2025-04-10 22:29:13
“Panpsychism is the view that consciousness goes all the way down to the fundamental building blocks of reality.”
— Philip Goff
Philip Goff (@Philip_Goff) is a professor of philosophy at Durham University. His main research focus is consciousness, but he is interested in many questions about the nature of reality. He is most known for defending panpsychism, the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world. Fifteen years ago, panpsychism was laughed at, if it was thought of at all. Goff has led a movement that has made panpsychism a mainstream position, taught to undergraduates and widely discussed in academic journals.
Goff is the author of Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness and Why? The Purpose of the Universe. He has published 50 academic articles and has written extensively for newspapers and magazines, including Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Aeon and the Times Literary Supplement.
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
This episode is brought to you by Our Place’s Titanium Always Pan® Pro using nonstick technology that’s coating-free and made without PFAS, otherwise known as “forever chemicals”; AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement; and Helix Sleep premium mattresses.
This episode is brought to you by AG1! I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.
Right now, you’ll get a 1-year supply of Vitamin D free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit DrinkAG1.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive your 1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive daily, foundational nutrition supplement that supports whole-body health.
This episode is brought to you by Our Place’s Titanium Always Pan® Pro. Many nonstick pans can release harmful “forever chemicals”—PFAS—into your food, your home, and, ultimately, your body. Teflon is a prime example—it *is* the forever chemical that most companies are still using. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to major health issues like gut microbiome disruption, testosterone dysregulation, and more, which have been correlated to chronic disease in the long term. This is why I use the Titanium Always Pan Pro from today’s sponsor, Our Place. It’s the first nonstick pan with zero coating. This means zero “forever chemicals” and a durability that will last a lifetime. That’s right—no degradation over time like traditional nonstick pans.
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This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep! Helix was selected as the best overall mattress of 2024 by Forbes, Fortune, and Wired magazines and many others. With Helix, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk-free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, Helix is offering 20% off all mattress orders at HelixSleep.com/Tim.
Want to hear how writer and producer Michael Schur brought philosophy to prime time with his critically acclaimed NBC comedy The Good Place? Listen to our conversation here, in which we discuss how performing live comedy is like Roman gladiator combat, the F = ma of sitcom writing, rare-book collecting, what qualifies the legitimacy of a philosopher, two philosophers Michael would choose to have on speed dial for his own personal instruction, worthwhile failures, why we should all strive to better understand ethics, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
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The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
“Panpsychism is the view that consciousness goes all the way down to the fundamental building blocks of reality.”
— Philip Goff
“Don’t start from ‘What do I want?’ Start from ‘How can I contribute?’ I think happiness flows from that.”
— Philip Goff
“The way the word ‘consciousness’ is standardly used, I think in both science and philosophy, it just means subjective experience. Your consciousness is just what it’s like to be you.”
— Philip Goff
“I’m not here saying, ‘Oh, this is the one true faith you’ve got to believe.’ … I’m interested in different experiments in living, and I think there’s a way of engaging religion that perhaps not everyone is fully aware of.”
— Philip Goff
“Physical science doesn’t really tell us what matter is … ultimately, at base, physics just gives us mathematical structure. And so in a sense, physics doesn’t care what matter is, it doesn’t care what physical reality is, it just cares what its mathematical structure is.”
— Philip Goff
“We don’t know if we can get consciousness out of physics, but we know we can get physics out of consciousness.”
— Philip Goff
[On the integrated information theory:] “The proposal is that at the exact moment when a system has more integrated information in the whole than in the parts, that’s when the lights come on. That’s when you get consciousness.”
— Philip Goff
The post Philip Goff — Exploring Consciousness and Non-Ordinary Religion, Galileo’s Error, Panpsychism, Heretical Ideas, and Therapeutic Belief (#805) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-04-10 00:30:40
David Whyte (davidwhyte.com) is the author of twelve books of poetry and five books of prose. He holds a degree in marine zoology and has traveled extensively, including living and working as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands and leading expeditions in the Andes, Amazon, and Himalayas. He has also hosted a live online series, Three Sundays, every other month since 2020.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with David for an interview a few months ago, and he proved as wonderful in person as he is on the page. During our conversation, he read from his most recent work, Consolations II. Now, I have a dog-eared hardcover copy by my bedside. It’s indispensable. No matter the challenge, dream, mystery, or feeling of stuckness, he has a poem or essay within that will help you.
