The guest
Kevin Rose — Kevin Rose with Tim Ferriss
The gist
In this Random Show, Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose catch up in Austin over Lalo Tequila and talk through their 2024 New Year's resolutions, including Kevin's three months without alcohol and Tim's minimalist delegation, quick creative collaborations, and physical reboot. They dig into startup advising and equity strategy, AI privacy risks, second-brain notetaking apps, and account-security horror stories. Kevin shares a deeply personal account of the emotional toll of his Moonbirds NFT project and how eight IV ketamine therapy sessions helped his anxiety, while Tim recounts his own ketamine experience and his caffeine, alcohol, and sugar elimination experiment. The conversation closes with Tim's ayahuasca-linked back-pain release, generative-art tattoos via the Blackdot machine, and heartfelt mutual gratitude.
Big reveals
- Kevin reveals he did eight IV ketamine therapy sessions (two per week) at a Los Angeles clinic to treat severe anxiety, describing it as lifting a 35-pound weight off his chest.
- Kevin discloses he has a brain aneurysm being monitored, discovered via the high-blood-pressure workup, which grows with stress and elevated blood pressure.
- Tim reveals he took a full month off caffeine cold turkey for the first time since his teens, and his decades-long sleep issues completely vanished.
- Tim discloses he also did six ketamine sessions over three weeks years ago, where his anxiety scores actually rose because the drug compromised his short-term memory before big podcast tapings.
- Tim shares that during a brutal ayahuasca session in South America he finally felt the heartbreak of his recent breakup, and his crippling lower-back pain released, leaving him 90-plus percent pain-free since.
- Kevin reveals he is in Austin to get a generative-art sparrow tattoo by artist Tyler Hobbs, applied by the Blackdot robotic micro-needle machine doing 17,000 micro-pushes.
- Both hosts say their New Year's resolution hit rate is around 50 percent, and this year they are deliberately simplifying goals to hit 75 to 100 percent.
Things worth remembering
- Lalo Tequila is Tim's first and only alcohol investment; it is additive-free, blanco-only, and matured in the plant rather than in barrels, and Lalo is the grandson of Don Julio.
- Kevin's Moonbirds NFT project traded over one billion dollars in volume in its first year, far beyond expectations.
- Kevin recommends Google Fi with a brand-new secret Gmail as a backup number plus a Google Titan hardware key to lock down iCloud against SIM-swap and social-engineering attacks.
- Dr. John Krystal, chairman of psychiatry at Yale, developed the ketamine antidepressant protocols, generally 0.5 mg per kilogram of body weight over a set number of infusions.
- Kevin uses the RESPeRATE breathing device (recommended by Peter Attia) and the Aktiia wrist blood-pressure monitor, which he had to import illegally via VPN since it is not US-approved.
- Ketamine is on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines largely because it is well-tolerated and does not suppress respiration.
- Tim is a sterol hyper-absorber and takes Uloric for uric acid plus NEXLIZET (ezetimibe and bempedoic acid) for his lipid profile rather than a statin.
- Tim cites studies showing populations with more naturally occurring lithium in drinking water have lower suicide rates, and notes psychedelics are a non-specific amplifier, not a guarantee of peace.
- Matthew Perry's toxicology showed a ketamine dose consistent with fainting and drowning; the danger was recreational unsupervised use, not therapeutic ketamine.
- Tim recommends Dr. John Sarno's back-pain books and a folding Pilates ball for lumbar support, despite criticizing Sarno's selective success statistics.
Recommended in this episode
Books, products and media the guest or host genuinely endorsed here — with the buy link.
Affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
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