let me do a deep dive to see what we can say with any degree of certainty and what we can't say with any degree of certainty.

And looking at government reports, looking at various first -person testimony about the Tic -Tac and so on that are very widely cited and trying to account for the possibility that some of these people, not all of them and not necessarily people involved with Tic -Tac may see some benefit or appeal like

every human being on social media to getting attention, right?

So you have to add that in as a possible contributing factor.

What can we conclude based on the available data and what seems to be the case if you're looking at UAPs, right, this is what unidentified aerial phenomena now the rebrand from UFO.

So you don't sound like someone wearing a tinfoil hat.

And part of the reason that it's aerial phenomena as opposed to flying object is because the vast majority of these can be explained by say high altitude weather balloons or meteorological phenomena that cause a strange visual effect in the sky that is noticeable by humans from the ground.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

There are like a 95 plus percent can be accounted for by that or 90 plus percent.

Then you have also a long government history of covering up test craft flights and so on with reports of UFOs, right?

So there's a crash of some prototype of some type of weaponized technology or surveillance technology.

And especially many, many decades ago they're worried about that news getting to our enemy slash competitors overseas.

So they drum up a misinformation campaign around it being UFO.

Okay, so there's also a bunch of that.

Taking all of that into account, if you look at congressional testimony and a bunch of other things, there do seem to be quite a few examples of documented phenomena often recorded from multiple video sources that defy explanation.

They seem to defy explanation and the descriptions of the behavior of these things seem to defy any explanation using technology that is currently available to us.

But I would say that the idea that there are like little green men in these ships strikes me as kind of ridiculous unless they're tourists who just like are on safari seeing what humans are doing.

Because if they're sufficiently advanced to do what some people report these craft doing, why on earth would they have like we're already using drones for warfare and all sorts of things.

Why would they risk?

That's right. Life and injury.

That's why I don't think it's that.

I think it is tourists.

You're right. It could be tourism.

And the ones that wreck are like the ones that you hear about in Africa when people go to the safaris and they have too many drinks and they just like fucking crash into a rhinoceros and then like get eaten or whatever.

It's like some of these aliens are coming down here and it has to be something like that.

They've had a few bevs and they just, they just fucking wreck their shit.

It's like teenage alien TUIs.

Exactly. Where'd glub glub go?

Ah fuck. It's gone to earth again.

Did he drink? He took a few.

I mean, maybe, maybe, right?

I do think there are many more questions than answers of course, but actually, I'll give a shout out there is an app called Enigma which runs machine learning on UAP sightings.

So if people want to check that out, it's pretty interesting.

Of course we've seen a huge spike in New Jersey over the last period of time.

But that's worth checking out and I'm actually just gonna double check.

Did you see Moment of Contact by the way?

Oh, you gotta see this.

Yeah, so Enigma is enigmalabs .io.

Make a note of this.

Moment of Contact, it's a Netflix documentary about this 1996 crash in Brazil and it's like these citizens, dozens of them, saw not only the crash, but the freaking aliens wandering around the neighborhood and shit after the crash.

And then all these military things came in.

It's worth it, it's worth it.

It's like ET but in Brazil.

I put on an alien documentary once a year.

Netflix knows what happened.

Yeah, it's like, hey, you might like this.

I'm like, J .J. Abrams' production company, Bad Robot, they made some UFO mini -series.

I watched that on an airplane.

Did they? That's when you watch that kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so I watched this one and I was like, wow, holy shit, it's pretty compelling.

Let me throw out a couple of alternate explanations or supplemental explanations.

So one, when you see these reports, the vast majority of alien abduction reports are rednecks getting pulled up by a tractor beam and then having anal probes put in them.

And I'm just like, why is it that all these rednecks are getting anal probed?

Is it always anal probes?

Well, there is a lot of probing typically involved.

But it is weird what's going on there.

Why do they return them?

Like take them. I don't know, I don't know.

Where I was going to go is like the reports also of the appearance of these aliens, right?

So what you often see is like the upside down teardrop shaped head with the big eyes and it's like, well, look cross -culturally, you see these reports everywhere.

Therefore they must be real.

Those types of entities often are cited in say certain types of psychedelic drug experiences also.

So what does that mean, right?

Are people having sort of spontaneous drug -like experiences that are producing these visions?

Is it actually not that these particular alien creatures exist, but that there is some fundamental production of this hallucination based on endogenous DMT release or something?

Who the fuck knows?

But I'm saying like there could be a component of that.

The other one is, you know, my thought is if we take as a possibility that there are aliens from God knows where we're somehow getting to earth by like bending the time -space continuum to get here from gazillions of light years away somehow in these craft, then wouldn't it be equally plausible that these

craft are sent by time -traveling humans basically like descendants of us that are like, wow, we really fucked that up.

