Money, Fame, and Deep Work: Dr. Mike Israetel and the Blueprint Team on What Success Actually Costs
Bryan Johnson
This episode of the Bryan Johnson podcast was meant to cover longevity and health. Instead, as the hosts admit at the end, it reached "zero of our proposed topics." Bryan Johnson, Blueprint co-founder Kate Tolo, Johnson's lead physician Dr. Mike Mallin, and returning guest Dr. Mike Israetel ended up in a long, frank conversation about three things: how each of them does their best thinking, what sudden money and fame have done to their lives, and how to handle a steady stream of public hostility. Johnson later called it "therapy." The through-line is a question none of them fully resolves: if money and visibility are what most people want, why do the people who have them describe them so ambivalently?
Comfort as a Precondition for Deep Work
The conversation opens with teasing about Israetel's visibly deep, comfortable chair, which Mallin compares to a sensory deprivation chamber. Israetel explains that comfort during deep cognitive work matters a great deal to them. They say they cannot relate to standing or walking desks at all. Put at one, they would be irritated within a minute and would leave within two to go sit somewhere comfortable.
Johnson agrees with the split. Standing or walking works for conversation, they say, but real deep work requires sitting and a "stable state." Mallin notes that their best conversations happen while walking with headphones in, but the deepest work has to be done relaxed and seated.
Setups come up next. Israetel describes an office lined with mirrors on every surface except the door, which they jokingly decline to explain, along with a large curved monitor inspired by the work stations in The Matrix. Johnson says a friend talked them into a roughly 50-inch curved screen. It took about a day for their eyes to adjust, but they call it "the biggest game changer" and now run about six things at once. Going back to a laptop feels like being carried out on a stretcher. Tolo points out the downside: when they travel, Johnson says they can't work without the screen.
Why Bryan Johnson Stopped Flying His Own Jet
Israetel asks whether they fly private. Johnson says they fly commercial now, but they used to own and pilot a jet. Several years ago, stressed from building their company, they saw a sign offering flying lessons and took it up as a hobby. They moved from a Cessna to a Beechcraft Bonanza and flew themselves from Chicago to Texas, Florida, and New York.
The problem, Johnson explains, is altitude. A plane like that typically cruises around 12,000 to 13,000 feet and can't go above 14,500 without supplemental oxygen, which keeps it in the lower atmosphere where weather is constant. Johnson says they "almost died twice" on separate occasions. After that they decided either to stop flying or to buy a jet that could operate at around 30,000 feet in controlled airspace. They bought the jet and flew it themselves for a couple of years. Then COVID arrived, they stopped traveling, Blueprint made their life very routine, and the plane became "a major burden." Johnson calls the question of private flying "psychologically very complex": it is expensive and burns a lot of fuel, which makes it hard to justify.
Airplanes, ChatGPT, and Edibles
Israetel's reason for asking turns out to be about working while traveling. On commercial flights, even in business or first class, they can't do laptop work. If they're physically uncomfortable, their first priority is getting comfortable, and the "cognitive bandwidth for deep work just goes down the drain." So they use flights for generating ideas. They now look forward to long flights because of the extra time to talk with ChatGPT. The benefit, they say, "cannot be put into words," like a cup of knowledge that never runs dry. Johnson says they also talk to ChatGPT nonstop.
Tolo has the opposite reaction to flying: a plane is an "instant flow state." They meditate during the first 15 to 20 minutes before the internet comes on, then work intensely, even crammed into coach with the laptop against the seat in front. Mallin reports the same experience. Tolo half-jokingly guesses it might be hypoxia or radiation, then settles on a simpler explanation: there's nothing else to do, just you and your mind.
Israetel adds that on very long flights they sometimes take edible marijuana at takeoff. By their own estimate, the ideas that come from that state are roughly half nonsense and half insightful, and a fraction of the insightful ones are "actually quite brilliant," though they admit their own metrics for judging this "suck." They write everything down and review it later, deleting what's embarrassing and keeping what's worth a YouTube video. They also note that every drug they've taken has made them more conversational, not less.
Israetel's Model of Creativity: Growing and Pruning a Knowledge Tree
Johnson asks everyone where their best ideas come from, looking back over the past decade. Israetel gives the longest answer. They say they've been thinking about creativity lately because they're trying to model whether AI can be creative and how prompting or system design could make it so. They reject the common view that creativity is a lasting human "moat" against AI. In their view it is a mechanistic process that can be described in neural network and data-architecture terms.
Their model starts with a knowledge base shaped like a tree: branches, sub-branches, and sub-sub-branches mapping one's understanding of the world. That structure matters because creativity with no connection to it is pointless. Their example is asking "what if dragons were purple?" Dragons aren't real, so the question connects to nothing. That kind of thinking is fine for a bong session with friends, they say, but not much more. So they deliberately build the tree: constant reading, podcasts, and thinking, over their whole life.
Creativity, in this model, is extending new branches off well-founded knowledge. They'll have an idea grounded in fact with three possible directions, without knowing which, if any, is right. Those extensions often arrive while they're falling asleep. They keep their phone nearby, and they call their most useful advice "really wise": never let a good idea go if you can help it without becoming neurotic. Write it down in your notes app. People ask how they have so many ideas, and they answer that they don't think they have unusually many. They just write all of them down, and the good ones turn out very well. Joking that Johnson appears on their shoulder telling them to go to sleep, they say they jot ideas down anyway. About half the time the ideas branch further, but the whole process usually takes only 10 to 15 minutes. Edibles are a second idea source, with what they call "a huge error range." Stoned ideas can carry a sense of profundity without any logical anchor. Their example is "people are just monkeys that walk upright": true, but so what?
The second half of the cycle is filtering. When they are in the basement doing deep work, often in the morning when they feel "more inhibitory dominant, less expressive, less verbally fluid," they switch into what they call a "red team" mode. That skeptical mindset is bad at producing new ideas, they say, but very good at testing them. They cross-link evidence and logic and argue against each idea until the branch is either cut or kept. The next round of ideas then grows off the surviving branches. The loop takes roughly a week, and after weeks, months, and years of "growing and pruning," they say the map ends up with some very good ideas in it.
Sleep, Running, and Space: Everyone Else's Creative Triggers
Mallin says the falling-asleep effect Israetel describes is real. Some physicists, scientists, and mathematicians working on hard problems deliberately bring themselves to the edge of sleep to trigger it, which Mallin points out is the opposite of what Johnson tells people.
Johnson says their best source of ideas is "unquestionably" sleep, and Tolo confirms Johnson often wakes up with the previous night's best idea from a dream. Johnson explains that during the day, in their current role, things come at them so fast that sleep is the only relaxed mental state they get. Calling themselves "99.9% NPC," Johnson says most of the words and concepts they use come from others throughout history, and the small number of genuinely novel ideas they've had came in sleep.
Mallin's trigger is exercise. They say they struggle to focus unless their body is busy, and wonder whether that's an ADHD-type trait. In medical school they studied on an elliptical, laminating their notes so they could sweat on them, and spent hours in zone two. Every creative idea of theirs that became a success, they say, came on a run. Their business partner now pays attention specifically when a call starts with "I was on a run and had an idea."
Tolo describes the reverse of Israetel's approach. They try to take in as little information as possible because their mind already generates plenty. A few minutes of a podcast can send them in a new direction for months. What they need most is space, which is why they love planes. Johnson says their goal has been to create space for Tolo to think and play.
The Pain of Fragmented Work and Endless Messages
Israetel then raises something they say they're "not proud to admit." They love deep work and hate days full of varied small tasks: replying to emails, connecting people to marketing, sending photos of themselves drinking a product shot. Their ideal workspace would be something like a research station on a moon of Uranus. They describe themselves as hyper-social, but for them socializing is fun and never counts as work. After three hours of talking to people they'd feel they had done nothing. They describe "a crazy industriousness drive that eats at my soul," and ask Johnson and Tolo whether, after something like their India trip, they feel they've worked or just toured. Both say yes, and that it's painful.
Johnson widens the point. They hypothesize that most of society feels "tortured" by constant messages and social media, and by the sense that you have to post, scroll, and engage to stay part of the tribe. Tolo agrees that the expectation of immediate replies is out of control. They list Instagram DMs, WhatsApp, Slack, email, texts, and Twitter, and say they'd like two months to answer a text to be acceptable.
What Fame Does to Mental Health
Israetel, anticipating "shut up, Mike" reactions, says outsiders assume people with millions of followers and plenty of money must be in paradise. They thought so too when they were younger. Recently they asked ChatGPT about the mental health of famous people, and they report the answer as "legendarily terrible," with risks it compared to anorexia nervosa levels. According to what the chatbot told them, celebrities get almost only negative feedback from people who know them, while the positive feedback comes from strangers and goes "in one ear and out the other."
They mention a story they heard, while noting they don't know if it's true, that Joe Rogan keeps three phones: one for potential guests, one for acquaintances, and one for his core group. They thought it was ridiculous at first. As their YouTube channel grew, they came to think "Joe's on to something." Many people contact them asking for introductions, and with "three day jobs," they're expected to answer what they estimate is hundreds of people a week.
Johnson says they feel caught in a tornado. They estimate 100 to 150 messages a day from people who matter to them, many of them urgent: someone being extorted who needs to talk that morning, someone whose parent has a serious medical condition. These come from friends and, sometimes, nation-state leaders, while their schedule is booked back to back. It's hard, Johnson says, not to respond to friends or to people who genuinely need help.
New Money and the Pattern of Broken Trust
Johnson then raises what they wish people talked about more. They were poor until age 34 and are now 47. As "new money," they never learned what having money means. With money, everyone who enters your life becomes something to be considered. Looking at the people who have been close to them, Johnson says more than half have done something that ended in a violation of trust. They don't think those people were bad. They think money makes it hard for people to tell "what is theirs and what is yours." Johnson says they wondered whether the cause was them, whether they were a bad boss or a bad person. After hearing the same stories from others, they concluded it is "algorithmic," a pattern that just emerges. The cost is having to look at the world with suspicion when you would rather see the best in people.
