Please enjoy this transcript of another wide-ranging “Random Show” episode I recorded with my close friend Kevin Rose (digg.com)!

We cover Kevin’s sobriety journey and marking 100 days without alcohol, my results with the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting, GLP-1 agonists, home defense and security, the future of Venture Capital, authenticating yourself online, AI, the cultural shift toward human-to-human connection, Roblox, and more.

Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the conversation on YouTube.

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Tim Ferriss: Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. KevKev. Random Show.

Kevin Rose: TimTim.

Tim Ferriss: Here we are again. Nice to see you here.

Kevin Rose: Here we are. Good to see you as well.

Tim Ferriss: And you crazy listeners and viewers out there, we have a lot to talk about. This is going to be an action-packed episode. Features all sorts of new biological hacks, psycho-emotional hacks, even includes some homeless people hiding in a closet. And that is not a metaphor. We’ll get to that eventually, but let’s kick off with a huge congrats, man. 100 days. Why is 100 days significant? What is the milestone?

Kevin Rose: The milestone is no alcohol for 100 days.

Tim Ferriss: Fucking A, man. Congratulations. That is huge.

Kevin Rose: Thank you.

Tim Ferriss: That is huge.

Kevin Rose: It is huge, especially given how much of an alcoholic I was.

Tim Ferriss: Well, let’s dive into it. Because I have, over the decades, I guess, at this point, right, seen you take a stab at sobriety many different times, and the success has varied, but nothing has approached 100 days. Nothing. Nothing.

Kevin Rose: Well, don’t make it seem like it’s that bad.

Tim Ferriss: When you were laying under those overpasses just taking hit after hit.

Kevin Rose: Hey, listen, you’ve also taken a stab at non-sobriety with me many times.

Tim Ferriss: I know, I know. Well, I was going to say 100 days sober, even for someone who does not consider themselves a drinker, but let’s just say for someone who drinks occasionally, socially, that’s a meaningful period of time. That’s a quarter of the year, more than a quarter of the year. So I’m sure we’ve talked about this, we’ve tracked it a little bit over time, but what made the difference this time around? Let’s reiterate that for folks and maybe your answer’s changed.

Kevin Rose: Yeah. I think that initially it was fear of death, which was largely driven by my doctor calling me up and saying, “Your liver enzymes are like,” whatever it was, “5X, 7X what they should be.”

Tim Ferriss: Oh, wow. Okay.

Kevin Rose: So that was number one. But just to give people a benchmark of where I was at drinking-wise. My journey with alcohol, it’s been one of a love affair. I’ve definitely enjoyed the drinks, but for me, it’s never been about drinking to blackout or drinking to even any type of illness or sickness. It’s just kind of consistency, meaning that when COVID happened, I was sober as could be for the first three weeks. And then I’m like, “Eh, what do we have to do? We should just drink a little bit. I think everybody’s going to be okay.” At first, I was like, “Got to get my immune system on point,” and then I just gave that up and there was a lot of loneliness. And I was out in the woods in the middle of nowhere in Oregon, and had some young kids, and was like, “Ah, let’s just crack a bottle of wine.” So it was a very common, very normal thing for us as a household — 

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for a lot of people.

Kevin Rose: — to just crack a bottle and just finish the whole bottle between two people, and that became the norm. And then I just remembered that there — for me, I was always asking myself, “Can I take a day or two off per week?” Which I think would be a good, healthy thing. But then if you just add up the amount of drinks, even with taking a day or two off, if you’re doing three drinks a night, that’s a lot of drinks every month.

Tim Ferriss: It’s a lot. And just to put that also in a broader context, part of the reason I’ve never lived full-time in New York City, and part of the reason some of my friends have moved out of New York City is not because New York City is a bad place, but at least in the social circles by and large that I know, finishing a bottle of wine between two people, let’s call that two and a half drinks apiece, that would be a light night in New York City. And to do that minimum three nights, but three, four, five, six nights per week — and a lot of the groups I know at least, that is just par for the course.

Kevin Rose: Right. The issue is that when you get into your 40s and you have all that cumulative damage of decades, you realize, “Well, things start to shut down like your liver.” So I think that was the first sign, but then I just realized — 

Tim Ferriss: Only have one liver, so you want to take care of that baby.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, the nice thing obviously about the liver is that until you’re at that point of no return, it’s pretty damn good at healing itself. And my liver enzymes snapped back to normal ranges within four weeks, which was great to see. But when I think about: when have I truly given it a break? When have I truly taken more? And I’ve taken a month off here or there, there’s those dry Januaries, and I would have a dampish January where you have a drink or two, but it’s still kind of dry January. And so that was the norm, and then I just said, “If I can’t go three months, then —” And actually my therapist told me this, she said, “Kevin, it’s kind of a golf clap at one month, three months is where the magic happens in terms of how you feel, your energy, your mood, weight loss, glucose control, all of the things that you’ve said you want to have.”

But can you do it? And it is really challenging to go three months for someone like myself that it is a crutch around social situations. It is a crutch around, if I’m being honest, when you have a partner where you’re dealing with a couple little kids and it can be challenging with the kiddos and with the logistics of a household, and all of a sudden you’re just like, “Ah, I had a hard long day at work and I had a long day at home, and I have some good wine sitting right there.” It’s very easy to tap into that.

Tim Ferriss: So what would you say made the difference this time around? You had the health scare or at least the doctor saying, “Hey, hot shot —”

Kevin Rose: It was surrounding myself with people that had done this before. 

Tim Ferriss: How did you find them?

Kevin Rose: Well, I think we’re at the age that if you — I’m sure you probably can check this box as well, where I know right now three people that have successfully done 12-step programs.

Tim Ferriss: Sure. Yeah. Easily three.

Kevin Rose: In fact, we have a couple of friends in common that are now sober and have done these programs. And yeah, that’s exactly it. And you reach out to them and say, “Hey, what did you do? What about these 12 steps has worked for you?” I was always kind of put off by the religious aspect of — 

Tim Ferriss: Sure.

Kevin Rose: — some of the 12-step stuff. It just seemed to me like a little — I don’t know. I didn’t really think I had it that bad, but I knew that there were people that, and I had seen this, that had stuck to it with the help and support of these people. And they gather around you and really give you a kind of tool kit to lean into. And for me that has been really understanding that it’s not about the three months, it’s just about winning today. And so if you can reframe it as just not today. Yeah, I can have a drink tomorrow, but just not today.

Tim Ferriss: Not today, Satan. Not today, Satan.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. And it sounds so silly, but — 

Tim Ferriss: No, it doesn’t though.

Kevin Rose: — do these little tiny things

Tim Ferriss: Eternity — well, I guess we’re not going to live for all eternity unless you believe some people on the internet, but until you die is a long time, or at least you hope it’s a long time. But today or tomorrow, today, it’s very digestible, right?

Kevin Rose: Yes. Yeah, 100 percent. And so that was a big thing. And having those friends, and the first thing they did being — some of them are — one’s still in AA and two or ex-AA. They said that, “What we do here is we can just give you our numbers and you call anytime you’re having a craving or you think you’re getting close to not pulling this off because we want to see you succeed.” And I think that’s a powerful thing to be able to have a hotline to someone that is like, “I’ve been here. It sucks.” Yes, yes, you can get to two weeks, but do you want to white knuckle this all the entire way by yourself or do you want someone that’s going to go have a tea with you and sit with you for an evening on a day that’s particularly hard?

And so I think after you get to kind of six — well, I’m just speaking for myself, but when I got to six or ish weeks, the kind of the headache-y kind of desire of it all faded away a little bit. And then I found a bunch of shit that I really enjoyed doing that was not drinking. And I think that’s the other big thing you have to do, is you have to really figure out what is going to fill that space. Because if it’s just sitting there thinking about drinks — 

Tim Ferriss: Smoking. Copious amounts of weed. No, I’m kidding.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, I started cocaine and I just did a bunch of weed, but other than that — no. I wish I liked weed. I do not like weed for some reason. It just doesn’t — I like the way it —

Tim Ferriss: I think Sigmund Freud for a while was viewing cocaine as the solution to heroin. I’m not making that up. He’s a very famous psychoanalyst, but that’s not that. So, you didn’t go for snow blindness, you went for — 

Kevin Rose: No, but I did go for this. Look at this.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, okay. Now this looks like a Japanese LEGO-ish — those are Nanoblocks?

Kevin Rose: Yes. So this is called Nanoblocks, and it’s one of the things I wanted to talk about today. So, Nanoblocks are from Japan. And I did a little research and essentially they were able to find a way around a lot of the LEGO patents. And they created — look at how small this block is.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, he’s holding it up.

Kevin Rose: If you listen to audio — 

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s about the size of a baby aspirin. It’s tiny.

Kevin Rose: Right, exactly. And so they literally sell Nanoblock branded tweezers to put these things together.

Tim Ferriss: That’s the most Japanese thing I can imagine at this moment.

Kevin Rose: Exactly. And so the instructions are horrific, which actually makes it more fun. Look at this. Look at this bad boy.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, wow. Okay. So, he’s holding up a cherry blossom tree. It’s actually awesome. It’s kind of mesmerizing in that lo-fi kind of way. And it probably has, I’m just going to guess here, 857 pieces, something — 

Kevin Rose: No, this was 2,500, I think, pieces.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God. Here we go.

Kevin Rose: So, this’ll take you a good solid week.

Tim Ferriss: It’ll keep your hands — idle hands of the devil’s workshop, but not if you have Nanoblocks.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. So, I will say that little hobbies like this, especially ones that you can do with your kids — do I have my — yeah, so this one back here is also LEGO.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, that’s — I guess I’m blanking on the exact name. The Great Wave, Hokusai. Almost everyone will have seen this in some form or fashion. That’s cool. That’s very cool.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, so that actually is legit LEGO. This is not Nanoblocks, but this one is really cool. We talked about that one once before, but I think these things are great to have. These little hobbies are great to have. And Nanoblocks, I will say, if you go on Amazon, they sell them on there, they have horrible reviews. And the reason why the reviews are so bad is because the instructions, like I said, are horrific. But once you understand the way that the Japanese want you to do it, there is a method to their madness, and they all work the same way. So, it takes you an hour and a half to be like, “Why are they telling me to put it like — what does that arrow mean?” And then you understand the arrow systems because there’s a lot of Japanese, a little bit of sprinkled English throughout the instructions.

Tim Ferriss: Probably doesn’t help very much.

Kevin Rose: Right, but look at this kit here. So they have these cute little kits.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, ramen. Yeah. Cup O’ Noodle, basically.

Kevin Rose: That little ramen.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, 140 pieces, ages 12 plus. That’s fun.

Kevin Rose: Yeah. So, this ramen is going to be about the size of — 

Tim Ferriss: A shot glass.

Kevin Rose: — a little teacup. Like a shot glass. Exactly. But it’s super tiny, and it’ll take you eight hours to put that together. But they’re so fun. They’re so fun. And I have a massive Godzilla that’s cool.

Tim Ferriss: So, two things. Number one, if a video on YouTube doesn’t exist already, you should just create a video, which is like, “Let me explain how to use these fucking things.” That would be a great service to humanity.

Kevin Rose: You know what’s funny is I’m actually doing that. I’m going to do a live — there’s this whole movement right now where people go out — actually Craig Mod is quite good at this, where he’ll go out — you had him on your podcast, fantastic. All things Japan, Craig Mod is the best. He has gone out and he’s done these ambient recordings where he just goes to these rural parts of Japan.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, they’re so cool.

Kevin Rose: And he just sets up his mic and you listen to the street traffic, you listen to the people doing various tasks, and there’s something to be said about — they call this slow TV, this movement. There’s this whole thing where people watch people grooming and shearing sheep. Have you seen this.

Tim Ferriss: No, but I saw this guy who has a podcast that is sort of, I guess, interviewing thought leaders, and he didn’t disclose this in the tweet, but the tweet was like — there is an account of a Norwegian truck driver, this is on YouTube, just driving through different parts of the countryside in Norway, and it has 5,000,000 subscribers or something. And he said, “Meanwhile, there are other podcasts that do this on YouTube, and they only have 9,000 subscribers,” link. He didn’t disclose that it was actually his account. But yeah, the slow, I suppose, what’s the right word, sort of living vicariously as a fly on the wall with things that seem very day to day.