Let's try to send back like an intervention team.

It sounds crazy. I don't think it's, I don't think it's any crazier than aliens figuring out how to get here from a gajillion light years away to go on safari and anal probe rednecks.

Like it's, it doesn't strike me as any stranger.

Well, you've heard that a lot of these sightings are around some of these nuclear facilities as well.

Like the missile silos and stuff like that.

I have, yes. What I'm doing right now is what I always try to do.

And this is especially true with things that I feel strongly about.

I'm like, what else could explain this?

Like what are some possible alternate explanations?

Particularly when I'm delving into some of the very weird edges of things that I've done over the last 15, 20 years with respect to psychedelic assist therapies and so on.

Like some very, very strange reports come back.

So how do you cross -examine those?

One tool in the toolkit is simply to say, let me try to strong man against whatever my current explanation is, right?

So in the case of the nuclear sites, it seems like there's a disproportionate number of reports and videos and so on associated with these military sites.

However, you could also look at say the data for like brain tumor diagnoses.

And if you were to look at the graph of something like that, and I'm making up this example, but I think it's probably true.

It would look like there's an explosion of brain cancer that among the human populace brain cancer is just on this crazy parabolic rise, but it's probably just because our diagnostic tools have become better, right?

Our imaging tools are catching things earlier.

They're more sophisticated.

Similarly at these nuclear sites or especially military sites with nuclear components, what do they have?

They have a million times the surveillance of any other place, right?

So it's possible these things are flying around in the Alaskan tundra, but there's nothing there to capture them.

So I think it's certainly possible those are areas of interest.

To me, that would seem to lend weight to explanations of, I don't know why aliens would be interested in that.

Time traveling humans maybe, state actors like China.

Oh, for sure. They'd be very interested.

Soviet Union for sure, but some of the propulsion and aeronautic behaviors of these craft do not seem to reflect technology that's available to any current state actor, including the United States, which is all sorts of questions, but there's some very strange stuff out there.

It is a very, very, very small single digit percentage of the total reported or documented phenomena, but yeah, it's strange.

That was my conclusion.

If we could ever find a hotspot and we get a chance to go out there, that would be fun.

I just get a group of people go out there and just do like a little UF.

What do you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like a place where there's a lot of UFOs showing up, you know?

There is some of those places that are supposed to be better for like viewing UFOs.

Yeah. That would be fun.

Just get everybody to meet for like a week.

When I was a kid, I remember driving, my mom, babysitter at the time, I think my brother was baby and we were driving.

I remember exactly where we were.

I'm not gonna name it, but I remember the exact road and this kind of like cigar shaped thing, just went, whoop, and then just shot off.

We all saw it and I was just like, what the fuck was that?

No idea. But we all saw the same thing.

Yeah, so who knows?

There was a fair amount of military testing out there, so maybe, who knows?

That's crazy. Go figure.

It's awesome. All right, so that's the aliens.

That's all you got.

More pseudo aliens.

All right, that's all you got.

So I'll talk about a couple of things which are not related to predictions.

Maybe I have some predictions.

Maybe they'll come out organically.

So you're talking about protein.

I'll mention a few things that might be of interest to folks.

So while I've been here, I've been on the go.

I'll also talk about why I seem so chill, which I think I can nail pretty easily to one thing.

So the first, and this is a company I'm super heavily involved with, but, I mean, I'm involved with it because I believe in it a lot.

So these, so you've seen these venison sticks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. These axis deer venison sticks, Maui Nui venison.

And it's the most nutrient dense red meat that you can get and the most ethically harvested, in my opinion, red meat that you can get.

What's interesting about this one, this is a brand new product.

I've been consuming two or three of these a day.

It's basically a multivitamin in a meat product because it has, this is called Pepper 10.

And it's got 10 % liver and heart.

In addition to the muscle, and it is incredible how much nutrient density you get from that.

And then the other one, which I don't actually have any official relationship with whatsoever, but shout out to also Peter Tia, who we both know, who's the chief science officer, but this is David.

So these David bars have incredible protein per calorie ratios, 28 grams of protein, 150 calories.

So when I am traveling, especially when I'm traveling, this is basically the kit.

Yeah, I do the David bars too.

They're good. One of them was a little too sweet for me, but the blueberry one's really good.

Yeah, some of them are a little too sweet for my palate, but also there is a point where I'm like, I cannot eat another venison stick because I eat so many of those per week.

And we're in Maui, meaning my team and I are in Maui right now because we wanted to visit Maui Nui.

Oh, that's awesome.

Jake Muse is one of the most impressive company leaders and operators I've ever seen, including all of my startups in tech and otherwise.

He's so good at talent development.

He's so good at culture, and it's a great example of doing good through a for -profit.

And I just think that type of model is important to highlight because there is a lot of good you can do through sort of market driven solutions.