Johnson describes meeting, with Tolo, a very wealthy, powerful person in their 40s who had lived with wealth their entire life and said they were "out." After years of extortion, lying, and theft, whenever they thought things were fine, they went wrong again. Johnson says this doesn't always happen, but it seems to be a prominent pattern.
Mallin offers an image from early in their friendship with Johnson: money is like another person standing next to you. Friends approach and say, in effect, "You know that guy, money? Can you tell him I want some of him?" Tolo adds that in a capitalist society money is the highest-value thing, so it distorts reality and people's thinking, regardless of who you personally are.
Israetel's Version: A Gap Between Self-Image and Perception
Israetel says they haven't been rich for long, and they and their wife live simply: in "the middle of nowhere," working in home offices, watching Netflix at night, walking in the backyard. If they were single, they say, "landmines everywhere."
They say money and fame have had no effect on their own psychology that they can detect. They see themselves as "the same regular idiot" and have an aversion to placing themselves above others in status. The problem is a gap in perception. They still see themselves as a regular guy, but others increasingly see a rich, famous person. Their friends and wife sometimes point out that someone was nice only because Israetel is "Dr. Mike," and Israetel says they can no longer tell.
Their solution is separation. They stay friendly with everyone and won't be dismissive to strangers. But once a relationship moves toward jobs, contracts, or business pitches, they switch to "lawyer brain" and pass it to their business and legal team. Some pitches from people they meet casually are excellent, and they've gone into business with great people that way. Still, they used to assume every idea came well vetted and in good faith, and "half the time that's just not true." Typically they say they love the idea and will check with their technical people, who about nine times out of ten reply that the company is already overloaded, so it's "an automatic no unless it's Warren Buffett." They say they don't know whether this is a good approach.
Does Money Make You Happier?
Mallin, who says they are much less wealthy than Johnson or Israetel, offers an outsider's view. Time spent around very wealthy people has made them want money less. Ten years ago, $500 million would have sounded amazing. Now they value time, privacy, and "the luxury of relationships without caveats." Israetel teases that this is what all rich people say, then asks what specifically changed their mind. Mallin says it was watching wealthy people constantly assess whether someone is trying to get something from them. They can't just be themselves because they always have that companion, money, to watch and manage. Some wealthy people have told Mallin directly that their wealth is "a pain" and consumes their attention, and that once you have it, you can't easily walk away. Part of that, Mallin suggests, is the question of who would get it and whether they would do as much good with it.
Tolo argues that money represents freedom, but you trade one freedom for another. It opens some doors and closes others, and it isn't clear either life is better. The major caveat is real scarcity. They recall how painful it was not to be able to pay for a phone and internet access. Above a basic quality of life, though, they doubt the benefit. People who make a lot of money usually do it through intense work and a certain personality, which doesn't go away afterward. Such people may be lonely because they put earning ahead of relationships. Tolo cites a well-known study putting a happiness threshold around $75,000, possibly $100,000 today, above which happiness stops rising and might even fall.
Israetel says they have "an update to that study." As they describe it, the curve rises steeply at first and keeps rising above $75,000 to $100,000, but much more slowly, with large individual variance. By their illustration, going from $50,000 to $150,000 a year is revolutionary. From $150,000 to $250,000 makes things a little better. Getting the same bump as that first $100,000 would require going to $500,000, and from there to $2 million a year.
Their broader argument is that money is "a miraculous mega tool" for happiness, but only if you deliberately engineer your life around it. They compare it to Super Mario: jump one way and you collect coins, the other and you fall into a pit. If you keep the same work, recreation, and relationships and simply add money, you get a little happier and wonder why it isn't more. Money also brings problems: privacy, liability, opportunity cost, and in their case "massive guilt" about having it when others don't. They note that they invest nearly all of it in the stock market, which they believe by economic logic is its best net use for society, but that knowing this "doesn't make me feel that good." They think most rich people either assume spending will make things better or keep doing what they always did, and never ask what actually makes them happy. Their example is someone who owns a Gulfstream but hates people and hates flying, and only has it because "that's what rich people do."
In passing, Israetel predicts that within five to ten years, "almost certainly" within ten, everyone in the modern world will be "trillionaire level rich relative to purchasing power." They don't expand on it, saying they and Johnson could spend years discussing it.
Fame as "Money on Steroids"
The bigger distorter, Israetel argues, is fame. It's "a lot like money, except it doesn't pay you." They say they now envy hedge fund managers who can walk through New York City unrecognized. What fame removes is "an expectation of anonymity" in crowds. They and their wife used to enjoy visiting cities and just walking around. That's gone, they say, because they get "Dr. Miked" constantly. Israetel enjoys meeting people. Their wife, who is more private, finds it wearing. Taylor Swift, they point out, can't go anywhere without a large security team. Their summary: "Fame is money on steroids" for warping your life.
Johnson describes a flight that same week where a line formed on the plane for selfies and boarding couldn't continue. They say they love it and that people have amazing stories.
Bryan Johnson's First Draft of "What It Means to Have Money"
Johnson says they can now sit with almost anyone for 20 minutes and explain the "power laws of health": stabilizing mood, sleeping well, managing weight. When they made money, they wish someone had offered them 20 minutes explaining what having money means. Pressed to try, they warn they haven't done the "reps" the way they have with health.
Their first principle is to assume by default that everyone wants something from you. That doesn't mean people are bad or nefarious. Everyone pursues self-interest, often wrapped in kind-sounding or heroic stories. Johnson explains that they grew up in a religious, high-trust community where the default was to trust people and assume they meant what they said. "That is not the way the world works," they say, so they're having to unlearn those intuitions.
The second principle is to make expectations explicit and written from the start. Johnson frames this as freeing rather than cynical. Once expectations are clear, both sides can act in a trusting way. Without them there's "a wide open space of gamesmanship," and you can't see where the other person's motivations lead.
Tolo gives an example. When hiring core team members, they tell candidates that people have stolen from Johnson before, so trust is the most important part of the relationship. Talking badly about them behind their backs counts as breaking trust, they explain; if someone has a problem, they should come directly, and the team will adjust. Johnson says that while bringing on someone new for their personal life, they listed the people in their private circle over the past 12 years and found that nearly 50% had been caught stealing. Examples included running up large personal charges on company cards over years and taking cash. So they now say plainly, "don't steal from me," even in small things, because they see it as a slippery slope. Mallin observes that the need to say something that basic shows how much money distorts things.
Johnson connects this to a New York Times piece they describe as a takedown that portrayed their NDAs as sinister. In their account, the NDAs are about being upfront. Tolo gives the example that the company talks about Johnson's erection data, so new hires should know that in advance and decide if it's a fit. The paper, Tolo says, presented this as evidence they were "insane."
Israetel on Hit Pieces
Israetel says they respect that journalists have a job to do and that hit pieces bring clicks and rewards. But because most journalists will never be famous, they never face the aftermath of damaging someone's life for weeks. They admit to thinking "they're rich, they'll be fine" themselves, and grant there's some truth to it: people can mock Kim Kardashian and she remains a billionaire. But she's also a real person who probably reads her comments and gets hurt.
What bothers them most is when writers at what claims to be "the paper of record" rely on rumor or come close to manufacturing information, then feel proud and go out for drinks. They suggest such writers imagine their own name in the piece. They add that "we all need rich people to get checked" and admit a gossip piece can be fun to read. They also hold themselves to the same standard. When they made exercise-science critiques of celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Mark Wahlberg, saying unkind things as jokes, they "didn't feel good" and "didn't deserve to." They say they'd expect a higher standard from the Times than from "some kind of smut YouTuber" like themselves, but "if it smells, it sells."
Bryan Johnson's Recent Months of Hate
Johnson says the conversation has felt like therapy. They're coming off "a few months of some pretty brutal hate." Being so public gives critics endless material to twist, and a cluster of people have been "hammering away." After 12 years of having money, they say they're only now putting the pieces together into a new model of the world. They stress it isn't meant to call people bad, only to say humans are complicated and often don't know why they act as they do.
They tie this to their health work. Much of that journey, they say, meant accepting their own inability to act in their best interest. "Evening Bryan," who wants to overeat and stay up late, was a version of them they were nearly powerless against. Having finally subdued those tendencies in themselves, they're now trying to understand the different "versions" of the people around them. A person might present a cooperative version and later show another. Johnson wants to stay positive about humanity's future while keeping enough realism to accept that you can't bend other people's behavior to your wishes. They say they arrived in the adult world late because of their insulated religious upbringing and didn't learn these basic lessons until well into their 30s.
Handling Online Negativity: "Behind Every Critique Is a Confession"
Israetel says they find Johnson's positivity inspiring and describes their own trouble with Twitter. They deleted the app after liking posts critical of Donald Trump's recent economic policies, which they call themselves "hypercritical" of as someone "economically literate." Their feed then filled with complaint accounts and endless left-versus-right fights, and they felt "the black sludge of toxicity" pouring in. Replies to their own posts, they say, mostly underestimate their intellect and overestimate the replier's. When they win arguments for sport, embarrassing the other person doesn't make them feel good. Then they scroll past a Johnson post reminding people to sleep, someone insults Johnson, and Johnson replies "thank you." They ask how Johnson handles it, admitting to "a Russian side" that wants confrontation, and that they catch themselves fighting imaginary people in their head.
Tolo answers first. Silly jokes are fine, but accusations that Johnson is lying about things they work very hard on are hard. Tolo says it has taken a large toll on both of them in recent months, and at times they've wanted "out of this game."
Johnson says they genuinely don't care what people say. Looking at history, most humans, including themselves, are idiotic most of the time, and not being an idiot takes effort. They cite Warren Buffett's idea that in investing, simply avoiding idiocy already beats the market. They view critics with empathy, as people struggling with their own idiocy, and they judge themselves the same way. They try to be legitimate, factual, and helpful. From reading biographies, they conclude that people who persist through difficult phases "always prevail." On the macro level they believe they're winning, even if daily turbulence is unpleasant.