Craig Mod has actually a super relaxing — it’s hard for me to explain exactly what it is. Maybe it’s just a mild antidote to digital loneliness. Maybe that’s part of it. But he went to a Japanese jazz listening bar where people — or a jazz listening cafe, where it’s full of vinyl. People sit there in true Japanese fashion, practically dead silent, just listening to the owner who’s effectively the DJ, put on different vinyl. And he got all the — 

Kevin Rose: I’ve been to this bar.

Tim Ferriss: — all the ambient sounds. And Craig Mod, what a gem. Definitely look him up.

Kevin Rose: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: The name is M-O-D, as you heard.

Kevin Rose: Yeah. And I will say that I’ve talked to Craig about — I asked him, I said, “Hey, how do you get this? Why does it sound so amazing? What’s your secret here?” And he uses these binaural microphones that, essentially, they go into his ears. And so he plugs them into his ears and then into a solid state recording device. And so you’re listening as though you’re sitting in his ears because there’s a mic on each side. And so that’s the left and right audio channels, and it creates this illusion of a depth of audio as you’re listening, which is just brilliant, and it’s so much fun. But yeah, there is a massive movement, and I get it. 

Tim, we are so addicted to our devices that, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m getting in my late 40s, but I desperately crave more analog in my life.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, more analog.

Kevin Rose: More so than I ever have.

Tim Ferriss: For sure.

Kevin Rose: Do you find that to be the case with yourself?

Tim Ferriss: Oh, 100 percent. Next week I’m going on this wilderness trek in Montana and Idaho that is going to be off grid and with a couple of close friends. And sure, you could bring, say, a solar charger and try to use your phone, but I’m just going to leave mine behind. I don’t need it. What am I going to do?

Kevin Rose: You just bring in your printed Playboys. You’re going all analog.

Tim Ferriss: I’m bringing the stash from the late ’80s. I kept those with my D&D from childhood when I packed them up. And analog, more and more analog. We are just evolved to thrive and feel at ease in analog environments, which isn’t to say all digital is bad, but certainly past a point, the self-soothing becomes a poison. And I don’t think we need to convince anyone of that. You see it everywhere. So, it makes sense that even in a digital sphere, this type of slow viewing cat — I was going to say cat-on-the-wall, not even sure what that would be. Maybe it — it sounds like a Japanese t-shirt, but fly-on-the-wall experience, it allows people to put something in the background. I used to do this when I was writing my books.

So 4-Hour Workweek — I don’t even know if you know this, so 4-Hour Workweek, 4-Hour Body, 4-Hour Chef, I would do most of my writing late at night. And a lot of authors I know who are productive, not saying I’m one of the most productive at all, but either write very early when everyone’s asleep or they write very late when everyone is asleep. The upside is you can focus, the downside is it can feel very, very isolating. So I would sit in my TV room and I would put on music, but I would always put on movies to watch, so I had people around on the screen.

And these were movies that I would just watch on repeat. So I’ve seen, for the first movie — or first set of movies for The 4-Hour Workweek. It was Shaun of the Dead and the first Jason Bourne. And then for The 4-Hour Body, it was Snatch, and it was the first movie I chose that popped up on Amazon Prime, which is Babe. Masterpiece of a movie. So, I watched Snatch and Babe like 5,000 times each. Absolutely high hundreds each. But it’s just to have something in the background that is comforting while I’m isolated and I’m listening to music and writing, so it makes sense to me.

Kevin Rose: You know The Naked Gun is coming back.

Tim Ferriss: Yes, I do. I saw the reviews and I’m like, “God, I hope it’s true,” because The Naked Gun was so good.

Kevin Rose: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: Liam Neeson is actually a fantastic actor, despite the fact that he’s made some version of Taken like 789 times, but the guy has chops. But in the same way Johnny Depp has chops, but when they did a remake of Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, I was like, “Oh, I don’t do it. Gene Wilder is going to be really hard to top. That’s going to be really tough.” So I’m optimistic in a way I suppose with movies that I haven’t been in a long time. So, I’m excited to check out The Naked Gun.

Kevin Rose: I’m just curious to see if they’re going to keep up with the — because The Naked Gun you could not make today. Well, maybe you could.

Tim Ferriss: As it was.

Kevin Rose: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: There’d have to be some script doctoring for sure. Let me — before we get to The Naked Gun, I want to make an observation, which is you and I text a lot, and we’re in one ridiculous small friend group thread. And since you cut alcohol out, the tone of your communication is completely different, in the sense that you basically don’t complain anymore, effectively gone as far as complaining. But I think that’s just related to the ups and downs that are maybe more noticeable when you’re drinking and all the effects on metabolism and insulin sensitivity and so on. But it’s like your general tone and existence and demeanor is so much more stable in its positivity since you stopped drinking. So I just wanted to mention that because it’s very noticeable.

Kevin Rose: That’s interesting.

Tim Ferriss: Not that you were bitching and moaning all the time before, but the change is very noticeable.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, because I feel like your bitching has gone up.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Kevin Rose: As you get older, something’s happened.

Tim Ferriss: Something’s not right here.

Kevin Rose: No, I appreciate you saying that. I feel as though — well, I will say this — you never know how much you should share on podcasts and whatnot, but I’m going to just go out here. I know my wife’s going to listen to this, but I might as well say it anyway. You argue less when you’re both not drinking, it turns out.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Kevin Rose: And you and I are always — we’ve been known to text each other various grievances with our partners and people we’ve been seeing.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you need to do it. Yeah, you need to do it.

Kevin Rose: You need an outlet, especially with your buddy.

Tim Ferriss: You need an outlet. It’s like you just need somebody to vent to. But I would say holistically, so if you even took the partner piece out of it, just in general, you’re much more upbeat and it’s noticeable. 

And again, I want to mention something that I’m pretty sure we haven’t. I didn’t want to repeat myself, so I used AI to summarize our last few Random Shows. And a few things that I’ve done I’m pretty sure since our last conversation were interventions for health also. And the primary drivers behind that were not any type of medical emergency, but I’m now caring for two family members who have rapidly deteriorating cognitive health. And this is very common in my family. Lots of Parkinson’s, lots of Alzheimer’s in particular.

And what I’ve noticed is that some of these people who seem hardest hit by Alzheimer’s are, say, APOE 3/3. They shouldn’t have a high predisposition to Alzheimer’s. And I’m APOE 3/4, so I’m like, “Fuck, if I am, as we understand it now, something like 2.5 times more likely than the population average to be predisposed to Alzheimer’s, this is something I want to look at very, very closely.” Because there are some interventions out there, and you and I have invested in hopefully some new interventions to come in the four coming years, but that’s going to take some time. By the time the symptoms are really obvious, it’s very, very hard to treat something like Alzheimer’s, which doesn’t mean that the interventions don’t work, it just means they might not work at that stage. So, I’m really trying to — and I’ve already been taking a lot of mental health and cognitive neuronal health thing seriously. So I started wondering, and this is just a hypothesis, but if it’s possible that I have inherited some mitochondrial dysfunction, and looked at ways to improve mitochondrial health, which would include increased Zone 2 training, for instance.

Kevin Rose: I hate Zone 2, but yeah.

Tim Ferriss: It’s so boring.

Kevin Rose: Just annoying.

Tim Ferriss: It’s like flossing. It’s just like the worst — it’s not fun, but it’s mild enough that you can throw on something on Netflix or listen to a podcast. So, Zone 2, it’s boring, but you’ve got to do it. And I’ve been finding more interesting ways to do that. But in addition to that, looking at some old friends that I thought were worth dusting off and revisiting like ketosis and the ketogenic diet. So I’ll give you the punchline and then I’ll back up. So, did my blood draw, and also an oral glucose tolerance test, which we should really talk about because that’s just such an important tool in the toolkit to see how sensitive you are with respect to insulin or insensitive glucose disposal, et cetera. Getting fasting glucose isn’t enough. You can get false good news if that’s timed luckily or well.

So I’ve had my best lab results, and I get three or four tests a year, probably my best lab results in the last decade, most recently. And I would attribute that to a few things. I used ketogenic diet, very straightforward. You have to figure out a few meals that work for you. For me, it was a big salad with ribeye cut on top with some cheese. You have to figure out something that doesn’t make you feel like a human cheesecloth every day because you really want to keep your protein moderate. You can’t have too much protein on the ketogenic diet if you want to stay in high levels of high millimolar concentration of ketones. And I test all this with a finger prick. I shifted naturally, like ketosis first, to initiate some adaptations. And for everything I read, it takes about — I knew I didn’t want to do it super. It’s just too boring and too disgusting, and plus, I really need to watch my lipid profile.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, that’s my problem.

Tim Ferriss: But based on the reading that I was doing, it seemed like three to four weeks of serious ketosis was enough to initiate some durable changes. And then maybe if you do that at least, and this is speculation, but once every six months, once every year, that you can keep the metabolic machinery where you want it. And so I did four weeks and I was like, “Enough,” but I started leaning into intermittent fasting towards the end of that, and experimenting with 16/8. So, what that means is 16 hours of fasting, eight hours of eating. Eight hours could be noon to eight o’clock, could be 2:00 p.m. to 10:00. And then continued with the ketogenic diet, but just two meals a day, typically like one at two o’clock, and then one at, say, 8:00 or 9:00.

And then shifted back to a non-ketogenic diet, and this is going somewhere, folks, because the ketogenic diet may have nothing to do with it, but the combination of doing three to four weeks of ketosis and then doing intermittent fasting for the last two months, but at the time of my blood test, it was only about four weeks in, my insulin sensitivity — which my family just as a team sucks at. Genetically, I am not predisposed to having great glucose disposal or insulin sensitivity. And that’s a huge driver for accelerated neurodegenerative disease. If you have high blood pressure, if you have chronically elevated glucose or insulin and/or insulin, all of these things drive degeneration cognitively.

And people can learn all sorts of stuff about 16/8 intermittent fasting from Rhonda Patrick, and she’s had a number of scientists on her podcast. There’s also a guy I recommend with some reservation, but Martin Berkhan, who really popularized, to his credit, 16/8, and worked with a lot of clients and his audience. So, he had very interesting data, but his editorial tone is not for everybody. He will not die from confidence deficiency, I’ll put it that way. Nonetheless, his recommendations around intermittent fasting plus resistance training are very compelling. So, I would suggest people check that out. A byproduct of this is that, and this was very unexpected, my mood is so elevated and stable now, it’s kind of hard for me to believe that I didn’t figure this out sooner.

And I think part of that was, as a competitive athlete, especially growing up when we grew up, it was like, “Okay, small meals every four hours,” something like that was the dogma. And I think that was a just enough smoke screen that I was able to cover up insulin insensitivity because if I didn’t eat frequently, I would start to crash and then get grumpy, and then I would boost it back up with granted a healthy meal, but I was still eating very, very consistently. And in doing this, my mood on average has just been so much higher, so much more stable for, I would say, the last eight weeks. I don’t have any intention of changing.

Kevin Rose: That’s amazing.

Tim Ferriss: I think I could do the intermittent fasting indefinitely. And on top of that, I’ll say one of my concerns, and part of the reason I didn’t try this sooner is that if you don’t incorporate resistance training and if you don’t get enough protein — 

Kevin Rose: I was just going to ask you that.

Tim Ferriss: — you can lose a lot of muscle mass. And I remember doing DEXA scans way back in the day. I started doing DEXA before The 4-Hour Body in 2010. And the owners of these DEXA facilities would tell me the vast majority of people who try intermittent fasting think they’re losing fat, but they’re losing muscle mass, and their body composition goes upside down effectively. And I judged it harshly and I judged it prematurely. So, in animal models, and also certainly if you look at what Martin and some of his clients have done, that need not be the case. And you’re not necessarily going to pack on tons of muscle, but you can lose fat while preserving or moderately gaining muscle. So, I’m still getting stronger in my workouts, and it’s interesting how fat loss works too. And Martin’s observed this. A lot of people have observed this, but it’s not caloric deficit, and you lose a predictable amount every week. Sure, if you were a closed system, blah, blah, blah, law of thermodynamics, yeah, it should just be pure math. But what seems to happen, at least with me, is that it’s not really seeing anything, not really seeing anything, not really seeing anything, and then all of a sudden in week four or five, you just seem to drop a lot of body fat. And I don’t have a great explanation for that, but I’m sure there is a good explanation.

Kevin Rose: It’s that MCT oil that you’re taking with the — you’re running into the bathroom.

Tim Ferriss: Just letting everything pass through.

Kevin Rose: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: But what I will say is that I have used just about every diet imaginable, and I would say one criticism I would have of some of what Martin recommends is he advises people to consume somewhere along the lines, if they can tolerate it, like 400 to 800 milligrams of caffeine a day to aid in fat loss.

