Hi, I'm Kara Swisher editor-at-large at recode you may know me as the author of the 400 hour work week, which is my book about working three jobs and never sleeping. But in my spare time, I'm just a reporter and you're listening to Rico decode a podcast about power change. And the people you need to know were part of the VOX media podcast Network today in the red chair. I'm thrilled to have back Tim Ferriss the host of the popular podcast the Tim Ferriss show. He's also the best-selling author of books such as the 4-Hour workweek the 4-Hour chef and tools of titans the tactics routines.
And habits of billionaires icons and world-class performers much of his work is built around advice and there are a lot of people looking for some guidance right now. So we were thrilled to have Tim back on Rico decode welcome. Thanks for having me back. So Tim, let's get started. Like you've been doing a lot on your podcast about coping and adapting and things like that. So let's just get into it right now. I want to talk about other things too. I know there's coronavirus isn't the only thing in the world but it kind of is so talk a little bit about how you're approaching this and in terms of your audience and yourself and different things that
Thinking about right now.
I've been testing a lot. This is week six or seven of quarantine for me. I ended up self isolating early with my girlfriend because I have some pre-existing lung issues and
eyewitnesses like January or February
didn't know this would have been I guess mid-February. Hmm, and I have concluded and this this is not a tactic. Perhaps we can get into tactics.
I don't talk about that but that some degree of leniency with oneself and being gentle with oneself. At least for me has become guiding principle number one and what I mean by that is
In the early phases of this quarantine for me. I'm reading about Isaac Newton and how the year of isolation during the plague was the most productive year of his life and found myself. Just self-flagellating 24 hours a
day. No. No the
hell am I not Isaac Newton? What am I doing wrong? And instead being consumed by news and seemingly schizophrenic / manic depressive swings and
Optimism and pessimism and I find that in my experience what you resist persists. So if I begin to get angry at myself for being angry, of course that perpetuates the anger and so on and so forth. So the the sort of rule number one has been allowing myself quite a bit of slack in the system for being unproductive for being nervous for being afraid for being fatigued.
And so forth and so on and and then there are there is the ritual and the routine which saves one from whim and distraction and I think that's certainly what I've been focusing on is building scaffolding around which I can maintain some semblance of Sanity.
So what is that? Sometimes it manifests itself in the first one in the being kind to yourself? Let's talk about that one. How does that happen? The way
that manifests is really as a
A referee in my own mind when aggressive self-talk begins on a loop, right? So it's getting an exact exactly. I'll give you an example. Yeah, I'll give you an example. So an example would be there are three or four things that have been on my to-do list for probably two weeks now and they are just getting pushed from one day to the next to the next to the next these are important things.
I know they're important. They're all uncomfortable and I keep pushing them. Eventually they will get done and I had a really good podcast that I recorded this morning. I was very happy with it. It took a lot of preparation and in the hour or so afterwards, I slipped into berating myself for not doing these these two items and the gentleness with oneself took.
The form of basically a referee if you can imagine a referee jumping in like hey now hey now hmm. Let's let's call a truce here for a second and recognize that your pattern Tim is beating yourself up and really sort of driving yourself from a place of scarcity or scarcity mentality as opposed to so you're running away from things as opposed to towards things and perhaps this is a good time rather than beat yourself up about these to do.
Items, like you've been doing all week to try to bask in the positivity of what you just did and recording this podcast. And so it's really an edit function on my inner
monologue. But how do you do that? Because I had that happen this morning. I'm moving to a house and I had finished stuff and I just didn't want to do it and I just lay there on the bed and stared at the ceiling and I was like, oh I can't you know, I'm super productive. I really am compared to a lot of people but I felt like I was letting myself down and then at I just decided I'm like, you know what?
I'm just gonna lie here and stare at the ceiling and I'm just going to end that I'm not gonna be mad about that box over there that I'm furious about kind of stuff and it was really hard from a mental point of view to do it and not again pick up the phone and look at the news and we'll get into Tech stuff how it impacts you later. But but it was a really interesting exercise because it was super hard to do that super hard to like give yourself a break
it is it is hard and I think that almost any type A personality whether they write a book that is the
And our work week or the 4-Hour workweek if they are hard-wired on some level for achievement or have been conditioned to focus on that that it's it's tremendously difficult to pause and appreciate what you've done or say to yourself for today. This is enough and much like the component ingredients or the
Prerequisites that go into certain types of achievement. I think that there are practices that you can piece together and with repetition become better at when it comes to these things. Right? So for instance, I am doing more journaling than I perhaps normally would these days in the mornings? There's an option called the 5-minute Journal. There's another called morning Pages by Julia Cameron and these end up
Turning into oftentimes a gratitude practice of sorts, which is on some level the opposite of an achievement practice. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I do think they're sort of opposite sides of the coin and then again at dinner, I'll sit down and my girlfriend and I have been as one might expect cooking a lot more together and sitting down lighting a candle which we don't normally do right right lighting candle making.
Ritual of eating actually at a different table than we normally would because the kitchen table has been commandeered to become my my office. Yeah, and we will then talk about our favorite frames of the day. Very simple. You have to use them to pick one moment. That was a highlight of the day every day is going to have a highlight even if they're all low lights. There will be one that is higher and and these are suppose counterbalancing practices that
that are helping to maintain some level of mental health, but I will be the first person to admit that there have been a lot of struggles. This is that this hasn't all been smooth sailing and it makes me think about a conversation I had with a Danish friend of mine several years ago because the Danes and I want to say the singaporeans maybe the Costa Ricans have been put on the in the in the gold silver bronze listing for the world's.
Best pecan trees right world's happiest people and I asked my Danish friend if he thought that was the case and if so, why and he said oh, yeah. Yeah that seems about right and he said the secret is low expectations. And so I actually think there's something to that and that there's a place for optimism, but if you are consistently forcing yourself into an extreme of optimism, which we see a lot in the markets right now for instance.
