The Random Show — 2025 Predictions (AI, Aliens, BTC, and More), New Year’s Resolutions, and More

I think it is tourism, dude. I think you're right; it could be tourism. The ones that wreck are like the ones that you hear about in Africa when people go on the safaris and they have too many drinks and they just crash into a rhinoceros and then like get eaten or whatever. Some of these aliens are coming down here, and it has to be something like that. They've had a few bevs, and they just wreck their stuff. It's like Teenage Alien DUIs.

Yeah, exactly! Where'd Glo Glo go? He's gone to Earth again, right? So did he drink?

A few!

[Music]

Kev, nice to see you! Tim Tim, happy holidays, brother! Happy holidays! Another random show, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, brought to you by Kev Kevin.

Tim Tim, happy holidays, everyone! It is that time of the year, it is! And can I say where you are? Because you're not in a holiday place; you're in Hawaii, right?

I'm not in a place with great seasonal variety, but I am in a place with wonderful sun and warmth, which is Hawaii.

Is it good?

It's amazing! Of course, it's amazing! You seem very chill right now.

I am chill right now. I'm feeling very good, and there are a bunch of reasons for that that I could talk about. We'll get to that, but there are some contributing elements that you're actually very familiar with, so we'll come back to that.

I've had more comments in the last week or two from close friends of mine, people who know me, saying, "You seem really chill. You seem very grounded right now." And I'm like, "Yeah, I feel very chill and very grounded right now." And there's still a lot going on.

I love that! It's not for the absence of things going on. It's actually somewhat amazing that, given how many projects are in process right now, I'm getting those comments, which makes me feel like I must be doing something right or I'm just lucky because who knows? I'm sleeping well in Hawaii.

Could be that!

Set the AC to like negative 500 degrees, which I had to override every system in the hotel to do. They have those things locked down, and then if you open the door, it shuts the AC off. It's like it's a whole thing.

Oh, the chill!

Yeah, it's 70 degrees would be dangerously cold, so it's sometimes hard to get the AC low. But let's hop into it, man! We have a lot to talk about. Where should we begin?

Oh man, let's start off with... when I think about these year-end specials, we've done a few of these, and we typically do a little bit of what are you doing in the new year, you know, like to change this year. And it's the same list every year for me: drink less, exercise more.

Exactly! Exactly! But we'll talk about that. But there's a lot of stuff. I thought some predictions would be fun because I have some good ones for next year.

Super fun! And then whatever else you want to talk about.

Yeah, you're the right guy for that. I might have some predictions, but you have a better track record than I do.

You've got a few right!

I mean, I occasionally get one right. It's not that my track record is bad. I think you have such a 30,000-foot view on so many different sectors, and also just as a general partner at True and as a more active investor than yours truly, you get to see a lot that is coming down the pike.

Yeah, right! You really get to observe patterns on a weekly basis that most humans do not, including me. But I do see things occasionally, so we'll see if I can riff off of some of your predictions.

So where would you like to start?

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

So every year, Apple does these like, "Hey, here are the 15 apps that we love. This is the best gaming app. This is the best productivity app," all this stuff, right? And I tend to go in there and poke around, and I'm always checking out, you know, what the new hot thing is, especially on the gaming side or stuff where I really just don't pay attention. I'm like, "Just tell me the best thing; I'll go check it out," right?

Yeah!

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

Oh God, okay!

So we've sent a couple of these videos back and forth. You mean the mutually assured destruction threads?

We could say that!

Saka, these are more civilized.

Okay, got it!

Yeah, yeah! So like you mean Saka will be like trading texts. This is one of those threads. I don't know if this one's that bad, but we've been on some threads where there's a lot of pics going around. Nothing horrible, but definitely... I'll move on from there.

So there's basically these new AI videos of like MMA fighters, yeah? And they'll get knocked out, and when they fall to the ground, they like get in go-karts and start driving around. Have you seen this?

Where they like blend AI?

Yeah, I've seen them! It's messing with my head! I look at that stuff, and I'm like, "This is really bending reality." I don't know if it's because there's a psychedelics kind of component there where you're like, "Why am I seeing something that I would typically see in a different realm in this realm?" Like weird stuff's happening in the brain.

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

And why they were so stoked on Lightroom? When you think about Lightroom, you're like, "Oh, this is like software that's been around for like, you know, a couple decades." Why is this anything new?

They had a video there that showed these kids running around in their backyard. And you've seen this thing where like you can erase stuff, you know? Like you can drag your finger across. Google does all these ads where they're like, "Hey, is there someone weird standing in your photo? Like erase them!"

Dude, this video... we've gone too far! They're like these kids playing in the backyard, and there were like hedges, and then they erased their yard door to get out of their backyard, and it made more hedges!

And I was just like, "Can you imagine these kids are like 35 or 40, and they're like looking back in their photos, and they're like, 'Do we have like a backyard door?'" And they took the dog out and stuff. I'm like, "Why are you taking the dog out? The dog's part of the family!"

Just like sewing the seeds for gaslighting yourself later!

No, but do you know what I mean? Like what is going on? They're erasing all of our real memories and replacing them with like almost imperceptible at this point digital alternatives.

Yeah, and it's really worrisome to me. I don't know, do you do any of this stuff? Do you erase anybody out of your photos?

I don't erase people out of my photos. I also feel like a lot of that editing is for sharing outside of your immediate circle, like social media stuff.

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

And I am very cautious to play with that because I feel like it's similar to getting your first little dabble with eye tucks or face lifts.

Yeah!

And then there's this creeping tendency to add more and more and more and more. Similarly, I don't want to become delusionally dissatisfied with my life because there are little things that in my mind's eye aren't perfect for broadcast, like a door in the hedges.

Right!

Because then what happens when you're doing that constantly, and then you sit in your backyard and you're looking at that door? Does it drive you insane when it really shouldn't?

And then also, think of the downstream effects too, where your friends are like, "Okay, you just take something that is a mild visual nuisance out of the equation," and it's like, "Oh, they had that perfect beach shot! They are so lucky! If only I could have that thing!"

And then you go, and you're like, "Oh, it was crowded! We didn't have the same thing they did!" But in reality, they just magic erased all their friends or all the people behind them out of it.

I'm just like, it's creating a fake everything! I don't know, there's something about it. I love AI; I think there's a lot of fun. There's so much I use it for every single day, but this is one of those things where I'm just like, "I don't want my kids to grow up thinking they need perfection!"

Yeah!

And that's what this is doing; it's creating a better scene, you know?

Oh yeah! I mean, people are already using that to, of course, I mean, it's like Zoom filters on steroids!

Right! Totally!

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

I really feel like the impact is going to be felt in a way that people could perhaps rationalize away or brush aside in years past. We're like, "Well, I know that Twitter's a cesspool on X, Y, and Z levels, but I get A, B, and C."

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

And people are going to look for things offline. I think there are going to be a lot of opportunities for that. You see that in... I think you see early indications of that with, for instance, like running clubs and various in-real-life activities that have become very popular in place of or as supplements to online dating and dating apps, as an example.

Yeah!

Like those things are exploding in New York City, a lot of major cities. You see that in potentially... certainly this is a trend at least in a few countries outside of the US. I'd have to look at the data. I think it's mildly true. We see some improving numbers in print book sales that could be attributed to a number of other factors outside of people moving from digital formats to print.

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

So that's certainly extrapolating from just what I see in a sort of small circle of people who are hyper-exposed to a lot of this. I feel like people like you who are perhaps way, let's call it like prematurely saturated with exposure to these things are canaries in the coal mine.

Like, "Oh holy [ __ ]! We need an exit! We need a way to step off the stage so we're not looking at this manufactured reality!"

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

And he's like, "Dude, you know what's funny? When we got bullied as kids, somebody would be like, 'I hooked up with your mom' or whatever, right? And it would just be like there are like the schoolyard slams or whatever, right? And like now, in like three years, he'd be like, 'I hooked up with your mom! Look at this video!' and like the mom hooking up with the kid 'cause it's AI."

And he'd be like, "Damn! You're hooking up with Mom!"

You know, but it won't be real, but it'll be like the slams.

It's going to look real enough!

Yeah!

Like it's the bullying is going to get hardcore!

Yeah, of course it will! Or just, yeah, sharing videos of the person you want to bully doing things they didn't do!

Right! Exactly! It's going to get bad!

Yeah, and there are plenty of upsides. I mean, look, I've used ChatGPT and Claude like 10 to 15 times today with my team. I'm doing a company offsite here in Maui; that's why I'm in Maui.

And there are reasons for the location we can get into, but it's very useful. But the dose makes the poison; the application also makes the poison, and it pays to just be cognizant of how you are using these things.

Right! So that's one.

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

Oh man, okay! So the exasperated exhale is always a good place to start.