Kevin Rose: Wow.

Tim Ferriss: And yes, that will aid in fat loss, but — 

Kevin Rose: Yeah, and lack of sleep.

Tim Ferriss: — yeah, I don’t want the sleep architecture disruption. And also it’s like you can get away with a lot if you’re taking stimulants. And this is said as someone who for a long time — I was first introduced to pre-workout stimulants by an older student when I was wrestling in high school.

Kevin Rose: Let me guess, N.O.-Xplode.

Tim Ferriss: So, N.O.-Xplode, little reds, yeah. N.O.-Xplode is like a later iteration, but at that point, this guy was giving me the cobbled together, you can’t really do this anymore and I don’t recommend it. 

Kevin Rose: Fen-Phen and shit?

Tim Ferriss: No, not Fen-Phen. Ephedrine caffeine aspirin, the ECA stack, and that will rip body fat off of your body, but you are not getting a biological free lunch. You are really hammering yourself and your system. So I’ve — 

Kevin Rose: Did you ever hit Bronkaid?

Tim Ferriss: Bronkaid is probably ephedrine, I would guess.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, I know, but did you ever hit it when you were younger?

Tim Ferriss: Actually an inhaler, or what do you mean?

Kevin Rose: Yeah, because that’s what people would do.

Tim Ferriss: No.

Kevin Rose: The bodybuilders would hit Bronkaid and they would put on sweatshirts and go on the treadmill, just sweat their faces off — 

Tim Ferriss: No, no. No, I didn’t do that.

Kevin Rose: And just get six-pack abs.

Tim Ferriss: No. You would buy Primatene Mist tablets. And don’t do this, folks, it’s not good for you. Also, if you try to buy Primatene Mist tablets now, you have to show your driver’s license because I believe there are labs or probably trailers is a more accurate description. People will use that as a precursor to produce methamphetamine is my understanding, which is why it’s very tightly controlled. So suffice to say don’t do that and I’ve been very wary of any regimen that requires a lot of stimulants is, I guess, what I’m trying to say. And the only time that I have reliably — if you look at every single male in my family, it’s kind of comical. You can spot them from a mile away.

And abdominal fat, I know this isn’t unique to my family, but nobody in the history of my family on either side has ever had six-pack abs except for me when I was taking disgusting quantities of stimulants. But this time around doing the resistance training plus intermittent fasting and yes, some of it could be explained by reduced caloric intake, but I think there’s more to it, the abdominal fat’s finally coming off. And this is at 48. I’m no spring chicken. So I’ve been very impressed that I’m able to do that.

Kevin Rose: Anything else like joint pain? Some of the benefits of a ketogenic diet, people say joint pain goes away. They get some of these other things.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So another reason in addition to mitochondrial health that I want to ketosis is because of the potent anti-inflammatory effects and some of the chronic back pain that long-term listeners will be sick of hearing about. So that was another reason why I did the ketosis. I felt the anti-inflammatory effects of that much more so than just the intermittent fasting with a “regular diet” that’s higher in carbohydrates. 

I have also been adding in with my, let’s just call it normal diet, intermittent fasting, exogenous ketones. So supplemental ketones in the morning because I also — I want to give credit where credit is due. Rhonda Patrick and I have had a lot of texts back and forth. Rhonda Patrick, for people who don’t know, I think — God, maybe you introduced me to her. She was like podcast number 12 for me out of 800 and something, which I didn’t realize it was so early.

She’s a PhD, she is a scientist and researcher. She has published in very credible journals and it’s just a great resource for separating fact from fiction in so many different domains. And her dad, I believe it was, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and she’s been public about this. And so we were trading notes on all different things and we were talking about ketosis and if you’re in ketosis, what about intermittent fasting? If you have a tablespoon of heavy cream in your coffee in the beginning, are you sacrificing autophagy, this kind of cellular self-eating/cleanup? And she sent me a case study of an Alzheimer’s patient. Pretty progressed Alzheimer’s, very impaired function, who was given a ketone monoester, so this is a liquid that is basically just a shot, two or three times a day.

And I recognize this is N of one, so take it with a huge grain of salt, but still a huge regain in function. I mean astonishing, astonishing recovery of function and mood and personality. So I figured, well, let me experiment with this because I might want to suggest it to people in my family, but I’m not going to do that until I understand exactly what I’m dealing with from a first-person perspective and adding in, for instance, one option a mutual friend of ours, I’m not going to dox him, but recommended Qitone, Q-I-T-O-N-E. And it’s a powder that you can add into your coffee and mix up as a creamer, which is what I do.

Kevin Rose: Wait, can we ask you one question, Tim, before you go on with this one? You and I were on a call, not a public call, but a phone call and you had mentioned that you found the best basically ketones on the market that you believed at the time and this was recently. So are these the ones?

Tim Ferriss: These are not those ones in part because, this is going to make me sound like a dick, I will share that one soon. They’re very expensive. I’ll tell you offline. The reason, and people are going to hate me for saying this, but I want this stuff for my family and this producer has very, very limited inventory. So I want to make sure that I can get this stuff. And Furthermore, I think it’s really premature to start just dosing your elderly parents or aunts and uncles with this. I still have some open questions about concerns and long-term health, etc. So I want to do some more digging. This is not that one.

Kevin Rose: Is this one palatable?

Tim Ferriss: This one is palatable.

Kevin Rose: Because you should tell people, the hardcore stuff is no joke, right? It’s cruel to be giving it to someone with dementia and that you’re asking them to chug gasoline.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I thought it was going to be worse than it is, but I also have a stomach of iron and have choked down so much disgusting shit over my life that I think — I’m dating a lovely girl right now and I made some salad and she tried to eat it and she’s like, “This is inedible. This is so disgusting. Why did you put so much vinegar on it?” And I did put way too much vinegar on it and she almost puked at the table and I was like, “What are you talking about?” I’m just shoving it down my maw. So I don’t know if I’m the best reference for palatable, but they’ve improved a lot.

They used to taste like jet fuel, I mean based on reports. I wasn’t even willing to do it. Because literally, I think he’s been public about this, Peter Attia, famous doc, trained at Hopkins, Stanford, etc, a lot of people will know him, he told me about the first time he tried the OG ketone monoesters and he took a shot and he basically had to run to the sink and white-knuckle the sides of the sink as he’s dry heaving for like 10 minutes. And I was like, no thanks, no thanks. But this Qitone, the Q-I-T-O-N-E, it is very palatable. You just mix it in with your coffee. What I will say to folks is just public service announcement, your GI distress may vary. So you might be fine, you might not be fine.

Kevin Rose: Just chase it with an Imodium, you’ll be fine.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. And of particular danger is caffeine ketones and creatine, which is also great to take.

Kevin Rose: Well, and MCT.

Tim Ferriss: But yeah, if you take any two of those four, you’re in the danger zone. If you take three or four out of the four, there’s coin toss disaster pants. So just stay close to the bathroom. You do get used to it. But I just used this ketone this morning for instance because the stuff at some point that I hope to share when they get their production ramped up, number one, it does taste pretty awful. It’s pretty god-awful. And then second, it’s very expensive. I mean, it’s like 20 to $30 a dose.

Kevin Rose: Wow.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It’s very, very expensive. So if you’re going to be giving someone this particular exogenous ketone two or three times a day on an ongoing basis, we have to figure out a more economical solution because outside of the one percent of one percent, no one’s going to be able to afford that.

Kevin Rose: So Tim, for people that are listening and they’re hearing you talk about two different ketones here, it begs the question, if you are pricking yourself, doing blood work afterwards and finding out what your ketone levels are or peeing on a strip or however you’re doing it, obviously you can tell that these things work and I’ve done it myself because you take them and then you literally go do the test and a half hour later or five minutes later you see that your ketone bodies are elevated and you’re like, okay, it’s in my system, it’s working. Right?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Kevin Rose: And I don’t know about you, but I can feel it. It’s like a light switch goes off.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you can absolutely feel it.

Kevin Rose: Cognitively your brain, also cardiac tissue, loves ketones.

Tim Ferriss: Yes, brain juice. It’s brain juice and — finish what you’re saying and then I’ll add something else.

Kevin Rose: My question for you is why would you even consider the more expensive 20 to $30 when there are so many other readily available, call it the five to $7 range ketones that are out there on market? What are the advantages of that $30 model?

Tim Ferriss: It’s hard for me not to dox a supplier by giving too much detail, but what I will say is this. Subjectively, and I’ve checked with a few people who have tested it, nothing feels like these ketones.

Kevin Rose: Really?

Tim Ferriss: Nothing. Not even close. It’s the Bugatti of exogenous ketones. You flip on the switch and for instance, I’m doing a lot of media interviews and stuff right now because of this Coyote game and we could talk about that at some point, I mean that’s very analog, as analog as it gets. I’m doing a lot of media and historically what would I have done? Because I want to be sharp, even in the afternoon I would have tea or coffee, but then that fucks up your sleep so badly and it turns into this vicious cycle. So now I just take the exogenous ketones in the afternoons and if anything, it’s going to help you sleep, which is something you observe with the ketogenic diet that’s really wild is that you are, at least personally, and this is true for a lot of people, your sleep requirements go down and when you wake up, I’m not a morning person historically, it doesn’t take me an hour to get up to speed. When I’m in ketosis, I wake up and I am ready to go nine or 10 out of 10.

So I would say for a lot of folks though, at least based on the reviews and reports that I’ve read, the diester, this Qitone, Q-I-T-O-N-E, it’s more than enough to get a taste test for whether or not you’re going to get any response. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone not getting a response because we’re evolved to produce and consume ketones. And I’ll just say also that I have found it very helpful to think of Alzheimer’s, and this is simplifying things and I’m not the first person to say this, as type three diabetes. Brain diabetes. And that is part of the reason why this is so interesting to me. Not only is it possible treatment or something that could reduce symptoms, maybe restore function, but also for preventative purposes.

If I can do, as I did for a long time, for many years I did a seven-day water only fast per year and then I would do a three-day water only fast once a quarter, I still think that’s a good idea, but for whatever reason in the last few years I became less tolerant of that. I would do a seven-day fast and I would get really dizzy if I stood up. I would have memory problems and I think it was increasing insulin insensitivity in part that caused that. And now that I’m doing this 16/8 intermittent fasting and I’ll occasionally just switch it up and — ketosis takes a little while to get into, so there’s a bit of an on-ramp. But now that I’m doing this, I’m also feeding my system with exogenous ketones. My working hypothesis is that I’m keeping that ketone machinery busy so that it doesn’t atrophy.

And my expectation is, and I’m going to test this again soon, is the next time I do, three days is pretty easy for me at this point, but a seven-day let’s just say water-only fast, by the way, you don’t need to lose much if any muscle mass doing that either but that’s a whole separate conversation, it’s kind of counterintuitive, I will be able to test this hypothesis. Did all this stuff help? I think doing 16/8 by itself probably helps you with an extended fast. So we’ll see. We’ll see. But my feeling is that I’m late to the party in a sense, but that intermittent fasting is very interesting and it’s compelling from a compliance perspective because for instance —

Well, I just think of my parents or anybody. I can get so many people to change their behavior on the planet and my parents will not listen to a thing I say. And it’s very hard to get people to change what they eat. I think it’s easier to change when people eat. And just from the perspective of trying to grease the wheels for behavioral change in people who are resistant, who have failed a lot before, this is very interesting, particularly — 

Kevin Rose: People really underestimate what snacking does to keep their glucose levels elevated. Because when you have that full eight hours plus of downtime of no eating and you really give your body a chance to — for me, I’m just like you where I did a glucose tolerance test and I stayed elevated for way too long.

Tim Ferriss: You want to explain what that is?

Kevin Rose: Yeah, so for people that don’t know, when you go to a fancy doc like Peter Attia or some of these other concierge doctors, and you can ask your normal GP to do this and some of them will if you have a cool one and they’re on top of it, but they’ll essentially sit down with you and they will give you a straight glucose drink. So think of a Gatorade syrup, like if it were just pure syrup, right? And you drink that and then they’re going to, one, draw your blood at baseline and then they’ll pick intervals, I can’t remember what it is. Tim, do you remember off the top of your head?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, every 30 minutes for two hours.

Kevin Rose: Right. And then they’re testing for insulin response and also where is your glucose over time? And ideally you want to see a spike up, not too high, and then a rapid kind of — 

Tim Ferriss: Recovery.