Asked how they handle a stinging critique from someone prominent, Johnson says: "I realize they are talking about themselves." Their principle is that "behind every critique is a confession." They argue that psychological critique almost always implicates the critic, and that critics are often guilty of what they accuse others of. Their example is Bill Cosby, who, Johnson says, described drugging women in standup and interviews in plain sight long before it was pieced together late in his life. People leave these "confession clues," Johnson says, and turn them into critiques of others to insulate themselves.
Johnson also draws on memory. Having been depressed, they know how hard it is to get through a moment in a bad state. Since they believe most people are dealing with bad health, food, habits, and sleep, they're not surprised people take harsh views of the world, and they say this explains the "absolute warfare" on X. Israetel adds their own framing: people "just having a lot of feelings." Most critics have some valid point, they say, but a person full of hate may simply be using you as that minute's target.
Gratitude, Identity, and an Unfinished Agenda
As time runs out, Johnson expresses gratitude for everyone. Mallin has been working with them for nearly a year, Israetel is a new friend they hit it off with immediately, and they say they and Tolo "share a brain at this point." Israetel says few people state their gratitude explicitly and that they need to do it more, because they struggle with constant self-criticism. Seeing a successful person do it reminds them that you can choose to be happier and pull yourself out of "a sludge of default misery," and that no one else can make that choice for you. Tolo connects this back to the discussion of money: what they're grateful for is being able to be themselves without worrying what anyone wants from them.
Johnson praises Israetel for talking openly about a recent surgery, noting that most people hide such things. Israetel says they had no idea people hid them and have "no privacy impulse at all."
Mallin, who shares Israetel's first name, jokingly asks whether "Mike" feels too common for their identity. Israetel answers seriously. They say they don't really have an identity, and that in their deep conversations with AI and others, they've come to think identity will become an open question once people share "a metabrain." They consider identity "largely an illusion" and say they'd happily be Matt, Bill, or a number. They say attachment to names, or to almost anything, "never hits organically."
The episode ends with its official topics still unaddressed. Mallin says they'd like to come back to longevity and health. Israetel says they're ready to discuss their approach to longevity whenever invited, and the group agrees to a part three.
Hey, Mike. I see you're pulling up with the vibe today to the podcast.
What's up, Bryan? It's good to be on. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm glad you're dressed up. I'm glad you're feeling good. Seems like you're in your flow.
I'm flowy and I'm not wearing anything. Perfect. That was the costume. That you hit it. Let's go.
You guys, today on the podcast, we have Dr. Mike Israetel. If you don't know who he is, you're living under a rock. He knows a whole bunch of stuff about muscle and performance. And if you do something online, he's going to dress you down and tell you don't know what you're talking about. So today, Dr. Mike is going to treat us to his knowledge, extensive knowledge on health and wellness.
Mike, I think what they were commenting on is your face is suggesting satisfaction. Comfort. You feel great comfort. You look very comfortable. It just suggests like Russian anhedonia.
You look like you're sitting in a cloud. Is it actually that comfortable?
Yes. I think that comfort during work that is deep work and very cognitive is like super important to me at least and I vibe with but cannot absolutely relate in any way to like a standing desk or a walking desk. I think that's insane. If you put me at a standing or walking desk within a minute I would get pissed and within two I would just leave and go sit down and do my deep work in a comfortable chair. So.
Huh. Interesting. You look like you're in like a zero gravity chair. Like you're about to be at any minute in one of those like salt baths. You know what I'm talking about? Like the sensory deprivation chamber. That's literally what you look like right now.
About 10 grams of DMT. That's the protocol.
But Mike, I hear you. When I have to do deep work, I have to sit down. If I'm standing up or I'm walking, like deep work is not happening. I can have conversation. It's actually standing up is good for having conversations, but when you run into deep work, I have to pause everything and be in a stable state. Otherwise, it's not happening.
Agreed. I actually have my best conversations when I'm walking around, with headphones in, and then if I have to do the deepest work, it has to be super relaxed, sitting down. I actually have, you guys can't see it, maybe you can in the reflection, cuz this is my office and I had a 360-degree mirror installation. So, other than the door, everything is mirrors. There's a reason for that. I can explain. I'm also a psychopath, but that's unrelated. It might be. It might be related.
Hello. I have like a 32 in or 48 in curved monitor, so like I can do multiple tabs. It's like pure bliss. Like I saw the Matrix and I saw their work setups and I was like, I need that. I need that as soon as I can afford it.
I mean, Mike, we can kind of see it in the background. We can see your legs. You want to? Yeah. Kick them out. We can go.
I'm too short to reach the ground. So,
That's amazing. My screen, let's see. I think I'm like a 50 in screen. Is that right?
Oh, big flex, Bryan. All right. Yours is at least one inch bigger than Mike's.
Yeah. I just have to make a couple more hundred million and I'll be there with you.
You know, a friend of mine told me about this and I was not convinced. Then he set it up and it's curved. It took me like a day for my eyes to set, but man, it is the biggest game changer I've had. It's when I go back to a laptop now, I feel like somebody's taking me out on a stretcher. It like I can't see. I feel, yeah, I feel like I've got claustrophobia. It just changed everything. So now I've got like six things up simultaneously.
But is that worth it though? Like because now when we travel, you're like, I don't have my screen. I can't do it. It's rendered me useless.
Yeah. Can I ask a question that maybe you guys can edit out or something if it comes off wrong? Love it. Excellent. We're not going to edit it out.
Penises. No, I'm kidding. Do you guys fly private at this point?
So I had a jet. So I guess like no, we don't. We fly commercial. Yeah. Yep. The history of this is a couple years ago I was really stressed out in building my company. I was just like, it was full-on. And one day I was going home from work and I saw this sign that said come learn how to fly. And I was like, you know what? I need a hobby. So I went and learned how to fly. And then I thought this is so cool. I'm going to buy a plane and fly myself to various conferences and meetings. So I went from a Cessna, then I bought this little Bonanza, which is like a little step up. It's got a decent range. I started flying myself from Chicago to Texas and Chicago to Florida, New York.
Wow.
But the problem was in that plane, you typically fly, you know, around like 12, 13,000 ft. You can't go above 14,500 feet because you need oxygen. So, you're in the lower layers of the atmosphere, which means you're always encountering weather. So you have to be mindful of storms and so I almost died twice. It was like stories of different days. But after almost dying twice, I said, "Okay, I'm either going to stop flying or I'm going to buy a jet." Because then with the jet you're, you know, above the clouds, you're at 30,000 ft. You're flying within the controlled airspace. And so I got a jet and did that for a couple years.
You flew it? Yeah. Holy [ __ ]
And then COVID happened and then like, you know, I wasn't flying for several years and I started doing Blueprint and my life became very rigorous where I didn't travel much and so the plane just became a major burden. So yeah, so I fly commercial now but definitely love the jet. It's also such a complicated thing because it's expensive. You're burning so much fuel. It's hard to justify. Psychologically it's a very emotional, a very psychologically complex topic.
Yeah. Mike, what's your take on that? Why do you ask?
I thought that was all incredibly fascinating. I was going to try to say a relatable thing, but then I realized you might be too rich to relate to at this juncture, but try me. Let's do it. It turns out you do fly. Like going from a really good setup, like a good work setup like you and I were talking about, and then trying to work on your laptop or iPad in a commercial airplane seat is like, if I do any kind of work, it's just on my iPhone. Like I can't do the whole laptop, even in like business class, first class, it just doesn't work for me. If I feel inherently uncomfortable, my priority is to become comfortable first and then if the work plus the sitting is a certain degree of discomfort, the cognitive bandwidth for deep work just goes down the drain. So what I use flights more for is like idea generating. But nowadays I actually look forward to very long flights because it gives me more time to talk to ChatGPT and like the amount of benefit I gain from talking to that thing, it cannot be put into words. It's like drinking from a cup of knowledge that never gets empty. It's insane.
I feel the same way. I talk to Chat non-stop. That's awesome.
For me, a flight is instant flow state. Like I get on it. I take that first like 15, 20 minutes where you don't have internet, right? Because you're like listening to them talk or whatever and then you're taking off. I meditate during that and then as soon as we're in the air and internet's back on, like bam, flow state. I'm like a sardine in a can with my laptop in, you know, in coach, like pushed up against the seat in front of me, but I just crush. I mean, it's ridiculous how much work I can get done. I'm with you, Mike. Same experience.
I'm really jealous. It's unique to a plane though? You feel it specifically on a flight?
Yeah. I don't know if it's like maybe it's the hypoxia, maybe it's the radiation exposure. Yeah. There's something going on that works.
Yeah. Yeah. Either I'm like hyperproductive at my laptop, like especially, yeah, long flights the best. I can get through so much work or I feel like I'm having a psychedelic trip. Like I get so many ideas through that time. I'm just like having a moment. It's great.
Yeah, the idea thing works. I don't know what that is. Just get some time to yourself. There's nothing else to do. It's just you and your mind and you get going. Every now and again for very long flights, I'll take edible marijuana at the beginning of the flight. Boy oh boy am I going sky-high with that one. But yeah, it doesn't really lead to... No, you know what? I do have a lot of creativity when I'm on edible marijuana and it's this thing with creativity where like probably half of it is just total nonsense and the other half of it pretty insightful and some fraction of that is like actually quite brilliant, according to my own metrics, which suck, but like, so I'll write down a ton of ideas when I'm high and then I'll look at them later and be like, "That's dumb. I'm deleting that. That's frankly embarrassing. This is just pure nonsense." But this is a gem and this is going on the YouTube channel next week. So, it's kind of an interesting thing. But every now and again, like people will talk to me while I'm high as [ __ ] on a plane, and that's extra fun cuz I have this weird thing with drugs. There's never a drug that I've taken that doesn't make me want to engage more in conversation with people. Like, no drug at all or any drug, I'm just more conversational. It's kind of strange.
