00:03:39.520I looked into the active ingredients and it feels like very like trademark Tim Ferriss that he is listing out a bunch of like very scientific names for things.
00:03:53.820He's doing the thing of saying ascorbic acid instead of just saying vitamin C.
00:03:57.840He's saying niacinamide instead of vitamin B.
00:04:00.880So it sort of obscures that what this pill is, is like there's some adaptogenic mushrooms in it.
00:04:07.880there's some b vitamins there's some amino acids there's some ginkgo there's some ginseng
00:04:12.820and there's a fuck ton of caffeine oh so like it was largely a caffeine pill people like i feel
00:04:20.200amazing on this absolutely that's like all of the comments on all of the reddits are like
00:04:25.160does anybody know where to find this nothing worked this well and it was like 200 milligrams
00:04:29.960of caffeine starbucks you can find it at starbucks yeah you can find it in the panera lemonade
00:04:35.900please enjoy since selling brain quicken tim ferris has mostly been an investor for
00:04:43.120tech companies like task rabbit and a bunch of others he's a forbes 40 under 40 guy he's a
00:04:49.080princeton graduate and he has quite an ego on his own website he has two poll quotes that are
00:04:57.740blown up one is from wired magazine calling him the superman of silicon valley and another one
00:05:05.920is from the new york times calling him quote a cross between jack welch and a buddhist monk
00:05:11.600i just want everyone to just think through like what would that even be also he's never1.00
00:05:21.240accomplished anything in this case he's just a scam artist he just wrote a stupid fucking book0.99
00:05:26.580And the core message of the book, if I recall correctly, is like how to scam other people, like how to start doing seminars and stuff.0.99
00:05:32.160Yeah, he was like, the best way to create passive income is to do a scam like the one I'm doing on you right now by writing this book.
00:05:39.780So you all have provided me with the perfect segue.
00:05:43.380He did publish the four hour work week in 2007.
00:05:47.040It is on its face like a life hack manual to just work less.
00:05:51.860It's a rebrand of work smarter, not harder.
00:05:54.240among other things. He advises readers to hire people to outsource large parts of your job,
00:06:01.680as you mentioned, so that you can do less. But he also advises things like, hey, you could become
00:06:07.180an expert in something. Go buy the top two or three most popular books on the subject. Schedule
00:06:15.760a free seminar. Invite people to the free seminar and give them like a talk about what you learned
00:06:22.540from the books basically and then book a bunch of paid speaking gigs off of that free seminar
00:06:30.680i'm almost nostalgic for this because now it would be like we'll just get chat gpt to read
00:06:34.960the two most popular books and like you wouldn't even have to absorb the information if you're
00:06:38.980like hey did his next book include or use any of those tips yes it did three years later in 2010
00:06:46.560Then Tim Ferriss follows up with the four hour body, the diet part of his book, which
00:06:52.120is a pretty commanding majority of it, is fully just reheating the nachos of the zone
00:18:26.360He's like, look, you're going to be doing a bunch of self-experimentation.
00:18:30.120That means that you're going to have to challenge your own ideas about correlation and causation.
