Radical Authenticity Over Marketing Tricks

`0:52:57`

I build the company I want to work at. I hire the people I want to work with. I try to write. I do all of our writing. I don't do the design, I work with our designer to do a lot of that, but he's sort of the visual person there. But I do all the writing. And I want every word to land with meaning. This is, again, like thin, thick. I don't like thick stuff. Thin, how can I just get to the right point but not be sterile? It's a problem sometimes with getting to the point, you can be sterile. So there should be a little bit of bounce, a little bit of rhythm in the writing. It should feel nice. You should be carried through it. There should be some momentum in there, and I just love doing it. That's my favorite thing to do, actually, at the company is write. But we just do stuff that we like. I like that style.

`0:53:44`

If you look at my product demos, I always do the demo for the product, like the launch. They're long, and they're unedited, and I screw up a bunch, and I don't care. If I was sitting with you, what I want to try to get to with this kind of stuff is, if I'm showing you something, our product, literally, you're behind me or sitting next to me, and we're looking at this thing together, if I screw up two minutes in, I'm not going to go, "Let's start over." I'm just going to keep going. And so that's how I want these to feel. I want to connect with people in a real way. This is a real person showing off a real product. This is a real person writing a real thing. My name's on it, my signature's on it, my email is on it. We are who we are. We represent ourselves as we are. We are not a corporate entity hiding behind a structure. We're not a CEO or a CTO hiding from our customers.

`0:54:31`

We don't have a board. We don't have any of these things. It's just us running the show. And the show is open for anyone to see. And we open source most of our work. We're very open about sharing everything we know as best we possibly can. I just feel like there's no reason not to. I just want to be direct and clear with people. And hopefully, they like that, and some people don't. Some people are like, "Oh, you guys are too small, I can't trust you." I'm not out to convince anybody of anything. That's the other thing. I don't want to convince anyone. I don't like marketing language. I don't like tricks. Here we are. Here's what we do. Here's what our product does. That's the best we can do, and that's the best I want to do, and I think it's the honest way to be. And take it or leave it. Some people don't like it. That's totally fine. I get it.

`0:55:16`

— I love the idea of doubling down on authenticity and leaving the mistakes in. I remember reading one of your essays a long time ago. I can't remember the culture, but they would do... — Navajo rugs. — Okay. — I'll tell you the story. — Yeah. — I was in Wisconsin, in this little town called Mineral Point, Wisconsin, small, little town, about 50 miles west of Madison, and I was wandering through this gallery. Strange. It was this weird building, and it looked like a junkyard inside. You peered in, it's like, "What is going on in here?" And I saw some old man in the back. Like, "There's going to be something cool here." So, I knock on his door, I walk in. There's some rugs hanging, but there's also junk everywhere. Anyway, he comes out, and you're like, "Okay, this guy's a character." I love characters. I love old people. There's something going on there, right? I'm like, "Who is this guy?" So, he's a Navajo...

`0:56:03`

He's dead now, but he collects Navajo rugs. So, anyone can't go there today, is what I'm saying, but he collects Navajo rugs And I find them very beautiful. They're very simply patterned, and the colors are very vibrant, and they're very interesting, and I don't know what it was, they spoke to me, right? And I don't want to analyze why either, because I find that that's a great way to ruin any experience, is to try to figure out "Why." Just does it or does it not? It does. I love these things for whatever reason. So, I go in, talking to the guy, and I notice that they have a lot of errors on them. There's what I thought was an error, there's geometric shapes. So, their rugs are very geometric. They're stripes, they're squares, they're triangles, they're all sorts of different shapes. And a lot of them weren't quite right.

`0:56:48`

You can look at a shape and go, "It's not..." They're trying to make a perfect triangle, but it's not quite right. And I asked him about that. Or there's a stitch that's off, very clearly off. I'm like, "They could have just taken that out and redone it." And again, I don't know if this is true, but this is what he told me, which is the Navajo, they don't see those as mistakes. They're just a moment in time, and he relayed it this way. He's like, "If you're walking on a path, if you're climbing a mountain or something and you're going on a path, and you trip or you stumble or whatever, you don't start back." You can't take that stumble back. It just happened. The Navajo leave these in their rugs because they just happened.