And in this case, what Maui Nui venison does, people don't know, AccessDeer were introduced.

They're originally from India to Hawaii by King Kamehameha, the third or fifth, I can't recall exactly.

They have no natural predators.

And now there are like tens of thousands of these deer ravaging the landscape.

And so they're destroying the ecology and that has all sorts of downstream effects, literally and metaphorically, including destroying coral reefs because they produce a lot of erosion.

And it's really alarming.

It looks like wildfire effectively.

So what Maui Nui does is they harvest these deer, meaning they shoot them in the field at night for lowest stress levels for the animals.

And it's incredibly well run.

Their sort of efficiency ratio is as good as say, slaughterhouses for cattle, which are very stressful for the animals, right?

They're factory farmed, then they're put into shoots.

They're literally held in place.

And then boom, like bolt in the head.

This, for my money, is infinitely more ethical.

I mean, the animal is wild and free, living its life until the very instant that it instantaneously expires.

Then they package that and they sell it.

But what they also do, best way to go.

Yeah. Let's just go out of Maui Nui field and we're all old.

Like they'll just put us out on the field, and we'll just run.

When we can no longer harness our spinal engine.

It's like, oh, it's time to put Kevin out to pasture.

Just give him a donut and a couple of beer, have him sitting at a table.

Yeah, exactly. Let's just go.

At Maui Nui, it's all green.

I'm like, Tim, why did you bring me to Maui Nui?

It's so nice here. Yeah, Maui Nui retirement home.

You're gonna love it.

So what I did here this trip, which I had always wanted to do, but I've never done is I went on a holoai.

And a holoai harvest is for the community here in Maui.

So the holoai food sharing program that was created in April, 2020, as a response to food insecurity in Hawaii, which had a lot of food security issues, emergency level, caused by the COVID lockdowns.

And what the Maui Nui team did is they completely sort of revamped everything.

So they could first just drive venison by the ton straight to the food bank to donate it for communities.

And then after the devastating wildfires last year, they completely restructured their operations.

And I mean, I got the email sent to all investors and they're like, hey, look guys, we are like shifting our focus completely to helping our communities, which need food.

Like this is a disaster level crisis and changed their business model.

And they have shared more than 120 ,000 pounds of venison, meaning donated since the 2023 fires.

It's amazing. So there are a lot of partners and other people who have helped them along the way.

But what I did is, and my team had the option of participating and they all opted in, was to go on a night harvest.

So their operation is like a special operation, vampire hour outing.

I mean, you go out, they have FLIR infrared cameras and scopes, they have display monitors.

They're capturing information, which is like a current stop, no shot, current stop shot.

And they have like laser identifications for the rovers where the people who then go and like retrieve the deer.

And I went through the butchering process.

I wanted to get better at butchering.

So it's like I actually butchered, I don't know, six or seven deer on this trip.

That's amazing. And did you take some meat with you or no?

Oh, of course, yeah.

I mean, the vast majority of that's gonna be donated, but some of it I'm gonna keep for myself and send to family members and so on.

But it can be very visually arresting.

It can be confronting for someone who's used to getting food from a conveniently wrapped plastic packaging from Whole Foods.

But I find it so grounding in the sense that it makes you fully aware of what is involved to put food on your table if you choose to eat meat.

And I feel very unconflicted about it.

I know there's something cool.

I do too. You feel conflicted, I don't.

It's funny you mentioned that because it's like, I get if you're a vegetarian or vegan out there and you're like, I don't see eye to eye with anything that is being said right now.

That totally makes sense to me.

But if you're going and having a burger and like, I don't know for me, if I'm eating a burger and I can't put down the animal that I ate it from, like there's a big disconnect there.

Like it wasn't just a couple of generations ago we were doing that, you know what I mean?

And like now it's been completely stripped out of our culture.

And you know, I don't have the same amount of hunting experience that you do.

I went hunting with my dad once but, you know, when I was, I've certainly done a shit ton of fishing and you know, it's not the easiest thing to put down a big ass salmon either, but like, you know, you think it's for its life and you make use of everything you can, you know, and it's amazing.

And they use everything, which is also deeply inspiring.

I mean, they use everything from these animals and in their effectively restoring an ecosystem, right?

They are feeding the local community and they're providing the most nutrient dense that you can purchase.

And they're bringing back traditions of things that like this idea that, and there's a lot of chefs that are doing this now where they call it like nose to tail, which is like, it's not about just getting the prime cuts and throwing everything else away and being wasteful.

It's like cooking all of the different aspects and using all of the different aspects of the animal for either consumption or for product use or whatever it may be.

There's no waste there or very little, you know?

And part of the reason they can do this is because they are harvesting these deer from private land.

So to be clear, the reason that you buy farmed animals for food in the United States, because that's what you have to do.