00:18:34.820right and he gives them some like actually quite good questions to challenge like is this causal
00:18:40.920relationship moving the way you think it is one is like is it possible that what he calls the arrow
00:18:47.040of causality is reversed so like is it possible not that this person ran and therefore got a
00:18:53.820quote-unquote runner's build but rather that they kind of looked like someone who could do well at
00:18:58.600running so they did i'm eating brussels sprouts because i'm farting actually if you think about
00:19:05.820it he asks if uh you're mixing up absence and presence so for example like is a vegetarian
00:19:14.380diet healthier or perceived to be healthier because of the lack of meat or because of the
00:19:19.560increased presence of vegetables okay right like it's just like basic good probing kinds of
00:19:25.100questions at one point he does say quote is it possible that you tested a specific demographic
00:19:31.180that other variables are responsible for the difference for example if the claim is that yoga
00:19:36.680improves cardiac health and the experimental group comprises upper class folk is it possible
00:19:41.900that they are therefore more likely than a control group to eat better food you bet your downward dog0.95
00:19:48.860opposing ass oh god a little spice in the sentence nice so this is like straightforwardly0.87
00:19:55.700good advice that he then proceeds to ignore for the rest of the day like you're reading a book by0.99
00:20:00.820a rich guy who got blood tests a thousand times right he's like don't confuse what's happening
00:20:07.460with rich people with what's happening with you confuse what's happening with me with a single
00:20:13.500rich guy the diet itself is pretty straightforward there are five core rules one is avoid quote
00:20:21.740unquote white carbohydrates so that's like bread pasta rice potatoes that kind of stuff
00:20:26.900two is quote eat the same few meals over and over again especially for breakfast and lunch
00:20:34.160you already do this you're just picking out new default meals this is where he gets into like you
00:20:39.960should not enjoy it and also he does talk about he's like here are some good meals to have on the
00:20:46.120diet one of my favorites is canned tuna packed in water mixed with lentils and chopped onion
00:20:53.760what just like in a bowl yep dude no mayo no lemon juice nothing you gotta get that mercury up
00:21:00.780you want you want you want to be able to see it through your skin like a thermometer
00:21:07.420rule number three is don't drink calories that's a pretty common one rule number four is don't eat
00:21:14.240fruit what it's part of the like slow carb thing right of just like it there's not a ton of fiber
00:21:20.040there is a lot of sugar that's that's not true but whatever whatever rule number five is take
00:21:26.960one day off per week and quote go nuts i recommend saturday often nicknamed fatter day by followers
00:21:34.160But this is also like he's just telling you to like do something you hate all the time and then one day a week you get to do something you like.
00:21:40.880Like surely you can find a happy medium, right?
00:21:58.680But these guys are like basically discovering like fad diet stuff.
00:22:01.680It's like look maxing stuff for men where like we we've gone a little too far and like 19 year olds are like wearing shoulder pads and micro dosing meth.
00:22:13.120Yeah, I will say on the cheat day stuff.
00:22:15.600He comes up with sort of a scientific rationale for the cheat day where he's like, no, it's actually like good and important, like psychologically important.
00:22:24.840No, like physically metabolically important.
00:22:28.800okay quote paradoxically dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week
00:22:34.700increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate doesn't downshift from extended caloric
00:22:41.100restriction not true that's not true i know he's like oh don't trust your your doctor the science
00:22:47.100but like you should trust the science bro that's not true at all you want to get your body right
00:22:51.420on the verge of starvation mode and then boom an entire pizza yeah remember like the p90x muscle
00:22:57.780confusion thing you're doing that but for your metabolism you can't let it get too comfortable
00:23:02.680the formula for meals uh for this is pretty straightforward very standard diet advice
00:23:10.340he says for every meal you should pick one item from each of his sort of prioritized food groups
00:23:16.380that's lean protein vegetables that are either low carb and or high fiber and the third group
00:23:24.300is legumes is a bean diet baby beans at every meal so you're gonna fully endorse this book now
00:23:32.240i love it i'm blurbing it it's gonna be great the only diet that works
00:23:38.320he's honing in here on this idea of whole grains and quote-unquote slow carbs that was popular at
00:23:44.420the time the underlying idea here is that so-called fast carbs so things with like white
00:23:52.020flour white sugar whatever else are big drivers of people getting fat and that so-called quote
00:23:57.400unquote slow carbs like whole grains and fiber rich vegetables would be less likely to lead to
00:24:03.460weight gain and would like help with weight management this is based on the glycemic index
00:24:08.180which we've talked about before on the show the glycemic index is a way of it's sort of presented
00:24:15.200as a way of measuring the impact of various foods on like humans blood sugar but the way that they
00:24:21.880determined it is in groups of between five and 15 people since then in the in the years since
00:24:29.860the development of the glycemic index um we have found that it is like almost useless for individual
00:24:35.860guidance because different people's bodies have like such wildly different responses to the same
00:24:41.860foods going in them right that for some folks white rice might be like a major issue for their0.69
00:24:47.460blood sugar. And for other folks, it like doesn't really do much, right? But what if a rich guy who
00:24:52.220wrote an airport book already did all the research and told me what works for him? What if a wealthy
00:24:56.780man said it with confidence? What if a guy wearing an aura ring told me that I should eat sweet
00:25:01.340potatoes? A 2021 meta analysis in the journal Advances in Nutrition looked at 43 studies with
00:25:09.580samples totaling just under 2 million adults. And they were looking at like, when we're advising
00:25:15.180people to have a low glycemic index diet. What are the actual results of that? What they found
00:25:22.540was, quote, results of 30 meta analyses of RCTs from eight publications demonstrated that low GI
00:25:28.760diets were generally no better than high GI diets for reducing body weight or body fat.
00:25:35.480While carbohydrate quality, including glycemic index, impacts many health outcomes, GI as a
00:25:42.520measure of carbohydrate quality appears to be relatively unimportant as a determinant of bmi
00:25:48.040or diet induced weight loss that makes right so like have your slow carbs they're good for you
00:25:53.620for a lot of reasons they're not going to make you thin also this is just like yet another diet
00:25:57.940basically being like you should eat brown rice and broccoli and chicken breast but those diets
00:26:01.880are marketed to ladies not yeah nerds who want to be wealthy yeah well i wonder what he kind of
00:26:07.280would have come up with if it wasn't for his research with the ultrasound machines i spent
00:26:13.720250 000 and here's what i've come up with it's like brown rice eat some beans i'm also now just
00:26:20.260imagining tim ferris with like a pulse oximeter clipped to every finger yeah just eating tuna
00:26:25.880out of a bowl like a dog just with his face so his main chapter or sort of section about weight
00:26:32.920loss is called subtracting fat he has subtracting fat he has adding muscle and he has improving sex
00:26:39.720don't listen to gimmicky little taglines folks people are going to tell you that you can quote
00:26:44.960lose weight you can't you can subtract fat however also like don't listen to marketing
00:26:50.240language but the first header in the first chapter about weight loss is quote how to lose 20 pounds
00:26:57.180in 30 days without exercise hey no one's ever said this before no one's ever promised that0.62
00:27:02.680This is how, like, tech guys talk, where they try to, like, throw in what feels a little more like computer language into, like, everyday shit, right?0.86
00:27:11.140So they talk about optimizing all the time, and it's just, it's so tedious and annoying.0.98
00:27:18.040Here's how to pivot to being a skinny person.
00:27:20.780The other thing, did you guys see this article that they're now recommending?
00:27:25.220You know this whole thing of, like, a stack?
00:27:26.580You have a stack of, like, the caffeine that you do?0.88
00:27:28.260Oh, we're going to talk so fucking much about stacks.0.93
00:27:30.840tech bros are recommending that you add nicotine patches yeah to your stack oh hell yeah dude no0.90
00:27:36.560they're talking about nicotine and caffeine both as being nootropics which is a wild way to read
00:27:41.840those things because that's also a made-up term so like yeah they're nootropics like lucky charms
00:27:45.600nootropics why not like whatever it does feel like we're gonna circle back to just like you
00:27:50.020can smoke and they're gonna rebrand it as like drag maxing right like burn smashing and then0.68
00:27:55.380you're all gonna be fucking smoking again you know like the the famous madman ad campaign where0.97
00:28:00.400they're like uh they're toasted all right they're gonna start doing that shit yeah um so he does0.99
00:28:06.780use this header of like how to lose 20 pounds in 30 days without exercise and then his example0.98
00:28:12.180for himself is that he lost 15 pounds in six weeks oh nice okay so do more than i did he also
00:28:20.080has some before and after pictures that are fascinating they are almost a complete
00:28:24.900recreation of like a very popular style of like 2010s body positivity instagram post hell yeah
00:28:33.960where like a thin woman would take a picture of herself slouching so that she would like have0.97
00:28:40.080some rolls and then would take another picture of herself standing up straight and the caption0.90
00:28:45.400would be like it's the same body he like has like a quote-unquote before picture that is him
00:28:51.480leaning forward and weighing, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 pounds more. And then the next picture
00:28:56.380is him shirtless and ripped and standing off to the side. It's like the, the Alex Jones picture,
00:29:02.060uh, where, where he's just slightly more red in the after photo.
00:29:09.620The initial diet that we talked through sounds pretty straightforward, like focus on protein
00:29:15.040and fiber, eat from certain food groups, get some exercise, that kind of thing. But then he gets to
00:29:21.060a section where he talks about like common mistakes okay and now it's getting real complicated
00:29:26.360mistake number one not eating within one hour of waking preferably within 30 minutes it's all
00:29:33.240metabolism confusion at the end of the day his argument is that you should he's like i eat one
00:29:37.880tablespoon of almond butter and four brazil nuts upon waking oh yeah i keep it next to my bed just
00:29:44.320right before my first cigarette of the day absolutely he says that uh mistake number two
00:29:49.880is not getting enough protein per meal mistake number three is not drinking enough water but he
00:29:54.720doesn't really define enough mistake number four he says is believing that you'll cook especially0.80
00:30:00.020if you're a bachelor what the fuck is that what's wrong what what throughout this book he is assuming
00:30:04.480that the reader is him and he's like i don't cook so they don't cook yeah i feel like learn to cook0.99
00:30:08.760would also be like reasonable advice for a book like this he has a whole mistake just about um
00:30:15.220mistiming weighings with your menstrual cycle. And then in parentheses, he writes,
00:30:20.040not a problem for bachelors. He talks about how cheat day is like a really important part of the
00:30:32.320diet, not just for adherence to the diet, but for its actual effectiveness. He says that the big
00:30:41.700issue that cheat day helps with is uh to minimize your release of insulin which triggers your body
00:30:49.820to store fat metabolism spoofing that's what it's doing yes so he has a whole thing where he's like
00:30:55.780uh you have to increase the speed of gastric emptying or how quickly food exits the stomach
00:31:04.500oh he's doing like a poop speed run like you want to get from food to poop in like 35 minutes your
00:31:09.480Your body should not be absorbing the nutrients from the food.
00:31:11.740It should be blasting through you at full speed.
00:31:14.660Actual food should be coming out of you at the end.1.00
00:31:16.920Just a full slice of pizza coming out your ass.1.00
00:31:19.760But can people even do anything about that?1.00
00:31:22.140Could you manipulate how fast you're pooping and like processing food?
00:31:25.460There are ways that you can line your pipes to like in your house.
00:31:29.340I imagine if you implement the same method so that you can sort of create a slide where
00:31:34.220the food cannot actually enter your stomach in any meaningful way.
00:31:37.240You're just drinking a bottle of lube and just like eating something to slide through,
00:32:48.620This is what, before we had meta-analyses, right, before we had the studies to analyze, guys were just shitting on scales, right?
00:32:56.280This is what Isaac Newton would have done.
00:32:57.740I love that he's like, I'm not going to get into these meta-studies.0.99
00:33:01.120instead i weighed my shit what are you a fucking nerd i'm like squatting over a bathroom scale0.98
00:33:07.820it's so absurd and it really feels like like he presents this in a way that is very much like1.00
00:33:15.520guys i cracked the code yeah yeah yeah in the meantime you are i guess fishing poop out of
00:33:21.920your toilet yeah and weighing it like what are we doing here was there is there any basis to this at
00:33:26.260all michael i like i like how you're at you're like so aubrey did you look into this or yeah0.98
00:33:31.280this guy this guy is shitting on a scale michael all right no i fact checked a lot of things for0.73
00:33:38.300this episode i did not fact check the poop weighing also it's like good to leave out of0.98