I’ve recently been rereading one of his essays in particular, and David kindly agreed to allow me to share it with you here. I’ve bolded some of my favorite parts. If a sentence is bolded and underlined, I found it particularly impactful.
is the mask that truth wears when we refuse to stop and uncover its face: the disembodied state I feel when I pretend to put things right by worrying about them instead of conversing with them. Anxiety is my ever-present excuse for not truly resting into the body or the breath or a world where I might find out the truth. Anxiety is the temporary helper going by the name of worry, who, when turned into our constant live-in companion, becomes our formidable jailor.
In the midst of anxiety we always haunt the body like an unhappy ghost from the past instead of living in it as a live anticipation of our future: anxiety creates the ghost-like sense of living timidly in our mortal frames so that we begin living in the world in the same way: as a troubled guest; a guest who does not believe they deserve the rest and hospitality that the body, the breath or the world can offer. Anxiety is the mind refusing to be consoled and nourished either by the body itself, or the beauty of the world that this body inhabits: anxiety is an extended state of denial; the refusal to put right something that needs to be put right, because putting it right often means feeling real anguish, a real sense of the unknown and the need to change at a fundamental level.
Anxiety always tells us we are somehow just about to be injured by reality, by another or by the body itself: that nothing is to be trusted fully: our continued nervousness wasting the body’s powers by keeping up a heightened but unsustainable level of alertness. Nervousness loves further nervousness to confirm its fears; on the Internet I will find everything I need to feed my anxiety because anxiety is what makes me click as much as curiosity. Anxiety is difficult to shed because anxiety always refuses rest and rest is where the answer to anxiety lies. Rest feels as if we are letting down our guard and refusing to defend what we instinctively feel must be constantly defended to the last. Rest feels like a traitorous activity ignoring the fears that have come to make up our identity, anxiety is a dead end exactly because it refuses to look for real consolation.
Temporary worry is useful to us and allows us to identify and innumerate what has not yet been fully answered or done and therefore outlines what is important to us and what we care about: constant worry always goes over and over the same territory and becomes, in the refusal to move on, the anxiety that cripples: anxiety is the illusory state of non-attention where we imagine that the very worrying itself is a way of paying deeper attention, but anxiousness actually becomes our unconscious way of refusing to go any deeper with the very things we are spending our days, worrying about.
Constant anxiety is an unconscious defence against what is calling us to a deeper understanding. Ever-present anxiety actually covers over and prevents me from feeling fully what is praying on my mind. Constant anxiety is our constant way of not paying attention. Anxiety is the trembling surface identity that finds the full measure of our anguish too painful to bear, constant fretting is our way of turning away from and attempting to make a life free from the necessities of heartbreak. Anxiety is our greatest defence against the vulnerabilities of intimacy and a real understanding of others. Allowing our hearts to actually break might be the first step in freeing ourselves from anxiety.
Anxiety is a way of being temporarily absent that almost always turns into a permanent exile. The exile that anxiety creates is most grievously felt in the way we both live in our bodies and don’t live in our bodies at the same time. In order not to feel the full measure of my heartbreak, I refuse to let my body breathe in its own, easy natural way, I refuse to let myself feel I am in the right place at the right time; I refuse almost every invitational aspect of the world and see it only through the inverted telescope of my worries, where everything is made smaller, harder to see and harder to understand. My defence against a painful reality is to live in an unreal body in an unreal, besieged kind of time, and often in an unreal place; a place I don’t care about; I disallow myself the ability to stop and rest and the spacious silence needed for a full, easy, coming to ground in a new understanding.
In an anxious state I actually do not wish to understand, I only wish to worry: and in my worries, everything feels as if it is squeezed through the narrow aperture of my anxious body, causing it to tremble, to constrict and to hide inside that rheumatic constriction. I hurry from one thing to another, never actually landing, never feeling there is enough time, never making time to feel fully what is occurring both inside and outside my body. Anxiety, when I am lost, is often the only merciful way I can find to turn away from the pain the world caused me, is causing me and will cause me.
