Hello boys and girls. Ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. Thanks so much for tuning in this time around. We have my good friend, Derek severs back on the show, he's one of my favorite humans, I call them often for advice. He is hilarious and he will do his own introduction because I'm incredibly lazy or I was feeling playful and lazy in this conversation. He is a philosopher programmer musician, king of
Sorts that's how I would describe him. It is a very fun conversation. I really enjoyed it and you can find Derek's books including his latest useful, not true. Which we discuss at his website, sivir's.com or S IV, e dot RS, which is probably just about as confusing. To people as Tim DOT log, if you enjoy this episode, you should go back and listen to the 2015 conversation. I did with Derek. The very first one. You can find that at Tim top log /, Derek severs and many longtime listeners out
The nearly 800 episodes. I've done consider this their favorite or certainly one of their favorites. It is a barnburner of an episode. And now we're going to get to it first. Just a quick word about the sponsors who make this podcast possible.
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At this altitude. I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking the millions you a personal question. Now it's a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
For people who don't know who Derek siver's is, what is the brief overview of
Darryl? I have to like it. All right, I was a musician for many years and then I started selling my music online in 1997 when there was no PayPal and there was, you know, Amazon was just a bookstore. So I started a little thing called CD baby just to sell my music, but then it grew and became the largest seller of
Music online and I did that for 10 years until I got sick of it and sold it. And then I was a Ted speaker for a few years and then kind of threw myself into that completely. And then Seth Godin asked me to write a book. So I wrote a book and then people really liked it. So now, I've written five. Now I'm a dad in New Zealand thinking philosophically and live in my life but that
I thought you did a great job, thank you for that. You know, when I can't find a virtual assistant to do work for me, I'll ask my podcast.
To be much. I will also add number one, people, if you enjoyed this conversation which I'm sure you will not to apply any pressure to Derek, but I always have so much fun. Go back and listen to the other conversations also, because you will notice a few things. Number one, Derek has one of the most eclectic seavey's imaginable. He's worked in traveling circuses. He has played music at Pig fairs. He has been an entrepreneur. He has certainly been a philosopher code.
Odor and many other things but also I would say overarching Lee, crafted a life that is uniquely Derek's and frequently tests assumptions. And to I suppose bucket, one of what we're going to discuss today, changes his mind and finds himself zigging when he might have otherwise act or where other people are zagging. And that is part of why.
I enjoy spending time with Derick aside from The Dashing good looks and wit and charm of course, so let's begin. As we were brainstorming what we might chat about because we're hoping to catch up.
I suggested a few things, we've added a number of things around and we landed on things, you've changed your mind about things you're fascinated by people, you're studying not necessarily in that order. So let's start with things, you've changed your mind about or on. Where shall We
Begin? I've got five things for you. I'm starting small and getting big.
Coffee. I've never liked coffee. Every time I tried coffee, I went, yeah, I don't understand how you people like this. And even when I'd be with somebody that knew, I didn't like coffee, and we were out somewhere and they would go. Oh my God. This is the best coffee I've ever had my life here. I know you don't like coffee, but if you're ever going to try coffee, this is the one try a sip. And I said, okay, I'd like to try to get myself into this mindset. I'm gonna like this. I just never liked it.
So then I was in United Arab Emirates, and I was the guest of this emirati, man. We will get to later and he said, it is emirati, custom. You must have the coffee and I went, oh, sorry. I don't drink coffee. I just he said, you must have the coffee. I said, no really, I've never liked coffee my life because my friend you must have the it is emirati. Custom, you must have the coffee. All right, I took a sip like, oh my God.
This is really good. He was, that is emirati coffee. I went not you really there's something different about this. He goes. Yes, it's emirati coffee. Instead is that the one where they make it in the sand? He said, no, no, that's Turkish. He said, this is emirati coffee. So knowing that we were talking today and I was going to mention coffee, I texted him. I said, hey, what was that coffee? Because he said, there are only three places in Dubai that know how to make real emirati coffee. So he told me one but he'll be a
Well, if you're in Dubai and you want to try real emirati coffee, apparently, according to this emirati, try batil in Dubai for real emirati coffee. I've changed my mind on coffee. I now like, at least emirati coffee. There's one. Okay,
just for definition purposes. All right. I'll you know, I'll hold my follow-ups. There are going to be a couple of follow-ups. Including, how do you define M Rowdy? As I basically a Brahmin, the
UAE. Sorry, that's what we call people from United Arab
Emirates.
Everybody. If you are of the lineage, if you were a citizen of United Arab Emirates, you referred to as emirati,
what? It's special technique, special ingredient, that makes emirati coffee. So miraculous for
you, hey listeners. If you find out what's different about emirati coffee, please let me know. I went back, six months later, same thing. I tried emirati coffee and I like it,
severe social pressure baby. Yeah, that might be the
management Reading, pretty fast.
Pressure. It makes anything to
you. Must have it and it will it will be disastrous if you don't like it.
I don't know what it is but it surprised. Okay python. So I'm just going to include this because 23 years ago, I learned the Ruby programming language and I became fluent in Ruby and Ruby and python are as similar as Portuguese and Spanish but let's say Ruby is Portuguese where Spanish became more and more popular. So when I
And Ruby. It's like Ruby and python. What kind of side by side. Ruby was a little more popular at the time but then over the years python just took off and I refused to look at it as like no I chose Ruby I speak. Really I don't want to Learn Python. It's too similar. If I'm going to learn another language, it's going to be lisp or Haskell or something, really different. I'm not going to Learn Python. No. And so for years and years, I've been refusing and then just irrationally prejudiced against python. When I was choosing a new language for a new project, I considered everything.
But Python, and then I realized I had left python out because of my severe prejudice against it for no good reason. So I finally looked at the Python programming language and I went, oh my God, it's beautiful, it's great. Oh my God, it's wonderful. So now I love Python and that just felt amazing in my heart to be like, wow, this thing that I was prejudiced against for 20 years is actually wonderful. Oh cool. So coffee python. Number
two. Hmm. Shall I go on number three,
Let's go on
rats. Okay rat I brought a prop. I want to make this a good show for the first time ever appearing.
Are my little pet rats, okay? If you see on you
to look at that rights, we have two Rats on video there, sizable. Yeah, chunky monkeys, huh. They are
so cute. And they're so wonderful. And they're so affectionate, you can't. Maybe tell because I'm holding them up. Like, they owe me money right now, you know? But so, here's the deal years ago, I used to kill rats. I hated rat so badly. I lived in a basement apartment in Boston that had
Rats in and around the apartment. That would sometimes be blocking my entrance to my apartment, as I would come home, and I was tired. So, I killed many rats with great Vengeance. I hated rats. And then, just a few months ago, my boys said, hey Dad, can we get a pet rat? I was like, haha, and I just thought it was a, it was kidding. And he said A week later, he said, you know, that really kind of made me sad that you just shot down. My idea of the pet rat. I said wait you were serious said, yeah. But oh well why?
You would you want a nasty awful rat? As a petty said, no, they're not. Nasty and awful. Look. And he showed me some videos that rats are really sweet and they're really wonderful. They're smart, they're trainable. You can train them to do little tricks and, like, pick things out and like, go to a wallet and open it up and take money and bring it to you and get a
very useful in here. Skilled. Exactly. Interesting people.
Artful Dodgers. So it's like the difference between a wild rat and a pet rat. It's like the difference between a wild
Dog. And a poodle, the pet rats are really sweet. So no matter what you think of wild rats don't discount or don't hate on pet rats. They're actually really wonderful and cuddly and they're even clean. They use a litter box, they can control their bladder, like a cat. They prefer to go in a litter Bots and so they're really clean and wonderful. So, oh and wait. The lifespan. Their lifespan is two to three years. Which as a parent is really wonderful. Because when a kid says, I want a pet, you don't always want like a
Year commitment to, you know, the kid's gonna be away at College, you still have a pet that your kid wanted when they were 18, you know. So I like the lifespan is two to three years, which is, you know. So rats are good. Pets. And so, I love my little rats. We just got these two boys, but even more than loving the rats, I love that. I am now cuddling. What I used to kill like that, I now love what I used to hate, it's so sweet, like a cuddle them but it's like, God, I used to hate you. This is
Such a good feeling in my heart that I now love what. I used to hate and you'll see this is the theme of my five things today
really fast. What are the names of the two
rats cricket and clover, Kylie Clover and crazy. Cricket
climber, do they eat crickets for? Do they eat
actually? Will they do love clover but now they just kind of eat rat food from the store, they eat anything. It's like when you're making opportunity and you've got little leftovers, you've got little bits and crusts or little things that you just give it to the rats and they usually love it. It's great. I keep them in the kitchen.
That's perfect. That's what some folks in South America do with guinea pigs. Although the difference is they fatten up the guinea pigs on the table scraps and then they eat a pig's, probably not going to eat cricket and clover and
engine kick it in Clover, but I do like that kind of hang out near the kitchen and give them the scraps, okay? Number for China for China. So in 2010, I went to guilin China and then I went to Taipei Taiwan and
At the time China was rough. I was like I was walking over Rubble, the air was just choking me with its smoke in the sense of oil and everything felt very third world, very rough and I just thought, okay? That's what China is China. And a developing economy, it's just rough and then you go to Taipei Taiwan and it just feels like the most refined first world, beautiful version. It's like Japan, but with Chinese culture and I thought ah, someday I want to lend
In Taiwan because that's the really nice part of China. So here we are 20 24, 14 years later. I go to bring my kid on a school holiday to China for his first time and I thought, well, we'll start out rough by going to Mainland China, and then we'll move on to like the best of the best with the refined culture of Taiwan Taipei and it turned out to be the opposite that China was wonderful. We went to Shanghai and it was like,
The first world amazing refined silent because all the vehicles are electric now. So that was a very first thing I noticed as soon as I q-- I took the train from the airport. We got off in downtown Shanghai I'm surrounded by a hundred vehicles and I hear nothing it's just that's so nice. I like oh my God what's obvious is a real. I'd like 20 motorbikes went in front of my face like right there like you know, three meters away. I heard none of them. They was just the silent movement.
Like, this is so nice and the people were just so polite and cultured. And it was none of this like hacking and spitting that I associated with it before, like the shouting in the spitting.