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

Yeah, of course!

It happens every single year! I just go ham on stuff! And like Thanksgiving comes around, and I hate like too much nutmeg!

It's like, or not nutmeg, but eggnog! Nutmeg too! Like, you know what I can't stand? Cloves!

Let's talk about cloves for a minute!

No, but I do like a little eggnog with a little brandy in there, you know? You put in a little cognac in your eggnog!

And so like, but that goes straight to your gut!

You know, of course it does!

And so I hate this 'cause this is like the freaking seventh year of random shows or whatever where it's like every December, it's like, "I want to be less fat and drink less!"

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

So I am going to go into this... maybe we'll put together like a compilation music video!

Oh yeah! Of all the times we've said that over like 10 years!

"I'm not going to drink!"

Yeah, exactly!

So I think I'm just going to lean into it and do the exact opposite! Just keep eating and just keep drinking!

No, I'm just kidding! I'm just kidding! That's horrible!

No, but I think one of the things that you and I were trading links on a couple of days ago, which I'm really curious to get your take on this, is like, yeah, there's like this movement... well, not movement, it's called a movement, but it's an old people movement of like... we used to like, you know, you and I, when we first met, the name of the game, as bro-y as this might sound, is like we wanted to put muscle mass on!

Meat central!

Yeah!

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

It was pretty meathead!

So to transition from meathead to like somebody that actually just wants to like stretch and do like functional stuff!

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

And I sent you another one that you were checking out as well. What's been your take here?

Because I'm starting to make this move into like, okay, I want a lot of movement and a lot of kind of like core plus plus strength. I'd love to be lean; I don't need to be ripped!

Although, did you see the new Hugh Jackman Wolverine with Deadpool?

Yeah, of course! He's a beast!

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

I think it's really him!

That's insane! How could he freaking be that cut at that age?

I have on pretty good authority that that is him!

Yeah, dude! How does he get cut like that?

It was insane! He takes it seriously, follows the basics, follows the rules, doesn't waver. He's very dedicated, and he is a real athlete!

I mean, you watch him move; he moves like a dancer! He can lift like a powerlifter! His endurance on a Concept2 rower is unbelievable!

Like the wattage that he can sustain over periods of time would boggle the mind of even some people who have been former competitive rowers!

He is a true athlete!

So that explains it!

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

Where do you see that playing into your own routine? Is that something that you're looking into?

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

And then I ended up doing a bunch of research on this account that I did not tell you about, so I will probably pronounce the name incorrectly, and for that, I apologize, but I believe his name is Ina Inyang.

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

Inyang, I N Y A N G.

So Ina has this video, which you sent to me, called the "LIE of Traditional Strength Training."

Now, yes, that is YouTube clickbait on one hand, but he actually does deliver on that. His production value is incredible; his delivery is impeccable. I was very, very impressed!

I went back and watched certain sections of this. His agility too, just insane!

His agility is incredible in terms of power! He is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitor as well at a very, very high level. I think he won worlds or Masters Worlds at brown belt most recently; he's now a black belt, which is no joke!

And I reached out to a friend of mine, Mark Bell, who is very well known in the powerlifting community. He also has a number of products that have done very, very well.

And I met, I realized, In SEMA at Super Super Training Gym in Sacramento like a decade ago!

Oh crazy!

When he was still really focused on powerlifting! Met him very, very briefly!

I'm almost 100% confident I remember he was doing deadlift band pulls while I was there checking out the gym for the first time!

This was a long time ago!

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

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

And there's a book actually by that title, the spinal engine.

The name again, tough one, I think it's Serge Groovy.

S R G, and we'll put a link in the show notes.

But in effect, I'll actually pull this up because I think it's worth reading.

So the spinal engine, and you can watch the video and see he does a great job with video of explaining this, but the book has in its Amazon description, and there's no digital version; you have to buy paperback for like 115 bucks.

So I'm not saying you should; I haven't read it.

But this book deals with the human spine with particular emphasis on the lumbar spine.

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

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

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

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

Yeah, right!

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

And it really got me thinking, and I started experimenting with some of the motions in that video, primarily because his counterexample, which is effectively the LIE of traditional strength training, is how if you're constantly bracing, you're constantly, say, holding your breath in certain portions of a lift to increase intra-abdominal pressure, that ultimately, as a side effect, you can produce a lot of rigidity in the spine.

And I really have never had an interest in being a powerlifter or even an Olympic weightlifter, although I think they should more accurately be called powerlifters.

I've always been focused on weight training in service of athleticism, and I have loved playing sports, have traditionally competed a lot, and I may actually compete in 2025 in some form of sport.

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

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

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

Yeah!

Or pulling a sled backwards in this compromised rounded back position. You will break yourself if you do that!

So I think the name of the game is micro progressions and progressive resistance, but being very, very smart about it because, as you have experienced, certainly as I have experienced, as you get older and you accumulate injuries, it takes a lot longer to heal.

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

It's funny; I got one of those splits machines where you can like put your legs in there and then you crank a wheel.

Oh, the Chuck Norris special!

Yeah! I had like the Chuck Norris thing on the outside, but like I was doing it, and I was getting further and further each week, and my Pilates instructor was like, "What the hell are you doing?"

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

And she's like, "You have no supporting muscles at all for any of this!"

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

You know? And I was like, "Oh [ __ ]! That's a good call! I'm glad I didn't take it that far!"

Yeah, good point!

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

And in 2025, I will be very focused on this. For the first two months of the year, I'll be focused on skiing, so I'll be in the mountains for two months.

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

So good!

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

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

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

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

And that's age-related muscle loss. Sarcopenia is directly correlated to any number of issues, I'm sure, including all-cause mortality.

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

Yeah!

But for me, that means compound movements once or twice a week. You really don't need to overdo it or do it five days a week.

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

You can make a lot of progress, especially if you haven't done much weight training, with one day, one session per week if you're using, say, high-intensity training, one set to failure type protocol.

I recognize it's very simple. I recognize there are some very experienced athletes who will say, "Well, no, you want to do five sets of three or five sets of five or whatever it might be with three to five-minute rest intervals in between to replenish the creatine phosphate, da da da da."

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

A lot!

And it's like just scale down to what you can do if you're starting an exercise habit.

If that means you go to the gym every day and you do five minutes on a treadmill, make the bar low enough that you can clear it, and you are not tempted to make excuses!

Right!

Let me ask you a question. If you're like, "Okay, I don't want to be a meathead, but I want a little muscle mass, so I want like some tone, some definition, a little bit of muscle mass."

You know, I've seen the pros and cons of one set to failure and the data around it. It seems to be that it's good, but not as good as multiple sets of failure for a single muscle group.

Would you say that you believe that to be true? Or are you doing one set to failure with like... if you're doing biceps, let's take biceps for example.

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

So I would actually... let's just take skiing as an example, right?

So my priority is going to be skiing, and there are actually a few other sports I'll be training for at the same time, so I will be a busy, busy boy for the first two months of the year, which is great because I'll need to lose all this fat that I accumulated over Thanksgiving and Christmas 'cause I know those Danish butter cookies that my mom bought at Costco are just waiting for me!

Everybody's got their thing!

I know! I know! They're sitting there!

The one set to failure or multiple sets to failure training to failure can inhibit your ability to train something sport-specific like skiing if you overdo it.

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

But to answer your question directly, I have not looked at the most recent data on any of this. I'm not sure there exists data comparing these in meaningful ways that do not bias towards one method or another.

I have volunteered to be a participant, a subject in certain weightlifting trials. I'm not going to mention the university because I don't want to throw them under the bus, but when I went in there, the protocol required us to do 10 reps of bench press for X number of sets.

And I went in there, and you'd see one guy get on the bench because there's a circuit, right? They're trying to make use of basically an open class period for volunteers.

You'd see one person who's basically dropping the weight onto his chest at a risk of breaking every one of his ribs and bouncing it off.

Oh jeez!

Like terrible form!

Terrible form! Very, very little time under tension!

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

Those are not the same 10 repetitions!

Right!

Yeah!

So I think garbage in, garbage out for a lot of these studies, so I don't weigh them too heavily.

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

Right!

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

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

So you're saying one set, why?

And now let me tell you what the one set means!

Yeah, exactly! That's what I was going to get to!

What the one set means!

And I've gone back to all of my books; I kind of function this way. Like all of my books are sort of reference books for myself, right?

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

So in the case of say the 4-Hour Body, the AAM's protocol and a handful of compound movements still does the trick for the vast majority of the population.

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

Like it does work!

Yes, it's simple! Yes, it could be more sophisticated! It is idiot-proof for a reason!

If I go into lift, I'm not going to be doing direct bicep work. I'm going to be doing something like a seated row and then a pulldown.

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

I might honestly just do one of those!