Anxiety is both my protection and the sure indication of my deepest vulnerabilities, all at the same time. What seems completely wrong with my life, with the world and with the time in which I live, is often my greatest, manufactured, defence against being fully part of this body, this world and this time. What I worry about and fret about for my children’s future is often what keeps me from helping them into that future. What I worry about and what I am anxious about keeps me in an insulated, busy state of mind that stops me feeling the true depth and vulnerability of how much I care, how much I want to make a difference and how much I feel powerless to do it. Anxiety is my temporary ally and my daily saviour from the abiding pain of real heartbreak. I am not anxious because I worry so much as I am anxious because I do not want to feel the full vulnerability of being visible and touchable in a difficult world.
Our anxiety is constantly calibrated by the sense of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, inhabiting one moment while thinking about another, thinking one thing while doing another, trying to live in another abstracted, ideal body while forgetting to eat or breathe in this one. Loss of weight and loss of the breath are two abiding symptoms of anxiety. Gaining weight and breathing in a laboured way are also magnified by the abstractions of anxiety. Anxiety is my way of not fully feeling the vulnerability of my body, and my world.
Constant fretting is my refuge but also, often the source of my loneliness, doubling as it does as a defence by keeping people at a distance. Anxiety begins in helpless worry, and then becomes a means of protection against our own ability to help others, a state which provides me with distance from my real, foundational sorrow, by keeping an equal distance from the grief of others. I worry but other people’s worries do not count.
Anxiety is a way of feeling constantly besieged and therefore allows me to be helpless to do anything about what lies beyond my walls. When I see everything as impinging on my life, I find it hard to have a sense of humour about the fundamentally amusing absurdities of every human life; when I see everything as an ecological threat, I find it difficult to live with the blessings of birdsong or the beauties of a passing cloud scape. When I worry constantly about the imperfections of my relationship, I keep my love at an equally constant distance. Anxiety is my ongoing excuse for not being intimate, anxiety is how I keep what I am worrying about from coming too close, anxiety enables me to stay well clear of my heartache.
Over time, constant anxiety is a form of amnesia, a forgetting and an absence. Anxiety becomes my beloved abstraction where I can keep myself in suspension, when I am afraid of getting to the bottom of things and allowing myself a true understanding. Emotional immobility is the state in which we find ourselves when we have lost sight of the silent, pivotal centre from which to speak, to take action or to harvest the wisdom of the spacious, the timely and the timeless.
Our vulnerability to constant worry is produced by a dynamic of the mind whose chief evolutionary task is actually to make us more anxious: to worry, to fret, and out of that worry and fret, to get things done, and out of getting things done, to survive; constant anxiety always in the end raises even the tiniest little threat to the level of existential survival. Anxiety makes every little thing a matter of life and death.
The cure for anxiety is almost always found in some kind of radical simplification, a simplification that slowly opens up a very physical, rested experience of timelessness. Often the heart of our simplification is the freeing realisation that we can do nothing about the worry except to let it go. From this place we learn not to leave our worries behind but to consciously worry only for brief necessary periods when worry is needed as a way of paying deeper attention. To briefly, consciously, worry in a way that brings things to a proper harvest of presence is always far more helpful than days of vague anxiety.
One of the greatest gifts we can give to our friends, our partners, our children or our colleagues might be to forsake anxiety: to realise how much we use our worrying as a barrier to our becoming and a protection against real intimacy, real friendship and real engagement with our work. One of our greatest gifts as a provider might be to stop all the worrying about those we are providing for; to provide something else, something that is more difficult to give but something they might actually want—a deeper, more rested, and invitational sense of presence and the gift of timelessness in that presence.
Luckily, all of our great contemplative traditions tell us that the way out of anxiety is always very close and abides just beneath the very surface of our worries, waiting for us to drop down into the body again to a better place. Every meditational tradition of mindfulness in the world tells us that our doorway to freedom is as simple and as close as learning to take the next breath; to take that breath as fully as possible, and then to learn how to give it easily back into the world. In breath and out breath, when taken and when given and when completed without a controlling, worrying thought is an instant doorway to release from anxiety. A mindful easing away from the restless, bullying, fretful mind, into the restful, invitational calmness of easy breathing is always the foundation from which we will re-inhabit the mind in a more spacious, generous, less worrisome way.