Kevin Rose: Return to a normal baseline, right?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Kevin Rose: And mine just stays elevated for 5X too long. It just hovers around that 135 forever. So that could be my muscles aren’t sensitized, they’re not taking up enough glucose, I have metabolic dysfunction. It could be a handful of different things. 

And so I’m actually taking a different approach than you in that I also have been talking to Rhonda a lot.

Tim Ferriss: Phone a friend. Poor Rhonda.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. Poor Rhonda. So she told me not too long ago, maybe this was like six months ago, she was like, “There are people —” and this is not an endorsement of this but, “There are people that are microdosing GLP-1 now.”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So I want to hear more about this.

Kevin Rose: So I started microdosing, basically about two months ago, tirzepatide.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Zepbound also.

Kevin Rose: Right, it goes by Zepbound or on the glucose side it’s Mounjaro for people who have glucose and diabetes issues. So there’s two brands for it. Zepbound is if you want the fat loss. It’s the same drug. So essentially the lowest dose you can get that in is two and a half milligrams, but they sell it in vials now. So if you grab yourself an insulin syringe, you can give yourself a little under one milliliter of it and — not milliliter. What am I thinking of?

Tim Ferriss: Milligram?

Kevin Rose: What is it the insulin syringe is? A little under one unit basically.

Tim Ferriss: IU, yeah, international unit.

Kevin Rose: Yeah. So a little under one unit of that compound. And I notice over the course of a week, because that’s how long you microdose it for, I have lower just standard resting glucose, and then also my spikes don’t get near as high. I probably trim 30 percent off the spikes and my return to baseline is so much better. And so I’m kind of repairing that through a little bit of a hack. And so there’s a bunch of people now that are starting to think of this as more of a longevity drug. And we’ve known this that people that take these drugs, they have fewer cardiovascular events. There are other benefits of GLP-1 other than just can I look good? Right? So obviously I’m not doing it for the weight loss, I need more for weight loss, but if I could see one ab, I’m not going to be pissed.

Tim Ferriss: I’ll take a two pack at this point.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly.

Tim Ferriss: No, but try the 16/8, man. It’s been wild to watch.

Kevin Rose: Well, I mean, you’re talking to the guy that created zero, the intermittent fasting.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Rose: I’ve definitely done my fair share of 16/8.

Tim Ferriss: It takes some time, just the long-term durable changes. And I don’t mean indefinite changes, but with the ketogenic diet it really took a few weeks and then there was a step function in terms of change.

Kevin Rose: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: A few more things about GLP-1 agonists. So I have some of my relatives with neurodegenerative disease on tirzepatide, low-dose tirzepatide. And by the way, folks, talk to your doctors. We are fucking not doctors, we’re clowns on the internet.

Kevin Rose: This is bro science at best.

Tim Ferriss: At best. Yeah. Bro science B minus. But they’re on tirzepatide, that’s with supervision of very competent doctors, for the metabolic dysfunction primarily. So glucose control, etc. Some of these, and I’m not sure which in particular have been studied, but some of these GLP-1s appear to have neuroprotective effects also. So that is very interesting to me. And there’s actually, I think they’re called DORAs, a sleep medication, also appear to have some neuroprotective effects primarily or at least relevant to me related to Alzheimer’s. So I’ve also thought — 

Kevin Rose: What was the name of the one that — I can’t remember the name of it. The sleep medication.

Tim Ferriss: It’s a class, so let me get this — 

Kevin Rose: But there’s a name for that. I just got a prescription to one of these and I had to pay out of pocket for it because I didn’t qualify obviously for insurance and it was insane.

Tim Ferriss: Well, let me just finish my thought for a second here.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, go ahead.

Tim Ferriss: So I want to hear about this. So I said NORA or DORA, I’m mixing up my words here, but I’m pretty sure, and do your homework, folks, that DORA is dual orexin receptor antagonist. And I’ve been thinking, because you and I probably still use occasional or continuous trazodone for help with sleep for — 

Kevin Rose: I don’t use trazodone anymore.

Tim Ferriss: You don’t? Okay. I’ve been thinking of replacing that with a DORA, obviously with medical supervision, because now that I’m an adult and I can see what’s going on — because as a kid I had a grandmother who kind of disintegrated under the weight of Alzheimer’s, but I was too young to really know what was going on. Now that I’m an adult and I can see the personality changes, the anxiety, the depression, everything that comes with it, I am looking for a full stack of capped downside, ideally well-studied low risk, but potential upside interventions. So you tried some of these? What happened?

Kevin Rose: Yeah, I have one. I’m trying to find the name of it. I’ll have to go into my pharmacy and look.

Tim Ferriss: Into your pharmacy.

Kevin Rose: Well I have an online pharmacy. But it’s legit. It’s Amazon Pharmacy. I’ll just say it.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, all right. All right.

Kevin Rose: Amazon Pharmacy.

Tim Ferriss: I thought you just had next to your red room, you have a dedicated pharmacy.

Kevin Rose: You’re the one with the [Inaudible].

Tim Ferriss: Well yeah, that’s true. That’s true. 

Kevin Rose: Cut that out. 

Tim Ferriss: Tomato, tomato.

Kevin Rose: Yeah. Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Whatever floats your boat.

Kevin Rose: Oh, so I tried Belsomra.

Tim Ferriss: No idea. Sounds like a Japan animation character.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly. So Belsomra is the one that I tried and it was, I want to say about $600 off prescription, which was just insane.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, that’s pricey.

Kevin Rose: But I just wanted to see what it would do. Yeah, it’s $600. So far I only tried it one time and it was great, but I don’t know, I’ve also been sleeping a lot better now that I’ve quit alcohol. And so I would say that I need to try it again. So it’s on my to-do list. It’s sitting in the cabinet. I’ll give you some next time you come, once you get your doctor to say that you’re allowed to have — 

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Black market bro trades.

Kevin Rose: What could go wrong? Give me some of your ketones, your quality ketones.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. My off-the-back-of-a-truck Bugatti ketones. 

All right, so I want to give — not to make this the Rhonda show, but I want to give her two more nods. Two other changes I’ve made — 

Kevin Rose: 10 grams of creatine.

Tim Ferriss: No, I’ve been doing that for a long, long time, but I have upped the quantity and actually yeah, if I’m feeling deprived of sleep, like my HRV, my heart rate variability was really low this morning so I took 20 grams today to try to compensate for some of the effects of sleep deprivation. But the most important, maybe most important one is that I reduced the temperature of my sauna based on some conversations with Rhonda. So I’m no longer doing 194 plus throwing lots of water on the rocks, which is what I’ve been doing for many, many years.

Kevin Rose: Wow, that’s high.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s high, but I reduced it to 175, 180, and that’s based on some literature and studies that Rhonda cited out of Finland. Now I don’t know how well-designed these are. I haven’t read them myself, but I’m like, you know what? It kind of makes sense to me. I mean, I feel like I am cooking a steak and my head happens to be the steak at 194 plus, whereas at 180 it’s less microwave in my head and more of a full body thermic effect. Because too hot could be actually— Accelerates dementia. So it’s like, oh, good lord. Okay.

Kevin Rose: Well, she found a study that too hot is not good for you. There actually was a study that showed you get the inverse at too hot and that 174-ish, 5-ish is kind of the sweet spot for 20 minutes.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Kevin Rose: Are you wearing a felt hat?

Tim Ferriss: I’m not wearing a felt hat. I probably should because — 

Kevin Rose: A hundred percent.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, because I’ll get hot enough wearing the, I guess it’s a wool hat. Yeah, the — 

Kevin Rose: Wool, that’s what I meant.

Tim Ferriss: If you go to Coney Island or some of these Russian bath houses with people with lots of tattoos you shouldn’t fuck around with, then not only will they have the hat, have you ever seen them wearing the oven mitts, the wool mitts?

Kevin Rose: No.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, they look like oven mitts. They’re these wool mittens that the super hardcore will wear and — 

Kevin Rose: Oh, damn, I’ve got to get that.

Tim Ferriss: They’ll just sit in there forever and people might think, wait, doesn’t wool keep you warm? It’s like, well, actually wool can do both because it’s an insulator. So it can keep the cold out, but it can also keep the hot out from what it’s covering. So that’s a good point. I should start wearing my little Keebler elf hat again. I do have one here. And then the other one that I’ll mention just because I’m sure there are people listening who have, if not chronic pain, then occasional pain. I mean, particularly as you just accumulate life, you get bumps and bruises along the way. 

I have begun to — and I really try not to take oral anti-inflammatories much at all. There was about a year and a half when I was on prescription anti-inflammatories and all this stuff, which is just systemically not great for you, but I needed it at the time for back pain.

Curcumin phytosome from Thorne, so really switching from NSAIDs like ibuprofen, aka Advil or naproxen sodium aka Aleve, just shifting away from that stuff to curcumin. 

Everybody should read the blog post I wrote called “No Biological Free Lunch,” but there is some trade off. And part of the reason I stopped using curcumin on a regular basis, which also seems to have some potential effects on slowing the onset of neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s, so it seems to have a lot of applications, but if I used it daily for say a week or two and then I stopped, I would be incredibly sore for a few days afterwards and I was like, I don’t love that.

So I’ll probably cycle on and off, but I have shifted to Thorne brand and I have no dog in that fight. Nothing to gain from saying that. Curcumin phytosome. So those are a few. Now you’ve got a lot on your list. I haven’t gone too far into the Google Doc, but where should we start? Well, where should we start, we’ve already started.

One thing before we move on from this topic though I think it’s important to mention is that when I first started doing the ketogenic diet with Peter Attia as my physician, he was running my blood work. And I am one of the unique individuals that, because heart disease runs in my family, I have that genetic marker that essentially hates saturated fat. And so my ApoB shot up through the roof, so much so that he freaked out and he was like, “Okay, you can never do the ketogenic diet again.”

Tim Ferriss: Abort, abort, abort.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, abort. So if you’re going to do the ketogenic diet, definitely get your blood work done, check your ApoB, make sure you’re working with your doc. It’s not a free lunch for everyone.

Tim Ferriss: No, it’s not. And also I’ll say, so I’m a cholesterol hyper absorber, so I also have to be very careful with saturated fat intake. So if I’m not in ketosis, I really do watch any type of saturated fat intake. Also have to be careful around MCT oil to a certain extent. But since I am on medication already for controlling some of that, my body was actually able to tolerate the ketogenic quite well. But the point of all of this is you need a professional tracking this and helping you to understand what you’re working with. Because I mean, the number of people who got really into, back in the day, Bulletproof coffee — 

Kevin Rose: Oh, my God, I had so many of those.

Tim Ferriss: And then realized, oh, shit, my labs are so bad that it looks like I could have a heart attack tomorrow. You just have to know thyself. And that begins with measurement and professional guidance. So yeah, thanks for saying that.

Kevin Rose: Yeah. All right, let’s talk about people in your house. So one of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is how one approaches modern day home security in terms of how you protect yourself. So it was one of the things I wanted to ask you what you’re doing at home, because one of the things that I had recently was a homeless person in my closet.

Tim Ferriss: I thought you were screwing with me, but this is actually a real thing.

Kevin Rose: Yeah. So basically what happened is — I only say my closet because we ended up getting the place. So real quick for people that aren’t aware, I was part of those crazy fires that happened out in California. We lost our house, everybody was safe and sound, which is great, and we moved into an apartment and recently I found a new place to move into. We were touring the house and my wife is upstairs and she walks out of the room and she looks at the person that’s showing us the house and goes, “There’s somebody in the closet.” And I’m like, “What are you talking about?” It’s an empty house, like a brand new empty house. What are you talking about? And she goes, “Yeah, I opened the closet door. He was crunched down in the corner and he puts his finger up to his lips and goes, ‘Shh, don’t tell anybody.’” Nothing more creepy than that.

And he walks out and he’s like, “Hey.” And we’re like, “Who are you?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I just live in here.” And he ended up being a really nice guy. I was actually kind of impressed because he goes, “I make the bed every day. I wash my clothes here because there’s a washer and dryer here and I’m keeping the place nice.” But he goes, “This is what I do.” I felt really bad for him because he said he worked at a car wash, he makes $500 a month, he can’t afford a place to live, and this is what he does. He just crashes in homes that are under construction and are newly built homes. And then he started bragging. He’s like, “You won’t believe some of the mansions I’ve lived in. I’ve lived in crazy places.” And I was like, this is crazy.