That's awesome. "Yeah, sir. I was just asking you if you wanted pretzels, but this is definitely going in a different direction, but I really appreciate your spirit." That's funny.
"What do you mean by pretzel exactly? I mean, is it an allegory for the soul?" They're like, "You're just high. Shut up. Take this pretzel."
Where do you find your best ideas come from? So, if you're mapping out, so edible marijuana, like where do you find your best gems? I have to ask.
How do you mean where? Like in what context, in what setting, in what pharmacological arrangement?
All the above. If you just trace back, you just make a subjective assessment of your best ideas over the past 10 years. And does it come from sleep, come from, you know, focused states of work, of edible paired with flights, you know, conversation with friends, with Chat, like where do you find unique insights coming from?
What a great question. I've been giving a little bit more thought recently to what creativity is because I've been trying to model it out to see how AI could be creative or to see if it's currently capable of creativity and how you would optimize either prompting or engineering an AI system to become creative. There's a lot of people, there's like, you know, the moat of what AI can't do that humans can is shrinking all the time, little island, and a lot of people are like, but creativity, and I think that's totally BS. I think creativity is a mechanistic process you can describe in neural network language and in just data architecture.
So there's a couple of different things that have to happen for creativity to occur and all of them are pretty important. One is that if you think of your knowledge base as a big tree with leaves and branches and branches off those branches and branches off those branches, that's kind of how like the knowledge base of understanding the world actually looks like if you map it on a neural network. And so that tree is really important because if you're just getting creativity out of thin air, like what if like dragons actually were purple, like that's nonsense, somewhere doesn't connect to anything. Dragons aren't real. What the [ __ ] are you talking about? They don't even have a color. And so creativity like without any connection to that architecture of real things in the real world is like sort of pointless. It's great for hitting the bong and then talking to your friends, but no better than that.
And then so what I like to do is I like to really build out my tree of knowledge. So I read all the time, I ingest all the time, podcast all the time, think, think, think, think, think, think. And then so I get this knowledge tree going and I've built it sort of my entire life. And then I do a couple of things to that knowledge tree and it's a cyclical process. One is I extend out the branches off the branches off the branches and that's really creativity. And that's basically like I have this idea that's pretty well based in fact, but there's three ways I can go with it. I'm not sure which one is correct. I'm not sure any of them are correct. So what I do is that I generate a couple of ideas.
Those typically come to me in many cases, unfortunately, when I'm trying to fall asleep and like I keep my phone with me at all times. So like almost asleep I'll have a [ __ ] to what to me is a brilliant idea and I know it's good and if I can share something with listeners that I think is really really wise: never ever ever, if you can help it without turning neurotic, let your ideas go. If you have a good idea don't forget it. Write it down. Just get your iPhone out, go to notes and write it down. Some of the best things I've ever done in my life with producing any kind of value I'm capable of has been just writing down ideas and keeping them for later. And people are like, "How do you have so many ideas?" I'm like, "I don't think I have a ton of ideas. I just write all of them down and the ones that work work really well."
So, I'll turn over my phone reluctantly. I'm like, "Okay, this is good enough to disrupt my sleep cycle." Bryan Johnson appears as devil on my shoulder: "You should be going to sleep, [ __ ]" "Sorry, Bryan Johnson. This is a really good idea." And so, I tap the idea down. I put it away. About half the time my brain keeps going and it's like, "Dude, you're branching off this one now and it's even more good ideas." I'm like, "Fuck, [ __ ] fuck." So, I just jot all them down. Usually, I'll run a ground and this only takes like 10 or 15 minutes. It's not like I'm up for hours or anything like that. And then, so pre-sleep period works really well for me.
Another one is edible marijuana typically does really good things for my idea generating. It has a huge error range. So, I can never truly tell if my idea is good when I'm on drugs because I know I'm on drugs and I know I'm irrational, but I get a high volume of ideas and some I can kind of feel like, vibe-wise, like this is stupid, it's actually nonsense, or you get a sense of profundity but without the logical anchor of actually anything profound going on. You're like, people are just like monkeys that walk upright. You're like, yeah, that's actually true, but so what? You're like, I guess the so what was just a feeling and not really any logic. But sometimes some of those ideas really do web off into some good stuff.
So I have this cycle that I go through. It's the creativity cycle of taking off of this tree of understood things, putting branches off of it, and then just leaving them, writing them down or thinking about them. And then later, when I'm in different phases, when I'm downstairs in the basement and I'm doing deep work, when I'm on a walk and I'm really thinking deeply, I'll apply a logical operator to filter them out. So, I turn from creative hippie-dippy guy into red team conservative [ __ ] "This doesn't make the, you know, company cut-off for the board meeting. Your idea sucks. You're fired, Johnson." Sorry, no offense, Bryan. But that kind of red-teaming, hypercritical, skeptical mind is actually dog [ __ ] at generating new ideas, but it really vets the living [ __ ] out of ideas to see like, okay, this cool idea I had, how well does it stack up? I cross-link evidence. I cross-link logic. I really try to argue against it. And at some point, that branch either gets cut off because like that was stupid, that was wrong. Or I'm like, no, this is good. We're keeping this branch. And then off that next branch, the next time I ideulate, I prune a couple more ideas off of it or I get a couple more ideas going and then I do that same cyclical period. That roughly takes like about a week. So when
I'm in my free flowing states through the week, I'll write ideas down. And then when I'm in my really deep work states downstairs in the basement, more focused, not under the influence of marijuana earlier in the morning when I tend to be a little bit more inhibitory dominant, less expressive, less verbally fluid, then I tend to be more of like a stickler and kind of little low-key pissed and like these stupid pothead ideas, let's put them to the test. And then I prune prune prune. And then that way my network, my map of meaning just keeps going and going and going. And it takes growing and pruning, growing and pruning, growing and pruning. And after a few weeks, few months, few years, like I got some pretty [ __ ] good ideas in there. So that's kind of my process.
Cool. Mike, what about you? For me, it's... that was so... Wait, that was so well thought out. Cool. Can we just acknowledge that? It was like cool. Next. The best part is Bryan's like, "Yeah, whatever. This guy's high still." Anyway, yeah, whatever. Let's try somebody else.
First off, Mike, that's like, man, that's legit. I've thought about creativity a decent amount, but like I love your approach. The interesting thing, I don't know if you knew this, but like apparently the falling asleep thing is actually a real deal. And there's people who like have really challenging problems like physicists and scientists and mathematicians and things like... Yeah. And basically the idea is like you force yourself to get to that point of falling asleep in order to trigger that thought process. So there's people who actually do the exact opposite thing that Bryan tells us to do, which is go to sleep in order to generate creativity, which is super interesting. Bryan, do you hate new ideas?
You know, I would say my best source of ideas is sleep. Unquestionably.
Unquestionably. Bryan talks about this all the time. Like he'll wake up in the morning and be like, you guys, best idea last night, and it's always through his dream. So it's actually exactly aligned with what you're talking about.
I sleep so that I can think. During the day it just feels like, in my current role in life, it comes in so fast and furious. I don't ever have enough space to just stretch myself out, and so sleep is the only time I think I actually get a relaxed mental state where I can explore various things. And like my very best ideas of the world, like I'm mostly okay, I'm 99.9% NPC. The words I assemble on a daily basis to express reality are ideas and concepts that people have put together, you know, throughout history, like very little novelty of me as a... Although I've had a few interesting ideas, a very very small subset, but I'd say those have come in my sleep. But yeah, I mean, Mike Mallin.
Yeah. So for me, interestingly enough, it's exercise. So a jog or a run, sometimes even like an intense jog or run is where I find it. And what's really interesting is like focus for me is hard unless I'm keeping my body busy. And I don't know if that's like an ADHD hyperactivity thing. I don't know what's going on there, but like... You're like the opposite of Mike.
In medical school, I used to study on an elliptical. I would literally take the study notes and I laminated them so I could sweat on them. That's so smart. Yeah. Yeah, I would take them onto the bike or onto the elliptical and just spend like hours, like, you know, abolishing any muscle protein synthesis that was possible, just like zone two, so I can think. And it's always been like that for me. Every creative idea that's turned into a success has happened on a run, to the point that my business partner, when I call him and say, "Hey, I was on a run. I had an idea," he's just like, bing, starts listening. Otherwise, it's like it wasn't really an idea. But if I tell him I was on a run and then I had an idea, he's like, "All right, let's talk." You know, it's interesting. That's amazing. Huh.
How about you, Kate? So, I do the opposite of you, Mike, where I try to absorb as little information in reality as possible because I feel like my mind is self-generating enough with ideas. And so, whenever I need like a little pick-me-up, I'll just listen to a tiny little bit of a podcast, like even a couple of minutes, it'll generate a new idea and then I'll go off in that direction for, you know, maybe a couple of months even, and then come back. Honestly, I think I just need space and then it just comes. I feel like I'm kind of always high just naturally a little bit, and so I just need to give myself some space. That's the most white girl [ __ ] I've ever...
I can attest to this. When, you know, Kate and I, it's like fast and furious all day long. If she gets just a free hour, it is amazing where her mind goes, like all these different branches. So yeah, I mean my objective has been create space for Kate to think, to play. Yeah, that's really cool. Which is why I love planes so much, because it's just space. You just get to sit down. That explains it. Yeah.
I've been dealing with a thing recently that I'm not so happy about, but I so much love deep work. I'm not proud to admit it. I'm not endorsing it, but I really hate a high degree of varied tasks like email this person back, connect this person to marketing, ping back a few pictures of yourself drinking a genius shot, that kind of stuff. I would just want to claw my eyes out instead of doing that [ __ ] I want to be in a windowless room to just have space and time to just work with ideas and produce produce produce. And it's gotten a little bad lately where I look at my schedule and I'm like, random [ __ ] kind of day, like the Bryan Johnson move. And like Bryan, like Kate, I don't know how the [ __ ] you guys do it, dude. I would opt right the hell out. I just want to be left the [ __ ] alone. My ideal workspace is like a military research center on one of the moons of Uranus or some [ __ ] like that. Like I'm back 10 years later. I'll see you guys in a bit. I got to go off to myself.