Anxiety and all the ways we feel the tremulous symptoms of anxiety tell us just how far away we are from inhabiting a real sense of the timeless. Anxiety is not an answer to a problem we are worrying about but the measure of our distance from the place where the answer lies. Our ability to escape from anxiety is found in our ability to do the simplest thing and to do it well: to breathe and to live easily in our breathing. This truth is too simple for the anxious mind to believe, therefore it is best to breathe in silence first and tell ourselves that we’ll get to curing our anxiety later. Anxiety cannot cure itself, the cure arrives while we are giving ourselves a real sense of rest. Anxiety is often created by trying to remember everything and keep it straight in our harried minds. No wonder then, that the cure for anxiety is found in learning to forget the very sense of self that first felt the fateful need to worry.
From Consolations II by David Whyte. ©2024 David Whyte & Many Rivers Press. All rights reserved. Shared with permission. www.davidwhyte.com.
P.S. David also happens to be good friends with past podcast guest Henry Shukman, one of only a few dozen masters in the world authorized to teach Sanbo Zen. If you’d like an extra dose of calm, I recommend checking out Henry’s app, The Way. It has changed my life. I’ve been using it daily, often twice a day, and it’s lowered my anxiety more than I thought possible. For 30 free sessions, just visit thewayapp.com/Tim. No credit card required.
The post How to Heal the Anxious Self — David Whyte appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-04-03 22:59:15
“Living is reliving.”
— Robert Rodriguez
Robert Rodriguez (@rodriguez) is a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and composer.
While a student at the University of Texas at Austin in 1991, Rodriguez wrote the script to his first feature film while sequestered at a drug research facility as a paid subject in a clinical experiment. That paycheck covered the cost of shooting his $7,000 film El Mariachi, which won the coveted Audience Award at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival and became the lowest budget movie ever released by a major studio. Rodriguez wrote about these experiences in Rebel Without a Crew, a perennial guide for the independent filmmaker.
Rodriguez went on to write, produce, direct, and edit a series of successful films including Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty, the Spy Kids franchise, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller’s Sin City, and We Can Be Heroes and collaborated with director James Cameron on the film adaptation of Alita: Battle Angel. His films have grossed more than $1.5B at the box office.
In 2000, Rodriguez founded Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas. He recently directed the Lady Gaga/Ariana Grande video “Rain on Me” and episodes of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett and launched Brass Knuckle Films, an investable action film slate. If you’ve ever wanted to pitch Robert Rodriguez a film idea or get profit participation in action films and sequels, he’ll tell you all about it.
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
This episode is brought to you by Cresset prestigious family office for CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs; AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement; and Wealthfront high-yield cash account.
This episode is brought to you by AG1! I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.
Right now, you’ll get a 1-year supply of Vitamin D free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit DrinkAG1.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive your 1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive daily, foundational nutrition supplement that supports whole-body health.
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Cresset is a prestigious family office for CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial planning, uncertain tax strategies, timely exit planning, bill pay and wires, and all the other parts of wealth management that would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most: making things, mastering skills, and spending time with the people I care about. Experience the freedom of focusing on what matters to you with the support of a top wealth management team. Schedule a call today at cressetcapital.com/Tim to see how Cresset can help streamline your financial plans and grow your wealth.
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Want to hear the first time Robert Rodriguez was on the show? Listen to our conversation here, in which we discussed journaling as a crucial component of personal and professional life, keeping crew morale high during a project, how applied creativity dissolves the separation between work and play, the legendary financing of El Mariachi, overcoming budgetary and technological constraints, maintaining momentum when lack of resources is no longer a creative driver, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
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The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
“A lot of times, when you can do anything, you can’t do anything.”
— Robert Rodriguez
“Two of my biggest movies came directly from a movie that you would consider a failure. … Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks.”
— Robert Rodriguez
“You’re not ready for anything life has thrown at you, but you become ready on the spot. Why is it that we think art and life should not be the same?”
— Robert Rodriguez
“You used to ask me, ‘How do you get so much done?’ It’s like I set the bridge on fire and then I run across. Otherwise, it’s not enough at stake. If you have a way out … you’ll take the escape route.”
— Robert Rodriguez
“They say knowing is half the battle. What’s the other half? Not knowing. I think that’s more important. That’s where the magic is. You don’t know what the other half is.”