That you are in a way setting the scene for consistent disappointment. That doesn't mean you have to be cynic but if you have low expectations and hope for the best, but sort of plan plan for the worst. Then you are constantly going to be pleasantly surprised. It's like if your stock drops 20% instead of
90% going to be straight you're going to be thrilled. Well, I'd call that a negative. I have always put the world into optimistic pessimists pessimistic.
Optimists optimistic optimistic and pessimistic pessimists obviously and I'm an optimistic pessimist meaning when something works. I'm like, wow, that was okay like good like yeah, but I expect the worst and hope totally has kind of thing which is an interesting thing. All right, let's talk about the idea of getting one of the things that you talked about when you're talking about people being disappointed as you have a go-go culture in Tech or and not just Tech but a lot of places but especially in Tech this hustle porn doing things like all the time, you know, killing yourself what?
It happens when this comes flat up against a virus, which doesn't doesn't care if you want to go go go. How do you recalibrate
that yeah, I well I've spent whether by Design or by Chance the last few years trying to solve for this. Yes. Yes. I've had a little bit of practice, but I would say that let me speak first to what happens to a lot of people present company meaning me included.
and that is there comes a point where I think if you've been living life in sixth gear and your your two gears so to speak or park and sex that you have trouble navigating life and many aspects of life and sort of pulling off of the Autobahn and then driving through neighborhoods at 20 to 30 miles an hour take some practice if that's not what you're accustomed to and I think that that is true for
this type of circumstance where perhaps that something that would have taken say a decade or 20 years to retirement or to family to to cause a course correction is now happening in a very compressed fashion. And I think that's happening to individuals. I think that's happening to companies. I think that's happening to technological Trends is we're seeing the compression of timeline.
Which is really really interesting to me. So if people were going to get divorced two years from now, they're going to get divorced in the next two months. If there are going to get married in the next four years. Maybe they get married in the next year. If your co-founders and you were on the the slow descent to dissolution. Then you might have a spectacular implosion and in all of these cases if we want to reduce it to the personal. So let's say you're kind of crashing into this wall called covid you can no longer.
Travel at up at a million miles a second with the work that would normally consume you in my case because I do like traveling fast. I do enjoy that speed even though I've for medicinal purposes tried to ratchet that back a bit. I still find it very intoxicating and I think that that can translate into a lot of anxiety when you're suddenly held in place as would be the case now.
And I'll give you an example of how reefers and questions for me has been very helpful. And I recognize that this is pretty high up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but it can be applied to other other things. A lot of people are panicking about money finances investment right now and I felt say a few weeks ago that I had to make a lot of decisions quickly and that was causing me I think in part because I'd
Taken the speed from one compartment of my life and then being frozen in place that decided to while subconsciously taken it and just start to apply to other things and I realized two things number one is historically have made almost no good Rush decisions. I've made a lot of good fast decisions, but no good. Rush decisions. Secondly in this came about through morning pages. I realized that I could change the phrasing of default questions. I asked myself for instance.
Instead of saying what should I do with investing now? I could change that on paper and in my mind to what types of opportunities could I wait say three to six months for or before examining that will still that I believe will still exist. Right? And that that's real example. That's something I journaled on and
It produced answers right? So if our minds are meaning making machines if you ask yourself what the fuck is wrong with me, pardon me if I'm not sure if I can curse or not, but go ahead. Yeah. So if your if your default question is what the fuck is wrong with me your mind will serve up answers. It's kind of like if you ask Google, you know, why should I buy stock X or Y. Should I not buy stock X you're going to get a very long list of answers for both. So I have found that being trapped.
In a way at home leads you to feel trapped in your own head and that is particularly true. If you are asking disabling questions that perhaps with the busyness of normal life are less
dominant right there. Just thought there so you have all these distractions where you go places where which you don't have the distractions are not available to you to already to do that. One of the things that's interesting you just is the idea of fast versus rushed and I think one of the things that that
Likes to think about or the people you wrote about in your Titans book was the idea of how to make a decision that the proper way to make decisions. And I think fast has always been looked at as important that you have to move fast break things all the all the different things you read about. How does that change when you don't get to move fast or is there a way to move fast in this environment?
Well, it makes me happy and I'm glad you're asking this because it's therapeutic just for me to have a good sort of say it for myself. Well, as a reminder, I've been thinking a
lot has your doctor available to the otic things on Fox News. So I'm here.
They're they're
occupied winning pools are our national tragedy.
Yeah, they're they're all that they're both. They're both occupants of the happy to stand and I will say that there is there's an expression that was shared with me.
By a friend who's a former Special Operations in Military, and he said Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Hmm and that
applies take that apart from me break it down take it
apart. So slow is smooth. So let's just say you're in the in the military context if you were trying to do a drill with practicing
jammed rounds and reloading and switching between Weapons Systems. Let's just say going from like a primary weapon like a rifle of some type and to a like a sidearm like a pistol. If you try to rush the process or you go into it trying to maximize for Speed at all costs. You're going to make mistakes, which will ultimately end up with a higher cost both in terms of time.
Everything else. So the expression is slow is smooth and smooth is fast. So you practice doing things very slowly. And if you do think slowly without making mistakes, you can later optimized for Speed but you will very often beat the person who is just throwing technique out the window and trying to like crash headfirst through the finish line and I think that is very applicable to
to investing and I think that much of what we do is investing whether it's investing Capital energy attention emotion or otherwise and so I have tried to use this forced pause as an opportunity to examine the value of the pause and to also speak with friends to see
How they are not just trying to survive this get through it but use it as a golden opportunity a window of sorts that they can really benefit from and I think when when you are forced into park and first gear as opposed to park and six gear you can at least I've been trying to notice the end.