And the thing is I'm hyper social, but socialization for me is for fun and for vibes and having a good time and talking about ideas and stuff, but it never feels like work. So if you get me to talk to people for 3 hours straight and be like, "All right, that was a good work day," I'd be like, "I didn't do any work." I have a crazy industriousness drive that eats at my soul every day that I'm awake. And if I'm not by myself producing in quiet, I start to go insane. And so how do you guys deal with that? Do you feel like after a bunch of different stuff like your India trip and blah blah, do you feel like you've done work, or is there something in you that's like, I haven't done any [ __ ] work, we're just touring around the [ __ ] place? Yes. To all of that. Okay. Yeah, it's painful. Very painful. Yeah.
I wonder if, so Israetel expressed his sentiment. I would say if you take what Mike said and we said, is it the case that most people feel like they're trapped in a torture chamber of that thing, that they're pinned down by a never-ending stream of messages, of social media, that if you don't post, you're missing out, if you're not scrolling, you're not up to speed, you know, if you're not involved in the actual tribe? I would hypothesize that most of society feels tortured by the systems that are in place and almost like the necessity that you have to engage to be part of the tribe. What do you think?
Yeah, the messages thing is out of control. The constant always on, and the expectation to respond immediately to people all the time. It's just ridiculous. Is that a thing? Is that an expectation? Well, you get a text message, you have to respond within three days, otherwise you're... I just find that ridiculous. Oh, see, your immediately is a little longer. Yeah. Yeah. Like I want two months to respond to a text message. I want that to be totally fine, cuz otherwise you're just bombarded. For us specifically, it's like Instagram DMs, WhatsApp, Slack, email, text messages, Twitter, you know, it's endless, the constant communication.
I can't believe I'm saying this, and I reserve a whole lot of shut up Mike for saying this, but as you get more famous or whatever the hell all of this is, I think a lot of people from the outside looking in are like, "This is amazing. This person must be in paradise to have millions of followers or whatever and lots of money and all that stuff. It's got to be so cool." And I also had ideas about that when I was younger and significantly less relevant. And then I noticed, and I actually talked to ChatGPT lately. I was like, "Hey, what's the mental health like of famous people?" And ChatGPT is usually really nice. It's like, not good, like legendarily terrible. And I was like, "You're kidding." It's like, "No, legit. Celebrities are dealing with like anorexia nervosa levels of real risk to self harm and all this stuff." And I was like, "Oh, no, no joke." And it's like, "Yeah, they get almost exclusively negative feedback on everything. The positive feedback is from people that don't know them at all," just like flittering into the air, and it goes in one ear and out the other. And the amount of people tugging at you in different directions is absolutely wild.
And I remember hearing back in the day, I don't know if this is true, that Joe Rogan has three cell phones: one for people who'll get on the podcast, one for acquaintances, the close friends, and then one for like core group, and like three numbers or whatever. And I remember hearing that and being like, that's ridiculous. And then as my YouTube [ __ ] went like this, more and more every month I was like, "Yeah, yeah, Joe's on to something." That's really a thing. Because a lot of people will hit you up and be like, "Hey, how's it going? Blah, blah, blah, this and that. Can you connect me to blah blah blah?" And I'm just like, "Oh my god, I have like three day jobs plus I have to respond to ostensibly hundreds of people a week. It's nuts." And if you have that expectation of yourself to do it, it gets really wild really fast. How do you guys handle all that stuff?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Kate's reaction nailed it. I agree with you. You feel like you're caught in a tornado. The forces that move about you, you're just not strong enough to wrestle the chaos. It's challenging because, for example, I get maybe, I don't know, I'm guessing 100 to 150 messages per day of, you know, these are important people and they're messaging like, "Hey, I'm being extorted by blank. Can you talk this morning?" And so it's not like a casual conversation of like when you get to it, or like, "You know, my parent is having this very serious medical condition. Can you talk about how you would approach a situation if you were me?" These are urgent pressing requests, sometimes from nation state leaders, sometimes from friends, sometimes it's like all power levels of society. And then in the meantime, you know, our schedules are back to back all day long. And then you layer in all the other stuff, like yeah, it is just absolutely overwhelming. And so it's very hard to not respond to friends. It's very hard to not respond to people who genuinely need help. So it just really creates a situation.
Then you layer on this other complication, and I wish people would talk about this more often, and you and I spoke about this a little bit when we were together, which is, you know, I was poor until I was 34 years old. I'm now 47, and so I'm new money, and so I never learned what it means to have money and the complications that that creates in your life. And when you have money, everything changes in your life. Everybody who enters your life is now some kind of thing that needs to be considered. If I look at the people who have been close to me, over half of them have done something that has ended up in some kind of violation of trust. And I don't think it's that they are bad people. I just think that when you get in that situation, it is very hard to discern what is theirs and what is yours. And as I've talked to other people, they tell me the exact same patterns, the exact same stories, that it inevitably just happens. And so I was trying to evaluate myself, like is this something I'm doing? Am I just a bad boss or a bad manager or a bad person? What is causing this? But it just seems like it's algorithmic. It's a pattern. It emerges. It happens. And that also just creates this other layer of, now you have to view the world through these lenses of suspicion. And that sucks. You really want to see the best in people, but it just turns sideways so frequently. It's really quite challenging.
So yeah, it creates an environment. I understand why... Kate and I were just with, I'm not going to say who their name was, this very wealthy powerful person, and they've been in wealth and power their entire life. And they basically just said, "I'm out." They're like, you know, 40s. "I'm out on this. I've been through so many [ __ ] situations with extortion and lying and stealing. I just can't do it. I'm done. And every time I think I'm okay, it just goes wrong." So, this is not to say it always does, but it does seem like a very prominent pattern. And it's just a reality. I wish people talked about it more often.
I think early on, Bryan, in getting to know you, we were kind of talking about this because you were just starting to get to this level of fame that was insane. And it's almost like the money is another person next to you, and they have their own existence, and you just happen to be directly tied with this person, and your friends are like, "Hey, you know that one guy, money, right?" Like, "Yeah, we're good friends." Like, "Can you tell him I want some of him?" Right. Exactly. And we live in this capitalistic society, which means that money is the highest value thing. And so it just distorts reality. It has absolutely nothing to do with who you are. It's just like you're associated with this person. And anytime anyone comes near them, it just distorts their thinking because it has this enormous power in the world. It's just undeniable. We all need money to live, and our exchange of time and energy is for money. So it's just like, yeah, algorithmic.
You were looking pretty shocked, Mike Israetel, when Bryan was saying this. Hasn't been your experience, just like power, fame? Same with Bryan, I haven't been rich for a very long time. And so the other thing is, my wife Chris and I, we just pretty much keep to ourselves in large capacity. We live kind of in the middle of nowhere and we stay at home and just work in our offices and we watch Netflix together at night and we take walks in our backyard. It's a very simple life. I'll tell you guys this, if I was single, I would be in real deep [ __ ] because landmines everywhere.
The other thing is, Bryan, when you said something like half of the people you ended up having some weird situation with, I've definitely had some of those in the past, and they always strike me because I'm incredibly... I guess it's maybe a good and a bad thing. The money and the fame have had absolutely zero impact on, as far as I can tell, my own psychology. I'm just the same regular idiot that I always was. I have like an anathema to putting myself in my own head status-wise above other people. If anyone's ever interacted with me in real life, it is highly probable that you got me being super kind and respectful and all that [ __ ] and joking and making dick jokes, cuz I'm just like that with everyone. It's not an act. There is no act. There's no surface layer. There's none of that [ __ ] The problem is that I see myself that way and I
think people see me that way. It's just like Mike the regular village idiot. But in reality, I guess nowadays some people, maybe many people, see me as like that rich famous guy. And so it's a different vibe and then I end up having a discordance between how I think I'm being perceived and how people perceive me. And then like my friends and my wife will be like, that person's nice to you cuz you're Dr. Mike. And I was like, I thought we were getting along great. They're like, no. And I'm like, well [ __ ] I can't tell anymore.
And then to me it's easy because I'm just still nice to everyone. I give a [ __ ] But it's one of those things where the difference between being nice and cool to people and the difference between giving people job opportunities, working with them, getting into contractual relationships with them is, then I have to turn on the Jew brain, lawyer brain, and then it's just port to the attorneys because business people, attorneys, I have an awesome team around that does all those things.
But it's a very different thing, like you know, you meet someone, you chill, you vibe, you see them a couple times in whatever kind of context and like, you know what would be a good idea is, and then they pitch you with some kind of like company idea, blah blah blah, and some of these pitches are dope, some of them are super worthwhile. You meet some of the best people randomly and get into business with them and like that's just how it works. But at the same time you can't just say yes to everything, and you can't even, I guess technically, trust people that they're like good business partners for you, because I always think like, oh okay, all ideas are from great people that have really vetted them and they're really ready to work and there's no con. And half the time that's just not true, which is super sad, but I just have to be like, I love that idea. Let me talk to my technical people. And nine times out of 10, the technical people are like, we already have a scope. You're already overflowing on work. It's an automatic no unless it's Warren Buffett. And I'm like, okay, okay, sorry, the answer is no. And I can't say it's awful for me to say that, but I have to keep that separation. That's how I deal with it. I don't know if it's a good way to deal with it.
Bryan, do you have any tips? You know, like is it like a business face and a serious business face and then a dope vibe face? Cuz I'm not going to be a dick to random people. I'm, don't talk to me, I'm on the subway. Like that's [ __ ] up. I'm never going to do that. But as far as business dealings and do you bring people over to your house, I think that's a different discussion.
Yeah. Mike Mallin, what's your advice on this? What's your take on this?