— Robert Rodriguez
“Creative spirit … doesn’t have hands. It’s waiting for you to get off your ass and pick up the pen, and then it can help take over. … That’s why I say always take action. Don’t wait to be inspired. Action first, inspiration second.”
— Robert Rodriguez
“Living is reliving.”
— Robert Rodriguez
“Don’t just parent; partner.”
— Robert Rodriguez
“I don’t take any job, any assignment, unless it’s going to involve my children, because life is so good that way. You’re checking all the boxes. You’re preparing them for life. You’re learning from them, they’re learning from you, and it’s family time.”
— Robert Rodriguez
The post Robert Rodriguez, The Wizard of Cinema Returns — The “Fear-Forward” Way of Life, How to Overcome Self-Doubt, Learning to Love Limitations, and Counter-Intuitive Parenting That Works (#804) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-03-28 23:17:44
“I would finish every day on these walks, get in bed, and just feel that was the fullest possible way I could have experienced that day. Given the cards dealt to me of this day, there was no fuller version of this day.”
— Craig Mod
As promised, welcome to round 2 with Craig Mod!
Craig Mod is a writer, photographer, and walker living in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan. He is the author of Things Become Other Things and Kissa by Kissa. He also writes the newsletters Roden and Ridgeline and has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, and more.
He’s walked thousands of miles across Japan, and since 2016, he has been co-running “Walk and Talks” with Kevin Kelly in various places around the world: the Cotswolds, Northern Thailand, walking across Bali, Southern China, Japan, Spain (Portuguese and French Caminos), and more. He’s a MacDowell fellow, Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellow, and Ragdale fellow.
In 2023 he wrote an impassioned recommendation of Morioka, Japan, to The New York Times, prompting the paper to rank the city number two (behind London) for “Places to Visit in 2023,” turning Mod into a minor celebrity. He sat for interviews with some forty or fifty newspapers and TV shows, trying to explain the goodness of a city like Morioka to people for whom the goodness is so self-evident that it has become invisible. This whole media dance culminated in his going on a two-day walk around Morioka with one of Japan’s biggest TV stars: the seventy-nine-year-old, sunglasses-wearing Tamori -san, who was lovely (and very tiny!). The response—a total heartfelt reverence for the avuncular Tamori—from people on the street (“Good morning, Tamori -san!,” yelled construction workers from atop their scaffolding) made Mod feel like he was walking with John Lennon. Mod’s moment of celebrity was mercifully short-lived. Nobody recognizes him anymore when he walks around town.
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
This episode is brought to you by Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business; Momentous high-quality supplements; and Helix Sleep premium mattresses.
This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep! Helix was selected as the best overall mattress of 2024 by Forbes, Fortune, and Wired magazines and many others. With Helix, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk-free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, Helix is offering 20% off all mattress orders at HelixSleep.com/Tim.
This episode is brought to you by Momentous high-quality supplements! Momentous offers high-quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, and I’ve been testing their products for months now. I’ve been using their magnesium threonate, apigenin, and L-theanine daily, all of which have helped me improve the onset, quality, and duration of my sleep. I’ve also been using Momentous creatine, and while it certainly helps physical performance, including poundage or wattage in sports, I use it primarily for mental performance (short-term memory, etc.).
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Want to hear round one of this conversation with Craig Mod? Listen here as we discuss Craig’s journey from a post-industrial Connecticut town to Japan, advice for adults who want to pick up the Japanese language, bizarre homestay stories, struggles with spirits of sauce and the supernatural, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
Website | Bluesky | Instagram | YouTube | Roden (Monthly Newsletter) | Ridgeline (Weekly Newsletter)
The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
“I would finish every day on these walks, get in bed, and just feel that was the fullest possible way I could have experienced that day. Given the cards dealt to me of this day, there was no fuller version of this day.”
— Craig Mod
“I love my scale because it’s sustainable. It gives me total creative freedom.”
— Craig Mod
“If you spend 30 days doing that physical activity every day to that degree, your body changes. You become what I call a bobbing consciousness. By day 20, 25 on the road where you’re walking 20, 30, 40k, your legs are just so powerful.”