00:33:43.000a first date conversation dude good to leave out of your book no one wants to hear about this
00:33:47.680i would rather i would rather you like fraudulently create a peer-reviewed study than tell me about
00:33:53.340this he says that there's a third principle which is engaging in brief muscular contractions
00:34:00.600throughout your binge kegels like butt kegels like intestinal kegels no he's doing like wall
00:34:08.040squats like he does like a wall sit he does uh he says wall tricep extensions and 60 to 120 seconds
00:34:17.240of total air squats immediately prior to eating main courses on his binge day oh my god dude so0.71
00:34:25.240he's like going to fucking pizza hut just like squatting down next to the booth yeah and then0.97
00:34:34.500like getting up to do fucking calisthenics for two minutes before he like eats a whole pizza0.98
00:34:40.200like it's it's extremely odd so not only is like the food miserable to eat six days a week because0.97
00:34:47.340he refuses to allow for seasoning or whatever but you have to do wall squats yeah in public
00:34:53.400on your binge day because you might enjoy it right yeah don't get caught enjoying your food
00:34:59.400i'm at the buffalo wild wings dude holding holding a wall squat for three minutes um
00:35:04.340so he has a whole argument here about how doing these sort of brief exercises and muscle
00:35:12.100contractions brings glucose transporters to the surface of muscle cells opening more gates for0.97
00:35:20.220the calories to flow into where is he getting this shit he's just making he's using big words0.98
00:35:25.360to make it sound real but like what is he talking about michael he's not making it up it's based on0.97
00:35:29.620one japanese rat study oh great okay cool just because someone reads his blog does not make them
00:35:35.960a japanese rat so earlier mike you mentioned stacks oh yeah tim ferris experiments on himself
00:35:43.560on which ones he thinks are most effective for weight loss he talks about one of his most0.97
00:35:49.600effective stacks being the quote-unquote classic eca stack and i was like what the fuck is an eca
00:35:57.080stack ephedrine caffeine and aspirin yeah oh what he talks about having done this eca stack ephedrine
00:36:05.320caffeine and aspirin ephedrine now banned yeah because so many people died from using it and
00:36:11.200also because you can use it to make meth my stack of uh chlorine and bleach so his current preferred
00:36:18.140stack is now the p a g g stack it consists of pcp garlic extract bath salt green
00:36:26.900and an antioxidant that naturally exists in meat and some vegetables like i googled it
00:36:35.020it's alpha lipoic acid and i was like what the fuck is this and they're like it's in broccoli0.76
00:36:39.800and steak and i was like oh well have some broccoli and a steak yes sounds less cool when0.98
00:36:44.360you're like i eat some broccoli and drink too these guys are constantly bragging about how
00:36:47.820easy they are to dupe right because they're like oh this supplement changes everything but like0.96
00:36:51.580they're just falling for like marketing claims ultimately take a fucking one a day like yeah0.65
00:36:55.600part of what makes it complicated is the supplements themselves part of it is the0.94
00:37:03.260schedule i am sending the schedule this one has a bunch of sciencey names uh so apologies in
00:37:11.920advance to whoever yeah peter all right i'll do it how did i do it i followed a simple supplement
00:37:17.680regimen. Morning. No explode 11. Two scoops. That's like an anti-diarrhea medication. Yeah.
00:37:24.380No explode. No explode. If you mix that with the diarrheals that he takes. And just let him0.86
00:37:29.960fight it out inside of you. That's intestinal confusion. May the best man win. All right.