`0:57:33`

And this is a record of what happened. I love that. I just thought it was so lovely. And I've tried to do that with the things that I do. I don't want to leave typos and stuff. That's not quite the same thing. But if I make a mistake on a video or something or whatever, like whatever. That's what you would do in the real world so I'm comfortable with that. I've always found that to be very, again, a very beautiful thing, that these are not mistakes. Mistakes are a concept we put on ourselves when we do something that wasn't what we intended. Why does that have so much weight? Maybe what we intended was wrong, too. I don't know. Are these rugs worse because there's a stitch off? No, they're not worse. They're better.

`0:58:18`

And that's kind of what I'm striving for with this stuff, is not to take things so damn seriously, and build a company that's afraid of itself, and afraid to do anything wrong and afraid to have an opinion. All these companies, not all, that's a very broad statement, all these companies. — Yeah. — You know what? Everyone's afraid. Companies are afraid, the PR people, and they've got to talk to lawyers before they publish anything. Everyone's afraid of everything, of saying something wrong, doing something wrong, being wrong in some way. That is not endearing. I think people want to do business with people. And they have to do business with companies because companies provide a lot of product. But I think they really want to do business with people. And maybe this is why I like the dry cleaner. Maybe this is why I like the grocery store. Maybe this is why I like running my business my way. I feel like people are dealing with people.

`0:59:06`

We don't have a big corporate structure. We're just 62 people currently doing the things that we're doing. We're all accessible, all reachable. No one's hiding from anybody. This is what we do. And there's, again, a thinness, a directness to that which just has an aesthetic value to me that I can't quite explain. It's like the quality that cannot be explained. I think it might have been Christopher Alexander or something, who was an architect, who talked about this. I might be totally off on this, but I think conceptually, the idea was, you can go see buildings in native villages, and there's no architect that made any of this stuff. They didn't have any architects. They had people making places for them to live and work and worship. And there's a certain quality to that,

`0:59:53`

which is not textbook high quality. But it's beyond high quality because it's a perfect fit for what they wanted for themselves. That's the kind of stuff I like to build. — It's kind of how you're designing your company. — Yeah. Perfect fit for us, for what we want and what we need, and again, getting back to the original thing, how many other people are there out there like us? Enough. That's the business model. — This is exactly how I started doing the podcast. I think I'm drawn to that, too. I think in people, not companies, right? — Yeah — And this is why I was drawn to podcasts to begin with, because it's impossible. Some of these podcasters that I was fans of before I had a podcast, I've heard them speak for hundreds of hours.

`1:00:38`

You can't hide who you are at that point. — Right. — You're going to like the good, you're going to hear the mistakes, and you used the word endearing, and that's exactly how I feel — Mm-hmm. — for some of the people that I admire. — Mm. — There's something about them that is endearing. In fact, a friend of mine just texted me this morning, my friend Lulu, she was listening to one of my old podcasts on Napoleon's maxims on Founders, — Uh-huh. — Episode 337, if I remember correctly. — Yeah. — And she thought it was hilarious that I didn't edit out the fact that I was mispronouncing all these French names. And I'm just like, I don't know. — Right. -I'm reading from the book. I'm like, "I don't know what this is. — Yeah. — I don't speak French, — Yeah. — so I'm just going to do this phonetically." — Yeah, just do it your way. — But it was endearing to her, — Of course. — that I didn't act like I speak French or anything. I was like, "I read books, — Yeah. — and I'm just guessing at how this is pronounced." — You're not putting on airs.

`1:01:27`

I admire anyone who is truly themselves, and that's what that was for you. You're like, "I could have probably faked the accent." You watch TV news, and the guy uses the Hispanic accent for some Spanish word, and you're like, "That's weird." — I know. — You're trying too hard. If you don't speak Spanish, you don't need to fake the accent to try to speak Spanish, is what I was trying to get at. But you see it all the time. I don't know how to pronounce French words either. I'm not even going to try. I'll just say what I say and read it phonetically, and you could even say, "I don't know how to say this." — I do say it. Exactly. — Yeah. I don't know what this is. You're going to laugh at me, but this is what it... And then you move on, and no one gives a damn because you're you, and that's not the point of the story. The point of the story is not perfect French pronunciation,