I don't have any advice. I'm not as wealthy as you guys. So— But that means it gives you an outside perspective on the [ __ ], which is extra valid. Bryan and I are delusional, fame hungry idiots, so we don't know what's fair.
I think like my take on it is, and I have had the luxury of experiencing some time with people who have a significant amount of money. The interesting take that I've had from it is that the more time I spend with those people, the less I want money. I think it's allowed me to come to a realization of like, I don't want that thing anymore. You know, like if you'd asked me 10 years ago, I'd be like, man, $500 million, that sounds amazing. Now I'm like, "No, I'm good. I don't even want that." You know, I value other things in my life. So it's given me this opportunity to value time, to value the luxury of relationships without caveats. That's what all the rich people say anyway. Yep. Which I see as a huge issue. The value of privacy. So like I've gained this gratitude for this place I am in life that otherwise I think would have been really hard to get to based on our current culture.
What is it about hanging out with rich people that made you think this? Was it the fact that they don't seem to be getting a lot out of their money as much as you would think? Cuz like behind closed doors, they're like, "Dude, literally Trix Rabbit is coming to this party. Like the actual Trix Rabbit, he's real. He's genetically engineered. He just hands out drugs that are not bad for you and make you have rainbow face for 10 hours straight." And you realize like actually it's just a lot of lawyers and accountants. And the guy gets like a champagne flute to himself in his private flight as he reconsiders his whole life every Tuesday. Like, Bryan's like, "Very well, this man knows my Tuesdays." You know, like, is it, what is it? What is it that's made you kind of reserved about like, oh, maybe money is not this like amazing amazing amazing thing. Maybe it's just really cool and everyone should have more of it, but it's not like an elixir that makes you infinitely happy and de-problematizes your life.
That's a good, that's a really good question. I think for me it's seeing the complexity around relationships and their relationships and how they've had to interact with people with sort of this constant attention to, is this person trying to get something from me or trying to work me over for an angle into a business or to get money from them or something like that. It's watching them not able to just be themselves because they've constantly got that companion of money, if we want to call it that, next to them who they're having to also like look out for and maintain and manage, right? It's the time spent managing the money rather than managing life. It's the time spent managing those relationships from that perspective.
And then also some conversations, like I've had conversations with people who are fairly well-to-do who quite openly are like, you know, this is just a pain in my ass, you know, like sure I get all these cool things. I have this nice house, I have these nice cars, but like I spend all of my time like worrying about it and focusing on it. And it's like one of those things like once you get it, it's hard. Like you can't just say like screw it, I don't want this anymore, you know? I mean like there's exceptions to that, right? Well, you sure can, but most people don't. You got to be upper level conscious to just like drop all that cash, right? I mean like because at the same time you're also like, well if I just give this up, who gets it, and can they do as good in the world as I can, if that's my purpose or my goal, right? So most people are not going to make that decision.
What's your take, Kate?
That money represents freedom in a lot of people's minds, but the irony is you exchange one freedom for another. So, it opens all these doors and it closes a whole bunch of other doors and it's not clear that one life is better than the other. Obviously, the big caveat here is there is this whole other level of like not having access to money where it's just miserable, where you're constantly having to fight this uphill battle. I remember like how painful it is when you don't have enough money to pay for your phone to have access to the internet and to send, like that's just, it makes work miserable. It's just such an uphill battle.
So besides that, once you've got this base level quality of life, more money, it's not clear, especially because in order to gain money, most of the time people have to work really hard. They have to be a certain kind of personality. And so once they have that money, it's not like that personality goes away. And so it's not like they're basking in the fruits of their labor and, you know, living this life that you imagine them to be. They're probably lonely because they didn't build relationships early in life because they prioritized making money, you know. So, I just don't buy this vision that people have of money.
There was a study that like suggested that it's $75,000 is the threshold needed to be happy and that happiness was not increased by being around, and I think this is an older study so maybe 75 is 100 now or something like that. I have an update to that study if you're curious. Okay, great. So, like, but at some point you don't actually increase your happiness as you go above this level, right? And I think there's some like reason to suggest that maybe you could be decreasing your happiness as you go above that level.
Yeah. The update to that study is it's like a curvilinear graph where it's a really steep ascent of happiness and then north of 75 to 100k the curve still goes up but at a much shallower rate. And if you measure it individual by individual it actually is huge variance. So I think the big takeaway is money makes you much happier if you start with having very little of it and then you have enough to get all your ends met and you can go to the movies anytime you want. After that it definitely makes you happier but like way more money. It takes way way way way more to make you as happy as, you know, if you go from 50k to 150k a year of income, that's like, it's revolutionary. It changes everything. If you go from 150k to 250k you're like, things are a little better. But you would have to go to 500k to get the same happiness bump that you got just from 100k increase earlier. From 500k you'd have to go to 2 million a year to get that same happiness bump. And it really is real, but obviously it projects out like that. So you just have to keep going and going and going to see the same gains.
The other thing I think is really insightful about money is money is a miraculous mega tool for a fuckload of happiness. But you have to apply that tool in a very complex context where there are a lot of like, you know, Super Mario, like he jumps into the pit and dies. If he jumps and gets the coins, he lives and he gets rich. It looks more like that, where if you're really intent on maximizing happiness and you have a lot of money, you can do just crazy [ __ ] and just be happy all the damn time. But you can't just expect the money to show up and then you're happy, because you have to engineer your life for happiness. Money can facilitate that, but it is not automatically a thing.
So like if you work a lot and you recreate in the normal way that you do and you have your normal relationships and then you pour a bunch of money on that, it makes you just a little bit happier and then you're like, why am I not a ton happier? Because you haven't addressed the fact that the money is bringing in huge solutions but quite a few big problems, like problems of privacy, problems of liability, problems of opportunity cost, in my case cuz I'm, you know, I'm saying genetically Jewish, problems of massive guilt all the time. Like why do I have this money and not other people? And technically I'm investing almost all of it in the stock market. So its net yield to society is the best it could ever be by laws of economics. But it's nice to say and think logically. It still doesn't make me feel that good about it. And so you get in all these wormholes.
So, I think money, a lot of it can just absolutely just objective good. But you got to really think through how am I going to use this money to make myself happier. I think most rich people just either assume money poured down the drain is going to be better or they just do the same [ __ ] they always did, which is like continuing to make more money, and then they're roughly as happy as they ever were, cuz let's be honest, like you can only spend so much money and the marginal amount of happiness you get from spending more money is a real tricky thing, because a lot of people haven't even asked themselves the question of what really makes me happy. Like a lot of people just go for regular tropes. Like I want a private plane. I want parties full of people at them and I want all of them to vibe. Dope. Do you actually really like that? Like no, I [ __ ] hate people and I hate flying. Like why do you have a G6? Like, that's just what rich people do? And so if you're really intent on it, I think money can be wonderful, but it's not one of those things that sure [ __ ] is going to make your life amazing.
I think next to money, because I think in the next 5 to 10 years, 10 years almost certainly, everyone in the modern world is going to be trillionaire level rich relative to purchasing power, like in a magical way, and Bryan and I could, I'm sure, go in a wormhole for 10 years talking about this. But I think the thing that hits is fame. Fame is a lot like money, except it doesn't pay you [ __ ] And it changes, I think, even more than money does.
Because I'm now legit jealous of like a hedge fund manager who's like behind a, you know, pay wall at his hedge fund site, or here is our management team. He walks out into New York City. No one knows. No one cares. It's some old ass Jewish dude. Who gives a [ __ ] Like, here's a cane, mister. But like if you have a ton of fame, then your life is really really different because you can't have a privacy level in public.
Like there's the thing I talk about, there's an expectation of anonymity when you're in crowds. Like you guys all probably have this memory of going out into a major city like New York City and just walking around. There's a million people around and it might as well be zero people. No one cares. Everyone leaves you the [ __ ] alone. You're just like vibing. My wife and I used to love going to various cities every now and again and just walking around and looking at stuff. That [ __ ] is gone, fellas. Cuz I get Dr. Miked all the time. Now, I personally love getting Dr. Miked. It's awesome. I love talking to people. I love meeting new people. My wife is more of a private person, so she thinks it's cool, but it wears on her. It's cognitive bandwidth.
And so like that whole privacy [ __ ] is gone. And that's something like, imagine if you're like Taylor Swift. Where do you go? Nowhere. You can't go anywhere. You need a full stack Seal Team X Delta security team to go anywhere. That's next level [ __ ] I think fame is money on steroids for really warping the [ __ ] out of your life. I have a tiny little taste of it. But Bryan, I'm sure you deal with this kind of stuff all the time.
Yeah, we took a flight this week and I was on the airplane and a line formed to do selfies with me, and like the stewardess is there, like the plane can't board because people are in line doing selfies. And so it was, I mean, I love it. It's great. I love hanging out talking to people and they've got amazing stories. So I really enjoy it. I wish, like in the same way, I've spent the past five years trying to work on health. I can now, with most people, like they can pull up and I can say I'm going to spend 20 minutes with you and I'm going to explain to you exactly how you achieve the power laws of health. How you stabilize your mood, how you get high quality sleep, how you keep your weight in check. I mean just these basic life habits. When I made money, I wish somebody would have called me and said, "Hey, Bryan, I'm going to spend 20 minutes with you and explain to you what it means to have money." Can we do it now?
Yeah. No, I'm serious. Like, can you give us— No, we don't have 20 minutes. We got things to do. I have another podcast in five minutes. Yeah.
You know, it's a great prompt and I would say I'm not as robustly prepared. Yeah. I basically, I've not done the reps. With health, I've done this thousands of times and I've dialed this in with data.
What have you learned though? Like even just do a rep now. We won't hold it against you, right? Audience comment section.
Okay. Number one— Oh, Bryan, your setup's all wrong. This is going to be terrible.