Yeah. That's good to hear. I remember the spitting from my visits a lot of
spitting. Yeah. And even just transactionally you have to get Ali, pay your, we chat on your phone. First before you go, like attach it to your credit card. But then, once you're there, all transactions, are just people. Everything is so easy and they're beautiful. Like,
Rental bikes everywhere laid out in perfect color, coded cues. You can just walk up to one and go beep and step on the bike and then just go where you want to go and you drop it off, you go beep. And everything is just so civilized and wonderful also in it, completely changed my mind about China and then I don't want to sound like I'm thrashing Taiwan but it was just interesting that by comparison that I went to Taipei and I thought, whoa, if China's this nice imagine how nice Taipei is gonna be and I got
And it was kind of like stinky and trashy and they don't take credit cards or they don't have the apps. And so you have to pee cash everywhere and I'm like, Wow money and paper and coins and I was like, Wow, interesting. And so, I met with a Taiwanese woman for lunch that I'd emailed with before and she's an investor that goes to Mainland China often. And I mentioned something about this cautiously, as like I don't want to trash your home. I didn't say it like that, by just cautiously said, hi.
I noticed something and she said I'm glad you noticed. She said I noticed this too. She said I go to Mainland China's cities every 6 to 12 months and she said I feel like Taiwan maybe plateaued like 12 years ago like we kind of hit first world status and then stayed there almost like Japan. You know, it's like Japan used to feel futuristic now. It feels kind of stuck in the 90s, you know, fax machines and stuff, and which is kind of cute in a way like, again, not to knock it. It's just, it feels like it.
To a certain point and then it said, okay, we're happy here.
But yeah,
and she said, every time I go to China, she said there's visible noticeable, improvements, like every six months. She said it blows my mind that they just keep improving and keep pushing. So I read a book called China's worldview by David. Now Kweli that changed my perception of China's government to its really impressive. He's a guy that
In but not in China's government. And so, he kind of is trying to explain the mindset of China's government to Outsiders and it's a beautiful book. I highly recommend. If somebody wants to understand China better China's worldview,
China's worldview of just as a sidebar, note, your mention of Japan, I love Japan. And spent time in mainland, China, and in Taipei, it's time for me to get back to both of those. I've spent much more time in Japan, but when people are going to Japan for the first time and I can't wait to
to experience this futuristic view. 30 years ahead, I typically say look, especially if they're going to stay there for a longer period of time. I say you're going to love it and it is 30 to 40% Blade Runner and sixty to seventy percent DMV just like feeling nice, filling out, paperwork and triplicates and fax machine. It's going to drive you nuts. If you actually
To live there on some levels, right? There's so many beautiful things about it but yes, it does have the feeling of having Frozen in time in a sense as opposed to continued to inflect the way that it was perhaps some time ago need to get back to the east. So to speak. It's been a long time, aren't I think you
have actually, because of this newfound, love, I'm actually going to Shenzhen and Chengdu in a few weeks. Oh wow. And I just want to keep experiencing different Chinese cities.
You're going to do any factory, tours or see manufacturing there?
I'm just meeting with people, that's kind of how I travel these days. I tend to go to a place and instead of just, instead of seeing the sights, I want to meet the people. So I'm meeting with people that have emailed with over the years and just, I chose those two cities because I know a lot of people
there. Great can't wait to hear the report. So, I think now, I'm no mathematician, but maybe you have one more
smartass,
okay? Number five,
Dubai.
So this is my big
one because when I lived in Singapore, Dubai would often come up, people would compare the two and they would tell me things about Dubai about the shopping malls and the millionaire pandering in the Instagram hashtag e. You look at me, kind of crap. And Dubai was in my top 10 places. I never want to go in my life. Fuck that place. It sounds awful. Sounds like everything I hate in one place you could
couldn't pay me to go there.
But then I have to notice that feeling in myself and this is going to be that will get to like the theme when we're done with this number 5. But I had a flight from New Zealand to Europe that it changed planes in Dubai and I looked at that and I went to buy and I was like, wait a second. What is his Prejudice in me against to buy? It's like saying I hate artichokes but I've never tried artichokes right? Like, I hate to buy but I've never been to Dubai. Maybe I should go to Dubai. So instead of making it a three-hour layover, I made it like a three or four-day layover went. Well,
Okay, I'm going to Dubai for a few days. So I read a book called City of Gold, which was about the founding of Dubai and the creation of Dubai. And dude, it was so good. It is such a great book, anybody listening this, if you want a great read, read the book City of Gold about the history of Dubai. It is inspiring the wisdom and the foresight, and the boldness, it took to make that place happen, it was really just like a vision that saw its way.
Through to the end Against All Odds, right? So, super inspiring, then somebody said, oh, you need to read Arabian, Sands by this man named messager, and that gets into. Like the Arab Bedouin culture is written in the 1940s or 50s, kind of like a Lawrence of Arabia. Kind of guy like from England, but went through the desert and kind of became one with the better people and got to know the culture and wrote about it. So that was really inspiring. And then the United Arab Emirates itself as I learned
More about so Dubai. You know, is a city in a region inside the United Arab Emirates. It's one of the seven states, the Emirates in that country. So Sheikh Zayed. The guy that was really like the father of the nation. Was a really great dude. Kind of like when I moved to Singapore and I learned more about Lee Kuan Yew and started to really admire the decisions. He made it became a bit of a role model like learning about him. Like makes me want to be a better person, you know, I just noticed that it actually subtly influences, my actions and so when I'm in Singapore.
Or I feel like a little bit infused with the the role model. Like I feel the presence of the role model of Lee, Kuan Yew. And when I'm in UAE, I feel a little bit inspired by Sheikh Zayed because he was just such a great generous, dude. And also, I think it's interesting that Arab culture gets a really bad rap in the media, like Hollywood portrayal is usually some like white actor with brown makeup being stupid saying, you know, I like this building, I'll buy ten of them, you know, I think I want a penguin colony in the desert, you know, make it happen.
And the kind of portrayed as fools that are too rich. And so getting to know the culture felt like this is really interesting. I really had the wrong idea about this culture, okay? So as I read these books, city of golden Arabian, Sands I have a thing on my website where I always show what I'm reading and I take notes from the books and I put notes on my website and a friend of mine that lives in Muscat, Oman saw my reading list and he said, what is your interest in this?
I've noticed you're reading books about Middle East. And I told him I just really interested in Arab culture and he said, you must meet the man from tamashii. I said, what? And he goes go to tamashii.com. TA Mas heee.com and he said, you will see a shoe store. His name is Muhammad cousin. He designs sandals, but underneath the surface, he's an educator of Arab culture. So, the sandals are just like the storefront.
It's like the pirate show.
In San
Francisco, I haven't heard this.
There is a place in San Francisco's on Valencia Street and it is used for now. Educating kids writing workshops things like that but because they couldn't get a designed in San Francisco. They couldn't get permission for what they actually wanted to do. They had to create a storefront and then do the teaching in the back. And so they created a pirate a tire store, and all the classrooms are in the back. So,
That was a bit of a digression especially because I can't even recall the proper name of the sort of writing outlet that is associated with this, but tamashii shoe store sandal store on the front end but it's actually education in
Disguise. Yeah, well at first, I thought there was no connection then I realized that his sandal designs are actually kind of
Reflecting Arab traditions and culture through the design of the sandals. But it's like his true passion and are these cultural trips. He does. So, if you go to tamashii.com and he closed in the menu, you can click cultural trips and then you'll see. So, my friend introduced me to this guy, so I met with him on my trip to Dubai, we meet by the creek. And he tells me that his grandfather built the first building in Dubai that was his grandfather. That's how young that's idiots, and he's just like, yeah, right? Basically, right over there. There was
Very first building in Dubai. My grandfather's, the one that built it. So I said, can you explain to me something about Arab culture? And, and he said, well, wait, first, you got to understand the culture of the people of the desert is very different than the people of the sea, the Arabian coast and which is very different than the people of the hills. I said, okay, well, where's your family from? And he said, well from the desert but he said, but you know, the two uncles got in a fight and so kind of half the family moved off to Iraq for a while. And there was kind of like a
Split in the family but then they kind of reunited in Abu Dhabi and he said, but then Islam came along and I said wait, hold on Islam. That was like the year 600. I said have you been telling me your family history from 2000 years ago and he goes well 1,800 years ago. Yeah I said wait, how the fuck do you know your family? History, bat 1800 years. He said well we keep Good Records. Whoa, imagine what that does to how you see your life.
If you see yourself in this long lineage of 1,800 years of recorded family history, like how that affects your dating and, you know, whatever choices on where to live. So, Muhammad cousin. This guy is a badass. I love this guy. He's such a wealth of information and he communicates it. So well, it really helps by the way that so he's got a complete American accent, he went to college in Boston for six years. Like got into Finance came back, worked in finance in Abu Dhabi. And then just said no my real passion is teaching the air.
Cultural Traditions that I think have gotten lost in our Modern Skyscrapers. So that's why he made it his passion project. You know, he could have made way more money and finance but he has his tamashii.com sandal store and he teaches Arab culture, and I admire the hell out of this
guy. That's a really cool Easter egg, all right. So we'll link to that in the show notes. And I also pulled up this word, that was on the tip of my tongue mcsweeney's mixed weenies dotnet. People can hang out over there, there's some hilarious writing the one.
I must recently shared with someone after it was shared with me as Cormac McCarthy rights to the editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican by John Keenan. It's only going to be funny for people who have read some of Cormac McCarthy like the road or Blood Meridian, but there's a lot of really good stuff. So that is the outlet. Also wanted to mention because you mentioned Iraq, Iraqi music. Traditional music is some of the most incredibly intricate music I've ever heard using.
A dulcimer or Hammered Dulcimer. They're different instruments involved. Absolutely spectacular. A lot of that has been destroyed. Unfortunately, culturally and various teachers and so on due to all of the goings-on in Iraq or in the last while. But what is the overarching lesson that you take from the five things you have changed your mind on our their kind of meta lessons that you take
from this. Yeah. You can see the theme which is like I love my rats.