You cannot buy game meat, that's illegal because you don't want people poaching on public land and then selling meat, which can lead to over killing and all sorts of issues with wildlife management cause imbalancing.

So the operation is incredibly unique in that respect.

And there are actually, and I don't think it matters to out them here.

Like there are a lot of say, vegans or vegetarians.

There are, I know vegans.

This is gonna sound like a contradiction in terms, but who object to a lot of the animal husbandry practices, especially factory farming and so on in the US.

So they don't eat meat based on those ethical grounds and they make an exception for mowing.

It's the only meat that they consume.

So anyway, that was this trip.

So my team got to ride around in these ATVs and see the displays and really see the whole process.

How does that not surprise me that every single one of your team, like if you work for Tim Ferriss and you're like, you're like, Hey, we're going on a hunt tonight.

Like, is there one person who's gonna be like, Oh no, you're like, you're fucking fired.

No, I wouldn't fire them.

I wouldn't fire them.

I mean, it's I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. Yeah, it's, you know, it's quite a bit to take in.

But what I wanted to do, and this is actually not my idea.

This is the suggestion of one of my employees.

They wanted firsthand experience with one of the companies or nonprofits that I support.

And initially we'd thought about doing something with Amazon conservation team because I've done a lot of work with them and in Columbia and Suriname and other places, but that would have involved two weeks off the grid and would have been very complicated from a logistics perspective.

Maybe they're talking about your psychedelic donations.

Wait, what was this?

Maybe they're talking about your psychedelic research.

They even doing that.

I don't think I feel comfortable sending my voice to the 17th dimension just yet, but who knows.

So that's what I've been up to.

And then on the calming side.

Yeah. You're like a two.

On your typically like a nice toasty seven or eight.

Simmering seven. You seem very chill.

Yeah. So I'd say chill certainly Hawaii helps.

Certainly good sleep helps.

Exercise helps, but.

You're like, I took three value before I started the show.

I've got the like it's on this shoulder.

I've got my morphine drip on the other.

Your margin patch is not morphine.

It's meditating twice a day and amazing.

Yeah. And I've been doing it for probably a month now and I started it in part as a response to a disappointing result from a booster of accelerated TMS.

So we spoke several shows ago about accelerated TMS and how my five day bout, let's just call it or treatment with accelerated TMS had the greatest durable impact on my generalized anxiety that I've ever experienced.

This includes psychedelic assist therapies.

The accelerated TMS, which is a noninvasive treatment using transcranial magnetic stimulation over five day period.

In this case, where you're getting treated basically eight minutes every hour on the hour for 10 hours a day.

It's very involved.

Like when you're doing it, that's all you're doing for effectively a week.

And it was phenomenal.

And I will almost certainly do it again, but five days is a lot.

And I wanted to see if I could do it with less.

So first I tried a two day booster, met a bit of single day booster and it was not enough.

It did nothing. Then I went back and this is going to California and I did three day booster, also not enough.

So I just wasted a lot of time, a lot of money trying to round down and it didn't do anything.

And I found that very disheartening.

It just means I need to go back and do the five days and figure out the right cadence, but it's very expensive to do this and it's very time -consuming.

So I then was looking at different meditation options and this has since become a company that I'm very heavily involved with.

But the way Henry Schuchman, your man, who you initially introduced me to and I've introduced my employees to the way, which is an app and the sessions, you can make them longer or shorter.

I set them at 10 minutes and I was very skeptical because I did TM, Transcendental Meditation back in the day, which is 20 minutes twice a day.

And I assumed that 10 minutes, like yeah, it'll be kind of relaxing, but it's really not going to have much of a cumulative effect and I was completely wrong.

Doing 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes either before dinner or before bed, but making it like brushing your teeth.

It's a non -negotiable.

It's just a non -negotiable.

You just do it like you would do anything else that is non -negotiable.

And doing those 10 minutes twice a day has been incredible because it has effectively gotten me to, I think a similar level of lower generalized anxiety that I got from spending 30 to 50 grand to do this experimental TMS therapy, which that is all inclusive, right?

It's like the treatment, the hotels, the flights, so on and so forth.

It adds up and you can do it for less.

That was with a Mag Ventures device, which I think is quite interesting.

Brainsway is another one that's very interesting and works well for a lot of other people.

It doesn't have to be that expensive, but for me, I was like, look, let me pay for the white glove, ultra high touch, best option.

And if that doesn't work for me, I'm going to conclude that I cannot recommend this therapeutic intervention because this is as good as it gets.

And the idea that you can meditate 10 minutes a day with an app and people can check it out, thewayapp .com is the app.

Henry Schuchman has the most relaxing voice you'll ever hear in your life.

And I think the app gives you 30 sessions for free, so you can get a real flavor for it.