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

That's the whole workout!

The whole workout should take less than 20 minutes!

Yeah!

People say, "What about warm-up sets?" Well, if you're tracking your progress well, you're using the same equipment, and you're lifting at a slow cadence, this is key.

The first handful of reps effectively function as your warm-up!

Now what I'll often do is take like 30% of the target working weight that I'm going to use for my one set to failure, and I'll do three, four, five reps just to make sure my joints aren't flared up, that I'm not feeling any pain.

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

So let's just say, hypothetically, I'm making this up, but you might have something like a close grip bench press, close grip incline bench press, right?

To just avoid issues with your shoulders, let's just say.

Then you have pulldowns, like close grip supinated, so palm facing you pulldowns, and then a leg press or split squats holding dumbbells on either side.

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

That's your whole workout!

Wait, one thing we didn't cover that I think is really important is you say one set to failure, but what's your target reps here? Are you going like, you know, some people say lift heavy and do 8 to 10. Some people say go a little bit lighter, get to 20 to where you fail at 20.

Like what are you aiming for here?

For safety purposes, and again, everybody's got a [ __ ] opinion with this stuff, but use something akin to a super slow protocol, which is like five seconds up, five seconds down.

And then you can do six to ten reps.

Okay!

But I wouldn't increase the weight until you get to like an 8 to 10 rep range.

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

I would say five seconds up, five seconds down, that's one one-thousand, two one-thousand, slow.

And let's call it six to ten reps to failure.

But I would just then continue to say, and positive or concentric failure means you're on the, in the case of the pulldown, the pulling motion.

This is when the muscle is overlapping and shortening.

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

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

That's the positive portion!

Then you get to the point where you stick; you can't move it at all!

Right!

Push for another 10 seconds as hard as you can!

Try to move it a millimeter at a time, and then lower for 10 seconds.

You're done!

And then you have to log the entire workout!

It's not hard to do!

You need to take notes! If you don't take notes, you're not going to make the progress you want to make!

And then the second workout, just to again hypothetical, doesn't really matter that much as long as it's safe and it's a compound movement, you're doing it to failure.

You're going to make progress!

So let's just say that your shoulders are healthy enough to do this. You could be like overhead press or a military press.

I'm equipment agnostic; people can argue about free weights versus machines.

My position now is like whatever is safest!

Yeah!

And whatever you can do consistently!

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

Yeah!

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

Then we already did the pulldown, so maybe it's a seated row or a bent row with a barbell.

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

I have, for instance, my right leg is 1.1 cm. I had full leg X-rays done a year ago because a number of doctors thought I was full of [ __ ] with this, and I was like, "I really think one leg is longer than the other."

I've looked at it a number of different ways; my right leg is about like femur length, right?

It's 8 cm to 1.1 cm.

I did takes of X-rays!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It seems that the long-term risk of having some type of issue with your disc or a rupture is higher if you ever puncture the disc, so I didn't want to do that.

And rather than do that, because my pain is localized to like the SI joint and L4 L5, where I do have a bunch of structural issues, we did something maybe a little unorthodox in a sense.

And there's something called the ilol lumbar ligament, and you have two of them, and people can look this up.

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

Right!

I really think there's something to that, especially when you throw your back out, and you're like, "[ __ ]!"

You've never felt older in your life than when you have to crawl to your bed on your hands and knees because your back is thrown out!

Yeah!

Or lay on your bed, or like you have to constantly fidget 'cause your back is bothering you!

Yes!

Where I've started to think there may be for me some interesting interventions because what we did is we did an injection... I mean, the needle's huge; that's like 5 to 8 inches long.

But an injection in the SI joint, but then also bathing the... didn't want an injection directly into the ligament just because I couldn't take the recovery time for that.

But to bathe around the ligament with these stem cells, MSCs, and within literally within a day, I felt relief in that area!

Wow!

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

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

And if you're over the age of 40, your back's going to look [ __ ] in some way!

Like that's not going to look great!

Like as you get older, just like you get wrinkles on your face, like your back is going to show degenerative changes almost 100%, especially if you've done any lifting or athletic anything.

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

So I've become super interested based on my recent experience in the... and I know friends from friction massage who have seen tremendous back pain relief.

What is friction massage?

You could use like a Gua Sha tool; there are different ways to do it.

Is it like cupping and [ __ ] like where they break the fascia up?

Yeah, it's like a rapid pressure movement back and forth.

So you could use a Gua Sha tool; it's probably going to be too big for this particular area.

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

Now the contrast between my right side, which was treated, and my left side, which was untreated, but my left side I considered the healthy side, I now realize it's actually in a lot of pain.

So what I may do, because you have to take with this, I'm part of a clinical trial, and you have to take a six-month break between stem cells for a host of reasons, I may actually do PRP, PL rich plasma on that left side.

We'll see!

Get the vampire face while you're at it!

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

Get the package deal!

Yeah!

So hopefully that helps, and we only talked about one aspect of how I'm thinking about health, which is the muscle mass.

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

I will probably do something in the order of more like the three to five rep range, still doing it slowly enough that I feel like it is very under control.

Nothing ballistic!

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

One question on the recovery side, you know, is back in the day it was like one gram of protein per pound of body weight to get, you know, any type of muscle growth.

Yeah!

What's your current regimen look like for something like this? 'Cause I mean, you're not going for massive gains here, so it's not like it'd be perfect, but are you still getting adequate protein? Are you putting a lot of protein in there when you're doing these training days?

Yeah, I will! I mean, especially because I'll basically be training at the gym at night before dinner, and I will be skiing and taking very serious technical lessons and trying some pretty gnarly stuff for me in terms of reasonably intense training, like flips and [ __ ] or no, no, no, not that intense!

No, you doing halfpipe?

No, not halfpipe! I'm just talking about like bumps and backcountry stuff!

Oh, backcountry stuff!

Yeah!

And also like ski touring! I'll be skinning, basically you work your way up the mountain, and then you ski down and stuff, so it's going to be physically intensive.

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

Yeah!

I don't think that's overkill!

All right!

And I'll show you one more thing that's kind of fun.

Yeah!

I've been looking very closely at this. I don't feel comfortable promoting any brands yet because I have some technical questions, but I have been experimenting with something called... the acronym is LICS.

So I've got this... holy [ __ ]! What is this?

And then another one over here!

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

Yeah! I've got these patches with electrodes and cables coming off, and then you set how many hours you want on this thing, and it is low-intensity continuous ultrasound.

Is this why you're so chill right now? What's going on? What is this thing doing?

No, no, no! This is not why I'm so chill! I mean, who knows? I don't think so!

This is a device that safely administers low-intensity ultrasound over a period of 1 to 4 hours per site of treatment.

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

I have a bunch of tendonitis around the insertion points of the infraspinatus.

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

No, no, no! This is... I've been playing with this for about a month!

It's not like for swimming or talking to dolphins!

No, no! This is for recovery!

But also the low-intensity continuous ultrasound... so like is LIUS... you can find a lot of interesting studies on this.

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

So you could put something in like, "Is there any evidence that low-intensity continuous ultrasound with tissue remodeling or whatever sports recovery?"

And you'll get an answer!

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

But this stuff, part of what I find interesting about this is unlike some other types of say, for instance, electrical stimulation, like there are TENS units that you can use that will effectively reduce pain by... and this is not the scientific description, but they're effectively overriding your nerves or overstimulating your nerves with certain frequencies to turn off or mute the pain signaling.

That's not what this is doing!

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

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

Crazy!

Now, could that be placebo?

Like, could be placebo!

What's the cost on this?

It's not cheap!

Yeah!

Which is why most people go into a clinic to use something like this, but they get you with the razor blades approach, right?

So the device itself, who knows?

But these coupling patches are very expensive!

So to get... if I'm using it once a day or twice a day, I've been using it a lot, it's like 10 grand for two months!

Oh Jesus!

It's expensive!

Damn!

It's crazy!

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

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

But there are also people out there for whom this may make sense, and hopefully, as this technology... and you've seen this happen a million times, so if I... as it becomes more popular, as the technology gets more developed, as there's more competition, the price drops tremendously!

You know what's funny is like I've seen in podcasts, you know, you and I have been part of this where like you'll mention something that's like three grand or whatever or something crazy, and they're like, "Well, that Tim [ __ ] rich guy can afford all these things, blah blah blah."

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

Yeah, totally!

It's funny; I've seen this happen so many times, even drugs, stuff as well.

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

Yeah!

It was like ridiculous!

And now Amazon has it for 500!

That's no insurance!

You know? And it's like it just takes time for these things to come down and hit the masses!

And with those V02 Max machines too that you can get at home now, I don't know if you messed around with those.

I just got one of those, and it's insane!

It's the same, but it's great 'cause you say you don't have to go to the clinic, and you can save the time!