Pick A Part in not it's not a negative way the assumptions that underlie a lot of my decision-making and just stop me if I'm not answering the question but now please but the my feeling is that covid whether it's covid-19 whether it is any period of wartime or a psychedelic experience for instance. These are all non specific amplifiers of
undercurrents that exist in your psyche already and that it brings to the surface a lot that perhaps you at least in my case. I already thought I'd dealt with I'm like having I dealt with this already. Yeah,
but I think amplifiers is next.
Yeah, and so I flail a lot if I try to think my way through all these things so just so journaling has actually been a almost like I'm Jane Goodall.
And here I am
today and yeah, I'll be I'm gonna be I'm gonna be restless.
Yeah, exactly observing my own mind being like what the hell is this monkey doing? This is wild and I'm writing it down so that I don't reconstruct some very romanticized positive picture of what's actually going through my head. I write it down and I'm like this makes no sense at all. What I thought was the most compelling argument in the world makes absolutely no sense when you put it on paper.
So those are some of the ways that I've been trying to benefit from the slowness as opposed to feeling afflicted by the
slowness afflicted by the saw this okay. We're here with Tim Ferriss. We're talking about coping techniques for around coronavirus we go back and talk a little bit about resilience and I do want to talk about some of his Investments. He's been making especially in in psychedelics and other things and what's going on with those when we get back after this.
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Hi, this is Scott Galloway gay polygamist in a throuple raising Jungle Cats plotting the murder of my Nemesis
Jazz kidding. It's Scott Galloway better known as prop
G. I have my own podcast called property where we interview very smart people do an unfiltered no mercy breakdown of the news algebra of Happiness Our Moment to get in touch with our feelings because we care about each other.
Anyways, check out more about the property show at section 4
calm
podcast that dog is Unchained.
We're here with Tim Ferriss. He doesn't need any introduction. But I will he's the best selling author of many books like the 4-Hour workweek and his most recent one which was tools of titans the tactics routines and habits of billionaires icons and world-class performers. He also has a podcast is very popular called the Tim Ferriss show. So Tim, what are the things? I've been hearing from a lot of people because they're trying to sort of shift in there things aren't were shifting. Anyway, and you were talking about the idea of amplifying and I think it's more
Accelerating a lot of trends that were happening are now accelerating as you were talking about whether it's retail was in trouble before now, it's really in trouble and it's all sort of moving to where it is things that Tech was doing that were damaging or now trying to move towards being redeeming themselves. It's moving there faster talk a little bit of Ed and one of the things they've talked about rather than growth and GoGo is resilience. I've heard it from a dozen people. I've talked to it check and and everywhere this idea that you have to be resilient versus
and that's the key attribute going forward. Do you agree or disagree with this? What do you think about that concept? I agree. It's a nice buzz word. It's like glia like, yeah, I
like resilience more than more than hustle. So I'll go with resilience. I do like resilience. I stopped doing almost all my startup investing 2015 because things got very frothy term started getting very weird and the game became very difficult to play for someone like me who does not use other people's Capital not that that's a bad thing. I just
Now didn't didn't want to do that full time. And I think this is a very natural calling of the herd and it's easy to it's easy to believe when you read in the media a hundred times a day that this is brand-new for Humanity that this couldn't have been predicted shouldn't have been predicted there for all these huge companies should be bailed out etcetera Etc and resilience.
As far as I can tell is the ability to withstand or benefit from the unforeseen. They really has no has some meaning within the context of known knowns, but I feel like this is a cleansing moment for a lot of the glut in a bloated capitalist system. So people who were over levered are gonna have problems, right if you've taken on a lot of debt and you don't have to serve
Debt, if I mean, I've heard some really wild stories in the last few months. I mean, I've also heard stories of like these
Famous money families these dynastic wealth money families who are getting margin calls and literally are effectively broke. I mean it's wild and that that is that is a case study and you can see that on a corporate level certainly and also on a start-up level a focus on growth or greed to the exclusion of resilience and and seat belts, right? So, I think that pestilence is nothing new.
If we read that the lessons of History by will think it's an Ariel Durant, like pestilence has been with us since day one and it's going to be these types of sort of hundred-year events. I think are going to be somewhat uncontroversial are going to become more common. Right? And this is the type of thing that you have to have the ability to withstand. I think I know what are
those tools you need are you did all those interviews with everyone and they had
Certain qualities and we talked about that before or any of those change from your perspective of the people in your book about the tools that they
use.
The tools that is this a to develop individual resiliency companies
unless you know that you one of the your book was about the tools of Titan, you know, what they what are their tactics and routines do they work here or do they have to would you if you went back to them do you think they would be the similar or is it like well, actually when I said do this maybe not
so much. I think they would still apply and almost everyone in the book. I know well.
Thinks about worst-case scenarios and capping the downside or mitigating the downside very very regularly. Mmm. It's so if you talk to Drew a Dropbox, I don't want to put words in his mouth. But if you talk to someone like Luis Von Ahn a Duolingo or you talk to a lot of these folks. They're very cognizant of downside risk and even if you couldn't see it,
A bat hopping to a Pangolin hopping to someone in China and and knocking the entire world economy on its ass. I think that if you have practiced thinking about worst-case scenarios that even when the unexpected hits you will be better equipped to cope and make good decisions under duress. Hmm. I do think the toolkits still applies and it's like the more you sell like I'm really loving my military quotes today, but it's like the
more you sweat during peacetime the less you bleed during war time. I'd I think that there is something to that as it applies to the contemplation of possible Black Swan events and understanding tail risk, or at least looking at historical examples of tail risk. Like are you the person if I look at some of the people who have done best in in our current climate with
Covid-19. There are the people who bought books on the Spanish Flu the so-called Spanish Flu in mid-February, right? There were not necessarily. They hadn't decided to take covid. Seriously in the sense that they're on the farthest end of the spectrum of what people would have been called alarmist, but they were they were educating themselves on historical examples to try to better.