Okay. Number one is everybody wants something from you. You have to start with that as a default. You have to. And if you're just playing probabilities, we all have self-interest. And as much as we want to cloak that self-interest in stories that are, you know, kind sounding, they are hero making, we all are pursuing our self-interest. And so, you don't have to necessarily assume the person's bad. You don't have to assume they're nefarious. What you do have to assume is they want something because those things are cloaked and
you're more likely to assume something in somebody else. You're more to assume good things. And I come from a religious upbringing where it's a high trust society. So when you meet somebody, the default is trust them. The default is they are not going to do something that is going to harm you. That is not the way the world works, right? So I'm really having to shake my old intuitions of you show up, everyone's good, everybody has good intentions, what they say is what they mean. There's no other alternative motives.
So number one is like you just have to have this really sober assessment of what relationships are and then create the boundary conditions. So it's not a bad thing. It's just like we are doing this thing together and here are our expectations. We're going to write them down. We're going to be explicit. We're going to be right. We're going to cover all the bases. And in doing that, that then gives you freedom to behave in the relationship in a trusting manner. But if you don't have that block of trust established in the beginning with proper expectations and they're actually written, you have this wide open space of gamesmanship of you don't quite know where things are going and then you're stuck being blinded to what the person's motivations are and where they can go with it. And that's where you get in a really bad spot. And so I'd just say like you really want to establish upfront those expectations, otherwise it gets squirrelly. I'd say that as number one.
Yeah. And I feel like we've learned now in any interaction that's new with someone new, we get out in front of these conversations. We say like these things have happened to us, like this is what we explicitly want you to not do, and we just say it and they're like, I sign up for that, and it's a much more seamless conversation from that point onwards cuz you're like, I'm baselined.
You know what's an example of that? I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas.
When we're hiring for core team members, we will say like in the past people have stolen from Bryan and so trust is actually the number one important thing in this relationship. Like above all else, protect that. And so your position is so close to us that you should know that any chance that you have, any opportunity you have to break trust, don't do it because the moment that happens, the whole relationship will fall apart. And level setting that expectation right early on. Like for example, you know, don't talk [ __ ] about us behind our back. Like that is an example of breaking trust. There's no reason to do it. If you've got, you know, a problem with us or how we handle things, etc., come to us. We're reasonable people. We'll help you work through it. We'll change our behavior. We're totally open. But a lot of people, you know, when there's fame and money involved, they just operate in ways that don't respect trust. And so setting it up as a front.
I mean, so for example, like we're bringing on a new team member right now into my personal life and we sat down and we listed out people in my past 12 years of life and it was something like nearly 50% of those in my private personal circle had stolen from me, like had they been caught stealing.
What do you mean stealing? Like physical goods or money?
Everything. Yeah. Using their company card to pay for personal items over years and running up huge bills. Stealing cash. Stealing cash. Yeah. I mean like everything. And so now I just simply say, like Kate was mentioning, don't steal from me, right? And that means even the smallest thing. Don't take something that is mine and, you know, assume it's okay or yours. That is a slippery slope because when one thing happens, the next thing happens and pretty soon you're in a predicament, but it just becomes so rampant that, yeah, addressing it on the nose. I expect you to not steal from me, if that is a very clear expectation. And then there's other nuances in that relationship, but it seems like it's such a basic thing, but that's what I would think. Yeah.
But that's the thing. Money distorts. It's like the basicness of it that makes that sound so bad, right? Like the fact that you even have to say that upfront in the conversation as opposed to just like we are now in relationship and like, you know, basic principles apply, but you're actually having to say out loud like, but don't steal from me, which like, yeah, cross apply to my prior comment about
Yeah, and this is also the takedown piece that New York Times did on me, and they're basically saying like, oh, evil Johnson, he has these NDAs he puts in place. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to say it is a really beneficial situation for everybody involved to be upfront with expectations, to clearly articulate to everybody this is what's happening, this is what goes on. If you like it, great. But really it's my lessons learned over the past 10 years of you don't want to do things where expectations have not been presented properly.
Yeah. Like a very clear example, like that was published in the New York Times, was we talk about Bryan's erection stats, and before you work at the company you should know that because if you're not comfortable with that, probably not the right fit for you. And so then, you know, we explicitly state that with people, and then the New York Times takes that and says, you know, well, these guys are just, you know, insane. It's like, actually we are talking about Bryan's erection, so really you should probably know that before you work with us. That makes sense.
This is the way you have a dick shark jark is telling.
Oh boy, do I ever. I don't know. I was kind of more in a serious mental headspace of, I guess it's all love and respect and everyone has to do a job. And so I respect the New York Times and other similar publications for like doing hit pieces because it's what they do. Like you're a journalist, you do hit pieces, they get a lot of clicks, you get a pat on the back from your boss, you get a little bonus, you go on vacation. It's nice. And because you're a journalist and you'll probably never have mainstream relevancy or anyone will ever recognize you, you'll never have to deal with the after effects of like, oh [ __ ], like really [ __ ] up someone's life for a few weeks.
Like, and I think a lot of people, like I do this, like, you know, [ __ ] them. They're rich. They're famous. Like, they'll be all right. And there's a lot of truth to that, too. Like, you can make fun of, you know, Kim Kardashian all you want. She's still a [ __ ] billionaire. She could give a [ __ ] But she's also a real person that probably scrolls on her feed and gets really hurt by some of the comments. And something you have to keep in mind, but it really does irk me a little bit.
All that being said, you know, hey, you know, you got to get your media [ __ ] going. It's all good. It does irk me when people who claim to be working for, you know, the paper of record, that like, you know, they're just doing these hit pieces and damn near manufacturing, almost manufacturing false information or going on rumor or any kind of just BS, and it's like, I just always have this vision of like them like hitting submit on the article and just feeling proud and going to have drinks with their friends while they're [ __ ] up someone's life. And it's like, dude, if someone wrote a hit piece on you, no one would get it because you're [ __ ] irrelevant. But if you were relevant, it would hurt you deeply in a way that you could understand if you just read your own piece back and inserted your own name into the [ __ ] And it's just really unfortunate.
I guess what I'd say is, folks that write like articles like that, like respect for doing the job that you're doing, but your job is kind of a [ __ ] thing to do. And if you're good with it, hey, listen, we all need rich people to get checked. And every now and again, a good smut piece is just fun reading. But like, don't pat yourself on the back too hard for doing the [ __ ] that you're doing. Like when I was doing the exercise scientist critiques for, you know, Kim Kardashian or those celebrities and Mark Wahlberg, and I said varieties of unkind things, you know, all jokes and stuff like that, I didn't feel good about myself and I didn't deserve to feel good about myself because I was saying like mean things and talking [ __ ] and that's not a fun thing to do and it's not cool. It's fine, but it's not great. And I'm some kind of smut YouTuber. When you work for the New York Times, you would think you'd have a higher standard than to publish hit pieces, but you know, if it smells, it sells. So, it's a weird dynamic.
Yeah. I think honestly what this conversation today for me has just been is therapy. Like, for real, I mean, I'm coming off of a few months of some pretty brutal hate. And no one's ever perfect in life, but when you're out there as much as I am, like you just have an endless supply of things to twist and turn and contort and make me seem like the worst person ever.
And there's been this clustering of people that have just been hammering away on me. And so it just kind of got to an apex where, 12 years now of having money, and I'm finally like piecing all these things together that I hadn't before. And I'm just trying to create a new model of the world. It's not meant to say people are bad. It's not meant to even have a sour note. It's just to say humans are complicated and humans don't even know sometimes who they are or what they're doing or why, including myself.
Much of my own health journey has been to acknowledge my own incapacity to act in my own best interest, right? Like when evening Bryan shows up and he wants to overeat and stay up late and do all sorts of things that cause me to be in poor health and potentially have, you know, worse depressive symptoms, I'm almost powerless in face of that Bryan to stop him. And I finally wrestled my worst proclivities, like the versions of me that I would say are just not great people. And I finally wrestled those in my life. And I feel like now I'm trying to wrestle those in my relationships where I'm really trying to understand who I'm playing with, what they're doing, what their objectives are, and what the different versions of themselves are. You know, like they could present to me like the good version of somebody is like, "We're going to do this together." And then they have other versions of themselves to show up and they're like, "But wait a second."
So, it's really, I guess it's like a somber thing. Like I'm trying to be a realist. I want to have a positive attitude about the world and about the future of humanity. It also needs to be balanced with some level of accurate realism where you can't bend the world to the way you want, especially how other people behave. And therefore, you kind of need to realize what those rules are. And I feel like I arrived in the world late as an adult because I was so insulated in the world in this tight religious community. I just never learned the basic lessons of life until I was, you know, well into my 30s. So, I just feel like I'm finally playing catch-up and I'm learning these basic lessons I really should have learned much earlier in my life.
Bryan, I honestly find your positivity infectious and inspiring because I follow you on Twitter and I've been having some trouble with Twitter lately. I deleted the Twitter app off my phone because I got into liking some posts that were critical of Donald Trump's economic policies of late, which I'm hypercritical of because I'm economically literate. It ended up recommending all these accounts to me and flooding my feed with people who complain about what Trump does and seemingly do nothing else. And I just got 90% bitching. I can't believe XYZ Treasury Secretary is doing XYZ policy, and there's tons of people arguing, and you have like right-wing Karen in the comments who knows nothing but she loves her president no matter what. And you have left-wing Jim in there that's like, "You're an ignorant idiot." And they're just going at it. And I'm reading this stuff and I feel the black sludge of toxicity like pouring out of my ears. I'm like, I can't do this [ __ ] anymore.
I used to want the conversations on Twitter. I would post something and see what the replies were. The replies are mostly just people vastly misunderestimating my intellect and vastly overestimating their own. And I just don't have the time to beat them to death with facts. Every now and again I'll do it for sport. It doesn't make me feel good anyway because it just embarrasses the [ __ ] out of them. But it's one of those like, wow, there's really nothing good here. And then I scroll past Bryan's [ __ ] and Bryan's like, hey, just reminding you guys to go to sleep. And someone's like, you're a [ __ ] And he's like, thank you. And I'm like, whoa, this is what I need in my life. So that's great positive feedback. No, it's really awesome.