`1:02:12`

with seven words out of 5,000. It's like, what is the story, and who's telling it, and why are you telling it? That's what matters. Figuring out the stuff that actually matters is what's important about that process, and I think, again, running a business and making decisions about product, it's like, "What matters? What doesn't matter?" That's fun. — Going back to you writing these letters for the landing page. — Yeah. — Do you do it like Bezos, where they write it before the product is created? Or you're doing it after the fact? — In the middle, usually. So, like with HEY, I wrote one for HEY, which is our email service, and before we launched, before the product was even anywhere near done, I wrote the letter. — I need to interrupt you. — Yeah. — I was a fan of your writing. The first time we met, I showed you the Amazon. I was like, "Listen, I have receipts here. I've been reading

`1:02:59`

— Yeah, yes. — your stuff for 13, 15 years." — Yeah. — I bought HEY, just because I wanted to give you money, because I'd buy your books, but I didn't have a team, and Basecamp's project management, — Right. — and I'm working by myself. — Yeah. — And so I couldn't ever give you money, and then you built up so much goodwill by teaching me so much through your writing that I was like, "Oh, I use email." — Yeah. — "I'm going to buy that product." — I appreciate that. — So, I am a proud subscriber of HEY, just because I was like, "I've got to give this... — Thank you. — I've got to pay you back somehow." — Thank you, I do that with other products too, where I'm not going to use them, but I just love the people behind them, and you want to support them. — It happens so much. — And it's a cool way... — This goes back to we identify with people, not companies. — Yes, and it's a cool way to purchase something. — Yeah. — Sometimes, the use is the support, not the actual use of the product.

`1:03:44`

But anyway, during the development of HEY, we launched this pre-launch page months before HEY was done. And so, I wrote this letter about why email is a beautiful thing, and for the longest time, people have hated email, because they despise it, because email has gone off the rails, and we can bring it back on. Do you remember when you used to get an email from someone you loved, or your grandparent, or an old friend? It's a wonderful thing to get an email from someone who you care about. The problem is that most emails now are spam, and sales and garbage, and meetings and shit. Anyway, we can get into that, but the point, to your question, was I wrote that in the middle. I didn't know what the product was going to be yet. We're going one day at a time. I didn't know what it was going to be. — Was that the why

`1:04:29`

behind the product? How would you describe... — It was the love behind the product. — Love? — Yes. — Say more about that. — Well, I don't want to get silly about it because you can't really love... — It's not silly. — I know, but it's a different version of love. — No, I love podcasts, so I know exactly what you're talking about. — Yeah. Yeah. — No, I love them. — Yes. — And when I make one, — Yes. -and listen to it before anybody else does — Yes. — and I'm like, "I'm happy with this," — Yes. — that is love. — Yes, that. — You're not silly. It's not silly to me. — Yeah, I know, I know. Okay, so there's a certain warmth, and tone that comes through when you make something you're really proud of in that way. We got proud about running the business for 27 years. I'm really proud of the products we make. The business, again, is like the envelope. I'm not proud of the envelope. I'm proud of the things that sustain the business,

`1:05:16`

which are the products. And I love getting them as right as I possibly can. And there is a warmth that comes to you when you're really proud to share something that you're done with, that you've finished, that you want to put out there in the world. And it could be a letter, it could be a line, it could be the right word in the right place, it could be an entire product, and it can also be a company, in a sense. But there is love reserved for that, for sure. — So, this is a love for the decentralized... I remember reading this. You were talking about if the actual creation of email is actually a miracle, we've just kind of f***** that up. — Yeah. It's amazing that anybody in the world can get in touch with anybody else. There's no platforms. Everything else is a platform.