And what the worst case outcomes could be and I think those people have been as far as I can tell quite well. If not, well prepared. They've been very
adaptable. What about the concept of the idea of being too alarmist now? I don't know think they're not taking this too seriously. But right now today we have we have this I don't even know if it's a real fight or not this idea that we should open up and get going versus stay in place and wait till the storm passes. It seems to be such a
Twitchy Society we've built now that we can't even sit still for this important amount of time where it's communicable where it's where it's very it's a very relevant virus here. What how do you change that idea or get people to stay in place or have that implication just to move constantly
this this is a thorny one because I feel like I used to have an informational Advantage. Let's call it a month month and a half ago.
Go but once we get into the 3D chess board of politics and theater and sort of WWE style fights in the media every day. It ends up above my paygrade pretty quickly, but I will say that from an evolutionary standpoint. We are who we are with however many billion people on this planet because we have a tendency to overreact. We are under penalized for
Overreacting and very very penalized for under-reacting as a species if we're just looking at Natural Selection. So I think the natural inclination is to overreact but as soon as things become politicized, I think that we overall we are able to in some senses override or mute are are better instincts, but the question of like
Weighing deaths against economic collapse. It's it's not a question that I really know how to wrap my head around honestly.
Are you surprised that it's being I just hearing from a lot of technical. They're like, let's just get started. I'm like are you thinking you have children? Do you have like it was an interesting discussion and I and at the same time. Everybody wants to leave everybody wants to get out and he wants to get back to normal which there isn't a normal. How do you then decide when to restart? I mean do you think about that?
I mean do you hear you are you going there longer than other people and it does take its toll whether you realize it or not. It takes a soul heavily. For some reason that it's kind of hard to grok why just staying home is so hard for people because it should be comforting being home should be wow. Great. I've always wanted to stay home. But now I can't how do you manage that idea of wanting to get started? And what does that look like for you?
Well, I'm in a very I'm in a very fortunate position because I don't have a lot.
Large organization that's dependent on working in person. It's been it's always been a distributed team. But if I think about I guess so I can speak to a few things I can speak at least to my personal predisposition because I'm perhaps a an edge case but nonetheless I get to decide when I read engage and I think that the extremes if I put myself in that category can kind of inform the
In but not vice versa so I can choose to re-enter assuming there is no shelter in place for everyone. Like if they opened everything up tomorrow. They said you know what this is all been a huge overreaction. All restaurants are opening back to normal back to the gym. I would not go to the gym. I would not go to restaurants. I wouldn't believe that because there have been so many points where we've been either.
Misled through incompetence or misled through disinformation like the claim that masks don't do anything. I mean come on. So the position I've had from the very beginning is a very conservative one, which is we have a hundred plus years of data on influenza. We do not have anything approaching that don't even have one year of good data on Star scope to covid-19. So until I have more confidence.
And in the conclusions which swinging all over the place on a weekly basis right now. I am going to assume the absolute worse and act accordingly and I
said this is very contagious and could kill
you right and I could be proven wrong. But the cost of me spending more time at home is very minimal compared to the cost. If for instance I take a serologic test.
I test positive great. I've then assumed which I would say mistakenly that I'm automatically immune and I re-engage and then I get sick and I have not just lung damage. But kidney damage possible brain damage. The the calculus makes no sense. Right? We don't know what level of exposure and antibodies confers immunity. We don't know how long that immunity if it exists how long it lasts. There's so many
unanswered questions that I think even if the entire country were given the go-ahead to reopen and we're already seeing this in China also people aren't as dumb as politicians might assume them to be the sense that humans really don't want to die and if they are able to curtail their activities, I think they will curtail their activities now on so one of the questions I'm asking myself for instance is not
how can I invest in the companies that have been damaged to the most that are still good that are fifty percent fifty one percent likely to survive its which companies whether the economy reopens whatever whatever the hell that means in six weeks or in six months can continue to do well.
All right. So, how do you think that what is that? What is that? How does that calculation go?
Well, I look at companies that have seen.
Benefit from and a lot of my bets have already been placed. So it's really looking at a portfolio, even though I stopped in 2015. I have let's just call it 50 bats looking at the portfolio and trying to determine who is who is actually seeing an uptick in customer acquisition and so on during this period of time Duolingo would be a great
example. Yeah. I was just thinking that when you mention it.
Yeah Duolingo is a fantastic example. I think there are
Quite a next door. I'm sure is another and the list goes on and on then there are companies that are having a tremendous amount of difficulty. Right? I mean, I still have a large stake as an early advisor in Uber and you know, I haven't sold a majority of it and that could prove to be a mistake but I'm still optimistic for for a bunch of reasons, but it could be confirmation bias in wishful thinking but that's a trickier one. That's trickier than Duolingo. There are
more very about that one.
About how you think about that then about boober you're like, oh well people will get back to it. Right is that your is that your basic thinking or
my thinking because I've been tracking this for very long time. Right? So I was able to go to mostly cash and mid-February outside of a few large positions like like uber and I sold a portion of that so that I would have liquidity for other things, but I just I was a very deliberate choice on my part to hold on to the majority of it.
And the the way I thought through that and it's important to take this with a huge grain of salt, right? Because I basically I mean I found the Willy Wonka golden ticket and I'm like to say that's from skill, but there's a huge huge element of luck and chance and everything involved but nonetheless the way I thought through holding that was and I had some some very good advice around this. Well, we'll see if it's good advice but is
That ride-sharing in some respects is very crowded. Even though you have effectively a two-horse race in the United States just as the herd is being called in just about every sector that will be true and ride sharing and Uber is very very well capitalized. So for instance, they also have ubereats as an augmentation to the ride-sharing.