It's not like, oh, you get two chances.

And at least when I used it the first time, I didn't have to use my credit card.

And by the way, even though I'm an investor, because I product test everything and love giving feedback as Kevin has seen, I've sent like a million looms to Go Founders as product feedback with love.

No, I want to pay for it.

Because if there's a glitch in the system, I want to know what the glitch is and I want to report it.

So I paid for it. And you get 30.

So that's either, if you're doing 10 minutes a day, that's 30 days.

If you're doing two a day, that's two weeks.

It's plenty of time to either notice or not notice in effect.

But what else would you say about Henry?

I will say that what is a challenging thing that I always navigate on the investment stuff, although I love my new as well.

I just ordered the sticks, the 10 sticks.

Those are gonna be good.

They're so good. I'm not an investor there, but I do love their product.

Is like, well, the one thing that you won't see that I'll tell you the behind the scenes is like, Tim, I was hitting you up and I was like, oh dude, you know, you invested, but you hadn't really given it a full deep dive run, right?

And you were like, oh man, I don't know.

Like I really have to like, to your defense and your credit, and this shows you kind of like the behind the scenes of why Tim, I respect you so much is like, you didn't want to ever really kind of talk about this or really like overly endorse it until you had really put it through your own personal

rigor. Super deep dive.

Yeah, and then the first thing is I get on the phone call with the team, cause we do investor updates with them or I do investor updates with them cause I love their round every month.

And they're like, yeah, Tim sent us like another 10 looms.

Like he's got all his feedback.

He's got all his feedback and he's like, and they were quick to implement that stuff.

They have been one of the fastest teams to update product, which is not to say they have to take all my feedback or suggestions.

They certainly don't.

It's their product, but they have been so fast at fine tuning the product.

I've been really impressed.

Yeah, well they've loved the feedback.

It's all been super valid stuff.

So that's awesome. But anyway, what I would say about it is like, I started studying with Henry before he had an app during the pandemic and this is what really got me into Zen.

And I think one of the things that meditation struggles from is this race towards the bottom in that there's been a commercialization of meditation that says, hey, do the two minute meditation.

No, the one minute meditation.

How can I just like productize meditation and sell meditation?

And this is like a reels and master teaching course that it's for people that really, you may have tried calmer head space, but you want to go deep, deep and really go for something much bigger here.

That to me is the exciting promise of this app because it's not just a hired pretty voice on the thing.

It's like an actual Zen master teaching you.

And it comes through in the knowledge transfer.

It's just, you can feel it.

And it's also, it's skill development, right?

It's not pleasant story du jour where you're just jumping around, listening to different things, which could be soothing.

Maybe it worked for some people.

It's never really worked for me particularly well if I approach it that way.

This is skill development in a logical progression, which you notice, like you recognize it.

You will recognize as you go through and maybe you're going through a particular retreat that is themed on hindrances for instance.

And then you're doing a sit where you're focusing on a version and you can label it.

And then for instance, I went out to a dinner, two nights later, this was a table of ladies who'd had a few too many drinks and they were cackling like fucking crazy.

And normally I would just, I would sit there just seething.

And then I'm not proud of saying this, but I would just be like, God damn it.

Like, I'd want to exact some vigilante justice.

I'd be like, well, if nobody's going to talk to her, like, how are they going to learn?

And nobody else is going to go over there.

So I have a moral obligation to be like, hey ladies.

And then if they're like, hey pal, fuck yourself.

Then I'm going to be like all spun out and just regulated sitting down to like eat my cheesecake, like trembling and fury.

So I was like, oh, and it popped up.

And as soon as it popped up, I was like, a version.

You're experiencing a version.

And I used exactly the skill that I had practiced two days before in the meditation.

I was like, boom. And it diffused the whole thing.

And that's what you want.

Like you're not meditating in an app just to feel good while you're using the app.

That's right. How can you bring it into everyday life?

And what I also like about it is it doesn't let you skip.

You have to follow the program for good reason.

You don't get to skip around indulging your whim and impatience.

You have to follow through.

So if you try to skip ahead, it's like, hey buddy.

Yeah, glad you're excited, but sorry, you're not allowed to skip around because this program does X, Y, and Z.

So enjoy. It's good stuff.

It's perfect time to use New Year's, like get a New Year's resolution.

This is like gonna be, this is gonna be a big one for me.

It's funny because I'm looking at the number of retreats because I've done quite a few now.

And I'm like, oh God, I don't want this to end.

Like, what am I gonna do when I'm like, we're through the entire program.

I'm like gonna run out of Henry, but I have so much left.

It's great. Also, you're gonna come with me to Seven Day Retreat.

We got to make that happen this year.

Like an in -person one.

Yeah, I'm game. We'll do a five day one.

Look, I'm open to it.