00:37:36.200No explode 11. Two scoops. Slow niacin or timed release niacinamide. 500 milligrams. Each meal
00:37:45.260chromate pre-workout body quick post-workout mycelian prior to bed polycosinol polycosinol
00:37:55.140sure chromate again alpha lipoic acid and slow niacin this is like a lot of steps to take each
00:38:03.920day and he's using these names like no explode and slow niacin and chromate and that kind of stuff
00:38:12.160most of these are pretty common things no explode 11 is just a pre-workout
00:38:18.880pre-workout fresh out of bed that's right yeah my workout is the entire day so i take a pre-workout
00:38:28.400right when i wake up like it's just caffeine and creatine this man is caffeinated to the
00:38:34.180max yeah by the way slow niacin is niacinamide it's just a b vitamin timed release
00:38:40.900yeah vitamin right okay all of this is just like you could all get all of these as like nature made
00:38:48.700supplements at target or whatever right like these are not like hard things to find but when he lists
00:38:56.320the like ah yes i'm using 23 milligrams of polycosinol yeah it gives the whole thing sort
00:39:03.700of a mystique of being much more like stem oriented than yeah yeah right he's giving his readers this
00:39:10.440veneer of science for things that are totally just like take your vitamins also i'm trying to like
00:39:17.100count up how many pills he's taking it's a lot right because if he's doing this in the morning
00:39:22.180at each meal before workout after workout and prior to bed you're just like pumping your body
00:39:28.440with like these weird powders when like you don't need even like the pre-workout post-workout stuff0.96
00:39:33.400is like fake you don't need this shit like have a banana he also is careful to note that you only0.93
00:39:40.060follow the schedule six days a week and you take one day off each week from your stacks wait what1.00
00:39:45.520and then you also take one week off every two months and quote this week off is critical yes0.98
00:39:52.480yeah you gotta keep your metabolism guessing don't let your metabolism fucking rest on its laurels0.51
00:39:57.720yeah you want to be constantly switching between constipation and diarrhea at uh at a rate that0.93
00:40:03.080baffles the intestines unsurprisingly he's also a cold plunge guy oh yeah unsurprisingly he's also
00:40:10.100like generally a health gadget guy so he advocates using a glucometer which is a monitor that you
00:40:18.420install on your body to continually monitor your blood sugar levels does he have the poop camera
00:40:24.980not to my knowledge but this book was written before the existence of poop cam peter this is
00:40:31.120an actual thing that exists you can get something that attaches to the side of your toilet the
00:40:34.340kohler decoder that films your toilet bowl and like there's an app that gives you like quote
00:40:40.340unquote insights but the insights are like how many times did you poop yesterday like
00:40:45.060well hydrated or not well hydrated no i like that why should i have to look you know i just i want0.82
00:40:55.360an app to just uh every time i take a shit i don't look i uh immediately i just stand right up and0.89
00:41:01.040then it it sends me a notification that says gross he uses a continuous glucose monitor0.91
00:41:06.580a thing that is straightforwardly unnecessary for people who are not diabetic
00:41:11.900i looked up the glucose monitor that he recommends it's the dexcom 7 it lasts for two weeks on your
00:41:19.380body and it costs $120 per monitor. It's more just him being a rube. It's like, this is not
00:41:25.420meaningful data that you really need. Yeah. He has this belief that if you keep your blood sugar
00:41:30.180under a hundred, that you will sustain fat loss for longer. He also writes, quote, don't want to
00:41:36.900become diabetic. Want to curb things like eating sweets, which can lead to adult onset diabetes.
00:41:43.900Try using a glucometer for 24 hours. Oh, he like recommends this? Yes. Oh my God.
00:41:49.380Essentially, the argument that he's making is like, do you not want to become diabetic? Start living like you have diabetes. Watch everything you eat, exercise in really specific ways, wear a glucometer, and you know, maybe take some diabetes meds, right? As a bunch of biohackers suggest taking like metformin and stuff like that, right?
00:42:10.120Like, so it is this really odd thing where I'm like, I just try mapping that on to other illnesses.
00:42:16.880Like, it would be really weird if someone was like, I don't want to get cancer, so I'm going to do preemptive chemo.
00:42:23.400Or like, if you want to avoid chlamydia, just wear a condom at all times, no matter what you're doing.0.94
00:42:31.080Before we dig in on the last chapter that we're really going to focus in on, we have a little interval that I have just titled in my notes, Tim Ferriss is weird about women.1.00
00:42:39.700there's one section that he calls the math of beauty oh no are we are we doing like symmetry
00:42:46.940symmetry stuff we're not leaning away from phrenology i won't say that uh michael you are
00:42:54.020up what do marilyn monroe sophia loren and l mcpherson have in common the number 0.7 and the
00:43:00.760letters whr if you measured the waist and hip circumference of these three women you'd find1.00
00:43:06.220that their waists are 7 tenths the size of their hips. That makes their waist-to-hip ratio, WHR,0.97
00:43:12.2000.7. And this ratio in females appears to be hardwired into the male brain as a sign of0.95
00:43:17.940fertility and therefore attractiveness. The wider your waist is, the higher this ratio goes toward0.99
00:43:23.640the apple-shaped 1.0, which correlates, in scientific studies, with decreased estrogen