But even more it's like I love that. I used to hate them and now I don't and I could have gone on twice as long about Dubai by the way, the place is amazing. It is this cultural Melting Pot that just warms my heart sitting on the second floor of the Dubai Mall and watching the whole world, go by just the Nigerians and the out of the Saudis and the Russians and the Chinese and the British should just all walking in through, in the same place, and it's so amazing. I just, I kind of want to live there, but it's as happy as it.
Makes me I could the extra happiness of going. Wow, I used to hate this place without even knowing it and I take a sip of this coffee and it's like wow for my whole life. I'm 55, I hated coffee the Python Programming
like but the secret is been held back from you. So now you have to go to Dubai to have the coffee there, like,
right? The theme is that if you feel completely averse to something, get to know it better that, whatever you feel yourself.
Self leaning away from try leaning into if you hate Opera then go learn more about Opera and if you hate Sports, will then go learn more about sports. It's usually just learning about something gives you an appreciation for this thing that you used to just dismiss at the end of the year. Last year I just thought God this has been I think maybe the greatest year of my life. I think this is the happiest I have ever been in my whole life. And I think the reason why was because
Had five major things in one year that I used to hate that. Now, I love God. This is the greatest joy
set of measure things. So the Rats makes it into major things. I like this, I
love you all. I mean, you know, they're my might I'm not minimizing rats. Yeah, I'm not minimizing rats but it's, you know, even the coffee and even the python I'm doing something python going. Wow, I can't believe I hated this for 20 years.
Well, I suppose their major in the sense that to the degree,
you had a fixed position beforehand. These were kind of strong fixed positions of dislike, so that turnaround is very interesting.
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Let me ask you this. Since in the case of the rats, that was catalyzed by your son, bringing up pet rats, Dubai. You had a layover. That then prompted, you to extend how long you stayed there python. I'm not sure exactly how that about face came to be. But having experienced the past year, you say to yourself. This is one of the greatest or maybe the greatest year of my life high levels of happiness. I think it's because
Is I had these changes of mine. Are you farming for opportunities to change your mind? Proactively. Yeah. And if so, how are you doing
that? I don't have a systematic thing. I can share and not that, I'm not sharing it. I just don't have it, but it just made me notice. Like, now, I just need to notice in myself when I'm irrationally averse to something, it can't even be a thought process sometimes? Okay, this is actually in my
Useful not true book that just came out. This idea that was actually a little bit sparked by you, where somebody dismisses everything. A person, says it dismisses everything. A public figure says because they don't like something about that public figure, right? Like, oh, I don't like the way he acts on social media. So fuck him. I'm not gonna listen to a word, he says. Yeah. And that was inspired. I think I told you last time that the first time I encountered that was years and years ago when I saw
Somebody holding four hour work week and I said, oh wow. Great book. And he goes. Yeah, the guys full of himself here you want it just like he didn't want to read the book because he saw one thing in there that made him think you were fully yourself. Yeah, so that's it. Fuck this whole thing. Fuck this 400-page book, there's nothing in it for me because there's something I don't like about this guy. When I think about that to me that's trying to think of people as either true or not true instead,
Of useful or not useful. That's judging the Box, not judging the contents inside. And so I think there are many things in my life where I have judged the box like python no, you know China rough Dubai. Fuck that place. Rats coffee. They're here. Sorry just had to spit all five times and all of those I was judging the box but if you learn a little bit more about it then you get into the contents.
And you go oh actually the contents are wonderful. It was just I was dismissing the
package. He probably read the first edition where I had that whole chapter on my cock size that ended up being a little over the top. So I took it out for a
prince and then he put it into for our
body. It was a bit much. Yeah. Then I ended up putting that as an appendix and the 4-Hour Body. So fair play on his part. I would actually build on that to say that.
I look to my close relationships and I pause and question how I'm thinking about friendships. If in every case, there isn't something substantial, I disagree with each of those friends on some expense. Yes, I love that. I really want friends where the differences of opinion. Bring us closer and make our friendships more valuable. Not the other way around. Yes.
If you and your friends agree on pretty much everything, I view that as symptomatic of a
problem. Okay, I'm so glad you brought this up. Sometimes I wonder about your motivation for continuing these podcasts and how you keep up the enthusiasm for doing this, for so long. And then I thought, God, wait, you must be immersing yourself in so many diverse World Views.
That it made me think about the comparison to investing. I was in a situation recently. You've probably had this many times that I think is maybe part of why you left California, where you catch yourself in a group of people and everybody agrees with everybody else that's like this group think, even if they're all really smart, but dammit, they all basically a grieve sucks and I thought about the benefits of diversification when it comes to investing, right? So anybody who learns like investing 101,
Learns about having a low correlation between your asset allocations so your US Stocks International stocks. Real estate Commodities, bonds, gold cash, something's risky, something's riskless and the whole idea is they're supposed to have a low correlation. So if one goes down, they won't all go down and I thought about that in terms of
The thought portfolio in our head, any given person. So you say it with the friends you have around, but I assume aren't you then by knowing your friends. So well, when you're in a certain situation, you're thinking about what to do, you don't just have Tim's thoughts. You also have this friends, thoughts. And that's friends thought since like, how would this friend of mine approach this? Do you do that actively
Oh yeah, I definitely do and I'll give you a real world example and I don't know if we want to get into the thick of it, but I was reading some of your writing before we hopped on the phone and I was taking an ice bath also. Right before we got on the phone, which I know I am fonder of than you are, but I was sitting in the tub freezing, my balls off and there were certain statements and positions in the writing that got me all riled up and
I was sitting there getting riled up and thinking about my counter positions. And then I thought to myself, well, that's interesting to observe these feelings. Coming up, these very strong feelings. Then I thought to myself, this is really good. This is good because the feelings are coming up in a strong way and you're not some one to shy away from a conversation about
those things and what a gift to be able to have
Civil disagreement with friends, like what a fucking treasure that is because we don't have a lot of models for civil disagreement. I would say, at least not in most Media or online, it's just not what sells and I very much want friends, who are going to call me on my bullshit or at least take counter positions.
And help me think through things, right? And I think that in your new book, for instance, is very good job of discussing perspectives and perspective, taking and how you can read many things differently from different viewpoints and you want friends, who can help you do that. So that you don't get trapped in your own thought loops. And furthermore, just on a very practical sense, you want to be able to speak truthfully to your
Send, you want them to be able to do the same. And if you do that, and you talk about a really wide breadth of things, if you never have conflict one or both of you is probably being dishonest. Yeah. And if you're gonna have some friction in the system, which you probably will, if you're really being honest, then you're gonna need to be good at conflict resolution or repair or talking about hard things. So, that's a very long story.
I'm of Consciousness that I just let out but if I look for friends who I can and will disagree with on things, then it becomes my dojo for Life. Overall, with people I really care for and love and good God, what an amazing gift an advantage. That is so yes I do. That deliberately and I invite people on the podcast who I suspect.
No, I will disagree with on a few different levels and that gives me a chance to interrogate their thinking, but also interrogate my own
thinking love it. I've noticed Within Myself that when I'm around people, that I know agree. With me, my inherent curiosity level drops a bit. And when I'm around people that I know, don't think, like, me my curiosity Peaks. So when I meet somebody, that is like a scientist that is also
So Hindu I'm like, oh, oh my God, I have so many questions for you. I was like, can you explain to me how this okay, did he? Like I'm filled with curiosity to meet somebody that grew up Hindu and still actively has the Hindu beliefs. I want to understand this better. I've read two books about Hinduism, I don't get it. Still, I have so many questions for you, but if I'm around somebody, that's like me and like, how you doing? What's up? Yeah, me too cool. Alright, so I think it's a deliberate.
Overweighting if we're going to kind of use a back to like quantitative and investment metaphor it, I have a whole lifetime of thinking my way. Now I want to overweight learning other ways of thinking and to me it's just pure curiosity. There's no debate. There's no, like let's work this out and get to the right answer. It's just no, please tell me this other way of looking at things, tell me this other way of looking at your family history, 1800 years. Tell me this other way of looking at
Don't know who spirituality life after death Etc. Please I'm so curious because it reminds me that my way of looking at it is not the only way I love dis lodging my first impression. I think our first thought is an obstacle and we have to get past it to realize. There are other ways to look at the situation. Once you realize that you can get past your first way of looking at something, then you can do that. Like, what do you call it systems to thinking?
Right thinking fast and slow. You can go. Oh right. Okay, hold on. That was my first reaction. What are some other ways I could look at this? That's what my whole useful. Not true book is
about the. I remember also on this is I think this was on the podcast in one of our earlier conversations, but I asked you, it was on the podcast. Holly the first conversation, I asked you, who the first person was you thought of, when I gave the word successful,
And your answer was along the lines of well, I think answer number one, isn't that interesting, because I might say Richard Branson but really memory or Elon Musk, but if Richard Branson wanted a life of peace and tranquility and slower Pace if that were his goal, then he's utterly failing. So maybe that isn't success. But perhaps overarching Lee might use that twice. Now as an adverb that's pretty funny. I never use that word but the
It should be who's the third person? You think of when you hear the word
successful, I am so impressed that you remember that
it's a long time ago. Yeah and that is an example of what you're talking about is getting past the first thought I think the operative word there is thought, right? Because yeah, just to draw a distinction for me. I think paying attention to feeling the first feeling can save you from a lot of
Pain in the short and the long term. In other words, along lines of the gift of fear. Gavin de Becker etcetera. If your system says no pay, very close attention to that. But if you have a inbuilt story, I hate Dubai. Because a b and c, which is very different from. I don't feel safe in this airport and I don't know why those are two different different. Very yeah. Questioning that first story can pay a lot of incredible dividends dude. I love this subject so much to me. That's it's
Yeah, the key of life. So often the difference between success and failure is the mindset, that leads you to take different actions but if you just look at a situation and you say that's it. That's what the situation is. I'm not talking about physical things. I mean, declaring something to be a dead end. Declaring something to suck. These are all things of the mind and nothing of the mind is necessarily true. Everything that's just in the mind is just one perspective.
Like physical things are true. Sure. No there are some physical realities, the number of votes cast in an election is a physical reality but an alien or a computer could observe and agree. But only this, these things of the Mind were social creatures and we treat them like they are realities like hey, that person wrong to me. And that's just a fact like mmmm. That's not just a fact that's one way of looking at it, and you might be a lot happier in a lot more successful. If you realize that, that's just one way of
Looking at it, it's not true. It's just a perspective, it's just a thought. And there's another way of seeing that and that other way of seeing it might lead to actions, it would be much more effective for you. Yeah, for sure. And I think your new book pairs. Well with Byron kitties the work very much focuses on a lot of what we're discussing and I was going to say in addition to what we've already covered that.
The content is different from the mindset. And what I mean by that is you have crafted a very path of Derek life for yourself and you've made some very unorthodox decisions. Some of which I think are frankly. Sometimes cuckoo bananas, but thank you. You're welcome. If I don't agree, even if I wouldn't, replicate the decision hearing, you explain why you did it and how you navigated that the lenses
Is through which you viewed. This scenario, has allowed me to learn things that I can apply to totally different circumstances, right? And that's really valuable, right? Yeah. Like borrowing you might not make the same house as someone else but learning how to use the carpentry tools that they use to build that house. Could actually really, really, really Aid you in a lot of disparate scenario. So, that's how I've also thought about
it. I so often try to get people to
Devalue the example but value the theme, the process. Like you just said that too many people focus on the example that you give them. It's like try to forget the example and look for the process. So thanks for saying that I do that with everything. There's a person that we could talk about here if you want later. But he's a computer programmer, but he gets up and gives a talk about computer programming that I see the theme in what he's talking about. I'm like, oh, okay. Well, forget the code for a
Second that's a brilliant theme and it's fun to be able to do that.
So let's pause, this might be a good Segway. Is that part of the next bucket of people you're studying? Yeah. Or things you're fascinated by. Where would you like to go next? Because this might be a good segue. Yeah, it's funny. You actually jumped to the last thing I was going to mention, you brought up this Diversified portfolio of perspectives. So that was one of
Things I want to talk about today, and you didn't even
know that amazing did
not. That was great. Yeah, let's talk about. Okay, you asked me in advance people, I'm studying. So, let's do them in reverse order since we already brought up rich hickey. So RI CH H IC ke, why wait a second before we switch to that? Have you ever met Brian? Eno the record producer?
I have not met Brian Eno but I have his oblique strategies. Yes.
Cowards, I was just reading about how he ended up coining. The term ambient music in the hospital, because he couldn't get up and change the volume and ended up. He ended up listening to very, very low volume music friend had put on for him. So I'm fascinated by Brian Eno but I've never met
him.
Brian has one of these guys that his thought process is fascinating, I don't love his music, I like his music, I don't love it but I love his thought process. By the way, if you go to the website music thoughts.com, that's my love letter to Brian Eno and John Cage and some of these music thinkers. I made that website in 1999 and it's a collection of inspiring quotes from Brian Eno John Cage and a bunch of other musicians music. Thoughts.com yet music thought Stuck. It's totally non
Marshall. I'm not going to make it Penny off of anybody looking at it. So I'm not trying to pitch it, but I'm just saying it's a collection of Brian Eno's philosophies on music and thoughts on music that I would read these quotes to inspire me as I was making music and kind of knock my thinking, kind of like the oblique strategies cards, to shift my thinking into something different. And so, even just reading his interviews
One thing he said is his job as a record producer is to have strong opinions in the studio. So that if he's in there producing a record by U2 and the guys are fighting about whether to have a guitar solo or not, whether it should be allowed guitar solo or quiet guitar solo. He said well my job then would be to say well how about we have no guitar at all in this song and the band members go. What are you crazy? No. This song needs guitar. Know we ride and we absolutely need guitar and he goes. All right.
See, I could help. Are you disagreeing with me? I just helped you solidify your position. So that's my job here. So, on the other hand, if you would have said, yeah, okay, no guitar, that's a good idea. Great. Glad I could help. I'm not saying my opinions are right? I'm just trying to help you respond. I love
that you're providing a foil. Yeah, yeah, you're providing a foil that's music. Thoughts.com quick, question on. Was it John Cage?
You mentioned. Yeah, so I was first exposed to John Cage in a documentary friend of mine named Steve Jang was involved with Nam June paik, moon is the oldest TV which is about Nam June paik, this amazing Pioneer and experimental art performance art, many different media and he was inspired by John Cage. Now, I know very little about John Cage, but I did get to see a segment of a performance that he did which caused like
Eighty percent of the audience to leave. Just like most agonizingly uncomfortable, I would say noise to listen to. That is my soul exposure, John Cage, but I've heard him invoked as this figurehead of great influence and I'm basing my impression of him only on that when I would just say is awful performance that I saw part of in this documentary, how would you sell John Cage or why is he interested?
I'm no expert. But let's just say he questioned things that hadn't been questioned before a lot of Modern Art, the kind where people look at it and go what that's it. It's a seesaw over the border between the u.s. and Mexico. You call that art. I could do that. It's like, yeah you but you didn't. Yeah, somebody looked at that border between us and Mexico and said, I think we could put a seesaw over that and in a way that's a beautiful.
Statement it's not about the brush Strokes on canvas, it's about the statement so I think John Cage was doing that with music. He was questioning the core of what is this anyway and so that's why I think his most famous piece is called 4 minutes and 33 seconds which is just 4 minutes and 33 seconds of Silence. The point was Hey listen to the room around you for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. There are sounds going on here already. I mean I think that was his point. Maybe he stayed mute on it, I don't know.
Okay, so is it fair to say that?
He's interesting to you for the same reason that Brian Eno in the producer capacity is interesting as a provocateur of sorts like an instigator of new thinking.
Yeah. I want to emulate his thought process, even if I don't love his end results. Well, that's a you said it. First, that's why I love that. You beat me to this. It's your friends. You may not want to live my life here, with my, whatever three glasses and two rats. But you like some of my
The three thought process? Yeah, people keep emailing me about that. Hey, I heard your podcast with Tim Ferriss. I have three glasses,
huh? So let me explain that for people who don't know, the kind that you should get a third righteously of the same number of rats that you have glasses. But when I visited you in his heel and I was like, hey, do you mind if I have glass water, not our knock yourself out, where the glasses are there in the cabinet. And I went, I saw three glasses all of different size dramatically different sizes. And I was like, what happens if you have?
If more than three people over here like I'll just buy some more glasses. I was like, well actually I kind of makes a certain Elegance sense so those are the three
glasses. All right. You know what? On that note? Do you want to hear? I am building my dream home right now. You can imagine where this is going. Just 20 minutes north of Wellington. I bought a piece of land or I'm building my dream home.
It is a 4 by 8, m rectangle, with nothing inside. No toilet, no kitchen. No nothing because I thought every house I've lived in came with its default shit and I adapted myself to its default shit. Like, well, that's just where the bathroom is. That's just the size of the living room. That's just what it is. And I've always had to adapt myself. So I've never experienced the process of making the place adapt to me. Mmm, through practice.
Itís, not in theory. So I thought if I just start with a 4 by 8 m, well, insulated rectangle, then over time. We'll see what I need. Wait, did you say 4 by 8? A 4 by 8 meters? Yeah, is the whole house. Sorry, it's actually 21 it. So it's a 4 by 12, okay, gotta know for by 14 meter rectangle is that's the two bedroom.
Place where I'll sleep with my kid and then next to it is a 4x8 where I spend all of my waking hours. Okay, so it's the sleeping house and the waking house. And my kid actually gets his own 4 by 8 meter cube to experiment with. And the whole idea is to see what you need. So I'm starting with no bathroom. No kitchen. I'm just going to put a little induction, hob outside and an outhouse and then I'll see if that's okay with me or if I find through experience that are really want a bathroom inside.
Well, now I know from experience not just because it's the default setting. So I'm trying to start from scratch and this is my dream house because of the process that it will allow me to have.
Okay. So this is a very mundane question but I'm curious generally if you're going to have like a kitchen or a bathroom or something, you would have the piping or the power and so on put in a certain place. So as it stands that is not the case. So you might have to do
Do a fair amount of demo or deconstructing your house to add any of these things. Internally,
I got this tip from Stewart brand wrote a brilliant book that everyone should read anyone who's smart, that is called how buildings, learn how buildings learned by Stewart. Brand, you should try to get the paper book because it's just laid out in such a way that you kind of need the paper book. He goes through this analytical thing about buildings and he said this is a reason why you should never
Hide your wires and pipes, just keep the infrastructure on the outside so that it's easier to change his, a beautiful line in there. It's almost the opening point. He says all buildings are predictions and all predictions are wrong. So therefore that's cool. Less predictive you can make your building the better. That's why I'm just getting this rectangle. All pipes and wires will just be exposed nothing buried, so that I can quickly change them. I can always
As see where they are. I'm very much following Stewart Brands philosophy.
Stewart, brand is a smart fascinating man, just a quick pitch for Stuart brand. So I met Stuart through Kevin Kelly. Now, Kevin Kelly founding editor of Wired Magazine, fascinating genius bizarre guy as an Amish beard, but he's a technology. Futurist built his own house by hand spends more time in China than probably anyone. I know, he's just an Eclectic combination.
Of all sorts of things and the title of my podcast, with him way. Back in the day, was the real world. Most interesting man in the world or something like that. And in the midst of the conversation with Kevin or maybe speaking offline, he said if you really want the person, I consider to be the most interesting man in the world. It's Stewart brand. It's had Stewart on the podcast a number of years ago and boy oh boy, you want to talk about a polymath, he's something else. Alright. So you've preserved the
Optionality with the possibility of putting things on the outside rather than on the inside in terms of support infrastructure. And how do you see yourself using a space with nothing inside? I
don't know. The see that would be a prediction I'm trying to not. I'm just, I'm just going to show up. It'll be ready in a few months and then I'll start living there and we'll see what happens. That's all I know.
There's going to be totally. Empty, are you going to have some desks a chair? I mean, are you gonna have any
At all, you're just going to sit on the floor and be like, what do I require at this moment.
I'm bringing a mattress to start. And then over time, I'll notice, if, if I wish I had a desk here, then I'll get a desk there, you know. So I'll add things as it. I feel that I really, really need them. Again, I highly recommend in how buildings learn he kind of goes into this about like the best spaces are just rectangles and the best place is the ones that are easy to alter. So that if you suddenly decide, he talks about this MIT building,
And where people are just allowed to bash a hole in the wall because it wasn't some beautifully. Architecturally designed Masterpiece. It was something thrown together quickly and WWII and people love that building because if they do need to bash a hole in the wall to run some wires through the can just do it because it's a trashy old building and its and because of that, it's such a creative space. The places that are award-winning are often, the ones that are the most hated by their residents. They might win the award for the architect. That's true it. Because their award-winning, their inflexible, their sacred. I mean talk to people who
A Frank Lloyd Wright home now and it's like, you know, living a masterpiece Museum, can't change a single screw or anything. It's the way he wanted it.
So practical recommendation I would say if you're gonna be sitting on the floor a lot, if you're not accustomed to doing that, just so you don't end up with all sorts of Orthopedic issues. I would start doing Turkish, getup sand getting accustomed to sitting on the floor and getting up a lot.
Just I'll probably get a good chair almost right away. But I just wanted to make sure that
the
Everybody's ready for the rectangle. Alright, fascinating yet. Another example, I'll let you be the first monkey shot into space on this particular type of home design. Can't see. Can't wait to learn so many things.
You experiment with some things. I don't want to experiment with and all experiment. Sure, things. You don't want to experiment with all renounce, my u.s. citizenship, and let you know how it goes. I'll build my dream home of a 4x8 rectangle. Let you know how it
goes. Yeah, I got a divvy it up in the redundancy and
Station, this kind of almost pointless, but it's more fun to have people doing different things. Other people, you are studying, all right? Or things are fascinated by. We can hop around depends on where you want to
go. I already started Rich hickey.
Oh, that's right. You mentioned him. I wrote them down because of that was left dangling. And I was like who is this Rich hickey?
So rich hickey is. He's a programmer, he's the inventor of a programming language called closure. See loj you re he's actually one of mine.
Number one picks for somebody that I would like to get on your show. Like if we did a co-hosting kind of thing an hour to get somebody on a actually already emailed him, he didn't reply, but maybe hey, if anybody knows Rich hickey, and if he's interested nudge nudge nudge, he did a brilliant talk. If you search YouTube for either simple versus easy or I think the name of the video on YouTube is called Simplicity matters.
Here's his point and actually jotted down these notes. So I could try to bang out his point quickly and then we'll talk about it and keep in mind everything much say. He's just talking about programming. He's speaking to a room of programmers. He said we mistake simple and easy. We think that simple means, easy, and easy means simple, but he said, there are two different things, the word complex. If you look at the definition, it's actually it comes from the word complex which is two braids things together. So
If something is complected, it means it's intertwined with other things. And so, the adjectives complex means that something is bound to other things. Whereas simple comes from Simplex, which means it is not bound to other things, it stands alone, easy, the root of that means that something is near at hand. It's something you already know how to do. It's within your realm so easy and hard are subjective but
And complex are very objective things that we can look at something is simple stands alone is complex, fits bound other things. He said here's where it gets tricky, is that? It can be very easy to make something very complex. So he says, you could just type gem install hairball. And with typing, three words on a computer, you can install a massive framework, whether it's Ruby on Rails or WordPress. And if you start using that will, wow, you are now complected with
Huge complicated system that your intertwined with. And so, now everything I say after this, this is my take on his analysis but it's really easy in life to say. Okay, yeah, let's get married or to have unprotected, sex and get pregnant and have a baby, that's easy. Adopt a dog hiring people, you can have a problem and think. All right, well, I've got some money and I'm overwhelmed. I'm going to get a consultant to like hire, ten people. Okay, great. Now I've got
Ten employees shoe. That was easy to take some work off my plate, but your life is now objectively complex. You are complected with these other people and their needs and their time schedules and their desires. Handing off parts of your business to say this is hard. I'm just going to hand off my billing or my something or my this or my scheduling to these apps where these subscription services that was easy to just hand it off.
Off. But now your business is very complicated with these other services. So, hence my rant on our last conversation, over scotch at my house about tech Independence.
His point is, it can be really hard to make something simple. It can be much harder to do something. That is objectively, simple that stands alone that isn't dependent on other things. It can be harder to make that, but it's ultimately usually a better choice because it's more maintainable, it's easier to change. It's easier to stop and start. It's simpler even if it's harder to make. So the point is in his thinking is to be
We're of the objective measure of complexity or beware of complexity, which can be objectively measured and aim for doing this simpler thing. Even if it's harder, it might take, I think you can make simple things easier just by learning more, say about the fundamentals of something. Instead of just adopting, somebody else's high level solution, you can spend a little time learning about the core Underneath It Up, fundamentals. Then, you can forget Norms, you could forget what others do.
Do what others think and you can just get to the real essence of what you need. I'm not just talking programming. Now, I'm just being me like in life.
What would be an example of
that? Okay, my 4x8 house. It's like really I just need a shelter where it's temperature controlled. So it's really well insulated. I do need a mattress to sleep on and I do need a place I can work. But to me those are the oh and I do need a little food.
To me, these are the core things of a shelter. But even say with friendships, do I need to live in the same place with my friends will not necessarily my dear friends. My best friends are often far far away. I don't need to move to a place that has all my friends. If I can reach them on the phone, I'm very often talk about just the thought process. I very often find myself asking like what's the real outcome I'm after what's the real point of this. And once I figure that out, well then what's the most
Most direct route to that outcome. Never mind what other people do. What the Norms are. What do I think is the most direct route to that outcome? And then try to keep it simple along the way and be very wary of dependencies and entangling myself, with other things? That's my take, could you
give the another example, or two of how you implement that in your life? Sure, or how you might. So, I know there are more
examples
The next to might be less relatable because it's
rising in the west relatable than the four by eight meter got to know everybody wants to leave it with nothing inside a. So
I mean we'll first here's a good question to strip away some things ask yourself would I still do this if nobody knew there might be a lot of things in our actions that we do because we like the way it would look to others because it would be impressive to
Is that's the first thing to just strip away. When you're beginning, this thought process is like, if I were to never tell anybody in nobody were to ever know what I still do this thing. Okay, well then that might just be the decoration.
Okay. So, two examples, programming wise, I'm constantly asking this when I'm building something. It is just I need to get this calendar entry into this database with this time. Do I need a whole bunch of JavaScript? Do I need a bunch of CSS and things flying around? Do I need fading Graphics? No, I just need this thing there. What's the most direct way to get that calendar entry into that database. So that's like a programming example.
Writing-wise my last two books. How to live? And useful. Not true. I'm spending most of my time reducing my rough draft. I always spew out everything I have to say on the subject and then I spend 1000 hours, every single word going is that word necessary. Wait a second. Is that whole sentence necessary we can the point still be communicated without that sentence. If it can. Okay. Let me try to get rid of that sentence and see if
Point still comes across actually. Does the point come across without this entire chapter? Oh my God, it still does. Therefore I don't need this chapter one of the most useful things that happened recently is a few months ago an organisation in Australia. Paid me to come give a talk and I said what you want me to talk about? I said anything. I said how about my next book called useful? Not true. They said sure so it was a room of very successful, very effective people and I had one hour on stage two
Communicate the whole idea of my next book. And at the time the book was still in process.
And that was so helpful because I noticed that there were a few things on stage, even though I had it in my notes, I skipped over it. I thought, okay, well actually we don't need to do that. Okay, let's get to the next point and so later when I was back home, I thought, wow, I just skipped over that whole point on stage. So why do I think it's worth killing trees to print that point? Apparently? It's not cool. This is now the shortest book I've ever written. I'm very proud of that fact I compressed this 400 Pages down to I think it's 702
Ages or something. And so those are two examples where I'm constantly asking like what's the most direct way to just get rid of what I really want? Get the outcome skipping, the usual Fanfare. How do you think about
First order Simplicity vs. Complexity versus second order. Third order and planning, and the reason I'm asking that is you strike me as someone who prizes, Freedom, Independence Simplicity all very highly, but I imagine there could be cases where
Looking at the first decision and the first order effects, you might think. Well, it's much simpler for me to do X to renounce, my u.s. citizenship to build a box, to do everything myself instead of taking on these cloud services for accounting and so on. But there are levels of second third order. Complexities that ultimately make it kind of net-net more complex than doing the slightly more.
Lex thing up front. Does that make sense? Almost I guess I'm wondering how practically people might think about simplifying, but not oversimplifying and then shooting yourself in the foot, no long-term give you an example. I know people who have moved to Puerto Rico to trim taxes substantially, right? But in the process they viewed that. As the most direct route to
Do you think taxes? They are for. They can do X Y and Z over time with more income or preserved, capital gain, whatever might be. However, in the process of doing that they've created all of this lifestyle, complexity and applied a lot of constraints to what they can or cannot do. And the text Tails, wagging, the dog and instead of money serving life. Now life is serving money and they've kind of put themselves in a topsy-turvy up
Side down situation. When, if you were to look at it from first principles to years later, you're like, wow, that was really bungled and that's not true for everybody in Puerto Rico. I'm not trying to make it sound like that, but I have seen those types of examples where like the thing that seemed simple and straightforward at the outset ended up producing a lot of Ripple effects that produced not just complexity, but complexity that was hard to undo.
Yeah, great example.
So yeah, how do you think about that kind of
risk
mitigation roof, by the way, my two little examples of that a few years ago. Tony Robbins had a money Master, the game book as I go. Wow, Tony hasn't put out a book and like, 20 years. I wonder how this is going to be. Yeah, and in it he's giving these prescriptions for extremely complex like Insurance things that you could set. It was like, oh wow, that's objectively complex. And another example is in Neil Strauss has book called emergency.
I'll never forget this point, he said that he's off at one of these Nomad sovereign individual. I'm beholden to No Country kind of events, and he meets this guy that is bragging to him about his setup. He's like, I got my income coming here, but then all expenses, go here. But then, I've got a trust and this, but I'm the non managing member of the trust, which is held by this that. And in the end, he's Gonna Save thirty percent taxes. And Neil said, wouldn't it? Just be a lot easier or
Make a lot more sense to just work 30% harder. Her like to just make thirty percent more money said that's a ton of work just to save 30% said, it's not that much harder to just go make 30% more. And dude, when I read that, I love that thought process. So I think that I know that your podcast in the Titans and all that is often about how do we use the wisdom of others to avoid making these mistakes.
It's ourselves, but some of these things maybe you just have to. I don't know, I think for some of these things I'm willing to throw myself in and feel the pain to see if I've done it wrong.
I do we improve jazzing here. So, let's keep going. This thought, just occurred to me because when I hear you talk about code and programming mean there's a poetry to it and there's an economy to it. That is seems I'm not a programmer, but I do right there. Seems to be something intrinsically rewarding to you.
You about that.
Presentation of Elegance and I'm wondering in the case of following Stewart Brands principles, and building this box or doing certain things. That seemed to me optimized for Freedom Independence. Is there, even if it ends up face planting, is there something that you find beautiful and redeeming just about taking the simple approach even if the outcome is suboptimal,
It's related, it's finding out in fact, instead of just in theory we can sit at home and wonder what it might be like to do such and such. But some point you just got to throw yourself in and go try it. And if you try moving to Puerto Rico and you hate it. Well now you know it was worth a try maybe and now you know in fact did that doesn't work for you. That's maybe the how buildings learn idea
Is don't predict that you will want to sink in that spot. Put yourself into that spot first it live without a sink for a while. Yeah, I do line eventually you'll get a good feeling for where the sink needs to be. In fact, not in theory. No, and so I think I do this with my life, as I'm willing to mess up happily because I will know that, then I found out in fact, that that doesn't work for me.
And maybe this is coming from the core of the fact that like, I'm a, I'm a really happy person and so, yeah, I feel that like my base level is up here. I can take some big knocks, you can take it a lot of the the crazy shit I've done. I did marry somebody that I hardly knew after a few months because fuck it. Let's see what happens. In fact, you and I have never talked about that directly but do you know what the mindset I was in at the time I had just sold my company. I had a ton of money and I
Felt like, I need to change my trajectory because my first impulse after selling my company was literally the next day. I set up my next company and I thought I'm going to move to Silicon Valley. I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to stay on the same trajectory and I did that for a few months, but then I caught myself.
Towing weight. I want a full life. I don't want to stay on the same trajectory I want to shake shit up. So I very deliberately did what we might call the George Costanza principle which is to the opposite. Do the opposite of all of my impulses. Every time I felt. Yes. Everything in me said yes I would say no out loud and everything. He says, no I say yes out loud as a way of deliberately shaking shit up. And so I was dating this woman for a few months.
And we had no great connection and she said, oh well I can't travel to California with you unless we get married and everything in me says, oh hell, no, don't do that, that's stupid. I don't want to marry this person. So I said yes, let's do that. And so we got married and I kept doing that in every way. I deliberately fucked up my life and made a bunch of crazy fucking decisions and some of them worked out great and some of
Didn't. And I'm so happy that I did that like I in some ways I could say that, that's my biggest regret. Her biggest mistake, but in other ways, it was wonderful. It deliberately sent me on a different trajectory and I'm glad I did
it that it definitely will. So for people who don't have any of the connective tissue here, to figure out how to orient themselves to this, people are going to want to know, right, Cliffhanger. So, how did that turn out the everything in me? Says, No. So, I said
Yes, let's get Barry. Let's do
that. The marriage is awful. No. That was that was terrible. Do you mean? And we knew it like, literally like days later like oops, we made a big mistake. Yeah. That was, that was instantly a big mistake and that's fine because we knew in fact, then that it was a big mistake. Not just in theory, I could have walked away from that going. Oh God, I remember that woman. That wanted me to marry her and I said, no God, I wonder what would have happened. Well now I get to find out like, I did it.
Now, hold on a second though. I'm gonna push on this a little bit. We could use this logic to be a reverse George Costanza, for every decision. We think is bad. We could turn around and say yes to, right? But as a life strategy, I don't see you continuing that right now. So you don't know for a fact that the awful idea would have been awful. But I mean, there has to be a point at which you think about self-preservation and time as a finite currency. So you're like, well, when would you apply that versus when would you
Not apply rank so you could apply it everywhere indefinitely, but certain things are one way to ours in summer to a doors, right? I mean, like for instance, getting a pet rat. Okay, lower cost more reversible, let's just say than maybe giving up your US citizenship, right. That is a little harder to control
Z. Yeah, I cannot undo that. Yeah, so
moving forward for you. Having
Learned everything that you've learned. When do you play the George Costanza strategy versus not, right? Because there are lots of things. We can't know for a fact unless we make the right or the wrong or the good or the bad decision, but you can't make all the decisions. So what do you do? You know,
Long ago. When I said the hell yeah. Or no thing
and it's going to be in your grave is done. Yeah,
hell yeah. We're here. I am. Yeah, here, he lays. So some people emailed me after that after that was on your show and they said, hey man, I'm you, you know, I like this. Hell yeah, are no thing. I'm using it for everything. You know. I just got out of college, I'm getting a bunch of offers. I'm like, I'm not feeling hell yeah, about any of them. You know, I'm dating. And it's like,
You know, I'm not hell. Yeah. About any of you. Okay, wait, wait, wait wait, hold on. Everything does not become a nail because you're holding this Hammer, you don't. This is a tool for a specific situation. When you're overwhelmed with options, you have to have the wisdom to know when to use this tool, you don't use it on everything. Always. So same thing with this going against your instincts, of course you don't use it on everything always but that was a specific time in my life when I wanted to deliberately change my
Ha E. I wanted to go against my normal way of doing things and deliberately introduced some Randomness in variety into my life,
right? It's not your
default right? But let's look at you know I mentioned Dubai earlier, everything in me said, fuck that place and then I caught myself feeling that and I thought okay wait hold on this is a good time to use this tool. My impulse is saying no, I'm going to try saying, yes, I'm going to go get to know this thing because that sounds to me like that.
Would be a learning Growing Experience to try it. That's a good example of integrating this into your life but then say like if maybe you do hit a situation where it's like nothing is working out, you've been an idiot, your whole life, you just got fired. You were just dumped by your romantic partner, you're at it Skid Row. Maybe it's a really good time to go against all your natural impulses since it's pretty clear that your defaults or set wrong
not working.
Yeah, they're not working very well.
I like integrating it. Maybe it's the question is like, is this going to be a learning Growing Experience for me? I like meaning into discomfort, whatever scares you go do it.
All right. So I have quite a few follow-up questions. We can take them in many different directions. So we we've covered Rich hickey, clojure, Knock-Knock whole. See if, if anyone lets him know, he appeared on the show and I also want to ask you a question. We can cut.
But from the conversation if we need to, but since Dubai has come up,
that's a great lead in the love that this may be too risky for anybody's ears, but here we
go. Taxes fit into this at all. Is this like people who move to Nashville or Austin? And they're like, oh, the barbecue and the music, and they will dance and dance, and dance, until you Corner them with a broomstick. And then they're like, yeah. Okay, fine. Yet the taxes is small. So it's a thing is Dubai one of those or
no.
I mean, I had to ask myself that. It's that's like one of those things. Okay. When you ask yourself, would I still be doing this thing? If nobody knew about it, I got an email from guy wants. It was just like, hey man, I want to travel the whole world. I'm going to visit every country in the world. Do you have any suggestions for me? I said, yeah, don't bring a camera and don't tell anyone that you're doing this is it still appealing to you now? Yeah, probably not okay. So anytime say
They Do by, for example, I was like, whoa, this place is fascinating. Oh my God. I think I want to live here. I was like, would I still live here? If the taxes were like 50%. I was like, yeah. That like that has that Smoot to me. I mean, look, I'm living in New Zealand where you my income tax right now. With is 45%. I pay a ton of taxes but it's worth it to me. I love it here, I don't care. So that thing I mentioned in Neil Strauss has book, emergency that sentence Hit me hard. When I first saw
CD baby that was 2008. There were some things I was thinking at the time recycle wow I just got Mega Millions. How can I pay less taxes? And it was literally like the month before or month after I sold cdbaby. That I read that book emergency and I saw that sentence and I went whoa
good timing, he said good
training Point. Don't jump through hoops to save taxes, jump through a hoop to go, make more money, that's the growth choice.
Anyway, that's the thought process. That leads you to make growing decisions, not shrinking decisions so
your
About to sell or have just sold CD Baby, you form a new company. The next day you're planning on moving to Silicon Valley and you see yourself moving on that track and you decide to throw a costanzo, curveball in, and mix things up, why like, what was the fear or the hazard you're trying to avoid by following that path? Was it doing something thoughtlessly in repeating? What you've done before? It wasn't
Functional. What was it? I want to live a full life at the end of my life. I want to look back and go. Wow I did a bunch of different things. I tried a bunch of different ways of living. I followed this philosophy for a while. I followed that one, I tried this. I tried that I lived here. I lived there. That to me is my definition of a full life. At my previous book called How To Live was 27 conflicting philosophies.
And one weird answer and the whole idea was that it's 27 chapters each one disagrees with the rest but each one has a strong opinions of saying here's how to live. No live for the future. The next one's like here's how to live live only for the present and the next one's like here's how to live you know leave a legacy and these are all valid ways of living and my definition of a full life is I want to experience the different approaches to life. I want to have the Diversified
folio of thought and of experiences. So it was that I just felt like if I was to create a new company the next day and moved to Silicon Valley, I just be doing more of the same shit I've already done. Yeah, makes sense, makes perfect sense. Who else do you have on your list of people? You're studying. All right, Tyler Cowen. Just a few days ago in an article on bloomberg.com called, who was Bitcoins Satoshi?
So we still don't know who is Satoshi the inventor of Bitcoin.
And, you know, there's this law of headlines that if, if it ends in a question mark, the answer is usually no, you know. So when I first saw the headline, I thought that the answer was going to be, it doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Who Satoshi is forget it and oh, my God, Tyler Cowen. Took it somewhere else. Like, even if you would have asked me by the way, hey, Derek. I'm going to give you an hour alone in a room to think about one question, does it matter? Who is Satoshi? The inventor of
Oin even after an hour, I think my answer would have been of course not. I would have sat there for an hour just going. No, no, no. Tyler Cowen took it the opposite way. I jotted down his points, but it's a masterpiece in this kind of, if then, knock on thinking. So he said, okay, if we find out that Satoshi is dead that the inventor of Bitcoin is dead, then that's a good thing because it means
Bitcoin will be more safe because it won't be open to Future alteration. The person can't tarnish the reputation of it, you know, say like Elon Musk and Twitter kind of like, you know, by continuing to be there, can tarnish the reputation of something. Sorry, I shouldn't have gone there. Satoshi can't come back and change the rules for the worst. And then he even said, this is why all religions have dead Founders is because the founder can't stay in and tarnish the reputation.
Ocean of the religion. So I went okay, good point if satoshi's dead, that is good for Bitcoin, it can stay as is and won't get tarnished. One can change and he said so there's a chance that Satoshi is an older guy from this previous movement around. E-gold, it was generally seen as like, a failed project that a bunch of people were into this idea of eagled and it didn't work out. If Satoshi is somebody from that group then that means that even projects that look like they've
Failed can create great things so we should maybe think more highly of it will be less dismissive of projects that seem to be failing, because who knows what they will lead to. He said there's a chance that Satoshi is this person on Africa their name but he said that would have been 21 years old and in grad school at the time of inventing Bitcoin, he said if that's true. That means we should raise our perception of what Young busy people can do that. They can do more than we realize that this guy
Why wall in grad school, also invented Bitcoin and he said, if Satoshi is still alive, that means. Oh, by the way, we should say for you, I assume people know, but maybe not that whoever is Satoshi has hundreds, okay, let's say at least tens of billions of dollars in Bitcoin that all he'd have to do, whoever Satoshi is would have to just take it, it's already there in the account in the public record that we can see. So, Satoshi is
One of the richest people on Earth who ever Satoshi is. So, he said, if Satoshi still living, that means that some people don't want to be billionaires or just have incredible self-restraint, like maybe upon realizing what he created. He destroyed the key destroy the password so that he could not take those billions of dollars, you know, to protect himself from that. There's a chance that Satoshi is a pseudonym for a group of people. If that's true. It means a group of people can keep secrets way better than we expected.
It which means that conspiracy theories are more likely to be true about anything in general about UFOs about JFK or whatever. If this group of people is Satoshi and they could have hundreds of billions of dollars or tens of billions of dollars, but they are choosing not to and they are all keeping the secret. That's amazing. And we should regard secrecy more higher than we can. So, that's the end of the bullet points. But I read this one. Little Bloomberg article, and my jaw dropped. I went, oh my God, this is the
And of thinking, I aspire to that is some amazing lateral creative. I don't know what kind of thinking do you call that, but that's what I want to do. More of
hmm, love it. Yeah, Tyler is incredible. The highly recommend people check them out. That's a really good. Tyler example. Cow & Co wwen, definitely recommend people check him out. Also pass
podcast. Yeah, that was a great one previously to this. One of my favorite points of his is he said that restaurants are better in places.
As of high income inequality, why? Because these are places that have both Rich customers and low paid staff. So somebody can afford to run a great restaurant because there are enough people that will pay because there are rich people around. But there are enough low-income people that we can have a good amount of staff. They said that's why the best restaurants are in places of high income inequality. Whoa! That's again a brilliant
connection. That's interesting. I would also add to that that a lot of folks.
On a dedicate themselves to a craft or an art, are depending on the industry, but frequently not going to be well paid for that. And so they're let's just call it volitionally poorly. Paid in some cases and I'm thinking of in this particular case, San Francisco and East Bay, where a lot of restaurants in San Francisco, a lot of restaurants in two places, but as the price of Living went up in San Francisco, a lot of the
Best restaurateur has meaning and I should say chefs, a lot of the best chefs. A lot of the best line Cooks. A lot of the best massage therapists. A lot of these people could no longer afford to be there had to move to the East Bay and I would say that led to a decline in the quality of all of the goods. I just mentioned services so that would also make sense if you want access to the artists they're not going to be in the most expensive areas typically. Lets like a Jeff Koons or
someone I haven't been to
Lately. But I heard that that happened with some of the, a lot of the best chefs from New York City, went to Pittsburgh, and that helped us bring is harder than you'd
expect. I can see that I could totally see it. All right, Tyler. Anybody else on the list of people you're learning from our people. You're
studying. Does it my to that tight latex because there specific things.
I love it. All right, so I think we have one more category. We'll see how many we get to but I heard a sharp inhale. Where should we
go?
Okay. So inch word inch, word.com Inc. Hwo are d.com. This is actually a bit of a call-out. I don't usually do this, but I would like to hear from translators it if you're a translator contact me. Because I've got a lot of paying work, because I'm really interested in the subject of translations that are always improving. When I always at a certain point, you call it, maybe you call it a release.
But you know, as a writer the first time you write a sentence is not always the best.
You improve it. The second or third time and at any given sentence, we see in your books that might be the fourth time. You've improved that sentence maybe over the course of months. There's always room for improvement when somebody makes a translation of one of your books, the incentives are a little off now because the translators incentive as long as they're not translating the Bible or something, their incentive is mostly just get it done. Good enough, get paid.
The Publishers incentive, the publisher, who publishes the translation? Their incentive is hire a translator that will make a good enough translation for a low enough price that we can get this out in the market now and make a profit selling it. But my incentive as the writer that sweated, over these words for years and really crafted it almost like song lyrics.
Like I have a different incentive that if I'm going to have a translation of this book out in the world, I wanted to be great. It really, really great. Which means my incentive is to work closely with the translator to make sure that what they're doing is the best it can be and that it's communicating what I intended. How do you do that in a language? You don't speak. I don't know. That's my question. So this is the I don't have the answer but I'm fascinated with the problem. So so far the best
Here is what I'm putting it into word.com which is this idea of incremental Improvement. Oh
so this is your website.
Yeah, I made it. It's my
little okay Ashley. All
right, so it's this idea where once I call it something done whether it's an article or a book I put every sentence into its own entry in the database and then I pass it to a computer that does the first round of a bad translation. So now we have a starting point. So now if you're the first translator to come through and translate the automatic translation,
In into your language, let's say that's a low bar, that's low-hanging fruit. So let's say that will pay 50 cents per sentence. But now, if you've done one round of improvements over the computer translation and now somebody else comes through and says some, I can improve that further that sentence not the whole thing that sentence, I can improve that one now that'll pay like a dollar per sentence. If it's an improved and now say, two different people have improved it twice. And now, a third person looks at that and says mean I had no
How to improve that better. Okay, well, now you can make say $2 per sentence to it, improve it better though. The stakes are getting higher for improving it. There are incentives now to make it as good as can
be, how do you know, if it's been improved?
So, yes, how do we know it's a better translation. So then we have readers, who reviewers readers, whatever you want to call them, that are paid a little something to just read through in judge.
And at any given sentence where an improvement has been made, both sentences are shown in random order and they have to vote for which one they feel is the better sentence. In that case when it's majority votes, at that sentence is better than its Chosen and that's when the translator gets paid, so translator, can't get money just for coming in and speaking crap they only get paid when the readers believe that. That was a better translation. Anyway, I'm not saying this is the final answer but I think it's a fascinating problem.
That I'm willing to spend money on because I'm incentivized to have the best translation of my works out there. That's it, if there are good translator, how do you incentivize them to go first? Knowing that someone might come along and make substantially more money by doing the fourth, or fifth iteration? Or is that not a problem? I don't know. So you just asked a great question. Thank you. You're welcome.
You're
all very kind of the answer that's a that's a really good thing to ask, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I know nothing about this. I'm not fluent in any other language but you've probably seen this effect whenever you start to learn another language, doesn't it make you look at your English more closely
100%. That's part of the fun. Yes. Makes you look at the whole world differently depending on? Yeah. How Divergent the languages from your native language in this case English for us? Oh yeah, so so so interesting. It's
Trying to help somebody with their approach to Japanese yesterday, and my first thought was, if you have like three or four weeks, maybe you go to South Korea, first and try to pick up Korean because the reading is so much easier. So, perhaps you could learn the basics of Korean which isn't identical to Japanese, but the grammar is very, very, very, very similar. And then you go back to Japan with your newfound, knowledge of the
Grammar without the handicap that slows you down of having to learn three writing systems, right? Hiragana, Katakana and challenging and I don't know if that's a good approach but it was the first time it had occurred to me and I was like, huh?
I wonder if that actually would be helpful or kind of like Python and Ruby would just be confusing as fuck because now, you're like, learn Portuguese Spanish at the same time and you just get scrambled. It's possible that it would be the latter.
Yeah. Okay. Do you remember Benny Lewis fluent in 3 months, Benny,
Lewis? Sure. Yeah, the Irish polyglot I think was yes, nickname.
Mmm, Yeah, Benny recommends, Esperanto for that same thing that you just said
And he said, because of objectively Esperanto is the easiest language to learn. That's why it was invented in 1888 by Zaman off to be easy to learn. Therefore, if you've never spoken a second language for go, learn some Esperanto first, get used to having a conversation, that's not in your native tongue interest and then go learn your target language.
Wonder, if that's too much of a lift. Have you
done it? Well, I will report. I did it. I became fluent in Esperanto.
Six years ago, on Bennie's advice and I regret
it. It's like less useful than Klingon. The least in communicating with others, right? Actually,
I think Esperanto is hippie Klingon. It is, I went to the annual Esperanto conference in Seoul Korea, and it was a bunch of like, 60 year olds in tie-dyes, singing about world, peace,
Kind of like, you know, Woodstock 1969 Revisited. Yeah, they're all singing like oh the world would have perfect harmony. If we all just followed the ways of Zaman Hoff and had the One World Language. And, and even though I had spent six months learning this language, I got to the event and I went, I don't like you people. I'm
sorry
I stopped the on that day. I was like, I don't want to speak this language anymore. Okay. But so talk about like, you know, the Ruby python. I never learned.
The Spanish my whole life. Even I grew up in America. I just thought now Spanish is too similar to English. If I'm gonna learn another language, I wanted to be Chinese or Arabic or something very different. So I never learned any Spanish, but just two months ago, I went to South America for my first time and so, I spent like a month learning Pimsleur basic Spanish, and Tim was like, oh my God, this is a great language. This is amazing, this is fascinating that us and also, it is so easy.
Z. That went damn it. Benny shouldn't have learned Esperanto for six months. I should have learned Spanish, it's just as easy and it would have been more useful. Anyway, I like that you brought up the Korean thing. I think it is proven to be a good technique to do the easier language first to help you disconnect or like you say to help you understand the grammar and then do the difficult one but it does help. I guess if it's Korean or a language that people actually use not
as bro. Yeah, Spanish is
Great language for people who are curious about Korean and just how brilliantly the writing system is designed is a point of national pride and it is not something that was out of the box. It was something that was developed long after Korea had first adopted Chinese writing. Much like the Japanese there is a cartoon online and it is something like how to learn to read.
Read Korean and 15 minutes or how to read Korean and 15 minutes. And it's a comic book, you can find it. And literally it might not be 15 minutes, but within two or three hours, you can learn Korean well enough that you can read anything in Korean, you will not understand a damn thing that you are reading. You can but you will be able to sound out phonetically yeah. Roughly roughly, what it is which is great fun and well enough that you know if your
As I was a few weeks ago, in an Uber and you see the Uber app is set to Korean. You could say, you know, thank you or have a nice day or how are you in Korean and blow the in the back. How did you know? And you be like well to Korean on the app. The oh my God, if you want some cheap Applause, that'll make somebody's day. That's that's an easy way to go.
You know, it's funny. It fits, right in your member, your whole like. Hey, here's how to learn how to spin a pen with your fingers. Like, here's some things, you can learn about you minutes. Like the old, like Tim Ferriss.
1.0 South by Southwest. Yeah, exactly. Speak Korean in 15 minutes
also, courtesy of Japan for sure. This is what all the kids used to do in class and now I have something that will endlessly distracted annoy everyone. Who sees it from on an airplane or something. Thanks, Japan. All right. What else do you have? Derek? Anything else that Top Hat?
I'll just say this quickly, I love this little phrase. I realized when I was like digging into the my incentives, why?
Why I do things? I travel to inhabit philosophies, you can hear about life in Brazil, or life in Japan.
But it's a different thing to be there in it. That I think there's some philosophies, whether it's stoicism re Hedonism that we can just do from a chair by just sitting in changing our thought process. But you know, Brazilian ISM. Japan ISM Arabian is. Mm, I don't know. Parisian is MM. These are kind of like, philosophies, the way that people live in places are kind of living philosophies that I want to experience.
What it's like because I want to think that way. So I would really like to go there live as close as I can to being like a local, learn the language live that life, according to that, way to inhabit embody this way of living in order to feel the actual physical results. The actions of living that philosophy. And I thought this is actually the reason I travel, it's not to look at things or take pictures or post them to impress people.
I travel to inhabit philosophies.
I love that. What are you finding of the philosophy? What is the philosophy of the UAE hoarded? By recognizing that the cultures are very different depending if they're, by the hills, or the water, or the desert, but how would you try to express that
philosophy? Easy generosity. That's the thing. When I said that, Sheikh, Zayed, who founded it? Bedouin culture underneath it and then say, emirati culture or a radiant hair,
Bob culture.
Generosity is by far the number one. If you read this book, Arabian, Sands by that, your he has all these stories of when he'd be out in the desert. On the camels with his little crew of six guys and they only have like this much food left. Like nothing and their tummies are grumbling and they're starving. It's funny that I said tummies that was cute
as noted that for myself. It's my bedtime story dad.
Kissing your little tummies anyway. Okay, so but then if somebody would approach them, you know, like oh, hello my friend, whatever he said. As soon as somebody approaches, that's it. We're not going to eat today because this is the way you give whatever you've got. So anybody that stranger approaches, you say hello front, come sit with us here. No have some soup, don't worry, we're not hungry. We've eaten enough, this is for you. Now come sit with us when I went to Dubai that first time somebody I had met once from
God Saudi Arabia. We met briefly in Oxford. He was the only person I knew that lived in the region. So I emailed him saying, hey man, I'm going to Dubai for my first time. Are you going to be around? And he said, my friend, he said, cancel your hotel reservation. He said you're going to stay at my home in the Burj Khalifa. The tallest building in the world. You're gonna stay. I have an apartment in the Burj Khalifa. Stay at my home, you're my guest. I said, wow, that would be great. I said, it'll be so good to see you again. And he said, no, no, I won't be there. He said, I live in Riyadh but my uncle will get you from the airport and just give you the keys, my home is your home.
Um, stay as long as you want. So I did I stayed in the Burj Khalifa, a few days. This generosity runs so deep, it's hospitalities generosity. And he understand why that you're in the harsh environment of the desert, everybody's living a harsh life. When you meet somebody that's traveling in passing, it's like owed. Come in, come in here. Have some, don't even need to tell us your name or who you are, your tribe or nothing. Just come in my guest, please have whatever you want my food. Take a bed. Stay. As long as you want,
And that's so deep in the culture that, yes, I would like to inhabit that philosophy. Now, that I've been on the receiving end of that Hospitality part of me, kind of wants to have a home near the Dubai airport and make that my like, my main home base. And for whenever I'm not there and I'm traveling to just open it up for any of my friends of the world. Like, pleat you're coming through. Please stay at my home. Like I want to
return. That is going to be a six by eight foot.
Touche, come everything I have
is yours. Wait, tarek things, quick text. Where's the bathroom? Oh no, there's
no bone. No, my friend question whether you truly need it or not?
Yeah we'll find out. Let me know where you think the syncs your feet
I'll be a bad emirati. Only fired.
How is understanding that do?
I is an international City for a lot of different reasons you could get by on English. Almost certainly, how is your Arabic coming? Have you started tackling
that I haven't spent more time in Dubai, yet. I'm planning on going back very soon and getting to know more people and spending more time there and considering it as a place, I really might want to live because I've just noticed throughout my life like I grew up in a suburb of Chicago. Then I moved to downtown Boston. Then I moved to New York City in the middle of it and it was like, oh yes, this
Culturalism, like this feels more like representative of the real world to me, right? Then like I when I went back to my hometown in Hinsdale, Illinois. It's like everybody's white. This is weird. You know. It's like I like places that are Multicultural because it feels like I'm more in the real world, right. So I thought New York, like I've also lived in London. I moved to Singapore. I lived in Singapore for years. I thought I had been in the most Multicultural places in the world. No, I looked up statistically, New York, London, Singapore.
They're all about 35 or so 30 to 35% foreign-born population, Dubai is like 90 plus percent. Foreign-born population, everybody is from everywhere, and so when I got there, it was like, anthropology jackpot. Oh my God, this is amazing. Everybody's from everywhere. I could get into any Taxi Driver, you know, anybody. You can just ask anybody, you see where you from, and you're going to get a different answer all the time. I'm from Cameroon. What are you doing here? I love languages.
Say okay. What does that mean? He said, well, I love languages and I thought. Where can I get paid to learn languages. I said, I moved to Dubai. I'll drive a taxi and I can get paid to learn languages. I said, did it work? He said my friend, I can speak 8 languages. Now I've been here 18 months I can converse with people in eight languages that everybody that gets into my taxi. I just talked with people all day long, he said I speak Urdu. Hindi Arabic think he grew up with friend. She said I'm speaking to you in English. He said I couldn't speak English 18 months.
Now look at me and he said, I'm getting paid to learn languages, this is amazing. And I turn to somebody else. I like where you from. She's like, I'm from Nairobi, she had the most beautiful accent and we got into a long conversation about Nairobi and it's the thought. This is what I want. Like just by being in Dubai, the whole world comes through there and you meet so many people from all over the place of how God this is. What a beautiful place. Anyway. It's like the
real living in the Cantina and Star Wars. That's followed. You said it.
First, that's that's what I usually say. It's like Dubai is the
A bar in Star Wars, but the Cantina everybody comes from all over the world to this spot to kind of do their Shady dealings. But, oh my God, if you're, if you're an amateur Anthropologist like me, it's Heaven,
well, I'm excited that you're excited, man. It's fun to see and I hope to break some bread in person in the not-too-distant future. What fun? Always fun to hang that. Always. Great fun. Is there anything that you would like to
Say anything you'd like to point people to mention anything at all. Before we bring out the little buddies, again, pop off, and land the plane.
These guys have been sleeping by my feet the whole time. We've been talking
adorable.
All right. You really good little pets. They're really if you don't wash your hands after you cook, then you just let them lick your fingers. Oh, he's licking me right now. It's really sweet the way they like they never ever, ever bite. Very gentle.
Well, unlike my hamsters, I had when I was a kid, they were biter.
Yes, yes.
My head gerbils, they were
nasty
anyway. I don't know. Well, you know, my usual call out. I really enjoy the people that I've met through your podcast. So hey, anybody listen to this all the way through, I truly enjoy my email inbox. I spend about 90 minutes a day just answering emails and I really like it. So, send me an e-mail, say hello, introduce yourself. Especially if you're a translator, or if you live in Dubai, or you found anything here, fascinating?
All right. Do you want them to do the detective work of finding the email address?
Is that the
hurdle? Oh sorry go to my website just go to S IV. E dot RS. There's a big contact me here link.
Okay, XIV e dot RS. Yes, my friend pretty pretty low hurdle. Yeah, the cat clear that than they have other problems. All right man. Well thanks for taking the time as always. Yeah, really
appreciate re I missed you in England.
Yeah. Next time we'll both get our knees repaired and then we'll meet up for another walk and talk.
I might ask you.
Tips on meniscus,
tough boy. Yeah, we'll talk about the Nia repair everybody. Listening, go to Tim dot, block / podcast, I'll link to everything. We talked about all the books City of Gold China's worldview. All these various things, the figures and places musicians and so
on, oh I should say that useful. Not true is only through my website, it's not at fuck Amazon, it's not on Amazon. I put it on my website only so don't go to Amazon and look for it in email. Me and ask why it's not there.
As I don't like them. So, go to cbs.com.
Go to service.com, or Si V Dot RS. Is this, go to the same place and you can find all things about Derek. And until next time be a bit Kinder than is necessary. Not just to others but also to yourself and thanks for tuning in.
Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off and that is five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little fun before the weekend, between one and a half and two million people. Subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday, easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things. I found or discovered for have started exploring over that week, kind of like my diary
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Blog / Friday, type that into your browser. Tim dot blog, / Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening way. Back in the day in 2010, I published a book called The 4-Hour Body, which I probably started writing in 2008. And in that book, I recommended many, many, many things, first generation, continuous glucose monitor, and cold exposure, and all sorts of things that have been tested by the
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