As long as you don't eat a lot of mushrooms before you go.

Yeah, fast for six days and eat a micro dose while I'm doing it from probably overkill.

You probably have some PTSD from that one.

Oh, it was not a wise set of decisions.

There were bad decisions were made on my part.

I'd be game to talk about that.

So let's talk about actually New Year's resolutions for a second as this ties in.

I literally just did my past year review, which I do every year.

I go through my calendar kind of week by week.

I did that today. I also looked forward to the next year.

And what I've already been doing over the last month or two, and I'd encourage people to think about this, I can instead of thinking about New Year's resolutions, think about New Year's reservations.

New Year's reservations, what does that mean?

It means what are you putting in your calendar?

So if it's not in your calendar, it's not real, right?

It's like, okay, so if you want to like exercise to this and this and this, like, hire a trainer or book a program or buy a membership, get time in your calendar, right?

So what are your New Year's reservations?

And for me, the core of that is extended periods of time with close friends.

Those people who I know are going to give me energy or going to leave me feeling better about my life and the world and optimistic.

Those are the relationships that I want to invest in.

So I go through the year.

And for instance, January, February, it's like a rent of the house and it's stupidly expensive for me.

But I put together a Google spreadsheet and I'm inviting friends to come join.

I'll see you late January.

I don't know if you saw this on our list.

Yeah, I'm gonna buy some skis too.

I'm gonna do some skiing.

Yeah, it's gonna be fantastic.

And I'll give you another example and you're invited.

I haven't actually talked to anybody about this.

I did it on the slide.

But next August, I booked a week in the Rockies for Alpine survivalist training with this amazing outdoorsman.

And I'm gonna invite five to seven guys.

Dude, that sounds amazing.

Yeah, so if you're interested, I can tell you more about that.

It's gonna be incredible.

Yeah, that sounds fantastic.

I pay a lot of attention to the details for this type of thing.

I've always loved that shit.

With the Eagle Scout and being a Boy Scout, I wanna dig little tunnels that I can like sleep in and shit and the fucking ice and shit.

Like I'm totally down.

So we'll have adventures like that.

And it doesn't have to be a week long.

It could be a long weekend, right?

It could be every year some of my closest friends come.

And it depends on the cast of characters.

Like it's not always the same people every year, but for like a annual reunion in the summer of old friends.

And in this case, because I do get questions about this sometimes, like, well, why isn't it a mixed group?

It's not a mixed gender group because unfortunately in modern society, especially on the coasts where people tend to get highfalutin and fancy and brainwashed themselves into all sorts of unproductive things, that there are very few socially acceptable male -only activities or groups.

And there are just not many options outside of perhaps certain sports environments.

So since that is a rarity, people are by default going to be in mixed groups.

And I think women generally do a very good job and it's socially acceptable to have female -only activities and groups and so on.

But a lot of men don't have that.

Most of my friends don't have that.

And that type of experience becomes less and less common as they get married and have kids and so on.

So for me, I feel like the gift I can give is blocking out a few options for people over the year.

Take them away from their wives for a week.

Yeah. It's a gift you're given.

Yeah, really good. Really get some time.

And the kids and, you know, a little break.

Yeah, yeah. And then also it's like, I think a lot of men in my experience, it's like they don't bond necessarily.

And I know I'm painting with a broad brush and there are always exceptions and so on, but it's like they don't bond in the same way that women do.

In the sense that a lot of guys just wanna not talk and do shit together, right?

And there just aren't many options for doing that.

And the beauty of saying, setting this up and having reservations and this doesn't only apply to men, it applies to women too.

Like, if you don't cultivate and nourish those friendships, they will atrophy, they will go away.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I have to convince my wife Darya to like do these social things with women because it's not her DNA to do that.

It's like tonight, I was like, I'm gonna record a podcast.

She's like, okay, I'm going out with my girlfriend.

I'm like, awesome, go do that.

Take some time, have a moment, go get a massage.

Like whatever you gotta do, like to prep for the holidays, like you deserve it.

And it's so important to have those breaks.

It's important to have the breaks.

And I mean, this idea that, I can't remember where I read this recently, but I was reading a piece.

This idea that you're gonna spend 24 seven together with your partner is a very new idea, relatively speaking.

And get everything and anything from your partner unreasonable.

That's not gonna work.

Yeah, they're everything.

The other being your therapist, your partner, your business person, you're like, and it's like, that doesn't work.

Yeah, so I have a number of these blocked out for the year.

I try to have probably like four or five and they're not all a week long and they're not all dedicated time.

For instance, like with the skiing, it's like people are bringing their wives, people are bringing their kids.

It's like, that's a family or a couple adventure.

And then there are a few that are boys only.

So the New Year's reservations is something, I've done this now for at least five years, maybe longer where it's like, I'm blocking these things out.