And then eventually these will be less expensive for everyone!

Yeah!

We've seen it with Uber, right?

Uber Black in the beginning was definitely kind of a 1%er thing, but it subsidized the development of Uber X!

I mean, that was jet travel though as well!

Tesla, same thing, right?

I mean, there are many, many examples!

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

Like this is a nice bonus, and I'm still experimenting with it; jury's out!

It seems to be very helpful, but I want to see longer term!

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

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

I'll share at least some of this.

There's a chapter in the 4-Hour Body called "Reversing Permanent Injuries."

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

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

Yeah!

And you have to invest in that stuff as you get older if you want to be active, if you want to be athletic!

Your body just does not have the elasticity and the regenerative ability that it used to!

Mhm!

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

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

And that's where I'm starting!

That's awesome!

Feels good!

Feels great!

And I'm doing it first thing in the morning!

Wake up, cold brew coffee right now!

And then Hawaiian coffee is incredible!

So this has been my re-entry after my 30, 40 days of abstinence!

Yeah!

Like wake up immediately, have a cold brew, and then go to the gym!

That's a big shot!

Like Kai coffee is no joke!

That's like some strong stuff!

It's so good!

It's delicious!

Some of my favorite coffee on the planet!

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

Yeah, it's good stuff!

The Kai coffee is good; it's just so delicious too!

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

Yeah, yeah, let's do it!

I mean, we got tons!

I just gave TED Talks, so you should let her rip!

Yeah, so I'll just do some rapid-fire fun stuff here!

So, damp January, I'm going to drink six less drinks per month!

Moving on to investment... ran through that one!

Well, listen, the drinking thing... well, I actually am cutting back a ton!

You know, I'm not drinking tonight!

Look at that!

Look at that!

Hey, baby steps!

Baby steps!

All right, so one of the things I've realized, especially as you get older, is that as life gets more complex, there has to be this kind of continual... especially as you have kids and other things, there's this continual re-evaluating of your processes and how to make them... like every year, how can you turn down the knob and automate more things than you had the previous year just for my own sanity?

Or eliminate more things too!

Yes! Yes!

And so in that theme, I've gotten really simple on the investing front.

Like the vast majority of my exposure is at True Ventures, where we take a lot on a lot of risk; that's what we do for our day job.

I'm using... I'm going to try a new app called Monarch.

It's not new, but it's been around for a while for tracking my finances and finally getting a budget under control starting January!

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

Yeah, I've been using it; it's great!

What do you like about it?

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

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

There's a bunch of tools out there.

Projection Lab is good.

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

Yeah, exactly!

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

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

What was it called?

Projection Lab!

Okay!

And then I would say that CoPilot has always been my favorite on mobile, but Monarch is now just... it ties together all my accounts in a view that I think is more data-rich, especially on the budgeting side than CoPilot.

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

And so, yeah, I mean those two, and then gosh, I'm drawing a blank on the last one for the kind of like overview of everything.

They're going to kill me because it's a fantastic app!

Pornhub Premium!

What's that?

Pornhub Premium!

Exactly!

There's Tim! He's back! He's back, everybody!

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

Yeah, exactly!

Before you were like, "I'm H!"

Do you actually buy their premium?

No, no, no!

You would answer even if you did!

This seems like overkill!

Yeah!

I'll share my public favorites!

Yeah, exactly!

Pornhub.com, Tim Tim, 20% off!

Kubera is my overview app that I think is the best for tracking off kind of your larger investments and like overall net worth.

What was the name?

No wonder you forgot it! Kubera!

K-U-B-E-R-A!

I love Kubera!

I think it's really high-quality software!

So anyway, that's that!

So let me just go quickly down the investment front.

VTI, because it gives you global exposure!

Like I love that I get the total stock market index there; it's Vanguard; it's low cost!

I want to have the majority of my stuff in there!

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

And just Bitcoin though?

Did you increase it, or is that just reflective of an increase in value?

No, I increased it!

You bought more?

Yes! I've been buying more for the last few months!

Okay!

I had this feeling that Trump was going to win, and I started buying more crypto when I had that gut feeling just because I think that he's going to push a massive crypto agenda.

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

I think we'll treat it as a currency that we hold in reserves, and when that happens, it's going to be nuts!

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

So we'll see where that goes!

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

I would say a lot of people said this!

I don't know!

I'm not saying that!

I'm just saying...

No, no, I get it!

But like here's the deal about shilling your bags!

I'm giving you PTSD flashbacks!

But this is the real truth!

Let's go and take a look at how much Bitcoin traded today in terms of volume, okay?

So I love our podcast that we're both going to syndicate this episode on our respective feeds, but like we're not moving trillions of dollars of Bitcoin because I say it's going to $250 a coin!

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

'Cause there's so much volume!

No amount of shilling could move it in any meaningful way!

It just can't happen right now!

10 years ago, you and I go on here and talk about Bitcoin, and we just made ourselves like, you know, five million bucks because you pump it up!

'Cause you know what I mean?

Like that's not the case anymore!

It's just too massive!

Makes sense!

So anyway, there's no such thing as shilling anymore, at least when it comes to Bitcoin!

If we're talking about shitcoins, which are happening a lot right now, that's the stuff that's like just so stupid I don't even get involved in!

So anyway, I hold Bitcoin!

I purposely hold it in an account that I can't touch!

So I like this because like Coinbase has a feature called custody where you can't withdraw it for like three days!

Enterprise-level self-control!

Yeah, exactly!

It's like a forced hold!

I like doing it!

And I've now stopped trading it, so I don't even look at the price!

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

I'm going to hold it for the next 50-plus years!

Like I want to hand my kids Bitcoin!

Yeah!

It's gone from like, "When do I sell it?" like, "Ooh, is it too high? Should I sell right now?"

Those days are over!

Now it's just like part of the portfolio!

So it's digital assets!

Yeah!

It's not going away!

You can't put digital assets back in the box!

Like, you know, back in the tube or whatever the genie comes out of!

Back in the tube!

Yeah, exactly!

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

Yeah!

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

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

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

Like we need alternative forms of energy, especially if coal plants are shut down!

Yeah!

Well, I mean, I don't think that's going to happen, but I'm not saying all... I'm not saying all!

But yeah, so if you want to play the broad basket and you're thinking about this over the long term, I was just speaking for myself; this is not investment advice!

But I did find there's a fund that like holds uranium manufacturers and some like nuclear plants and some of the companies that are thinking about doing these new small, smaller plants!

And so it's like a basket of public nuclear stocks right now!

And they will add to it as other nuclear companies go public!

And so like I'm not in the game of going and saying, "Hey, this is a nuclear future!"

It's just one company, right?

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

So anyway, the one I look at is the only one I could really find was NLR, which is the VCK ETF Trust, uranium and nuclear basket of stocks!

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

That's all!

Mhm!

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

And then I got a bunch of predictions going into the new year!

Throw some of the predictions out!

So prediction number one: Bitcoin hits $250, US government starts adding it to the reserves!

You think that's in 2025?

I think that is in the next two years!

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

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

And I'm talking some of the bigs that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars because I think what's going to happen is that the... I shouldn't say the bigs; the big players that are in the startup space now, I think the quote-unquote bigs, like the alphabet companies, are just going to run the table when it comes to most AI-related things!

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

OpenAI, I'm still like, you know, they're so intertwined with Microsoft; I think that they'll be fine!

Plus, they're working on other devices as well!

Speaking of which, one of my predictions will be that OpenAI launches some type of mobile device, maybe some type of smart headphones this coming year!

Because they have to be at the metal level, meaning like they have to be at the device level that we all carry around!

And when you have press and hold Apple intelligence just by holding in the side of your phone now, and you have press and hold like, you know how you used to query like Siri or whatever?

And now you have that same going on with Gemini with Google!

Now you've got AI at the phone level already carried by the big providers!

To get someone to think like, "Oh, I got to go download ChatGPT so I can go and switch it out as my assistant and all this and set up shortcuts and all that," and it's like if it's like 90% as good, people won't care!

You know what I mean?

Yeah!

I don't care if I'm streaming Lord of the Rings off of freaking Hulu or Prime or Apple TV; I just want to watch the movie!

Right!

And so it's like I think AI is going to be kind of like that where we'll just like, "Oh, I have an Apple phone, so I use Apple intelligence!"

That's kind of where it's at!

That's interesting!

Yeah!

Well, so you think of like where could they get the wedge in the door? The headset's interesting, right?

Because if they made a really good set of basically AirPod clones of some type but intelligent with AI built in, yeah, that had that built in!

But basically, they're not going to replace the iPhone, right?

They're not going to replace good Android phones for people who already use those!

But they could replace wireless AirPods!

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

Yeah!

I heard they were working with Jony Ive on some of this stuff!