New so before I decided to hold I was like, all right stocks at 40. Let me rehearse and this comes back to kind of stoic rehearsal of the worst case. Let me visualize what I will feel like if this goes to 14 or $15 and Mi. I will want to sell when that happens and will I be able to not sell and so I mentally rehearse that and I thought through like dhara I
Smart guy I don't know him personally, but he's heavily incentivized he I think has made some very smart decisions. If the entire ride sharing business needs to begin to constrain expenses, you know, perhaps Uber then number one built up their delivery business ubereats to an even greater extent number two. There are a lot of assumptions in this right number to their competitors.
He's possibly including lift have to Blink first with certain types of cost cutting like say suspending autonomous driving RDA, which is a huge cost center and that alone would fundamentally and greatly change the balance sheet for both of these companies and I don't see ride-sharing disappearing. It's very
hard for you. So directional you're talking about things that are directional you're thinking directionally. I'm thinking directional. I'm also
thinking that
higher unemployment
could in some respects lend itself to a greater number of drivers and I I would anticipate like if we're if we're talking about my fear or hesitation around for instance going to movie theaters, no fucking
way anytime
soon going before but yeah, but let's just say movie theaters public transportation. Yeah, it's Subways buses Etc. I think that as soon as
muting
exists again, even in part. Let's just say 10% of the workforce goes back to commuting if they do not have their own cars. I think there's going to be tremendous hesitancy around public transportation if people can afford something like Uber X, right and Uber will do what ride sharing is doing in Asia. They will likely add masks and bad masks Plexi glass or plastic screening and it will get to a point I think.
It feels certainly safe for the public transportation. So I'm cautiously optimistic now, we could
just want to walk someone through how they're thinking of it. Yeah, that's how I'm thinking about it. Now, you're still waiting to make investments. Correct? You're just sort of sitting on making Investments. Now you are and what give me an example of just one Investments and then the next section. I want to talk about your investments in Psych what you're doing at John's house. I could Alex. Yeah like a dog. So give me one example of something you just invest you and why
yeah, so I'll
I'll give you an example. So I invested for me took a pretty large position actually in now I have to say this because you know, some of the world's best investors. Okay, there's no reason I should have confidence that I'm one of them, but I can walk you through my decision making but I just wanted to be really clear to people that see how this this is. This is Tim kind of playing this in stock picker, so I will be making
King more investments in startups ideally with the capital to be deployed and say years time. I think that I don't want to invest in companies that were bloated a year ago necessarily. However, there are certain companies. I find really appealing on multiple levels. I'll give you one example and that is Shopify.
Ah, yes and interview the CEO. Yeah,
Toby so he's I'm sorry. Yeah, he's spectacular and I was the first or first of two.
Two advisers to Shopify when they had eight or nine employees and then all the way through IPO and then I at the time I wouldn't say Panic sold, but I sold pretty soon after lock up because at the time it was a really meaningful sum of money to me and that was that like $30 per share. So if you look at the Shopify now, I think it's trading at five hundred and forty dollars to share
some well done.
Yeah. Well, here's the thing. Yeah, I sold at 30. So oops now the but the decision this is where I think
This period of time is also been valuable for me is to really look at how people are making decisions. Not necessarily the outcome of those decisions because you can have good process and bad outcome as you might have in poker for instance and you can have really bad process and just when win the lottery and that doesn't reflect skill. You see that all the time and started investing. All right, so I wanted to Think Through process and I don't regret having exited the Shopify position then because it was
Real life-changing sum of money for me at the time it made sense. But I've gone back in and if the guys hear this that this they'll probably crack a smile because I haven't talked to them about it. So you're the kind of the first one to know but when they suspended their guidance, that's the right term a few weeks ago. They were really punished for it. And I find it very difficult given the management who I believe in
So strongly given that we are and I'm getting the numbers wrong. But let's just say somewhere between 17 and 8 and 20 percent e-commerce where China's like 79 percent is that Shopify will be smaller two to three years from now. It seems very unlikely to me now whether the stock price currently will sort of reflect that as a multiple of what it is today. Who knows but so I
But I bought the stock right after they suspended their or shortly after they suspended their guidance and have been looking at their companies. I've been looking at for a very long time that I believe in and if I feel like they're being unfairly punished, then I might put money
in. All right. Well that makes sense. We're here with Tim Ferriss. He's obviously well known author and also has a wonderful podcast called the Tim Ferriss show we get back. I want to talk to him about his investments in psychedelics, which he's doing with
with the Johns Hopkins and how he thinks that's going to go especially when thinking about health care in general and mental illness and things like that and mental problems people have and depression. It's a great topic to talk about now.
We're here with Tim Ferriss. We're talking about a lot of things but I do want to talk to him about his Investments. I've wanted to come for a while in and psychedelics the what he's doing talk to me about where you are right now and a lot of people, you know, it was written about at the time when you made these Investments talk about what you're doing exactly and why you're doing it where you think it's going to go because it's a really interesting right now because especially around the opiate addiction issue and then right now people need more inspiration and some of this stuff looks pretty promising
it does.
I in my entire life have never been more interested in and dedicated to any field and by field in this case, I mean psychedelic science research related to psychedelic compounds in that category. You would find psilocybin which is the psychoactive component of so-called magic mushrooms.