They're in the calendar.

They will not get crowded out by other things.

So that's a big one for me.

Yeah, that's great.

And then other news finished my nab nam, which is no booze, no masturbating, 30 day challenge, which a lot of my new readers and fans joined me on.

I also did no coffee.

So I was allowed to have tea, but I didn't do coffee and it was a fantastic reset.

And in the last week, not to get too TMI, but it's like, okay, all of those things have been reintroduced.

And I'm like, yeah, you just went to town.

I really liked the cleansing of the dopamine palette and these can be addictive behaviors, all of them.

So I think there's a very good chance that I'm going to be, I have to think about it a little bit just because so many people will be visiting, but very, very either completely dry for January.

Oh, I think, like something people are visiting, I just have to like, Master of patent and living.

Master of patent and living.

I got so many friends coming up, we're like, just gotta go to town.

What kind of party is this?

I didn't get the memo.

Yeah, Tim's back on like, just give him a few minutes.

Like, you understand he's been depriving himself.

Like, is Tim ever not in his bathroom?

What's going on here?

Yeah, so no, that's the alcohol side.

So yeah, all that stuff, I think I might continue all of that for January, we'll see, but it really was a fantastic reset.

And I think it contributed to the lowered anxiety and kind of how chill I am right now, frankly.

And there was an interview, I think Peter Tia did with a psychiatrist, female psychiatrist who was saying, when somebody comes in and say they're a heavy cannabis user and they use it for like a reducing anxiety and chronic pain or whatever, actually in this case, it wouldn't be chronic pain.

It would be they're using it for what they believe to be a reducing anxiety, but they've developed this sort of hedonic adaptation to the cannabis consumption that before she'll prescribe other medications, before she'll work on the talk therapy, she'll try to get them to abstain from say cannabis use

for two to four weeks.

And lo and behold, in many cases, anxiety drops to the floor just by that intervention.

And that was partially what inspired me to do the 30 days of abstinence from these things is to see, okay, what does it look like to reset the system?

And it's great, nothing against those things in moderation, but like, I think for instance, with me and coffee, it's like if I'm allowed to unrestrained consume as much coffee as I want, I will consume a lot of coffee.

And it's easy for me to over consume.

So I do occasionally, I mean, look, I've been loving my cold brew.

So maybe I'll just limit it to one cup of coffee in the morning, which I can actually do if I'm getting out of the house and getting on the mountain for a few hours, rather than sitting in a coffee shop where it's like there's a fixation with beverages and it's like, well, or if you're in a restaurant

and they're just like a diner, they keep pouring coffee, you're like, ah, before you know it, you've had five cups of coffee.

So anyway, some of the things on my mind.

What else you got, Kevin?

Anything else you'd like to add?

I'm on the same boat as you with the alcohol stuff.

It's so funny how the last few years, if you go back, it's been like, oh, I'm gonna do X number of days.

And there's been like this hard and fast rule.

And it was like, don't break it, just force yourself through it.

And it's like one of the things I realized in the last few weeks, especially with all the holiday parties and things that I've had, I'm like, I just have to understand there are gonna be moments when you go out and you have a couple drinks with friends.

But it has to be an occasion, not just a night at home where you're like, oh, let's pop a bottle of wine and have some alcohol.

I would much rather it be about a special moment with a friend enjoying a good meal than have it be just this constant thing that just kind of makes you not hung over, but just not your best version of yourself.

Like you said about the anxiety stuff, like a lot of that, you don't even realize it because you think that substance is actually reducing anxiety.

But in reality, if it's too many times in a month, it's like depleting of all kinds of nutrients and B vitamins and like it adds to actually more anxiety by just more taking in it.

So it's like this horrible thing.

And it also fucks up your sleep, right?

So I mean, the big one is like, yeah, it's gonna reduce your anxiety for two to three hours.

And then you're gonna feel like dog shit for 12.

So, and some people handle it better than others.

But what I've found also is that by doubling down on exercise, like exercise is the lead domino that tips over all of these other habits more easily.

What I mean by that is if I know I have a half day ski lesson that starts at 8 30 or 8 a .m.

depends on the snowfall.

And then I have more training later that night.

If I have had two or three drinks the night before, I'm going to be punished, right?

There are consequences.

And maybe it's not feeling terrible, but my performance is terrible and I hate losing, I hate not improving, I love improving.

And it's a corrective mechanism, right?

If I don't have that in place, I'm just sitting in front of a laptop and maybe the performance drop isn't as noticeable, it's not as obvious, then it's harder for me to hold myself to that line perhaps.

But the more movement, more exercise, the more everything else falls in line in my experience.

Agreed. Yeah. All right, man.

Well, I'm excited for 2025.

I got all sorts of crazy shit coming.