`1:06:02`

You want to write someone on WhatsApp? Well, they have to have WhatsApp. Signal, they have to have Signal. Whatever, right? Email, beautiful thing. It's as beautiful as the web. The web is beautiful because anyone in the world with a web browser made by any company can use HTTP and connect to some other website. Same thing is true with basic email. These are the wonders of the world. And how did they become so despised? I blame Apple, I blame Google, I blame Yahoo, I blame Microsoft for making shit email products that they just don't care about. Now, they've started to care more about them. But they didn't care about them for a long time, and everybody knows that nobody cared, and so we care. I live in email sometimes. We don't use email inside our company, we use Basecamp,

`1:06:49`

but for the outside world, we use email. And I want to use tools I love. I want to use tools that matter to me. And if I'm going to spend most of my day in Basecamp, I want to make Basecamp. If I'm going to spend the other part of my day in HEY, in email, I want to make an email tool that I'm proud of, that I want to use, that I have a certain love for, and that's what that is. And that letter, it was a love letter, in fact, it ended, if I remember correctly like, "This is a love letter. HEY is our love letter to email," and I meant it. — Yeah, it's a great thing. It's an amazing thing. — You just used the word tool a few times. — Yeah. — Do you identify with Tobi Lütke? He's like, "I'm just a..." — Toolmaker. — Yeah. "I'm a toolmaker." — That's all I make, too. I make tools. — That's how you think about it? — Yeah, so when people are like, "What do you do?" I go like, "I'm in the software business," so they understand what I do,

`1:07:36`

but I don't like that term. I also don't like, "I'm in the tech industry." I'm not a tech person. I don't like that. I make tools, they just happen to be made of software. That's all I know how to do. I don't know how to make things out of wood. But I know how to make things out of software, and code and design and conceptual ideas. And so, yeah, I make tools. We make tools. We make levers. It's just a lever. It's a lever that lets you do more with it than you could without it. That's all it is. You can move more things. You can organize more people. You can come up with better ideas. You can see those ideas through. You can make progress with the products that we make. That's what a tool is for, is to make progress. — I'm fascinated by a lot of your time spent out of the business, and a lot of the inspiration that you derive in life seem to be from physical things. You just named a bunch. — Yes.

`1:08:22`

— And you have a love of architecture, we just talked about watches, cars, the Concept Rower. When you said, "You could change your mind, David, maybe you're not podcasting in the future." — Yeah. — What I know for sure is if I ever do anything else, — Yeah. — it's going to be physical, because the same phenomenon where, — Yeah. — I barely look at numbers. I know you barely look at numbers, but it's just numbers on a screen. — Right. — And those numbers happen to be big, but you don't understand that. — Yeah. — You just don't feel it. — Yeah. — I remember, Mark Leonard of Constellation Software did this podcast. — Mm-hmm. — He talked about one of his most fulfilling jobs he ever had, was not starting and compounding whatever it was, 50 million to 80 billion or whatever he's done with pure software. — Sure. Yeah. — He was building stone walls. — Mm. — And even to this day, he said he'd go... I think he was a kid or a young man, maybe he was in his 20s, 30s back then.

`1:09:10`

But you can go to where the stone wall that he worked on 30 years ago, and he's pointing at it, he's like, "I did that." — That's badass. — "I made that." — Yeah. — Why do you draw so much inspiration from physical things? I'll take some guesses, because I don't know. Just like I don't know why I like certain flavors. I just do, right? You can't really explain these things, but if I had to guess, again, it comes back to there's something real about them. I like being able to hold things, touch things. I like texture. Something you'll see in a lot of our software products is actually texture, which is not real, it's simulated, but a lot of software these days is very flat. I like gradients and colors and lines and some texture. I just find it to be very fulfilling and real to rub your finger over something and feel it.

`1:09:55`

I like patina, I like age on things. Software doesn't age. I mean, it does age. It can look old or whatever, but software looks the same over time. A great building, a great brick, to get back to bricks, bricks are beautiful because they look even better as they get older. They collect age on them. They get stronger. They build into other things. There's something about the physical world to me that is just... We're from it, okay? We are it. We are part of it. There's something so fundamental about it that I try never to get too far away from it. I would much rather lay on the ground than fly in the air, you know?

`1:10:41`

I just want to be closer to things that are real. Now, flying in the air is real, too, of course, but you know what I'm saying. I'd rather walk somewhere. I'd rather drive. I'd like to be closer to the ground. I've begun to collect rocks that I think are cool looking. Oh, now you can move to Malibu. — Yeah. — Are these rocks crystals? — They're not crystals. I was going to save that in case you asked me. They're not crystals. I'll just find something at the beach, or I'll find something interesting with a cool pattern in it, and I just like it. I don't know. I love nature. I love all the textures and patterns and colors. Like, for example, when you're coming up as a designer, in the early days when I was designing identities, like logos and stuff, you'd go through these logo books or corporate identity books.

`1:11:27`

I think there was an organization called... I want to call it Brand, but maybe I'm wrong. Print, actually. It was this magazine that had all these pictures of business cards and stuff, and every designer I know would look through other business cards for inspiration, for color patterns and palettes and layouts, and I'm like, "Go outside." The best designs ever are right there. That leaf is the best it's ever been. Obviously, it has survived and evolved. This is a great thing, and so if you want to find great colors, look at a bird. Don't look at a book. Look at a leaf, right? Look at the ocean. Go to a tide pool and just look at the colors in that tide pool. Look at the way the light reflects. Like, that's the real stuff,

`1:12:14`

and... I have goosebumps. For me, whatever it is, whenever I talk about this, it's just fundamentally real to me, and I just love it, and I love the screen, too. I love making software, too, but probably because I'm in that a lot, I really like not being in that, too. — I don't think you love the screen. You said if you sell your business- — Right now, I do. If I... — All right, we never answered that. — Okay, let's get into this. — Yes. You said if you sold your business, — Yeah. — you're never going to use a computer again. — Well, I said I would never start another business again. What I would like to do is I'd like to shut my laptop. I'd like to turn off... Yeah, okay. I don't need a screen to survive my days. I'd like to close my laptop for a year and just not use it. I'll use my phone because I get in touch with people, right?

`1:13:02`

But I don't want to "compute." I don't need to compute. Let me just close it and walk away. Again, this isn't.. The computers are some of the most, probably the most amazing tool humans ever made. — The... Yeah. — So, I don't despise them, hate them, but I could take some time away from them. But I think time away from nature would bug me a whole lot more. If I couldn't go outside for a year, it'd bug me way more. — Oh, you'd go insane. — Yes. — Yeah. — I'd jump off the cliff. — I think people have gone insane. — They have, for sure. Right, exactly, so I want to be out. I want to be out there. I think it's just a wonderful... So, the screen is wonderful. Software is wonderful. Computers are incredible things, and right now is an amazing time for computers, one of the most amazing times since the web

`1:13:50`

back in the late '90s or mid-'90s, really. And it's cool to live through both of these moments. But I'd still rather play with some bricks and work on a stone wall, even though I don't know how. But that wouldn't pay my bills either, so I have to be practical. I've built a great software company. I like this stuff a lot. I don't know how to build stone walls, but I wouldn't mind playing with them. — The bills are taken care of. — The bills are, but I still... — I don't think you have to worry about that anymore. — I don't, and I don't do it for that reason. — I know you don't. — But yeah. My point is, had I built stone walls for 27 years, I'm not sure where I would be, you know? — No, the bills would be piling up. — My hands would be very sore, for sure. — The bills would be piling up. — Yeah, yeah. — One of the people I most hope to get on the show and I want to talk to is

`1:14:35`

Christopher Nolan. — Yeah, uh-huh. Have you ever looked into his personal philosophy at all? — No, I just like his movies. — Okay, so — Yeah. — there's something that me, you, and him, I think, have in common. He desires to live in an analog world. I'm almost positive that's a direct quote. — Yeah. — It might be me summarizing reading his biography. — Yep. — And so if you think about the juxtaposition between, like, you make software, but you want to be on a hike outside. — Yes. — You want to look at the ocean, right? — Yeah. — He makes some of the most technologically advanced films that have ever been created, and yet he doesn't have a cellphone. Like, you can't get in touch with him. — Love that. — You have to email his assistant, he has to track him down. — That's amazing. Yeah. — He will purposely put himself into a difficult position. So, he'll drop into a new city. — Yeah. — He doesn't have a smartphone, so no GPS. — Right. — He's got to go up to somebody and be like, "How do I get to the deli?"