And so, you know, you got the former industrial designer, head of design for Apple, coming to the table with OpenAI saying, "Hey, let's go back to the drawing board and say if we had to build a phone today, would it be with a series of app icons on here, or might it be a different interface that makes this way more sexy, more fun?"

Like, you know?

Yeah!

'Cause like the future is not going to be, "Hey, I'm going to go launch hotels.com app and say get me a room in Japan in two weeks, negotiate all the things, put in my credit card credentials."

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

And it'll be like, "Which room do you want? These three things, blah blah blah," and you're like, "This room!"

And it's like, boom! It's already got my information!

It's all APIs behind the scenes!

It hands all that data over!

The exchange is done!

And it's just like it's finalized within 30 seconds versus a 15-minute thing!

That's true!

I mean, I guess what someone like OpenAI could do is something along the lines of a fantasy I've had for a long time, which is like a very dumb phone!

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

It's like, "All right, I have maps, and then I have one request button for everything!"

Right!

And that's it!

Right!

Just to avoid the metastasized mess of having a thousand apps!

So many people want this!

And a thousand notifications and all that [ __ ]!

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

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

And their family has that number, right?

Ringer is on for emergencies!

It has maps, and that's it!

Yeah!

There's nothing else!

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

Yes!

Right?

100%!

Yeah!

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

It's not a full suite of things!

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

Right!

Yeah!

It's like maps, maybe Uber, and then music probably!

Yeah!

Music and like credit cards!

Like that's it!

Right!

You don't need anything else!

And like AI could serve up music!

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

Oh, they'll have APIs with all that stuff!

They can just talk to Spotify, and they'll have APIs for everything!

Yeah!

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

Sure, they could!

100%!

Almost certainly!

As the technology kind of matures behind the scenes!

And then, I mean, this is the playbook that I think is finally starting to work for Meta where they have these Ray-Ban glasses that it's the first time I've seen a Meta product where I've said, "Okay, you're starting to get a little..."

I mean, we've been talking about VR and AR for so long and how stupid it is as long as this show has been around!

I know Adam Gazale still owes me a bottle of whiskey because he thought it was going to win out!

But that's in your book!

But yeah, so Ray-Ban's finally starting to hit for Meta in that like, you know, you can walk up to people now in Japan and like get real-time translations!

Right!

And you don't even look like you're wearing anything!

Real-time doxing too!

Did you see the Harvard student who figured out how to use the Ray-Ban glasses to immediately dox everyone?

You'd be like, "Hey, are you so-and-so who researches so-and-so?"

They're like, "Oh my God! How do you know?"

And it's like, "I know because they're getting a Terminator readout!"

Yeah!

You get the Terminator readout!

Totally!

Yeah!

A little higher fidelity than those graphics back then!

But yeah!

So a couple things though, real quick on the prediction front, and then I'm done!

But I think Microsoft releases an Android phone because largely because they have the suite there!

They have Word, they have Excel, they have PowerPoint, they have Drive, they have all this stuff!

Outlook, you name it!

I think it'll be Android-based, and they have ChatGPT!

So I think on the OpenAI side, that will probably be integrated into the Microsoft phone!

Got it!

That's my gut tells me there's a no-brainer for them!

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

But it also be Android-based, right?

Okay!

It's almost like getting a Google phone!

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

If it is Android-based, this is such an LTE question; I should know the answer!

But does Gemini automatically come along for the ride, in which case that would be built-in competition for OpenAI if they used an Android phone?

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

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

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

'Cause Samsung already does that on the AI side and everything else!

Got it!

Okay, interesting!

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

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

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

And it's like, you know, it's just being generated, these little 4K snippets!

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

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

Yeah!

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

Yeah, I think 18 sounds about right!

Yeah!

So you skipped over damp January, which is fine; we'll let that sit!

Yeah, yeah!

It's going to be fine!

But aliens, tell me more about the aliens!

I mean, I just... and what the hell is going on in New Jersey?

Honestly, I just have been ignoring most of the news!

Yeah, I have kind of too!

I feel in the last three years, and I got a really awesome chance to sit down with that Navy fighter pilot that saw some of these things!

And you know, there has been so much inquiry now, and then there also is a new change in government, obviously, that's pushing for so much more transparency!

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

No, and that to me is just horribly scary yet exciting at the same time!

Yeah!

Who knows?

Crazy!

Yeah!

What are the odds that you would place?

Honestly, in my head, it's like 90% there's aliens out there and that we know about it as a government!

I mean, I guess we haven't talked about this because I don't want to sound like a [ __ ] crazy person, but there was a point where this conversation was in the air enough I was like, "Okay, let me do a deep dive to see what we can say with any degree of certainty and what we can't say with any degree of certainty."

And looking at government reports, looking at various first-hand testimony about the Tic Tac and so on that are very widely cited, and trying to account for the possibility that some of these people, not all of them, and not necessarily people involved with Tic Tac, may see some benefit or appeal, like every human being on social media, to getting attention, right?

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

Mhm!

What can we conclude based on the available data?

And what seems to be the case, if you're looking at UAPs, right?

The... I guess it's what? Unidentified aerial phenomena now?

The rebrand from UFO!

It's good!

It's good rebrand so you don't sound like someone wearing a tin foil hat!

Yeah, yeah!

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

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

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

So there's a crash of some prototype of some type of weaponized technology or surveillance technology, and especially many, many decades ago, they're worried about that news getting to our enemies, competitors overseas, so they drum up a misinformation campaign around it being a UFO!

Okay!

So there's also a bunch of that!

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

They seem to defy explanation!

And the descriptions of the behavior of these things seem to defy any explanation using technology that is currently available to us!

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

Yeah!

Because if they're sufficiently advanced to do what some people report these craft doing, why on Earth would they have...

Like we're already using drones for warfare!

Why would they risk...

That's right!

... injury?

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

I think it is tourism, dude!

You're right! It could be tourism!

And the ones that wreck are like the ones that you hear about in Africa when people go on safaris and they have too many drinks and they just crash into rhinoceroses and then like get eaten or whatever!

Some of these aliens are coming down here, and it has to be something like that!

They've had a few bevs, and they just wreck their stuff!

It's like teenage alien DUIs!

Yeah, exactly!

Yeah!

Where'd Glo Glo go?

[ __ ]!

Yeah, he's gone to Earth again, right?

So did he drink?

He took a few!

Yeah, I mean, maybe!

Maybe there are many more questions than answers, of course!

But actually, you know, I'll give a shout-out!

There is an app called Enigma, which runs machine learning on UAP sightings!

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

Of course, we've seen a huge spike in New Jersey over the last period of time, but that's worth checking out!

And I'm actually just going to double-check that!

Did you see Moment of Contact, by the way?

Nope! What's that?

You got to see this!

Yeah!

So Enigma is Enigma Labs!

Dude, you have to go make a note of this!

Moment of Contact!

It's a Netflix documentary about this 1996 crash in Brazil!

Okay!

And it's like these citizens, like dozens of them, saw not only the crash but the freaking aliens wandering the neighborhood and [ __ ] after the crash!

And then all these military things came in!

All right, dude, it's worth it!

It's worth it!

It's like E.T. but in Brazil!

I put on an alien documentary like once a year, you know, just 'cause like Netflix knows me enough!

Why not?

Yeah!

It's like, "Hey, you might like this!"

And I'm like, "I might!"

JJ Abrams' production company, Bad Robot, they made some UFO miniseries!

I watched that on an airplane 'cause that's when you watch that kind of thing!

Exactly!

And so I watched this one, and I was like, "Holy [ __ ]! This is very... it's pretty compelling!"

Interesting about this one: this is a brand new product that I've been consuming two or three of these a day. It's basically a multivitamin in a meat product because it has... this is called Pepper 10, and it's got 10% liver and heart in addition to the muscle. It is incredible how much nutrient density you get from that.

Then the other one, which I don't actually have any official relationship with whatsoever, is a shout-out to also Peter Attia, who we both know, who's the chief science officer. But this is David. So these David bars have incredible protein per calorie ratios: 28 grams of protein for 150 calories.

When I am traveling, especially when I'm traveling, this is basically the kit. Yeah, I do the David bars too; they're good. One of them was a little too sweet for me, but the blueberry one's really good. Some of them are a little too sweet for my palate, but also there is a point where I'm like, I cannot eat another venison stick because I eat so many of those per week.

We're in Maui, meaning my team and I are in Maui right now because we wanted to visit Maui Nei. Oh, that's awesome! Jake Muse is one of the most impressive company leaders and operators I've ever seen, including all of my startups in tech and otherwise. He's so good at talent development; he's so good at culture. It's a great example of doing good through a for-profit, and I just think that type of model is important to highlight because there is a lot of good you can do through sort of market-driven solutions.

In this case, what Maui Nei does... people don't know that Axis deer were introduced; they're originally from India to Hawaii by King Kamehameha III or V, I can't recall exactly. They have no natural predators, and now there are like tens of thousands of these deer ravaging the landscape. They're destroying the ecology, and that has all sorts of downstream effects, literally and metaphorically, including destroying coral reefs because they produce a lot of erosion. It's really alarming; it looks like wildfire, effectively.

So what Maui does is they harvest these deer, meaning they shoot them in the field at night for the lowest stress levels for the animals. It's incredibly well-run; their efficiency ratio is as good as, say, slaughterhouses for cattle, which are very stressful for the animals. They're factory-farmed, then they're put into shoots, they're literally held in place, and then boom, like a bolt in the head.

This, for my money, is infinitely more ethical. I mean, the animal is like wild and free, living its life until the very instant that it instantaneously expires. Then they package that and they sell it.

Best way to go! Yeah, let's just go out to a Maui Nei field. We're like, "Oh, they'll just put us out in the field; we'll just run when we can no longer harness our..."

Yeah, exactly! Our spinal engine. It's like, "Well, it's time to put Kevin out to pasture."

Yeah, just give him a donut and a couple of beers, have him sitting at a table, and then just came over.

And Maui Nei, it's all green! I'm like, "Tim, why did you bring me to Maui Nei? It's so nice here!"

My retirement home!

You're going to love it! Sit there; you're going to love it.

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

A Holo Ai harvest is for the community here in Maui. The Holo Ai food-sharing program was created in April 2020 as a response to food insecurity in Hawaii, which had a lot of food security issues at an emergency level caused by the COVID lockdowns.

What the Maui Nei team did is they completely revamped everything so they could first just drive venison by the ton straight to the food bank to donate it for communities. Then, after the devastating wildfires last year, they completely restructured their operations.

I mean, I got the email sent to all investors, and they're like, "Hey, look, guys, we are shifting our focus completely to helping our communities which need food. There is a disaster-level crisis."

That's amazing!

They changed their business model and have shared more than 120,000 pounds of venison meat donated since the 2023 fires. It's amazing! There are a lot of partners and other people who have helped them along the way.

What I did is, my team had the option of participating, and they all opted in, was to go on a night harvest. Their operation is like a special operations vampire hour outing. I mean, you go out; they have FLIR infrared cameras and scopes, they have display monitors, they're capturing information, which is like a current stop, no shot, a current stop shot, and they have laser identifications for the rovers, who are the people who then go and retrieve the deer.

I went through the butchering process; I wanted to get better at butchering, so I actually butchered, I don't know, six or seven deer on this trip.

That's amazing! Did you get to take some meat with you or no?

Oh, of course! Yeah, that's awesome! I mean, the vast majority of that's going to be donated, but some of it I'm going to keep for myself and send to family members and so on.

But it can be very visually arresting; it can be confronting for someone who's used to getting food from conveniently wrapped plastic packaging from Whole Foods. But I find it so grounding in the sense that it makes you fully aware of what is involved to put food on your table if you choose to eat meat.

I feel very unconflicted about it. I know there are some people who feel conflicted; I don't.

I do too! It's funny you mention that because I get it if you're a vegetarian or vegan out there and you're like, "I don't see eye to eye with anything that is being said right now." That totally makes sense to me.

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

I mean, now it's been completely stripped out of our culture. I don't have the same amount of hunting experience that you do; I went hunting with my dad once. But you know, I've certainly done a ton of fishing, and you know, it's not the easiest thing to put down a big-ass salmon either.

But you think it's for its life, and you make use of everything you can, you know? And it's amazing!

Totally! And they use everything, which is also deeply inspiring. They use everything from these animals, and I mean, they're effectively restoring an ecosystem, right? They are feeding the local community, and they're providing the most nutrient-dense meat that you can purchase.

They're bringing back traditions of things that... like this idea that there are a lot of chefs that are doing this now where they call it "nose to tail," which is like, it's not about just getting the prime cuts and throwing everything else away and being wasteful. It's like cooking all of the different aspects and using all the different aspects of the animal for either consumption or for product use or whatever it may be.

There's no waste there, or very little, you know? And part of the reason they can do this is because they are harvesting these deer from private land.

So to be clear, the reason that you buy farmed animals for food in the United States is because that's what you have to do. You cannot buy game meat; that's illegal because you don't want people poaching on public land and then selling meat, which can lead to overkilling and all sorts of issues with wildlife management and cause imbalances.

So the operation is incredibly unique in that respect. And there are actually... I don't think it matters to out them here, but there are a lot of, say, vegans or vegetarians. I know vegans; this is going to sound like a contradiction in terms, but who object to a lot of the animal husbandry practices, especially factory farming and so on in the U.S.

So they don't eat meat based on those ethical grounds, and they make an exception for Maui Nei. It's the only meat that they consume.

So anyway, that was this trip. My team got to ride around in these ATVs and see the displays and really see the whole process.

That's amazing! How does that not surprise me that every single one on your team... like if you work for Tim Ferriss and you're like, "Hey, we're going on a hunt tonight," is there one person that's going to be like, "No"?

You're like, "You're fired!"

No, no, I wouldn't fire them! I wouldn't fire them! I mean, it's quite a bit to take in, but what I wanted to do—and this is actually not my idea; this is the suggestion of one of my employees—they wanted firsthand experience with one of the companies or nonprofits that I support.

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

Maybe they're talking about your psychedelic donations that you've been doing?

Wait, what was this?

Maybe they're talking about your psychedelic research that you've been doing?

Oh yeah, I don't think I feel comfortable sending my employees to the seventh dimension just yet, but who knows?

So that's what I've been up to. And then on the calming side, on the grounding side...

Yeah, you're like a two on your typically like a nice toasty seven or eight.

Simmering seven! You seem very chill.

Yeah, I'd say chill certainly. Hawaii helps; certainly good sleep helps; exercise helps.

But volume... you're like, "I did three volumes before I started the show."

I've got the lyophilized on this shoulder; I've got my morphine drip on the other.

Yeah, exactly! Your morphine patch, slow release.

No, it's not morphine; it's not morphine. It's meditating twice a day.

Amazing!

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

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

This includes psychedelic-assisted therapies. The accelerated TMS, which is a non-invasive treatment using transcranial magnetic stimulation over a five-day period, in this case, where you're getting treated basically eight minutes every hour on the hour for ten hours a day.

So it's very involved; like when you're doing it, that's all you're doing for effectively a week. And it was phenomenal! I will almost certainly do it again, but five days is a lot, and I wanted to see if I could do it with less.

So first, I tried a two-day booster, or it might have been a single-day booster, and it was not enough; it did nothing. Then I went back, and this is going to California, and I did a three-day booster—also not enough.

So I just wasted a lot of time, a lot of money trying to round down, and it didn't do anything. I found that very disheartening. It just means I need to go back and do the five days and figure out the right cadence.

But it's very expensive to do this, and it's very time-consuming. So I then was looking at different meditation options, and this has since become a company that I'm very heavily involved with.

But the way Henry Shookman—your man, love Henry, who you initially introduced me to—and I've introduced my employees to, the Way, which is an app, and the sessions, you can make them longer or shorter. I set them at ten minutes, and I was very skeptical because I did TM, you know, Transcendental Meditation back in the day, which is 20 minutes twice a day.

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

Doing ten minutes in the morning, ten minutes either before dinner or before bed, but making it like brushing your teeth—it's a non-negotiable, right? It's just a non-negotiable; you just do it like you would do anything else that is non-negotiable.

Doing those ten minutes twice a day has been incredible because it has effectively gotten me to, I think, a similar level of lower generalized anxiety that I got from spending, you know, 30 to 50 grand to do this experimental TMS therapy.

I didn't know it was that much!

That is all-inclusive, right? So that's like the treatment, the hotels, the flights, and so on and so forth, right? It adds up!

And you can do it for less. That was with a MAG Ventures device, which I think is quite interesting. Brain sway is another one that's very interesting and works well for a lot of other people.

It doesn't have to be that expensive, but for me, I was like, "Look, let me pay for like the white glove, ultra high-touch best option, and if that doesn't work for me, I'm going to conclude that I cannot recommend this therapeutic intervention because this is as good as it gets."

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

Henry Shookman has the most relaxing voice you'll ever hear in your life; he's the best!

Yeah, and I think the app gives you 30 sessions for free.

That's right!

So you can get a real flavor for it. It's not like, "Oh, you get two chances." And at least when I used it the first time, I didn't have to use my credit card.

And by the way, even though I'm an investor, because I product test everything and love giving feedback, as Kevin and I have sent like a million Looms to co-founders as product feedback, but I'm like, "No, I want to pay for it because if there's a glitch in the system, I want to know what the glitch is, and I want to report it."

So I paid for it, and you get 30. So that's either if you're doing ten minutes a day, that's 30 days; if you're doing two a day, that's two weeks. It's plenty of time to either notice or not notice an effect.

But what else would you say about Henry?

Yeah, I think I will say that what is a challenging thing to always navigate on the investment stuff, although I love Maui Nei as well. I just ordered the sticks; the ten sticks, those are going to be good!

So good!

I'm not an investor there, but I do love their product. One thing that you won't see that I'll tell you the behind the scenes is like, Tim, I was hitting you up, and I was like, "Oh dude, you know you invested," but you hadn't really given it a full deep dive run, right?

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

Super deep dive!

Yeah, yeah! And then the first thing is I get on the phone call with the team because I do investor updates with them, or I do investor updates with them because I let their round every month.

And they're like, "Yeah, Tim sent us like another ten Looms; he's got all this feedback!"

He's got all this feedback!

And they were quick to implement that stuff, which was awesome! They have been one of the fastest teams to update the product, and which is not to say they have to take all my feedback or suggestions; they certainly don't. It's their product, but they have been so fast at fine-tuning the product. I've been really impressed!

Yeah, well, they've loved the feedback; it's all been super valid stuff, so that's awesome.

But anyway, what I would say about it is, you know, I started studying with Henry before he had an app during the pandemic. And you know, this is what really got me into Zen.

I think one of the things that meditation struggles from is this race towards the bottom in that there's been a commercialization of meditation that says, "Hey, do the two-minute meditation, no, the one-minute meditation."

You know, it's like, "How can I just productize meditation and sell meditation?"

Yeah!

And like this is like a real Zen master teaching course that it's for people that really... you may have tried Calm or Headspace, but you want to go deep, deep and really go for something much bigger here.

And that, to me, is the exciting promise of this app because it's not just a hired pretty voice on the thing; it's like an actual Zen master teaching you, and that comes through in the knowledge transfer.

Yeah, you can feel it!

And it's also skill development, yes, right? It's not pleasant story hour where you're just jumping around listening to different things, which could be soothing; maybe it works for some people.

It's never really worked for me particularly well if I approach it that way. This is skill development in a logical progression, which you notice. You recognize it; you will recognize as you go through.

And maybe you're going through a particular retreat that is themed on hindrances, for instance, and then you're doing a sit where you're focusing on aversion, and you can label it.

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

And normally, I would just sit there just seething, right?

Yeah, I was going to say, here comes the Tim that is just like, "I'm not proud of saying this, but I would just be like, 'God damn it!'"

Like, you know, I'd want to exact some vigilante justice. I'd be like, "Well, if nobody's going to talk to her, how are they going to learn?"

And like nobody else is going to go over there, so I have a moral obligation to like be like, "Hey, ladies!"

And then if they're like, "Hey, pal, fuck yourself!" then I'm going to be like all spun out and disregulated, sitting down to like eat my cheesecake, like trembling in fury.

And so I was like, "Oh!" And it popped up, and as soon as it popped up, I was like, "AV aversion! You're experiencing aversion!"

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

That's awesome!

In the meditation, and I was like, "Boom!" And it defused the whole thing.

And that's what you want! Like you're not meditating in an app just to feel good while you're using the app.

That's right!

How can you bring it into everyday life? And what I also like about it is it doesn't let you skip.

You have to follow the program for good reason. You don't get to skip around indulging your whim and impatience; you have to follow through.

So if you try to skip ahead, it's like, "Hey buddy, glad you're excited, but sorry, you're not allowed to skip around because this program does X, Y, and Z."

So enjoy!

Yeah, it's good stuff! It's perfect time too; it's New Year's! Get a New Year's resolution!

This is going to be a big one for me.

You know, it's funny because I'm looking at the number of retreats because I've done quite a few now, and I'm like, "Oh God, I don't want this to end! What am I going to do when I'm like through the entire program? Am I going to run out of Henry?"

But I have so much left; it's great!

Well, also, you're going to come with me to a seven-day retreat. We got to make that happen this year!

Like an in-person one?

Yeah, I'm game!

We'll do a five-day one!

Yeah, yeah! Look, I'm open to it as long as you don't eat a lot of mushrooms before you go.

Yeah, fast for six days and microdose while I'm doing it.

I'm probably over that.

That was not a good first... you said you probably had some PTSD from that one.

Oh, it was not a wise set of decisions; there were bad decisions made on my part.

I'd be game to talk about that!

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

Yeah, I literally just did my past year review, which I do every year. I go through my calendar kind of week by week; I did that today.

I also looked forward to the next year and what I've already been doing over the last month or two.

And I'd encourage people to think about this: instead of thinking about New Year's resolutions, think about New Year's reservations.

New Year's reservations? What does that mean?

It means what are you putting in your calendar? If it's not in your calendar, it's not real, right?

It's like, "Okay, so if you want to exercise, do this and this and this, like hire a trainer or book a program or buy a membership." Get time in your calendar, right?

So what are your New Year's reservations?

And for me, the core of that is extended periods of time with close friends, right? Those people who I know are going to give me energy, who are going to leave me feeling better about my life and the world and optimistic.

Those are the relationships I want to invest in.

And so I go through the year, and for instance, January, February, it's like I rented a house, and it's stupidly expensive for me, but I put together a Google spreadsheet, and I'm inviting friends to come join.

I'll see you late January. I don't know if you saw it; it's on our list.

Yeah, I'm going to buy some skis too; I'm going to do some skiing!

So yeah, awesome! I'm excited! It's going to be fantastic!

I'll give you another example, and you're invited. I haven't actually talked to anybody about this; I did it on the sly, but next August, I booked a week in the Rockies for Alpine survivalist training with this amazing outdoorsman.

And I'm going to invite, you know, five to seven guys.

Dude, that sounds amazing!

Yeah, so if you're interested, I can tell you more about that. It's going to be incredible!

Yeah, that sounds fantastic!

I pay a lot of attention to the details for this type of thing. I've always loved that stuff, you know, like with Eagle Scout and being a Boy Scout.

I want to dig little tunnels that I can like sleep in and stuff, and the ice and stuff! Like I'm totally down!

So we'll have adventures like that, and it doesn't have to be a week long; it could be a long weekend, right?

It could be, yeah! Every year, you know, some of my closest friends come, and it depends on the cast of characters.

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

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

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

And there just aren't many options outside of perhaps certain sports environments.

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

And I think women generally do a very good job, and it's so acceptable to have female-only activities and groups and so on, but a lot of men don't have that.

Most of my friends don't have that, and that type of experience becomes less and less common as they get married and have kids and so on and get busy.

So yeah, for me, I feel like the gift I can give is blocking out a few options for people over the year where I take them away from their wives, you know, for a weekend.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, it's the gift you're giving!

Yeah, really! They get some time away from their kids and, you know, a little break.

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

And I know I'm painting with a broad brush, and there are always exceptions and so on, but it's like they don't bond in the same way that women do in the sense that a lot of guys just want to not talk and do stuff together, right?

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

And the beauty of setting this up and having reservations—and this doesn't only apply to men; it applies to women too—like if you don't cultivate and nourish those friendships, they will atrophy; they will go away.

Yeah, it's interesting. I have to convince my wife, Daria, to like do these social things with women because it's not in her DNA to do that.

And so like tonight, I was like, "I'm going to record a podcast." She's like, "Okay, I'm going out with my girlfriend." I'm like, "Awesome! Go do that! Take some time, have a moment, go get a massage, like whatever you got to do to prep for the holidays. Like you deserve it!"

And it's so important to have those breaks.

It's important to have the breaks! And I mean, this idea that... I can't remember where I read this recently, but I was reading a piece about this idea that you're going to spend like 24/7 together with your partner is a very new idea, relatively speaking.

Yeah, yeah!

And get everything and anything from your partner is unreasonable; that's not going to work.

Yeah, they're everything!

Yeah, you know, they end up being your therapist, your partner, your business person, and it's like, "That doesn't work!"

Yeah, so I have a number of these blocked out for the year. I try to have probably like four or five.

And they're not all a week long, and they're not all dedicated time, right?

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

It's like that's a family or a couple adventure, and then there are a few that are boys only.

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

Yeah, and they're in the calendar; they will not get crowded out by other things.

So that's a big one for me!

Love it!

Yeah, that's great!

And then other news: I finished my NoBnom, which is no booze, no masturbating, 30-day challenge, which a lot of my readers and fans joined me on.

I also did no coffee, so I was allowed to have tea, but I didn't do coffee, and it was a fantastic reset.

And in the last week, not to get too TMI, but it's like, "Okay, all of those things have been reintroduced."

Yeah, you just went to town!

Like, I really liked the cleansing of the dopamine palate, and these are addictive behaviors, right? All of them.

So I think there's a very good chance that I'm going to be... I have to think about it a little bit just because so many people will be visiting, but a very, very either completely dry for January or like... so people visit me, I just G to have to like...

Masturbate in the living room every day!

Like, "Got so many friends coming over!"

Like, "Just got to go down!"

What kind of party is this? I didn't get the memo!

Tim's back on!

Like, "Just give him a few minutes!"

Like, "Yeah, sorry, you understand he's been depriving himself!"

Like, "Tim, ever not in his bathroom? What's going on?"

Exactly!

Yeah, so no, that's the alcohol side.

So yeah, all that stuff, I think I might continue all of that for January. We'll see!

That's great!

But it really was a fantastic reset, and I think it contributed to lowered anxiety and kind of how chill I am right now, frankly.

And there was an interview I think Peter Attia did with a psychiatrist, a female psychiatrist, who was saying when somebody comes in and says they're a heavy cannabis user and they use it for like reducing anxiety and chronic pain or whatever...

Actually, in this case, it wouldn't be chronic pain; it would be they're using it for what they believe to be reducing anxiety.

But they've developed this sort of tonic adaptation to the cannabis consumption, that before she'll prescribe other medications, before she'll work on the talk therapy, she'll try to get them to abstain from, say, cannabis use for two to four weeks.

And lo and behold, in many cases, like anxiety drops to the floor!

Yeah!

Just by that intervention!

Yeah!

And that was partially what inspired me to do the 30 days of abstinence from these things is to see, "Okay, what does it look like to reset the system?"

And it's great! Nothing against those in moderation, but like I think, for instance, with me and coffee, it's like if I'm allowed to unrestrained consume as much coffee as I want, I will consume a lot of coffee!

Yeah!

And it's easy for me to overconsume.

So I do occasionally... I mean, look, I've been loving my cold brew, so maybe I'll just limit it to one cup of coffee in the morning, which I can actually do if I'm getting out of the house and getting on the mountain for a few hours rather than sitting in a coffee shop where it's like there's a fixation with beverages.

And it's like, right? Or if you're in a restaurant, they just like a diner, they keep pouring coffee, and you're like, "Ah!"

And before you know it, you've had five cups of coffee!

Right?

So anyway, some of the things on my mind.

What else you got, Kevin? Anything else you'd like to add?

No, I'm on the same boat as you with the alcohol stuff. It's so funny how the last few years, if you go back, it's been like, "Oh, I'm going to do X number of days," and there's been like this hard and fast rule.

And it was like, "Don't break it; just force yourself through it."

And it's like one of the things I realized in the last few weeks, especially with all the holiday parties and things that I've had, I'm like, "I just have to understand that there are going to be moments when you go out and you have a couple drinks with friends."

But it has to be an occasion, not just a night at home where you're like, "Oh, let's pop a bottle of wine and have some alcohol."

You know, it's like, "Yeah, I would much rather it be about a special moment with a friend enjoying a good meal than have it be just this constant thing that just kind of makes you not hungover but just not your best version of yourself."

You know, like you said about the anxiety stuff, like a lot of that you don't even realize it because you think that substance is actually reducing anxiety, but in reality, if it's too many times in a month, it's like depleting of all kinds of nutrients and B vitamins, and like it adds to actually more anxiety by just partaking in it.

So it's like this horrible thing!

Oh yeah! I mean, it also fucks up your sleep, right?

So I mean, the big one is like, yeah, it's going to reduce anxiety for two to three hours, and then you're going to feel like dog shit for 12!

And some people handle it better than others, but what I found also is that by doubling down on exercise, like exercise is the lead domino that tips over all of these other habits more easily.

Yes!

What I mean by that is if I know I have a half-day ski lesson that starts at 8:30 or 8:00 a.m., depends on the snowfall, and then I have more training later that night, if I have had two or three drinks the night before, I'm going to be punished!

Right?

There are consequences!

And maybe it's not feeling terrible, but my performance is terrible, and I hate losing!

I hate not improving! I love improving!

And it's a corrective mechanism, right? If I don't have that in place and I'm just sitting in front of a laptop, and maybe the performance drop isn't as noticeable, it's not as obvious, then it's harder for me to hold myself to that line, perhaps.

But yeah, you know, the more movement, more exercise, the more everything else falls in line in my experience.

Agreed!

Yeah!

All right, man! Well, I'm excited for 2025!

I am too! I got all sorts of crazy stuff coming!

I do too! I'm super, super stoked!

We're going to hang, presuming it's South by... well, I'll see you in January, of course!

Yeah, we're going to see each other in January, and then got a lot of fun stuff coming for South by!

We'll have to let people in on that at a later date in terms of when to come hang with us!

Yeah, yeah! We're going to do a little... we'll do something on stage and something fun!

Yeah, yeah! Around that time, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for news at some point in the near future, which should be very exciting!

Sounds good!

Good to see you, buddy!

Yeah, happy New Year and happy holidays!

Yeah, happy holidays! Happy New Year! Give your fam the best!

Yeah, same to you, man! Same to you and yours!

And for everybody listening, we'll put links to stuff we mentioned in the show notes: tim.blog/slp-podcast, and we'll put everything in there.

And I'll give one more recommendation, which is I'm totally unaffiliated with this, but in addition to the Way, I've been listening to a recording which was actually sent to me by a friend who took the audio tapes and converted them into MP3.

But there's an easier option because I found it on Audible; it's called "The Present Moment: A Retreat on the Practice of Mindfulness" by Thich Nhat Hanh.

So Thich Nhat Hanh, I've been a fan of forever, and his books had a huge impact on me, but I'd never heard his voice.

I had never heard his voice, and this is a recorded retreat, yes, with guided meditations and so on.

I know this retreat!

Yeah, it's amazing from Thich Nhat Hanh, and it is quite mesmerizing.

And I mean, he's got the accent, which gives it like the necessary level of like exotic gravitas, which always helps.

But I will say that the Way sort of greased the groove for me to be more open to this, and when I've just been like laying in the bath after like doing a bunch of activities after my night harvest or whatever, and I'm really sore, I will listen to these chapters from "The Present Moment."

Let me give one book recommendation as well; I'm not affiliated with it.

Fire away!

By Bruce Grayson, MD, it's called "After."

Have you heard of "After"?

I have! I had Bruce Grayson on the podcast!

No way!

Yeah, yeah! Holy shit! I got to go listen to that!

Was it good?

It was outstanding!

Yeah, it was really good!

From the University of Virginia?

Yeah, so essentially this book, the subtitle is "A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond."

I'm like halfway through it, and I just like, I can't put it down!

Like, it's so good!

Yeah, and Professor Dr. Grayson is a very credible researcher.

This guy is not like handwavy woo guy in beads—nothing against beads, but you get the idea.

He's not like the archetype of some guy who's got like a heavy dose of conspirituality and can't really sort fact from fiction.

This is a very credible researcher, and he is fascinating!

And you know, I debated having him on the podcast or not for quite a long time, and then I realized, "What am I so afraid of?"

Like, I actually feel quite good about his documentation, the research he's put out, and his observations don't ring as wildly speculative.

And these are documented phenomena; like people have these experiences, so let's take a closer look at near-death experiences.

And I'm really glad I did it!

I'm really glad I did it!

But I was hemming and hawing for probably a year or two simply because I didn't want to... I was worried that it would open the door to criticism of not being sufficiently skeptical or critically minded with guests.

But he delivered what I hoped he would deliver, which is a very...

That's awesome!

Sober, fascinating account of a well-reported phenomenon that is poorly understood that he has researched for several decades now at this point.

Yeah!

Which he became interested in quite accidentally and reluctantly.

Oh my God! The story about how he became interested in it and what happened to him is just wild!

It's bananas!

I won't ruin it, but people check out the book or check when the podcast comes out.

A couple years ago?

No, the podcast came out like a few months ago!

This is recent!

Oh jeez! I got to go check it out!

Awesome!

Yeah, it's amazing!

It's fun!

It's fun! I'll link to the Dr. Grayson episode as well for folks!

Yeah, "After." Didn't Daria also read that?

Yeah, that's how I had it! It was in my Audible library, and she's like, "You got to read this!"

And like when you share an Audible library, you just see what your partner's buying!

Yeah, cool!

And so I just downloaded it, and yeah, it's been awesome!

Dig it!

Yeah! Awesome, brother!

Well, lovely to see you as always! Give a hug to Dardar and the kiddos and Toasty for me!

We'll do! Please pet Molly for me and tell your parents I said hello!

And happy holidays, brother! I love you!

Yeah, I love you too, buddy! I'll see you in January!

Yeah, love you too, buddy! I'll see you in January!

Happy holidays!

Happy holidays!