I'm super stoked. We're going to hang, I'm presuming it's South by.

Well, we'll see you in January.

Of course, yeah. No, we're going to see each other in Jan and then got a lot of fun stuff coming for South by.

Yeah, we'll have to let people in on that at a later date in terms of when to come hang with us.

But yeah, we're going to do a little, we'll do something.

We'll do something on stage, something fun around that time.

So keep your eyes and ears peeled for news at some point in the near future, which should be very exciting.

Sounds good. Good to see you, buddy.

Yeah. Happy New Year and happy holidays.

Give your fam the best.

Yeah, same to you, man.

Same to you and yours.

And for everybody listening, we'll put links to stuff we mentioned in the show notes, tim .blog slash podcast, and we'll put everything in there.

And I'll give one more rec, which is I'm totally unaffiliated with this.

But in addition to the way I've been listening to a recording, which was actually sent to me by a friend who took the audio tapes and converted it into MT3.

But there's an easier option because I found it on Audible.

It's called the present moment, a retreat on the practice of mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh.

So Thich Nhat Hanh, I've been a fan of forever and his books had a huge impact on me, but I'd never heard his voice.

I had never heard his voice.

And this is a recorded retreat with guided meditations and so on.

Yeah, it's amazing.

From Thich Nhat Hanh.

And it is quite mesmerizing.

And I mean, he's got the accent, which gives it like the necessary level of like exotic gravitas, which always helps.

But I will say that the way sort of greased the groove for me to be more open to this.

And when I've just been like laying in the bath after doing a bunch of activities after my night harvest or whatever, and I'm really sore, I will listen to these chapters from the present moment.

Let me give one book recommendation as well.

I'm not affiliated with Fire away by Bruce Grayson, MD.

It's called After. Have you heard of After?

I have because I had Bruce Grayson on the podcast.

No way. Yeah. Holy shit.

I gotta go listen to that.

Was it good? It was outstanding.

Yeah, he was really good.

From University of Virginia.

Yeah, so essentially this book, the subtitle is A Doctor Explores What Near Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond.

I am like halfway through it.

And I just like, I can't put it down.

Like it's so good. Professor slash Dr.

Grayson is a very credible researcher.

This guy is not like hand waving woo woo guy in beads, no offense to beads, but you get the idea.

He's not like the archetype of some guy who's got like a heavy dose of conspiratuality and can't really sort fact from fiction.

This is a very credible researcher and he is fascinating.

And I debated having him on the podcast or not for quite a long time.

And then I realized what am I so afraid of?

Like I actually feel quite good about his documentation.

The research is put out and his observations don't ring as wildly speculative.

And these are documented phenomena.

People have these experiences.

So let's take a closer look at near death experiences.

And I'm really glad I did it.

Really glad I did it.

But I was having and hawing for probably a year or two.

I was worried that it would open the door to criticism of not being sufficiently skeptical or critically minded with guests but he delivered what I hoped he would deliver which is a very sober, fascinating account of a well -reported phenomena that is poorly understood that he has researched for several

decades now at this point which he became interested in quite accidentally and reluctantly.

Oh my God, the story about how he became interested in it and what happened to him is just wild.

It's bananas. I won't ruin it but people check out the book or when the podcast came out a couple years ago?

No podcast came out like a few months ago.

Oh, geez. This was recently.

Check it, awesome. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's fun. I'll link to the Dr.

Grayson episode as well for folks after.

Didn't Daria also read that?

Yeah, that's how I had it was in my Audible library.

She said, you gotta read this and then when you share an Audible library you just see what your partner's buying.

Yeah, cool. And so like I just downloaded it and yeah, it's been awesome, dig it.

Awesome, brother. Well, lovely to see you.

As always, give a hug to Dardar and the kiddos and Toastie for me.

Will do. Please pet Molly for me and tell your friends I said hello and happy holidays, brother, love ya and I'll see you in Jan.

Yeah, love you too, buddy.

I'll see you in January.

Happy holidays, happy holidays.

Hey guys, this is Tim again.

Just one more thing before you take off and that is Five Bullet Friday.

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Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.

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It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.

It's kind of like my diary of cool things.

It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you.

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If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim .blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim .blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.

Thanks for listening.

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[Year-End Reflections: AI, Longevity, and Finding Groundedness]-[#785: The Random Show — 2025 Predictions (AI, Aliens, BTC, and More), New Year’s Resolutions and Strategies, Smart Fitness, The Spinal Engine, New Apps, and Much More]

📋 Summary

A Year-End Dialogue: Navigating Modernity, Health, and Future Trends

The Psychological Cost of Artificial Perfection

Rethinking Strength: The Spinal Engine

Recovery and Bio-Optimization

Strategic Life Planning: "New Year's Reservations"

Predictions for 2025 and Beyond

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript