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The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: The Random Show — Ketones for Cognition, Tim’s Best Lab Results in 10+ Years, How Kevin Hit 100 Days Sober, Home Defense, Vibe Coding Unleashed, and More (#822)

2025-08-14 04:25:49

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

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

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

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

DUE TO SOME HEADACHES IN THE PAST, PLEASE NOTE LEGAL CONDITIONS:

Tim Ferriss owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, with all rights reserved, as well as his right of publicity.

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WHAT IS NOT ALLOWED: No one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use Tim Ferriss’ name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another’s products or services. For the sake of clarity, media outlets are permitted to use photos of Tim Ferriss from the media room on tim.blog or (obviously) license photos of Tim Ferriss from Getty Images, etc.

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

Kevin Rose: TimTim.

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Thank you.

Tim Ferriss: That is huge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Oh, wow. Okay.

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for a lot of people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: How did you find them?

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

Tim Ferriss: Sure. Yeah. Easily three.

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

Tim Ferriss: Sure.

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: No, it doesn’t though.

Kevin Rose: — do these little tiny things

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: If you listen to audio — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Probably doesn’t help very much.

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

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

Kevin Rose: That little ramen.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: A shot glass.

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Oh, they’re so cool.

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: I’ve been to this bar.

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

Kevin Rose: Yes.

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, more analog.

Kevin Rose: More so than I ever have.

Tim Ferriss: For sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Yes.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: As it was.

Kevin Rose: Yeah.

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

Kevin Rose: That’s interesting.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

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

Tim Ferriss: Something’s not right here.

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure. For sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: I hate Zone 2, but yeah.

Tim Ferriss: It’s so boring.

Kevin Rose: Just annoying.

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

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

Kevin Rose: Yeah, that’s my problem.

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: That’s amazing.

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Just letting everything pass through.

Kevin Rose: Yeah.

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

Kevin Rose: Wow.

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

Kevin Rose: Yeah, and lack of sleep.

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Fen-Phen and shit?

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

Kevin Rose: Did you ever hit Bronkaid?

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: No.

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

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

Kevin Rose: And just get six-pack abs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Is this one palatable?

Tim Ferriss: This one is palatable.

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Well, and MCT.

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

Kevin Rose: Wow.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you can absolutely feel it.

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Really?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: You want to explain what that is?

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Recovery.

Kevin Rose: Return to a normal baseline, right?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Phone a friend. Poor Rhonda.

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Zepbound also.

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

Tim Ferriss: Milligram?

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

Tim Ferriss: IU, yeah, international unit.

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

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

Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah.

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

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

Kevin Rose: Yeah.

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

Kevin Rose: This is bro science at best.

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Yeah, go ahead.

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

Kevin Rose: I don’t use trazodone anymore.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Into your pharmacy.

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

Tim Ferriss: Oh, all right. All right.

Kevin Rose: Amazon Pharmacy.

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Cut that out. 

Tim Ferriss: Tomato, tomato.

Kevin Rose: Yeah. Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Whatever floats your boat.

Kevin Rose: Oh, so I tried Belsomra.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, that’s pricey.

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: 10 grams of creatine.

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

Kevin Rose: Wow, that’s high.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Kevin Rose: Are you wearing a felt hat?

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

Kevin Rose: A hundred percent.

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Abort, abort, abort.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: It’s a different story.

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

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

Kevin Rose: It’s not weapon advice.

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

Kevin Rose: Yeah, exactly.

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Or they get hacked.

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

Kevin Rose: People in your closet?

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

Kevin Rose: The college years.

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

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

Kevin Rose: Yeah, Taran Tactical.

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

Kevin Rose: Tim Ferriss Experiment.

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Oh, shit.

Tim Ferriss: Recognized his kid, not him.

Kevin Rose: Right.

Tim Ferriss: That’s spooky as fuck.

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Depends on what they’re on.

Tim Ferriss: You don’t want to engage.

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Spray is the way to go.

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Very calmly.

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: I had throwing stars as a kid.

Tim Ferriss: So dangerous.

Kevin Rose: I should bring that back.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Different world. I’m just — 

Kevin Rose: Different world.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: So you’re protected.

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

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

Kevin Rose: Exactly.

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

Kevin Rose: Yes, we did the same thing.

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Exactly. Minus the back pain.

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

Kevin Rose: You texted me — 

Tim Ferriss: And — 

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Footing.

Kevin Rose: — footing right now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Five years is generous.

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: What you can produce.

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

Tim Ferriss: Ketonesuppositories.ai.

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

Tim Ferriss: That’d be awesome.

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Kevin Rose: That’s $50 now.

Tim Ferriss: It’s so nuts.

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

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

Kevin Rose: Exactly.

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

Kevin Rose: Yeah.

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

Kevin Rose: Oh, my God.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

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

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Why would you?

Kevin Rose: Why?

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

Kevin Rose: With that volume.

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

Kevin Rose: Exactly.

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

Kevin Rose: That’s right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: That are killing themselves?

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Yes, that’s exciting.

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Keep your site up.

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

Tim Ferriss: Oh, that’s clever.

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

Tim Ferriss: Oh, that’s fucking brilliant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Six months.

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Yes, yes, yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: They’re different.

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Read this white paper.

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

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

Kevin Rose: Go ahead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: I love it.

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

Tim Ferriss: Kevin’s crystal balls.

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

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

Kevin Rose: Yes

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

Kevin Rose: [BLEEPED]

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Dude, that is so amazing.

Tim Ferriss: So crazy.

Kevin Rose: Dude, congratulations man.

Tim Ferriss: Thanks.

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

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

Kevin Rose: That’s amazing.

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Dude that is so awesome.

Tim Ferriss: Yes, I’m so excited.

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: I didn’t know that.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: Yes, the garden that you grew —

Kevin Rose: Grow a Garden.

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

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

Tim Ferriss: It’s built into the game.

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

Tim Ferriss: Congratulations.

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

Tim Ferriss: Oh, what’s that?

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Right, exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Speaking of in-person stuff.

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

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

Digg.com with two Gs is really —

Tim Ferriss: Digg.com.

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

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

So timtim.

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

Kevin Rose: Several hundred thousand people.

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

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

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

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

Tim Ferriss: I assume you’re being sarcastic.

Kevin Rose: No, it does suck.

Tim Ferriss: It’s like everything seems better.

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

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Let’s do some Nanoblocks together.

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

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

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

Kevin Rose: Yes, exactly.

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

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

The post The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: The Random Show — Ketones for Cognition, Tim’s Best Lab Results in 10+ Years, How Kevin Hit 100 Days Sober, Home Defense, Vibe Coding Unleashed, and More (#822) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

The Random Show — Ketones for Cognition, Tim’s Best Lab Results in 10+ Years, How Kevin Hit 100 Days Sober, Home Defense, Vibe Coding Unleashed, and More (#822)

2025-08-13 11:56:35

Welcome to another wide-ranging “Random Show” episode I recorded with my close friend Kevin Rose (digg.com)!

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

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the conversation on YouTube. The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

This episode is brought to you by Momentous high-quality creatine to sharpen the mind; David Protein Bars with 28g of protein, 150 calories, and 0g of sugar; and AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement.

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This episode is brought to you by Momentous high-quality creatine and more! Momentous offers high-quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, and I’ve been testing their products for months now. I’ve been using their magnesium threonate, apigenin, and L-theanine daily, all of which have helped me improve the onset, quality, and duration of my sleep. I’ve also been using Momentous creatine, and while it certainly helps physical performance, including poundage or wattage in sports, I use it primarily for mental performance (short-term memory, etc.). In fact, a new pilot study in Alzheimer’s patients, found that supplementing can increase brain creatine levels by 11% in just 8 weeks and improve measures of memory, reasoning, and attention—domains that typically decline over time.

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Want to hear the last time KevKev and I did one of these Random Shows? Listen to our conversation here in which we discussed maintaining sobriety with a partner who still drinks, Taiwanese tea, finding magic in the ordinary, the ups and downs of accelerated TMS, the intersection of AI and life sciences, deepfaked side hustlers, when meditation retreats go right (and wrong), and much more.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Connect with Kevin Rose:

Website | Instagram | Twitter | Threads | Bluesky | Digg.com

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

People

• Sigmund Freud: Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis who revolutionized our understanding of the human psyche.
• Hokusai: Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, famous for “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” and influential woodblock prints.
• Craig Mod: Writer, photographer, and publisher known for his thoughtful explorations of Japan, walking, and digital publishing.
• Liam Neeson: Irish actor known for dramatic roles in films like Schindler’s List and action films like the Taken series.
• Johnny Depp: American actor known for eccentric characters including Captain Jack Sparrow and Willy Wonka in Tim Burton’s adaptation.
• Gene Wilder: American actor and comedian famous for his iconic portrayal of Willy Wonka in the 1971 classic film.
• Dr. Rhonda Patrick: PhD scientist and host of the FoundMyFitness podcast, specializing in nutrition, aging, and health optimization.
• Martin Berkhan: Fitness expert and founder of the Leangains intermittent fasting protocol that revolutionized flexible dieting.
• Dr. Peter Attia: Physician and longevity expert focusing on the science of healthspan and lifespan optimization.
• Desmond Tutu: South African Anglican archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner renowned for his anti-apartheid activism.
• Taran Butler: Competitive shooter and founder of Taran Tactical Innovations, known for custom firearm modifications.
• Keanu Reeves: Canadian actor beloved for roles in The Matrix trilogy and the John Wick action franchise.
• Jim Jefferies: Australian stand-up comedian and actor known for his provocative and observational comedy style.
• Steven Seagal: American actor, screenwriter, and martial artist known for action films in the 1980s and 1990s.
• Marc Andreessen: Co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm and co-creator of the Mosaic web browser.
• Josh Cook: Digital strategist and entrepreneur known for his work in technology and social media engagement.
• Sam Altman: CEO of OpenAI and prominent figure in artificial intelligence development and governance.
• Alexis Ohanian: Co-founder of Reddit and venture capitalist focused on early-stage technology investments.
• Justin Mezzell: Digg CEO, designer, and creative director known for his distinctive illustration style and branding work.

Movies, TV, and Media

• Shaun of the Dead: A 2004 British horror-comedy film that brilliantly parodies zombie movies while delivering genuine scares and laughs.
• Jason Bourne: An action-thriller film series following the amnesiac super-spy created by Robert Ludlum, starring Matt Damon.
• Snatch: A 2000 British crime-comedy film by Guy Ritchie featuring interconnected criminal plots and memorable characters.
• Babe: A 1995 family comedy-drama about a pig who learns to herd sheep, combining live-action with groundbreaking animatronics.
• The Naked Gun: A comedy film series starring Leslie Nielsen as the bumbling Detective Frank Drebin, known for its slapstick humor.
• Taken: An action-thriller film series starring Liam Neeson as a former CIA operative with “a very particular set of skills.”
• Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory: A 1971 musical fantasy film starring Gene Wilder as the eccentric chocolatier in Roald Dahl’s beloved story.
• John Wick: An action film series starring Keanu Reeves as a legendary assassin seeking vengeance, known for stylized fight choreography.
• Slow TV: A television genre featuring real-time, unedited coverage of lengthy events like train journeys or knitting marathons.
• Playboy: An American men’s lifestyle and entertainment magazine founded by Hugh Hefner in 1953.
• Wired: A monthly magazine covering how emerging technologies impact culture, the economy, and politics.

Books

• The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss: A step-by-step guide to escaping the 9-5 grind through lifestyle design, automation, and the principles of working smarter rather than harder.
• The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss: An uncommon guide to rapid fat-loss, incredible sex, and becoming superhuman through data-driven body hacking and minimally effective dose principles.
• The 4-Hour Chef by Timothy Ferriss: A meta-learning manual disguised as a cookbook that teaches how to master any skill quickly using cooking as the vehicle for accelerated learning principles.

Brands, Companies, and Products

• Nanoblocks: A micro-sized building block system from Japan that makes LEGO look like giant boulders.
• LEGO: A line of plastic construction toys that bare feet have been stepping on since 1958.
• Coyote: A card game I made for strategic thinking and decision-making.
• Qitone: A brand of ketone supplement powder for metabolic optimization.
• N.O.-Xplode: A pre-workout supplement that promises to turn your gym session into a controlled explosion.
• Bronkaid / Primatene Mist: Over-the-counter medications containing ephedrine for respiratory relief.
• Belsomra: A prescription sleep medication (a DORA) that helps quiet the brain’s wake signal.
• Mounjaro / Zepbound: Brand names for Tirzepatide, a GLP-1 agonist medication for diabetes and weight management.
• Thorne: A health and technology company that sells research-backed supplements.
• Taser: A brand of conducted energy weapon manufactured by Axon Enterprise.
• Ring: A home security and smart home company owned by Amazon.
• Taran Tactical: A firearms training company specializing in competitive shooting techniques.
• Anduril: A defense technology company building autonomous systems for military applications.
• Cloudflare: A web infrastructure and website security company that keeps the internet running smoothly.
• Tools for Humanity: The company behind Worldcoin and the retina-scanning Orb for global identity verification.
• Oura Ring: A smart ring that tracks sleep and physical activity with impressive accuracy.
• Peloton: An exercise equipment and media company that brought the boutique fitness experience home.
• Fitbit: A company producing activity trackers and smartwatches, now owned by Google.
• Domino’s Pizza: An American multinational pizza restaurant chain known for delivery innovation.
• Coca-Cola: A multinational beverage corporation that has been refreshing the world since 1886.
• Andreessen Horowitz (a16z): A venture capital firm that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future.
• True Ventures: A venture capital firm focused on early-stage technology companies.
• Roblox: An online game platform and game creation system where users build virtual worlds.
• Amazon / Amazon Prime / Amazon Pharmacy: E-commerce and technology company that started with books and now sells everything.
• Costco: A multinational corporation that operates a chain of membership-only big-box retail stores.
• Walmart / Target: Multinational retail corporations competing for America’s shopping dollars.
• UPS: A multinational shipping and receiving and supply chain management company in distinctive brown trucks.
• 1-800-FLOWERS: A floral and gourmet foods gift retailer that pioneered phone-based ordering.
• Etsy: An e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies.
• Bugatti: A luxury sports car manufacturer that creates automotive art for the ultra-wealthy.

Institutions and Organizations

• Alcoholics Anonymous (AA): An international fellowship of people who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.
• Stanford University: A private research university in Stanford, California, founded in 1885 and consistently ranked among the world’s top academic institutions.
• Johns Hopkins University: A private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, founded in 1876 and widely considered America’s first research university.
• TSA (Transportation Security Administration): A federal agency within the US Department of Homeland Security responsible for protecting the nation’s transportation systems and ensuring freedom of movement for people and commerce.

Websites, Platforms, and Apps

• Leangains: Martin Berkhan’s website on intermittent fasting.
• YouTube: An online video sharing and social media platform.
• TikTok: A short-form video hosting service.
• Instagram: A photo and video sharing social networking service.
• Facebook: An online social media and social networking service.
• Reddit: A social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website.
• Wikipedia: A free, multilingual online encyclopedia.
• Digg: A news aggregator with a curated front page.
• Coyote: The official website for the card game Coyote.
• River: An in-person event and social platform for communities.
• Cursor / Claude Code: AI-powered coding tools.
• Lovable (formerly Base44): “Vibe coding” platforms for building apps.
• Vercel: A cloud platform for frontend frameworks and static sites.

Concepts and Terms

• 12-Step Programs: A set of guiding principles for recovery from addiction, most famously used by Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery organizations worldwide.
• Ketogenic Diet (Keto): A high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that forces the body to burn fat for fuel instead of glucose, originally developed to treat epilepsy.
• Intermittent Fasting (16/8): An eating pattern that cycles between periods of eating and fasting, with the 16/8 method involving 16 hours of fasting and an 8-hour eating window.
• Zone 2 Training: Low-intensity aerobic exercise performed at a specific heart rate zone that maximizes fat burning and mitochondrial efficiency.
• APoE (Apolipoprotein E) Gene: A gene associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, with the APOE4 variant significantly increasing susceptibility to cognitive decline.
• Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT): A medical test to assess how the body processes glucose over time, commonly used to diagnose diabetes and prediabetes.
• ApoB (Apolipoprotein B): A primary protein component of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol particles, considered a more accurate marker for cardiovascular disease risk than traditional cholesterol tests.
• Autophagy: The body’s cellular “housekeeping” process of breaking down and recycling damaged proteins and organelles to maintain cellular health and longevity.
• Exogenous Ketones: Ketone supplements taken orally to rapidly induce ketosis without following a strict ketogenic diet, though their effectiveness remains debated.
• GLP-1 Agonists: A class of medications that mimic the hormone GLP-1, used for treating type 2 diabetes and obesity by regulating blood sugar and appetite.
• DORA (Dual Orexin Receptor Antagonist): A newer class of sleep medications that work by blocking orexin receptors in the brain to promote natural sleep patterns with fewer side effects than traditional sleep aids.
• ECA Stack: A controversial and now largely banned supplement combination of ephedrine, caffeine, and aspirin once popular among bodybuilders for fat loss but associated with serious health risks.
• Vibe Coding: A modern approach to programming that relies heavily on AI tools and intuitive problem-solving rather than traditional computer science fundamentals, enabled by advanced code generation AI.
• Dead Internet Theory: A conspiracy theory suggesting that the internet is now predominantly populated by bots and AI-generated content rather than authentic human interaction.
• ZK Proofs (Zero-Knowledge Proofs): A cryptographic method that allows one party to prove they know specific information without revealing the information itself, crucial for privacy-preserving blockchain applications.
• DEXA Scan: A low-radiation X-ray scan that precisely measures bone density, body fat percentage, and lean muscle mass, considered the gold standard for body composition analysis.
• Venture Capital: A form of private equity financing where investors provide capital to startups and early-stage companies with high growth potential in exchange for equity ownership.

SHOW NOTES

• [00:00:00] Start.
• [00:06:54] Kevin celebrates 100 days sober! Why and how?
• [00:15:16] Nanoblocks: Kevin’s new Japanese micro-building hobby.
• [00:18:16] The Slow TV movement and Craig Mod’s ambient recordings.
• [00:20:58] Craving analog experiences and wilderness trekking.
• [00:22:24] Writing with background movies.
• [00:23:42] High hopes for The Naked Gun reboot.
• [00:24:35] Kevin’s improved communication since quitting alcohol.
• [00:26:28] My health interventions for cognitive protection.
• [00:29:00] How ketogenic diet and 16/8 intermittent fasting led to my best lab results in 10+ years.
• [00:33:35] Weight control regimens we don’t recommend.
• [00:39:51] Exogenous ketones: Qitone vs. premium options.
• [00:50:32] How glucose tolerance tests work.
• [00:51:58] Microdosing GLP-1 (tirzepatide) for glucose control.
• [00:54:12] DORA sleep medications and neuroprotective effects.
• [00:56:55] Belsomra trial and cost considerations.
• [00:57:52] Sauna temperature optimization based on Rhonda Patrick’s research.
• [01:00:28] There are no biological free lunches.
• [01:03:27] The time Kevin found a homeless person in his closet.
• [01:06:11] Modern home security and privacy measures.
• [01:19:42] Pondering how we survived childhood.
• [01:24:23] AI-driven venture capital landscape changes.
• [01:28:59] Vibe coding revolution: $250k projects now cost $50.
• [01:34:28] Education advice for kids in the AI age.
• [01:36:27] Empowering creative minds vs. traditional technical roles.
• [01:38:29] What Kevin’s crystal balls say about Cloudflare’s data marketplace for content creators.
• [01:42:02] The Digg reboot with Alexis Ohanian: a focus on in-person connections.
• [01:42:59] Dead internet theory and bot content proliferation.
• [01:43:25] Verifying humanity: the trust gradient.
• [01:54:28] My relief at the successful launch of Coyote.
• [01:58:03] Kevin’s Roblox addiction and Grow a Garden expenses.
• [01:59:56] Future meetup plans and parting thoughts.

The post The Random Show — Ketones for Cognition, Tim’s Best Lab Results in 10+ Years, How Kevin Hit 100 Days Sober, Home Defense, Vibe Coding Unleashed, and More (#822) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: My Two-Year Secret Project, COYOTE — The Strategies and Tactics for Building a Bestseller from Nothing with Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens (#821)

2025-08-10 14:28:42

Please enjoy this transcript of my conversation with Elan Lee, cofounder of Exploding Kittens.

This is a very special episode for me, one I’ve been looking forward to publishing for months. It features a behind-the-scenes look at my latest creative project, my new game COYOTE.

COYOTE is a fast, casual card game I created with Elan and the Exploding Kittens team. It has been my obsession for two years.

I worked really hard on every aspect of this one (concept, mechanics, art, you name it)!

You can finally buy it everywhere, including Amazon, Target, Walmart, and 8,000+ retail locations worldwide. It’s been a hit with 100+ test families, my friends, and at conferences around the world. It now produces guaranteed laughs with kids, adults, tipsy people, serious people… all who enjoy unleashing their inner trickster.

If you’ve benefited from my podcast, newsletter, books, or anything at all, please grab a copy or two! It only costs $10-12 and can provide hours upon hours of fun. It takes minutes to learn and 10 minutes to play. Under the hood, it’s also designed to be a good workout for your brain.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to get a product on the shelves of something like Walmart or Target, or simply create a game, this podcast covers it all.

P.S. One last thing: read to the end for a very fun surprise that involves a mystery Hollywood party.

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

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

DUE TO SOME HEADACHES IN THE PAST, PLEASE NOTE LEGAL CONDITIONS:

Tim Ferriss owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, with all rights reserved, as well as his right of publicity.

WHAT YOU’RE WELCOME TO DO: You are welcome to share the below transcript (up to 500 words but not more) in media articles (e.g., The New York Times, LA Times, The Guardian), on your personal website, in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Medium), and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include attribution to “The Tim Ferriss Show” and link back to the tim.blog/podcast URL. For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above.

WHAT IS NOT ALLOWED: No one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use Tim Ferriss’ name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another’s products or services. For the sake of clarity, media outlets are permitted to use photos of Tim Ferriss from the media room on tim.blog or (obviously) license photos of Tim Ferriss from Getty Images, etc.

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Tim Ferriss: Hello, ladies and germs, boys and girls. This is another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I’m Tim Ferriss and I’m sitting with a friend of mine who I brought to my podcast with a secret agenda that has ended up two years later with a very, very not-so-secret-for-long outcome that we’re going to talk about, Elan Lee.

Elan Lee: Thanks.

Tim Ferriss: Nice to see you again.

Elan Lee: It’s nice to see you too. That was a secret agenda. That was a two-year-in-the-making secret agenda.

Tim Ferriss: Two years in the making. So what we’re going to do in this conversation, and I just hijacked his bio because I’ve had too much caffeine, so I’m going to let him do the self-intro in a second. But we’re going to give you a peek behind the curtain, under the hood, open the kimono, choose your metaphor. We’re going to talk about the creative process, the development process, thinking about distribution, retail, all of these things which I have not heard discussed anywhere else in depth.

Elan Lee: You buried the lead. All of that stuff of — 

Tim Ferriss: Of a game that we created that from the very beginning was something I’ve wanted to do my whole life, which is create a game. I was raised, protected in some ways by Dungeons & Dragons as a kid. It was my refuge from bullying and also just the straight boredom of most of my schooling at the time. And that immersive experience, the ability to get lost in a world of imagination and fun and laughter and emotion was so incredibly important. It was so formative for me that the seed was planted really early. And I think you know this because I probably sent you a photograph of this at one point. I still have all of my modules. I have The Player’s Handbook, First Edition, Dungeon Master’s Guide, all of the dice, everything from when I was a kid. I’ve kept it to this day.

Elan Lee: I love this, I love this. But hold on.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: If you’re not going to say it, I’m going to say it. Tim Ferriss made a game.

Tim Ferriss: I did.

Elan Lee: That’s amazing.

Tim Ferriss: It took me 47 years, but here we are.

So the game, I’ll just show it to camera for people who want a visual who are not watching this. If you’re listening, you can go to tim.blog/coyote. So I’m giving a bit of what you might call foreshadowing in the biz. But this is the game. It is a card game. It’s called Coyote. That name did not come easily. We went through about 537 different names and lots of testing and we’ll talk about some of that. But this is the game and it’s effectively, I’d like to hear your pitch because we have slightly different approaches, but I would say it is rock-paper-scissors on steroids. So there are God knows how many, maybe 20 different gestures, something like that, 66 total cards. And you can play cooperatively where you’re all trying to beat the game together or competitively where you can sabotage individual players, throw curveballs of all different types, and that relates to the name Coyote, if you think about the trickster mythology associated with Coyote.

Elan Lee: Yeah

Tim Ferriss: We never got to your bio. Who the hell are you?

Elan Lee: Oh, that’s the least interesting part of this whole thing.

Tim Ferriss: No, I know, but it puts it in perspective and just explain the company a bit, the scope of it, et cetera

Elan Lee: I love talking about games, I hate talking about myself. So I will try.

Tim Ferriss: That’s why it takes someone like me to force you to do it.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Okay, here we go. My name is Elan Lee. I am the co-creator and CEO of Exploding Kittens. I believe we’re the number one independent game studio in the world, something like that. I don’t know. We’ve sold a whole bunch of games. We’ve sold 60 million games at this point and been running that company for 10 years now. And before that I was the chief design officer at the Xbox and before that I worked at a pet store.

Tim Ferriss: And for people who want the full journey, including the sort of magical tinderbox that was Kickstarter way back in the day, how this whole adventure started 10 plus years ago, listen to the first conversation that I did with Elan.

I had wanted to make a game and quickly realized that an RPG, something like Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, was going to be too complicated for me and my friends as adults to play. It would be too hard for me to recruit my friends where you have, let’s just say, a full day, then you have dinner, maybe you have a few drinks, and then you have an hour before people split. There’s no way I’m going to get someone to build, for instance, a chaotic good gray elf, which was my orientation, and work from there. It’s just not going to happen.

And meanwhile, about maybe it was a year or two years before I invited you on the podcast, I found this game Poetry for Neanderthals and holy shit, had so much fun with that with my friends. I thought, “Okay, I think I want to tilt my game dreams,” which at that point had no real direction, “towards something more casual.” But in the meantime, I’d also been listening to all sorts of podcasts and so on that we’ll get to. But you’ve explained your background.

Elan Lee: Well, hold on. So what you just described is exactly why I started Exploding Kittens, because I also — okay, a little bit different. Unlike you, I, when I encounter those crazy two and four and six-hour games, I am immediately turned off. I can’t focus for that long. I can’t understand the rules. If it takes longer than five minutes to explain a game, I am gone. I have no ability to play that game. And so the whole reason I started this company, and I think the whole reason that you made the pivot from giant role-playing games to being interested in the creation of casual fast-party games is this golden rule of two minutes to learn, 15 minutes to play because nothing’s at stake there, right?

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.

Elan Lee: You’re going to learn it. You’re either going to love the game or you’re going to hate it, but whatever, you committed five minutes total to that thing. And I love the games where after the five-minute commitment, you’re still going to play for two hours. But they’re going to be in these little five-minute sessions over and over and over again. And it sounds like that’s the experience you had, which makes me so happy because that means mission accomplished. That’s exactly what I wanted to build.

Tim Ferriss: And we’re going to talk about different rules or tenets that you have because what I want to do in this conversation, we’re definitely going to talk about the process of building this game because I am really, really happy with it and really proud.

Elan Lee: It’s so good. You should be. It’s so good.

Tim Ferriss: And we’ll have a lot to talk about. But the motivation also of basically showing the cards, I’m going to use so many mixed metaphors here, is to teach people game design and explain why this has possessed such a toehold in my mind for so long.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Well, you went through a journey and I’m excited looking at that journey through your eyes of, “I don’t even know what I want to build, but I know I want to build a fun experience that I would enjoy, that my friends would enjoy,” all the way through to this thing is at every Walmart and Target in North America. That journey is incredible and you got to see it for the first time. You absolutely drank from the firehose here.

This was fun for me because I had to walk you through this, right? You’ve never sold a game before. So walking through the process of how you make a game and how you sell a game, it doesn’t work the way people think. So retailers have a buyer per category. So if anybody wants to sell something to a retailer, you want something in Target or Walmart or Amazon or Barnes & Noble. The way it works is you have to convince the buyer for your category to take your thing, right?

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.

Elan Lee: They have limited shelf space. It’s very precious real estate. So you have to convince them that your thing is better than anybody else’s thing. And twice a year they have these things called line reviews.

The buyers have to buy games for next year, right? They need to put stuff on the shelf. There’s only a certain number of meetings they can physically have in a period of time because it’s usually one or two or maybe three people. So they take as many meetings as they can. It’s usually a dozen, maybe two dozen. And in those meetings — 

Tim Ferriss: In your case, with different game manufacturers, different studios.

Elan Lee: Exactly. So they’ll take a meeting with Hasbro and they’ll take a meeting with Mattel and all the big guys. And in those meetings, 20, 30, 50 games are pitched to them in every single one of those meetings. And then they’ll make a decision on which ones they’re going to purchase and stock for the next year. So that’s line review. The tricky parts for line review is one, you got to do a great job, but even before that, you got to get that meeting, right?

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.

Elan Lee: They only have time for a certain number of meetings. So you have to put yourself in a position where you can get in that room.

Tim Ferriss: All right, so we’re going to talk strategy and tactics for line review in a minute because, and take this as a compliment, you are one of the best in-person salespeople I’ve ever seen.

Elan Lee: That could also be an insult, but I’ll take it, I’ll take it.

Tim Ferriss: No, it’s not an insult. No, no, it’s not an insult. Everybody’s in sales, whether they like to admit it or not, whether you’re selling ideas, you’re selling a position, a perspective, if you want to call it deal making. This is what I used to say in my class, my guest lecture that I taught for 10 years, once or twice a year in high-tech entrepreneurship. I would start off by saying, “Who here wants to be in sales?” No hands would go up and I would say, “Well, I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news. Bad news is you’re all in sales. And let me explain why. If you want to call it deal making, fine, you’re going to have to negotiate. You don’t get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate.”

Elan Lee: That’s well said.

Tim Ferriss: “And you get what you can present in a very persuasive way.” I was like, “The good news is you can learn it.”

Elan Lee: Awesome.

Tim Ferriss: This is a coachable, learnable skill, which I completely still believe. There’s some people who may have a little bit of extraversion, charismatic reality, distortion, field advantage, but you can become excellent even if you start with zero raw materials. 

Okay, so the journey, wanted to make a game my whole life, but it was this vague, “Maybe someday. God, wouldn’t it be nice?”

Elan Lee: Let me just poke at that for a second.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, sure.

Elan Lee: Why?

Tim Ferriss: The why is I wanted to imbue someone else’s experience with the magic I felt playing D&D.

Elan Lee: Well said.

Tim Ferriss: That’s it.

Or much easier games, right? It’s such a simple game. I used to play Sorry and Monopoly. And as a young kid, I just thought Sorry was the most hilarious thing when you could look someone in the eyes and go, “Sorry,” and knock their stuff off the board. I didn’t always respond well when it happened to me. It doesn’t have to be the incredibly immersive, complex game that D&D is, although I still think that is just like Gary Gygax and the team way back in the day, holy cow. Also, by the way, for people who don’t know, Gen Con, huge convention, started out around Lake Geneva and was, I believe, created by the TSR guys way back in the day.

Elan Lee: I believe that’s right. Yeah. Yeah, Gen Con from Lake Geneva and then was the Generals Convention, and now is nothing. Now Gen Con doesn’t stand for anything because it’s in Indianapolis. But anyway, sorry. It was an aside.

Tim Ferriss: It’s an aside. So that was the kind of impetus behind wanting to make a game, but it didn’t have any form. And then I suppose it was maybe two and a half, three years ago, I was like, “Okay, I’d like to actually take a deeper dive here.” Because there are lots of things we have on our, say, list of New Year’s resolutions. For instance, for a long time I had “Develop the side splits like Jean-Claude Van Damme.” Never happened, but it was there every fucking year and it just got punted. I was like, “Well, didn’t do it. Okay, this year is the year.” But there was no plan, there were no deadlines, there were no constraints, which is the power of constraints, which we’ll probably talk about.

Elan Lee: Absolutely, yes.

Tim Ferriss: It is so critical. It’s not just critical. It is additive to have constraints, which seems like a contradiction, but it’s not. Well, we’ll, I’m sure, get to that.

So I started looking at different options and the catalyst for this actually was something way back in the day, some of you will remember called The Legend of CØCKPUNCH, and that was an NFT project — remember those? Which raised two million bucks for fundamental science and mechanistic studies basically related to mental health. So all the proceeds from that, if you want to look it up, it’s easy to find Legend of CØCKPUNCH. But all the proceeds went to a nonprofit foundation, which then funds mental health, therapeutic research and things related to that. But in the process of doing that, I got to, with very low stakes because I think it’s helpful when possible, especially if you’re an intrepid beginner wading into unfamiliar creative waters, make the stakes super, super low, right? And even before this podcast, it’s like, “Okay, this is a very unusual conversation where it’s like, “Look, we’re not doing this live. If we really don’t like it, we can scrap the whole thing.” So reduce, reduce, reduce the pressure and the stakes until you can get started, right?

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: With writing, I got the advice long ago, two crappy pages per day. That’s it.

Elan Lee: Love it.

Tim Ferriss: And then you actually put pen to paper.

Elan Lee: Yeah, the overlaps are enormous with games. But, yeah, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. Super related. Also the iterative process. All right, so using The Legend of CØCKPUNCH as this pretext, basically I started writing fiction and so I wrote these very, very, it turned out to be very involved, very viable fantasy histories and pieces, tying all of these greater houses together and then having these protagonists, the father and then the son, who’s Tyrolean, and yada, yada, yada, yada. And I still think there might be something there, but in the process of creating that, I thought to myself, “This would actually make a fantastic game. And it wouldn’t have to be as complicated as D&D, but you would have allies, you would have age old amenities, would have different strengths, certain strengths that cancel out other strengths, weaknesses that can be taken advantage of.”

And that led me to start listening to a podcast called Think Like a Game Designer with Justin Gary, which is outstanding. I recommend people check it out. And a lot of the focus there, not entirely, but a lot of the focus there was on trading card games, alternately called collectible card games, I guess. Wizards of the Coast who created Magic: The Gathering, patented and trademarked one of them. So they seem to be used interchangeably. But Justin, also former high-level competitive Magic: The Gathering player, has a lot of knowledge around that world. He’s developed some incredibly successful games in that genre where you’re building a deck, you’re buying certain cards or decks with the hopes of getting certain cards and assembling your toolkit basically. And that was initially where my mind went in terms of game concept.

But I realized a few things really quickly. I was a D&D guy, which predated Magic: The Gathering. My brother was a Magic: The Gathering guy. But I’ve never really played Magic. And when I began to delve into it, I was like, “You know what? I would like to think of this as D&D light, but this is incredibly nuanced.” Right?

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: To be good at this — 

Elan Lee: Oh, for sure, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: — it is incredibly nuanced. And also if you’re against someone who is really experienced or just has their mind wired for it, you are going to be obliterated.

Elan Lee: Absolutely right.

Tim Ferriss: And that’s what happened to me playing a friend of mine, kudos to Mike, just got slayed. And God bless Mike, he’s like a number of my friends who just kind of want to watch you die slowly in this agonizing ill-fated gameplay where you’re kind of whimpering along until they put you out of your misery.

Elan Lee: Yeah, yeah, you play a card, he said, “Isn’t this cute? You think you’ve got it. Watch this.”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is just not really my thing. So I thought to myself, okay, looking at some of the casual games I really like, there is an opportunity, and this will come back later, for the underdog or the person who is behind to win. So there’s an element, it is skill-based, but there’s an element of chance and this is going to come back. So then Poetry for Neanderthals, I don’t know how I found it initially, frankly. I think I probably went into a game shop and I was like, “Hey,” and this relates to why, as an adult, I want to spend less time in front of screens and ultimately if I look back and do this thing every year called a past year review, people can find it online, you can read all about it and do it yourself. You don’t have to buy anything, past year review.

Where I look at the peak positive and negative emotional experiences of the past year, I go through my whole calendar. Sometimes I’ll go through my photos, sometimes I’ll go through my text messages or my sent folder in the inbox. And lo and behold, and this is not a revelation for some people, but the activities did not matter as much as the people. So then the question is, how do I create different contexts for interacting with, let’s just say, my 10 or 15 closest friends? Some of that is doing things outside in the wilderness that are active and so on. But that’s a heavy lift, that’s a heavier lift than — 

Elan Lee: A high barrier of entry.

Tim Ferriss: — playing a casual game, right? So it’s like if I’m here in Austin, where we are right now, and my friends or a bunch of my friends come in for South by Southwest and I manage to get them together for one night, what can we play that will get us off of our goddamn phones and deepen our relationship and create memories that we can hold onto that will stick around? That’s it. That’s it, right?

Elan Lee: So good.

Tim Ferriss: And then we had our conversation and that’s kind of when everything, I guess, kicked off. Just a couple of things maybe that we should mention also. After our conversation when, I think, very shyly I must have reached out to you at some point shortly thereafter, and I was kind of like, “Hey, guy, not sure if this would be interesting, but maybe kind of sort, do you want to talk about maybe making a game together or something?”

Elan Lee: I remember this exact conversation. It’s like asking me out on a first date.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, yeah, like scratching my head looking at the ground. And that’s how the whole thing got kicked off. And I want to mention something related to that, which was for the last probably three years, my New Year’s resolutions have been very — they’re very broad, but they’re pretty specific. So I had two. One is doing more delegation, which is figure it out delegation. So what that means is rather than doing what I’m hardwired to do with my OCD and perfectionism, which is, “Here, go do this thing. Let me give you a 20-page installation manual explaining exactly what to do,” versus, “Here’s roughly what I want done. Just figure it out and get it done. I don’t want to make any decisions, So don’t come back to me with 12 options. Just make the best you can.”

And I’ll expect Reid Hoffman also, LinkedIn has mentioned this sort of a 10 percent footfall rate, like 10 percent of the time something’s going to go sideways and that’s fine in the interest of reducing decision fatigue and making things faster. So one was more figure it out delegation and number two was sprints with creatives. And for me what that meant as someone who has operated as a lone wolf, which by the way is a contradiction in terms, but who has been a solo operator for most of my creative projects, I was like, “You know what? It just isn’t that fun anymore to do it solo.” And it’s also antithetical to some of the creative projects I want to pursue like a game.

I mean, there are some amazing solo game designers. Not to say there aren’t, but I was like, “You know what? I want to try to be more social in my creativity and collaborate with creatives and do sprints.” Now, sometimes those sprints turn into longer things, but those have been sort of my two guiding lights for the last few years, which is what then gave me the ability to build up the courage. It sounds so ridiculous to say, but to actually reach out to you and be like, “Hey, do you want to actually just bat around the possibility of something?”

Elan Lee: So from my perspective, that conversation, I got very excited to work with you on something, one, because it turns out you’re just a lovely human being and so much fun to hang out with.

Tim Ferriss: Thank you.

Elan Lee: But two, I asked you that very fundamental question. You said, “Hey, do you want to build a game?” And I said, “Why do you want to build a game?” And your answer was almost identical to what you just related. You talked about your past experiences, you talked about childhood memories of games, you talked about what you like and what you don’t like. And what became very clear to me was there’s something special going on here. Tim wants to treat his friends and his audience to something extraordinary. And we get approached all the time by people who want to make games, big celebrities and singers and actors, all of them want to make a game. And whenever I ask them the question “Why?” the answer is invariably, “Because my agent told me to,” or, “Because I think I can make money,” or really very superficial. Often they’re not game players at all. They have no connection to the experience of game design.

And when I spoke to you, none of that was present. Instead it was, “This is a very personal thing to me, and ultimately I want to give a gift.” And that’s when my brain started lighting up. It’s like, “Oh, this is going to be fun. He’s in this for all the reasons I’m in this and that means we can make something very special together.” And I think we have.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, we definitely have. And another question that is sometimes a little tricky to apply, but that has been in my mind for a while, since Seth Godin, very well-known author, thinker, just incredibly sage and awesome human being. He reframed for me, which is the reframing of the question, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” Right?

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: That’s a good question. Like what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? All right, that’s freeing. But the way he tweaks that is he said, “What would you do if you knew you would fail?” In other words, like, what would you do for which the process alone would make it worth it? And for me, because I mean, we became fast friends very quickly, and I was like, “Okay, that’s rare for me as an adult, number one.” And I’ve been banging this around in my own little head for so long. Even if this ends up not making the cut for whatever reason, this seems worth it to me, right?

Elan Lee: Yeah, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Because coming back to the people over activities also, I was like, “Love hanging out with Elan and connecting. I am going to learn a lot.” And at the very worst, I learn a lot and we’ve deepened our relationship. And that stuff just snowballs over time. It transcends a single project. So even if this had not manifested, it would’ve been worth it and that’s how I try to pick my projects these days.

Elan Lee: So when we first started down this path together, I remember I came out, we sort of visited each other back and forth a few times. And I remember every time I would pack a suitcase full of games and we would sit with some of your friends and we’d play games all night long and you’d say, “I like this one. I don’t like this one. I like this part.” But ultimately, we weren’t making any progress. We were just learning vocabulary, essentially. And I would go home and my wife would be like, “How’d it go? What did you learn? Are you going to make a game together?” And I’d be like, “I don’t know. No, we just hung out and had fun.” And she’d be like, “Wasn’t that a huge disappointment? You traveled 2,000 miles to go see him?” I’m like, “No, it was just fun. Nah, I’m not disappointed at all. We’ll just do it again next month and we’ll see how it goes.” And we did that five or six times. And I remember walking away from each one just thinking, same thing, “If this goes nowhere, I’m having so much fun.” That’s so rare.

Tim Ferriss: It is rare. And if you can orient your life or professional life, and look, I’m not saying this is possible for everyone, but it’s to some extent more possible than people realize. You might not be able to run out and invite Elan on your podcast and then awkwardly approach him like a sheepish 12-year-old boy to ask him on a date. But taking the lens of picking projects based on creating or deepening relationships and learning/developing skills, if you just do that over time, it is almost inevitable that you will win, whatever winning means to you.

Elan Lee: Yeah, value the process, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So let’s talk a little bit about the origin story. Now, I’ll throw out a couple of things here and we’re going to talk about the game development, and then we’re also going to talk about how to sell this thing. How does that work?

Elan Lee: And it’s worth saying, designing a game, I remember you asked me this early on. You started out from the, “Hey, let’s design a game,” and then we’re basically done. And I remember really forcing myself to think through this process because I wanted to explain it to you. “No, that’s half of it. The other half is selling the game. And just as much work goes into that. And if you’re not willing to do it or if you have no mechanism by which you can do it, might as well not design the game because one without the other, useless.”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. So it depends on the scale you’re going after, right? If you want to make something for your friends, you can do that.

Elan Lee: Sure, Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: But in this particular case, I mean — 

Elan Lee: You wanted to make something cool and share it.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I wanted to share. I wanted to share it. So that kind of dictated parts of the process that we needed to weigh really heavily. So the game development process, I mean, we started off looking at the possibilities of modifying existing games, right? So looking at, say, Poetry for Neanderthals — 

Elan Lee: Poetry, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: — with an alternate set of rules or a different deck plus A, B, or C. We looked at prototype games that you alluded to earlier, bringing the suitcase, right?

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So we did that all over the country.

Elan Lee: Yeah, I showed up, I remember. So I have this notebook of game ideas three, 400 in there, and I add more every month. And I remember I picked my favorites, like five or six of them, and I would show up with just the jankiest prototypes. Like, “Here’s something I scribbled on a few cards.” I took some dice and I rubbed out the little nubs on the dice and hand wrote something on all the die faces. “Instead, let’s try playing this weird game.” And you were very patient and you had a lot of vision, thankfully, to look at these just horrible, very hastily created prototypes and say, not, “This is no fun, let’s move on.” But you would always say, “Oh, I like this. I like the — that moment where we had a conversation about what you were going to do next. I like that part. I didn’t like the rest of it, but I like that part.” And that astute sense of notes, really thoughtful and forward moving notes was ultimately what guided our conversation. Because then the next time, I don’t have to pick from 400 games to bring. Now I know, “Okay, this cooperative thing, he liked that conversation aspect. There’s only six games I’ve got like that. Let me bring those six and we’ll refine it even farther.”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, totally. So we can talk about the Toronto trip. The Toronto project.

Elan Lee: Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss: That is where things started to gel. Because we’d had a number of these meetings around the country where we would do a one to three day sprint of testing, take all these notes and we’d done a few of these and we’ve both got a lot going on and your wife would ask you how it went and you’re like, “Well, I’m not really sure. I think we had fun, but no game as of yet.” And so we scheduled time. I was going to fly to Toronto to do a sprint. You were going to bring in an expert game designer, sort of game mechanic specialist — 

Elan Lee: Ken Gruhl, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: — Ken. And it was like, “Okay, this is the trip. If we make it happen, great. If not, we’re just going to call spade a spade.”

Elan Lee: Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: We were circling around this thing but not really getting it done.

Elan Lee: It was like meeting number eight or nine at that point.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah, we tried a lot. And it was during that trip that the very primitive sort of germ of an idea started to resonate, which ended up being Coyote. And I remember a few things, and thank God also for Ken’s apparent photographic memory with the way things transpired, but we’re walking around all over the place in Toronto, the three of us, just spitballing. Then it starts to rain and we seek shelter. We failed twice, I think, with various coffee shops.

Elan Lee: Yeah, can’t get in.

Tim Ferriss: No room, no seats, whatever it might be. End up sitting in this weird kind of multipurpose building. And I remember where we were sitting and we played, I guess in English it’s Hanabi.

Elan Lee: Hanabi.

Tim Ferriss: Hanabi, which is Hanabi in Japanese, which is fireworks.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And hana’s flower. Bi in this case is fire. So it’s like flower fire. That’s Hanabi.

Elan Lee: For everybody out there, if you haven’t played Hanabi, go try this game. It is very special.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So we played that game, kind of killing time, giving it a shot, because you guys had mentioned it. And I was like, “Okay, this is a very elegant game.” And from that, liked the cooperative aspect. So when people think game, I think most folks are more familiar, maybe exclusively familiar, with the sort of winner-takes-all or team-versus-team competitive type of game. But I really enjoyed, and I’d seen this in other ways in different capacities, but the cooperative option and the cooperative aspect of this.

So that then gets stuck in the mind and the rain clears up. We go for a walk by the water. And I remember we were sort of — well, I’ll own it, I was kind of stalled. I’ll be the kind of hair plugging the drain in the bathtub. Because I was trying to search my mind for game examples. But I was thinking tabletop games because that was the canvas we were painting upon. And we’re walking, we’re walking. We’ve had quite a bit of caffeine by this point and it was either you or Ken, I think it was you, who asked, “Well, just broadly speaking, any kind of game, what games have you really enjoyed?”

And that’s where Rock, Paper, Scissors came up, right?

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Rochambeau. And I just — as dumb as it might sound, and I said this at the time, I was like, “I love Rock, Paper, Scissors.” Especially when you play over an extended period of time with friends, maybe there’s some alcohol involved or not, you don’t need to have it involved. But you start to pick up tells, you start to pick up patterns, and it’s actually very, very fun.

Elan Lee: So it’s important to note, the moment you bring up Rock, Paper, Scissors in any game design discussion, that’s usually the end of the conversation, right?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: Because there’s nothing to that game. There’s three tools, deploy a tool, determine a winner, you’re done. It is only when you say, “Let’s acknowledge Rock, Paper, Scissors is no fun unless you play multiple times.” Because now we’ve made a very important transition. We’re not playing the game anymore, we’re playing each other.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: Right? Because I know what you did last time. You think I’m going to throw scissors again. And now we’re playing each other. Yes, rock, paper, scissors are the tools by which we’re playing each other, but suddenly we’re playing a very different game and it starts — it cannot start in round one. It starts in round two and it moves forward from there. And once we started having that discussion, things started to get really interesting.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, things got interesting. And do you want to show the prototype deck?

Elan Lee: Yeah, I’ll show.

Tim Ferriss: And part of the reason I want to show this prototype deck, and we’ll describe it for people who aren’t watching, is quick and dirty is the fucking way to go. And I will just make another recommendation for Stephen Key. So Stephen Key has a book called the One Simple Idea, which is about licensing and creating inventions. He’s got a number of books now. But Stephen has made a gajillion dollars creating games for all the biggies that you can possibly think of. And he uses construction paper and glue you would find in a second grade class and a handful of markers.

Elan Lee: Love it. This is already my — 

Tim Ferriss: And this is by and large, that is how he creates these amazing — now, when I say — they can be games, they can be toys. He’s pretty broad spectrum. But it might be a new way to play basketball, shooting dirty laundry into a hamper, right?

Elan Lee: Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss: Something like that. And he prototypes these things incredibly quickly. And for him, for what he does, that is enough. He is able to put together a pitch, he’s able to sell it and he’s able to develop these amazing passive income streams with these annuities that just come in — 

Elan Lee: So good.

Tim Ferriss: — from all these different places. But that relates to what we’re looking at.

Elan Lee: Okay. I love that we have not even described what Coyote is yet.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah.

Elan Lee: But that’s okay because it’s more fun I think, to walk — I think the value of this conversation is to actually talk through the creative process and talk through — I think a lot of people want to make games, this is how you do it. And we went through this two-year journey and we arrived at a very happy outcome. So I’m excited to talk about, “Well, let me show you the very ugly, very first deck we ever built.” So we had this conversation about Rock, Paper, Scissors, and I knew there was something there because we were talking about players playing — my fundamental premise behind all game design is games should not be entertaining. Games should make the players entertaining.

And suddenly, when you said, “Rock, Paper, Scissors over time,” I was like, “Oh, that’s perfect.” But three tools, rock, paper and scissors, not a very robust tool set. We can’t really play a game that way. So I ran home and started scribbling on cards. These are just blank cards. I took Sharpies, I buy these by the thousands on Amazon. So I had a ton of these and we just started scribbling. And so we made a card that says rock, and we made a card that says paper, and we made a card that says scissors. And we thought, “What if we’re all on the same team? But what if these cards here are not tools to fight with each other? What if these are a challenge that we have to all solve together?”

And so we started just putting down a bunch of things, rock, paper, scissors, rock, rock, paper. And we’re like, “All right, we’ll sit around the table and we’ll all just do this pattern. Everyone do scissors. Now everyone do paper. Now everyone do rock.”

Tim Ferriss: And we’d been talking about these different variations and ideas on the walk and then we ended up back at your dining room table — 

Elan Lee: Yeah, that’s right.

Tim Ferriss: — with tons — 

Elan Lee: Seriously scribbling.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, scribbling and modifying cards as we went.

Elan Lee: Yeah, exactly. So now the modifiers are really the most interesting thing. Because the game that I’m describing right now is useless. Right?

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.

Elan Lee: We can all do scissors and then all do paper. Who cares, right? There’s nothing here. But now we have a baseline. We’re all going to do this thing. Cool, easy. And then we started doing these modifiers, all players do all blue cards. Right?

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.

Elan Lee: So we start scribbling rock, paper, scissors in different colors, and then we’ve got this modifier. So now everyone’s going to — sorry, I’m going to do scissors, but then we’re all going to do paper and then back to you just doing rock, and things like that. And so then it was like, “Okay, well, skip a player after every red card. Okay, shout every blue card,” right? Then we just started writing all these crazy modifiers. I’m just putting all these cards all over the table because the challenge got more and more interesting.

And then it was like, “Okay, so something interesting is possible here. Now what if instead of just splashing cards all over the paper, what if we were responsible for this? What if one at a time everyone had to add a new card to the table to make this challenge harder and harder and harder?” And that’s when we started talking about the vocabulary of this game. What are these cards? What makes this thing harder? Rock and paper and scissors very quickly got eliminated from the game because they’re so boring.

So we started talking about, “Well, okay, what if you’re making a peace sign?” And then you came up with, “Well, what if you pose a ballerina on a card? And what if you slap the shoulder or the person next to you on a card? And what if you have to — ” I remember one of our earliest notes was, “Eliminate all shouting cards,” because that was no fun at all.

Tim Ferriss: We tested that. And then that got all old real quick.

Elan Lee: Right, exactly.

Tim Ferriss: And also as we’re play testing, right? As we’re inventing mechanics and testing different things. So we play for a few rounds being like, “Okay, that was okay, but what do you guys think of this?” “Okay, we like this aspect.” “Great, let’s make four more of those cards of different colors.” And then we played again.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And then we played again. And then we’d iterate and we played again.

Elan Lee: That’s right.

Tim Ferriss: And we ended up with, I mean, spreadsheets full of different cards. And this is all still now in cooperative mode at that point.

Elan Lee: All in cooperative mode.

Tim Ferriss: And — 

Elan Lee: But over the next week, I would say we designed 80 percent of the game. We were at this stalled-at-one-percent mode for months. And then in a matter of days, 80 percent done. Because we found this every time we played some version of this, the immediate answer when we were done playing was, “Let’s go again.”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So is that the litmus test for you?

Elan Lee: For sure.

Tim Ferriss: I mean in terms of the indicators that something is worth further development, right?

Elan Lee: Yeah,.

Tim Ferriss: Because you have 400 in your notebook and so you’re not going to develop all of those. What are some of the — could be a water feel that you have, but what are some of the indicators where you’re like, “Oh, okay.”

Elan Lee: So there’s two things to talk about here. Certainly “Let’s play again” is a great one, but to set your mind in a place where you’re willing to say, “Imagine this, but tweaked, but something a little different.” There’s this principle I love called the zero effect. Zero effect.

Tim Ferriss: Zero effect?

Elan Lee: Yeah, zero effect. It’s from a movie, I think, in the late ’80s, early ’90s, somewhere around there called Zero Effect. And there’s this one scene where they explain what the zero effect is. And it is as follows, if you’ve lost your car keys and you’re looking for your car keys, here you are in your living room, you’re looking for car keys, the chances of you finding your car keys are very low because there’s so many things in this room that are not your car keys. So your chances of finding that one thing very, very low. If instead you are trying to find anything, your chances of success are suddenly at a hundred percent. You will find something, as long as you don’t care what it is that you found.

That’s my favorite premise for brainstorming and for early testing. Don’t lock in your head, “I’m looking for this particular thing. I must find X. I must find X.” Because the chances that you’re going to find that thing are almost non-existent. But if you can keep your brain open and say, “I’m just looking for something. I don’t care what it is, something, anything, and I’ll tweak it later, I’ll play with it later. I’ll find some way to consider this thing I found my car keys.” As long as you’re willing to make that leap, brainstorming becomes a pleasure.

Tim Ferriss: And does that take the form of, “What if, blah?” “What if we blah?” “What if this card did blah?”

Elan Lee: Precisely. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Is it a series of what ifs?

Elan Lee: And you’re not scared for all of those to fail, right?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: Because you can come up with those all day long. And that’s what we did, right?

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.

Elan Lee: Over the next few days, that process, “What if, blah. Let’s try it. What if, blah, let’s try it. What if, whatever, let’s try it.” And as long as the answer is always, “Let’s try it,” you will a hundred percent find what you’re looking for.

Tim Ferriss: All right, so let’s make some recommendations for people listening or watching. What books or resources would you recommend for people who are interested in game development? Now, I want to reiterate also, whether you think you’re playing games or not, you’re already playing games in life.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So for me, this is a way of putting on a table what we’ve already implicitly agreed to in our own lives in ways that we generally don’t realize, which is we’re all playing games. Now what does that mean? That means that beyond Maslow’s basic rungs on the ladder, shelter, warmth, food, et cetera, at some point, particularly as adults, maybe it’s before you go to school, maybe it’s when you’re in college, but you have decided to play or you have just ended up drafting into a game with certain rules, certain conditions for winning or losing certain ranking mechanisms. And step number one is figuring out what games you’re playing.

Elan Lee: Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss: Okay. So I would suggest that learning about building games helps you to put on x-ray vision glasses, where you start to see the world is comprised of tons of games.

Elan Lee: Yeah, it’s so true. And you start to dive deeper into game theory. What is the prisoner’s dilemma? What is a zero sum game? If you can start to identify those very fundamental game design concepts in the real world, you can jump to the end of a conversation so much faster. You can avoid so many missteps because everything follows, within reason, everything follows game design principles because this practice, this art form has been so well studied and so well researched and so well documented that you get to take advantage of all of that. And I love that.

I use that for my relationships. I use that as playing with my kids. I use that at work all the time. It’s just there’s these fundamental principles of game design. And I’ll talk about a book I’d love that illustrates them. But, yeah, they can be applied to anything. You’re right, you’re playing a game all the time. And the first step is to be aware that you are playing a game.

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.

Elan Lee: All right, so I’ve got two books.

Tim Ferriss: Let’s hear it.

Elan Lee: One is, let’s see, A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster. Raph Koster? Raph Koster? R-A-P-H, Raph. It’ll outline all these fundamentals. It is the first game design book I ever read. It is the one I go back to and refer to the most often. It’s just got everything and the author is brilliant and go read that book.

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.

Elan Lee: The second one is going to be a little controversial.

Tim Ferriss: Memoirs of a Geisha?

Elan Lee: It’s called Don’t Shoot the Dog.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, this is an exceptional book.

Elan Lee: Exceptional book. It is by Karen Pryor.

Tim Ferriss: It is not explicitly about game design, at all.

Elan Lee: It is not at all about game design. But here’s the thing, this book, the fundamental premise of this book is you are trying to teach a companion, a dog, to behave in a certain way. And the answer to how best to do that is not to, when things go wrong at least, not to blame the dog, is to fundamentally change the way you operate and the way you convey information and the way you look at the world in order to better relate to your dog and to the way that the dog understands and sees the world.

It is the best game design principle I have ever encountered in my life. And true, it has nothing to do with game design, but when you’re designing a game, you’re designing it for a target, for someone who isn’t you and you’re not even going to be in the room when they encounter it. And to have in your brain from the very first step, “Every problem that comes up is my problem, not theirs. Every responsibility is my responsibility, not theirs.” And if you can get that in your head and design games that way, those are the games I have found that are the most successful.

Tim Ferriss: This is Don’t Shoot the Dog, terrible title, but it is the fundamental starting point that I recommend to anyone who’s interested in dog training. And Karen Pryor is one of the popularizers of clicker training as a way of shaping behavior. I believe she had experience with marine mammals, which by the way, you can’t whack on the butt with a newspaper to punish them, so in other words, negative reinforcement. So how do you do it? You use positive reinforcement. You use clickers or whistles or different tools.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And I believe the back of the book, people will be able to fact-check this, but it basically says whether you want to get your dog to heel, your cat to stop laying on the kitchen table, or your mother-in-law to stop nagging you, the principles are all the same. And at the end of it, like you said, is this radical ownership of “It may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility.”

Elan Lee: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: And in a lot of cases, certainly with game design and instructions and so on, it is actually your fault. If people are confused, it is your fault.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, no, but it’s the best way. Before I started Exploding Kittens, I designed games for friends and I just had the hardest time. When I wasn’t in the room, people were not enjoying those games. And it was only once I read that book that I realized the fault is absolutely mine. Because I’m trying to get them to have as much fun as I want them to have and the fact that they’re not, I keep blaming them. And that’s so wrong.

Tim Ferriss: So what did you do? How did you fix that?

Elan Lee: There’s basically two parts. One starts with design. One says the game has to be so simple that it is almost self-correcting. And I have to strip out all complication, I have to remove all nuance. Any time I’m thinking of the rules and I say, “Okay, if this happens, then this happens, except if — ” The moment I say “except,” I’ve gone down a wrong path. I need to get rid of all of that stuff. That was the first part.

And then the second part is in writing the actual instructions and figuring out how — if I’m sitting in the room, you’re going to get this game because I’m going to explain it and I’m going to be enthusiastic. And when you ask a question, I’m going to answer the question. And when you get confused, I’m going to clarify it. I can a hundred percent do that. But a piece of paper trying to do that same thing, I have to write it as if I’m in the room and I have to anticipate those questions and I have to cut them off before they come up and I have to correct behavior because I know exactly where you’re going to go off course and fix it in the instructions. And that kind of one-two punch changed my game design from like 10 percent of the people get this to 95 percent of the people get this.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, one aspect — I mean there’s so many aspects, but one aspect of this that I enjoyed was related to the instructions.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And so number one, you make it really clear in the instructions, which we both poured over ad nauseum. But reading is the worst way to learn a game. Go watch this video, QR code. So that’s number one. But if you’re going to put it into text — and I think I’m pretty good at this, but I was very impressed with your ability to identify anything that could be misunderstood or that wasn’t yet defined or that could be taken with another more broader connotation that would steer people off course. And the number of edits in that Google Doc.

Elan Lee: I mean, it’s got to be in the hundreds, right?

Tim Ferriss: From all of us, hundreds and hundreds of edits.

Elan Lee: So the most important skill is you will write better instructions, you will convey information to people better if you can clear your mind. If you can approach any set of instructions from the perspective of the things I know I do not yet know, and the words that come out of my mouth have to not only fill my brain with the required knowledge — 

Tim Ferriss: I see basically beginner’s mind, right?

Elan Lee: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: Putting yourself in the place of someone who has never seen this before.

Elan Lee: Exactly. And it’s so hard to do because you have this information in your head. It must be there, otherwise you’re not going to be able to explain the thing. But to back all the way up and say, “I’m just going to split my brain in two. There’s this one reading script and I know the information I have to get out, but the other half is the recipient of that script and it knows nothing.” If you can do that — and it’s so hard, it takes so much practice. If you can do that, you’re going to not only be able to design good games and write good instructions, but you’re also going to be able to just converse more effectively just out in the world in general.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. All right. You mentioned I think it was two minutes to learn, 15 minutes to play.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: What other golden or guiding tenets do you have for yourself when you’re doing game design within Exploding Kittens?

Elan Lee: Oh, good question. If a component does not need to be in the game, remove it from the game.

Tim Ferriss: Right. So an example of that would be we had these chits or little chips, like poker chips.

Elan Lee: Like bingo chips.

Tim Ferriss: Like bingo chips that we were using for lives or strikes, and turns out you don’t need that. You can use — 

Elan Lee: Yeah, because you’ve got a whole thing of cards right here, just use those.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. You can use cards by flipping them over and using the back of the card.

Elan Lee: Exactly. That’s a perfect example. Right? We have this thing where we’re like, “Hey, you know what would be fun is if everybody had a big hand of cards and we’re going to play cards and you make decisions.” I’m like, “I get that.” Most games you play, you have a hand of cards and you’re going to play a card and you’re making a decision. That’s awesome. But you know what? That’s a private moment and you reveal a card. Every game you’ve ever played. When you play UNO, you’ve got a hand of cards, you’re making a decision, you play a card, you’ve revealed what card you just played.

And I remember thinking, “Is there a simpler version of that?” And it turns out there is. And the simpler version in Coyote is take some cards, put them all face up on the table, and then decide which one you’re going to pick. That’s very similar to having a deck of cards, but now it’s public.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s public.

Elan Lee: Right?

Tim Ferriss: And also when the competitive version was brought in, which is the way that I like to play, the way I would suggest people play, but you can warm up with cooperative or if you have somebody in your life or in your family who just cannot lose without creating a huge pain in the ass, then the cooperative mode is really fun. But the competitive mode then allows the group decision on which card to play potentially, although ultimately that’s individual. That has implications for cooperative when it’s public. But also for competitive.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: There are a number of tweaks made to this, but I mentioned earlier, sabotaging. So we had competitive, but different minds are wired for different games.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And so, God forbid, what happens to you is what happened to one of my employees who was play testing this, where one of the people in the group was a mathematician who also is high-level chess player if I remember correctly.

Elan Lee: Oh, no.

Tim Ferriss: And he just smoked everyone because he had the mind for it.

Elan Lee: Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So what do you do for that? Well, we ended up — and this took a lot of play testing to ultimately land on this. And I want to ask you about play testing, particularly if it’s kind of hands off the wheel and you have people playing the game without you.

Elan Lee: Yeah, terrifying

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Realized — and this comes back to the underdog being able to win, not getting my ass smoked in Magic over and over again by someone who’s just got better hardwiring for it.

Elan Lee: Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss: And that’s where the attack cards came from. Right?

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So there are these attack cards in the deck, which to the simplification side, you can play in cooperative mode to modify a card. I don’t want to get too in the weeds.

Elan Lee: Well, I want to give you more credit for this because I don’t think you’re taking enough credit. All right, let me phrase this a different way. So the basic premise of the game is we have a whole bunch of activities on the table, right? Ballerina, peace sign, whatever it is, thumbs up, thumbs down, smile, frown.

Tim Ferriss: Lean and make a fart noise.

Elan Lee: Yeah, exactly, lean and make a fart noise. So we’ve got all these things that we’re all going to do. And then on top of that — 

Tim Ferriss: It’s a fan favorite.

Elan Lee: That’s right. That’s such a good card. On top of that, we have all these modifier cards and they modify — you have to skip a player after this one, ignore this card, do this one twice.

Tim Ferriss: Those are generally the Coyote cards.

Elan Lee: The Coyote cards. And you had this great idea, you said, “Because some players are naturally gifted at this game, far more so than others, and because some players are going to naturally fall behind and they need a way to sabotage the first place.” If you’re in last place, you need a way to sabotage the first place player. If you’ve ever played Mario Kart, you know this feeling very well. And you said, “What if we took some of these modifiers, every time — all players have to do all the blue cards with one hand instead of two.”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: But what if instead of all the blue — 

Tim Ferriss: Or Tyrannosaurus arms.

Elan Lee: Or Tyrannosaurus arms, you have to do all your movements with Tyrannosaurus arms. What if instead of playing that on all blue cards on the table, what if you just put that, slide it right in front of another player and now only they have to do it? For every single one of their turns. You’ve put a curse on them. The last place player has attacked the first place player. And I remember thinking, “Tim, you’re like a natural game designer.” That’s such a nice moment and it’s such an easy modification.

And of course my answer was, “I don’t know, let’s try it.” And then we tried it and it was glorious. And I love moments like that for two reasons. One is because you had learned at that point to speak like a game designer. Right?

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.

Elan Lee: Instead of saying, “I think we just need to sabotage people,” instead you said, “Some people are really good at this game. We have to address that. Some people are naturally bad at this game. We need to give them a tool.” And those terms, speaking in that language, armed with that vocabulary, suddenly the answer to you became so clear, like, “Here’s how we solve those problems.” That’s great.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: I guarantee you would not have been capable of that when we started this process.

Tim Ferriss: No way. Yeah, no, I wouldn’t have had the — sometimes artists talk about the visual library, just the exposure to different types of artwork, different forms, different silhouettes, different structures so that they can pull from that visual library to inform whatever they’re trying to build or solve for. And it’s the same with game design, same with everything. You need to build your ABCs so you can convey what you’re trying to say in terms that are solvable, if that makes any sense.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Totally. You’re a quick study too.

Tim Ferriss: Helped getting the books that you recommended. 

All right, so I’m not going to dox my friend in question. But as long-term listeners will know, I was, in a former life, a neuroscience major and then, in the last 10 years, have funded a lot of science. I always have just had this hankering and this dream of being involved in neuroscience; it continues to this day. And in the process of building this game — and this is not how I necessarily sell it, because this is going to sound terrible, but through many experiments with different companies and so on, I’ve concluded that even though generally Americans, I’ll throw it on Americans, I’m American, say they want to be smarter, they will typically not pay for something that is designed to make them smarter unless it’s a magic pill, and then sometimes the answer is yes.

But what I was hoping to also do with this game is to create something that would — and this has not been proven, there’s no randomized controlled study examining this, although that might change at some point. — is to design something that would help those players who are not good at this, or the people who are in the middle of the bell curve or the people who are good to get better.

And for people who are interested in looking at some — they’re not perfect analogs, but they’re similar. People can check out the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, WCST. It’s a neurophysiological test used to assess cognitive flexibility in executive functions, particularly the ability to shift cognitive sets and learn from feedback. All right, so participants must sort cards based on an initially unknown rule, which changes after a certain number of correct sorts. Now this is not a perfect parallel because that does not, in and of itself, make for a fun game. Right?

Elan Lee: Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss: So fun number one, lots of probably rank ordered like one, two, three, four, five. But could I also Trojan horse in — 

Elan Lee: Yeah, love it.

Tim Ferriss: — cognitive training.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And I think the answer — this is from a lay perspective, and obviously I’m biased because I’m involved in every step, I’m making this thing, but I think it does the trick. And what people will notice is, and you know this too, the game starts off so easy.

Elan Lee: There’s nothing to it.

Tim Ferriss: And people are like, “There’s nothing to it.”

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: And then once a modifier or two comes out, people are like, “Oh, oh, wait a second, this is getting really tricky.” And if, for instance, I’ve had lifelong insomnia, you want to sleep better, play this game before you go to bed. And by the end you will feel like you just did a workout, a full brain workout for your cognition.

Elan Lee: You know what I love about that part? I learned to play the drums years and years ago, and I remember I would learn these new patterns and it was like your right hand has to do this and your left hand has to do this, and your right leg has to do this and your — and I remember thinking, “No way, no way. I can’t do that.” And you work at it and you work at it and you work at it and suddenly it starts to click, just a little bit. Like, “Oh, my right hand did the right thing.” And it’s like you can feel new neurons coming to life. Right?

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.

Elan Lee: Your brain is doing something that five minutes ago you could not do. This is the first game I’ve ever played that does that exact same thing. And I remember the first time I felt that way in a very early play test, my eyes got all wide and I was like, “There is something magical going on here. I know I’m psyching myself out, but I feel new things happening in my brain because five minutes ago I could not do this pattern and now I can. We can go all the way around the table and you can add a new card and I will still be able to do this pattern that I couldn’t do just five minutes ago.”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, totally. And what’s cool as well is you get to see just how specialized certain minds are and where you might have an Achilles heel. So for instance, and this is true for some folks, we have the modifiers ranked by difficulty just so you can — because ultimately with Coyote, you’re in charge of how hard you make the game.

Elan Lee: Mm-hmm. That’s right. That’s right.

Tim Ferriss: You are in full charge of how easy, moderate, or difficult you make it. And we didn’t even talk about how this game is designed to make you a game designer. We’ll talk about that with the blank cards. But this is a sort of creativity unlock as much as a game. That’s the intention behind it, which is part of the reason that I’m really excited to see what the hell it does when it’s released into the wild, which effectively is now.

Elan Lee: That’s going to — 

Tim Ferriss: Now the specialization piece, I’ll just speak to that. So for instance, for me, skipping turns, skipping players, it is a blind spot. It is an Achilles heel for me. That’s true for quite a few folks.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: But for other people, for instance, if we’re going around the table, most people would be familiar with “We Will Rock You.”

Elan Lee: “We Will Rock You,” yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So it’s like boom, boom, boom, boom. So the way you play the game is you go around is you go “Boom, boom,” and you can hit the table with your hands. You can do it with closed fists. You could probably clap it if you want, but it’s boom, boom. And then one person does the move. Like let’s take the ballet, we’re going to do a pirouette. You have to do the motion and you have to say the motion. So then these two things can be split or confused later. We want to get — 

Elan Lee: We’ll get to that later.

Tim Ferriss: — too deep into that. And then it’s boom, boom, next person, boom, boom, next person. And it goes around. And then it just gets more and more complicated.

So I remember when we were first experimenting with the modifier that said, okay, it’s now three bumps instead of two. So it’s boom, boom, boom. And then the move. And there were, I remember, I’m not going to call them out, but there’s one person who just could not do it.

Elan Lee: I know. I was one of those people. My brain would start melting out of my ears at that point. I don’t know why though.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. It’s weird. It’s weird. So they’re very specific. You’ll find each person will have a super strength and a super weakness, and you’ll figure it out by playing this game.

And just from a game design perspective also, I’d love to hear you talk about finding the sweet spot. I mean, we could talk about Bushnell’s law of Atari fame, the game, I’m paraphrasing here, but a good game is easy to learn and difficult to master.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: But how do you, in the course of play testing, working with prototypes find the sweet spot of difficulty? Because with this game, well, through making this game, I’ve just really come to appreciate how hard it is to create a game where people experience that sweet spot. Because if you were to take Coyote and make it too easy, what a simple game to make.

Elan Lee: Sure.

Tim Ferriss: Right?

Elan Lee: Oh, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: If you wanted to make it basically impossible and not fun to play, also very easy. But to find that sweet spot on the graph is incredibly challenging.

Elan Lee: Yeah. So the way I think about this is when you first encounter any game, the first thought that has to go into your brain is, “I can do that.” You hear it described, and you have to think, “I can do that.” And then you have to try the game and that has to be reinforced. The game has to say, “Yep, you can do that.” And you have to feel like, “Okay, I thought I could do it. I can do it. This is great.” But that’s only going to last a few seconds. The next thought that has to go into your brain is, “I understand the path to mastery. I understand how to get better at this.” And then the next thought is, “And I can do that too.”

So you have to see the moment a modifier card comes out, or the moment any complication happens in your favorite game, it has to stop you dead in your tracks. It has to be like, “Ooh, the thing I just did to start the game and was really good at, I thought I could do it. I could do it. That’s not going to work here. I have to rethink my strategy, or I have to get better at something else.” And then those two follow-up thoughts have to show up in quick succession: “I know what I have to do and I can do that too.”

And that’s really the art to me of that ramping up of game design. And you have to keep hitting that “I think I can do that”; “Yes, you can. Now you can’t anymore, but you know what you have to do and you can do that too.” And then that’s going to get blocked. And you think, “Okay, now what? Now I know what I have to do and I can do that too.” And you have to just keep hitting those two things. And it’s rinse and repeat over and over and over again. And if you can hit that, you are just holding somebody’s hand from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. And they’re going to get great at it, they’re going to achieve that sense of mastery over time.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, and if you, listening or watching, have any game that you consider simple that you enjoy, rest assured there was an absurd, absurd amount of development and testing and revising that went into it. And just to give you an example, this is by all outward appearance a very simple game. And the three to eight players you could probably play with more, 10 minutes, says age is 10 plus. I’ve seen people playing with their kids who are much younger and it’s actually hilarious and super fun. There are so many levers you can pull here. You have the action cards, which are these cute little salamander cards with the different motions and gestures and so on. You’ve got just the sheer number of cards. How many variants do you have? How many total cards do you have? How many Coyote versus attack cards? When you have a fully shuffled deck, what does that actually look like? There’s so many different variables that you have to think through.

Elan Lee: Yeah. And we even set up, one of my favorite things is we’re starting to see people compete now. So we set up this page of, here are table configurations. Here’s an array of cards in exactly this order with exactly these modifiers. This one’s hard, this one’s impossible. This one is going to kill you. And we’ve started to see, the game is barely available so far, but we started to see some people try to tackle those challenges.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, fun. Okay. I didn’t even know that.

Elan Lee: It’s incredible.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, so where this came from also is in The 4-Hour Chef a million years ago, came out in 2012, which was actually a book about accelerated learning, confusingly. But putting that aside, there were a few recipes in that book. I think one was called Dragon Force Chaconne or something like that, which was named after this video game track that people found impossible to play on guitar. And then there was something, a La Ancienne, which was this just ludicrously complex French dish that involved fish. And I was like, okay, look, if you’ve done everything up to this point and you want to take a quantum leap forward and try something that is considered effectively impossible by most people, here you go. And so that’s what we created on this particular page.

Elan Lee: I will just say, having tested all of the challenges on that page, I can do exactly one of them. The last two are so hard.

Tim Ferriss: They really are.

Elan Lee: And we’ve already seen someone, a table of six people succeed — 

Tim Ferriss: Oh, wow. Okay — 

Elan Lee: — at the middle one. They’ve already done it.

Tim Ferriss: That’s nuts.

Elan Lee: Yeah. I’ve never seen anyone do the crazy hard one.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: But it’s coming.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So people can check it out. And there may or may not be a bunch of excitement around that. So I will just say there may be incentives later to be good at this game. I will leave it at that for now.

So I tell you what, we’re going to come back to some of the blank cards and we’ll talk about those features. But let’s talk about a bit more of the process of making any game. We could talk about Coyote specifically of course, because you have a process for this.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: How many games per year do you guys put out on average?

Elan Lee: So it’s funny, I actually built this out as a graph. So our first year we did one, our second year we did two. Our third year we did two again. Last year we did 14. This year we’ll do 23, I think.

Tim Ferriss: Wow.

Elan Lee: Yeah, it’s a lot. But we’ve built this, it’s really fun, we’ve built this incredibly robust pipeline from design all the way through to testing and then sales and then marketing. And I feel obligated to just keep that pipeline full because it’s such a beautiful thing we built. So we do a lot of games.

Tim Ferriss: All right, let’s get some info that we wouldn’t normally have any access to.

Elan Lee: All right.

Tim Ferriss: If you do an 80/20 analysis, it’s not going to be exactly 80/20, but you get where I’m going, on your best-selling games, what’s on the leaderboard? What are the top X number of games? Five, three, four, whatever the number.

Elan Lee: Well, up until last year, number one, the top-selling game in the world amongst all games was Exploding Kittens.

Tim Ferriss: That’s nuts, man.

Elan Lee: It’s nuts.

Tim Ferriss: Congratulations.

Elan Lee: It makes no sense, but I’ll tell you something I’m even more proud of. It’s now number two. Number one is a game called Hurry Up Chicken Butt. Hurry Up Chicken Butt is a game I designed with my four-year-old daughter, and she did most of the design. And it is outselling Exploding Kittens. It is selling one game every four seconds.

Tim Ferriss: Wow.

Elan Lee: Yeah, it’s nuts. And it was designed by a four-year-old.

Tim Ferriss: Okay, so we’ve got a Hurry Up Chicken Butt, Exploding Kittens.

Elan Lee: Yeah. The next few spots in the global sales are constantly shifting. Everybody’s fighting for those, but we always have — our entries into that list, which are constantly shifting, Poetry for Neanderthals is usually number three. Throw Throw Burrito is usually either number five or six, and the rest are just totally random.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Okay, got it. So what has made Hurry Up Chicken Butt a success?

Elan Lee: Yeah. So remember what I said, if you have the best design game in the world — 

Tim Ferriss: And by the way, when we spoke I think two years ago — 

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: — you were just beginning to talk about this. I don’t think it had launched at that point.

Elan Lee: No, it hadn’t. Yeah. Yeah. It has been an absolute rocket ship.

Tim Ferriss: What are the magic ingredients? Why has it worked? Because not all games do that.

Elan Lee: Yeah. No, they don’t.

Tim Ferriss: And you’ve had now, with the number of games that EK, Exploding Kittens, has developed, you’ve had a chance to see a lot of different ideas come through the doors and go out the doors.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Some games last a season, some games last a decade. So when I was designing games — okay, so Hurry Up Chicken Butt in particular, I wrote a list of the things I wanted that game to accomplish. And my daughter had all these ideas, “Here’s what I want to do, and you’re going to do this and you’re going to run up and jump up and down and blah.” But I had a list of things that I needed to know were in this game in order for me as a parent to buy it for my kid. And they were as follows. The game has to be as much fun for me to play as it is for my daughter. That’s a hard one.

Tim Ferriss: That’s hard.

Elan Lee: That killed most designs that we came up with. Number two, my daughter has to be able to beat me at this game, even though I’m not letting her win. Holy crap is that a hard one.

Tim Ferriss: Yep.

Elan Lee: Number three, the game cannot have any losers. It can have a winner, but it cannot have any losers.