— Craig Mod
“One of the weirdest things about being a contemporary human is, first of all, we’re never bored because we always have this stupid Black Mirror slab in our pocket that’s always distracting us with some other dopamine hit.”
— Craig Mod
The post Craig Mod Returns — Epic Walks in Japan, The Art of Slowness, Digital Detox, Publishing “Impossible” Books, and Choosing Beauty Over Scale (#803) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-03-27 22:00:49
“Part of what was great about Japan was that as soon as I landed, I felt a few things. One was society was taking care of people. I was walking past so many people every day in the street who were so much better taken care of than where I came from.”
— Craig Mod
Craig Mod is a writer, photographer, and walker living in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan. He is the author of Things Become Other Things and Kissa by Kissa. He also writes the newsletters Roden and Ridgeline and has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, and more.
He’s walked thousands of miles across Japan, and since 2016, he has been co-running “Walk and Talks” with Kevin Kelly in various places around the world: the Cotswolds, Northern Thailand, walking across Bali, Southern China, Japan, Spain (Portuguese and French Caminos), and more. He’s a MacDowell fellow, Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellow, and Ragdale fellow.
In 2023 he wrote an impassioned recommendation of Morioka, Japan, to The New York Times, prompting the paper to rank the city number two (behind London) for “Places to Visit in 2023,” turning Mod into a minor celebrity. He sat for interviews with some forty or fifty newspapers and TV shows, trying to explain the goodness of a city like Morioka to people for whom the goodness is so self-evident that it has become invisible. This whole media dance culminated in his going on a two-day walk around Morioka with one of Japan’s biggest TV stars: the seventy-nine-year-old, sunglasses-wearing Tamori -san, who was lovely (and very tiny!). The response—a total heartfelt reverence for the avuncular Tamori—from people on the street (“Good morning, Tamori -san!,” yelled construction workers from atop their scaffolding) made Mod feel like he was walking with John Lennon. Mod’s moment of celebrity was mercifully short-lived. Nobody recognizes him anymore when he walks around town.
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
This episode is brought to you by David Protein Bars with 28g of protein, 150 calories, and 0g of sugar; Eight Sleep’s Pod 4 Ultra sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating; and AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement.
This episode is brought to you by David Protein Bars! I’m always on the hunt for protein sources that don’t require sacrifices in taste or nutrition. That’s why I love the protein bars from this episode’s sponsor, David. With David protein bars, you get the fewest calories for the most protein, ever. David has 28g of protein, 150 calories, and 0g of sugar. I was first introduced to David by my friend Peter Attia, MD, who is their Chief Science Officer. Many of you know of Peter, and he does his due diligence. And David tastes great. Their bars come in six delicious flavors, all worth trying, and I’ll often throw them in my bag for protein on the go. And now, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show who buy four boxes get a fifth box for free. Try them for yourself at DavidProtein.com/Tim.
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Want to hear another podcast episode with a dedicated literary champion? Listen to my conversation with Brandon Sanderson in which we discussed building a fiction empire, creating $40M+ Kickstarter campaigns, unbreakable habits, the art of world-building, the science of magic systems, and much more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
Website | Bluesky | Instagram | Roden (Monthly Newsletter) | Ridgeline (Weekly Newsletter)
“As an adopted person, I think my entire life is defined by that flailing. You just don’t feel like you belong anywhere.”
— Craig Mod
“In general, language learning is easier if you have a musical background. And I grew up all through my teens obsessively playing drums, just drumming, drumming, drumming, playing jazz, playing classical, playing in big band orchestras, playing everything.”
— Craig Mod
“Part of what was great about Japan was that as soon as I landed, I felt a few things. One was society was taking care of people. I was walking past so many people every day in the street who were so much better taken care of than where I came from.”
— Craig Mod
“The amount of scarcity I felt as an adult in my twenties is just shocking. It was this fathomless sense of scarcity, like the money’s not going to be there, the love isn’t going to be there, the support isn’t going to be there. And then when I lost her, I was like, I’m never going to have anyone who will ever love me like this person loved me, and I’m never going to be able to create like I created with this person. And I had to start proving to myself that that wasn’t true.”
— Craig Mod
“There’s a huge safety of being in a place that can never throw you away because you’re never going to be part of the thing.”