Selasa be cubensis generally, although for studies. They use synthesized psilocybin LSD, certainly, although that has more political baggage. So it's not as record researched. Although I will be funding some research related to that oversees actually and I've been principally involved with two institutions. I will be involved with more but Imperial College in London with Robin Carhart Harris they started
The first the world's first dedicated psychedelic Research Center and more recently Johns Hopkins with Roland Griffiths Matt Johnson, and they're in their entire team which is incredible. And the the reason for my involvement can certainly speak to my personal experiences, but the data speak for themselves in the sense that if we look at as a category what you
Viewers intractable psychiatric conditions, these are mental illnesses or psychiatric disorders that have no true. No, true effective treatment post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD opioid use disorder opioid Addiction eating disorders. Anorexia. Nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder obsessive-compulsive disorder treatment resistant depression.
Ian and these have all been failed by I think that's pretty uncontroversial to say failed by conventional treatments. Yes, and the the results that you see say in smoking cessation at this point with some of these I could all compounds
I think will force us in a way to completely revised our understanding of how these these illnesses exert their effects why they manifest and their possible treatments mean you have the degree and duration of sobriety correlated to the strength of mystical experience for instance with psilocybin.
And you can see a duration of effect in terms of anti-depressive effects for something on the order of 6 to 12 months or longer with two or three sessions. There is no real biochemical explanation for that with current Psychiatry and that's very exciting
to me. So what what got you
You doing this making these Investments now, I've interviewed Michael Pollan and many other people in this area. One of the things that fascinates me about it was the one is sort of the titillation effect, like you're saying the criminalization of LSD and sort of the links to you know, what was going on in the Nixon Administration. He was talking about how we never really got a chance to really study these drugs. How do you one overcome that idea? Because whenever I say, this is really when I give speeches I said this OST stuff is really to everyone giggles.
Don't know why hahaha drugs and I'm like no, we've never studied them in the way. They need to be studied and what if they're the way the way works out if you do it in a medical setting if it's done not as you know, just we're having fun. Everyone is gets high kind of thing. And it's a really interesting that that's one is to overcome one is the is the societal fliction of not wanting to go there to is the crew, you know, criminalizing a lot of these things and three is the idea that it gets sort of cast as like Silicon Valley people wanting to
to come up with the next startup idea or something like that. I can't tell you how many people have said let's do Ayahuasca to here. I will think of a start-up I'm like, you know, what I would love to talk about PTSD or depression or solving, you know real real problems, which is not I mean, I'm glad you come up with ideas like that, but talk a little bit about why how do you overcome one is societal ideas around these drugs. Secondly the criminalization part in this country especially and how you get real money to do actual research on these things.
Yeah.
I'm happy to speak to all that because of had to think a lot a lot about all this for the Hopkins Center. I helped raise about half the money which was eight eight and a half million on on my side and I think that right. Let me address these a bit out of order. So raising the money is on some level easy for me to do once we get up into larger amounts say 30 million a hundred million dollars.
It becomes more challenging but it's been easy ish to do it because a lot of science is saturated. If you want to apply funds to a breakthrough in cancer research you almost I mean, you have to be sent a millionaire or a billionaire to I think have hopes at least if we're looking at the kind of the top level current research that is known to have that.
Then packed whereas with psychedelics. I think a very in some ways very analogous comparison to the to illustrate the opportunity in terms of minimal dollars in maximal Impact is Kathryn McCormick and the development of oral contraceptives. I mean she put in I want to say the the equivalent of something like 20 million dollars over 10 years and fundamentally bent the Arc of History, right? I mean it
it's impossible to overstate the impact that all that had end importantly this comes to your legalization question. The oral contraceptive was first approved by the FDA not for contraception, but for menstrual disorders, so there are scientific mechanisms through which you can for instance get drugs re classified from One schedule to another and my goal. Therefore has been to avoid
X as much as possible and really focus on the phase 3 trial medical route for which there are mechanisms to get these things reclassified the so the fundraising was I think easier than expected because one you can point to a very asymmetric bet which is appealing to techies and to also appealing to people who are accustomed to
Investing right? It's like, oh I can put in a million and I could potentially have a billion dollar impact and I know my loss is kept at a million and it's over a few years. Okay, fine. Let's do it. I'm also playing with a lot of my own money. I mean, it's not playing it is
you are two significant amount of money. Yeah Lenny. So the idea is to put this money into these what Johns Hopkins for example, you're putting the money in and what are used for searching? What are they using
it? Yeah. They're they're they're they are doing so
Is related to treatment resistant and major depressive disorder. They are looking at and will be looking at Eating Disorders. They will be looking at and specifically psilocybin applied as an intervention to all of these with very good study design opiate or opioid use disorder. So let's just call that opiate addiction and
it's my head of the stuff that was supposed to help. You know, I mean like yeah correcting.
Yeah.
Exactly and it's in that Dan and I have a lot of personal connection to this because my best childhood friend died of a fentanyl overdose a few years ago. My aunt died of perks at plus alcohol about a year and a half two years ago. So these things hit close to home and I think they hit close to home for a lot of people when I was at the milk and Global conference a year ago, or maybe maybe a year and a half ago.
I mean, this is a highfalutin crowd right and fast fancy fancy crowd and I asked I asked the crowd first. I said raise your hand if you know someone who is depressed, even though they take antidepressants and basically the whole room raised their heads and then I asked raise your hand if you know someone who if you know anyone who has had their lives damaged or destroyed by opiate use or alcohol every hand goes up right these These are afflictions.
And Mortal risks that do not discriminate based on socio-economic class. It's across the board. So so some of the studies Alzheimer's will be another study. They'll be looking at the impact of psilocybin on Alzheimer's and specifically depression associated with Alzheimer's but as secondary outcome measures, they'll be looking at cognitive changes. If any which is very interesting to me and these are all really big problems, right?
And very exciting opportunities and the idea that you could take a few million bucks and begin studies and I want to give credit also to the I can't ever remember the order it's if it's the Alexandria and Stephen Cohen Foundation or the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation, but the
contamination show and then it's Steve first, but go ahead right
Steven. So in any case the Komen Foundation put up the other 50
to 60% of the balance to support this entire Center.
So how do you get Society to think about this and government that think about it in a more, you know to not to move away from the eye the the the generalized imagery of these magic mushrooms lsdexception as sort of a recreational thing either way back when for the hippies or now for tech people or whatever. How do you move it to the mainstream from your
That's the goal presumably.
Yeah, I think that you take it one step at a time. So you don't you focus on the thin end of the wedge that you're using for legal reclass classification first in the sense that before you can get it to mainstream you really need research to be faster and less expensive right now. I might be getting the number somewhat wrong, but to use synthetic psilocybin for research purposes. So you have to operate within the
the parameters and approvals of The Da the FDA etcetera instead of the fifty dollars. It might cost to get that on the street in the form of chocolates with mushrooms and bedded. I mean, it's gonna be like 1,500 bucks person or it may be many thousands more. It's it's astronomically expensive and very it very slow. So my objective is to focus on I'm going to answer your question longitudinally, but let me answer this first which is pushing the
It's ahead. So that research can be done more quickly less expensively and looking that at that is Step. Number one. Once the data have been collected at least based on some of the studies that have already been completed the the the results should speak for themselves. And if we if we use acronyms that have a lot of political historical baggage like LSD, it's a lot harder which is part of the reason why Scylla
Simon which is hard to say, even if you're used to saying it and even harder to myself right rather than mushrooms is it's a it's a very neutral term right and yet the effects are somewhat similar. I mean they're they're not identical LSD is it's much more promiscuous from a receptor standpoint then is psilocybin, but they are quite similar. They can both be used for instance with alcohol use disorder.
And in fact little known fact, I don't know if Michael Pollan mentioned this when you spoke with them, but they'll Watson the founder or at least co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous at one point wanted psychedelics to be one of the steps because he found sobriety through a psychedelic experience. There's a lot of research before the kibosh was put on it by Nixon related to alcoholism and LSD, but using psilocybin or
Molecules that have less political baggage is very helpful. But even if they have a lot of baggage like MDMA like a ecstasy when you see the effects on PTSD for instance and Maps dot org is a fantastic organization 501 c 3 that focuses on MDMA and PTSD. You see it's a their Phase 2 trials patients who on average had 17
Years of PTSD often severe or extreme symptoms that means effectively non-functional like curled up with the shades drawn unable to go to work who I can't remember the exact percentages, but I mean double-digit percentages who were asymptomatic after again, one, two, three sessions one, two, three sessions of four to six hours in duration with therapy before and afterwards, but that is so staggering.
A Goering compared to anything else that when you take something like that even with the connotations of MDMA might have if you take that to say the VA you take that to organizations who are spending billions upon billions of dollars on Treatment Center do not work.
Yeah, and then keeping people in
octaves, then it's it's just out of enlightened self-interest and economic benefit. I think I think your
data do you how is
Helped you personally.
Well, I would say it could be a long conversation. But the I'll give the upshot the upshot is I've struggled with depression and some cases severe depression almost my entire life and almost committed suicide at the end of college. I mean is very I've a lot of a lot of experience with
the darkest of darkness and I so I would routinely let's just call it a few times a year have these Dark Night of the Soul periods. It could be really extended and I mean god-awful and I understand and many ways self-created but nonetheless, yeah, they are very dark and I haven't had any such experiences in the last five to six years.
Hole, I mean that that defies any conventional explanation. It really does and that doesn't mean it's magic. Right? It means that it's underexplored and that's part of the reason that I feel so strongly about this and there are other compounds that I'm not funding Research into which I also find very interesting. For instance. I will say for suicidal ideation people who are suffering from acute suicidal ideation, I think
Ketamine is very interesting and there are some researchers in the Bay Area who have done a lot of good work with ketamine and there are legal ketamine clinics for chronic pain as well. Very interesting. But these compounds particularly those with Decades of safety data and while in some cases if we're looking at use by indigenous, we're looking at hundreds and thousands of years of use
but ignore them as you know, that's our guy. Yeah, our sons are right.
So are their experiences but let's just say psilocybin and ketamine very well-tolerated overall and given how inexpensive they could be. The risk-benefit is so attractive. I mean, it's like if anyone is looking to like where do you have the opportunity to have billions of dollars of impact with a million dollars? It's just there aren't that many
places. That is a really good way to put it. So, when do you think this is going to shift to you? Imagine this?
Is there's a lot of people involved and I hear it from various people but in terms of a real shift by the government by institutions using Johns Hopkins to me was a big sign of like this is you know a big
deal. I think there will be a shift in academic funding mean quite frankly. This covid situation is D. I'm not gonna say derail, but at least delayed a number of very very very big initiatives and announcements and that's true across the board for everything. So
Soco's but I've already seen and I do think that Imperial College as well as Hopkins who played a role in this that was kind of the intention all along was to put a lot of effort into this real top-tier research and treatment University IE Johns Hopkins so that their social proof and proven reputational upside for other universities to do to do the same. So I think that we are already seeing
On a tide shift in how psychedelic science and research and psychedelics is treated among academic circles, which is a big deal actually because younger researchers now see a possible career in
focusing on the right, which is part of the problem, right? So that's you don't want to get near it
because oh, yeah. It used to be a complete used to be a suicide mission that then it was a dead end and then it was unattractive and now it's attractive. So that's already happening on the
Old level if the science can be funded properly. I think we will see some major progress in the next two years and culturally. I'm the quite frankly. I think the cultural shift there's a risk the good news of with the cultural shift is is happening incredibly incredibly quickly. The bad news is it's happening incredibly incredibly quickly and you may end up in a situation where a lot of overzealous uninformed.