And so he leaves and then he won’t leave. He’s standing in the driveway just standing out there and we’re like, “Hey, buddy, you kind of have to go.” And then he just stands there and we shut the door and we’re like, okay, clearly he’s not completely of sound mind, but he’s a nice enough guy. And eventually he knocks on the door again and he’s like, “I left all my stuff in the cupboards there.” And he had all this stuff in the cupboards, like peanut butter and all this stuff. And I was just like, ah, this poor guy. So we ended up sending him some — he had a cell phone, so the realtor was nice enough to send him some cash just to help him get a meal that night and whatnot. But it makes you think, especially — I mean, when I was younger, listen, I lived in some really shitty alleys and bad places in San Francisco, so I’m fine with that. But when you have kids, it’s — 

Tim Ferriss: It’s a different story.

Kevin Rose: It’s a different story, right? And so I immediately started thinking, what do you do? And so I went and did some research online and this is one of the pepper sprays that I found. Because all of the home defense stuff that I had before burned in the fire. And so I’m basically starting from scratch. And so I bought two pepper sprays and a taser. And I’m just wondering, what does Tim Ferriss do for home protection? I know what you do. You’ve got AR-15s and shit.

Tim Ferriss: Well, all right. This is not — let’s see —

Kevin Rose: It’s not weapon advice.

Tim Ferriss: No. Yeah, this is not professional weapons. Talk to your professional armorer.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly.

Tim Ferriss: All right, so I would say a few things. There are a few things. We can say, “How do we get really good at pulling people out of the river?” But then there’s like, “Why are people falling in the river in the first place?” It’s actually a Desmond Tutu paraphrase, but the point of that is that there’s, “What do I do when someone’s in my house?” or, “Who comes to my house?” And then there’s, “How do we just prevent that from happening in the first place?” And there’s serendipitous accidental/unpredictable randomness and then there’s premeditated trying to find you.

So I would say, for me, step number one is choosing very carefully where you live, if you can, and secondly, just paying a lot of attention to privacy. So if you might have people who are going to seek you out, and this is going to become an increasingly relevant problem for anyone who even becomes micro famous for a second, you think it might not happen, who knows, you’re doing something funny, you end up with 3,000 followers on Instagram or TikTok or wherever, 3,000 people is a lot of people.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, all it takes is one crazy one.

Tim Ferriss: All it takes is one crazy one. And for that reason, there are lots of basics, and none of these are foolproof, but it’s like buying your home through an entity of some type, which doesn’t need to cost a lot of money, but simply to cut down on how easy it is for casual fair weather stalkers to find you, never having anything shipped to your home address. Always having a UPS store or some type of mailbox where everything is sent because if someone, for instance, sends anything to your house, maybe they’re trying to be really nice, it’s a friend of yours and they send you 1-800-FLOWERS, this is not a real example, I’m just making that up, but they send you flowers and those businesses rent and trade and maybe even sell mailing lists as part of their business — 

Kevin Rose: Or they get hacked.

Tim Ferriss: Or they get hacked. Before you know it, you’re doxed, your home address is everywhere. So I would say that thinking about privacy, and honestly, trying to red team yourself, that’s just to say, we won’t get into what that actually means, but the basics are have one of your friends who’s smart pretend to be a stalker and try to find you, preferably somebody who has some technical chops or is at least tech-savvy because just because someone’s crazy does not mean they’re stupid. There are actually a lot of unstable smart people out there. So that’s step number one for me. Since taking all of that stuff seriously, I’ve very rarely had to deal with any type of stalker issues.

Kevin Rose: People in your closet?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, the people in the closet are a thing of the past.

Kevin Rose: The college years.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Then I would say I never thought that high-rises condos would be of any interest to me, but there are added layers of security. My place in Austin is way the hell off a ground floor. There are multiple, I don’t want to say security points, but you need a key and a fob to get through the elevators and to get past the front desk and to do these various things. So I would also consider that as a viable option if you currently have or expect to have any type of real public exposure.

And again, this seems like a problem for the one percent of the one percent of the top creators, that’s not going to be the case. And increasingly, this is a problem even for people who are micro famous to a few thousand people. That’s step number one. But you’re very savvy with a lot of that kind of stuff. On a home security level, and you mentioned the kids, look, you and I have shot firearms together. We did three-gun shooting training with Taran Tactical — 

Kevin Rose: Yeah, Taran Tactical.

Tim Ferriss: — way back in the day before he was everywhere.

Kevin Rose: Tim Ferriss Experiment.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, good for him. So we did a lot with Taran over the span of a few days, a bunch of training, before he did the John Wick movies and everything else. That’s where Keanu Reeves trains. That’s an amazing spot. So we both know how to shoot guns and I have firearms and so on. I’m not recommending that for everybody. If I had kids, I would rethink that really, really strongly because kids are smart, and yes, you can have biometric safes and this, that, and the other thing. Jim Jeffries does a hilarious and tragically realistic reenactment of gun stuff in the US. He’s from Australia. He’s hilarious and very politically incorrect, if you want to check out his comedy. He’s been on the podcast too.

But basically, it’s like if you want your guns ready to go, you need to be able to get them quickly. But if you want them secure enough that your kids are insured against some type of horrible accident, which is sadly pretty common, then you need them really, really fail-safe in their protection. So you’re sort of moving in the right direction with a taser and so on. 

Some people obviously have physical security. I think physical security is often overrated compared to digital security, frankly. For instance, if you have physical security for a portion of the day or at your home and then you’re constantly posting where you are on social media in real time, or you’re putting your family on actually publicly accessible social media. I remember this friend of mine wasn’t really thinking about it because he doesn’t have a lot of exposure to crazy people, but has become better known in his niche sphere. And he was at the grocery store with his kids and somebody recognized his kid and was like, “Oh, that’s so-and-so.”

Kevin Rose: Oh, shit.

Tim Ferriss: Recognized his kid, not him.

Kevin Rose: Right.

Tim Ferriss: That’s spooky as fuck.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, people have done that with my dog.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, definitely.

Kevin Rose: They actually see Toaster and they’re like, “Oh, there’s Toaster,” and I’m not even there. They see Toaster and they can recognize him, which is crazy.

Tim Ferriss: So I would say if you’re intending on having people familiar with how to use a taser or pepper spray or any of that stuff, first of all, even with firearms, most police officers in a pinch will not be able to hit someone under dark conditions at any decent distance. And that’s not to insult police officers. It’s very, very hard, which is why people use bear spray instead of firearms, oftentimes. With bears, it’s just easier to get the job done. So you might consider, because that little pepper spray that you just showed me, the effective range of that is probably going to be pretty low.

Kevin Rose: It’s 10 feet, yeah. But it is the highest concentration. This is the heat test. They have those ratings on them. This is the highest legal concentration you can get, which I think is 2.4 in heat or something.

Tim Ferriss: Just just get a bear spray that you can hit them at 25 feet, if you get to that point. And I’ve played around with tasers before. Amazing tool. But just like anything else, it takes a good amount of practice to be able to hit anything with that, particularly under duress. So when I’m training for, say bow hunting, which I’ve done for 10-plus years now, the way that I’ll train a lot of the time as I’m getting closer to the season is I’ll do a bunch of kettlebell swings outside until my heart rate is peaking, my hands are kind of shaking, and then I will grab the bow and I have the ability to shoot one arrow. That’s it. That’s a pass/fail.

And practicing under those heightened conditions I think is important if you’re going to take it seriously. But when I’ve talked to my military friends, I know this uncorking a lot here, but sure, they’re very good with handguns and they’re very good certainly with their primary weapon system. And I’ll talk to some of them about, say, hand-to-hand combat stuff. And yes, fundamentally, if they get to tier one operator, they’re kind of mutants and they’re physically very, very, very impressive and almost, I shouldn’t say almost, all of them can fight hand-to-hand, but the point they’ll make, because they’re not trying to become a black belt in jiu-jitsu necessarily, although some of them are, they’ll say, “If it gets to the point where I am having hand-to-hand combat, 17 things have gone wrong.”

You never want to get to that point. Sure, you want to know enough that you can cover the base, but if it ever got to the point where you’re tasing someone or your wife is having to use pepper spray, a lot of things preceding and preventing that would’ve had to have gone wrong, right? I don’t know if that’s a satisfying answer. I do think, and I’m saying this as someone who takes certain precautions for natural disaster, et cetera, but a lot of the prepper stuff misses the plot, I think, past a certain point. And as much as we would all like to think that we’re Steven Seagal, in the movies, not in real life, plus Jason Bourne plus American Sniper, we’re not, trust me. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound a cure, for sure. How are you thinking about it? Because you’re living in L.A. where it’s not exactly marauders in Mad Max, but there are some issues, right?

Kevin Rose: Yeah. It is certainly depending on the block you’re on, a roll of the dice on who’s going to confront you, and that becomes very clear at about 3:00 a.m. every night because you just hear the zombies in the street that are strung out, screaming their brains out, just going crazy. It’s less about someone’s going to rob me, it’s more who’s going to stumble into the yard or hop the fence or whatever it may be.

I’ve already put up those little spikies that will cut you wide open if you try and hop the fence. You get those on Amazon. I got those and I put those all around the perimeter. So that’s been good. I think about the pepper spray as more like I’m taking my kids out to the park or out to some place where you could bounce into someone. And for me, it’s just like I don’t want to engage. Could I take out a crazy person?

Tim Ferriss: No, you don’t want to engage.

Kevin Rose: Depends on what they’re on.

Tim Ferriss: You don’t want to engage.

Kevin Rose: You don’t want to engage. Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Nobody’s going to win, everybody’s going to get hurt, and if they have a knife, you’re going to get stabbed or cut. There’s no way around it. Look, I’m sure there are some people out there who are master ninja disarmers, but here’s what you can do. I think Krav Maga has a lot to offer, but it sometimes instills a false sense of confidence in people.

If you think you can disarm someone with a knife, have somebody take a nice big highlighter, hold onto it, and be like, “I’ll give you 10 bucks for every mark you can leave on me,” and see what happens. You’re going to get covered in highlighter. Those are all cuts. So it’s not worth engaging. So I think if I had to bet, I’m sure other folks are going to have good ideas here, but I think spray is probably the way to go.

Kevin Rose: Spray is the way to go.

Tim Ferriss: It’s going to have the most margin for error and you’ll have more rounds per se than a taser if you miss fire or you miss the target.

Kevin Rose: Yeah. Fun times though, people in your closet. That was the weirdest house showing I’ve ever been to.

Tim Ferriss: I could also totally see your wife just going, “There’s a person in the closet.”

Kevin Rose: Right, exactly. Didn’t freak out at all. 

Tim Ferriss: Very calmly.

Kevin Rose: Yeah. It was very strange. I’m glad I kept my cool because I get very protective, especially if my kids are there. He ended up being a very nice guy, but still.

Tim Ferriss: When I was younger, growing up as a townie with a rat tail, working in the restaurants on Eastern Long Island where there are a lot of wealthy people, I would look at them with the hedges and all the protection and I would just think to myself, “What a bunch of assholes. They think they’re so important, blah, blah, blah.” And now I’m like, “Yeah, okay. I get it. You don’t want some weirdo just digesting everything you’re doing in the house, like someone watching TV.” There are a lot of unstable people out there, I hate to say it. And it’s not like they’re the majority of the population, but it just takes one.

Kevin Rose: It’s funny, I was walking through a grocery store the other day here in L.A. and it’s so strange because I had this flashback as when I was a kid and my dad would essentially just say like, “Okay, go have fun,” in the grocery store. So I’d just run around and go to the toy aisle and see what they had and try and grab some Twinkies and sneak them into the cart when he wasn’t seeing and stuff like that. That was my childhood. And I looked around and I was like, “I don’t want my kids out of my sight.”

It was just filled with, I would say, the potential for — there was a lot of people there that clearly either were on drugs or had just taken a step too far in that direction. And we just didn’t have that. I was standard lower middle class growing up. The drugs weren’t as hardcore. We would have alcoholics, that was it. If you saw somebody down on their luck, they were an alcoholic. And now you see people that sadly just don’t have the care and they’re talking to themselves. It’s brutal. It’s really brutal and it’s tough because there’s no easy fix.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So throwing stars and sharks with lasers, folks, I think that’s where we landed.

Kevin Rose: I had throwing stars as a kid.

Tim Ferriss: So dangerous.

Kevin Rose: I should bring that back.

Tim Ferriss: Another thing that I was allowed to do. Literally, I just threw out my throwing stars that I got from Asian World of Martial Arts magazine catalog. I think they shipped it from Philadelphia. And I’m just like, “I cannot believe I was allowed to play with these.” Because what happens, you throw a throwing star at a tree, it just bounces back and shoots right back at you.

Kevin Rose: No. Here’s what we did. So this was the hack. 100 percent they would just bounce back at you. My dad, for some unknown reason, let me go into the garage and use his metal grinder polisher to make it sharper. I made them sharp. So mine would stick in the tree. So you would go to our front yard and there were all these holes in our tree from me just throwing stars at it. And I think he kind of looked at it and was like, “Oh, that’s cool. Kids are throwing stars at the tree.”

Tim Ferriss: Different world. I’m just — 

Kevin Rose: Different world.

Tim Ferriss: — amazed that I’m alive, honestly, when I look back.

Kevin Rose: Well, that was the same era where he would just be like, “We’re going to the grocery store, jump in the back of the pickup and put your arms over the side.” And the word of advice was, “Lean up against the back so your backs are touching the back of the pickup.”

Tim Ferriss: So you’re protected.

Kevin Rose: Yes, so you’re protected. Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: That’s like the brace position in an airplane in case of impact, you’re like — 

Kevin Rose: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: — “Yeah, that’s going to do a whole lot.” Sorry, I’ll shut up on the reminiscing, but it is kind of wild. I was into skateboarding. You were too. I was never terribly good at it, but I had confidence and enthusiasm way beyond my capabilities. And my parents, to their credit, were cool. They made a homemade quarter pipe, right? Now, that sounds cool and I loved it, but homemade quarter pipe, the angles aren’t quite right. And the way that we would use this, because there’s just grass and gravel around, is drag it out. And cars would go by and then you’d drag that quarter pipe out into the street — 

Kevin Rose: Yes, we did the same thing.

Tim Ferriss: — and start skateboarding and then try not to get hit by traffic and then pull it back over.

Kevin Rose: Oh, for sure. We would just leave a quarter pipe sitting in the street and then they’d be like, “Drag it back to the sidewalk,” and we’d drag it back. And I had a trampoline in my backyard. I was lucky enough, my dad eventually bought us a trampoline at Costco, and I used to climb on my roof and jump off the roof onto the trampoline. And he would hear me climbing on the roof and he’d come out and be like, “Get off the damn roof,” and that was it. And then he’d just watch me jump off the roof onto my back on the trampoline.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Wow. By a consequence of many miracles, we are still here today.

Kevin Rose: Exactly. Minus the back pain.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. No, shit. Jesus. Yeah, it’s not exactly a total mystery. I want to hear about something that you texted me, and people might be, who knows? I think it’s interesting. Let’s hear about it. We’ve got book recommendations coming, we’ve got all sorts of stuff coming, so don’t skip out. Also, shameless plug, coyotegame.com, just in case it doesn’t come up later. It’s gone fucking bananas right now, which we should talk about, but it’s awesome.

Kevin Rose: You texted me — 

Tim Ferriss: And — 

Kevin Rose: Go gentle here on what I said exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Okay. All right. You know what? I’m not even going to say it because I don’t want to misstep and then put more work on my post-production. All right, what did you say to me and where do I go?

Kevin Rose: Well, we were talking about venture capital funds and investing.

Tim Ferriss: We were talking about venture capital and what did you say?

Kevin Rose: The way that I put it is, you had asked me about investing in certain funds and I said I would be careful because I believe that venture, they’re not necessarily on sound — 

Tim Ferriss: Footing.

Kevin Rose: — footing right now.

Tim Ferriss: This is the most doctored Kevin I’ve ever seen.

Kevin Rose: I know. Well, I work in venture capital, so that’s probably part of the reason why. So I have to be careful in what I say here.

Tim Ferriss: So is it fair to say that the gist of what you’re saying is venture capital is going to get a lot harder. Is that fair?

Kevin Rose: I believe it’s going to be a lot harder for early stage funds. Well, let’s first start with the problem and what’s changed. Essentially, what we’ve seen historically with venture capital is that venture capital can be a fantastic return for investors if done right because you get into early stage, predominantly, technology startups, if you’re doing a venture on the tech side.

And if you get into the next Uber or OpenAI or whatever you may pick your unicorn, the returns are just insane. And they outpace that of pretty much all public S&P or whatever it may be. It’s just a good asset class to be invested in. Not to have all of your eggs in that basket, but certainly a lot of professional investors would want some exposure to venture. Endowments want exposure, universities, that’s where a lot of the LPs or limited partners that invest in these funds come from.

Tim Ferriss: It’s also how the GPs make a lot of their management fees. Yum, yum, yum.

Kevin Rose: That’s right. Yes. So partners at firms both get management fees and they also get upside in the return on those funds.

Tim Ferriss: And also for people who have not enough context, and I would’ve said this in the intro somewhere, but you have a ridiculous track record with not just creating companies, but investing in super early stage companies. And, I’ve said this to a lot of people, you’re a rare breed because you are very good at investing in a whole lot of different asset classes at different stages of size and growth, and it’s very hard to do that. So I just want to understand that Kevin is speaking from a place of being a very good practitioner of this craft. Continue.

Kevin Rose: I appreciate you saying that. No, thank you. It’s kind of you to say. I’ve certainly enjoyed the journey. It’s a crazy journey when you get to see these things at a very early stage and watch them grow and have eventual outcomes. But the craziness that’s happening right now, it should come as no surprise for people listening, is that AI is the absolute darling of Silicon Valley right now. So everyone is talking about AI. All the funds are geared towards AI. I’m a partner over at True Ventures. I would say nine out of 10 deals that we do these days are all AI-focused in some regard.

There was a couple of decades of what Marc Andreessen famously kind of coined is software eating the world. And now we’ve kind of transitioned into this world of AI eating the software. So AI is doing a lot of both retooling of the software to make it more, I would say, AI dominant in that you’d need less employees. And AI does a lot more of the heavy shouldering of the burden and work. So it’s causing a lot of disruption all across multiple industries and multiple verticals, starting with customer service, eventually getting into coding and beyond, drug discovery, basically everything.

Tim Ferriss: And eventually, the next 12 months, it’s got to be. I would imagine law firms are already reading the writing on the wall for hiring of associates for rote tasks that can be done in 30 seconds by AI. I know actually a senior partner at a law firm, he is in charge of spearheading a huge AI initiative within the firm for cost-cutting and efficiency.

Kevin Rose: Absolutely. I have seen it on the legal side as well. Our mutual friend, Josh Cook, has talked to his junior associates and said, “Look to your left, look to your right, one of you is not going to be here in the next five years, and it’s most likely just going to be the AI.”

Tim Ferriss: Five years is generous.

Kevin Rose: Yeah, five years is very generous. The tea leaves that I’m reading right now, and where I think that venture is going to have a hard time, is I would say on non-capital intensive businesses, meaning that if you’re building something that is hardware-based, you’re building the next robotics company or whatever it may be, you need a lot of capital to get that off the ground. There’s no doubt that that’s still the case, so venture makes a lot of sense.

And I feel very fortunate that we’re quite good at that particular area in that we’ve done the Pelotons and the Rings and the Fitbits and all those companies that kind of go off and build on the hardware side. 

On the software side, what’s happened in the last, I call it 18 months, is that the barrier to entry for a new engineer, you don’t even have to be an engineer, they call it vibe coding now. So if you have an idea, you can spend the next 48 hours maybe, let’s just say double that, watch YouTube videos and be, I would call it a second year computer science student in terms of your efficiency — 

Tim Ferriss: What you can produce.

Kevin Rose: — your ability to deploy. Yes. Tim, even today, if we started today and we said, “Okay, listen, we’re going to make you watch these 10 videos on Cursor and AI and use Claude Code and insert the four or five most popular AI coding tools right now,” I would bet, without a doubt, within four days, you could dream up any app that you could imagine in terms of the Tim Ketone dosing regimen app, whatever it may be.

Tim Ferriss: Ketonesuppositories.ai.

Kevin Rose: Exactly. The Bugatti ketone suppositories get sued immediately.

Tim Ferriss: That’d be awesome.

Kevin Rose: There’s a co-branding deal there somewhere you’re missing out on. But I’m not even kidding. You could actually ship that to the app store and have it fully functioning. And how much is it going to cost you? Traditionally, you had gone out, you’d hired a designer, you’d have gone out, you would’ve found an engineer, you probably would’ve maybe needed a back end engineer, probably mostly front end. You’d picked your language, it would’ve been a whole, call it, 250k project.

Tim Ferriss: Side end, power top, all those,

Kevin Rose: Right. You know all the angles that you need to hit. You’re already speaking code, look at you. But imagine that’s 250k traditionally, right?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Kevin Rose: That’s $50 now.

Tim Ferriss: It’s so nuts.

Kevin Rose: Because your Cursor account is going to be $50 a month and you can deploy that on Vercel for an extra 20 bucks a month.

Tim Ferriss: I don’t even know what Vercel is. But I want your help doing this because this is something I want to do, just to interrupt for a second, and then I want you to tell me what those names correspond to because I haven’t been tracking this very closely. I’ve been meaning and meaning and meaning to dig into vibe coding. And then in a team thread with my employees, just in a few hours a night for a couple of weeks, one of my part-time employees created an app, a website, everything he wanted, had to pay a little bit for a Getty image to use Canva Pro to make some graphics, but all in, I think $240 is what he said.

Kevin Rose: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: And he was using Base44, which six-month-old solo-owned vibe coder Base44 sells to Wix for 80 million in cash. That was June of this year. And then Lovable, right? There’s a post, this was in the same thread, which is why it’s right here top of mind for me, vibe coding platform, Lovable, becomes fastest growing software startup ever. I love the Swedes, right? They’ve got some good stuff.

Kevin Rose: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Swedish AI startup, Lovable, says it has surpassed 100 million in annual recurring revenue, ARR, just eight months after launch. This makes it the fastest ever software company to reach the milestone, eclipsing the historically rapid growth rates of companies such as Cursor and Whizz. That’s bananas. Eight months.

Kevin Rose: Oh, my God.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Kevin Rose: Yeah. Lovable, I think is probably my favorite hosted vibe coding platform that’s out there. If you’re really taking vibe coding seriously, as seriously as you want to take that statement because it’s still not coding, you’re vibing your way through code, you would be using Cursor, not Lovable, but Lovable is great. It’s a great place to start, actually.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Okay.

Kevin Rose: The point being is that venture capitalists, what they do at the seed stage in the early stages, it’s their job to go out, find entrepreneurs that are building exciting new products, write that first, call it one, two, $3 million check, get their ownership.

Tim Ferriss: I don’t need to get on bended knee for $240.

Kevin Rose: Well, exactly. So what’s going to happen is you’re going to have 10 x the amount of ideas hitting the market because anyone can code, and probably even greater than that, call it 50 x. So we’re going to try and fail a lot faster, which is great. And then you’re going to have, and I’ve already seen this, startups that are one or two people, full investment, call it, to their first million users, might be a couple few thousand dollars, and they’re already profitable and on their way to great things. And yes, it’s going to be buggy right now because the code is a little bit janky and a little bit half broken.

Tim Ferriss: That’s going to get fixed real fast.

Kevin Rose: It won’t be in six months. Exactly. If it’s a second year CS student right now, in a year, it’ll be full-on college grad, and you’re off to the races. And you don’t need to raise venture capital. Why would you?

Tim Ferriss: Why would you?

Kevin Rose: Why?

Tim Ferriss: And also, how would venture capitalists even begin to filter and sort the winners from the losers?

Kevin Rose: With that volume.

Tim Ferriss: There’s be so many. You can’t have coffee dates with even one-hundredth of those founders, nor would they necessarily take the coffee to begin with.

Kevin Rose: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Maybe if they just want to meet you, sure. And maybe at later stages, if they’re going to be really — 

Kevin Rose: That’s right.

Tim Ferriss: — fueling massive growth. Well, here’s a question for you. You’ve got kids, I don’t have any that I know of, hope to change that at some point soon, but how are you thinking about educating your girls?

Kevin Rose: Yeah. Well, I would say I don’t believe there’s a profession that is really immune to the AI wave. I believe it’s going to touch anything and everything that’s out there. And so at the end of the day, this is really tough because I think the answer is the lamest one, which is you should be doing what you’re most passionate about and where you can find your life’s work. It’s really artists and crafts, handmade goods, things of that nature that will stand out and still be desirable because of the human touch side of things.

Tim Ferriss: So you’re saying I should buy a lot of Etsy, is that what you’re saying?

Kevin Rose: I just going to say, but then you just turn into an Etsy wool hat maker for saunas.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, man, mitts, sauna mitts. I’m all about the sauna mitts.

Kevin Rose: Exactly. But it’s wild because for the last two decades of my career, I would’ve said computer science, computer science, it’s all about these tech jobs and the tech industry. That’s the future. And I think if someone was just going into college and they said, “Hey, should I study CS?” I don’t think I would say yes. I don’t know where to point people because everything is kind of f’ed, you know?

Tim Ferriss: I mean, there is, and this isn’t Schadenfreude on my side wanting to celebrate the misery of others, but there is kind of this poetic justice to techies creating tools — 

Kevin Rose: That are killing themselves?

Tim Ferriss: That people thought would take away kind of working class blue collar jobs. And nope, surprise, bitch, we’re taking all the coding jobs. We’re taking all of the white collar jobs. Those are going to get smashed. I mean, so many of those jobs that are basically occupied by people who have helped create these tools, they’re going to get obliterated.

Kevin Rose: Well, you know what’s really interesting about that, that’s a great insight. And one of the things that I have found, which is pretty exciting actually, is that a lot of technical people that I know that are very senior computer science, like hardcore, they’re like, “Screw AI. Yes, it can look at my code base and tell me where to look for something, but I am going to be the one that manually writes that code because ego, ego, ego,” that plays out. And then you have the scrappy designer that’s the creative that says, “I have never coded in my life, but I have a lot of ideas.” And all of a sudden that person is empowered, that creative mind is empowered in a way that they have never been empowered.

Tim Ferriss: Yes, that’s exciting.

Kevin Rose: It’s interesting because Andreessen Horowitz, I actually did a post about this, it was this LinkedIn post or something where they said, we’re looking for designers to be the next CEOs, where they were really brilliant in saying actually the next wave forever, we’ve always said technical, who’s your technical team? What’s the technical shops? That’s been the kind of lens at which we’ve evaluated the quality of a startup. I think that really shifts to more of the creative side.

And I think that, I don’t think VC is dead. I think what happens is that valuations go up, which is great. It means entrepreneurs give away less of their company and you fund them at a later stage. Because ultimately, if you’re going and you’ve really hit the ball out of the park and need to grow from two to 200 people for a variety of different things that you need, it turns out you need a lot of stuff as a startup, not just more engineers. You’re going to need some working capital and VCs, that’s what VCs will step in.

Tim Ferriss: And also to be clear, and correct me if I’m getting this wrong, but there are many sectors and many categories where venture capital or some source of financing is still inevitable. It’s like if you’re creating an Anduril, you need cash, right?

Kevin Rose: Right.

Tim Ferriss: If you’re producing something that has a hardware component, you’re going to need some cash, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I’ve thought, and I don’t know if this is just a simplistic, primitive way to think about it, but I’m really wondering with everybody focusing on the hottest girl at the dance, which is AI and everything that has AI slapped on it, what are the neglected unsexy, really fast-growing sectors? And it makes me think of, I remember somebody showed me a chart, somebody could look this up, we’ll put it in the show notes, but if you just invested in Domino’s Pizza at the right time, it would’ve smashed every tech company, right?

I mean, the growth rate was just shocking to behold. And it’s like what’s the equivalent of Domino’s Pizza that has nothing to do, at least at its core AI. So in some sense, maybe it’s outside of the overbearing influence of that, so maybe there’s less likelihood of it getting completely disrupted. Although like you said, nothing is immune, but Coca-Cola is going to be Coca-Cola. I don’t want to invest in poison, so I’m not going to, no offense, Coke invest in that. But there are certain things that may be fast-growing and maybe more predictable. And I’m just wondering what those things are.

Kevin Rose: I think this too. So I have two that I think I’ve identified that I have no crystal ball. I have crystal balls, but I use them for myself. That didn’t sound right.

Tim Ferriss: Yep. Got to be careful. You can end up in the ER.

Kevin Rose: Exactly. They can be painful at times. So let’s rephrase that. This is my best guess at kind of where I see the puck going on a couple of different fronts. One is that I believe that, well, I know this to be certain actually, it’s kind of the same bet in just two slightly different ways, which is that the lifeblood of AI, it should come as no surprise, it’s human data. It is human generated, actual human created data in order for it to learn, to evolve, to understand where humanity is going. It has to drink from the blood of us humans to serve us.

Tim Ferriss: It is such a nice vampire manservant, so polite.

Kevin Rose: But this is why Reddit is getting 50 million a plus a year to train on their data is why the Tim Ferriss blog should be charging AI to train on all of the original content that you’ve written. So what I really liked was a move that Cloudflare did here just a few weeks ago where they said, okay, everyone in the world uses Cloudflare. That is their DNS, more or less. They have anti DDoS protection and all that good stuff, which is a fancy way of saying that your service stay up and they’re really good at — 

Tim Ferriss: Keep your site up.

Kevin Rose: Yes, they keep your site up. So what they’ve done if they said, if you own original content like a Tim Ferriss, we can block the AI bots. So we won’t let them train on your data.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, that’s clever.

Kevin Rose: But we’re also going to create a marketplace.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, that’s fucking brilliant.

Kevin Rose: If you want to sell to the AI companies, they can bid to actually license your data. Isn’t that brilliant?

Tim Ferriss: That is brilliant. The first thing that comes to mind is, I mean, there are a lot of smart people working in these AI companies because they just use Wayback Machine to scrape all your stuff anyway. But I imagine Cloudflare is thinking about it, but yes

Kevin Rose: Well, I mean that’s also, it’s always going to be the most recent stuff as well, right? There’s no doubt they could go get a copy of Wikipedia and train on what they have.

But they’re going to need, “What does Tim Ferriss think about the latest GLP-1s?” And that’s going to come out next month. So they always need to be training on the latest stuff. So that’s one. 

And part of the reason why, and I swear this isn’t a self plug, but part of the reason why we’re — Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and myself — are rebooting digg.com, is that we believe that human authenticated original content is going to be so important to safeguard. Because if all of these social sites are just flooded with bot content — 

Tim Ferriss: Oh, man, just looking at the comments on some of these platforms I’m like, 90 plus percent of this is all bot. It’s all bot.

Kevin Rose: But so here’s the crazy thing is that you can still tell a little bit that it’s bots, but in a few years, or not even that in a few months.

Tim Ferriss: Six months.

Kevin Rose: You won’t even know it’s bots. You’ll just be sitting there being like, wow, that was a really thoughtful review that person wrote about X headphones, and then you’ll buy them off Amazon and you’d be like, why the hell these headphones suck so bad?

It’s because there were 37 bots and they’re all championing these headphones about how they’re so amazing and it’s all BS, everything. Nothing is to be trusted. 

So there’s this whole theory called the dead internet theory, which is that eventually the internet is just going to be completely overrun by agents, AI agents that are infinitely patient that will write perfect, perfectly screwed up copy enough for you to believe it, right? Because it can’t be perfect.

Tim Ferriss: Yes, yes, yes.

Kevin Rose: And so this is just all going to come. And so for us, what we’re focused on is really creating a safe haven for humans to have real conversation, and that’s exciting. So those are the two kind of things that I believe that original content creators, as long as you can prove that you’re an actual human, are going to be rewarded ultimately, hopefully by the AIs that crawl you.

Tim Ferriss: How do you think that authentication is going to work? Because doing private and public keys and stuff, there’s too much of an education hurdle to make that work. I would think. I think maybe Sam Altman has yet another company that is focused on human authentication, but what do you think is going to actually make the cut and become the standard of the driver’s license for proving this is me, right? Because there’s so much AI deepfake stuff out there right now with just, I can speak personally and it’s so good and it’s within six months, like you said, it’s going to be indistinguishable or close to indistinguishable.

Kevin Rose: Yes, I mean, this is something that I’ve kind of spent a lot of time thinking pretty deeply about, and I went and met, I traded a couple notes with Sam, and I met with the CEO of the Retinal Scanner Company, Tools for Humanity. They’re making that orb that scans your eyeball and went and met with him, and I actually got my retina scanned and did that whole process. It is not for everyone. I think a lot of people will kind of freak out by that. It is anonymous.

They’ve done it in a way that shards your data. They can’t link it back to you, all that good stuff. But that’s too much explaining. Consumers are not just going to believe that. They’ll use it for their TSA pre-check or whatever it may be to skip the line. But I don’t think for everyday purchases or general internet trust, it is going to hit scale. They’re paying people to do it. And right now, which I think is probably a signal that you don’t quite have the right product if you have to pay people to use it. So I don’t know. It’ll certainly be an authentication method that a lot of sites will use and support. And I could see us doing that as well.

Tim Ferriss: I can see consumers not wanting to, users of the internet, let’s just say broadly speaking, not wanting to use it for, well, if they had to for a checkout purpose to pay for things, then they would, but having a lot of resistance for say, just logging into Facebook or Instagram. But as a creator, if I want to give my fans a way to confirm that something is mine, then I think you’re heavily incentivized to use something like that.

Kevin Rose: Right. And I think, so there’s two sides of the coin right?

Tim Ferriss: But the education part is so hard just to teach people what to look for. It’s got to be common, as common in the vernacular as driver’s license for people to just know what to look for. If I have to be like, okay, guys, I’m going to teach you the exact watermark and this and that and watch out for these fakes though, because they’re very similar, but it’s never going to work.

Kevin Rose: Right, and that’s where I think there’s going to be a couple things. Well, we’re talking about a handful of different things here, right? Because we’re talking about consumers. How do I trust another consumer that when they say these headphones are the best headphones, I can really believe that. And then you’re talking about how do I know that Tim Ferriss is Tim Ferriss, right? And so those are two different things.

Tim Ferriss: They’re different.

Kevin Rose: I think on the internet. And I’m actually writing an article for Wired right now about this, where the trust is moving from a binary thing where we had binary trust before, meaning that back in the day, and I don’t think this is any longer the case, but more or less you could go onto Twitter when it was called Twitter, and you would see a blue check box next to someone and say, “Oh, that person’s been verified or validated in some way.”

So it’s a very binary, I guess I trust this person because of said box and graphic. Trust is moving to a gradient. And I think it’s very much going to be score, a score or a level based trust system where trust will be defined by a collection of actions that you take online and a collection of proofs that you do online. So a hardcore proof would be “I got my retina scanned, I’m showing you that I got my retina scanned, and here’s my proof of that.” A gradient would be, “I’ve been a paying customer for this service for X number of months, I can prove it”, or “I have purchased these headphones. That’s what the Amazon verified purchase does.” And so there are going to be open standards for that, and it’s going to be messy, but it will work.

And that if you come on the future version of Digg, for example, if you come on there and you say, “Hey, I own an Oura Ring and I love it,” anyone can say that. And so how do I trust that?

And so one way to trust that is to, there’s these fancy technologies, I won’t get into it here, but they’re called ZK proofs where you can go in and I can authenticate basically with my Oura account and prove to you without exposing who I am, but I can do cryptographic proof that I have owned an Oura ring for five years and I have used it daily. And so those types of proofs, almost like the way that we see secure certificates when we check out now on an e-commerce site, and we trust them because they are cryptographically secure, we will have those types of proofs for almost anything and everything that exists online. And so when you engage with another user, you’ll be able to say, “Okay, I’m clicking on Tim. How do I know that these are the ketones that he trusts or whatever it may be?” And there will be multiple ways to cryptographically prove in a non-geeky way. That’s the key here. It can’t be something that my mom won’t understand.

Tim Ferriss: Read this white paper.

Kevin Rose: Right, exactly. It can’t be that. So it’s going to be a little rough for the next couple of years while we hammer this stuff out. We come up with standards, we figure out with very easy consumer ways to show this. But ultimately, at the end of the day, there needs to be this. And also the other thing I was going to tell you is I believe deeply that human connection matters and that we need to really encourage more of that to happen. So one of the things that we’re without trying to spill the beans too early and what we’re building at Digg is a lot of proof around — 

Tim Ferriss: I was still thinking about the crystal balls.

Kevin Rose: Go ahead.

Yes, we’re not going to spill the, crack the crystal balls on this yet, but I will say that in person means a lot. And so when you actually gather a location with other people proving with technology that you’ve actually met in person and had broken bread in person is going to create a trust network that is unlike anything that can be done online. And so that’s on us to build and figure out as well, which is going to be pretty exciting.

Tim Ferriss: Yes, I have, and this might seem like I’m still in my bags, but I’ve thought this for a long time, just launching a card game literally as we record this. But I am so long analog, and the reason that I’m long analog is that at least one of the silver linings, I think of this post-truth internet experience, at least for a while, it’s going to be messy AF for a while. Yes. And it’s also a cat and mouse game, right? It’s not like you create this authentication, there’s no response. It’s a cat and mouse kind of cloak and dagger situation. There’s so many incentives, financial and otherwise, to scam people that trust me, the scammers have great, some of them are really sophisticated.

And it’s an arms race. And I think speaking of someone who’s not an engineer, I’m not a computer scientist, but I would like to think of myself as pretty tech-savvy. I’ve taken social media apps off my phone for the last handful of years, and I have systems for trying to sort fact from fiction, but it has become so exhausting and it’s going to become a hundred x exhausting. I’m like, I’m done with it. I don’t want to walk into this house of fun house mirrors and watch things that are fake read things that are fake, have to decipher what’s true and what isn’t, and get misled. I just don’t, there’s so much downside that I really am optimistic, at least I hope that people are going to actually do what we’re evolved to do, just spend more time interacting with humans, IRL.

And we’re seeing that with running clubs and board game nights and these various offline activities that are exploding in popularity. Who knows if that’ll sustain, but you’re seeing it in every major city in the United States at least. And that gives me some hope because if there were nothing to offset the opiate addiction of short form video and perfectly tune algorithmic feeds, we’re entertained to death, we’re done.

Kevin Rose: No, this is exactly why I think a big portion of this social site that we’re building is going to be about in-person connection. It really has to be. And you actually, Tim, you were a big inspiration for this. One of the things that we talk about, remember when you had, you did those global meetups where people gathered in?

Tim Ferriss: Yes, yes. That was so fun.

Kevin Rose: Do you remember the name of the service that you use?

Tim Ferriss: It was, let me get it right, it’s River. I think it’s river.io, and let me just make sure I’m getting that right. …

It’s getriver.io. So getriver.io in-person event and social platform for communities. So I used this service to run the podcast 10th anniversary global meetups around the planet, and we had 157 cities, thousands of people meeting up in person who have already a bunch of common interests, or at least lived experience. They’ve listened to the podcast, so they have something automatically they can talk about meeting in person. And it was so much better than I could have ever hoped for. It was so much fun. Some of these meetups had hundreds of people, some had four or five, and what I hoped would happen, and what did happen, is a lot of these people have stayed in touch and they’re meeting up afterwards. It wasn’t just a one and done. So had a great experience and the team over there was awesome.

Kevin Rose: So I met with her because of you, and then she was amazing. And we’re going to use them for our Digg launch. In fact, we’re doing a meetup tonight, close to a hundred people in L.A., just randomly threw it out there last week.

Tim Ferriss: I love it.

Kevin Rose: It’s exactly this, where if we can build part of that functionality into the product itself and encourage people with these interests that when you figure out that your weird is not so weird, if you’re into Japanese woodworking or the Tim red rooms that you love, whatever you’re into —

Tim Ferriss: Kevin’s crystal balls.

Kevin Rose: Yes, exactly. You can find 10 other people that are, and you can go break bread with them and hang out. But I think that is the future because don’t get me wrong, I still want to launch that app and learn about those funky, weird things that I would only find online. And you and I trade so many ridiculous videos, I wouldn’t want that to go away, but I also need to go and get outside and actually breathe some fresh air and meet people. And so I think that has to be a big part of what we do at Digg. And a lot of it was inspired by your success there, which is great.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, that’s awesome. I didn’t know that. So I got to, since we’re so on topic, I’ve got to just flash this guy right here.

Kevin Rose: Yes

Tim Ferriss: So as you know, I’ve been so nervous about this and excited, but so, Coyote, this card game, it’s fast casual, a couple minutes to learn, 10 minutes to play. Kids love it. Turns out people who have had a few drinks or smoked a little weed also love it does not help performance, but does make it pretty hilarious to watch.

Kevin Rose: [BLEEPED]

Tim Ferriss: We will have to see if that’s okay to keep in.

Kevin Rose: Just called out a friend of ours that likes to play games. 

Tim Ferriss: And it’s finally launching everywhere. Walmart’s had the exclusive for a few months and they’ve been actually awesome. And it’s been a bestseller and it’s started to go kind of bananas and gameplay videos. We’ve texted about this a little bit, but gameplay videos online have more than 300 million views now.

Kevin Rose: Dude, that is so amazing.

Tim Ferriss: So crazy.

Kevin Rose: Dude, congratulations man.

Tim Ferriss: Thanks.

Kevin Rose: After the NFTs, I’m glad to see you actually doing something that works.

Tim Ferriss: Thanks. And I got to practice my art in a different way. And we’re not going to get into a mud wrestling match over NFTs. I am still going to do a bunch with that CØCKPUNCH/ Legends of Varlata universe. You wait and see. I’m actually going to do a bunch of it. But yes, it’s been going nuts. If people go to Amazon or wherever, Target, it’s all over the place and it’s 8,000 plus retail locations as of this week. It’s feeding into all the locations.

Kevin Rose: That’s amazing.

Tim Ferriss: And it’s actually giving me both flashbacks that are really pleasant and also a little bit PTSD with my first book because the inventory is not getting to the warehouses fast enough. So it’s actually it can be a little challenging to buy this thing.

Kevin Rose: But hey, soak it all in, man. Enjoy that moment though, right? Because you’re in a great place to even have that issue. It’s so awesome.

Tim Ferriss: And you know what’s also been super fun is I’ve played with friends. I’ve seen all the play testing with families. We tested it with a hundred plus families. We tested the hell out of this. I mean, so many iterations, and it’s ready, it’s going. But I had a chance to play with a group of strangers, two different groups of strangers at a game shop in Brooklyn last weekend, and we were recording it for an instructional video. And they’re not actors, they’re people who love games, but people I’d never met before and the amount of fun that we had, that was the real test for me.

It’s like if I have a bunch of my dumb friends and we’ve had two drinks each and we have so much fun anyway together, it’s a warm audience. The game still has to work. And it did. But with a group of strangers where it’s a little uncomfortable in the beginning and everyone’s a little stiff, and then by the end we’re slapping shoulders and high fiving and laughing our asses off. I was like, okay, I can finally exhale a bit with this thing. Like, okay, okay, okay, okay. It’s actually on the way.

Kevin Rose: Dude that is so awesome.

Tim Ferriss: Yes, I’m so excited.

Kevin Rose: You caused a micro fight in our house last night because of the game.

Tim Ferriss: Was it over whether somebody messed up or not?

Kevin Rose: No. So here’s what happened. I was playing Roblox with my kids, and then Daria had her headphones in, and so she couldn’t hear me, and the kids were asking questions and I was like, she’s listening to her podcast. And I’m like, “Can you take them out so that you can engage with the kids?” And she’s like, “Well, if we weren’t playing this and we could play something like Coyote, then we wouldn’t have this issue. We’d all play as a family.” And I’m like, “Oh, fuck.”

Tim Ferriss: Oh, man. Quick funny note on Roblox. I actually want to interview the founders of Roblox. It’s such an incredible, just such a wonder they’ve created, and they’ve also, actually, I’m sure you did not know this, maybe you did. They have funded a ton of research related to dietary interventions for various psychiatric conditions. So with —

Kevin Rose: I didn’t know that.

Tim Ferriss: The ketogenic interventions, so they’ve actually funded a lot of science related to that. So on a whole bunch of levels. But the reason that I brought up Roblox is because you sent me and Sacca this video, this screen capture of playing Roblox, which is honestly really relaxing. It’s so relaxing.

Kevin Rose: Yes, it’s the garden that I grew.

Tim Ferriss: Yes, the garden that you grew —

Kevin Rose: Grow a Garden.

Tim Ferriss: — with the cherry blossoms, very relaxing to watch, but there was this classical music playing and I was like, wait a fucking second. You stopped drinking and now Kevin’s listening to classical music. What is happening here?

Kevin Rose: It’s built into the game. It’s built into the game.

Tim Ferriss: It’s built into the game.

Kevin Rose: Grow a Garden has millions of users now, I have the beautiful cherry blossom bushes if anyone wants to come check out my garden. And I built little forts for my kids to play in there. I’ve got some great bamboo, and I just got a rare little red Zen dragon today, which is cool.

Tim Ferriss: Congratulations.

Kevin Rose: Thank you. It was one percent chance to get it on a roll. And so I —

Tim Ferriss: Oh, what’s that?

Kevin Rose: It’s 20 bucks per 10 rolls.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, wow. What a bunch of geniuses.

Kevin Rose: Yes, and I won’t even tell you what I’ve done there. I’m not proud.

Tim Ferriss: This is like when they’re doing their internal presentations, they’re like, okay, so Q2 has been great. They’re like, really, we’re hit? It all hinges on the one percent of overspenders. There’s an avatar. We call it Kevin Rose.

Kevin Rose: Right, exactly.

I don’t know who this user is, but yes.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, my God. Awesome, man. So nice to see you, always.

Kevin Rose: Yes, good to see you as well.

Tim Ferriss: Yes, we’ve got to hang. This is also, I’ll just talk about in person. I’m like, man, we’ve got to hang in person. I’m sorry, I mean, you’ve got family and lots of stuff. I didn’t give you a ton of heads up either on the wilderness trip, but we’ve got to do something. Got to do something in person.

Kevin Rose: A hundred percent, Japan trip or something.

Tim Ferriss: Japan trip, or I will be in L.A. actually next month. So I’ll let you know. Either next month or the following. So I’ll let you know. I’ll be in L.A.

Kevin Rose: Awesome. Let’s do a little meetup.

Tim Ferriss: Yes. I’m taking my note. 

Kevin Rose: Speaking of in-person stuff.

Tim Ferriss: KevKev. All right. Sweet man. Well, I think you’ve got anything to add for folks? Anything to mention?

Kevin Rose: Oh, I always tell people, yeah, so that crazy site that I was telling folks about.

Digg.com with two Gs is really —

Tim Ferriss: Digg.com.

Kevin Rose: Yes, from the old internets, if you remember it from way back in the day, it’s rebooting. Alexis and I and my CEO Justin are working hard at work on it. We want to give people an early invite. It’s in beta right now. If you want to check out Kevin Next Gen, crazy, fun social network that is all about news and craziness around the web, email, and we will put you on the early invite list.

Tim Ferriss: TimTim, it’s two Tims at digg.com, digg.com, and we will let you skip that list and get you on one of the early invite lists.

So timtim.

And just FYI, and I’m not going to disclose because I don’t know if it’s public, but that’s a long, there’s a long list. You’ll be —

Kevin Rose: Several hundred thousand people.

Tim Ferriss: The bouncer will be letting you skip and come through the velvet ropes.

Kevin Rose: We’ve only let 25,000 in so far and we have a couple of hundred thousand people waiting on the wait list. Yes, so far people are loving it and we’re just getting started, so we’ve got a lot to build.

Tim Ferriss: So fun. So fun. Well, you look great, man. You sound great. Congratulations on the hundred days. That’s a big, big, big, big deal.

Kevin Rose: It sucks that you feel so much better. I hate it because I feel better. I’m slimming up a little bit and it’s like —

Tim Ferriss: I assume you’re being sarcastic.

Kevin Rose: No, it does suck.

Tim Ferriss: It’s like everything seems better.

Kevin Rose: I want to have a couple drinks, but —

Tim Ferriss: You’re getting to spend money on Roblox instead. Instead of the vice that kills your liver, you got a vice that kills your bank account. You got to trade.

Kevin Rose: I will say I’ve definitely kind of just shifted that funnel of cash over straight to Roblox in Grow a Garden. That little freaking dragon guy cost me like two grand or something.

Tim Ferriss: That’s the Kevin I know and love. There you go. He is back. He’s back.

Kevin Rose: Let’s do some Nanoblocks together.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I’m down for some Nanoblocks. I think I need one that is sub 500 pieces to start with because —

Kevin Rose: I’ll save this little ramen for you and we’ll do it live on video. That’d be fun.

Tim Ferriss: Have Craig Mod set up the audio for us.

Kevin Rose: Yes, exactly.

Tim Ferriss: All right. Cool, man. I’ll send this to you, buddy.

Kevin Rose: All right, brother. Talk soon.Tim Ferriss: All and everybody listening, I guess we’ll probably have some show notes for this. So tim.blog/podcast Random Show and just look for the newest ones. All right everybody, be well. Be kind and thanks for tuning in.