Those three were my guiding lights. It was like, I need to check off these three check boxes for this game to be good. And we worked on a hundred million designs. She’s great. She’ll just be like, “Oh, you don’t like this one? Here’s another one. You don’t like that one? Here’s another one.” And she just kept firing them off. And we finally got to this game that hit all three of those. That, as I said earlier, is only half the battle.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, that’s the necessary, but not sufficient —

Elan Lee: Exactly. So now we have a game that I’m in love with, that we play every single night that she can beat me at regularly. And I am trying my absolute hardest to beat her. And this four-year-old is kicking my ass at this game. Love that. Love it. And I’m having a blast.

Tim Ferriss: So this is my first time hearing about these criteria. Just for people listening, this is all new to me.

Elan Lee: When my daughter got old enough to start playing games right around when she turned four, we went out and bought all these games and I just hated them. They were so boring and I hated playing. And so we just designed our own. We just made them better. And it was important for me to have that list. ‘Cause unless I know what success looks like, I’ll just stay in brainstorming mode forever. So I made that list, finally hit it, and then we entered into part two. And here my daughter has very little to do with it. Here’s where I sit down with the marketing and sales team and I was like, “What the hell are we going to call this thing?” And we went through a thousand different names.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I know the feeling.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we did that. But once I had 10 names that I really liked, we sat down with my daughter and all her friends and I would just read them off. And there was no contest. I got to Hurry Up Chicken Butt and they’re like just laughing hysterically, jumping up and down. They didn’t even want to hear the rest of the names. I was like, okay. Sold.

So that was a really nice step forward. It was like, I know I’ve got a game that’s just fire for kids. They’re just so excited about this. And the next thing was, all right, well what do we make this box look like? And I was like, I know it has to be — the game itself involves a character and a die shaker and some sound effects. It’s got all this stuff packed into this character, this chicken. And I was like, I can’t just hide that. I have to put that in a box where you can see it. And that was really hard.

The difference between box design for an iPhone and a game is an iPhone will spend a hundred dollars on that box with the materials and making it beautiful. And when you open your iPhone, you take the box and you throw it away. In a game, you’ve got about 40 cents to spend on the box and it has to last forever. It sucks. The equation is totally backwards, but I needed a thing that displayed the chicken and told you it made noise and lets you shake around the die and still hold its structure as a box so that you could remove this thing, play with it, and then reinsert it into the box in a way that isn’t going to mess with the integrity of the box — its structural integrity. So that was really hard, but we finally solved that. And then — 

Tim Ferriss: Did you do that before or after you started testing the waters with retailers?

Elan Lee: After.

Tim Ferriss: After?

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Okay. I don’t want to hijack, but whenever it makes sense, I would love to know how, at what point you start testing the waters with

Elan Lee: Well, we do this backwards. And when we started, you have to do it the opposite way. You have to walk into those sales pitches and you have to say, “Here’s the final product. Look how beautiful it is. You don’t have to trust us that this is going to sell. You can look at this thing and know that it’s going to sell.” For this game, luckily, because we have a really good track record, we walked in with no box. All I walked in with was a rough idea, a name scribbled on a piece of paper. And I said, “Trust me, this is going to be great. We’re going to solve everything. It’s going to be amazing.” And they said, “Okay, yeah, sold. Let’s buy it.” That comes from 10 years of pitching them hit after hit after hit.

Tim Ferriss: I got it. So if it were earlier in Exploding Kittens’ existence, you go in with the finished box.

Elan Lee: Yeah. They’re never taking a flyer on that.

Tim Ferriss: Who creates the finished box? Do you guys create it in-house? How do you prototype something like that?

Elan Lee: Yeah, we have an incredible team. We have a large scale printer. We print on actual cardboard. We have a paper folder so we can actually build the boxes.

Which was an investment, that’s not off-the-shelf machinery, but it helps — okay, so look, normally whatever manufacturer you’re working with, they send you a prototype box. Because they make it and they want you to see the final product and that’s what you go into the sales meetings with. You say, “Look, here’s the box. Here’s how much it’s going to weigh. Here’s the final presentation. We’ve been working on it for a year and a half. Here it is.” I walk into those meetings like, “I got an idea, I’ve been working on it for three weeks. I want you to buy it right now. I don’t have any materials to show you.” So it’s a different kind of pitch that I’m very proud of because I’ve earned that and we haven’t ever let them down.

Tim Ferriss: So in the case of Coyote, there was a lot of play testing that was done before we ended up in line review meetings.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Wow. We skipped that whole part, didn’t we?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah.

Elan Lee: All right.

Tim Ferriss: So could you talk about your secret cabal of families?

Elan Lee: Yeah, yeah. Secret cabal of families. I love it. All right, so — 

Tim Ferriss: Another chapter for your memoir.

Elan Lee: Yeah, right. That’s a good title there. So, okay, so here’s how most game companies test games. If you had partnered with a different games company, here’s what your experience would’ve been like. “All right, we got a game. We really like it. It’s really fun, lots of internal testing. Everyone’s on board. We now need external testing.” And they go to these market research groups and they pull strangers in and they sit in a room with a one-way mirror and they show the game and they play the game with people they don’t know and they order in some crappy catered lunch and they play the game and then they rate it on a scale of one to 10 and they fill out this form that’s like, “Here’s what I liked and here’s what I didn’t like and here’s what I would improve.” And then you get to watch those videos and they present you back all these forms and you get to make a determination.

Okay. Nobody plays games like that. You don’t play games with strangers. When was the last time you played a board game with a stranger?

Tim Ferriss: Can’t even remember.

Elan Lee: It doesn’t happen. Right? The testing procedure that all these other companies go through is fundamentally flawed. They’re using a resource because it’s the only resource that exists. So I sat down, that’s what we did our first time. We went through one of those companies and they gave us all the results. And I looked at these results and I was like, oh, my God, we just burned $25,000 on this thing and it’s useless. So I realized at that moment, because nothing better exists, we’re going to have to build it ourselves. So I started reaching out to, at first our Kickstarter community and then our Discord community and then our Reddit community as we grow and grow and grow and said, “Look, I got a bunch of prototypes. I need families and friends who get together regularly to play games and I’m going to mail you a free game. You don’t even have to send it back to me, it’s yours forever. You get this amazing prototype. All I ask in return is upon receiving it within 24 hours, you play the game with your friends and family and you record the session and you send me that video. And that’s it. That’s all I want in return.”

And within about 12 months, we had 400 families sign up for this thing. They are called our kiddie test pilots. And they’re this incredible group of enthusiastic game players that give us the best feedback. And we don’t have them fill out a questionnaire. All we ask them at the end of the test session, we say, “Look into the camera and answer one question. The only question we care about, do you want to play again?” And we know a game is ready when everybody looks into that lens and says, “Hell, yes!” And that’s it. That’s our testing process.

Tim Ferriss: What are some of the pass/fail marks or green versus red signals that you look for? In other words, I imagine the response rate could vary, but you don’t know if that’s because people are busy or if it’s the wrong time of year or maybe they looked at the game, the box, and so on and it just didn’t sell them so they didn’t play it.

Elan Lee: Totally.

Tim Ferriss: Is that something you pay attention to? Are the people, I’m sure I’m not the only person wondering this, if they’re part of this special VIP get free game group, are they disincentivized to say, “Hell no, I would not play this game again.” So do you get a false positive signal?

Elan Lee: I see.

Tim Ferriss: How do you think through what constitutes a thumbs up versus a thumb sideways versus a thumbs down?

Elan Lee: Yeah. There are a lot of false positives for sure. And there’s no way I can solve that problem. We prompt them in advance. We’re like, “Look, we need honestly — this game will get great if you tell us that something’s broken with it. We need to know that.” And they’re motivated because we also send them the final version of the game. So they know that’s coming, they know a better version is coming if they help us make it better. So some of the problem is solved that way, but not all of it. So that’s why the video is so important.

Tim Ferriss: So they say, “We had a great time,” and you’re watching and you’re like, they are not having a great time.

Elan Lee: Yeah, yeah. Look, count the number of eye rolls. Or you know a great one, they’ll take the instructions — I love this. They’ll open the instructions. And when you see that eyes go wide and they inhale.

Tim Ferriss: Pull back and they’re like — 

Elan Lee: It’s like, “Oh, fuck.”

Tim Ferriss: Instruction apnea.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, God.

Elan Lee: Something, that’s terrible. Right? And that’s really important. And there’s no survey in the world they can fill out that’s going to tell me that.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: You need to watch the moment they see the instructions.

Tim Ferriss: Because they may not even realize they’re doing it.

Elan Lee: Yeah, exactly.

Tim Ferriss: So how are they going to report it?

Elan Lee: Yeah. And that’s why the video is so important. And we have very specific instructions for the video.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, what are they? Because I’m wondering how in the hell do you review 400 videos?

Elan Lee: Oh, well one, we watch them at 4X speed and two is we’ve got a whole team of people that watch them and they flag moments. They don’t even say why this moment is important. Something happened here, something happened here. I’m going to go on to the next video now. And then the next group of people will go through and look at those flags and say, “Oh, big, deep inhale. Rules confusion.”

Tim Ferriss: Nerd question, what do you use software wise for flagging stuff?

Elan Lee: Vimeo.

Tim Ferriss: Vimeo, okay. So you have people upload their videos to Vimeo?

Elan Lee: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Got it.

Elan Lee: Yeah, so this whole process takes months and it’s really important. And the other thing is, I’ve got 400 test families, but I’m only going to send out five games at a time. The reason is I need to collect that feedback, make changes, and send out the next batch. Otherwise, I’ve got 10 results for a version and it’s useless. I know what the next five are going to be like ’cause I saw them on the first five.

Tim Ferriss: I got it. So is it then, just to state my understanding, with the kiddie test pilots, you basically have — you’re not sending out the same version to 400, 600 people at once?

Elan Lee: Five at a time.

Tim Ferriss: Five at a time. And then you look at that cohort and see what comes back?

Elan Lee: Mm-hmm. It’s always the same stuff.

Tim Ferriss: Then you tweak and then it goes out to the next group.

Elan Lee: Yeah, the next five.

Tim Ferriss: Over what period of time do you get a prototype to the max number who are going to receive it?

Elan Lee: Usually I would say six to eight months. And we’re tweaking two things. One is we’re tweaking gameplay, but much more commonly we’re tweaking the instructions. Because gameplay has already survived internal testing. So we know the game is fun. If we know this game is fun and then we watch a video of people not having fun, chances are it’s the instructions, not the game. And so that’s what we start attacking at that moment.

Tim Ferriss: Got it. What are some of the risks of internal testing? ‘Cause I’ve always wondered, for instance, when I have, as I’m doing right now, doing a bunch of writing and I have people proofreading or test reading my writing, I do not only do it with professional writers. I mean they’re very good and I know I’m very fortunate to know some amazing writers, but they’re also a little too close to the material. It’s like a travel writer who can’t stop looking at their travel experience through the lens of a writer. They have lost the ability to just travel and have fun.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So what are some of the risks, if any, of internal testing?

Elan Lee: So you and I have the same instinct here. I remember when we were testing this game internally, hadn’t gone out the door yet.

Tim Ferriss: This game?

Elan Lee: This game, Coyote. Yeah. I remember you would say, “Hey, can you show me test results? But can you have your accounting team test it instead of your game design team?” And I remember thinking, yeah, that’s what we do. I’m not interested in the game design team’s results. So I would show you the accounting team results and I would show you the sales people, the sales team’s results, who hadn’t even ever seen the game. Our internal testing starts out with the game design team, of course, but very quickly has to move on to the other teams, specifically the other teams who have never seen the game and don’t know the background. Because those are really the only tests that we care about. So your instinct is perfect there, and I’m very happy to say you didn’t have to teach us that, we already knew that part.

Tim Ferriss: I mean, if I’m teaching you anything, I don’t know what it would be other than my obsessive focus on — I’m sorry for the volume of email and the volume of text messages and the volume of everything.

Elan Lee: Every single one of those made the game better. Truly. Truly. I mean, okay, look, we’ve only done, we’ve done, I think two partnerships total. Three partnerships total. We did a game with Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller. We did a game with Jeff Probst of Survivor, and now we’ve done a game with Tim Ferriss. You probably sent more notes than the other two combined.

Tim Ferriss: I sent a lot of notes. Sent a lot of notes. I really had a blast with it. And I remember this moment, and I’m wondering if this happened before or after the line review meetings. I think it might’ve been afterwards, but you could place it for me because this is my first game and I don’t put my name on anything. That was part of the very, very truthful pitch. It’s not like one of, I don’t have Tim Ferriss microwave enchiladas and Tim Ferriss sneakers. And then just as an aside, I have the Tim Ferriss game. It’s like, no, no, no, I don’t put my name on anything. So I take it very, very seriously. And I think it was, tell me if I’m getting this wrong, pretty sure it was Carly, who’s amazing.

Elan Lee: Carly is the president of Exploding Kittens.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Carly is incredible. And because there’s always a fear, for me at least, where it’s like, maybe internally I think it’s great, and then it gets released into the wild and then, oh, shit there’s a real problem. Like Houston, we have a problem.

Elan Lee: Yeah, and you can’t take it back.

Tim Ferriss: Right. So what do you do? And I remember Carly, I want to say, sent a text to me. She was in, I want to say Germany at some type of gaming convention or meeting of distributors. I don’t remember the exact context, but she said Coyote was belle of the ball. She’s like, “You would not believe we had an entire huge room full of people playing, smashing on the tables over and over and over and over again.” And I was like, whew.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Isn’t that a great feeling?

Tim Ferriss: Okay, here we go, LFG.

Elan Lee: She sent me a video of that. So just to set the stage there, there are 2,000 people that — sorry, there’s 2,000 people at this hotel of the 25 hotels that are part of this convention. And there’s one games room and there’s 10 tables in there. And the idea is there should be a different game at every table. And everyone’s testing out the games and sampling them. And we put Coyote on one table and almost immediately people started gathering around. And so those people said, “Can we just grab another copy and we’ll just put it on the next table just so not everyone has to gather around this one table?” ‘Cause it looked so intriguing. And so they sent it to another table. And then by the time Carly sent me a video, it was at every table in the room. It was just an entire hotel playing this one game because nobody wanted to play anything else.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, wild.

Elan Lee: It was so neat. It was so neat. And how gratifying? We’ve been killing ourselves on this thing. And to see an audience receive it and say, thank you for the gift.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah, totally. And also, I mean, I said it to you guys and look, it says technically it says age 10 plus. So I don’t want to contradict that, but if you’re willing to modify the rules, which is something that I encourage, and we have that in the instructions, house rules, feel free to modify the rules. But I sent you guys the video of my friend’s four-year-old after she played, which was like this — 

Elan Lee: So good!

Tim Ferriss: It was such an amazing video. And this is the first thing I’ve ever done that can include families and kids directly/

Elan Lee: Easily.

Tim Ferriss: Where it’s like, four-year-old, 10-year-old is not going to have any interest or necessarily the capacity to read one of my phone books that are like 600 pages long. It’s not going to happen. So this is also so much fun to finally now that it’s kind of released into the wild to start seeing these things bubbling up that I hoped would be there.

Elan Lee: It’s the reason you make a game. You want to share an experience that then the recipients get to share with those people that they love. That’s why you make a game. That’s exactly what we’ve made here.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So let’s talk about the selling process a little bit more. Because you said, there’s the game development, there’s building the game, there’s crafting the game. But there is an equally important part, which is how do you get this thing into people’s hands? And for that you need distribution.

So this is going to be a callback. Remember that line review at the very beginning and then I took us on a very meandering path, but there was a point to it. How do you pitch big retailers? How does that happen? And how did you do it in the beginning of Exploding Kittens and how — I know it’s changed over time as you’ve built your track record, but nonetheless you still need to do it. And actually, here’s a data point that most people will never hear anyone talk about. What percentage of your sales are offline retail versus online?

Elan Lee: Yeah. All right, we’ll start there. Yeah, we never share these numbers, but for you, Tim — 

Tim Ferriss: Thank you.

Elan Lee: — here we go. 70 percent of our sales are in-person retail. Only 30 percent are online sales. Totally backwards than what you’d expect for almost any industry. But yeah, people like to walk into a store, they like to see and touch and feel the game and flip it over and read the back and compare it to the other games. And that’s where we sell our games. Which means not only do I need tremendous retail buy-in, those sales meetings are so important, those line reviews.

But also the game has to sell itself on the shelf. When you’re walking down that games aisle, 70 percent of our audience does this. You need to look at all the game, hundreds of games, and you need to stop dead in your tracks on this one. And you need to say, “Ooh, what’s that?” And that starts at that line review, starts with getting them to say, not only are we going to commit to this game, but we’re going to put it in multiple locations. So you see it more than once. Very important. Also, we work with them to figure out the color scheme. And you and I, we did tons of surveys on the color scheme and the character and everything to stop people in their tracks.

Tim Ferriss: So just a quick sidebar. I know I keep doing this, but some of you may remember, and for those who never heard it I’ll just tell you, from my very first book, 4-Hour Workweek, I used Google AdWords to test the top, let’s just call it 10 title and subtitle contenders.

So I bid on keywords that were related to the subject matter in the book. And then the sponsored results, the ads were automatically split tested, like multivariate tested by Google. They will do this automatically. And then all of the URLs, I had different URLs for each title option. They just took people to an under construction page. Because I didn’t care about conversion, I cared about interest, sufficient interest click. And that is how I figured out the title. And then for the cover, back in the day, I went to Borders, which was on University Ave. in Palo Alto. And I had a counter, like you might see from a bouncer at the front of a club. And I put different covers onto a book of the same dimensions on the shelf.

Elan Lee: Oh, wow.

Tim Ferriss: I guess I didn’t tell you this. Under the new nonfiction.

Elan Lee: Oh, my God.

Tim Ferriss: And I just, during the peak hours over a couple of days, I just tracked the number of times it got picked up.

Elan Lee: Oh, that’s so good.

Tim Ferriss: And then I used that to determine which cover to use.

Elan Lee: I love this, I love this.

Tim Ferriss: Now there are better or certainly easier tools to use. So we ended up, there are a number of them, I’ll just mention a few. So we used PickFu, P-I-C-K-F-U.com. There’s also Intellivy, I-N-T-E-L-L-I-V-Y, and then there’s another one called Stickybeak also.

But these allow you to do roughly the same thing, which is you can take, for instance, with this box design or any type of art, or you could probably do it with copy, many different things. You can survey people who fit a particular demographic. And so you could identify whatever the ages, the gender, if they are members of a particular service, whether they have Prime membership or this membership or that membership. You can fine slice it however you want, and then you can serve up variants.

So for this coyote who you see on the cover, I’ll explain for the people, basically the box looks like a slightly enlarged box for a deck of cards and then the top of the box is this beautiful autumnal orange, almost a saffron, like Buddhist robe.

Elan Lee: We spent so much time on this color.

Tim Ferriss: We spent so much time on this, it is impossible to overstate how much time I spent on this and everybody spent on it. Then there’s this beautiful lime green. I remember taking photographs of particular leaves at particular times of the year with light coming through it to identify the hexadecimal or Pantone numbers for this particular grain.

Elan Lee: Oh, I remember this well, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you remember it, you remember it. And then looking at color theory and the color wheel and, oh, my God, it went on and on. But above the coyote which is in the center of the box, there is this upper portion of a cartoon coyote’s head and very much trickster. Where it ended up is there’s a little hat on the coyote, there’s an earring, there’s a wink and the snout is where it’s cut off so you don’t see the nose. And this was originally, I remember sketching this initially on a Zoom call by pen and paper and then holding it up to the Zoom call to the camera and then later sending the scan and then we worked from there. But we had variants with no hat, we had variants with no earring, we had variants with both eyes open looking to camera, so to speak, we had both eyes open looking in one direction off to the side and we were able to very quickly get a very good statistical signal on what people preferred.

Elan Lee: Yes. However — 

Tim Ferriss: However.

Elan Lee: — to your credit, when you showed me that character, I think, initially, both the coyote’s eyes were open and we had some questions about the hat and I remember asking you all these questions. “What do you think of a wink? What do you think of an earring? What do you think of a hat? What do you think of one eye closed? With both eyes closed? What do you think? What do you think?” And to your credit, your answer was always “Let’s test it. I don’t want to have an opinion about this, I do have an opinion but I don’t even want to tell you, let’s test it.” And that is such an intelligent way to approach this. And ultimately, this beautiful character that we ended up with was so clearly the winner, it wasn’t even close.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it wasn’t even close. And so we were able to get this very strong signal from thousands of people voting and, boom, here we are.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Okay. So, we were talking about the road to retail. So it’s 70 percent of your sales are in-person retail versus online.

Elan Lee: Yeah, right.

Tim Ferriss: And, therefore, the stakes are high for these line reviews.

Elan Lee: Yeah, line reviews are a big deal. And I remember, so we really wanted to all show up in person. I remember you were trying so hard to get — our first line review was with Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas. I remember you wanted so badly to be there and there was some scheduling conflict that just wasn’t going to let it happen. And we tried to change the date but, again, they’ve got so many meetings and you’ve got to get in in exactly this time and they couldn’t change it to anything appropriate. 

And I remember thinking, “Oh, we’re sunk, I don’t know how to sell this game without Tim there in the room showing how much passion he has.” And you had a great solve, you just recorded a video of all that passion and you sat down in front of the camera and you just riffed on the game. You were just like, “Here’s why I love this, here’s why this is important to me, here’s why I made this game, first time I put my name on a thing,” and you recorded this beautiful and passionate video.

And I remember walking into the line review and sitting down and saying, “I have a new game. First thing I’m going to do is we’re going to play this game and I’m not going to tell you anything about it, we’re just going to play this game.” And I set up the game and, within five minutes, they’re laughing and they’re having this incredible time and they’re like, “Oh, this is amazing, this is so much fun. How are you going to sell this thing?” And I said, “I’m going to play a video for you now,” and that was it. It was that one-two punch. It was we’ve nailed game design and we’ve nailed the pitch, we know exactly who to talk to and how to talk to them. And they saw those two elements and they’re full line purchase, every single store is getting this game.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, wild, yeah.

Elan Lee: That has never happened on an initial pitch for us ever. Normally, we get into a subset of stores and then, eventually, it rolls out to all the stores. This was the first time ever they said, “Whatever it takes, we need this game everywhere.”

Tim Ferriss: Which is still very surreal for me and I’m so grateful, obviously, and it’s terrifying at the same time. Not going to lie, this is mister dip the toe, then one foot, then wade up to the ankles, this is just — 

Elan Lee: Yeah, fire hose on.

Tim Ferriss: — full Monty from second zero. 

What are other keys to pitching in a line review? And that could also be, I’ll just offer another option, which is what are some common mistakes that people make or that you suspect people make?

Elan Lee: Okay. So, the first most common mistake — 

Tim Ferriss: Because this could be for games but it could be for — 

Elan Lee: It’s for anything, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: — cosmetics, it could be for anything.

Elan Lee: For anything. The first question is how are you represented in that room? Remember I said they only take a certain number of meetings, it took us five years to get one of those meetings.

Tim Ferriss: Wow.

Elan Lee: And the way that you get the — 

Tim Ferriss: Even with the thunderous, crazy lightning-in-a-bottle success of Exploding Kittens?

Elan Lee: They only have so many hours.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: Yeah. So what you have to do instead is you find someone who already has a meeting and you hire them as your publisher and then they represent your game in their meeting. That’s how most companies do it and that’s how we did it for years. So the first problem is you have to make sure that whoever’s representing you, assuming you can’t be in the room because 99.9 percent of the people can’t, they are representing you the right way. With enough attention, they’re pitching it the right way, they’re representing it the right way, they’re saying the right words, they’re conveying the right fun.

Tim Ferriss: How do you ensure that?

Elan Lee: It’s a personal relationship and you — It’s just hard, it’s really hard. And to be honest, I don’t want to name names, but we went through three different publishers and I wasn’t happy with how — 

Tim Ferriss: How did you, this may or may not be something you can talk about, but how did you craft the deal structure such that you could take a swing and then you’re like, “Okay, swing and a miss, we’re going to go to someone else. And then swing and a miss, we’re going to go to someone else.”

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: How are those deals structured?

Elan Lee: We got very lucky. Because our Kickstarter campaign was so through the roof, that fed into our Amazon sales immediately. And so I could go from publisher to publisher saying, “Look how many games I sold the last week, look how many I sold the week before that. This is a prestigious title that you want to represent.” And then when they wouldn’t represent me properly, wouldn’t get the right sales, couldn’t get the right deal structure in place because we also demand quite a bit as far as where the game is placed, is it in aisle, is it out of aisle, meaning is it in the game section or somewhere else.

Tim Ferriss: Ankle height versus eye height.

Elan Lee: Exactly, right. Those bottom shelves are like a death sentence, nobody looks down there. Can we get games at checkout where they’re selling chewing gum, can we put games there? Can we get games in the catalog? All this stuff that I wanted for our games was just not being properly represented for us. So, eventually, after our sales got high enough, I finally was able to stop doing that silly dance with these publishers and we were able to publish our own games.

Tim Ferriss: Quick question. So, if I’m hearing you correctly, the success of the direct to consumer, the DTC, Kickstarter, Amazon, I should say online, those successes allowed you to dictate certain deal terms with the publishers so you had flexibility.

Elan Lee: Correct. And they allow us to say you want to represent us. Because, even then, they only have a one, maybe two-hour meeting and so there’s only so many games they can pitch so how do they fill that library.

Tim Ferriss: And then you get to the point where you can go and book those meetings yourself. How important was having a critical mass of SKUs?

Elan Lee: Oh, it’s everything, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Because I have to imagine, if I’m a major retailer, I don’t want to have a meeting with someone who only has one thing to sell.

Elan Lee: Well, that’s why we couldn’t do it at first. It was only once we had, I think, 10 games was the magic number to make it worth their while.

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm. Okay, got it.

Elan Lee: Yeah. And that takes a long time. And it’s not just 10 games, it’s 10 bestsellers. And unless you’re there, they’re just like, “Yeah, just go through a publisher. We don’t have time for — “

Tim Ferriss: Don’t have time.

Elan Lee: We take 10 meetings, we don’t have time for an 11th.

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm. All right, so what have you learned understanding but, to the extent possible, if we can put aside the element of Exploding Kittens having and developing this incredible track record which allows you to not cut corners in a bad way but you can go in without a finished prototype of the box, et cetera. If we put that aside for the moment, what have you learned about line reviews if you look at your first outing versus — 

Elan Lee: Yeah. Oh, I love this.

Tim Ferriss: — the more refined line reviews?

Elan Lee: Yeah, okay.

Tim Ferriss: And I’m spending a lot of time on this, guys, because this applies to everything. It applies to so much. You have a movie? Okay, fine, how are people going to see the movie? Yeah, you can go direct but you might want a distribution partner. What we’re talking about will apply to that pitch meeting, a lot of it. And it’s the stuff that mainstream magic is made of is figuring out how to craft these meetings.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Remember you said, “Like it or not, you’re in sales?”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: Here it is. This is where the rubber meets the road. Dust off your tap dancing shoes because, holy crap, these are tough. So you have to walk into that meeting and first you have to keep in mind you are their 10th meeting. Even if you’re not their 10th meeting, you’re their 10th meeting. They’re in this “I’m tired, I want to get out of this room, I’ve been at this for too long,” they’re in that mindset. So the first thing you’ve got to do is get them out of that funk. You need them to understand that this is going to be the best of the 10 meetings. And you do that with enthusiasm, you do that with props, you do that with a cool video. The stuff that can get them out of, “Oh, this isn’t like the other meetings.” Cool, that’s where you start.

So we walk into the room with two of those suitcases, not the ones that fit in the overhead, the big crazy ones you have to check and they’re filled with games, the most beautiful games we’ve got. Even stuff that we’re not pitching that day, even stuff we know will never see the light of day because we’re going to set all of those up. And the basic premise is buy into this world. Exploding Kittens is not a product, it’s a whole world and you can have this world on your store shelves. And so that’s how we start and that’s a really nice way to start. Okay. Then what they’re expecting is, “Okay, pitch us a game one at a time. Pitch this, okay, you’re done. Okay, pitch the next one. Okay, you’re done. Pitch the next one.” 

What we do is very different. Instead of pitching a game and then pitching the next one, just like I said, for Coyote, we’re like, “Hey, we’re going to play a game.” And usually they say, “We don’t have time to play, can you just pitch it?” And I say, “No, we’re going to play a game.” Confrontation, I get it, but I force them to play the games, every single one of them. Now, I’m not going to play all the way through, I’m not going to spend 10 or 20 minutes.

Tim Ferriss: All right. This might seem like a trivial detail but I don’t think it is. You in a tuxedo and a top hat for this? Are you dressed in your Sunday’s finest?

Elan Lee: Oh, yeah. Oh, it’s so funny. So I learned this in my Microsoft days. If I dress up, if I wear a tuxedo, if I wear a suit, if I even wear a button-up shirt, nobody takes me seriously because I’m supposed to be the creative guy. I have to wear the creative guy uniform, I have to wear a t-shirt, I have to wear jeans, otherwise, no one looks at me. So that’s how I show up.

Luckily, it’s a really comfortable uniform for me. So I force them to play and I’m there being the game’s biggest cheerleader. I don’t usually let them win, but I usually orchestrate a scenario in the game where they’re having as much fun as possible. And my goal is for them to have exactly those emotions that we talked about. When we start, I need them to think I can do that. And then, a minute in, I need them to think, “Oh, I did that. What’s next? Oh, I can do that next thing too.” And I am just crafting that.

And right at the point where they’re like, “Oh, I know what the next thing is,” I pull the game away. We’re done playing, now let me tell you how we’re going to sell this game. And it’s because, at that point, they’re drooling. And I do that 10 times in a meeting and we just keep hitting that over and over. And I am very aware that the last two games I pitch are usually not going to be purchased because they’re exhausted because that roller coaster — they’ve been up and down too many times.

Tim Ferriss: Right. So, you’re going to have to figure out the sequence.

Elan Lee: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: Do you start with the game you hope is going to be the big purchase? How do you sequence it?

Elan Lee: Yeah, yeah. We open with our shortest, easiest pitch and what that usually is an Exploding Kittens expansion. So, if I need to sell an expansion box or a new Exploding Kittens product and I know I don’t have to work very hard to sell it because they always sell, that’ll take the first spot. That just warms the waters, gets us all eased in.

Tim Ferriss: A little yes momentum.

Elan Lee: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Doesn’t hurt.

Elan Lee: Yeah. The number two spot is the glory spot.

Tim Ferriss: Okay, got it.

Elan Lee: Whoever is there, that’s the game I’m actually pitching today. That’s where Coyote was, that’s the big thing we’re going to talk about. And then the next five are equal, it doesn’t matter what order they are, those are — usually we’ll sell all five of those. At a typical meeting, all five. What happens after that is very iffy.

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm. Now you mentioned you play the game, you get them super excited, hopefully, they’re drooling over it and then you say, “All right, I’m going to take the game away, here’s how we’re going to sell it.” What is included in the “Here’s how we’re going to sell it?”

Elan Lee: Oh, yeah, okay. So important. So this has changed over the last three years. It used to be I have to start with the box and we still — I shouldn’t say it used to be, it still is, we start with the box. “Look how beautiful this thing is,” and we do a mock-up, here’s how it looks on the shelf and it’s usually from a photograph we took that morning. We want to show you, “Hey, Target, here’s what your shelf looks like. Hey, Walmart, here’s what your shelf looks like. Here is our game right there in line.”

Tim Ferriss: And I should mention, this probably goes without saying, but you are not just showing up and winging it, you guys — 

Elan Lee: Oh, my God.

Tim Ferriss: — rehearse like you are going to be performing once in a lifetime at Carnegie Hall.

Elan Lee: It is, if we screw up this meeting, our company is screwed. We don’t survive a bad meeting so, yeah, there is nothing that matters more than this. This is, arguably, 70 percent of our business this year. If we mess up this meeting, we will see a 70 percent drop. If they bought zero games, I don’t know that our company would survive that, so it’s a big deal. We rehearse constantly, we make changes constantly, we make all these props. We try to get the spot either right after breakfast or right after lunch because that’s when they’re in the best moods. All of it is orchestrated and so carefully. Who’s in the meeting? How many chairs are we going to fill?

Tim Ferriss: How do you request those time slots? Because I imagine you’re not the only people who are thinking about this, right? It makes me think of the data, it’s a meta-analysis long ago looking at judges’ verdicts before or after meals and leniency, right?

Elan Lee: Yeah, right. So, how do you get the right slots, yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So, how do you angle for those?

Elan Lee: There’s an art to that as well. So we have agents, we have representatives, one for Target and one for Walmart, and these are people who live in those cities, and they live and breathe sales with the sales rep. So, their job is — the very cynical way to say it is they’re like lobbyists but the more — 

Tim Ferriss: Ambassadors.

Elan Lee: Ambassadors, there we go. That’s a much more appropriate way. They have been doing the job for longer than the salespeople have, longer than the buyers have. And as a result, the relationship that they have with the buyers is actually one of education because they’ve seen all the mistakes, they know where all the landmines are, they know how to avoid them. And so part of the art of getting the best meetings, of getting yourself set up the best, is to hire the best agent.

Tim Ferriss: How does someone find said agents?

Elan Lee: Friends of friends of friends.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: The best ones already have too many clients. You can’t work with them.

Tim Ferriss: Right, the usual situation.

Elan Lee: Yeah, exactly. But if you have a good enough brand, if you have the right relationships, if you can talk to the right people and if you’re persistent, you can get the right agents. I actually thought we didn’t need an agent at all at first. I was like, “We can just do it, we’re going to show up the day before, we’re going to walk into these meetings,” and some very good friends of mine in the industry said, “You are an idiot, it’s just not going to work.” So we started working with agents and they’re incredible. They know the industry, they can — 

Tim Ferriss: Now, just to dig into that a little, why wouldn’t that work? Is it that the code of etiquette and the way everything has been set up involves those agents and, therefore, it wouldn’t work or are there other reasons why going in guns blazing without representation wouldn’t work?

Elan Lee: Yeah, both. The answer is both. So the buyers are much less likely to take you seriously unless you have an agent in the room. And part of that is just because — 

Tim Ferriss: I guess part of it is just these fools don’t know how this is done.

Elan Lee: Exactly right.

Tim Ferriss: Right. They’re showing up to Downton Abbey wearing a tank top.

Elan Lee: Exactly right.

Tim Ferriss: And they don’t know how to use the silverware.

Elan Lee: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Why should I trust their ability to be a good partner and actually get things done on time if they haven’t done their homework?

Elan Lee: Precisely.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: And the other half is you haven’t done your homework.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Elan Lee: You actually don’t know, you actually don’t know how to use the silverware. When we walk into a meeting, the agent has done a year’s worth of work prepping for that meeting. They have made sure the buyers know what you’re going to pitch, how many games you’re going to pitch, what the order of the games is. They’ve made sure that the sales for the previous purchases they’ve made going into the meeting so they already have the confidence in, yes, these people are going to deliver. They’ve made sure that inventory levels are where they need to be so that a meeting doesn’t get sidetracked by them saying “This game is sold out, how did you let that happen?” So many things can go wrong that the agent is fixing before they go wrong so that the meeting stays on the rails and gets you to success.

Tim Ferriss: Okay, got it.

Elan Lee: It’s a full-time job and, without it — 

Tim Ferriss: And so that agent is the person who lobbies for the appointment after breakfast for lunch?

Elan Lee: Exactly, yes. But you have to know to ask for it.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, right.

Elan Lee: Because your agent has other clients. They’re going to sit through maybe three, sometimes four meetings in that sell cycle and they’re going to give that prime slot to the one who asks for it. So you’ve got to know to ask for it. Here I am telling you on this podcast, it’s probably going to make my job a little bit harder for the next sales round, but so be it.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. People listening need to hop through a few hoops before — 

Elan Lee: Yeah, fair enough, all right.

Tim Ferriss: — they end up being viable competition.

Elan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. There’s a few other tricks that — 

Tim Ferriss: And we are going to come back to, if you’re just developing a game at your kitchen table, what are some of the first steps. So, we’re going to get to that.

Elan Lee: Yeah, we’ll get there. Yeah, for sure.

Tim Ferriss: But in the meantime, you said a couple of tricks of the trade?

Elan Lee: Yeah, there’s a few more. I should be a little careful about what I say but, look — 

Tim Ferriss: We can always bleep things in edit later.

Elan Lee: All right. So, you want to pay attention to, believe it or not, all of the retailers have color themes year by year. So you want to make sure that, when you walk into a meeting, your boxes match that color scheme, it makes it much easier for them to say yes.

Tim Ferriss: Had no idea.

Elan Lee: Yeah, right, I know. Because why would you? Because why would anybody, right? There’s things like those agents are given permission to read the notes from the all-hands meeting from the company so they know what the company’s priorities are. And so you want to sit down with your agent in advance and say, “Those buyers, what are they going to get promotions and raises based on this year? Is it more throughput at the store? Is it promote online sales? Is it match the color scheme?” Whatever it is, you want to make sure — 

Tim Ferriss: What are the incentives?

Elan Lee: Yeah. And you want to make sure that, when they look at your games, they think, “Oh, I’m really trying to promote online sales this year, whoa, this game would do great on our website. And then the next game, this game would do great on our website as well.” And by the time you get to the end of the meeting they’re like, “Oh, my God, I can get a promotion if I just buy all 10 of these games.” That’s what you want them to walk away with.

Tim Ferriss: All right. So, these meetings are huge, we’ve established this. A huge deal.

Elan Lee: So important.

Tim Ferriss: You mentioned a couple of tricks to the trade. And any other tips, tricks, learnings along the way?

Elan Lee: So what happens after those meetings is also very important. Okay. So there’s two things we have to talk about. One is pricing structure and the other is marketing.

Tim Ferriss: Yep.

Elan Lee: So in the meeting you talk a little bit about both. You have to now include marketing. Remember I said three years ago things were different than today? Three years ago, the marketing plan that you show for your game is largely your own website. Maybe you’ve bought some TV commercials, things like billboards, product placement here and there, things like that. Today, none of that matters. All they care about is social media because that’s the only form of marketing for games that works anymore, so.

Tim Ferriss: I should say also it particularly works on, and this is my understanding, on platforms like TikTok or now that other platforms have realized to avoid TikTok consuming their market share, they need to push and reward short-form video.

Elan Lee: That’s right.

Tim Ferriss: Short-form video. Casual games are perfectly suited to short-form video.

Elan Lee: Yeah. And the way that you build the most effective videos for those is you need to inspire, I think, two emotions. One, “I understand what those people are experiencing right now,” And two, “I would like to experience that.” And it took me forever to get to those two sentences. At first it was, “Let’s show gameplay, let’s show setup, let’s show a memorable moment. Let’s show people screaming and yelling because they’re having so much fun.” None of that matters. None of that works. “That looks like fun. I could have that much fun.” That’s it. That’s what you’re trying to show.

Tim Ferriss: How does that differ from the first?

Elan Lee: Um, it’s very, very focused, you want to — remember we talked about mastery early on?

Tim Ferriss: Well, I also asked you guys, because we were talking about this very early on in the process, right?

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Also, because if I’m procrastinating doing something hard, I like to talk about the marketing because it just is a lot easier for me to talk about. But I wanted to see examples of videos that had worked for any of your games.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Social posts. And so they were sent over. I was like, “Okay, I think I can deduce why this works.” Often it was one person playing the other person struggling to guess what the other person was doing and one person losing it laughing. Just inconsolably, but in the best possible way, losing it, getting the giggles out of control.

Elan Lee: Okay. So I’ll tell you, one of the most effective pieces of media we have ever used was for Poetry for Neanderthals. This has like at this point, I don’t know, tens of millions of views. And all it is — oh, sorry, “Here’s how you play Poetry for Neanderthals. I have to get you, I have a secret word on this card. I have to get you to say that word. And I can only speak using single syllable words. That’s the whole game. If I mess up, someone sitting next to me has a giant inflatable neanderthal club and they get to bonk me on the head.” All right. So there’s our whole game. The best video we’ve ever seen is someone who’s trying to get a person to say the word “garage.”

And we know they’re trying to get the person to say the word garage because we put that right on the screen. We show you, “Here’s the secret word, it’s garage.” And they’re just saying, “Car, go here. Car, hole, car hole. This car hole, big car hole.” And everyone’s losing it. And the poor person trying to guess is like, “What the fuck is a car hole? Glove compartment? What are you trying to say?” And then they say, “Vehicle. Multiple syllable word.” And so they get bonked on the head. Okay, here’s why that video is so effective. It’s those two senses. One is, “I see the experience they’re having. I get that.” And the secondary corollary is “I could do better than that.”

Tim Ferriss: Is this the video, I think I remember seeing this. This might have been a separate video, but there’s a woman who’s the poet and then there’s the guy next to her, holding the club.

Elan Lee: Yeah, so menacing.

Tim Ferriss: The ax is going to drop. Yeah. And everyone’s losing it, including the guy at the back.

Elan Lee: Because you look at that and you say, “I understand the rules,” immediately. “I understand the experience they’re having. I would like to have that experience.” And that’s what makes for an effective social media video.

Tim Ferriss: All right, so how do you pitch that?

Elan Lee: Well, we show a lot of examples and we show a track record. We say, “Look, here’s how many views our last round of videos got. Here’s how many likes, here’s how many shares, here’s how many subscriptions.” All this stuff, we show them right there in the meeting. We never had to do that. This is a brand new phenomenon. And we say, “Here’s the type of video that we’re going to craft for this new game,” and we always couch it in those two sentences. “Here’s how we’re going to explain the fun people are having and here’s how we’re going to make the audience feel like they would like to have that much fun as well.” And that’s been very effective for us. So that’s now half the meeting, because every game we start by, I demo the game.

Tim Ferriss: It’s social media strategy.

Elan Lee: Yes. I demo the game, I pull the game back, we talk a little bit about the pricing structure and the theme and the box and all that. And then we go right into social media strategy for that game. Because I have to spend as much time on that as I did on the game design because they’re equally important now. It’s huge. Such a difference.

Tim Ferriss: All right, so for somebody listening who is thinking about making a game, and I really encourage everyone to do that, and I’m just going to flash, this is as good a time as any, just to flash these blank cards that are within every Coyote box and they are color-coded. You can use these to make action cards, which are these different gestures and actions and so on.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Those are the templates that we use.

Tim Ferriss: These are the templates. You can use them to make Coyote cards, these modifiers. You can use them to make the attack cards which you use to sabotage other people. There are other ways to play those cards. This is intended to invite everyone to basically create their own game by modifying the rules.

Elan Lee: That’s right.

Tim Ferriss: Or adding new elements that are uniquely their own. You can have fun with your friends, you can have fun with your kids. I mean, this is intended to make you a part of the creative process, which you will be part of anyway, just by the way you play the game but this takes it to another level. And this was a really important element for me. So this will be a warm-up in a sense. You get to try game design, game development light, with these blank cards. But let’s say somebody then decides they want to give it a go, maybe it’s with one of their kids, like you did with your daughter. Maybe it’s by themselves. Who knows? Maybe it’s going to the game shop, local game shop, which I really recommend people do. If you’ve never been to a real proper game shop, go in on a game night when people are set up and also check out the games you might not be inclined to check out. So if you’re a casual gamer, go to a Warhammer night, see what that’s about.

Elan Lee: Totally.

Tim Ferriss: Check out these different worlds.

Elan Lee: Another secret weapon is go to a game shop, find the owner, or even the person behind the counter, someone who knows what they’re talking about. And just say, “I’m looking for a game. What game do you wish more people would give a try?” And you’ll find the gems that way because they know. But maybe the game doesn’t have the best box or the best name or it fell short somewhere and people just aren’t buying it, but they know it’s amazing. That’s where you find them. It’s a great experience.

Tim Ferriss: So start testing the waters in that way. It’s so easy to do in a place like Austin. I mean, this is Austin. People might think of game locations and X, Y, Z, they’re all over the place. There happens to be a really vibrant scene here. And if you wanted to, if one wanted to start developing their own game, let’s say they find something that starts to stick.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Okay. We’ve got a tiger by the tail. This seems to be working. They’re play testing. It might take a while, like Settlers of Catan, I think Klaus Teuber had 150 versions before, that’s a complex game. But let’s say they start to develop the game and they’re like, “All right, I would like to try to sell this.” What are the options? What would you say to someone who’s like, they’re smart, they can plan, they’ve operated in the world before, so they’re not new to adulting, but they have no experience in selling games.

Elan Lee: There are three paths. I’ll tell you all three paths and then I’ll tell you my favorite one.

Tim Ferriss: All right.

Elan Lee: Okay. Path number one, self-publishing. Self-publishing is hard, but you can print out your own decks. You can design everything yourself. You can write the rules yourself. You can do absolutely everything yourself. And then you can spend a few thousand dollars, publish a few hundred copies, and send them out to all your friends. Okay. So that’s option one. It sucks. Don’t do that one. It’s just the worst. I mean, you’re just going to make every mistake and you’re not — 

Tim Ferriss: And you’re going to have to pay for your mistakes.

Elan Lee: And you pay for every mistake, and then once you make the mistake, now you can’t take it back and you can’t undo it. Just don’t self-publish. It’s a terrible idea. Okay, there’s number one. That’s not my favorite one. Number two is you go to an existing publisher, Hasbro, Mattel, nowadays Exploding Kittens. You can approach big publishers, pitch your game, and then strike a deal with them where they will handle all the risk, but they will also take most of the reward. You can still honestly get very rich this way, but you have to get into their portfolio, so either you need a track record or you just have to absolutely wow them or you need some other — you have to show up with some bona fides. You can’t just say, “I’m a brand new designer, here’s my brand new game, please publish me.”

Tim Ferriss: How would you, maybe there are exceptions where people have wowed them, first time game designer with a game, how does one do that?

Elan Lee: You go to a convention.

Tim Ferriss: You go to a convention?

Elan Lee: Yeah, you go to a convention, you demo your game, they will all show up. They’re like agents recruiting for a sports team. They’re going to show up to all of those places and they’re going to walk the halls and they’re going to check even the smallest booths. And they’re going to even go to the big convention halls where everyone just has their own little folding table or even a temporary folding table. They’re going to look at all of that stuff. So it is possible to do it that way, but you have to keep in mind they have very few slots open and they usually only have one or two agents, scouts looking for games. So your chances of success there are low as a first-time person, much better if you can walk in, if you can schedule a meeting and they will take that meeting and then you can say, “Here’s why you should not say no to this.”

Tim Ferriss: What are the things you can do or put in a pitch that increase the likelihood of getting a meeting, outside of being an influencer with 20 million followers on Instagram?

Elan Lee: Well, yeah, that helps, but the reason that helps is, what I was going to say is the ability to sell the game, whatever it is, maybe you’re an influencer — 

Tim Ferriss: By the way, also true of nonfiction writing.

Elan Lee: Exactly right.

Tim Ferriss: If you’re selling a book.

Elan Lee: And for selling a screenplay and for really selling anything, you need to be able to say, “Here’s why people are going to take notice of this thing and why you would be a fool to pass on this opportunity.” That’s hard. Oftentimes the best way to do that is to have already done it, which means your first time out, you need what I’m about to talk about, which is option three. Option three, crowdfunding. This is relatively new, like 10, 15 years old.

Tim Ferriss: So it is, I guess, self-publishing in a sense, but you’re getting other people to fund the development.

Elan Lee: Two things, yes to that. Exactly right. Other people are funding a hundred percent of the development, which is incredible. But also you are collecting those funds on a platform that promotes the game. People are there watching your video, you’re trying to convince them.

Tim Ferriss: It is a discovery platform.

Elan Lee: Exactly. Perfectly phrased. It is a discovery platform that was missing 15 years ago. “Watch my self-published YouTube video and hopefully fund my game,” it just didn’t exist. So now people are looking at crowdfunding sites looking for cool new experiences and backing them. And that’s a new invention and that’s really cool. And it’s not my favorite one either. So I just said I picked my favorite and I just pitched three and I said, “None of them are my favorite.” Here’s my actual favorite. A combination of two and three. Start on crowdfunding, especially if it’s your first time out. Learn everything you can. Your first project is probably going to fail. That’s okay. You’ve got nothing at stake. You didn’t lose anything. Fix it. Relaunch it, fix it again. Relaunch it again. Take as many times as you need. There’s nothing at risk here. You’re just learning the process. Awesome. When you get a success on whatever crowdfunding platform you love, now go to those publishers and say, “Here are my bona fides. Here’s proof that this thing is going to sell. I’ve already sold this once. I’ve already gotten 10.”

Tim Ferriss: Do you do that before you have shipped the game?

Elan Lee: No. Very important. No. Ship the game first. If the only thing you can prove is that you are a train wreck waiting to happen, you will get nothing from them. So ship the game, show that you’re organized, even if it’s a small fulfillment like you sell a hundred copies of your game, show that you can fulfill those hundred copies and then start to show the reactions to those. If you’ve only got a hundred people who bought the game, reach out to every single one of them and beg them to record a video about how much they love your game. And now go to publishers with that. That’s really what you’re searching for. Use crowdfunding as exactly what it is, as a way to launch your new game to then take to step two.

Tim Ferriss: Let me ask this. There may be people listening or watching who think to themselves, “That sounds awesome, but wasn’t the heyday of crowdfunding three, four, or five years ago?”

Elan Lee: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: You hear less about it. Certainly for, let’s say, selling to a hundred people or maybe many, many more, I’m sure there are runaway success campaigns even today, but are there any tweaks that you would add to it?

Elan Lee: It’s really tricky. Okay, so here’s what happened with crowdfunding. So we launched on Kickstarter, Exploding Kittens launched on Kickstarter, and by some amazing twist of fate, that was perfect timing. Very few people had heard of Kickstarter. They heard about this funny, silly thing. It was drawn by The Oatmeal. Matt already had this incredibly large audience and people showed up and they said, “Ooh, crowdfunding. Ooh, this thing costs 20 bucks. I’m going to back this thing.” And we had 219,000 people try that thing. Amazing. Unheard of success. Those people then over the next, let’s call it five years, stayed on Kickstarter and they backed other things, other games, other projects, whatever. And what they found was the nature of Kickstarter is such that only about 50 percent of those projects that shipped either the thing that shipped was nowhere close to the thing promised, or the thing never shipped, and they never got their money back. Whatever it is.

Tim Ferriss: People got burned.

Elan Lee: They got burned, and they had a terrible experience. And now when you say, “Hey, back my Kickstarter,” everyone’s got this memory implanted of, “Oh, that was a bad experience for me. Maybe I even had some great experiences, but I also had those bad ones and this is not worth it. And I’m not going back to that site or any crowdfunding site.” So that’s the problem. We’re not seeing the numbers we used to see because everyone’s walking in with this baggage and it sucks. My only advice is there is now a secondary ecosystem around Kickstarter, other websites that have gotten very good at promoting projects, that have gotten very good at advertising new offerings on Kickstarter and building trust, like if you get on this other — 

Tim Ferriss: So it’s like a curated site that vets projects.

Elan Lee: Exactly right. And here’s the thing, those companies almost always take a percentage of what the maker gets in exchange for helping them with fulfillment, with creation, with everything. So not only are you buying into a trusted ecosystem, but you also know there’s multiple parties involved that are going to work very hard to make sure you get that product.

Tim Ferriss: What are some of those companies?

Elan Lee: I would have to look them up.

Tim Ferriss: Okay. Yeah, no problem. All right, we’ll put maybe links to a few of them in the show notes.

Elan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a ton of them. They all have the word backer in them somewhere, backer found and backer this and backer that. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Okay. We’ll put a couple of links in the show notes. Tim.blog/podcast, you can find it. 

And I will also just give a shout-out to a friend of mine who at some point you have to meet, maybe you’ve met him already. Craig Mod, does that name ring at all?

Elan Lee: No. I don’t know Craig.

Tim Ferriss: All right, so Craig is a gem of a human, amazing writer, also very technical as a software engineer, software development expert. And he, at one point, for his beautiful books that he has bound and crafted in Japan, these are works of art, they’re absolutely beautiful. And he created basically a, I don’t know if open source is the right term, but he does have the code available on GitHub for anybody who wants it, called, I think it’s called Craigstarter, which is effectively, if you want to host your own crowdfunding campaign and in his opinion, fix some of the bugs that were difficult to contend with.

Elan Lee: Interesting.

Tim Ferriss: Then boom, you can do that.

Elan Lee: Oh, I love that.

Tim Ferriss: And I think he incorporated Shopify and other add-ons, different services could be as modules. I’m sure I’m not using the right terminology, but incorporated into it.

Elan Lee: Super clever. I love it.

Tim Ferriss: So people can also check that out. And I have two interviews with Craig. You should check out both of them. They’re absolutely fantastic.

Elan Lee: Lovely.

Tim Ferriss: Okay, so folks can look at these services as basically a stamp of credibility. They will help not only with the promotion if you are so vetted, but with the fulfillment, like that third-party logistics.

Elan Lee: That’s right. Now, I don’t think we’re going to see a crowdfunding campaign on the scale of Exploding Kittens these days. There are a few exceptions. You just interviewed one of them, in fact.

Tim Ferriss: Brandon Sanderson?

Elan Lee: Exactly, out of control success.

Tim Ferriss: $45 million, or whatever it was, Kickstarter campaign for fantasy books. Unheard of.

Elan Lee: Bonkers. Unheard of. But what I love is that that shows this is not even a remotely dead platform.

Tim Ferriss: No.

Elan Lee: There is success to be had here. You just have to be creative. I mean he started out with a great fan base. He picked an incredible title, the first word of his campaign was, “Surprise.” No one’s done that before. What does that mean? And just everything about it. Smart on top of smart on top of smart. I loved it. Loved it. So it’s very possible, but it’s also very rare and you have to be smart about it.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Well, here’s the thing. It’s possible and who cares? It may not have the gravitational pull that it had five years ago, but if you can’t sell anything in a crowdfunding campaign, you are not going to sell any buyer at mass retail.

Elan Lee: Absolutely right.

Tim Ferriss: It’s not going to happen.

Elan Lee: Absolutely right.

Tim Ferriss: And therefore you save yourself years of banging your head against a brick wall when you’re never going to break through. If you get, and this might not sound like good news, but if it’s going to fail, you want to fail as quickly as possible.

Elan Lee: It’s great news, as long as you don’t take it personally, as long as you say “This product — “

Tim Ferriss: How many games do you guys screw around with on any level? And how many make the cut?

Elan Lee: We probably work on a hundred games a year and less than 20 make the cut.

Tim Ferriss: And that’s with all of your experience?

Elan Lee: Yeah. That’s probably way higher than it should be. I’m probably pushing forward games that have no right to be pushed forward. But again, you don’t take it personally. You say, “This game is flawed.” And the faster you can figure that out, the faster you can move on to a game that isn’t flawed.

Tim Ferriss: So if I heard you correctly then, it’s crowdfunding. You establish some numbers and so on that you can share that show traction at some type, game reactions, et cetera. Then you take all of that to book a meeting at a trade show or a conference or convention with one of these publishers who already has the annual meetings and line reviews.

Elan Lee: Exactly right.

Tim Ferriss: And you make a pitch to do a deal with them.

Elan Lee: That’s my favorite path through this.

Tim Ferriss: What deal terms do you need to pay attention to?

Elan Lee: Okay, so there is one very important number that you’re going to get, and it’s going to seem like a very low number, but here’s how this works. Most publishers are going to throw a number at you, like two percent.

Tim Ferriss: Royalty rate?

Elan Lee: Yeah. And you’re going to think, “Wait a second, I was the inventor, I get 80 percent and you’re offering me two percent?” But here’s what that number actually means. They, the publisher, are going to take on all the risk. They’re going to do all the printing, they’re going to do all the relationship management, they’re going to do that sales meeting, they’re supporting hundreds of people on their staff, they’re doing all this stuff that you are not doing. But in exchange for that, that two percent isn’t two percent of the profit, it’s two percent of the revenue.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Top line.

Elan Lee: Exactly. And that is a very important distinction. That makes that two percent probably closer to 20 percent, 30 percent once you do all the math.

Tim Ferriss: It’s the opposite of Hollywood accounting.

Elan Lee: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: It’s not some percentage of net income, which is defined in some Byzantine way to fuck you every which way from Sunday.

Elan Lee: Precisely right.

Tim Ferriss: If it’s top line — 

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: So just to reiterate what you just said, two percent is more like 20 plus percent?

Elan Lee: Yes, that’s exactly right.

Tim Ferriss: Of profit?

Elan Lee: Yeah. And you can ask them to break down that math for you. You can say, “Show me the spreadsheet, show me what you’re spending, what your responsibilities are, what mine are. After all of those numbers are crunched, what is the total amount you’re going to spend on this game? Show me your total projections on what’s coming in, show me how much I’m going to make of that.” And then you can start comparing those numbers yourself and see, “Oh, of the money that came in, I’m getting 20 percent of it. Even though this number only says two percent.” Once you crunch that math, this is a pretty decent deal. And you can get higher than two percent. Usually not as a first-time developer, but I’ve seen deals anywhere from two to 12 percent on the super high end.

Tim Ferriss: 12, wow.

Elan Lee: You’ve got to be a rockstar because at 12 percent, now you’re at 50 percent, and that’s tough to get to. You’ve got to really pull your weight to get numbers like that. So those are what the deals look like. And then after that, then the whole relationship moves into this like, “Okay, now what the hell are we actually making? What is the quality of the cards? What are the components in the box? Are you allowed to change rules?”

Tim Ferriss: Quick question, is the deal structure similar to a book publishing contract in the sense that the game developer would get an advance against sales? Or is that — 

Elan Lee: Sometimes.

Tim Ferriss: Sometimes?

Elan Lee: Yeah. You can negotiate that. I’ve seen publishers do that or not do that. I will just say for Exploding Kittens, we never do advances.

Tim Ferriss: It’s fundamentally different also from, say, nonfiction book publishing in the following sense. If you’re taking a, let’s call it conventional publishing approach, which is very similar to selling the game, it’s like you have an agent. You’ve got the editors, let’s just say, and the publishers who are the buyers of sorts, the editor might be the category buyer but they have to get the okay from the publisher for signing off on deals.

Elan Lee: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: And you’ll have your royalty rate, which varies widely, but let’s just say somewhere depending on paperback versus hardcover, up to probably a maximum in conventional deals of 12 to 15 percent of cover, which is also, again, of cover. And then there’s the advance, but the critical difference that I was alluding to is typically when a nonfiction book is sold, you are selling a book proposal, which is a writing sample and a marketing plan.

Elan Lee: Wow.

Tim Ferriss: And if, and only if, a publisher decides to sign a contract and buy the book, do you get an advance to buy you the time so you can stop doing all of these other things to write the full book, whereas with the game, the game’s got to be ready.

Elan Lee: It’s done. Yeah. Now let’s call it 90 percent done, to be fair. And usually when we take on games, we change them significantly just because there’s always a better version, and through testing, we discover it. But the reason we don’t do advances, partially, is exactly what you’re saying. You’re already done. We’re not trying to pull you off of other projects.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. You don’t have to stop your nine to five.

Elan Lee: Exactly. Exactly. But the other reason is because I want a partnership. I’m not here to say, “You sold us this game. Now we’re never going to talk again.” I want you here every day. I want skin in the game. We’re going to all make this better together, which is why we do so few partnerships.

Tim Ferriss: Now, when you do partnerships, meaning you’re the publisher, you’re paying someone a royalty, how do you typically find those? So for instance, and I imagine a lot of it is you guys canvassing and basically asking the question that you recommended people ask the store owners, “Which game do you wish people played more often?” And then you find something that has the bones of a really good game but a piece of it is shitting the bed. There’s something that is broken and you’re like, “Oh, we can fix that broken thing.” Or do you take cold submissions? How does that work?

Elan Lee: We have a form. We have a submission form on our website. We almost never find anything there. It’s hard. It’s time-consuming to go through all of them and honestly, it’s just not the highest quality. We also go to conventions. We look a little bit around there. Sometimes we find a diamond in the rough.

Tim Ferriss: That’s a crowded fishing hole, right?

Elan Lee: Very crowded. The most effective way are those agents. We talk to those two agents and we say, “Hey, people approach you all the time wanting you to be their agent and you have to turn a lot of them down. The ones that you feel terrible about because they’re such a good game and they just can’t get in the door, send them to us.” And that works really well.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Smart. That’s super smart. Aside from a crowdfunding campaign, what would actually cut through in a submission? Are there any ingredients outside of, here are a bunch of compelling data from a crowdfunding campaign?

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Or, “Hey, I’ve designed a hundred hit games.”

Elan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. There’s that.

Tim Ferriss: Aside from those two, what other types of lines or elements would cut through the noise?

Elan Lee: So remember I said that phrase, the way we design games is we don’t make games that are entertaining, we make games that make the players entertaining. 90 percent of the game pitches I see are attempts to be entertaining games and I just immediately dismiss them. That looks like that game is working so hard to entertain the players. I don’t care.

The best games, the ones that I pay very careful attention to, are when everything you do in the game creates an interaction between two players. I’m not interested in a four-player game where all four players are playing solitaire. It’s just, who cares? I’m interested in a game where the players are playing the players and I play a card — 

Tim Ferriss: We tweaked a lot in Coyote based on that.

Elan Lee: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: So guiding principle.

Elan Lee: And those are the best games. Those are the ones I love the most. Those are the ones I want to play over and over again.

Tim Ferriss: And it could be as simple as you might, I’m saying you, the listener or viewer might remember holding your cards facing you versus having the cards available to the entire table.

Elan Lee: That’s right. Because now we’re playing all together. And the card I choose, if I have a blind hand, if I have a deck of cards and I choose a card and then I play it, that is me presenting a game to the players. If I have all my available cards face up on the table and everyone can see what I choose, and everyone’s hoping I pick that first card, and I hover my hand over it and then I move to the second card instead and everyone starts groaning and then I play that second card anyway, now it’s me playing the players. And those are the best games in the world.

Tim Ferriss: What are some common Achilles heels for games that have the potential to be great and huge successes? And I’m not going to mention names, but we’ve talked about a couple of games that you’ve considered buying or publishing, and I’m wondering what are some of the common weaknesses where you’re, this is a great game, but the reason it didn’t work is X or Y or Z.

Elan Lee: All right, so there’s two basic places the games fall apart. One is right off the bat, their boxes suck, or the name sucks. The number of games out there called The Legendary Folklore of Gorgonzel. I can’t remember them, I don’t know what they are. I look at this — 

Tim Ferriss: Got to throw a CØCKPUNCH in there, and then it’s problem solved.

Elan Lee: CØCKPUNCH aside, I would argue that those games, they have no chance of success. Yes, they’re going to sell 10 copies to the 10 people that bought The Legendary Tales of Gorgonzel volumes one through six, and they’re going to buy volume seven. Cool, great. I don’t care. Picking the wrong name, picking a non-descriptive name, putting a picture on the box that does not describe gameplay at all and does not provide a compelling narrative about what experience you are about to have, those games have zero chance of success. And I see that over and over and over again. You can fail right up front. And I’ve even seen the biggest publishers in the world mess this up, especially now that game shelves are so crowded and you don’t have five games to choose from, you have 500 games to choose from. And a game that doesn’t do a good job of saying, “Pick me, pick me, pick me,” you’re just not going to pick, so you will fail right there.

Tim Ferriss: Or really complicated packaging too. I’ve seen that a bunch.

Elan Lee: Absolutely.

Tim Ferriss: Where there’s just so much going on. There’s no one dominant element. It’s like, what am I supposed to look at here?

Elan Lee: Yeah, what do you look at first?

Tim Ferriss: So you can’t.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: You don’t look at anything, you look at the next box.

Elan Lee: It’s just noise. Just noise. We worked very hard on Coyote, on all our games, but I remember having this discussion about Coyote because this is such an important lesson. When you look at this box, we know the first thing you’re going to look at and we know the second thing you’re going to look at and we know the third thing you’re going to look at, and this is a formula, and we crafted this — 

Tim Ferriss: It’s a formula.

Elan Lee: — very carefully.

Tim Ferriss: By the way, also exactly what works in old school print advertising.

Elan Lee: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: Right?

Elan Lee: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: Header image, headline, subheading.

Elan Lee: Exactly right.

Tim Ferriss: Text.

Elan Lee: Yeah. And those components are all present here.

Tim Ferriss: And if you fuck up the order, pardon my French, the eye doesn’t know how to track or it bounces around.

Elan Lee: And if there’s other better options right next door, off you go. We hit those three things on a box meticulously, and your reaction should not be, “I’m going to buy that game.” That’s not our goal. Your reaction is, “I’m going to pick up this game and I’m going to turn it over and I’m going to read the back of the box.” And now we’ve got a very different task. Now we have more real estate we can afford. We still know the first thing you’re going to look at, but now we care a little bit less about the second thing. As long as you’ve already got enough interest, you’ve already committed to picking this thing up, now you’re willing to read a little story. As long as you can see the end of that story and you know it’s not too long, you’re going to read a little story. The goal of this is now purchase. I want you to get to the end of this experience and say, “I’ve got to have it. I want this.”

Tim Ferriss: And just for people who can’t see this particular visual, and there’s all sorts of stuff on the back of the card, which we won’t get into, but some people might notice interesting things on the back of the cards. The dominant element on the back of the box is how to play. And man, we worked on this a lot too, with basically three panes, step one, step two, step three. “Put cards on the table, then take turns performing them,” that’s step one. And you’ve got a little visual with the salamander action cards. Then next part is “Play cards to help or sabotage other players,” shows two examples.

Elan Lee: “Sabotage” was a very carefully chosen word, by the way.

Tim Ferriss: Very carefully chosen. And then the last one is “Mess up and you’re out. The last player standing wins.” That’s for competitive mode. Now, one aspect of this that I think is very clever is not sure if you should buy this game? Give us a few seconds to convince you. And then there’s a QR code.

Elan Lee: Nobody does that. This is new.

Tim Ferriss: I know. What’s the impetus behind this?

Elan Lee: This was an idea I had that we’re demoing on this game, first time ever. My idea was “If I went to the store with you, I could convince you to buy my favorite game because I’m going to pitch the hell out of that game.” But I’m not in the store with you, so that’s a problem. My first idea was for every retail location in the world, “Will they let us install a telephone that you can pick up and talk to somebody?” And they said, “No.” My second idea was, “Can I hire a person to stand in every store and convince you to buy the game I want you to buy?” And they said, “Sort of, but you have to pay for all of that.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s not going to work.” And so this was option three.

Tim Ferriss: It’s cool, it’s a lot of people. 6,000 plus people.

Elan Lee: I know, right? Can you imagine? This is just a little QR code. And the idea is I can’t stand next to you for every store, but I can tell you what I would’ve said had I been standing there. And so you scan this code and it’s just a 15-second video. In this case, it’s me, Tim, saying, “Listen, you’re holding a game in your hands. It’s the greatest thing you’ll ever see. Let me try to convince you.” And it’s just a pitch. It’s just, if I were standing next to you in the store, here’s why you should buy this game. And I don’t think a lot of people are going to scan that code, to be fair. But for those who do, they’re going to have the experience of a friend telling them, “You should trust me. This is going to be great, trust me.”

Tim Ferriss: And it doesn’t take up that much real estate either. It’s an easy addition to the box. Once again, test it. Right. Let’s test it.

Elan Lee: Test it. And what’s the worst that can happen?

Tim Ferriss: See what happens. And I also want to revisit something you mentioned earlier, which is that royalty rate, whether it’s two percent, it’s up to 12 percent in the book world. Let me take the book world and the publishing world in the book publishing sense is changing a lot, but it’s also quite consistent over time. Different things have changed, sure, audio as a format has grown tremendously and become highly prized now versus 10 years ago when I could carve out those rights, it’s a lot harder to do now if you’re going to do the conventional route. But some folks will look at the percentages and they’ll say, “Well, wait a second, max 15 percent after an escalator, I’m starting off at 12 percent for hardcover. That’s ridiculous. I wrote the whole thing, da, da, da, da, da. I want to make the lion’s share.”

There are some instances where you can make that work, but I will say just a few things. When you begin, for most people, unless you are excellent at running a meticulously managed business, it’s actually pretty tough to beat those numbers. In part because you’re going to be sacrificing distribution, so the top of the funnel number is going to be different. Secondly, when you factor in paying various agents, various distributors, and all of these little costs that for you, without any scale of having a thousand skews in a department dedicated to it, you start to very quickly approach that number.

Elan Lee: Very quickly.

Tim Ferriss: And by the way, you’re running a real business. This is not the easiest thing in the world to do at all. And I will probably do some experiments on that side of the equation in terms of “self-publishing,” which I would put in quotation marks because it’s going to be augmented pseudo self-publishing on a few levels. But I would only have the confidence of doing that myself currently, because I’ve gone through the conventional route multiple times and I’ve also run quite a few businesses. But if you’ve never, what Stephen Key, I mentioned earlier, one simple idea for licensing, what he might call venturing, running a business, do not underestimate the value of your time and sanity also.

Elan Lee: It’s so true.

Tim Ferriss: Because he’s, “Hey, look, I’ll take the licensing deal, maybe I’ll negotiate the number up a little bit.” But he’s like, “I can do 12 of those a year.”

Elan Lee: That’s right. That’s exactly it.

Tim Ferriss: And it adds up to a lot. And I have no employees, no supply chain issues.

Elan Lee: No risk.

Tim Ferriss: No, “Oops, that was printed the wrong way and now I have thousands of books —” 

Elan Lee: You have to recall those. Oh, my God.

Tim Ferriss: “— that are sitting in my garage unsold, gathering dust and mold.”

Elan Lee: Let me tell you the simplest example of the difference between doing it yourself and getting help, valuing your time. Our very first game Exploding Kittens, I needed to put a barcode on the box because it has to sell in retail. I go, I’m like, I’m going to research this, this can’t be too hard. I do the research and I find this website and it’s, you’ve got to pay some little subscription, 100 bucks a year, whatever it is, and you can generate unlimited barcodes. Amazing. I generate a barcode, I put it on the box. That wasn’t so hard.

Then Target’s like, “Well, this is the wrong format.” I’m like, “Okay.” I spend another 100 bucks, I get a different format bar, put it on. They’re like, “We need a different barcode based on the palette that it’s in.” And then I talk to Walmart and they’re like, “Yeah, we use a different barcode format and we need this barcode to represent whether it was picked up in China or Mexico or Poland, so you actually need three different ones. Oh, and by the way, if it’s bundled with other games, we need a fourth one. And by the way, if it ships into Arkansas, we need a fifth.” And I was just like, “Help. Oh, my God, help.” And that’s the difference. You should not get good at this. Why would you want to get good at that?

Tim Ferriss: What’s funny is I was actually going to bring up the example of the UPC codes and the ISBN and all this stuff because I also went down that rabbit hole. I’m like, “How hard could it be?”

Elan Lee: Right, right.

Tim Ferriss: “Oh, this is easy.” And lo and behold, actually it’s a lot of brain damage. I’m not saying that no one should Venture in the sense of self-funding or self-publishing, but it is a lot harder and much more consuming than most people realize.

Elan Lee: And there’s no reason, unless you want to do it for a living, there’s no reason to get good at it. There’s no upside there.

Tim Ferriss: And do it for a living meaning handle those types of details.

Elan Lee: Right, exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Okay.

Elan Lee: Anyway, we have a barcode person who does it for a living. She’s quite good. I’m so happy she’s on my team.

Tim Ferriss: All right, so on the side of selling games, what else have we not touched on? Any other aspects?

Elan Lee: Let’s see. Another thing I learned along the way is there’s two kinds of selling. One is everything we’ve been talking about today. And your expectation is, “I have sold you a game, the game is now your responsibility. And we’ve negotiated a price, you, the retailer, own this game now and you’re going to sell it.” The second kind is the kind that we actually engage in, which is you do own this game, but there are restrictions on how you can sell it.

Tim Ferriss: Can you explain that again? When you say you own this game, you mean a retailer?

Elan Lee: You, the retailer, have purchased this palette of games from me.

Tim Ferriss: I get it. All right. Sorry, I was just clarifying because people might’ve heard that as you own the IP of the game.

Elan Lee: Sorry, sorry, sorry. Yes.

Tim Ferriss: You are buying an inventory of this game.

Elan Lee: Correct. Now, what if the game doesn’t sell very well? Whose problem is that? Well, if you didn’t think that through and it’s just a straight sale, they can put it in a bargain bin or they can sell it to somebody else who’s then going to sell it. Or if you really didn’t negotiate it, they can force you to buy it back from them.

The restrictions on what happens to the game, what they’re allowed to do post-sale is so meticulous and these contracts get so long. And this is another thing, you don’t want to get good at this. You just need to hire someone who has seen every imaginable mistake and knows what to argue for. And oftentimes the retailers don’t care that much about this part, especially because they have a lot of faith. This thing’s going to do well. But when it goes poorly, if it goes poorly, and we’ve had a few examples of this, what do you do next?

In the case of something as simple as Amazon, Amazon has a terrible policy for returns. Namely, they will accept all returns and it is the vendor’s responsibility, my responsibility. You buy Exploding Kittens from GameKnight, you play the game, you damage all the cards because you spilled beer all over them, you put them back in the box the next day after you had a great time and you return it and now that’s my cost. And that happens hundreds of times a week. It sucks.

There’s also this thing where people will buy counterfeit games and they’ll buy, then, the real version. They’ll buy a counterfeit for a dollar, they’ll buy the real version on Amazon, they’ll keep the real version, they’ll return the counterfeit and now that’s mine as well. And I just spent $20 on that stupid counterfeit version because that’s coming back to me. All of this stuff has to be thought through in advance and it’s tricky, because some retailers, the Targets and the Walmarts in the world, they are so willing to work with you on that stuff. Amazon, not so much. They’re just like, “Oh, you don’t like our policy? All right, well maybe a different platform is for you.” It’s hard. It’s really hard.

Tim Ferriss: And I should say that I’ve run into, when I’ve talked about termination clauses or what do we do when everyone’s pissed off and things aren’t working? Because really that’s the only time that you’re going to go back and look at the agreement, which is why Gary Keller, famous for his real estate empire, said, “You should really call them disagreements.” The only time you’re going to look at them is when things are really going sideways.

Elan Lee: That’s right.

Tim Ferriss: And there are some people I’ve spoken to about the importance of these things, like, “Wow, that’s really pessimistic.” I’m like, “No, no, no.” Let’s understand the consequences of not going through this. I know so many examples of entrepreneurs who actually had a chance at a runaway success and they did not pay attention to these terms for, say, a QVC or a huge retailer. And this could happen with Kickstarter as well, of course, they get overextended because now they have orders for God knows how much inventory that is well beyond their capacity, their experience, their financial means. And in their mind, let’s take out the Kickstarter or crowdfunding, but they don’t think about the return policy and they get the hug of death. They overextend themselves financially to produce the inventory, they ship it, and then any number of things can happen. It might be net 270 payment terms.

Elan Lee: Oh, God.

Tim Ferriss: It could be just — 

Elan Lee: So brutal.

Tim Ferriss: — cash flow suicide right on the front end. And on top of that you might get all of it shipped back to you — 

Elan Lee: All of it.

Tim Ferriss: — and it’s your problem. And then that — 

Elan Lee: It’s so tragic.

Tim Ferriss: — is the hug of death and you’re done.

Elan Lee: And then you’ve seen this, you’ve seen this picture. You have this friend whose apartment is filled with products and it’s taken over their living space and they have no way to move it.

Tim Ferriss: I did that myself early on. I made an audiobook product. I was going to sell millions of this thing. Oh, my God. Didn’t do any market testing, none of that stuff, just high on my own supply. And I had an entire garage full of these things that just melted in the heat ultimately. And at the time though, that was a huge financial risk. I didn’t take so much risk that it torpedoed me, but if I had had that level of self-delusion and lack of experimentation a little later on, it very easily could have been a recipe for disaster.

Elan Lee: Totally. Look, there’s so many ways to mess this up. There’s so many ways to mess this up. And the only good news is there is someone out there who has messed it up in every possible way.

Tim Ferriss: Or represented people who have messed it up — 

Elan Lee: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: — in every possible way.

Elan Lee: And those are the people you have to work with. You have to. If you don’t, the risk you’re taking on is just massive. Luckily, I had some very good advice early on from people who said, “Don’t take this on yourself. Just don’t do this.” And it’s the best advice I ever got.

Tim Ferriss: And I think maybe tell me if this is overreaching on my part, but don’t take this on yourself now in the sense that after you’ve had 10 mega successes and you actually are fluent in retailese and you have the relationships, all right, now you can take some calculated risks.

Elan Lee: And now you can hire the people that you would otherwise contract, now you can pull them in-house. Because now you can afford their salaries and now you want them to only be working on your own products. Great. That’s a huge mark of success and really that is exactly the way you reinvest in your own company.

Tim Ferriss: And to reiterate just a few things, if you want to develop a game, number one, you can just develop it for your family, your friends, and keep it small. And I will just say in the book world, a lot of later mega successes have started out that way. You don’t have to go for scale, which I think can be a very dangerous word out of the gate. But as you mentioned, you can also, with the blank cards in Coyote, you can get a taste of it, see if you like it, then you can use the books that you recommended. And there are certainly other resources, we’ll put things in the show notes, to play around with prototyping. Look at these initial cards. These are blank cards with Sharpie writing on them.

Elan Lee: That’s it.

Tim Ferriss: That’s it.

Elan Lee: That’s literally it.

Tim Ferriss: That’s it, that’s the entire thing. And you can also find kits online, you can find them anywhere you want. Amazon has gaming kits where there are blank dice and cards and so on so you can workshop it.

Elan Lee: Easy. It’s so easy.

Tim Ferriss: It’s like Build-A-Bear for games basically.

Elan Lee: That’s right.

Tim Ferriss: And what I would add to that is you don’t need to run a big business to be a successful game designer.

Elan Lee: Absolutely.

Tim Ferriss: In fact, I would imagine most of the legendary game designers are not running companies.

Elan Lee: No, definitely not.

Tim Ferriss: They’re designing games and licensing them. And man, there are some legends out there.

Elan Lee: Legends. They’ve created incredible games and they’ve generated gigantic wealth for themselves because in success, that two percent deal, that five percent deal, whatever it is, that faucet doesn’t turn off, that’s in perpetuity. In summary, I don’t think the games business is going anywhere.

Tim Ferriss: And also there is a lot of room to innovate. There still is room. There’s so many games, but I wouldn’t have even attempted to create a game had I not thought there was space.

Elan Lee: The thing is, it’s like saying, is there still space in the book industry, in the movie industry? All a game is is an idea delivered in a new way. When are we going to run out of ideas? When are we going to run out of delivery mechanisms? The answer to both of those individually is never. Combine them both together and it’s just build games forever. You’ll always have a new way — 

Tim Ferriss: Option.

Elan Lee: — to deliver it.

Tim Ferriss: All right, so I’m trying to think of anything that we missed. I do have a tantalizing offer for listeners and viewers just for fun because why not? And we will have also mentioned that in the intro. But before I get to that, anything critical that we’ve forgotten? Is there anything that we have left out or any other resources, people to watch, maybe people to Google and Wikipedia maybe? Anything at all?

Elan Lee: All right. I’ve got two. I’ve got two that are interesting. One is there is a podcast I quite like for game design, it’s called Fun Problems, it’s with Peter and AJ. And all they do is they talk about game design. Now, they do talk about more hardcore games than I am accustomed to. It’s a wide range of topics, but it’s fun stuff and it’s worth listening to if you want to know more about game design.

And the second thing is, because of you. Because of you, because of this process, this journey that we’ve been on over the last few years, I realized that I don’t document any of this ever. I never talk about what goes into a game design, I never talk about where to buy blank cards, and I never talk about why anybody can do this and what the process is like. I’ve started recording it and I started for the first time, I can’t believe I’m saying this, I actually started a YouTube channel and you can actually go and watch these instructional videos. Literally if you want to make a game, the whole idea is: here is how to make a game from scratch. Nobody’s watching right now, but — 

Tim Ferriss: YouTube.com at Elan Lee, that’s E-L-A-N-L-E-E. You can also just search him on YouTube. The first result will be our podcast together.

Elan Lee: That’s true.

Tim Ferriss: Episode one. And then within the first few results, you’ll also find it. But I’m pretty sure the URL is YouTube.com/@ElanLee. And let’s finish up with a few things. The first will be the tantalizing offer that I mentioned. The tantalizing offer is this, there’s no purchase required whatsoever, so if any sweepstakes sharks are out there, take it easy, take it easy. This is going to be just a fun little, it’s not even a competition, just a fun little experiment that I want to run. 

*** [Interview pauses]

02:46:00 to 02:48:14 

Tim Ferriss: Hi, everyone, Tim here with an update, as details have changed since that first conversation with Elan. Here’s the tantalizing offer that I wanted to share with you. 

You have two very easy ways to enter for a chance to win a trip to a secret Los Angeles mansion for an unforgettable day or evening with me and Elan and maybe some special guests. Here’s how. 

Option number one, simply visit any Target or Walmart and take a fun photo or video with a Coyote game. No purchase necessary. Option number two, if you already bought Coyote, record yourself playing the game with friends or family. That’s it. I would love to see it. Then share your photo or video on Instagram or Tik Tok or both and tag me and ExplodingKittens. You can find us easily, but I’m @TimFerris on both. That’s @ Tim F-e-r-r-i-s-s and Exploding Kittens is ExplodingKittens on Tik Tok and @GameOfKittens on Instagram. So share your photo and or video on Instagram and or Tik Tok. Put them everywhere. Why not? And tag both me and Exploding Kittens. 

Longtime listeners know that I have a love of deadlines. This is how things actually get done. So, the deadline to post is August 17. That means that 10:00 p.m. PDT August 17. By then, you need to have posted and done all this stuff. By August 31st, we’ll randomly select five winners from people who post. Each winner will receive roundtrip airfare within the US, one night at a hotel, and will join us at our secret LA mansion party. And I think the legal elves wanted me to mention that that’s going to be coach airfare. So, just to be super clear, important legal disclaimer. No purchase necessary. Open to US residents aged 18 or older. So no little kids, no minotaurs allowed. Void where prohibited. Winners selected at random. Odds depend on number of eligible entries. Travel dates must align with the event likely in September. We are still finalizing the time with the busiest man in show business, Elan Lee himself. For official rules, eligibility details, and final date, please visit tim.blog/rules.

So, go ahead, post a creative Tik Tok or Insta real or a photo with Coyote by August 17th, 10 p.m. PDT. Tag us and you might just be celebrating with us in Hollywood this fall. Now, back to the episode.

*** [Interview resumes]

Tim Ferriss: What else? Anything else to add? I have a little bit. I have one more thing I want to say.

Elan Lee: Oh, okay. I want to hear one more thing.

Tim Ferriss: I just wanted to thank you so much for allowing me to be part of this incredible ride — 

Elan Lee: Oh, my goodness.

Tim Ferriss: — and just collaborating on the game. It’s been so meaningful for me and so much fun and so great to get closer with you and your family, and we’ve all been traveling together since.

Elan Lee: I love it.

Tim Ferriss: And to work with the incredible team that you have at Exploding Kittens. I’m not going to mention them all because there are quite few — 

Elan Lee: So many.

Tim Ferriss: — but it’s just been such a joy and a dream come true to actually have this thing in my mind that was floating around that I’ve always wanted to do. And now here it is and people can get it.

Elan Lee: Tim Ferriss made a game. Look, here’s the thing — 

Tim Ferriss: I’m thinking — 

Elan Lee: — you’re so welcome and thank you. We have limited time here and you have to choose your endeavors wisely, and this was one of the wisest choices I’ve ever made.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, thanks, man. All right. We’re going to go get a fantastic meal. It’s Texas, so probably a bunch of meat, barbecue. Who knows, maybe some tequila and make an appearance unbidden. You never know. Strange things happen out here in Austin, Texas. And for everybody listening, we will link to all sorts of things, many resources that will help you think about how you might create a game. You could start with the blank cards in Coyote. Those will actually teach you a lot, I think, as you begin to experiment with these different elements.

Elan Lee: Because you’re going to fail, because your first few are not going to work and you’ll learn why.

Tim Ferriss: And then if you run out of blank cards, look, just go get some blank cards. Just go buy a blank deck and you can use those. But this is something anyone can do. You did this with your daughter when she was how old?

Elan Lee: Four.

Tim Ferriss: Four. This is an incredibly fun family activity. It’s an incredibly fun friend activity and it gets you off of your screens. It’s not good for you folks.

Elan Lee: So important.

Tim Ferriss: They are tools, but there is a point at which the tools become our masters and that is where a lot of the poison seeps in around the cracks.

Elan Lee: This thing builds memories. That’s what you should be doing. That’s what your phone isn’t doing. This is building memories.

Tim Ferriss: Building memories with some durability, not ephemera that get pushed out of your head as soon as you watch the next 10-second clip. This is something I’ve wanted to do for so long and I’m thrilled that it’s here. Fingers crossed. I’m still nervous as hell, obviously. But we’ve done so much play testing. Hundreds of people have play tested at this point and have made these fine-tuning tweaks along the way. I would love everybody to think about your life as a collection of games. You may not be aware of which games you’re playing just yet, but rest assured in some respects you are playing games and you get to choose more games than you realize. Most of them are optional, not all of them. Sure, we have responsibilities as adults and so on, but this is a way to open up that Pandora’s box of possibility.

And we’ll include a lot of resources in the show notes, so tim.blog/podcast, just search Coyote. That’ll probably be the easiest way to find it. C-O-Y-O-T-E. And another time I’ll explain the backstory there, which is pretty wild, but for another time. And until next time, as always, be a little kinder than is necessary, not just to others, also to yourself. Play wisely. Find fun problems. And I’m going to check out that podcast. And life is short, have fun while you’re here, folks. And until next time, thanks for tuning in.

The post The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: My Two-Year Secret Project, COYOTE — The Strategies and Tactics for Building a Bestseller from Nothing with Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens (#821) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

My Two-Year Secret Project, COYOTE — The Strategies and Tactics for Building a Bestseller from Nothing with Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens (#821)

2025-08-07 01:23:36

This is a very special episode for me, one I’ve been looking forward to publishing for months.

COYOTE is a fast, casual card game I created with the amazing Elan Lee and Exploding Kittens team. It has been my obsession for two years.

Here is a demo:

I worked really hard on every aspect of this one (concept, mechanics, art, you name it)!

You can finally buy it everywhere, including Amazon, Target, Walmart, and 8,000+ retail locations worldwide. It’s been a hit with 100+ test families, my friends, and at conferences around the world. It now produces guaranteed laughs with kids, adults, tipsy people, serious people… who all enjoy unleashing their inner trickster.

If you’ve benefited from my podcast, newsletter, books, or anything at all, please grab a copy or two! It only costs $10-12 and can provide hours upon hours of fun. It takes minutes to learn and 10 minutes to play. Under the hood, it’s also designed to be a good workout for your brain.

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Elan Lee, the co-creator and chief executive officer of Exploding Kittens.

We discuss the behind-the-scenes story of making COYOTE, including early misses, finding the right idea, developing it, navigating mass retail, and much, much more.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to get a product on the shelves of something like Walmart and Target, or simply create a game, this podcast covers it all.

P.S. One last thing: stick around to the end for a very fun surprise that involves a mystery Hollywood party.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

This episode is brought to you by:

• Gamma AI design partner for effortless presentations, websites, social media posts, and more
  
• Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business
  
• Wealthfront high-yield cash account

Want to hear the last time Elan Lee was on this show? Listen to our conversation here, in which we discussed the secrets behind Exploding Kittens’ record-breaking Kickstarter success, core gameplay loops, the power of positive constraints, craftsmanship in game design, building superfan communities, and much more.

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This episode is brought to you by Gamma! Readers of The 4-Hour Workweek know I recommend delegating and automating tasks that can be done better by someone or something else. It’s why I recommend this episode’s sponsor, Gamma, for creating incredible, professional slide decks better, cheaper, and faster than you ever thought possible. I polled many of you about Gamma on social media, and some of you called it “a game changer,” “mind-blowing,” and “far and away the best product in the category.”

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With more than 50 million users, it’s already the most popular AI presentation platform in the world. Explore Gamma today at gamma.app. Listeners get one month free of Gamma Pro’s annual plan by using promo code TIM at checkout.

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This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront is a financial services platform that offers services to help you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 4.00% APY—that’s the Annual Percentage Yield—with the Wealthfront Brokerage Cash Account. That’s nearly 10x more interest than if you left your money in a savings account at the average bank, with savings rates at 0.42%, according to FDIC.gov, as of 05/19/2025. It takes just a few minutes to sign up, and then you’ll immediately start earning 4.00% APY from program  banks on your uninvested cash. And when new clients open an account today, they’ll get an extra $50 bonus with a deposit of $500 or more. Terms and Conditions apply.  Visit Wealthfront.com/Tim to get started.

Cash Account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. Wealthfront is not a bank. The APY on cash deposits, as of 04/30/2025, is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum. Funds in the Cash Account are swept to program banks, where they earn a variable APY. Tim receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage for advertising and holds a non-controlling equity interest in the corporate parent of Wealthfront Brokerage. Tim and Wealthfront Brokerage have no other affiliation. Tim reflects his own opinions and Wealthfront does not endorse, sponsor, or promote them. See full disclosures here.

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This episode is brought to you by Shopify! Shopify is one of my favorite platforms and one of my favorite companies. Shopify is designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. In no time flat, you can have a great-looking online store that brings your ideas to life, and you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day and drive sales. No coding or design experience required.

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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Connect with Elan Lee:

Twitter | LinkedIn

• Connect with Exploding Kittens:

Website | Twitter | Instagram | TikTok | YouTube

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Elan Lee’s Past Appearance

• Elan Lee, Co-Creator of Exploding Kittens — How to Raise Millions on Kickstarter, Deconstructing Mega-Successes, Secrets of Game Design, The Power of Positive Constraints, The Delights of Craftsmanship, and The Art of Turning Fans into Superfans | The Tim Ferriss Show #653

Games

• Coyote: The card game created by Elan and me!
• Dungeons & Dragons: The pioneering tabletop role-playing game that launched the entire RPG genre, featuring collaborative storytelling, character development, and dice-based mechanics that have influenced countless games since 1974.
• Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) / Rochambeau: The classic hand game involving simultaneous choices and circular dominance (rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock), serving as core mechanical inspiration for Coyote’s strategic decision-making framework.
• Sorry!: Classic family board game where players race their pawns around the board while drawing cards that can either help them advance or force opponents backward, teaching lessons about both strategy and accepting setbacks gracefully.
• Monopoly: The iconic property-trading board game that has dominated family game nights since 1935, teaching economic principles through real estate acquisition, rent collection, and strategic resource management, while often ending in dramatic family arguments.
• Poetry for Neanderthals: A hilarious Exploding Kittens party game where players must describe complex concepts using only single-syllable words or get “bonked” with an inflatable club, demonstrating how simple mechanics can create engaging casual gameplay that inspired the author’s approach to accessible game design.
• Magic: The Gathering: The groundbreaking collectible card game that created the entire TCG industry, featuring deep strategic gameplay, customizable decks, and a complex economy that has sustained competitive play and collecting for over 30 years.
• Hanabi: An innovative cooperative card game (Japanese for “fireworks”) where players work together to create perfect firework displays while being unable to see their own cards, requiring communication, memory, and trust to succeed as a team.
• UNO: The beloved family card game where players race to empty their hands by matching colors or numbers, featuring special action cards that can reverse play direction, skip opponents, or force card draws, making it accessible yet surprisingly strategic.
• Mario Kart: Nintendo’s iconic racing video game series specifically cited for its brilliant catch-up mechanics (like blue shells targeting the leader) that keep all players competitive throughout the race, serving as an example of how “attack cards” can balance gameplay.
• Exploding Kittens Original Edition: The flagship game of Elan’s company that became the most-backed Kickstarter project in history, featuring simple yet hilarious gameplay where players draw cards until someone draws an exploding kitten and loses, unless they have a defuse card.
• Hurry Up Chicken Butt: The best-selling Exploding Kittens game designed collaboratively with Elan’s daughter, featuring fast-paced card-slapping action where players race to match cards while dealing with silly interruptions and challenges.
• Throw Throw Burrito: A revolutionary Exploding Kittens game that combines card gameplay with physical dodgeball elements, where players collect matching sets while literally throwing soft foam burritos at each other, creating a unique hybrid of tabletop and active play.
• CATAN Board Game: The award-winning strategy game that popularized modern European-style board gaming, featuring resource management, trading, and modular board setup that creates different experiences each game, specifically cited as an example of successful iterative design and development.
• Warhammer: The complex tabletop miniature wargame system requiring detailed painted armies, intricate rules, and substantial time investment, mentioned as an example of a fundamentally different game type from casual, accessible party games.
• Game Types Mentioned: Card Games, Role-Playing Games (RPGs), Casual Games, Party Games, Trading Card Games (TCGs), Collectible Card Games (CCGs), Tabletop Games, Board Games, Cooperative Games.

Crowdfunding Options

• Kickstarter: An American public benefit corporation that maintains a global crowdfunding platform for creative projects.
• Craigstarter: Open-source crowdfunding tool and methodology by Craig Mod for transparent project funding.
• KickstarTrends: Receive exclusive discounts on the latest projects before anyone else.
• Backerlead: Stay ahead of the curve in technology and design.
• Kickstargo: Showcasing the best crowdfunding products.

Companies, Brands, and Organizations

• Exploding Kittens: A game company founded by Elan Lee that creates card games and mobile apps.
• The Legend of CØCKPUNCH: My early NFT project.
• Walmart: An American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores.
• Sam’s Club: A membership-only warehouse club owned by Walmart that offers bulk merchandise at discounted prices.
• Barnes & Noble: An American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States.
• Target: An American big box department store chain headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• Amazon: An American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, and digital streaming.
• Xbox: A video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft that consists of gaming consoles and services.
• TSR: A defunct American game publishing company that was the original publisher of Dungeons & Dragons.
• Wizards of the Coast: An American publisher of games, primarily role-playing games and trading card games including Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons.
• Hasbro: An American multinational toy, board game, and media company known for brands like Monopoly and Transformers.
• Mattel: An American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company known for brands like Barbie and Hot Wheels.
• PickFu: A market research platform that provides instant consumer feedback through polls and surveys.
• Intellivy: A market research and consumer insights platform for product testing and validation.
• Stickybeak: A market research platform that provides consumer insights and product testing services.
• Vimeo: An American video hosting, sharing, and services platform used for high-quality video content.
• Google: An American multinational technology company specializing in internet-related services and products including search and advertising.
• LinkedIn: A business and employment-focused social networking platform owned by Microsoft.
• Shopify: A Canadian multinational e-commerce company that provides a platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems.
• Atari: An American video game developer and home computer company that was a pioneer in the arcade and video console industries.

People

• Gary Gygax: Co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and pioneer of tabletop role-playing games.
• Jean-Claude Van Damme: Belgian martial artist and actor known for his action films and exceptional flexibility.
• Justin Gary: Author of Think Like a Game Designer: The Step-By-Step Guide to Unlocking Your Creative Potential and host of the Think Like A Game Designer podcast.
• Reid Hoffman: Co-founder of LinkedIn and venture capitalist, mentioned regarding delegation and his “10% footfall rate” philosophy.
• Seth Godin: Bestselling author, entrepreneur, and marketing expert who reframed questions about failure and innovation.
• Ken Gruhl: Expert game designer and mechanic specialist involved in Coyote’s development in Toronto.
• Raph Koster: Game designer and author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design, expert on game mechanics and virtual worlds.
• Karen Pryor: Author of Don’t Shoot the Dog! and pioneer of clicker training and positive reinforcement methods.
• Stephen Key: Inventor, author of One Simple Idea, and expert in product licensing with over 20 patents to his name.
• Nolan Bushnell: Founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, creator of Bushnell’s Law: “Easy to learn, difficult to master.”
• Klaus Teuber: German board game designer best known for creating Settlers of Catan.
• Penn Jillette: Magician from Penn & Teller duo who partnered with Exploding Kittens on a game.
• Jeff Probst: Emmy-winning host of Survivor who partnered with Exploding Kittens on a game.
• Carly McGinnis: President of Exploding Kittens.
• Matthew Inman: Cartoonist and creator of The Oatmeal webcomic, artist for Exploding Kittens who helped launch the game through his massive online audience.
• Doug McMillon: President and CEO of Walmart, leading the world’s largest retailer.
• Sam Walton: Founder of Walmart and Sam’s Club, revolutionary retail entrepreneur.
• Alex Cutler and AJ Brandon: Hosts of the Fun Problems game design podcast, experts in tabletop game mechanics.
• Craig Mod: Writer, photographer, and creator of Craigstarter, known for his walks across Japan and innovative book publishing approaches.
• Brandon Sanderson: Fantasy author known for his record-breaking $41+ million Kickstarter campaign and prolific writing in the Cosmere universe.
• Gary Keller: Real estate mogul and co-founder of Keller Williams, known for the principle “Agreements are Disagreements.”

Books

• Players Handbook (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition) by Gary Gygax
• Dungeon Masters Guide (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition) by Gary Gygax
• One Simple Idea: Turn Your Dreams into a Licensing Goldmine While Letting Others Do the Work by Stephen Key
• A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
• Don’t Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor
• The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life by Timothy Ferriss

Concepts and Ideas

• Product Line Review: A retail buying meeting process where manufacturers present to retailers to validate merchandising plans, educate on market opportunities, and secure shelf space for their products.
• Bushnell’s Law: A video game design principle attributed to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell stating that “all the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master” and should reward both first-time and experienced players.
• Prisoner’s Dilemma: A game theory thought experiment involving two rational agents who can either cooperate for mutual benefit or betray their partner for individual gain, illustrating the tension between self-interest and collective benefit.
• Zero Sum Game: A situation in game theory and economics where one participant’s gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of other participants, with the total value remaining constant.
• Past Year Review: A personal reflection process that involves systematically evaluating the previous year’s experiences, accomplishments, and lessons learned to gain insights for future goal-setting and personal development.
• Non-Fungible Token (NFT): Blockchain-tied assets behind The Legend of CØCKPUNCH.
• Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST): Neuropsychological test compared to Coyote‘s potential cognitive effects.

Places

• Lake Geneva, Wisconsin: A picturesque lakeside city in southeastern Wisconsin that served as the original location of Gen Con gaming convention.
• Indianapolis, Indiana: The capital and most populous city of Indiana, currently hosting the annual Gen Con gaming convention since 2003.
• Austin, Texas: The capital city of Texas known for its vibrant gaming scene and as a location for podcast recordings in the gaming industry.
• Bentonville, Arkansas: A city in northwest Arkansas that serves as the global headquarters of Walmart Inc.
• Toronto, Canada: Canada’s largest city and provincial capital of Ontario, notable as a location for key development sprints for the Coyote game project.
• Germany: A European country known for its strong board gaming culture and conventions where games like Coyote have been well-received.

Movies, Podcasts, and Media

• How to Play Coyote: Coyote how-to-play video.
• Think Like A Game Designer: Podcast by Justin Gary focused on game design principles and business.
• Fun Problems: Game design podcast covering industry insights.
• Elan Lee’s YouTube Channel: Resource for game design instruction and industry insights from the Exploding Kittens co-creator.
• Kickstarter: Crowdfunding platform for creative projects including board games and product launches.
• PickFu: Market testing and consumer polling platform for product validation and feedback.
• Google Ads: Online advertising platform used for testing book titles and market validation.
• Vimeo: Video hosting platform used for playtest video review and content sharing.
• D&D Beyond: Digital platform for Dungeons & Dragons modules, Player’s Handbook, and DM Guide resources.
• Prototyping Supplies: Blank cards, Sharpies, and game creation kits for rapid game prototyping and testing.
• QR Code Generator: Technology used on game packaging for linking to video pitches and digital instructions.
• Zero Effect: A 1998 mystery-comedy film starring Bill Pullman as eccentric private detective Daryl Zero, whose investigative methodology emphasizes pure observation and objectivity to uncover unexpected connections and solutions.
• “We Will Rock You” by Queen: Brian May’s anthemic contribution to arena-based sporting events the world over.
• Downton Abbey: A British historical drama television series that follows the lives of the Crawley family and their servants in an Edwardian country house in the early 20th century.
• Poetry for Neanderthals player tries to convey “garage”: Popular video showing the game in action.

Events

• Gen Con: The largest tabletop game convention in North America featuring role-playing games, board games, card games, and miniatures with nearly 70,000 attendees annually in Indianapolis.
• South by Southwest (SXSW): An annual conglomeration of interactive media, music, and film festivals and conferences held each March in Austin, Texas since 1987, celebrating the convergence of technology, film, and music industries.

SHOW NOTES

• [00:00:00] Start.
• [00:05:21] Coyote: a game 47 years in the making.
• [00:08:41] Who is Elan Lee?
• [00:09:37] How our motivations behind game creation intersect.
• [00:12:41] The nutshell view of pitching a game to a retailer.
• [00:14:40] Salesmanship is a learnable skill, but Elan’s a natural.
• [00:15:53] Why I’ve always wanted to make my own game and how development began in earnest.
• [00:26:00] First contact with Elan and our fast-forged, fun-focused friendship.
• [00:32:28] The Hanabi and Rock, Paper, Scissors-inspired Toronto trip breakthrough.
• [00:39:40] Early prototyping and testing.
• [00:45:34] The Zero Effect.
• [00:47:37] Recommended game design rationales, resources, and reading.
• [00:53:00] The beginner’s mind approach to writing effective game instructions.
• [00:56:26] A simple fact: less complication = more fun.
• [00:57:49] Cooperative vs. competitive play.
• [00:58:24] Leveling the playing field with attack cards and sabotage mechanics.
• [01:01:34] Tricking people into cognitively bettering themselves by gaming.
• [01:08:04] Finding the sweet spot.
• [01:10:44] It takes a lot of work to make a game effortlessly fun.
• [01:13:40] How many games does Exploding Kittens publish per year?
• [01:14:36] Exploding Kittens’ number-one seller was designed by Elan’s four-year-old daughter.
• [01:18:30] Prototypes and pitching.
• [01:22:26] Improving on the industry’s fundamentally flawed testing procedure.
• [01:24:58] Analyzing passing/failure with play testers’ video and feedback.
• [01:28:41] Risks of internal testing.
• [01:31:47] Coyote’s first positive signs from the wild.
• [01:34:22] Online vs. physical store sales and tweaking variables to gauge market interest.
• [01:41:22] What a successful line review looks like.
• [01:43:51] Line review hoops through which lesser-proven companies have to hop.
• [01:48:04] Elan’s field-tested line review meeting strategies.
• [01:54:15] The importance of finding proper agent representation.
• [01:59:35] In modern marketing, social media (especially short-form video) is king.
• [02:04:48] The best and worst ways for an aspiring designer to sell a game.
• [02:13:05] Crowdfunding pros and cons, and Kickstarter alternatives.
• [02:19:57] Dealing with deal terms.
• [02:23:56] The Exploding Kittens attitude toward rare partnerships.
• [02:25:45] The types of games that capture Elan’s attention.
• [02:27:40] Common game design mistakes.
• [02:29:49] How we tried to avoid these mistakes when packaging Coyote.
• [02:33:55] Self-publishing vs. conventional publishing.
• [02:38:40] Business considerations and risks.
• [02:44:59] Parting thoughts and a tantalizing offer.

ELAN LEE QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“We don’t make games that are entertaining. We make games that make the players entertaining.”

— Elan Lee

“Your reaction should not be, ‘I’m going to buy that game.’ That’s not our goal. Your reaction is, ‘I’m going to pick up this game, and I’m going to turn it over, and I’m going to read the back of the box.'”

— Elan Lee

“It’s like saying, ‘Is there still space in the book industry? In the movie industry?’ All a game is is an idea delivered in a new way. When are we going to run out of ideas? When are we going to run out of delivery mechanisms? The answer to both of those, individually, is never.”

— Elan Lee

“70 percent of our sales are in-person retail. Only 30 percent are online sales. Totally backwards than what you’d expect for almost any industry.”

— Elan Lee

“We probably work on a hundred games a year, and less than 20 make the cut.”

— Elan Lee

“The way that you build the most effective videos for [games] is you need to inspire, I think, two emotions. One, ‘I understand what those people are experiencing right now,’ And two, ‘I would like to experience that.’ And it took me forever to get to those two sentences. At first it was, ‘Let’s show gameplay, let’s show setup, let’s show a memorable moment. Let’s show people screaming and yelling because they’re having so much fun.’ None of that matters. None of that works. ‘That looks like fun. I could have that much fun.’ That’s it. That’s what you’re trying to show.”

— Elan Lee

The post My Two-Year Secret Project, COYOTE — The Strategies and Tactics for Building a Bestseller from Nothing with Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens (#821) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter (#819)

2025-07-27 12:06:30

Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. (@foundmyfitness), a biomedical scientist and the founder of FoundMyFitness, a platform dedicated to delivering rigorous, evidence-based insights on improving healthspan and mitigating age-related diseases. Through her podcast, website, and YouTube channel, reaching millions globally, she translates complex science into actionable strategies for metabolic health, brain aging, and overall improved healthspan.

Dr. Patrick’s research explores genetic determinants of nutritional response, metabolic health, micronutrient deficiencies, sleep biology, and hormetic stressors, such as exercise, heat, cold exposure, fasting, and phytochemicals. She is an associate scientist and board member at the Fatty Acid Research Institute, where her work focuses on the role of omega-3 fatty acids in metabolic health and brain aging. Her peer-reviewed publications have appeared in top-tier journals, including Nature Cell Biology, The FASEB Journal, and Experimental Gerontology.

By uniting scientific integrity with protocol-driven precision, Dr. Patrick equips individuals and organizations alike with practical, scientifically sound strategies for optimizing health and longevity.

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

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch my interview with Rhonda on YouTube.

DUE TO SOME HEADACHES IN THE PAST, PLEASE NOTE LEGAL CONDITIONS:

Tim Ferriss owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, with all rights reserved, as well as his right of publicity.

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Tim Ferriss: Rhonda, it is very nice to see you again. Thanks for — 

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Likewise.

Tim Ferriss: — making the time.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, I’m excited to be here.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I was going back through the archives, doing my homework as I always do, looking at our past conversations. And it was such a trip down memory lane because our first podcast together was podcast number 12 of The Tim Ferriss Show, which was in June of 2014. And then preceding that by a few months, April 2014 was when you had a guest post on my blog called “Are Saunas the Next Big Performance Enhancing Drug?” So well done. That’s become quite the topic.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I know. I like to take a little bit of that claim to making saunas popular.

Tim Ferriss: The godmother, the fairy godmother of heat shock proteins, the context of saunas. And we are going to run out of time before we run out of topics or questions, as always. And what’s so fun about having a conversation with someone like you who is not only very scientifically credible and literate, but who’s actively involved with the science, tracking the science, and have published, is that there’s always more stuff to talk about. Things change. There are new developments, there are new discoveries, there are revisions, which makes me very excited to hop into the conversation. And for people listening, we’re going to cover a lot of things that are very, very actionable and practical. And I just wanted to give people an idea of some of what’s coming. We may not cover it all, but if you’ll bear with me, Rhonda, I’m just going to read some of these because it’s great. How to increase VO2 max and why you should. Looking at VO2 max as a predictor of longevity with high intensity interval training. What type of exercise reduces heart aging by 20 years? Brain aging in the same context or reversing brain aging. The benefits of exercise snacks on glucose regulation and mitochondrial function. We’re going to get a lot because this is something that is a perennial topic for me, but I’ve been really doing a deep dive on all things fasting related, intermittent fasting, metabolic benefits. IF versus extended fasting versus ketogenic diet, et cetera, et cetera.

Daily protein requirements and optimal timing for protein intake. The role of vitamin D and brain health and protection against klotho decline. How a low Omega-3 index is as bad as smoking and what to do about it. Benefits of creatine for brain and muscle health and best practices. Microplastic exposure: the biggest offenders, and so on. It just goes on and on. We could cover so much ground. And the way this conversation came to be, to give people a peek behind the curtain, is we were texting about all sorts of things, including aging parents and what we’re trying and what we’re thinking about what has worked, what hasn’t worked seemingly.

I thought we would just start there if you’re open to sharing because I really gained from our exchanges, enjoyed our exchanges. And for instance, talking about creatine as one example. There are potential applications to preserving or at least halting the decline or slowing the decline of cognitive deterioration. And why don’t we just begin with the personal, because I think that’s the most universal. All of my friends of my vintage or younger — no one is getting younger, so they’re all contending with aging parents and what to do with them, how to help them. Can you speak to just some of the circumstances with your parents and what you have used as interventions that have seemed to have an effect?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I’m one of those people that my parents, neither of them are really physically active. My dad for many years was physically active in the sense that he played a team sport. He was a baseball player and he did it for many, many years all the way into his early 60s and then he just couldn’t do it anymore. So my mother never really got into any sports and she wasn’t the kind of person that would go out to the gym or go for runs or anything like that. And so physical activity really wasn’t part of the equation and neither is really a healthy diet.

But as I started to do a lot of research into these sort of what I think are interventions that are low-hanging fruits, things that are easy for people to do that can have a pretty big outcome in terms of the effect, the size effect is greater than what you have to put in.

So examples of that would obviously be something like a supplement that you could take. That’s the easiest thing you can do is kind of swallow a pill and hope that it has a great effect. And this is where both of my parents are taking a multivitamin. And you might go, “Well, multivitamin? Really what’s that going to do?” And I’ll tell you, we’ve come full circle. 10 years ago, there was a huge splash that was made in the media. A big article came out and it was called enough is enough. Multivitamins are not only useless, they may be harmful.

It was a study that had looked at a variety of different studies. It’s called a meta-analysis that basically said, “Well, all these vitamins that you’re taking are useless.” And in some cases they can be harmful because they can allow cancer to grow faster. I debunked that 10 years ago. But over the course of those 10 years, and as you mentioned in the intro here, science is always changing and revisions are made. We learn new things. And in that 10-year frame, three different randomized controlled trials have come out. And randomized controlled trials are really key because you are comparing this intervention, which in this case was a multivitamin to a placebo because people taking anything are obviously going to want a positive effect. And many people do anticipate that and they can actually change their biology. Placebo is a real thing. 

So three trials came out looking at the effect of multivitamins on cognition. And I’m talking the multivitamin that was used was the standard, run-of-the-mill. It was Centrum Silver. I mean it was the same — 

Tim Ferriss: Centrum. I knew it was going to be Centrum, yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It was the vitamin that you would go, “That’s the one vitamin that’s not going to have any effect.” It’s like that, but actually it turns out it’s got over 40 essential nutrients in it and it’s also got some other non-vitamins. So things that are like polyphenols, like lutein and zeaxanthin. These are actually really important for eye health, but also the brain. And these three randomized controlled trials were two years long. What they showed was that taking a multivitamin for two years had pretty enormous effects on cognitive aging. These were in older adults. These were adults who were 65 years of age or older. That’s where my parents are.

And after two years of taking the multivitamin, they had improved cognition on a battery of different tests that equated to reducing global cognitive aging by about two years. And on top of that, they reduced their episodic aging by five years. Almost five years. It was 4.8 years. Episodic memory is the kind of memory that’s involved in remembering events, things that happen in your life. And so that’s a big effect. Five years of reduced episodic brain aging, episodic memory, brain aging.

And so I think that anyone that’s concerned about their parents, one of the easiest things that you can do in terms of improving cognition — now I should mention these were older adults, yes, but they weren’t older adults with neurodegenerative disease. So these were older adults that were — otherwise, didn’t have any sort of neurodegenerative disease. That’s also important because once you get to a pathological state, you have to do more things to help improve cognition than just a multivitamin.

I have my mom and my dad on a multivitamin. That’s the easiest thing. Vitamin D is also another no-brainer. I mean 70 percent of the US population has insufficient levels of vitamin D. Older adults are even higher than that. So almost the majority of all older adults are vitamin D deficient. I mean, most people aren’t going outside and even if they are going outside, they’re either wearing sunscreen or just the fact that they’re older affects their skin’s ability to make vitamin D3 from the sun, from UVB radiation from the sun. And so they’re much less efficient at it.

In fact, a 70-year-old makes about four times less vitamin D than their former 20-year-old self. So vitamin D supplement is a low-hanging fruit. It is super easy to bring some up to that level.

Tim Ferriss: Can I ask you a question about vitamin D, because I know you love vitamin D? So here’s my question about vitamin D, and it actually relates to, I believe this is a publication you had in 2019, so we’ll see if things have changed or not, but APOE4 for an Omega-3 brain delivery. So my family, a lot of benefits to having my genetics. Also, a whole bunch of bugs in the code, including quite a bit of APOE4, I’m APOE34. And should that change how I consume vitamin D or consume fish oil or Omega-3s to having that type of status?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I would say vitamin D, there hasn’t really been any effect that I’m aware of in terms of having an APOE4 allele as you mentioned. And for people listening or watching, APOE4 allele, if you have one of those, it can double your risk of Alzheimer’s disease. If you have two of them, you can go up to a tenfold increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease. When it comes to fish oil, particularly fish oil, there does seem to be — and this is where my publication came from, but also there’s a lot of evidence that has shown people with APOE4 alleles, they don’t tend to have as much DHA getting into their brains as people without the alleles.

And on top of that, in trials, people with mild cognitive decline, for example, if they supplemented with fish oil and they had APOE4, they didn’t have the cognitive benefits that the people that were not APOE4 had. And so there was this big question in the field as to why that is. And it’s still not entirely known. Although I will say what my take on that is, and in fact I’ve talked to some of the experts in the field as well, is that you have to have a higher dose of fish oil, for one, and it’s better if it’s in phospholipid form. If you’re eating fish, it is in phospholipid form, it’s in triglyceride form as well. 

Tim Ferriss: So just for clarity, if you’re taking capsules, it may not be the case, but if I’m eating my can of sardines in the morning, then phospholipid form?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: You’re getting more phospholipid form, exactly. Now, if you are taking your supplement oils, you can actually make phospholipid form, but you have to get to that two gram dose range. That’s when your body is also converting into phospholipid form. And then the other way around that is actually consuming a phospholipid form of Omega-3.

And so that’s something that can be done if you’re supplementing with either krill oil, which I’m not a huge fan of because it’s super — it’s not very concentrated, so you’d have to really take a lot of it. Or you could eat something like salmon roe, which is a really high phospholipid concentration of Omega-3 fatty acids. You might go, “Why phospholipid form?” Well, it turns out the way your brain, you actually get Omega-3 into the brain, there’s two ways. The first way doesn’t require phospholipid form. It’s just this Omega-3 is in a free fatty acid form and it diffuses across the membrane and gets into the brain that way.

The second way actually is through a transport mechanism, and that is phospholipid form. And that’s why it seems as though people with APOE4, their free fatty acid form isn’t going into the brain as well because they have breakdown of the blood-brain barrier early, early on. APOE4 tends to lead to early breakdown of the blood-brain barrier. And when your blood-brain barrier breaks down, it’s hard for things to kind of just passively diffuse as well.

I know that is counterintuitive, but without getting into all the crazy molecular and biochemistry involved, just take my word on that for the two different forms of Omega-3, or you can read that publication as well.

Tim Ferriss: So let’s step back for a second and just get into the parental specifics and then we can zoom out and talk about mechanisms and all sorts of stuff. But if you just had to give a couple of bullets on the things that you feel confident in having your mom and dad continue doing or taking, let’s start with the supplements because like you said, it’s sort of a low-hanging fruit in a sense from a behavioral change perspective. What do you have them doing?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I think you listened to a podcast I did with Dr. Mark Mattson several years ago. I had mentioned that my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017. And that’s an important context to consider what sort of supplements I’m giving my dad. And also the fact that you have to think about compliance. What were your parents? Do you have a parent that’ll take a lot — 

Tim Ferriss: I actually do.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: — of vitamins or a few vitamins? Right?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So with my dad knowing his disease was Parkinson’s disease, multivitamin was in there because that’s already so important just to cover a lot of bases. You’re getting a lot of different vitamins and minerals. And then it was Omega-3, and in fact it was a high DHA and he’s getting about two grams a day. And there’s a lot of evidence that Omega-3 can help with dopaminergic transmission, can help with a lot of brain function, and particularly as it relates to Parkinson’s disease as well as Alzheimer’s disease.

So that was the second supplement that he’s taking. And then the last one that I could really get him to take was ubiquinol, which is a reduced form of CoQ10. Now, coenzyme Q10 is actually something that we have inside of our cells and it’s involved in mitochondrial health. So having a depleted CoQ10 can lead to mitochondrial toxicity. And so taking CoQ10, there’s actually been some early studies with even Parkinson’s disease patients showing that supplementing with CoQ10 can be beneficial. And he’s actually taken those supplements for many, many years now and very, I would say surprisingly, but also I’m thankful that his Parkinson’s disease has progressed very, very slowly.

So it’s been nine years, almost 10 years, and he’s really essentially had this Parkinson’s disease limited to one tremor in his hand. So that’s great. And that’s all I can say is — 

Tim Ferriss: That’s great news.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, it’s great news. And you never really know at the end of the day what is the reason for that. But he’s convinced, I’m convinced, his doctor is convinced that he should keep doing what he’s doing and that it seems to be beneficial. My dad is one of those guys that doesn’t like to take a lot of pills. If he would take more, I would give him more. 

Tim Ferriss: If he were willing to take more, what would you give him?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I would also give him sulforaphane. Definitely tried, but he doesn’t want to take more pills. So sulforaphane is, it’s a compound that is formed when you eat cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, for example. And it’s formed from something inside of it called glucoraphanin. When you break the plant tissue, when you bite it or chop it up or whatever, it forms sulforaphane.

Sulforaphane is not necessarily in the plant itself, it just gets formed when you break the plant tissue. That’s a technical thing. So I’m just going to talk about sulforaphane and call it sulforaphane as if it’s part of the plant, but it’s not, just so you know. Sulforaphane is, like I said, it’s something that’s formed in these cruciferous vegetables, broccoli sprouts, the young, young sprout of broccoli actually is the best source of it. It has a hundred times more of that active precursor glucoraphanin than mature broccoli. So that’s the best dietary source of it.

Tim Ferriss: Are you growing your own broccoli sprouts or are you doing off the shelf now?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I’m off the shelf now. I used to. It’s work. It’s not that much work, but it is work. But you also, you have to be very fastidious about not having it contaminated, and that’s where the real work comes in. But I like it because there are people that can’t afford the supplement, and this gives them another way to basically get it for cheap. So the reason I really like sulforaphane and why I want both my parents on it and my mom, it has been taking it, we can talk about that in a minute, is because it is the most potent dietary activator of this system that we have called NRF2, which is this major system. It’s basically a transcription factor that activates a lot of different genes inside of our body, and it activates genes that are involved in stress.

Basically, it activates a lot of what are called stress response genes. And these are the things that are activated when you’re doing stress, stressful things like exercise or if you are fasting. So you really want this pathway to be active. 

Tim Ferriss: It gives a little bit of stress, right? It’s like chronic overdose of stress, bad, but little doses of stress has this, I guess, what would you call it, hormetic effect. Right?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Am I getting that right?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: You got it. Yeah, you nailed it. Yeah. So essentially we’re talking about what’s sometimes called eustress or good stress. It’s these small doses of stress where your body is responding to that stress by activating all these beneficial pathways that deal with stress, whether we’re talking about antioxidant pathways, anti-inflammatory pathways, pathways involved in clearing out damaged stuff from your cells like autophagy. Just all sorts of beneficial stuff.

And those pathways are activated for a longer period of time than the acute stress that you’re giving it. So in this case, the sulforaphane is a little bit of an acute stress like polyphenols in general are. So the amount of time that you’re ingesting that polyphenol is very small and digesting it. And then the reality is that it’s activating these stress response pathways that last on the orders of 24 to 48 hours, sometimes longer. So you’re having this beneficial effect that’s overall beneficial from that little bit of stress.

And so sulforaphane activates NRF2, and one of the main pathways that it’s activating is increasing glutathione production. And it’s been shown in a couple of different human studies that it increases glutathione in both plasma but also in the brain. Glutathione is the major antioxidant that we have in our body, and it’s very important in the brain. Super important for not only preventing brain aging, but also for dealing with dysfunction in the case of acute injury like traumatic brain injury or in the case of Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease, which are other types of injury on the brain.

Glutathione plays a big role there. And so I obviously would want my dad to be taking sulforaphane, and there’s a supplement out there that I use that has been used in many 12 or so different studies. And so it’s been shown to be beneficial across the board. And that is something that I do give my mom. Now, the reason I gave it to my mom, well, I was kind of hoping my mom interestingly has two other types of brain dysfunction problems, but they’re not neurodegenerative in the sense of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease are there. It’s kind of like something going wrong in the brain and it affects her motor control. So she has tremors. She has essential tremor, and she has orthostatic tremor.

I have secretly wanted the increase in glutathione to affect those tremors. But when I gave the sulforaphane to my mom, because I knew the placebo effect, I did tell her that we were using it to detoxify these chemicals that are associated with plastic like BPA because that is also something that I’m using sulforaphane for because that NRF2 pathway does activate what are called phase two detoxification enzymes, and it’s been shown to detoxify. Even if you’re living in a city like New York or L.A. where there’s a lot of air pollution, it’s been shown to detoxify benzene. Within 24 hours, people start excreting 60 percent more benzene from their body. Now, benzene needs something that is found in air pollution. It’s also in cigarettes.

Tim Ferriss: Yes. So don’t drink your own urine if you’re taking sulforaphane is what you’re saying.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Definitely don’t do that. But also if you’re living in a polluted place — I tell all my friends in L.A., I am like, you have to be taking sulforaphane. It’s just like a non-negotiable, right? So I told her to take the sulforaphane because I wanted her to detoxify BPA because she does eat a lot of processed foods and stuff, which are found in plastic. Anyway, so she started taking it and she came back to me and told me that it was helping her tremors and that she wanted more. 

Tim Ferriss: How long did that take?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Not long. It was actually, I think within a week or so, maybe two.

Tim Ferriss: Wow.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It was very quick.

Tim Ferriss: That’s wild.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It was very quick. And she is religious about it. I mean she comes — I buy it for her and I give her these bottles and she takes two a day. She takes a certain brand called Avmacol. I don’t have any affiliation with them. They’re a brand that, again, 12 different published studies using their supplement.

Tim Ferriss: A-V-M-A-C-O-L.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: That’s right.

Tim Ferriss: Avmacol.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: She takes two of their advanced formula. So she’s taking that. She’s taking the multivitamin, the vitamin D, and she’s also taking the Omega-3. She’s doing great. What’s funny is that I was able to then get her into CrossFit. And I don’t know if it’s because her tremors, I think her tremors have lessened a bit, and so she’s been more active and wanting to be more active. She’s out dancing more. My mom likes to dance. I mentioned how I really wanted to get her into a seniors CrossFit class, and she sees me do it.

I have a coach come to my house and we do CrossFit training at my house. My mom has seen me doing it and she’s been interested in it. I told her that there’s a great seniors class and I would be willing to pay for it and get her in it. It would be huge. She’s been doing it now for a couple of months, maybe like three or four months. She goes three times a week and she loves it. She loves it. She’s made friends there.

Sometimes the coaches take videos and she sends them to me. She sends them to her friends. She’s so proud. She’s doing kettlebell swings. She’s doing wall squats. I mean, it’s amazing. 

Tim Ferriss: Go, Mom. That’s amazing.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It’s a very different type of atmosphere than your usual CrossFit class would be, right? You’re aware that these are seniors, and so they’re not doing barbell, squatting like heavy weights and stuff. They start out with wall squats and then they’re squatting with just a really light bar and it’s really great.

Tim Ferriss: So let me hop in for a second here and I want to know if there’s anything else to add to that. But we’ve talked about this, you and I. Or texted a hell of a lot about it that I have Alzheimer’s in my family. I now have multiple relatives who are moderate to advanced with respect to Alzheimer’s. Saw my grandmother disintegrate. Terrifying to watch and terrifying to imagine yourself experiencing the same thing.

And also at least one of them is APOE33. And I’m APOE34, so I’m like, “Well, wait a second. If that is where they are right now, and I’m at hypothetically 2.5x greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, AD, I should really double down on paying attention to as much as possible for myself, certainly for them as well.” But the earlier the intervention, the better the outcomes generally. So I’ve been looking at all sorts of things. And just to reiterate a few things you said. So on the Omega-3 side of things, just like with sulforaphane, not all brands are created equal, right? There’s a lot of garbage floating around out there.

Neither of us have any affiliation with this company, but I know our mutual friend, Kevin Rose, had this particular brand tested that, I guess it’s O.N.E. Pure Encapsulations. Is that what you have your parents are taking or did you use a different brand?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So with my dad, he is now taking the Zymogen brand, which is also very good. And the reason for that is because it’s higher DHA, which is what I wanted.

Tim Ferriss: Fascinating.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: My mom is taking the O.N.E.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, got it.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Cool.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, both those brands, by the way, are great. They’ve both been third-party tested and have very high quality fish oil, and I don’t have affiliation with either of them.

Tim Ferriss: So I’ve got my parents on those. I’m taking those. You mentioned lutein and zeaxanthin, which is good for quite a few things. Now, for those people who may be interested, and this probably won’t help me with my particular presbyopia. So age-related visual decline, particularly with near work, reading a book, let’s say, but AREDS2, people could check out studies that have been done on AREDS2. And two of the principle ingredients are lutein and zeaxanthin. So there’s that.

Now, also have been very, very curious about how to activate some of the pathways that you mentioned. Sulforaphane would be a good option for that. Also, looking at, and we don’t have to spend a ton of time on this, but exogenous ketones because ideally, sure, I would have my parents maybe do intermittent fasting or some extended fasts. I don’t think that’s going to happen for a million different reasons, but perhaps exogenous ketones and have looked at that.

This is a work in progress I’ve been doing, and I know you have too. Lots of self-experimentation, but there are some case studies in the literature, one of which you sent to me that are pretty interesting, looking at administration. In other words, giving an older patient with Alzheimer’s disease, oral exogenous ketones. They tend to taste like jet fuel. They’re not tasty. But the effects of, at least in these case studies are pretty remarkable.

Now, granted with the monoester they use in some of these, the off-the-shelf cost per day would be like $150 or something like that. Maybe even more. So there’s sort of a cost question. But I’m just going to throw a couple of more things out there that are on my mind. So you mentioned the exercise piece. This has been so important for me. So I’ve hired a trainer and I realize my parents are kind of sneaky and sometimes a little, I don’t want to say passive-aggressive, but they’ll say they’re going to do something to please me and then they won’t do it.

So getting the trainer to actually pick them up at their house is something that I decided to do because there are a lot of reasons. Exercise is amazing, one of which is the natural release of klotho and people can look this up. I’m hoping that you’ll be able to inject this in the next handful of years. We’ll see in humans. But K-L-O-T-H-O. Also worth checking out. 

Tim Ferriss: Anything else that you would add to that or any commentary you want to sprinkle in? Am I missing any criticals?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: There’s definitely commentary.

Tim Ferriss: Multivitamin, yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: There’s commentary, but we can get into that if you want to go dive into the why the ketone esters are beneficial and why the exercise is beneficial. We can go into that because I love talking about it.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. This is going to be a conversation just between you and me. That’s how I treat all of these things. And I’m very self-interested because I think the personal is the most universal. Maybe that’s just an excuse to make this all about what I want. But we have been texting also because I told you I’ve been thinking about doing a 14-day fast, and actually I ratcheted that back from doing a 30-day fast.

I’ve done 10 days before, water only. I’ve done lots of seven days. And part of the reason is I think I would be better equipped now to do longer fasts because of the intermittent fasting I’ve been doing. And this ties into the conversation around the parents because what I have noticed is, for instance, doing 16:8 fasting, which was, and I’m so sorry, the scientist you mentioned before, whose podcast interview I listened to on your podcast, what was his name again?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Dr. Mark Mattson.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, Mark Mattson. Amazing, amazing scientist. Fantastic conversation. A lot of seminal work related to intermittent fasting. So 16:8, what does that actually mean? I did this today, I’ve done this most days now, which is basically eating between, for me it’s like 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. There are arguments that it should be shifted earlier, like noon to 8 p.m. or something like that. But socially, just practically, again, coming back to compliance, like the good system you do being better than the perfect system you don’t, generally it’s like two till, let’s say 9 p.m. is when I eat and then I fast the rest of the time. And for the first five to seven days, pretty grumpy, kind of pissy, I’m not going to lie. Sent some emails that I probably shouldn’t have. But then once I adapted, I did a recent set of labs and they’re my best set of labs that I’ve seen.

I can’t solely attribute it to the intermittent fasting, but the best set of labs I’ve had in ages on things that were very hard to move prior, also did an oral glucose tolerance test and my sort of insulin sensitivity and glucose management, the best it’s been in ages. So I was like, okay, that’s really interesting. The last time I did a seven-day fast, it was kind of brutal. I hadn’t done one in a few years and I don’t think my metabolic machinery was ready for the task, very unpleasant. But I have some chronic inflammation or at least chronic pain in my low back. And after doing that seven day fast, I had four weeks of zero symptoms and that’s the first time in three years that that’s been the case. So I was like, okay, that’s pretty interesting.

So I’ve ended up harassing you with all sorts of questions such as, well, what if I had a little bit of heavy cream in my coffee in the morning, so it’s kind of dirty fasting, but if I did that, what am I accepting as a compromise or a penalty if anything? Because then I think of, say, Longo’s work and others looking at fast-mimicking diets where I’m like, well, wait a second, these people are doing, let’s just say five days of fast-mimicking dieting per month for three months straight. And they seem to have all these benefits that maybe of lower magnitude, but mirror water fasting on some level, but they’re consuming a few hundred calories, let’s just say for simplicity per day of those five days of “fasting.” If you look at the actual meal composition, it ends up being very low calorie keto, basically very low calorie keto with very low protein, like 10 percent or less avoiding animal products.

That’s the basic way that I’ve been thinking of it. And so I was like, well, should I do something like Wilhelmi in Germany who have, again, “fasted thousands of people,” but they do give them bone broth, a little bit of juice, it’s akin to the fast-mimicking diet, but they will do that with people for 30, 60, 90 days or am I better off doing shorter water fasts or maybe even a 14-day water fast? And a lot of the questions came down to, I know this is mouthful, but as you know, I’ve been thinking about this nonstop. I was up until 2 a.m. this morning reading really, really old stuff out of the Soviet Union on psychiatric clinics fasting patients for schizophrenia.

And so that tells you metabolic psychiatry also goes back a long, long, long time, not to mention ketogenic diet for epilepsy. So there are a lot of similarities, but if I want the benefits, as many benefits as possible with the least pain possible, which includes not losing a ton of muscle tissue, which is not always the same thing as lean body mass, what should I do? Right? That’s kind of the open question. And that is a huge, huge mouthful. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

But where is your current thinking when it relates to all of this stuff? And I said earlier at the very beginning that it ties into my parents. Why is that? Because when we looked at some of my relatives and I got my docs to come in and do a real proper full workup, looking at all sorts of things that normally wouldn’t be tested, absolutely some metabolic syndrome in the sense that they’re highly, highly insulin insensitive, like insulin off the charts. And it’s like, okay, well this has been going on for years to get to this point and Alzheimer’s is sometimes called type 3 diabetes. And it’s like, okay, well if I can’t help them, at least I want to try to help myself and other people who might be listening at an early enough stage. So how do you think about all this stuff?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Well, there’s a lot to talk about here, and I think we’ve got to kind of — 

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Let’s — 

Tim Ferriss: Let’s chew on one bit at a time.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right. Let’s chew one bit at a time and zoom out for a minute and talk about this intermittent fasting concept and why do people want to do intermittent fasting? What are the benefits that they’re looking for? Now, you mentioned some metabolic benefits that you had noticed after doing your intermittent fasting.

So there’s lots of different types of intermittent fasting. You’ve mentioned the 16:8. So essentially you’re talking about not eating food for a period of time, and that period of time can either be 16 hours, it can be 24 hours, it can be longer, in which case it would not be an intermittent fast. It would be more prolonged fast, which you also talked about. But with respect to the intermittent fasting, there are a few things that happen and there are a few reasons why people like to do intermittent fasting. First and foremost, I think most people like doing intermittent fasting is because they want to actually lose weight and the weight that they want to lose is not necessarily their lean body mass. They actually want to lose their fat mass, so they want to lose fat, and that’s a big reason why people do intermittent fasting.

Well, it turns out that intermittent fasting is more of a tool for weight loss. And what I mean by that is that there have been multiple studies now that have looked at different types of intermittent fasting in sort of a community dwelling aspect where people are just kind of free to eat the way they’re going to eat, but they’re supposed to be practicing intermittent fasting. And what it’s been discovered is that naturally, people end up eating about 200 fewer calories per day when they’re doing some form of intermittent fasting. So if they’re eating all their food within an eight or 10 hour period, for example, usually they’ll eat their food within a 10-hour period and then they’ll fast for 14 hours. If they do that, they end up actually eating 200 fewer calories. And so they end up performing what’s called caloric restriction, which we know can lead to weight loss.

And so a lot of the weight loss actually comes from reducing calorie intake, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everything that’s beneficial from intermittent fasting comes down to calories because it doesn’t. But the weight loss definitely seems to come down to the calories because if you keep calories the same and then have people do intermittent fasting or not intermittent fasting, they won’t lose the weight, but they will have a whole host of metabolic benefits. You mentioned glucose regulation improvements. I mean fasting glucose, postprandial glucose, HbA1c, which is a long-term marker of glucose regulation, their lipids are more favorable, and then they have improvements in blood pressure, for example, that’s another big one that people get with more of a longer type of intermittent fasting. So they’re fasting more like 18 hours and eating their food within a six-hour window. Now that’s another benefit.

Now you go even further, and I know this is something you are very interested in, so beyond metabolic benefits and people want to get then, they want to get into what’s called ketosis. So they want to be making ketones, these things that we’re talking about earlier with respect to taking an exogenous ketone ester, well, you make something naturally when you start to actually burn fat as energy, you start to make something called beta hydroxybutyrate, but it takes about 12 hours or so. It depends on the person. It depends on how heavy of a carb diet they eat or how physically active they are. It can be a range. So if someone’s doing a more ketogenic type of diet, they can actually deplete their liver glycogen quicker than 12 hours. It might even cut it down to like eight if they’re physically active on top of that, you might go down to even six or something.

So there’s a big range here, but for a standard person on a normal diet, they’re going to take around 12 hours before they start to deplete their liver glycogen and then start to immobilize fatty acids from their adipose tissue and use that as energy. And when you start to do that, then you start to get into ketosis, your body starts to then make beta-hydroxybutyrate the major circling ketone. Why do people want that in their system? Because it’s not just a very energetically favorable source of energy. What I mean by that is it takes less energy to use beta-hydroxybutyrate to make energy than it does to use glucose, for example. It takes more energy to actually use glucose, so it’s more energetically favorable, right?

Tim Ferriss: It’s a clean fuel. Yeah. Also, BHB, the beta-hydroxybutyrate, as I understand it, I mean highly anti-inflammatory effects as well, right?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. That was the next point I was going to make is that it’s called a signaling molecule. So it’s actually a way so your body knows that it’s in this stress mode, okay, there’s no food. It’s food scarcity time. And this is something that it’s evolutionarily tapped into our system, into our DNA where times of food scarcity, when we’re not eating, our body switches into ketosis, beta-hydroxybutyrates produce, and it signals to these other genes to basically make more of something beneficial. So it’s been shown to reduce inflammation. It depresses something called the inflammasome, which causes inflammation. It’s an HDAC inhibitor, so it’s a histone deacetylase inhibitor. So it’s globally affecting gene expression and in such a way that it reduces genes that are involved in making oxidative stress, it actually activates brain-derived neurotrophic factor. That’s the beneficial neurotrophic compound that’s made in the brain that exercise also activates as well.

So it’s doing all these beneficial things. And the other thing that it’s doing is it’s getting into the brain. It’s being used as a very great source of energy. And so you have this sort of bypass where the glucose can then be shunted to be used to make glutathione, that very important antioxidant I talked about earlier that sulforaphane activates.

Well, it turns out when you give your body ketones or your body’s making ketones, your brain actually consumes a lot of that. There’ve been tracer studies that have looked at that. And what happens is because neurons are now using the beta-hydroxybutyrate as energy, glucose is no longer needed. And so that glucose that is there is then used to make NADPH, which is a precursor to make glutathione, and so it’s called glucose sparing. You get this glucose sparing effect. And so that’s another reason why people are interested in intermittent fasting. 

And then another main reason, and there’s many others, I’m not going to touch on everything, but the other main reason is it activates repair processes. And what I mean by repair processes is to be in repair mode, you have to be in more of a catabolic state. And we were talking about this earlier, people get so freaked out by the word catabolism.

Tim Ferriss: Last night when I was walking around New York City, we were talking about this catabolism —

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And I think even over the last few years, intermittent fasting has kind of gotten a bad rap because people now equate it with, “Oh, loss of muscle mass. I’m going to be catabolic.” Well, in order to be in a repair mode, you actually do need to be in a catabolic mode. And these repair systems are so important for cleaning up all the garbage that’s inside of our cells. And that can be things like protein aggregates. These are things that lead to aggregation like alpha-synuclein, which is involved in Parkinson’s, amyloid beta aggregates, which is involved in Alzheimer’s disease. It’s not the cause. It’s like the cause and the symptom. It’s like both. It’s involved in Alzheimer’s disease and then aggregates in our cardiovascular system that play a role in cardiovascular disease, but it also cleans out even damaged little what are called organelles.

And so mitochondria or an organelle, and these, our organelles get damaged. So you want to be able to repair that damage. And this process of autophagy is the process that does that. And there’s lots of different types of autophagy. So if it’s a mitochondria repairing damage to itself, it’s mitophagy but for all this stuff to be active, you have to be in that more catabolic state, which can be induced by not eating, can also be induced by heavy endurance exercise as well.

Okay. So talking about those sort of outcomes that people are interested in, those different endpoints that people are interested in achieving, I think something that you are specifically interested in is the metabolic effects of intermittent fasting as well as the repair processes like the autophagy.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, for sure. And that’s why I was asking because I don’t really, look, I’m as vain as the next person. I like looking less fat if I can, but it’s not my main driver, right? It’s mental acuity and hopefully staving off on some level things like neurodegenerative disease and even cancer possibly, which has been part of the reason I’ve done a lot of these extended water fasts, which is I realize there are a couple of hops here in terms of speculation, but it seems plausible that you might zap punch a couple of pre-cancerous cells in the nuts by doing that.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Definitely. Not only does autophagy play a role in preventing Parkinson’s disease, but also Alzheimer’s disease as well. Again, this has been shown in many animal studies. We know that autophagy plays a role in clearing away the amyloid beta plaques that are involved in Alzheimer’s disease. And yes, there are some people that have amyloid beta plaques that don’t get Alzheimer’s disease. They may be the more resilient non-APOE4 type of person, but we do know that many, many people do get Alzheimer’s disease with amyloid plaques. And in fact, people that have, again, the SNPs in what’s called the amyloid precursor protein APP, that leads to amyloid beta plaque buildup, they get early onset Alzheimer’s disease. So autophagy plays an important role in clearing away those plaques. And I will say what we don’t have a lot of evidence on is what’s the minimal effect of fasting dose to activate autophagy?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I know. God, I wish we had this

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right. We don’t. I think what we do know in humans from some of these old studies is that you do see some signal of autophagy activation after 24, 48 hours in humans. Now, does that mean that that is the only amount of time that it takes to activate autophagy? No. So most humans are probably doing anywhere between a 12 to 16 hour nightly fast. There’s a period of time when we’re not eating, and that is when we’re sleeping a little bit before bed autophagy still happens in people, we just aren’t measuring it because we don’t have sensitive tools yet. And so it’s not that I don’t think a 16-hour fast doesn’t activate. I believe it does in human. I believe there’s some autophagy going on. It’s probably not that much. But if you go into that 48 hour fast, then you’re really starting to get more robust activation of autophagy.

Tim Ferriss: Can I throw something else in here just for fun?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: So you mentioned sleep, and I’ve been looking, trying to look at Alzheimer’s from every possible angle and found literature looking at disruption of sleep architecture in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and the possible application of Xyrem, I believe it is, which is another, it’s a brand name in a bifurcated schedule for GHB gamma hydroxybutyrate, which you have to be very careful with. It’s a party drug. People die of it because it suppresses respiration. The person who bought my apartment in San Francisco died of a GHB overdose, but it actually is a tremendously interesting compound for increasing, I think it’s deep wave sleep specifically, which does what? It helps the cleanup crew to do its work and to actually take out the garbage cellularly. And so if I could wave a magic wand, I would have my relatives on something like Xyrem, might actually be a different type of sleep medication like the NORA class. NORA, might be DORA.

I would also look at, and this is something obviously not suitable for most elderly people, but potentially lower dose psilocybin or psilocin. And there is some actually very interesting, I don’t want to call them speculative, hypothetical applications of that to Alzheimer’s disease, which you can find on PubMed. And from a mechanistic perspective, they’re super, super interesting. So I just want to double click on the sleep because that is such a critical component, whether you’re fasting or not, to try to ensure that your sleep architecture is not hyperdisrupted, which can be the case with lots of different types of sleep medications that you might take. And if you have really bad insomnia, it’s like, okay, you can do all of these other things, but boy, oh boy, it would make a lot of sense to try to fix sleep whenever possible.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Great. Yeah, so true. The low-wave sleep does activate the glymphatic system, which is cleaning out the amyloid beta aggregates as well. And the last thing I kind of want to mention is you were talking about the intermittent fasting and more prolonged fasting and the muscle mass loss or lean body mass, which people equate with muscle mass, which it’s not, there’s a lot of things going on. So the thing is, when people are doing intermittent fasting, I mentioned they eat fewer calories, which means they’re eating less meals, they’re eating fewer meals, they’re not eating as many meals. And so what ends up happening is people lower their protein intake, and that’s an important signal for maintaining muscle mass and certainly growing muscle mass as well. So it increases muscle protein synthesis, which is important. If people are engaged in resistance training and doing intermittent fasting, they’re not losing muscle mass.

And in fact, they can even gain muscle mass a little bit, not much, but they can gain it too. So I think the key here is that if you’re doing an intermittent type of fast, like 16:8 where you’re fasting for 16 hours, that’s really not a long, long fast. There’s not a lot of concern with losing muscle mass if you’re resistance training. Now a more prolonged type of fast, you’re talking about 14 days, that’s a long fast. And definitely, you’re going to be losing some muscle mass no matter what. Now, how much you lose depends on how, I guess if you can resistance train lightly while you’re fasting, that would be huge because you would be then activating muscle protein synthesis through another signal, which is not protein, it’s mechanical force.

So that, I think, would be really important for preventing the loss of a lot of muscle mass. But what is interesting is that you do lose lean body mass, a lot of it, when you are doing a prolonged fast like that and looking at the old literature and some of the literature that’s been done, a lot of water up to 10 pounds of water rate, which is crazy, you lose that and your organs shrink. And this is something that’s been also shown in animal studies and also by Dr. Valter Longo many years ago, and he’s shown in animal studies, prolonged type of fasting actually causes organs to shrink because a lot of the damaged cells, not only is autophagy getting activated and you’re cleaning out damage within a cell, but cells that are so damaged that autophagy can’t even fix them, they actually undergo death, cell death.

And so you end up getting a lot of cells that die. And then what happens is during the re-feeding phase, and this is key, the re-feeding phase is the growth phase, and this is when you regrow organs, it’s when your muscle mass comes back, you can go back, get your muscle mass gains back. And so having that refeeding phase is really important. And getting the right nutrients, like protein for example, is key for that refeeding phase. But you also lose fat during that fast and you’re losing visceral fat. And you had brought this up last night when we were talking and I did some reading on it because it was like, oh, I made perfect sense because your organs are shrinking, you’re losing a lot of cells in your organs. You’re also losing some of the visceral fat that surrounds the organs, right?

Tim Ferriss: And that can get misclassified. Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. It gets misclassified as lean body mass. And so you look at this lean body mass and all you think about is muscle. Well, it turns out, muscle’s a small part of that. There’s a lot of other stuff that’s going into that lean body mass. It’s a pretty big undertaking, a 14-day fast. But I’ll say this, and this kind of goes into what you mentioned about the fasting mimicking diet and perhaps even adding cream. We can talk about that as well. I do think, I mean the fasting mimicking diet, you’re not going to get the same amount of autophagy that you would get if you did a five-day fast, water fast, because it’s just impossible.

You’re getting some protein, you’re getting some amino acids that’s activating mTOR, that shuts down autophagy. You’re getting energy, ATP, there’s a ratio called the ATP to AMP ratio, which you want it to be low to activate something called AMP kinase for autophagy to happen. And so when you’re eating heavy cream or eating whatever, fill in the blank, any type of calories, you are changing that ratio. And so that AMP kinase is not getting activated as robustly. Now, the amount of inactivation of those pathways, which then will inactivate autophagy, depends on how much you’re feeding, how many calories that you’re eating, how much of that is amino acids.

Tim Ferriss: And specifically leucine, right? In the case of Longo, really trying to minimize leucine as in an activator of mTOR and so on.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes, exactly. Yeah. So I think for the cream, if you’re trying to do 16:8, if someone is trying to do 16:8 on a daily basis, and it’s a non-negotiable for having an earlier feeding window because social, just everything compliance wise isn’t going to work and you have to do it later, which means you have to wake up and still be fasting in the morning, then you either have to love black coffee, learn to love it, or try maybe MCT powder, MCT oil, because then you’re not getting the amino acids in there to activate the mTOR, but you can do a small, maybe a tablespoon of it, and so you’ll maybe just get a little bit of depression of autophagy, but not much. That would be my recommendation.

Tim Ferriss: And I also want to clarify for folks listening just to really make it specific. When I have had, I just like saying dirty fasting, I didn’t realize it was an expression, I just think it feels fun like a dirty martini. So dirty fasting is kind of cheating in this way. But when I do that, which is not all the time, I usually have black coffee or tea or something like that, but it is heavy cream, which is almost entirely fat. It is not creamer that you would just pull off the shelf. It is not half-and-half. It is heavy cream, which just from a macronutrient perspective is very, very, very different. And you can really overdo it on the calories also, it’s just liquid fat effectively. But the MCT powder is a good idea.

I tell you what, if you’re open to it, let’s shift gears a little bit. I will just say, I wish somebody, nobody’s going to do this, but would somehow get the ethics board, IRB, etc, to approve long-term human studies, again, in fasting, that would be great because you used to be allowed to do it. There are case studies of people who literally fast for 300 plus days, I mean fat, what is it? 9,000 calories per pound. You can do a lot with that fat. So we’ll see if I do 14 days. If I can do 14 days, then I might just go to 30. But then the refeeding gets really tricky.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I think people are concerned with gallstones. So when you don’t eat for a long period of time, then you’re not stimulating the gallbladder and the gallstone risk increases, which is what I think is the big concern with the long, long fasts. But I mean, if you’re doing something like that once a year, I don’t know if it’s that big of a deal.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I mean that’s why I was doing a seven-day fast once a year for a long time, and then I took a break for a few years and I did a seven-day water fast and it was so incredibly unpleasant. And I had orthostatic hypotension where I stand up and I felt like I was going to fall over and vision started to get funny and I was like, you know what? Maybe this isn’t for me, but I think it’s because my machinery just wasn’t developed for that. Having seen really stark differences in my mental acuity and sustained focus with the intermittent fasting, I’m like, okay, I feel like doing intermittent fasting, which part of my reason behaviorally for my interest in that also is that getting people to change their diet is fucking hard, meaning their diet composition, the food they eat. So if you can just say, Hey, look, keep eating whatever you want, same thing, but you have to fit it within this window.

It’s an interesting option B that might work for people who otherwise aren’t going to follow a paleo diet or whatever. But if you do the IF, and then what I’ve done is like, all right, do the IF, maybe if you have some grains or in my case legumes and stuff, okay, fine. And then shift to a mostly ketogenic diet for a period of time, then I feel like you’re pretty well teed up for a longer water only fast. Maybe you supplement with electrolytes. This gets into all sorts of controversial territory.

But if you’re okay with it, let’s talk about training for a minute because, and I’ll force a really awkward segue maybe, which is one thing I noticed is that my ability to do Zone 2 training, let’s just for simplicity’s sake, say that for people that you’re on a bike, stationary, is just easier to keep consistent and you’re cycling for 60 minutes at a wattage and a speed that leads you to the point where you could have a conversation with someone on the phone in short, full sentences, but you don’t really want to, right? That’s like the talk test. Intermittent fasting plus ketosis really helps my Zone 2. And then this leads into the question of just training in general. So I have to click on this, what type of exercise reduces heart aging by 20 years? Do you want to start there or do you want to start with VO2 max?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: We can start with VO2 max maybe because — 

Tim Ferriss: Okay, let’s do it.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: — they kind of lead in to each other.

Tim Ferriss: Great.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And so people might be going, what is VO2 max? It’s essentially a cardio respiratory fitness. It’s measured by VO, it’s measured or calculated by VO2 max, which is essentially the maximum amount of oxygen you can take up during maximal exercise. And what’s so fascinating about that is it’s a really important predictor of longevity. So there have now been enough studies that have come out looking at cardiorespiratory fitness in the sense of VO2 max and how people with a higher cardiorespiratory fitness have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to people with a low cardiorespiratory fitness. In fact, if you have a low cardiorespiratory fitness and you go anywhere above that from low to low normal, it’s associated with a two-year increased life expectancy. And people with a low cardiorespiratory fitness actually have a higher all cause mortality that’s comparable or worse than people with known diseases like type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease or smokers, for example.

So in other words, being sedentary is a disease and we need to think about it as a disease and we should be trying to train to improve our VO2 max. And that is something that should be in our minds. And I say this because just having this conversation that you and I are having right now, it takes about 11 milliliters of oxygen per minute, per kilogram body weight just to have this conversation. Now, just sit still and just breathe. It takes about three milliliters of oxygen per minute, per kilogram body weight. And that’s important because as we’re aging, we’re sort of heading towards this cliff of VO2 max. Our VO2 max goes down as we age just naturally. Even if you’re training and doing everything, it goes down.

And once you get to that cliff, everything becomes a maximal effort like talking, you’re out of breath. Carrying groceries to your car from the store, you’re just out of breath. Everything is a maximal effort, and you don’t want to be there.

So you want to start from a higher-up point so that when you’re going down, that cliff is much further away. And that’s where the training comes in because you want to find a training program that’s going to improve that cardiorespiratory fitness, right?

And that’s where you talked about Zone 2 training and that’s the kind of what I would call moderate intensity exercise. So you’re able to sort of the talk test, I like the talk test because heart rate is so dependent on a person’s fitness level. But let’s just say on average, generally people, they’re not at like 75 or 80 percent max heart rate. They’re kind of below that on average.

Now some people may actually be above that, but the talk test is great because you can have a conversation, you’re breathy. You don’t want to have a conversation, but you can or so.

We know that people that are doing that moderate intensity type of training, if they do the standard guidelines of physical activity, which are about two and a half hours a week of moderate intensity physical activity, people that do that for two months, 40 percent of those people still can’t improve their VO2 max.

Tim Ferriss: Just different gears.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Well, unless they actually add in high intensity interval training.

And that’s where I kind of get into this. I think people should be doing vigorous intensity exercise. That’s the type of exercise where you’re unable to talk, so you can’t have a conversation because you’re going harder. Your heart rate is about 80, 85 percent. It’s above 80 percent max heart rate.

That type of exercise has been shown to improve VO2 max, especially if you’re doing sort of what’s called high intensity interval training, as you know, you’ve talked about this a lot as well. But you’re doing sort of these intervals of going more vigorous intensity exercise, and then you have recovery periods where your heart rate goes down. So there’s been a variety of different protocols out there that have been shown to improve the VO2 max if you do them.

Generally speaking, what’s happening is you’re putting a stronger stress on your cardiovascular system, so on your muscular system, even on your brain. So the adaptations are greater, and one of those adaptations is increasing your stroke volume, so being able to like basically transport oxygen to tissues faster. And that’s an adaptation that happens when you’re going at a harder, when you’re training at a harder intensity.

Tim Ferriss: What do you do personally? What’s your HIIT look like?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So my training is three days week I do some sort of CrossFit training that involves high intensity interval training with it as well. And the high intensity interval training will either be on a rowing machine, or it’ll be on a stationary bike or AssaultBike, or it’ll be like a skier, like those skiers or jumping rope.

And I also do longer intervals, so I’ll do the Norwegian 4×4. So that’s where I do, on a stationary bike, or I do it on a rowing machine actually as well. I do four minutes of as hard as I can go and maintain for that entire four minutes. So this is obviously not an all-out 30-second sprint. I’m just working hard, as hard as I can, and maintain that for four minutes.

And then you recover for three minutes, and then you do it four times. I’m thinking of a variation I do sometimes with my husband. I recover for four minutes because we’re switching on the rower. So I sometimes do a little bit longer recovery.

But that Norwegian 4×4 where you’re doing as hard as you can for four minutes and maintain that intensity for the four minutes and then you recover for three minutes, you do that four times, that’s been shown to be one of the best ways to improve VO2 max.

But you can also do one minute on, one minute off, which I’ve also done. So you do that 10 times. It’s more like a 20-minute workout. That’s also been shown to improve VO2 max.

But also even doing something like 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off like a Tabata, again has been shown.

And I do all of these, by the way, and I do variations of them depending on the week. Most of my exercise is high intensity interval training, CrossFit training, which incorporates, it’s more dynamic. So it’s including like strength training stuff, but it’s like more high intensity.

And then I do a couple of runs. I do like two 30-minute runs a week, sometimes three. And that’s more of my Zone 2 stuff.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s a nice roster.

So I’ll share, just for people who might be curious, some of my goals and program at the moment, right?

So I’m about to turn 48 and feel good overall, but have realized that I really hate endurance training, generally speaking. So I’ve neglected that and specifically have neglected the stuff that makes me think I want to puke into a bucket, i.e. VO2 max training. The Zone 2 is like listen to a podcast, maybe I have like a slightly breathy conversation. Like it’s pretty chill. Watch something on Netflix. It’s pretty straightforward.

VO2 max, specifically chatting with Peter Attia, I’m doing the Zone 2, which I do either on a stationary bike or on the treadmill, typically with a rucksack at a lower incline. I found that when I had the speed too high, incline too high, I ended up getting lower back pain just from a like really long stride with my lordosis and stuff.

And then for the VO2 max, doing the 4×4 that you described. And I think I’m getting this translation right, but the way it was described to me was like, all right, for each of those four minutes you have these four-minute work intervals, and then you have three or four minutes of rest, and then you repeat four times.

It’s like first minute you’re like, “Wow, this is a lot of work.” Second minute you’re like, “Wow, this really sucks.” Third minute you’re like, “I don’t know if I’m going to make it. I don’t think I’m going to make it.” And then minute four is like, “I feel like I’m going to die and I’m being chased by wolves.” So it’s like when we say like maximal effort, at least as it’s been, and those are not Peter’s words, but another person that I like a lot.

It’s a lot of work. Like it’s pretty pukey, but I’m going to be doing that, given the longevity associations that you mentioned.

Now, I would love just to get your two cents, and this relates to vitamin D2 a little bit for me where I’m like in these studies looking at VO2 max as a predictor or correlate of longevity, are there other possible confounders, confounding variables that might actually be the real McCoy?

In other words, because you could say, and I know you know all this, but just for people listening, it’s like, okay, well, I’ll make this up. Like women who do Pilates in Manhattan have four years of additional lifespan. Okay, great. So you could conclude then we should all do Pilates to improve lifespan. It’s like, well, wait a second, Pilates is expensive, and maybe they’re also following a better diet and so on and so on and so on.

So are there any confounders that might apply, possible confounders to these VO2 max studies? I’m assuming they’re observational, more than experimental, or sort of intervention-based. So what are your thoughts there?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, I mean there’s absolutely a possibility for some sort of confounding factors in any sort of observational study, including the ones I’m discussing. Because, yes, they’re going in and measuring their cardio respiratory fitness, which is better than a lot of observational studies that you’re going off a questionnaire, right? So that’s already sort of one, at least a one up over other observational data.

But at the end of the day, you may have someone that has undiagnosed cancer or some kind of undiagnosed disease because diseases are, I mean, they’re not, they’re supposed to be disease free or if they have a disease, it’s known and so everything’s corrected for. But there’s always the possibility that some people have some disease and that’s why they can’t exercise very well because they’re diseased, and it’s the disease that’s causing them to have a higher mortality rate than the lower cardiorespiratory fitness is.

Studies always try to account for diet and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, you can never really establish causation, right? So that is why we turn to randomized controlled trials. And I will say this is where the heart aging comes in and also this type of training.

Tim Ferriss: Can I do one more thing real quick? Before we get to the heart aging, real quick.

So when I’ve done VO2 max training, my legs grow, my legs grow like weeds, like they adapt and get big. So along with the age-related decrease in VO2 max, there’s also sarcopenia and age-related loss of muscle mass.

So I’m like, I wonder if these people who also have higher VO2 max tend to have a higher percentage of lean body mass or muscle tissue be more heavily muscled than the people without, I don’t know. I mean, that’s just — I’m just kind of poking at it out of curiosity. 

Okay, so the heart aging.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: This goes into why randomized controlled trials are important because you can establish more causation from an intervention. And this study was done by Ben Levine out of UT Southwest and Dallas. And really, to me, it’s a seminal, groundbreaking study that isn’t talked about enough.

By the way, he’s just a phenomenal cardiovascular exercise physiologist. I mean, he trained with, like, the biggest giants out there.

And what he did was he took, him and his lab took 50-year-olds that were sedentary. So they’re middle-aged, 50 years old, sedentary, but otherwise healthy. So you didn’t have any other diseases besides being sedentary, which I think is a disease, but they didn’t have any other diseases like cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes or hypertension, right? So they were otherwise healthy, just not active. And he wanted to see if he could put these guys on a pretty long two-year training protocol, how would that affect the aging of their heart?

So as we age, our hearts typically shrink in size, and they get stiffer. And that affects not only our cardiorespiratory fitness and our ability to exercise, and I mentioned our cardiorespiratory fitness goes down with age, but it affects our cardiovascular disease risk as well.

So the reason our hearts get stiffer, by the way, does come down to a lot of glucose. So the more glucose stimulation, more glucose is around in your vascular system, it through a chemical reaction forms advanced glycation end products. So this glycation essentially stiffens the collagen that surrounds your myocardium and your pericardium, and so you get like this stiffer heart that can’t respond to stress well.

So you want your heart to be very plastic and malleable and flexible, right? You don’t want it to be stiff.

Tim Ferriss: Doesn’t sound good, yep.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So just like you don’t want your blood vessels to be stiff, right.

So what he wanted to do was see if he could change the structure and the trajectory of these aging hearts. So he put them on a two-year training program, which involved the Norwegian 4×4, by the way. And when you start someone out that’s not physically active and you want them to do the Norwegian 4×4 when you have them doing their interval, their four-minute interval, and this speaks to you as well, or anyone, you don’t have to necessarily go as hard as you can the whole four minutes. But you just have to be working hard that interval.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you do have to last four minutes, right? So — 

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: You have to last four minutes. So some people even start off, they’re just briskly walking because that’s hard for them, right?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So it’s all tailored to the individual. So some people get really intimidated where they’re like, “Oh, there’s no way I could ever do that.”

Well, actually these people did do it, and they started out doing the Norwegian 4×4, but they also did a variety of other exercises, including moderate intensity and some more vigorous intensity exercise, as well as some resistance training. And the control group was just this like yoga flexible training sort of stuff that people were doing.

By the end of the two years, these people were working out about five hours a week, and at some point they were doing two Norwegian 4x4s a week, and then they went down to just doing one a week. But over the course of two years, they were getting a lot of exercise, about five hours a week.

And essentially at the end of those two years, the structure of their heart, so the stiffness of it and the shrinking of it was reversed. So their hearts grew and they became more flexible. And it was reversed in such a way that it was 20 years less aging. So their hearts looked more like 30-year-olds than 50-year-olds, which is pretty incredible.

Tim Ferriss: That is amazing. And I think it’s also like, well, you think 50, it’s too late to start exercising.

Well, it’s not too late. I mean you can be in your 90s and get benefits. So I think that’s another really important sort of take-home with that story is that you can reverse your aging of your heart by 20 years if you really put in the effort.

Five hours a week is about what I do, five or six hours a week. It’s a lot of work. I didn’t always do that, but I’ve decided as I started to get into my mid-40s, I’m going to spend less time podcasting and more time exercising because this is my health.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, foundational for everything else, that’s the base of the pyramid.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right.

Tim Ferriss: All right. So let’s park that particular piece of training for a moment. Do you want to piggyback on that and talk about reversing brain aging with exercise? Is it a different type of exercise, or do you get two birds with one stone?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: You do get two birds with one stone. And that’s why I do like the vigorous intensity exercise because when you’re kind of shifting into working out harder, when you’re getting that vigorous intensity exercise, you are shifting somewhat to anaerobic metabolism.

So you’re working so hard that you can’t get oxygen to your muscles fast enough to use mitochondria for the mitochondria to then make energy. So your body goes, I need energy quick right now, there’s not enough oxygen here, and so you start to use glucose outside of the mitochondria as energy, and that’s called glycolysis.

And you’re not just only doing glycolysis, by the way. I mean even if you’re doing an all-out sprint, you’re still somewhat using your mitochondria. It’s not like a black-or-white thing, right? There’s sort of gray here. But the reality is, is that when you’re not going intense, you are not, mostly you’re not doing anaerobic exercise.

So what happens is when you’re doing that, sort of getting in that anaerobic state, what I mean is like you’re not using oxygen to make energy. You’re just using glucose. You actually make something called lactate as a byproduct, and lactate is what’s essential for the brain health.

So there have now been a variety of studies. This was pioneered by Dr. George Brooks at UC Berkeley decades ago. So many studies have now shown this now. It’s no longer a hypothesis, but it used to be called the lactate shuttle hypothesis where, when you start to do this vigorous intensity exercise and you get your lactate levels higher than baseline, baseline, you’re usually about 0.9 millimolar or so lactate.

You start to go above that and well beyond, you’re getting 7, 10 millimolar or 15 millimolar, right? The lactate gets into your bloodstream and it’s used by other tissue. So it goes back into the muscle. It’s used for energy, gets into the brain, it gets into the heart, liver quickly. It happens within 20 minutes. You can do a HIIT workout, see your lactate go up to 15 millimolar, measure it 20 minutes later, and it’s back to baseline. I mean, it’s quick. It gets consumed.

One of the major organs that consumes it is the brain. This has been shown in human studies. Not only is lactate very much like beta hydroxybutyrate, our favorite ketone that we’ve been talking about, because it’s an energetically favorable source of energy. Lactate is used by neurons to make energy, just like beta hydroxybutyrate is very similar. It’s energetically favorable. All that stuff is happening, same stuff. So you’re using the lactate, glucose is being spared, you’re making glutathione.

Lactate is also a signaling molecule. So in the brain, it’s activating brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is important for growing new neurons in the brain, which has been shown in human studies. So there’ve been human studies that have done exercise for even just one year and shown that you can increase the growth of the hippocampus by like one to two percent after that year of training versus losing one to two percent of the hippocampus. That usually happens as you get in older age.

So the lactate is again a product of that vigorous intensity exercise. It’s increasing norepinephrine in the brain, serotonin. It’s a signaling molecule. It’s basically your body’s, your muscle’s way of communicating with the brain, “Hey, I’m really working hard. This is a stressful time. Let’s respond to that stress,” right? So your brain is also working hard during exercise and particularly vigorous intensity exercise. It’s stressful in the brain. Anybody that’s done it knows it.

Resistance training also increases lactate and resistance training is very stressful on the brain. And so it’s like this response to that stress. Your brain is now being communicated from the muscles by lactate, which is the communicator and saying, “Hey, make all this good stuff so that we can not die,” right? That’s essentially the adaptations that are happening.

So that’s why I like to also incorporate vigorous intensity exercise into my program because I am also prone to neurodegenerative disease. I have Parkinson’s disease on my dad’s side, I have Alzheimer’s disease on my mom’s side, so I’m very, very tuned in to neurodegenerative disease and wanting to prevent it and do what I can. And I do think that vigorous intensity exercise is part of that equation because I want to get that lactate, which is so beneficial for brain health.

Tim Ferriss: So let me ask you about two other things related to brain health since this is on the mind, ha-ha. For the first is related to saunas and the second one is vitamin D.

So with saunas, I was looking back, and I think this is probably summarized by some LLM, so I want to be very careful with citing numbers. But I’m looking at a summary, I believe, of the findings of a large Finnish study published in JAMA Internal Medicine 2015 that followed 2,000 middle-aged men for 20 years. That’s wild. And it looks like, please correct me from memory, you can correct any of this, but all-cause mortality, 24 percent lower risk with two to three times per week. This is sauna use and four to seven times per week was associated with 40 percent lower risk.

And I’ll just cut to the one that’s of greatest interest to me right now. It says in a follow-up paper, using the sauna four to seven times per week was associated with a 66 percent lower risk of dementia and 65 percent lower risk of Alzheimer’s. Now at face value, if those numbers are roughly accurate, those numbers seem incredible, right?

And I guess what I’m wondering is how should we think about those results? Because if out of 100 people, two people were getting dementia and now it’s one person, it’s less interesting than other ways of interpreting the data. How should we think about this, and how do you personally use if you do sauna or hot tub or heat stress at this point?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. So those numbers are accurate, By the way. They’re spot on, and there is a dose-dependence there, which kind of strengthens the data. So people that are using the sauna more frequently are having a more robust effect. You mentioned 24 percent lower all-cause mortality, and then 40 percent if they’re doing two to three times a week versus four to seven times a week, they’re having a 40 percent lower all-cause mortality. And the dementia risk is also extremely interesting to me.

And this goes back, Tim, to some of the earliest experiments that I did as a sort of budding young biologist at the Salk Institute where I was working with these little nematode C. elegans worms and injecting human amyloid beta-42 into these worms, and essentially injecting it into their muscle so that they become basically the amyloid beta-42 aggregates and forms these aggregates as these worms age.

And it happens very rapidly because their life expectancy is only 15 days. So within a day or so, they start to become paralyzed where they can’t move their lower half of their muscles, their muscular cells are, and they can only move their nose to feed in this little Petri dish with E. coli bacteria, which is what they eat.

So I would do these experiments and then I would overact, basically when you do a genetic manipulation and you can make them overexpress heat shock proteins, which are something that are robustly activated upon heat stress as the name implies. And sauna has been shown to activate heat shock proteins. If you’re in the 163 degree Fahrenheit sauna for around 30 minutes, you can activate your heat shock proteins by 50 percent more than baseline.

So when I would add heat shock proteins that would be activated in these worms, it would prevent this from happening. These protein aggregates don’t happen. And that’s because one of the things that heat shock proteins do is they help repair damaged proteins that are misfolded and prevent them from aggregating. So you want to have more active heat shock proteins if you’re wanting to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Now, there’s a lot of animal studies that have shown this as well. For example, you can take a mouse and sort of give it Alzheimer’s disease in this similar way. And if they have a lot of active heat shock protein genes, then they’re not getting the Alzheimer’s disease. It delays it, right?

So when I remember reading this study, and it was like one of the things I was thinking about was, of course, the heat shock proteins are activated upon the sauna use that you would probably see a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and even dementia.

There’s other things as well. Cardiovascular health is really improved with the sauna. So sauna sort of mimics moderate intensity exercise. So if you’re having improved cardiovascular health, that means more blood flow to the brain. Lots of things are happening, right?

The one thing I do want to mention, Tim, and this study was, I think it came out in 2020-ish, I don’t remember the exact year, but it was not out of Finland. I believe it was a Polish study. And that study looked at sauna use and dementia risk, and there was very interesting results there.

So they sort of looked at people that are using saunas, but they also sort of categorized them based on the amount of heat, so how hot their saunas got.

So in the Finnish studies and out of Finland, majority of the people are using the sauna at around equivalent of 174 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s about what the average temperature of pretty much any of those studies that you cited. That’s about the average temperature that they’re using in, and they’re in there for about 20 minutes.

Now, this other study looked at a wide range of different temperatures, that temperature versus like the really, really high extreme end so people that were doing like 200 degrees Fahrenheit or more.

And this is something that you can see nowadays, like there’s this sort of go all in, go hard or go home, right? So people think that they need to go in a 200 degree sauna. And if they go in a 200 degree sauna, it’s going to be better than going in a 175 degree Fahrenheit sauna, right? Apparently, not the case.

So in that study, again, you saw a protective effect of people that use the sauna, and I think it was also dose-dependent, but I can’t recall, there was a protective effect, but only if they used saunas that were less than 190 degrees Fahrenheit. People that started going into the 190 degrees to 200 degrees Fahrenheit range actually had an increased risk.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, no.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So that was something that I don’t know that anyone talks about, but I’ve done really, really hot saunas before. I personally don’t like it. I get headaches, actually. So your head is in there and you have to think about that. Your head is getting heated up. So I don’t know that it’s necessarily good to go in a 212 degree Fahrenheit sauna for your head.

Now I don’t want to say that with certainty because there could be all kinds of confounding factors, but it’s something to keep in mind.

And why do you have to go above 190? Well, 190 is hot as hell. That’s good enough. Like you don’t have to go above that.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, my default setting, my sauna is 194, so it’s just kind of like — well, I guess I set it some time ago, so it’s just been set at 194, so that’s kind of my default. So maybe I want to dial it back. Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I think 190 is great. Yeah, 190 is great.

So you asked about me and how I use the sauna. Now I should also mention that hot tubs are good as well. And in fact, the study just came out a few weeks ago showing that hot tubs have comparable effects on blood pressure regulation, all these parameters that are looked at with sauna use as well.

And a lot of people ask that question. “Oh, what about a hot tub or a hot bath?” And I think not everyone has access to a sauna, not everyone has access to a hot tub, but a lot of people have access to a hot bath.

And I think if you can get a sort of pool thermometer and keep the temperature of your bath 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which is what all the studies use, you have to keep adding hot water. That’s fine.

Tim Ferriss: It’s pretty hot.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: But you want to stay in there.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s hot.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, it’s pretty hot. You stay in there for about 20 minutes and you’re going to have comparable effects.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you’ll be sweating like you’re in a sauna. Don’t worry about it. Yeah, 104.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. 104 is hot. And I actually do both. I do a hot tub and I do sauna.

I like to do hot tub at night. It does seem to help with my sleep. But sometimes I’ll do the sauna in the day and I’ll do it after a workout, and it sort of extends my workout. I particularly like doing them after a workout like in the winter when it’s cold and if I work out outside. So that’s kind of how I use the sauna.

I used to do hot, I was doing hot tubs for a while like every night. I don’t do that in the summer because it’s just hot and so I don’t like — I actually shift more to doing cold exposure more in the summer, which is kind of funny. Pretty much the only time I do it is in the summer. Such a wuss. I like doing the heat a lot in the winter.

Tim Ferriss: I would be very curious to see if they measured sperm like motility and morphology for all the males who are doing this. And they’re like, “Good news. You have this incredibly lowered risk of Alzheimer’s. Bad news. You’re effectively sterile from all the heat on your swimmers.”

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Good point. Yeah, there’s been studies that have shown you do lower motility, for sure. The motility rate’s lowered and that those changes are reversed after six weeks of abstaining. So it is reversible.

But also don’t use it as a contraception method, either, because I know some people that have tried that. It doesn’t work. You can still get pregnant.

Tim Ferriss: That’s not so smart. Do you still use, if needed, curcumin or Theracurmin or any of these products? I think Meriva or Meriva was one that you mentioned as a formulation in place of NSAIDs, like ibuprofen or naproxen? Or is that something that you may have changed your mind on?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I actually just did it like a couple days ago when I had a headache, and I didn’t know why. That’s the thing that I go to still, and I mean, there’s some cases where it won’t work, where it’s just like, I don’t know, this is like a really bad headache. I don’t usually get headaches, but if I don’t sleep well or something, something going on or my cycle, I will get a headache and I use it.

I use four of the Meriva, which is a phytosomal curcumin, which increases the bioavailability of the curcumin. I use the Thorne brand just because I like the, I think the brand is reliable, no affiliation with them, but it works for me. It really does. So it’s, I think, 500 milligrams of curcumin per capsule, I believe. And so I do four, so I’m getting two grams.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, cool.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: But I do still use it.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, just don’t take it right after your workout, right?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, It doesn’t have the same effect.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it doesn’t have the same kind of COX-2 inhibition as the other does, right?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It doesn’t. Uh-huh. And in fact, I think it helps with DOMs, delayed onset muscle soreness.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, I’m sure, yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And so sometimes, I do use it actually after a really, like, hard squat workout.

Tim Ferriss: All right. I’m glad I asked.

So speaking of not getting enough sleep, let’s hop to creatine because, God, I don’t know where I read this, but that higher doses of creatine, maybe like 25 grams, 20, 25 grams could combat sleep loss or some of the effects of sleep loss.

What should we know about creatine? Creatine has been around for a long time. There are dozens of questionable sports performance, athletic performance products come out every year. Most of them are all marketing, no substance.

Creatine has been used by athletes for a very long time, but for at least the last five years, I have been taking it typically five grams a day, more for the cognitive or potential cognitive benefits.

But what else should we know about creatine? Because what you put in your newsletter not too long ago was forwarded to me, and then you told me via text. I was like, okay, we should probably talk about this. So how should we think about creatine and best practices for different applications?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Well, it’s funny. As you mentioned, it’s one of those supplements that have been, it was like in the gym bro world forever, and still people associate it with that. But yet it’s been one of the supplements that’s actually stuck, right? It’s worked. And there’s been countless studies showing its effectiveness, particularly with respect to increasing exercise volume.

So in other words, what creatine is, is it’s essentially, it’s stored in our muscles as something called phosphocreatine. When you take creatine exogenously, it’s stored in our muscles as phosphocreatine and then used for energy. So it’s a way to make energy quicker, right? So the more of it you have stored, the quicker you can sort of make that energy.

So what it’s been shown to do is really help with increasing exercise volume. In other words, you can do one to two more reps per set or sets. I mean, you could do an extra set, or whatever it is you’re doing. And that leads to obviously if you’re increasing your workload, you’re going to have increased muscle mass and muscle strength because you’re increasing your workload. It doesn’t work like protein in the sense that you can increase muscle mass because it’s anabolic. You need to put the work in.

So creatine by itself isn’t going to make your muscles grow, but it is going to make you work harder. It’s going to be easier for you to work harder, and so you end up increasing your exercise volume, which then has adaptations on your muscle. And that’s why a lot of people like it because for one, they want their muscles to grow bigger and stronger, and two, some people like to use it during competitions or something because they want to be able to increase that exercise volume as well. It’s also really good for that explosive-power type of exercise, again, because getting that quick mobilization of producing energy.

And I’m just glossing over decades of research and a lot of specifics here, because I want to get to the brain. But it turns out creatine is something that our liver makes a little bit, I think maybe one to two grams a day. It’s also something that’s found in dietary sources, particularly animal products. So it’s high in meat, poultry, fish, dairy, not so much in vegetables. So vegans and vegetarians actually end up — they can have lower creatine if they’re not supplementing with it because they’re not eating animal products. Well, it turns out that it seems as though if you’re supplementing and eating a high meat diet, you’re getting a good amount of creatine. Five grams seems to be about the point at which your muscles get saturated at least over the course of a month or so. So if you’ve been using creatine for a month or two, your muscle stores are saturated, and five grams a day is kind of what’s consumed by the muscle on a daily basis to kind of maintain that.

So I would argue that you might want to go above that to get the brain benefits, and here’s why. Because your muscle is very, very greedy when it comes to creatine. So that five grams that you’re taking — I used to take five grams a day until about last April or March or something like that. So the five grams a day is what’s been shown in countless studies, and that’s probably why you take it. I took it because it was countless studies showing five grams a day was the dose. That was the dose that you needed to get the muscle benefits.

All these brain benefits now coming out seem to be at higher doses, and you mentioned one that was 25 grams, I mean 20 to 25 grams, which is kind of a crazy study where they did about 21 hours of sleep deprivation, essentially. They were barely sleeping at all. And giving them the 25 grams of creatine, 20 to 25 grams, depending on their weight, seemed to not only negate the negative effects of sleep deprivation on their cognition, but it also improved their cognition beyond what their baseline normal cognition is when they were sleeping.

And that’s what was really intriguing to me as well as some of the other studies where older adults are given 20 grams of creatine and it improved their cognition. We now have the first pilot study in Alzheimer’s disease where, again, 20 grams were given to a very small number of people with Alzheimer’s disease. It also improved cognition. It turns out that when you start to go above the five grams and you get into more the 10 grams range, then some of that creatine is getting into the brain versus being all consumed by the muscle. I personally use creatine now. I do 10 grams a day, every day. And what I have noticed, and this could be totally placebo, but I’ll tell you when I don’t do my 10 grams a day, what I have noticed is that the afternoon sleepiness kind of slump I get is completely gone if I take my 10 grams a day. 10 grams. I don’t get afternoon sleepiness. I miss it. I get it.

So it’s not like a stored-up kind of thing. It’s like, no, if I miss it that day, it’s noticeable. If I travel and I don’t have it, it’s noticeable. So I’m hooked on the 10 grams a day. If it’s placebo, I don’t care. It works. On top of that, what I’ve also been doing ever since that study came out with 21 hours of sleep deprivation, I take about 20 grams of creatine when I’m traveling and I have to give a talk or I’m doing a podcast, particularly because oftentimes I’m traveling either to Central Time or to Eastern Time. And I’m giving a talk early in the morning, which is 6:00 a.m. my time. I got to be on my game. So I take the 20 grams and I kid you not, it’s like you get this brain boost, but without the caffeine. It’s hard to explain.

Tim Ferriss: Without creepy crawly ants on your skin, jittery caffeine overdose.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right. Without that jittery thing. And even that, sometimes the caffeine isn’t enough if you’re really jet-lagged, especially if you’re going across time zones.

Tim Ferriss: Well, also for me, it’s like I’m a caffeine fast metabolizer. If I have a cup of coffee, I’m on fire for 25 minutes and then I’m sleepy. I think some of that is actually a glucose response, but that’s a whole separate thing. I’ve been using glucometer when I was doing all my ketogenic experiments and so on. I’m like, wow, if I have too much coffee, there is a huge, which is not that surprising, spike in glucose and then a very predictable subsequent drop off. So it doesn’t end up being net net that helpful for me unless I’m doing a 20-minute sprint on something, which is probably never.

So the creatine is super interesting to me. Let me ask some very specific, maybe mundane questions, but I think they’re practical, which is, when these subjects were taking 20 or 25 grams, was that in one sitting? Was that in multiple divided doses? When you take it, is it in powder form? Is it little sachets that you can take with you on travel days? Is it encapsulated? What does it actually look like?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. With respect to all the studies, I don’t remember if they were in one sitting. A lot of studies are. If they do like a 20 gram, it will be in one sitting. What I do is different. I do five-gram doses. So creatine monohydrate is the form I take. It’s the absolute tried and true — 

Tim Ferriss: The gold standard. Yeah, it’s been around — 

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It’s the gold standard.

Tim Ferriss: It’s been around forever.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. There’s a lot of other marketing out there that talks about other types of creatine, but that’s really the gold standard. And I had Dr. Darren Candow on my podcast. He’s a creatine researcher at the University of Regina in Canada, and we talked all about this and he really convinced me, creatine monohydrate is the way to go. I asked him about every type of creatine under the sun. But the way I take it is in five-gram doses. And so I do five grams first thing in the morning, and then I’ll do my workout and then I do another five grams about 11:00 a.m. And that’s my 10 grams that I get.

Tim Ferriss: Got it.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: When I’m traveling, I do have these sachets that, again, Thorne makes. By the way, no affiliation. I mean, there’s probably a million other — I like Thorne because their creatine is NSF-certified, and so it’s free of contaminants. I really like that. So again, find your own favorite brand, but I like this brand. And they have sachets, which are five-gram sachets. And so I will have my 10 grams for the day, or again, if I’m traveling for work-related purposes, I will take 15 to 20 grams depending on how much I need. In that case, I will do two 10-gram doses. For me, I can tolerate that. I don’t have any GI problems with it. Some people do.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I was going to bring that up.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. Some people do. I think doing the five-gram doses is pretty easy on the gut. Most people don’t have a big problem with the five grams.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, five is fine.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It’s when they go above that.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So I’ll say a few things. So the NSF-certified is a pretty simple cheat code just to use as a filtering mechanism for a lot of supplements. And it is shocking how inconsistent supplement contents are. I mean, I’ve looked at lab reviews of 20 off-the-shelf melatonin products, and it ranges from zero melatonin up to 20x the label amount. It’s just bananas. So I use Momentous creatine, but it’s passing the same hurdle.

And I’ll say good news, you can reduce the likelihood of cognitive deficit from sleep deprivation. Bad news is you could increase the likelihood of disaster pants if you have 20 grams at one sitting. And I will say, maybe from personal experience, maybe I’m just talking about somebody else, but if you really want to increase the likelihood of disaster pants, then you can do a bunch of caffeine, like a double espresso or black coffee with MCT powder, and then have your creatine around the same time. That would be asking, you’re going to want to pack some Pampers in your travel kit if you do that. So yeah, just be aware of the GI stuff.

But I’m excited to up my intake, because the science that you cited in the study or studies in your newsletter seemed really compelling. And it’s also one of those supplements where it’s like, okay, look, I assume this is on the grass list. They generally recognized it’s safe, seems very well-tolerated, over decades and decades of research, assuming you don’t have some who knows, right? Really outstanding kidney dysfunction or something, maybe. So why not, in a sense? It’s also relatively inexpensive compared to a lot of things.

Let me ask you, just because this has been on my mind. With the sulforaphane — I mangled the pronunciation a bit. Sulforaphane. Do you take that better on an empty stomach? Better with food? This has become an issue when I’m doing the intermittent fasting sometimes, especially if there’s something like the AREDS 2, which I’m taking for the eye health, which is supposed to be twice a day. And I’m like, oh, it’s part of the reason why I’ve been doing the, quote, unquote, “dirty fasting,” with a little bit of fat in the form of that heavy cream in coffee, was to try to take supplements earlier in the day that are benefited from some type of fat in terms of absorption. Sulforaphane. Does it matter?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I think if you can take it fasted, that’s great. Some people find it kind of as hard on their stomach and so they like to take it with food, and that’s really the only reason to take it with food is because they get upset stomach. It’s like GI problem. So that would be, again, the only really real reason that you would have to really take it with food.

Tim Ferriss: I wanted to loop back around just so people aren’t like, “Ferriss, you forgot about vitamin D.” I wanted to talk about vitamin D. So the vitamin D, I’ve taken vitamin D forever, tend to take 5,000 IU a day. I particularly in the summer get I would say at least an hour in the sun without skin protection. And I built up to that. I’m not an idiot about it. And yet, I am barely — in my labs, I’m always barely squeaking by on vitamin D.

And for almost all of my adult friends who get labs — and this is also race agnostic, right? Everybody is deficient or just on the border of being deficient, even if they seem to be taking a lot of supplemental vitamin D and getting a lot of sunshine. And I have to ask myself, what the hell is going on here? In what set of circumstances is it possible that everyone would be so deficient if they seem to be getting a bunch of sunlight, they’re taking a bunch of supplemental vitamin D? Can you shed any light on this?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I can.

Tim Ferriss: Or is there a problem with this measurement in the first place? Which is why I was talking about proxies and confounders and stuff earlier with respect to some of the other studies. Yeah, so please and please educate me.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes. Okay. So the way vitamin D is measured, so vitamin D actually gets converted into a steroid hormone, and this steroid hormone, essentially, it’s going inside the nucleus of our cells where all of our DNA is and it’s activating 5 percent of the protein encoding human genome. Many of these genes, it activates Klotho. By the way, you mentioned Klotho. Vitamin D is important for activating Klotho.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Nice.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. So very hugely important for dementia risk, which we can talk about. But to answer your question, so your vitamin D levels are measured by a proxy and it’s called 25-hydroxy vitamin D, which is the precursor to the steroid hormone. So essentially, vitamin D3, which is made in your skin, or if you supplement with it, exogenously gets into your bloodstream. And that vitamin D3 then goes to the liver and it’s converted into 25-hydroxy vitamin D. That’s the major circulating form of vitamin D.

After 25-hydroxy vitamin D is made in the liver, it then goes to the kidneys and it’s made into the actual act of steroid hormone, which is called 1,25-hydroxy vitamin. Well, it turns out the enzymes that are doing the conversion of vitamin D3 into that stable form that everyone gets when they’re getting a vitamin D blood test, that’s what they’re looking at, requires magnesium to work. And there have been studies showing that with low magnesium, it doesn’t happen readily at all.

Tim Ferriss: Interesting. Interesting.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And so 50 percent of the US population has insufficient levels of magnesium. So you’re talking about a coin toss here, right? One out of two. One out of two. You have 50/50 chance a person’s not going to be getting enough magnesium. That’s been shown to actually play a role in circulating levels of vitamin D. There have been NHANES studies and stuff showing that people that have low magnesium intake also have low circulating forms of 25-hydroxy vitamin D. So that’s one thing.

Another thing comes down to genetics. There’s actually a lot of people that have SNPs, very common ones that probably came from more southern areas, that don’t make as much vitamin D3 from the sun exposure because probably they’re getting so much sun, right?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So essentially, there’s the genetic component as well. And I’ve seen a lot of people’s different SNP makeups, and I know quite a few people that actually have to take a super high level of vitamin D3 to actually get enough vitamin D. And then the other thing is that you mentioned earlier the variation between supplements. There have been studies on vitamin D supplements, and it’s the same problem with melatonin. There’s some vitamin D supplements with a fraction of what is stated in terms of concentration of vitamin D3 on the nutrition facts, and then some of them have 10 times as much vitamin D.

So there’s just this huge variation where you’re like, it says it has 5,000 IUs but it only has 500. So there’s a lot of different factors that could be contributing to that as well. And then there’s also in terms of people getting sun exposure, you said you don’t wear sunscreen, some people do. People that have darker skin pigmentation have melanin. That’s a natural sunscreen. There have been studies showing that, for example, out of the University of Chicago, there was a study that was published a few years back showing African-Americans have to stay in the sun six to 10 times as long as a Caucasian to make the same amount of vitamin D3 from the same amount of sun exposure. Because they have a natural sunscreen, melanin, which is that darker skin pigmentation. It’s a natural sunscreen. It’s also why their skin always looks great as they’re aging. You’re like, “Oh, you’re 75? Your skin looks like you’re 30.”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I remember, I won’t mention him by name, but meeting this African-American fellow. And I thought he was 25, and he was 53 and had five big — and the way we got to that is I was like, “Oh, are you married?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I have five kids.” And I was like, “Wait, what? You have five kids? You don’t look Mormon.” Like, “Wait, what’s going on here?” And lo and behold.

So let me dig into some of this real quick. So recommended brands for vitamin D and how much should someone like me potentially be taking as a starting point, because I’m also wary of taking too much vitamin D. I don’t want to overdose on vitamin D. It seems like there are some risks associated with that. Maybe I’m overstating them, but how do you think about that? And then in terms of this rate limiting factor that you mentioned, magnesium, what type of magnesium? How much? How should I think about both of these?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Okay. So first of all, we need to talk about vitamin D levels and what the optimal levels are, and that’s really important for someone to figure out how much they should supplement with. I tend to think anywhere between 40, 60 to 80, 40 to 80 nanograms per mil, you’re in an optimal range. I like 40 to 60. I think that’s my sweet spot, and that’s because there’s lots of studies out there showing all-cause mortalities lower within that range. Fifty nanograms per mil would be great. I mean, that’s a great place to be. If you’re below 30, if you’re about just 30, you might want to try to get up to 40. 

Tim Ferriss: Let’s just say for argument’s sake that I’m at 30. I think I’m probably closer to 40, but let’s say it’s 30.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Okay. For someone that’s at 30 nanograms per mil is supplementing with 5,000 IUs a day and getting an hour of sun in the summer without sunscreen, that you probably should be closer to 50 nanograms per mil, I would say, if you’re taking that — 

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’ll check my last labs. I just had them pulled two weeks ago, so I’ll double check.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right. So for someone in that case, you might go up to 7,000 IUs and check and see where you’re at a month later. And if you then are in the 40 to 50 range, then that’s your optimal dose to take. And this is an important conversation to have, Tim, because it really is, there’s an individual component here and people just want to, at the end of the day, they want to — how much do I take? How much do I take?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Well, you have to get a vitamin D blood test. This is one of those — 

Tim Ferriss: For sure.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: This is one of those that you have to really measure because, as you mentioned, there’s huge variation there in terms of absorption. And then the magnesium issue, there’s the RDA for magnesium. So for men, it’s about 400 milligrams a day. For women, it’s about 300 milligrams a day of magnesium intake from diet or supplemental sources. If you’re taking a supplement, and also if you’re athletic and sweating a lot and using the sauna, those requirements can go up between 10 percent to 20 percent, depending on how physically active you are. If you’re like the endurance athlete, you’re on the 20 percent higher range. If you’re more just like the average, like I’m a committed exerciser, then you might have to go up 10 percent above that.

So typically, the best forms of magnesium to take are the forms of magnesium that are the organic forms. So that would mean it’s bound to salt, like magnesium citrate or magnesium malate or magnesium taurate. Those are more bioavailable than magnesium oxide, for example. There’s also magnesium glycinate, which is also a very bioavailable form. It’s the form that I take as well. And dose range, you can take 300 milligrams a day and probably not have any GI distress. And so that gets you most of the way there. And then you get the rest from your diet. You’re eating some leafy greens. You’re eating maybe some almonds or something, which are really high in magnesium. If you’re not getting any greens at all, then you’re going to have to go up a little bit more to the 400-450 milligram range, especially if you’re athletic. But that if you’re taking something like electrolytes, you’re getting some magnesium there so you can figure out how much magnesium is in your electrolyte and that can be counted towards it as well.

There’s also magnesium threonate, which is the magnesium form that is allegedly able to cross the blood-brain barrier better than other forms of magnesium that I mentioned. And I say allegedly because it’s animal studies that have shown that. There have been a couple of human studies that were, unfortunately, there’s a conflict of interest. They were done by the makers of the magnesium threonate supplement. So that’s always important to keep in mind. But they have shown that magnesium threonate could improve some cognitive scores if you kind of pulled all the cognitive scores together. And so I think that there’s no reason why if you’re interested in cognition and stuff, trying the magnesium threonate.

A lot of people like it as well. So that’s another form of magnesium, although I do think you should probably take some magnesium glycinate along with that because you don’t want all the magnesium going into your brain. You want some of it going into your liver and activating the enzymes that are converting vitamin D3 into 25-hydroxy vitamin D. So that is something to keep in mind if that form of magnesium indeed is going into the brain more, you want to make sure you’re getting some of the other forms to cover the other bases of other organs as well.

Tim Ferriss: What brand of vitamin D supplementation and magnesium glycinate do you use? Is that also Thorne, or are they other suppliers?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I use Pure Encapsulations for the vitamin D. I have some friends, mutual friends of ours, that like the VESIsorb Vitamin D3. So people that are not able to increase their vitamin D as well, VESIsorb really increases the bioavailability of a lot of things, including ubiquinol, the CoQ10 I mentioned. I should have mentioned that I buy my dad. That’s the form I get for him because it increases the bioavailability. Also, some fish oil, it’s been shown to increase the bioavailability. So VESIsorb Vitamin D3 can be found at Pure Encapsulations. I don’t have an affiliation with them, either. They also have a lot of clean third party tested products as well. And then I use their magnesium glycinate. For the magnesium threonate, I use Xymogen. I like the Xymogen magnesium threonate.

Tim Ferriss: Great. All right, thank you. I’ll get on the magnesium, and I’ll also check my last labs. I mean, I am very bespoke about this stuff, and to your point, you got to check your levels, guys. You can’t just be shooting in the dark here. It’s not a good idea.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right.

Tim Ferriss: All right. Where should we zig and zag to next? Do you want to talk about microplastics and mitigation strategies? 

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It’s really a big mess. And the microplastics are now, it’s not just, okay, well, I’m not going to drink out of bottled water, plastic bottled water. If you can get any kind of water filter, any kind of water filter is great. Reverse osmosis is the best because it filters out the smallest, smallest nanoplastics, which are the kind that are actually crossing the blood brain barrier and getting into the brain. In the brain, they’re associated with Alzheimer’s disease and all kinds of things, but we now know they’re in chewing gum. So anything with the word “gum base” is made of a plastic polymer. So if you chew gum, it has to be plastic-free gum. And it’s not the same. I’ll tell you that. But it’s in gum. It’s tea bags. Tea bags. If you make tea with tea bags, all sorts of tea bags, they’re releasing just thousands of microplastic into your beverage.

They’re in essentially everything. And the problem is that it’s very hard to avoid. The best things that you can do to avoid them is reduce exposure, which would be the water filter, try to avoid drinking out of any type of water that’s in a plastic bottle. But it turns out a new study just came out showing it’s also been found in glass bottles. I know. It’s like, are you kidding me? Come on.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Apparently, the paint that’s on the lid of the glass bottle is shedding little particles into the beverage, and those are microplastics because the paint has got plastic in it. And so essentially my take home from this is still, you want to probably use — if you’re traveling and you have to choose between a plastic water bottle with water in it and a glass one to buy, I would still buy the glass one because the particle size is higher. It’s larger in the glass bottles, and that doesn’t get absorbed in the gut very well at all. If any, you actually excrete it through feces.

And so I think the next study that’s going to be done will be to show this essentially. I’m sort of speculating here, but because the size matters, the size of plastics and the plastic bottles are super small, and that’s really absorbed well by the gut epithelia and taken up into the bloodstream and gets to the other organs. Also, the plastic chemicals like BPA are in plastic. They’re not in the glass. So I still think that opting for glass is the best option. Even though that study came out, “Oh, glass has more plastic than plastic bottles.” It’s like one of those sensational headlines. The devil’s in the details, right? There’s always a nuance there. And in this case, the size does — 

Tim Ferriss: The size matters. In this case, size matters.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Size matters in this case, for sure. But when it comes to people want to know, is there anything I can do to sort of detox these microplastics? That’s the big concern that people have. Well, if I can’t reduce, if it’s impossible to reduce my exposure because they’re just absolutely everywhere, then can I sort of get rid of them? And unfortunately, there’s not a lot of evidence right now out there that you can perhaps some of this electrophoresis sort of thing where you kind of filter your blood. But who’s doing that? Maybe you’ll do it, but that’s not something that the public’s generally going to do. And I don’t even know that I’m going to do it.

Tim Ferriss: It’s also, even if they were going to do it or willing to do it, it’s not readily accessible or cost-effective for people to use.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So again, your best strategy here is minimizing your exposure to them. And the way to do that for one would be obviously a water filter, top of the list, because the water that’s coming through your tap, through your sink, does have microplastics in it, and that’s a major, major source of microplastic exposure for many, many people. So if you can get any type of water filter again. You can even get countertop reverse osmosis water filters. Those are great for filtering out the majority of microplastics. Big, big, big — 

Tim Ferriss: I wonder if the Big Berkey countertop filtration system is effective at filtering out microplastics? I don’t know.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It is. It’s effective at filtering out microplastics. It’s not clear about the nano-nano, like the super, super small size ones. It might. It might not. I don’t know, but it does, definitely the micro size ones, it does filter out microplastics. So the thing with reverse osmosis is it’s really filtering out all, even the nanoplastics as well. Of course, you have to consider re-adding certain minerals and trace elements that are found in water back to your water. And some reverse osmosis companies do that. You can have them put on a filter that’ll just add it back in after it filters out all the microplastics. But you can also just buy mineral drops and put those in your water, or you can take a mineral supplement that has some of these minerals that are taken out as well.

The other thing I do want to mention is that the plastic-associated chemicals are another concern, and that would be like the BPA, BPS. These chemicals are endocrine disruptors. They disrupt hormones. They’re also associated with Alzheimer’s disease or associated with cancer, all sorts of things. And those can actually — I think, actually. This is a big speculation on my part, just based on animal studies. I think sulforaphane plays a role in detoxing BPA from our system, and that’s because of the whole situation where it activates the very same enzymes that do excrete BPA through urine. It does that, and it’s been shown in animal studies, animal studies that are given sulforaphane, and then given a high dose of BPA, it completely blunts the toxicity of the BPA, which is pretty interesting as well.

So the other thing to keep in mind is heat, and I’ll say this. All the to-go cups that you’re out there buying when you go to your favorite coffee shop, fill in the blank for the most part, with the exception of the Blue Bottle Coffee, phenomenal, they’re great, all these paper cups are lined with plastic. And when you add a hot beverage into the plastic lining, it releases all these microplastics into your beverage, and it releases the chemicals like BPA into them, like 50-fold. Blue Bottle Coffee, by the way, they apparently line their cups with sugarcane, polylactic acid, and so they don’t have any plastic.

I remember the other day I went into a Blue Bottle coffee shop and I was like, I really wanted to get a hot tea, and I was like, “Do you guys line your cups with plastic?” And she’s like, “No, we line them with sugarcane.” I was like, “Yes.” So that’s something to keep in mind. You see a lot of people drinking these to-go cups everywhere, and you’re pouring a hot beverage into it. It’s a really, really major source of microplastic exposure because you’re accelerating the breakdown of the plastic. Heat accelerates the breakdown of the plastic, and essentially, you’re doing that in real time, like in an instant, right?

Tim Ferriss: And ditto for the — 

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Bring your own cup. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: — teabags, right? So.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And the teabags, so you have to do loose leaf tea, which is what — now I’m always, it’s got to be loose leaf. I’ll bring my own little — I’ll sometimes open the teabag out and I bring my own little tea steeper thing with me that you can — 

Tim Ferriss: Like the little half globes that connect together.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, exactly. Mine are the ones that you kind of squeeze on it and opens up and then closes the clamps back together. But yeah, so I use that because the teabags, again, you’re getting the heat on top of the plastic, polymers that are making up the teabag and accelerating the breakdown of plastic. So you’re drinking plastic beverage.

And there’s all these health consequences now associated with microplastics. You mentioned the brain. It’s been found 20 times — to accumulate 20 times more in the brain than in other organs. And people with Alzheimer’s disease have up to 20 times more microplastics in their brain than people that didn’t have Alzheimer’s disease. And then the same goes for cardiovascular disease. There’s been a study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine about a year ago, showing that people that had microplastics in their whatever aortic part that they were doing surgery on, those individuals ended up dying of a heart attack within the next three years versus ones that didn’t have any microplastics.

Anyways, all sorts of interesting stuff. We don’t know enough about it. But I think enough said, we do know that they’re not good and we want to try to avoid them as much as we can, and that they are pervasive. They’re everywhere. It’s ubiquitous.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. And there’s some simple things people can do. I mean, this is not necessarily in the same category, but it’s like, look, the effects at least seem to be, I don’t know if they’re well established, maybe there are animal studies on this, but certainly there’s a lot of seemingly compelling evidence pointing to the effects of, say, phthalates as endocrine disruptors on male fertility. And it’s like, look, if you have shampoo or soap with a really strong fragrance, just stay away from it. I mean, they’re very simple guidelines for some of these things that I think can be very helpful.

Yeah, the microplastic stuff is kind of terrifying. I did not realize the gum. I knew about the teabags, the water filtration. Did not realize the gum. I don’t chew a lot of gum, but one of my relatives who has Alzheimer’s has chewed four packs of gum a day for 10 years. And I was like, “Oh, shit. I wonder if that’s a contributor.”

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Wow, that’s crazy. I started chewing gum when I learned about the research showing that xylitol could inhibit some of the S-mutagens bacteria that are involved in cavity formation.

Tim Ferriss: Then a few years later, you’re like, “Goddamn it.”

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Well, I was able to reverse cavities multiple times, and my doctor was like, “Keep doing it.” I’m like, “Yes, the xylitol.” And then I found out, it was like this year, I found this out, Tim. This year the study came out with the gum, and I was devastated. I mean, I’ve chewed so much gum, so much gum, and I’ve let my child chew it, and it’s like, all I could think about was how great it was for the teeth, and now it’s like, oh my God, this has been a source of microplastics that I had no idea. I did thankfully find an alternative xylitol source of gum that is microplastic-free, but yeah — 

Tim Ferriss: It’s like chewing on bark? Is it like chewing on —

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It’s pretty much bark.

Tim Ferriss: — tasteless bark?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It’s actually made from bark.

Tim Ferriss: That’s awesome.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: No, it’s made from trees, like some kind of sap or something from the bark.

Tim Ferriss: Resin or something, yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Sounds delicious. You can’t just do xylitol mints? You have to chew it? I guess you have to get it up —

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: You can do xylitol mints. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss: Okay.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: You can do xylitol mints. I have those as well.

Tim Ferriss: Well, just to, on the same thread of you don’t always get it completely right, I was looking at some of the research docs that I have in front of me, and there’s one section that I highlighted, which was each three-hour increase in nighttime fasting was linked to 20 percent lower odds of elevated hemoglobin A1C, this long-term marker of blood glucose. And then one of your bullets was the effects of alcohol in the brain and cancer risk, and so I was reading this document over dinner. I sent this to you, and my time zones are all screwed up, because I just got back from Polynesia, and so I’m eating at 10:00 p.m., first of all, and then I had a glass of wine, so I put the glass of wine on top of my research document with all of this text visible, and I sent it to you and I was like, am I doing it right? You’re not going to always get it right. But let’s talk about — do you want to talk about the booze for a second?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I mean, so alcohol, yeah, and especially since we were talking about APOE4.

Tim Ferriss: Just to depress people after the microplastics?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I know. It’s like, “You can’t have any enjoyment at all if you want to live a long, healthy life.” No, you need to find a good balance, obviously. So alcohol is — it’s a toxin. It’s also a lot of fun. I mean, it’s fun to drink and have a glass of wine. Sometimes it helps — it feels like you’re lowering your stress, lowering some inhibitions. It’s fun to do with a group of friends and stuff.

It’s not so great for the brain though, and certainly, if you’re concerned about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia risk, and I will say that there’s been a lot of mixed research out there looking at alcohol consumption and dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, where some of it says, well, if you’re doing moderate alcohol consumption, you can actually have a protective effect against dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, where it’s like this idea that alcohol, like a glass of wine a day is actually beneficial for you. So you should be doing that.

Tim Ferriss: I wonder if it’s actually the social interactions facilitated by alcohol versus the moderate alcohol itself, I wonder.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Well, there’s a lot of things going on here. Certainly social interactions, that’s a confounding factor. Also, when people then looked for their APOE genotype, it was found that it was actually in the non-APOE4 carriers that you would find that benefit, not in the APOE4 carriers. And then on top of that, there’s been all this research that, over the years, has looked at moderate alcohol consumption, and depending on the study, that number changes, which is such a big bummer. It’s like, well, what does that even mean? In some cases, it can be seven drinks a day in some cases.

Tim Ferriss: Seven drinks a day?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Sorry, a week.

Tim Ferriss: Okay.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Oh, my gosh. No. In some cases it’s seven drinks a week for a woman, but for a man, it’s like 14 drinks a week.

Tim Ferriss: I wonder who authored that study.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, exactly. It’s a big difference. But on average, moderate alcohol consumption is more like seven drinks a week. Seven drinks a day would definitely be heavy alcohol consumption. That would be more like substance abuse, substance use or use disorder. Let’s cut the substance abuse part out. Alcohol use — 

Tim Ferriss: Why can’t you say abuse anymore? Why do these things have to keep changing? It’s so ridiculous.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And it’s hard for me because I’m always tripping on my words.

Tim Ferriss: Use disorder sounds better than abuse? I mean, what are the reasons behind this? Do you know?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I guess it’s politically correct.

Tim Ferriss: Because I’m finding all this psychedelic stuff, and it was abuse for a long time, and then all of a sudden, nope. Verboten. Can’t say that. Who knows? Anyway.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It’s funny. I still have read so much of the literature that I still say abuse, because that’s what I’m familiar reading. But anyways, back to this, what I was saying, which is seven weeks — sorry. All right, we’re going to cut this out, Tim. Seven drinks a week.

Tim Ferriss: How many drinks have you had before this podcast, Rhonda?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Well, I did have some ketone ester, where there’s a little bit of alcohol that is involved with that.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. Watch out for the — 

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: There’s been — 

Tim Ferriss: — 1,3-Butanediol. Anyway.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right. There’s something called the sick quitter hypothesis, which is essentially a lot of these studies we’re comparing people that are drinking this moderate alcohol consumption with non-consumers, people that abstain from drinking. And it turns out that many, many, many, many studies did not account for the sick-quitter aspect, which is essentially — 

Tim Ferriss: What is sick quitter? Is that English?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: — someone gets sick. Yes.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, sick quitter. I got it. Okay.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Sick quitter.

Tim Ferriss: Okay.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Quitter, yes. So essentially, what it means is they get sick, and so they quit drinking alcohol. And then when they’re filling out their questionnaire, however many years later, whatever, they are asked, “How many drinks do you have a week?” And they say “Zero” because they quit, but they don’t — the question wasn’t asked, “Were you a former drinker?”

Tim Ferriss: The prior drinking habit.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes, very important. And now, more studies are, when they’re doing the questionnaires, are asking that question. But many, many, many years and many, many studies did not ask that question. And so it’s very possible when you’re looking at these cohorts of people that are comparing moderate alcohol consumption to no alcohol consumption, they’re saying, “Oh, look, there’s a benefit. You have less cardiovascular disease risk. You have less dementia risk if you drink versus not drink. We don’t really know if that’s because these people were former drinkers and did so much damage already that that’s why they’re getting dementia more.

Tim Ferriss: In the non-drinker group.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: In the supposed non-drinker group.

Tim Ferriss: Quote-unquote non drinker group.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right, which could have been a former drinker. But I think at the end of the day, when you look at alcohol and cancer, it’s just unambiguous. Alcohol is now classified as — I think it’s a — is it a group-1 carcinogen? Where it’s known to play a role in causing cancer. There’s no gray area here, and there’s many, many different cancers that it’s associated with. So alcohol does get metabolized into acetaldehyde — that is something that can be a mutagen. It is a mutagen. It can cause cancer.

And so there’s a lot of different cancers that’s associated with breast cancer, colon cancer, for example. Breast cancer is a big one because women’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is already high. I mean, a woman has a lifetime risk of one in eight of getting breast cancer. So if you have a room with eight people, one of those women, if you’re at a dinner party, and eight women are there, then one of those women will come down and be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime.

So when you add alcohol consumption on top of that, if you’re talking about moderate alcohol consumption, that risk can go to one in six, which is very significant for lifetime risk. So I do think that alcohol, I mean obviously some people enjoy it, and I don’t know that there’s any amount that’s actually safe, but if you’re really looking for a number, it seems like one or two drinks a week seems to be the safe spot.

I mean, the safest would be zero, right? Zero drinks. But if you’re really not wanting to have the damage, the light drinking, which is the one to two drinks a week, that’s where you’re probably the best off. Talking about a weekend, you have a weekend and you’re doing a glass of wine, maybe Friday or Saturday night. I think that’s the safest if you’re looking for some alcohol consumption. If you’re going above that, just be aware there is definitely a risk of increasing dementia, increasing cancer risk.

However, there are other lifestyle factors that also play a role here, like being obese and exercise. In fact, some of the alcohol and dementia studies that have shown an increase in dementia incidence with alcohol consumption were negated by people that were highly physically active. So I do think there’s other things to consider. You can’t just silo everything, right? I mean, you’ve got to look at the whole lifestyle.

Tim Ferriss: So air squats before gelato and my tequila shots?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right.

Tim Ferriss: Well, let me ask you, what is the purported mechanism, maybe it’s known, by which alcohol increases the likelihood that you’ll experience some of these maladies like cancer, dementia, et cetera? Is acetaldehyde acting as a mutagen and therefore just smashing your DNA, so you have these mutations that then proliferate and turn into some type of dangerous cancer? Is there more to the story of mechanism of action?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. I mean, acetaldehyde is one aspect of it. It’s an important one. But the alcohol itself is causing inflammation. I mean, it’s causing gut permeability, essentially. It’s very hard on the gut. And so what ends up happening is you release inflammatory factors into your bloodstream, like the polysaccharide gets released into the bloodstream. Inflammation gets activated. Inflammation is a major cause of cancer and also brain aging. So the brain aging aspect is definitely linked to the oxidative stress component and the inflammation component. Damage is happening to neurons, and I think one of the reasons why people with APOE4 are a little more sensitive to alcohol is because the repair processes in individuals with APOE4 isn’t as robust.

Tim Ferriss: It’s compromised already.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It’s compromised already, right. And so they’re not able to repair that damage that’s being generated from the alcohol, whereas people without the APOE4 somewhat can repair it a little bit better. And then you add the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier on top of that, and then you’re just getting more inflammation into the brain. And neuroinflammation is a major cause in Alzheimer’s disease. I mean, it’s really a known factor now. And you’re disrupting mitochondria, you’re disrupting — just everything you know about to be important for health is sort of affected by alcohol, through a variety of mechanisms.

Tim Ferriss: Do you ever drink?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I don’t drink very much. I used to drink more. Sometimes I go several months without having anything.

Tim Ferriss: I do. So I’m not putting you on the stand here.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, no.

Tim Ferriss: I don’t drink all the time, but I’m just giving you a little leeway.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. I used to drink at least a couple times a week where I would do the weekend thing, but I don’t drink much anymore. Once in a while I’ll have a glass of Prosecco for a celebration. I do enjoy it, but I definitely try to limit it to certainly once a week. But like I said, these days I’ll go a couple of months without having anything, and then I’ll have a social situation where I like to do it. And the great thing about that is I’m so sensitive to the alcohol that I’m such a lightweight, and it’s great because I get one glass of Prosecco and I’m like, “This is amazing.”

Tim Ferriss: So I’ll say, what fringe benefit, and this could be — 

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Oh.

Tim Ferriss: Go ahead.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Can I mention one other thing, Tim?

Tim Ferriss: Jump in. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So I forgot to mention with respect to the dementia risk and alcohol, you asked about mechanisms, the sleep aspect, right?

Tim Ferriss: Oh, for sure. That’s a huge one.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes, it’s a huge one because alcohol does disrupt sleep.

Tim Ferriss: That’s massive, yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Massive. I know people that use it because it helps them fall asleep easier, so it’s definitely something that decreases that sleep latency. People can fall asleep easier, but it completely disrupts. So they have more awakenings in the middle in the night, and it disrupts REM sleep. So there’s every reason to definitely not drink and certainly don’t drink close to bedtime. You want to kind of be able to get rid of the alcohol before you go to sleep. Going back to your picture, you were doing everything wrong, but — 

Tim Ferriss: Oh, that was, yeah. Am I doing it right? Yeah, that was very much deliberate. 

Rhonda, one thing, and I’m so curious if maybe you’ve heard reports of this, I could ask my audience and figure it out. Wasn’t placebo effect because I didn’t expect it, but it seems like when in ketosis past 1.5 millimolars, even above 1.2 for me, and I use a precision extra device to track that. I’ve tried a number of other devices that are remarkably erratic. In any case, I am much more sensitive to alcohol, much, much, much more sensitive to alcohol, which is great, because then I’m a cheap date. I could have my one glass of mezcal or whatever, and I’m good. And I don’t drink super often. I might take three or four weeks off, but then it’ll be like this week I’m in New York City, this is a city of drinking. A lot of people have decided to do ketamine instead, which I think is a Faustian bargain, shitty trade for a number of reasons.

And then I’ll stop. I’ve a party with my oldest friends this weekend. I’m sure there’s going to be drinking, and then I’ll stop for two weeks, and take a month off or two months off or something like that. It’s kind of how I operate these days. But the ketosis seems to sensitize me, which I thought was pretty interesting. I hadn’t noticed that before when I was in ketosis, probably because I wasn’t drinking during those periods.

But on the ketamine substitute, right? “Oh, this is what I’m using now as a healthier alternative.” I think the “Is this risky?” question is often, “Is this risky or is this bad for me?” can be answered in absolute terms, but it can also be answered in relative terms. So zero alcohol might be better than two drinks. Seems pretty unequivocally that’s the case. But if you then ask in relative terms as compared to what, if you’re swapping in another behavior or smoking after your dinner, or — I mean, smoking’s a whole different kettle of fish that we could unpack some other time. Nicotine’s pretty interesting, but lung cancer less interesting. There is the, as compared to what, when people fight another coping mechanism.

So I just wanted to throw that out there as just another question that I think is worth people asking. If they’re going to abandon something, that’s great if you can just delete it without replacing it with something. But if there is a substitute, if there is an alternative or something that you may end up adding to your behavior or your consumption, just to be aware of that, because you have to measure A versus B, not just a versus lack of A. So just wanted to throw that out there. I’ve seen so many people unravel from ketamine and that I feel a moral responsibility to mention it because it can be so, so incredibly addictive. Fast-acting, short duration, and even though it is very successfully used to treat, say, treatment-resistant depression when it’s administered in a clinic at reasonably higher doses for, let’s just say, six infusions over two weeks, something like that. John Krystal at Yale’s done a lot of great research, and his teams and co-authors — used recreationally, it actually increases your predisposition to depression.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I think psilocybin is a better candidate when it comes to something like that, because it’s really not addicting. And I don’t know if you saw this, Tim, but this really — it’s, of course, people may not be aware, but it’s been shown to treat depression as well, and in more than one study.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, for sure. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. The two major applications are major depressive disorder and alcohol use disorder, as it stands right now.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right. This study just came out, like, gosh, this last two weeks or something showing — is the animal study that psilocybin increased life expectancy by almost 20 percent in mice.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I saw that. And I think that was out of Emory? Am I making that up?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, I think it was.

Tim Ferriss: And I remember looking at it because I was like, wait a fucking second. I think they were giving something like five milligrams of psilocybin to these rats or mice. And I’m going to mess up the numbers a little bit, but I was like, wait a second, because I’ve funded a lot of the science, and for humans who are walking around at one, let’s just call it whatever, 125 to 200 pounds, it’s 25 to 30 milligrams. So on a mix-per-kicks basis, are those rats getting the equivalent of 300 dried grams of mushrooms on a monthly basis?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: No.

Tim Ferriss: I was like, let me look at that. Let me look at that a little more closely. And the metabolism is very different, but it’s still non-trivial. I do think those little furry friends are probably tripping balls, even though I — I do think the life-extension stuff is interesting, and I would say just anecdotally, looking at people who have consumed in South America, ayahuasca for decades, they are — can’t prove cause and effect, but almost always sharper than the rest of the people in their age cohort, almost always, which is interesting. I mean it raises more questions than it provides answers.

But the life extension stuff is interesting. And I’ve been funding some science that Chuck Nichols is doing, looking at the anti-inflammatory applications of different psychedelic compounds, and they are profound, really profound. And what makes it most interesting is that it can be achieved depending on the compound, and he’s tested dozens of them with very, very trace quantities, in sub-perceptual quantities. You do not need any hallucination, any sort of reality distortion to achieve the anti-inflammatory effects.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So like a microdosing.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: A microdosing of it.

Tim Ferriss: Even less than what someone would consider a microdose, like a nanodose.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Wow.

Tim Ferriss: It’s remarkable. And part of my reason for looking at the fasting, the ketogenic diet, also looking at cold exposure, and most recently, this is a whole separate topic, obviously for another time. I’ll be having a scientist on this podcast soon, super credible, very, very well-cited, to talk about vagus nerve stimulation. But when you look at how fasting, I was talking about this old Soviet work looking at schizophrenia, okay, interesting, ketosis for epilepsy and also all sorts of psychiatric conditions, but also things like potentially rheumatoid arthritis or any number of Crohn’s disease, let’s say in the case of vagus nerve stimulation.

My theory also with psychedelics is that in a lot of cases, the anti-depressive effects, anti-depressant effects, the anxiolytic effects, this would be true for exogenous ketones as well, maybe largely, I don’t think it’s a trivial piece of the puzzle, mediated by anti-inflammatory effects addressing chronic inflammation, including neuroinflammation.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Totally.

Tim Ferriss: And so as you said, if you’re chronically suffering from neuroinflammation does not bode well for later life with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and things like this, so I’m trying to throw everything sort of the kitchen sink at this to see what these subjective and then measurable objective effects are. So it’s like, okay, if I did intermittent fasting and I’m doing then cold exposure during — which, by the way, past a certain point seems to shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic activation, particularly with certain breathing patterns. Like, okay, if I did that during the intermittent fast, I’m taking the sulforaphane, doing all that stuff, and then the exercise we talked about and once a quarter doing a three to seven — let’s call it probably every quarter. I used to do a three-day fast. I don’t think I’d do a seven-day every quarter. That’s probably once a year.

But just looking at like, okay, and then the curcumin. It’s like, all right. If we threw four or five at this problem and didn’t get too crazy, go “Murica!” Like more is better, we did the minimal effective dose, but recognized there might be a synergistic effect, like what happens, and what can we measure? So I’d like to do, and I’m in the position where I could spend a lot of money just to see, okay, if we take out my white blood cells and then look at their ability to produce cytokines after certain interventions, like, oh, okay, cool, let’s spend the money. Let’s see what happens after you do this stuff for a couple of weeks. Very, very, very, very interested in all of this. 

Let’s do this, Rhonda. Where can people find you, find what you’re up to, get into all things Rhonda Patrick?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I have a podcast. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube. It’s called FoundMyFitness. You can also just search Rhonda Patrick.

Tim Ferriss: One of the OGs. You’ve been doing it for a while now.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Doing it for a while, yeah. And I’ve got a website, foundmyfitness.com. You can find all my stuff there. You can follow me on Twitter, or sorry, X.

Tim Ferriss: I still say Twitter.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I still do it. I still do it. You can call me on X or Instagram, FoundMyFitness, all one word, or look, just search my name, Dr. Rhonda Patrick.

Tim Ferriss: And you have a newsletter.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I have a newsletter. I have a newsletter, yeah. I send out a weekly email that covers some fascinating new either science, health, fitness, nutrition-related study, and usually it’s applicable. Sometimes it’s something that’s misunderstood in the media, and I break it down every week. I sent you the creatine one. We covered a Vitamin D, dementia one as well. I mean a lot of different fascinating studies. So you can again find that on my website, foundmyfitness.com. You can sign up for the newsletter there.

Tim Ferriss: Awesome. Yeah, I took so many notes, as always. I always take a lot of notes when we have our conversations, not necessarily on the podcast, but also in our text exchanges. Very actionable. I so appreciate what you do in the world. You’ve called a lot of things early. Looking at our timelines has been wild, to look back and I’m like, “Wow, April, 2014, talking about the stuff that now all the fitness influencers are ranting and raving about today in 2025.” It’s like, yeah, you’ve called a lot of things early, and I appreciate your ability to simplify without mangling. Simplify without disfiguring the science. I really respect that. It’s not easy to do. It is such a service to people who care about being scientifically literate, but they also care about and benefit from someone who can take what could be impenetrable and translate it without mistranslating it into something that they can test with limited downside and plausible or supported upside. I just think it’s such a tremendous service. So I appreciate you, Rhonda. I really do.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I appreciate you too, Tim. Thank you for all you do, and your podcasts have been great. I’ve listened to them over the years. You’re one of the few podcasts that I’ve listened to, so you’ve got great, insightful, thoughtful questions and I’ve read your books, so I appreciate all you do. So the feeling’s mutual, and I’m glad we get to still have conversations over 10 years later.

Tim Ferriss: I know, I know. I love it. Yeah. The long game. It’s fun to play the long game. So nice to see you, Rhonda. Everyone, we will put links to everything Rhonda Patrick in the show notes. Check her out. You’ll not be disappointed. And as always, until next time, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself, and thank you for tuning in.

All right, so that’s a wrap. Thank you, Rhonda. Really appreciate it.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Same. Thank you.

The post The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter (#819) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter (#819)

2025-07-24 22:24:15

Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. (@foundmyfitness) is a biomedical scientist and the founder of FoundMyFitness, a platform dedicated to delivering rigorous, evidence-based insights on improving healthspan and mitigating age-related diseases. Through her podcast, website, and YouTube channel, reaching millions globally, she translates complex science into actionable strategies for metabolic health, brain aging, and overall improved healthspan.

Dr. Patrick’s research explores genetic determinants of nutritional response, metabolic health, micronutrient deficiencies, sleep biology, and hormetic stressors, such as exercise, heat, cold exposure, fasting, and phytochemicals. She is an associate scientist and board member at the Fatty Acid Research Institute, where her work focuses on the role of omega-3 fatty acids in metabolic health and brain aging. Her peer-reviewed publications have appeared in top-tier journals, including Nature Cell Biology, The FASEB Journal, and Experimental Gerontology.

By uniting scientific integrity with protocol-driven precision, Dr. Patrick equips individuals and organizations alike with practical, scientifically sound strategies for optimizing health and longevity.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch my interview with Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. on YouTube. The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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Want to hear the last time Rhonda Patrick was on the podcast? Listen to our conversation here, in which we discussed simple methods for extending a healthy lifespan, minimizing cancer risks, the dangers of some common supplements, dietary effects on genetics, and much more.

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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Connect with Dr. Rhonda Patrick:

Website | Podcast | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Health Protocols and Lifestyle Interventions

• Sauna Use: Linked to a 65-66% lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease when used four to seven times weekly. Optimal protocol: 174°F (79°C) for 20 minutes. Temperatures above 190°F (88°C) may be less beneficial.
• Hot Baths: Provide similar cardiovascular benefits to sauna use, with daily hot baths linked to 28% lower cardiovascular disease risk. Protocol: 104°F (40°C) water temperature for 20 minutes.
• Intermittent Fasting (IF) — Specifically 16:8: Time-restricted eating with a 16-hour fast and eight-hour eating window, shown to improve metabolic health, blood sugar control, and activate cellular autophagy.
• Extended Fasting: Water-only fasts lasting seven to 30 days that can trigger profound autophagy and provide anti-inflammatory benefits, though requiring medical supervision for safety.
• Fasting-Mimicking Diet (FMD): A low-calorie, low-protein, plant-based eating pattern for five consecutive days that aims to provide fasting benefits while allowing some food intake.
• Norwegian 4×4 Protocol: High-intensity interval training method involving four minutes at 85-95% maximum heart rate followed by three minutes active recovery, repeated four times to maximize VO2 max improvements.
• Zone 2 Training: Moderate-intensity aerobic exercise performed at conversational pace below the lactate threshold, optimizing fat oxidation, and building aerobic base for endurance and longevity.
• Tabata: A form of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) that involves short, intense bursts of exercise followed by brief rest periods.
• Seniors CrossFit: Adapted functional fitness program emphasizing scalable movements, strength training, and community engagement specifically designed for older adults to maintain independence and health.

Key Health Concepts and Terms

• VO2 Max: The maximum rate of oxygen consumption during exercise, considered the gold standard measure of cardiorespiratory fitness and a key predictor of longevity.
• APOE4: A genetic allele that significantly increases the risk for Alzheimer’s disease, with those carrying two copies developing brain pathology predictably by age 55.
• Klotho: A longevity-related protein that acts as an anti-aging factor, boosted by exercise and vitamin D, and associated with improved cognitive function and extended lifespan.
• Heat Shock Proteins (HSPs): Protective proteins activated by heat stress such as sauna use that help repair misfolded proteins, prevent protein aggregation, and provide cellular protection against damage.
• Autophagy and Mitophagy: The body’s cellular cleanup processes that clear out damaged proteins, organelles, and mitochondria, activated by fasting and intense exercise to maintain cellular health.
• NRF2 Pathway: A genetic pathway that controls the cellular response to oxidative stress and inflammation, strongly activated by compounds like sulforaphane from cruciferous vegetables.
• Ketosis / Beta-Hydroxybutyrate (BHB): A metabolic state where the body uses fat and ketones for fuel, with BHB acting as a clean energy source and signaling molecule with anti-inflammatory effects.
• Glymphatic System: The brain’s waste clearance system that is most active during deep sleep, helping clear amyloid-beta plaques and other toxic proteins from brain tissue.
• Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs): Harmful compounds formed when sugar binds to proteins, causing tissues such as blood vessels and organs to become stiff and contributing to aging and disease.
• Microplastics and Nanoplastics: Pervasive environmental contaminants found in food, water, and packaging that can cross biological barriers including the blood-brain barrier and potentially cause cellular damage.
• Sick Quitter Hypothesis: A confounding factor in alcohol studies where people who quit drinking due to illness are miscategorized as healthy non-drinkers, potentially skewing research results on alcohol’s health effects.

Supplements, Compounds, and Products

• Centrum Silver: A multivitamin specifically formulated for adults 50+ that was used in randomized controlled trials showing it could reduce global cognitive aging by ~2 years and episodic memory aging by ~5 years in older adults.
• Vitamin D: Recommended dose is individualized based on blood tests, aiming for a level of 40-60 ng/mL. A common starting dose is 5,000 IU/day, but some may need more.
• Omega-3 Fish Oil: Crucial for brain health. A dose of ~2 grams/day is mentioned. For APOE4 carriers, the phospholipid form (found in salmon roe, krill oil, or created by the body at higher doses) is recommended for better brain delivery.
• Ubiquinol (Coenzyme Q10): A form of CoQ10 that supports mitochondrial health. Dr. Patrick gives it to her father for his Parkinson’s disease. The VESIsorb formulation by Pure Encapsulations is mentioned for higher bioavailability (and cost).
• Sulforaphane: A compound from cruciferous vegetables (especially broccoli sprouts) that activates the NRF2 pathway, boosting glutathione and aiding detoxification of pollutants like benzene and BPA. Best taken on an empty stomach unless it causes GI distress.
• Creatine Monohydrate: The “gold standard” form. Recommended for muscle performance (increasing exercise volume) and cognitive benefits. A 5g/day dose saturates muscles, while higher doses (10-20g/day, in divided doses) are suggested for cognitive enhancement and combating sleep deprivation.
• Curcumin: Used as a natural anti-inflammatory alternative to NSAIDs for headaches and delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). The Meriva (phytosomal) formulation is recommended for bioavailability, with a suggested dose of four 500mg capsules (2g total).
• Magnesium: Essential for over 300 enzymes, including those that convert Vitamin D. Recommended forms include magnesium glycinate, citrate, and malate. Magnesium Threonate is mentioned for its potential to cross the blood-brain barrier. Typical supplemental dose is around 300-450mg/day.
• Lutein and Zeaxanthin: Polyphenols important for eye and brain health, found in multivitamins and supplements studied in the AREDS2 trials.
• Exogenous Ketones: Mentioned as a potential intervention for cognitive decline in aging, as seen in some case studies. The ketone monoester used in studies is noted as very expensive.
• Psilocybin: Discussed as a non-addictive alternative to ketamine for treating depression and for its potent anti-inflammatory effects, which can be achieved at sub-perceptual doses.
• Momentous: Brand for NSF-certified creatine, used by Tim.
• Avmacol: The brand of sulforaphane supplement Dr. Patrick gives to her mother.
• Xyrem: Oral prescription solution that may be used to treat excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) in adults and children aged seven years and older with narcolepsy.
• Thorne: Recommended for Meriva Curcumin and NSF-certified Creatine Monohydrate.
• Pure Encapsulations: Recommended for O.N.E. Omega-3 Fish Oil, VESIsorb Vitamin D3, and Magnesium Glycinate.
• Xymogen: Recommended for high-DHA fish oil and Magnesium Threonate.
• Big Berkey: Water filtration system.
• Blue Bottle Coffee: Noted for using plastic-free, sugarcane-lined cups that don’t leach microplastics into hot beverages.

Foods and Beverages

• Broccoli Sprouts: The most potent dietary source of sulforaphane, containing 10-100 times higher levels than mature broccoli plants, with powerful anti-cancer and detoxification properties.
• Sardines and Salmon Roe: Excellent dietary sources of omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA in highly bioavailable phospholipid form, with 40-70% of DHA in salmon roe being phospholipid-bound compared to just 1-3% in regular fish.
• Xylitol Gum/Mints: Sugar alcohol sweetener with proven dental health benefits, reducing harmful oral bacteria and preventing tooth decay when consumed at 6-10 grams daily, though most commercial gum contains problematic “gum base” polymers.
• Heavy Cream / MCT Oil: Fat sources commonly used in “dirty fasting” that have minimal impact on insulin levels compared to protein or carbohydrates, with MCTs rapidly converting to ketones while preserving most fasting benefits.

People

• Dr. Mark Mattson: A neuroscientist and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine known for his pioneering research on intermittent fasting and its effects on brain health and neuroplasticity.
• Dr. Valter Longo: A biogerontologist and professor at USC who directs the Longevity Institute and is renowned for his research on fasting, longevity, and the development of the Fasting-Mimicking Diet (FMD).
• Dr. Ben Levine: A cardiovascular exercise physiologist and Distinguished Professor at UT Southwestern who demonstrated that a 2-year exercise program can reverse heart aging by up to 20 years in middle-aged adults.
• Dr. George Brooks: A professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley who pioneered the “lactate shuttle hypothesis,” revolutionizing our understanding of how lactate serves as a crucial fuel for the brain and muscles during exercise.
• Dr. Darren Candow: A professor at the University of Regina who directs the Aging Muscle and Bone Health Laboratory and is recognized as a leading expert on creatine monohydrate supplementation and its effects on muscle health.
• Dr. John Krystal: A psychiatrist and chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine who led the groundbreaking discovery of ketamine’s rapid antidepressant effects, revolutionizing depression treatment.
• Chuck Nichols: A professor of pharmacology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center who discovered the potent anti-inflammatory effects of psychedelic compounds through novel 5-HT2A receptor mechanisms.
• Kevin Rose: A technology entrepreneur, podcaster, and mutual friend who is known for his early trend identification and has been mentioned in the context of third-party testing fish oil supplements.

Relevant Resources

• FoundMyFitness: Dr. Rhonda Patrick’s science-based website, podcast, and newsletter providing evidence-based health information on nutrition, aging, exercise, and disease prevention through deeper understanding of biology.
• Are Saunas the Next Big Performance-Enhancing “Drug?” by Dr. Rhonda Patrick | Tim Ferriss
• Dr. Rhonda Patrick on Life Extension, Performance, and Much More | The Tim Ferriss Show #12
• Exploring Smart Drugs, Fasting, and Fat Loss — Dr. Rhonda Patrick | The Tim Ferriss Show #237
• Dr. Rhonda Patrick’s Supplement Routine (2025) | FoundMyFitness
• Vitamin D | FoundMyFitness
• Dr. Rhonda Patrick’s Omega-3 Supplementation Guide | FoundMyFitness
• Dr. Mark Mattson on the Benefits of Stress, Metabolic Switching, Fasting, and Hormesis | FoundMyFitness Podcast #66
• Exactly What Happened When We Tried Hugh Jackman’s ’16:8 Diet’ | Men’s Health
• We Did a 10-Day Fast at Buchinger Wilhelmi Clinic So You Don’t Have To | Robb Report
• Intermittent Fasting: Does a New Study Show Downsides — Or Not? | Harvard Health
• How Does VO2 Max Correlate with Longevity? | Peter Attia
• Peter Attia on Zone 2 and Zone 5 Training | Peter Attia
• Facts And Myths Of Male Fertility: Tight Underwear, Hot Tubs, Marijuana, And More | Office for Science and Society | McGill University
• Darren Candow, PhD on the Optimal Creatine Protocol for Strength, Brain, and Longevity | FoundMyFitness Podcast #100
• Reverse Osmosis Water Filter: The most effective filtration technology for removing microplastics and nanoplastics from tap water, with membrane pore sizes capable of filtering particles as small as 0.001 micrometers. Big Berkey systems also provide effective filtration in the 24-26 nanometer range.
• Loose-Leaf Tea and Tea Steeper: Brewing method recommended to avoid the billions of microplastic particles released by plastic tea bags, using stainless steel, glass, or food-grade silicone infusers for a plastic-free tea experience.
• NSF Certified for Sport: Third-party certification program that tests supplements for 290+ banned substances and verifies accurate labeling, ensuring products are free of contaminants and safe for athletic use.
• Sustainability at Blue Bottle: A Timeline | Blue Bottle Coffee Lab
• Alcohol | FoundMyFitness
• Dr. John Krystal — All Things Ketamine, The Most Comprehensive Podcast Episode Ever | The Tim Ferriss Show #625

Relevant Research

• Effect of Cocoa Extract and a Multivitamin on Cognitive Function: A Randomized Clinical Trial | PubMed
• Age-Related Eye Disease Studies (AREDS/AREDS2) | National Eye Institute
• Psilocybin Promotes Neuroplasticity and Reduces Neuroinflammation in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer’s Disease | Journal of Neuroinflammation
• Reversing the Cardiac Effects of Sedentary Aging in Middle Age — A Randomized Controlled Trial | Circulation
• The Lactate Shuttle During Exercise and Recovery | Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
• Association Between Sauna Bathing and Fatal Cardiovascular and All-Cause Mortality Events | JAMA Internal Medicine
• Sauna Bathing Is Inversely Associated with Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease in Middle-Aged Finnish Men | Age and Ageing
• Does Sauna Bathing Protect Against Dementia? | Preventive Medicine Reports
• Creatine Supplementation Improves Cognitive Performance After Sleep Deprivation | Psychopharmacology
• Association of Daily Step Count and Step Intensity With Mortality Among US Adults | JAMA
• Brief Bursts of High-Intensity Exercise and Cardiovascular Risk | Mayo Clinic Proceedings
• Microplastics and Cardiovascular Disease | New England Journal of Medicine
• Microplastics in Beverages: Glass and Plastic Bottles | Science of the Total Environment
• The Effect of Xylitol on Dental Caries and Oral Flora | Clinical, Cosmetic and Investigational Dentistry
• Interaction Between Alcohol Consumption and Apolipoprotein E (APOE) Genotype with Cognition in Middle-Aged Men | Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society
• Psilocybin Increases Lifespan and Health-Span of Drosophila via Mechanisms Related to Autophagy | Aging

SHOW NOTES

• [00:00:00] Start.
• [00:04:54] Dealing with aging parents and other topics on the table.
• [00:10:43] How a common multivitamin helps reverse cognitive and memory aging.
• [00:12:04] The importance of supplementation — especially as we age.
• [00:13:10] Effectively supplementing with omega-3 fish oil to counter APOE4 and Alzheimer’s risks.
• [00:16:50] The CoQ10 and omega-3 protocol that has helped Rhonda’s father manage Parkinson’s symptoms for nearly a decade.
• [00:19:28] Sulforaphane: a potent NRF2 activator with an unexpected benefit for Rhonda’s mother’s tremors.
• [00:25:34] How Rhonda convinced her mom to start CrossFit and the power of community-based, senior-focused fitness.
• [00:26:52] The earlier the intervention, the better the outcomes.
• [00:32:25] Intermittent fasting vs. extended fasting and my own results.
• [00:44:31] Does fasting destroy muscle mass? Debunking the catabolism fear and understanding the crucial role of the re-feeding phase.
• [00:57:24] “Dirty” fasting: what really happens to autophagy and metabolic benefits when you add a splash of cream or MCT oil to your coffee?
• [01:00:44] VO2 max: the one metric that may predict lifespan more accurately than anything else, and how we work to improve it.
• [01:12:07] How a two-year exercise program reversed heart aging by 20 years in previously sedentary, middle-aged adults.
• [01:16:18] Lactate isn’t the enemy: how vigorous exercise creates a superfuel that protects and grows the brain.
• [01:20:30] The optimal sauna protocol (temperature and frequency) for slashing dementia risk by 66%.
• [01:29:17] If you’re human, you’ll find a use for curcumin.
• [01:30:43] Creatine for cognition: moving beyond the gym with a powerful, science-backed tool for focus and combating sleep deprivation.
• [01:42:41] Still vitamin D deficient despite taking supplements? Here’s the critical cofactor you’re probably missing.
• [01:53:52] Shocking sources of microplastics in our daily lives, including chewing gum and teabags.
• [02:04:10] The uncomfortable truth about “moderate” alcohol consumption, cancer risk, and why the “sick quitter” hypothesis makes most older studies unreliable.
• [02:17:03] The ups and downs of ketamine and psilocybin on cognition and longevity.
• [02:24:19] Parting thoughts and where to find more from Rhonda.

DR. RHONDA PATRICK QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“After two years of taking the multivitamin, they had improved cognition on a battery of different tests that equated to reducing global cognitive aging by about two years. And on top of that, they reduced their episodic aging by five years. Almost five years. It was 4.8 years.”

— Dr. Rhonda Patrick

“A 70-year-old makes about four times less vitamin D than their former 20-year-old self.”

— Dr. Rhonda Patrick

“There have now been enough studies that have come out looking at cardiorespiratory fitness in the sense of VO2 max and how people with a higher cardiorespiratory fitness have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to people with a low cardiorespiratory fitness.”

— Dr. Rhonda Patrick

“People end up eating about 200 fewer calories per day when they’re doing some form of intermittent fasting.”

— Dr. Rhonda Patrick

“If you have a low cardiorespiratory fitness and you go anywhere above that from low to low-normal, it’s associated with a two-year increased life expectancy. And people with a low cardiorespiratory fitness actually have a higher all-cause mortality that’s comparable or worse than people with known diseases like type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease or smokers, for example. So in other words, being sedentary is a disease. And we need to think about it as a disease, and we should be trying to train to improve our VO2 max.”

— Dr. Rhonda Patrick

“Over the last few years, intermittent fasting has kind of gotten a bad rap because people now equate it with, ‘Oh, loss of muscle mass. I’m going to be catabolic.’ Well, in order to be in a repair mode, you actually do need to be in a catabolic mode.”

— Dr. Rhonda Patrick

“50 percent of the US population has insufficient levels of magnesium. So you’re talking about a coin toss here, right? One out of two.”

— Dr. Rhonda Patrick

“A woman has a lifetime risk of one in eight of getting breast cancer. So if you have a room with eight people, one of those women, if you’re at a dinner party, and eight women are there, then one of those women will come down and be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. So when you add alcohol consumption on top of that, if you’re talking about moderate alcohol consumption, that risk can go to one in six, which is very significant for lifetime risk.”

— Dr. Rhonda Patrick

The post Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter (#819) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.