And Bryan, I just want to ask you like, does it wear on you? How do you do it? Cuz I have like a Russian side that wants rage and violence all the time and loves confrontation. And someone's like, "You're dumb and your views on AI are wrong." I just want to be like, "You don't even know how to articulate why I'm wrong. You just have a lot of feelings. I could crush you." And then I'm like, wait, I'm just like combating a fictional person in my head because this guy probably logged off of Twitter and is just going to bang his wife now. He's not thinking about me. And so, like, how do you deal? How do you deal with the negativity? Cuz you get so much of it on Twitter. Have you read your comments? It's just a bunch of people that are good at almost nothing, telling you you suck at the things you're the best at in this world. How does that grab you?
Yeah. Yeah. Kate, what's your assess? I mean, Kate's with me all day, every day. What's your assessment, Kate?
So, if it's not personally attacking things that Bryan works extremely hard at, everything's fine, right? Like stupid jokes, like fine, whatever. But when it's like, hey, he's lying about this thing, that sucks. That's really hard. And I think for both of us, it's taken a huge toll the last couple months. Like, for me, it's been like, man, I want out of this game. Like it's not fun anymore when you can't say anything and people are just going to not trust you. So yeah, it's tough, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
Like I would say like I really don't give a [ __ ] what anybody says, legitimately. I think that when you look back through history, you see that most humans are absolute idiots. That we ourselves are idiotic most of the time. It is very hard as a human to not be idiotic. And I try to basically just try to catch myself. I mean, Warren Buffett kind of had this idea of like just don't be an idiot, like when you make investments, right? If you can not be an idiot, right, you're already outperforming the market. And so I view most people as just dealing with their own idiocy in terms of how they're trying to process reality. And I'm empathetic to it. I'm empathetic to myself. I'm trying not to be an idiot moment to moment. It's very, very hard not to.
And so like Kate is saying, we are genuinely trying to make a positive impact in the world, but that does not mean we get the good grace of anybody, and we don't expect it. But what we do try to do is we try to show up and be legitimate. We try to be factual. We try to put our best foot forward. We try to help people out. So yeah, it's just like on balance I feel like over the long run we will prevail. Like when I read through biographies through history, the person who persists through these various phases of their trajectories, they always prevail. And so we will too. It's just like these momentary blips. And so I think on a macro scale, we're winning and we'll continue to win. So I really am really unbothered overall on like the macro trajectory, even though the day-to-day turbulence can suck. How
do you deal with that suck, Bryan? Like when you read a comment from someone relevant, someone important, someone esteemed, and they're basically trying to clown you. How does that hit you? How do you deal with it? What do you tell yourself in your head? Like you want to take this person, sign a waiver at an MMA gym and just go to town. That's not going to happen. And it's super unproductive and now you're an ape. Back it up. Like what's your stream like that? How do you calm yourself down?
I realize they are talking about themselves.
Explain.
Behind every critique is a confession, right? It's very, very hard for humans to make psychological critique without it being about them in some form or fashion. And if you examine what the person is saying and where they're coming from, they usually implicate themselves. It's not about the person they're pointing at. It's about their own behaviors. And oftentimes you find the irony that they are guilty of the thing they're accusing the person of. And so to me, when it comes at me, I'm just like, it's not about me. Like they're pointing at themselves and they're doing this weird... It's like Bill Cosby, right? When you look back at all of his commentary over the decades, he literally told in his standup comedy that he was drugging women. He made confessions in interviews. It was all there in plain sight and then, you know, towards the end of his life it got pieced together. So people leave these confession clues throughout their entire life as they confess to their darkest sides, but they parade this as critique of others because they want to insulate themselves from that critique. They want to project it onto someone else.
So it turns more into empathizing with how tough they have it versus getting angry about how much they're being.
Yeah. Exactly. I mean, I know when I was in a depressed state, man, that is torture to try to understand how to go from moment to moment. And now I'm actually in a really good state, but it took me a lot of effort to get here. I know what it's like to be in a bad state. And so I have to assume the majority of society, just because most people I know are trapped in bad health, bad food, bad habits, bad sleep. And when those things are not going well, you're just not in a good mental state. And no wonder you're going to come out and just take a really harsh take of the world, which is why there's so much animosity, like you're saying, when you go on X, it is just absolute warfare in there. So yeah, I don't blame people. I really empathize that they're in a system that has beaten them down and they're trying to make it moment to moment. So yeah, I just have deep empathy for whatever they're going through.
It makes a lot of sense. I call it people just having a lot of feelings. Yeah, like when you're really upset at something, you have a lot of feelings. I understand almost everyone has some kind of valid point in there. Everyone's criticisms are always welcome in a certain sense, but if you're really, really passionate, you're really full of hate. You're full of hate and you just happen to be today's or this minute's vector for them to kind of spew their hate on, which makes sense.
Yeah, you guys, we're out of time, sadly. We got to zero of our proposed topics. I loved it though. It was like therapy. I myself was soothed. I hope it's relatable for everyone watching at home, but I don't know if that was true. Yeah. Mike Mallin, how was it for you today?
I thought it was interesting. Yeah, I don't know why you guys had the medical doctor on, but I'm glad I got to contribute and joke around a little bit with you guys, and super interesting to hear everyone's perspective. I thought that was great.
Yeah, I'll say, you know, both Dr. Mike Mallin and Dr. Mike Israetel, you're both new friends in my life. Dr. Mike Mallin and I have worked together for what is coming up on a year. Yeah. But Mike, I love our friendship. You know, we hit it off. I think we get along really well. We understand each other. We have such a fantastic relationship and it's so meaningful. Israetel, you know, we just became new friends and it was immediately just fantastic.
We made out within seconds of seeing each other.
Yeah. So, you know, and then Kate is just spectacular. We share a brain at this point. We do so much together. So yeah, it's just really amazing to be with people I love. It's such a good feeling to connect on a deep level. So yeah, just gratitude for you guys. Appreciate the relationships.
Same. Thanks, Bryan. It's special to get that, Bryan. Very few people will explicitly articulate their gratitude, and you're definitely one of them. And I think it's a habit that I need to do a lot more of because I struggle with a lot of self-criticism. And thank you, Jewish genetics. I'll just dump it on that. But it's just never-ending. And so being able to be grateful for simple things like new friends is something that I think only ridiculous hippie girls do when they're in their early 20s on MDMA. Kate, why are you smiling? But when you, as a successful businessperson, Bryan, and a successful human, do these little mini gratefulness outlets, it reminds me that you can choose to be happier and you can choose to pull yourself out of a sludge of default misery. And that choice cannot be made for you, and if you just default, then you'll run your whole life on default mode.
Yeah, I think the gratitude you're expressing is the full circle in our conversation. It's the ability to feel like we can be ourselves and communicate without worrying what others are wanting to get from us or that there's some sort of exchange that's happening. So, yeah, agreed. Very grateful for that.
I love that we're now being grateful of Mike being grateful for Bryan being grateful. This is too much gratefulness. We need negativity back. You guys are killing me.
Yeah. Cool. Mike, I hope you come back. Yeah, we didn't get to any of the topics, you know. I just want to give you a shout-out on your surgery, and for sharing that so publicly. I think that's badass. I love that you just put it out there. You talk about it. It's open. So that's really cool. I really admire you for doing that. I mean, as we all know, most everyone hides these kinds of things.
Oh, is that a thing? I didn't know people... I actually had no idea. No joke. I'm not even kidding. I have no idea how people deal with this stuff. So I'm glad that your proclivity is just to make it public and share it. I thought that was great.
I have no privacy impulse at all. I could walk naked down the street if it wasn't illegal or didn't scare me. Do it every day. I don't give a flying [ __ ] You've seen one, you've seen them all. Kate, why are you staring off into the distance thinking about genitals now? This is strange. As soon as I got to talking about naked, you were like crazy.
I've got a vacuum in the background now. So, can you guys hear it? Not at all. Someone's vacuuming your house? Yeah, my hallway. In my hallway. Oh, I see. 'Cause you've got family in town. Yeah. I wish someone was vacuuming my house. That would be great. But no.
Mike, I didn't get to tell you my joke. My joke is, Mike, I just want to say I am such a huge fan of your name. Such a great name. I love the name. And Mike, I didn't know I was going to have this conversation, but I'm actually in love with your name as well. Oh, wow. Not like, it's not lust, it's true love, it's marriage type of stuff. I see myself in you, and I mean that literally and figuratively. What is your relationship with Mike? Is it too common for your identity? Or are you comfortable with Mike? Is it hard to come across another Mike?
Mike, I have no problem with Mike, or any Mikes. I am a lover of all Mikes. I don't really have an identity, to be completely honest. Every time that I talk deeply with AI and other folks about this, in the future when we're all sharing a metabrain, there's going to be a question mark about identity. I think identity is largely an illusion. I have no attachment to any name whatsoever. My name, if you told me tomorrow, "Hey, everything's great, but you have to call yourself Matt," I'd be Matt. I'd be Bill. I'll be a number. I don't give a flying [ __ ] I have zero attachment to my name whatsoever. I have zero attachment to almost anything whatsoever. It just never hits organically. Just don't get it. Yeah. People really love their name or whatever. All jokes aside, I'm like, that's nice. I didn't choose my name. Mike's a fine name, but I don't, like, "Yeah, Mike, that really feels like something." It doesn't feel like anything, you know? I don't know if there is a name that would feel like anything. That got creepy.
Well, and I was like, Mike, I was really excited to talk to you about these topics. So, for real, I think it'd be great if we do this again maybe and, I don't know, focus, talk about some longevity and some health stuff. It'd be cool for me. Although this one was great. I loved it.
Whenever you guys want to have me back on, I'm ready to talk longevity, my approach to it, and all that other stuff. That would be awesome. So, just let me know. Yeah, we'll do it, part three. Part three on some podcast. Yes. Yes. All right, guys. Everyone be well.
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