Short-term thinking and use related to psychedelics derails some of the scientific
right prompting. We really could use some magic mushrooms right now. Well, like the last thing we need is
some like Senator
son or daughter like yeah
do something stupid and running into traffic because they thought Ayahuasca was good for using for brainstorming like start-up ideas, right? Yeah. It's just that's that's a
misuse by Me. By the way one guy. Yeah having a good for you do that was like
Not with you tried for sure with you in any way, but I still don't want to close my mind to the idea that I think some of the stuff is so promising and it's really it's fascinating the historical elements of this stuff. How much has been badly bad PR around this stuff? I don't know how else to put it and and how much people have to I hate to say open your mind to the something like this, but really think about some of these issues especially, you know now with so much stress and anxiety is going to come out of this and so much talk about PTSD. We've got to find really interesting.
Ting ways and scientist scientifically proven ways is whether it's covid-19 whether it's opiates not opiates. Excuse me. Psychedelics. No opiates is what I would hope for, you know, it's a really important to be thinking really hard about how to how to cope with what's we're going to be coming out of which is which I think this is a really promising area. Anyway, Tim. I don't want to keep you any longer. I really appreciate it. Let me ask you one last question. If you had like give me two tips to get through this you're like since you've been at it longer or do we just just you know, I just
Posted something where I was I made a song. I've been all she did to scream but he has saw that I saw
that was that in Spanish was
it? No, no, but I'd love a Spanish for there's one. Yeah any language it was okay. Great. Yeah. Give it get me two or three tips. But you write books about tips and you jump in a cold pool. That was one of your tip I do I do actually I recently did
that. I actually I actually right behind me. We have a colorable. There's a chest freezer that has been repurposed with
Caulking it was being caught today so that I could turn it into a cold plunge be called getting getting
one you go to one of the places where you get froze at
though the cryotherapy no, I mean cryotherapy is fine. I prefer cold plunges. You have to be very careful not to electrocute yourself. If you're using something that is plugged in. Yes fair point but that is something that I use but I realize that's not within reach of a lot of folks start practical if you're on the 17th floor and New York
City or something.
On the shower cold and you could do this for you to do
culture, but I'll give I'll give a few tips for things that have helped me a lot. The first would be morning pages and I will show you exactly what that looks
like morning. Yeah
morning Pages. I've written a blog post about it on Tim Doyle blog people can just search my name and morning pages but morning pages. I won't spend a lot of time on it right now, Julia Cameron the artists way one of the practices that is fundamental to that.
Is morning pages and it's more therapeutic than I could possibly give it credit for. It's really remarkable. That's that's 1/2 is some type of movement every two hours or so it that's an arbitrary choice, but it could be five push-ups. It could be five jumping jacks. It could be taking as my girlfriend does and actually does with other people on Zoom.
Great, they love it is like a dance break for one song. It could be anything but moving. Yeah, moving moving mind-body not two separate things. They're very intertwined if your biochemistry is off physically your your your cognition is going to be off. Your emotional calibration is going to be off so movement is really really important. Okay, you can take Zoom classes as I am in 45 minutes with my girlfriend for acroyoga you can do anything via
The one of the zoom Skype joined whatever super fun. So yeah try to move that would be another I mean that's too but I'll give one more which is there's a book actually I'll give two more like if two more one that has nothing to do with me and one that is just a Shameless
Shameless plug, it's fine.
Yeah. All right. So three is a book called awareness by Anthony De Mello DEA me LL. Oh, it's incredible.
Polly short read it's very easy, and I've read it probably 10 times at this point. I've an entire book shelf in the guest bedroom in my house full of this book. So people can take them with that. Wow. It's it's very impactful for a lot of people doesn't catch everyone at the right moment, but that's that's right. And the last
is funny. I have all I had giveaway Strunk and white elements of style. But go ahead. It was good. Also a great one all surgery. I don't think it's quite as inspiring, but it dude you better.
Grammar, yeah, you do better grammar. And that's my feeling. You better go.
It's part of awareness. So awareness by Anthony De Mello. And then the last one would be sign up for my newsletter and get fun stuff sent to every
Friday. All right. All right. What is that? Give it up? Yeah.
It's it's it's called five bullet Friday there about I mean between one and a half and two million people who get in every week and it's and it's just the five favorite things that I've found that week so you can find that at Tim dot blog /i love Friday. All right.
It's just a dose of optimism and fun and a world of Doom and Gloom.
All right, thank you on that note. All right, Tim. Thank you so much for coming on reach. Oh DJ's has been a really fascinating discussion of on lots of different things. You can follow me on Twitter at Kara Swisher my executive producer Eric Anderson. Is it Erica America? My producer Eric Johnson is that hey esj Tim where can people find you online? But you just said that one is there anywhere
else that teamed up blog is everything you can find me or it has everything find me at T Ferris to ours to us on Twitter and then Tim Ferriss two r's two s's.
Us on Instagram and Facebook and everywhere else
great. If you like this episode, we really appreciate if you share it with a friend and make sure to check out our other podcasts pivot reset recode media and Land of the Giants just search for them in your podcasting app of choice or tap the link in the show notes. Thanks. Also to our editor Joel rob a special thanks to Squad cast dot f m thank you for listening to this episode of Rico decode. I'll be back here on Friday tune in then.
Hey, I'm Jason Del Rey. I'm the father of two young kids, which means like many of you right now. I'm working from home while trying to keep the kids learning and entertained and like you I'm using Tech products to keep my life together Google Classroom Facebook Messenger for kids NetFlix. All that on top of that list is Amazon and Amazon Prime as senior correspondent for recode. I've covered Amazon for 7 years now and I'm the host of the first season of Land of the Giants called the rise of am
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