— Craig Mod
“It is just undeniable that a fullness of life that I find is found through the writing and who that connects me with and the adventures it brings me on.”
— Craig Mod
The post Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits (#802) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
2025-03-20 21:37:44
“You can set a goal to run a marathon, and you can download a training regime, and you can go run the marathon. You can’t do that to invent the computer or Twitter or create amazing art. You can’t plot it. And to the extent you try to plot it, you shoot yourself in the foot because you cut off the possibilities that lie before you.”
— Ev Williams
Ev Williams (@ev) is the co-founder and chairman of Mozi, a new social network that helps you connect in person with the people you care about. Over the past 25 years, Ev has co-founded several companies that have helped shape the modern internet—including Blogger, Medium, and Twitter. Ev is also the co-founder of Obvious Ventures, an investment firm that focuses on world-positive companies addressing major systemic problems. Ev grew up on a farm in Clarks, Nebraska, has two sons, and lives mostly in the Bay Area.
This episode was recorded live at Diggnation (diggnation.show), where digg.com was relaunched. Digg was recently acquired by its original founder, my friend Kevin Rose, and reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and they invited me along for all the fun and surprises as they celebrated the relaunch. Go to digg.com and sign up to get early access when invites go out.
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
This episode is brought to you by David Protein Bars with 28g of protein, 150 calories, and 0g of sugar; Sundays for Dogs ultra-high-quality dog food; and Wealthfront high-yield cash account.
This episode is brought to you by David Protein Bars! I’m always on the hunt for protein sources that don’t require sacrifices in taste or nutrition. That’s why I love the protein bars from this episode’s sponsor, David. With David protein bars, you get the fewest calories for the most protein, ever. David has 28g of protein, 150 calories, and 0g of sugar. I was first introduced to David by my friend Peter Attia, MD, who is their Chief Science Officer. Many of you know of Peter, and he does his due diligence. And David tastes great. Their bars come in six delicious flavors, all worth trying, and I’ll often throw them in my bag for protein on the go. And now, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show who buy four boxes get a fifth box for free. Try them for yourself at DavidProtein.com/Tim.
This episode is brought to you by Sundays for Dogs, ultra-high-quality dog food without the prep or mess! I want to give my pooch, Molly, the best of everything. This is especially true when it comes to the ingredient quality of her food. But most healthy dog foods are an expensive, frozen mess. They’re a hassle to thaw and serve, and the prep work eats up time I’d rather spend hiking with Molly. Sundays for Dogs solves my problem with air-dried, high-quality dog food I can store and pour right from my pantry.
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APY as of 03/17/2025 and is subject to change. Tim Ferriss receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage LLC for advertising and holds a non-controlling equity interest in the corporate parent of Wealthfront Brokerage. See full disclosures here.
Want to hear another fun live recording from Austin, TX? Check out my conversation with Kevin Rose:
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
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The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
“You can set a goal to run a marathon, and you can download a training regime, and you can go run the marathon. You can’t do that to invent the computer or Twitter or create amazing art. You can’t plot it. And to the extent you try to plot it, you shoot yourself in the foot because you cut off the possibilities that lie before you.”
— Ev Williams
“The most creative force in the world is clearly nature, and it has no plan. It just tries shit.”
— Ev Williams
“I saw companies—in particular, products—as a creative process. It’s like writing a book or painting a painting: you have to figure it out as you go. You don’t have it fully baked in your head from day one.”
— Ev Williams
“Remember when social used to mean getting together in real life, getting to know people? And now social is just this catchall word that kind of just means the internet.”
— Ev Williams
“I think humans, fundamentally, were wired to be deeply social, but that wiring was way before screens. And that wiring to be social, it didn’t happen in public. So Mozi is a very simple idea where we said, ‘Well, what would an actual social network look like?’ That’s what we’re building.”
— Ev Williams
“I think this idea of it’s okay to quit is underappreciated.”
— Ev Williams
“You don’t know what else there is until you clear your attention away from the thing that you’ve been struggling with.”
— Ev Williams
“Creative ideation is useful no matter what you do, ever.”
— Ev Williams
The post Ev Williams — The Art of Pivoting (e.g., Odeo to Twitter), Strategic Quitting, The Dangers of Premature Scaling, Must-Read Books, and More (#800) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