`1:15:22`

or whatever. — Yeah. — If he wants you to be in his movie, — Yeah. — like, "Oh, email me the script," he's not emailing you the script. — Right. — Okay? He is printing it out physically, — Yes — flying to you. — Yeah. — So I'm Christopher Nolan, and I want you, Jason, in my movie. — Yeah. — I'm showing up at your door. — Yeah. — "Here's the script," and you're like, "Great, I'll read it." — Yeah. — And I'm sitting here until you're done reading it, — Waiting. — and then when you're done... — Take it back. — I'm taking it back. — Amazing. Amazing. That's cool. — And I feel that exact same way, where it's like, your entire product is — Yeah. — delivered digitally. Mine is, too. — Right. — But I like to read physical books. I like to be in person. I will not do a remote podcast. — Right. — Now I've got to the point where I won't even go on other people's podcasts remote. I was like, "No, no, like, let's go meet and hang out." — It's cool.

`1:16:08`

— I want to talk on the phone — Yeah. — if I can't be with you in person. I don't want to text you. — Yeah. — I want to live in an analog world. I just feel better — Yeah. — being outside reading physical books not looking at a goddamn screen. — I'm with you, and what's important about that is not actually... This is going to sound... Whatever you said doesn't matter, actually. It's that you know who you are. That's what matters, that you know that you like that, that you've figured out that you like that. It's good to figure out what you like eventually. Like, a lot of people don't know what they like. They like what other people like. They like what they're supposed to like. They live up to other people's expectations. They kind of run someone else's business, in a sense. Not like an executive running their business, but people grow businesses that they think they have to grow because that's what you do.

`1:16:54`

They make decisions they think other people would make. They don't even have a sense of who they are and what they're all about yet, and I hope all of them find it because it's a wonderful thing when you know what you're into, and also that you know maybe that might change, too, but you know right now you're into that. The other thing is, you don't need to pick sides. You can love digital, and you can love physical. They're all the same thing. We live on this speck of dust, you know, in space. It's all the same thing, right? So, it doesn't, really, any of it, matter. What you like and why you like it, just that you do, and that you know that you do. You don't even know why that you do, but that you do, and you respect and treat yourself to those things that you find beautiful. — All of the founders and extreme winners that I have

`1:17:40`

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`1:18:26`

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`1:19:12`

At what age do you really think that you finally figured out who you are? — I think probably more recently, frankly, than then. I think I knew what I liked to do, but I'm not sure I still know fully who I am, but I... That's the big question, right? Like, who are we and the whole thing, right? I don't totally feel like I should... No one should be certain about that. But I feel like I've come more into my own actually since getting married and having kids. Looking back on maybe how I was, how I acted, how I was in the world, I'm glad I am who I am now than who... I wouldn't want to be that person again. — Why? Didn't you say you used to have, like, anger? — I think I was... Yeah, I was definitely more of a punk,

`1:20:00`

you know? Like a young... — Say more. — I don't know. I think I probably resented things for some reason. I was sort of... I had a chip on my shoulder. I mean, maybe that was good. Like, you've got to prove yourself when you're new into something, and you're young, and you're breaking in, and people don't think you're any good at what you do. The only time I'm ever competitive is when someone slights me. Otherwise, I'm not competitive. So for whatever reason, if someone's like, "You can't do that," or, "You guys aren't good enough," or... I remember this... Actually, early on in my career when I was a web designer, before I made software, I just designed websites, I submitted a website design to an award thing, and I'm trying to remember what... It might have been called the High Five Award or something. I can't quite remember what it was, and I can't remember the guy's name right now. Dave Siegel, actually, was his name. I do remember now.

`1:20:47`

Back in the day, getting an award from Dave Siegel, I think, was his name, was a big deal in the design community. So I submitted a design, and he wrote me back saying, "You suck." Literally, "You suck. Find another day job." And I loved that. I loved that. That was like... I loved that. I love when someone says you can't do something, that you're not good at something, you know. Maybe this comes from being, like, I'm 5'7", and I'm pretty good at basketball, and you walk on the court, and people don't think you're very good. You know, I love that kind of stuff, right? So, that just fired me up. So as far as finding confidence, I think I probably had a lot of that early on, where people were like,

`1:21:33`

"You're just one guy. How could you do this?" Or, "How could you do that?" Or, "You don't know what you're doing. You don't have a degree in this." That kind of fired me up for a while, but there's a point where you want... This is, again, to the point of, kind of like, you want to sort of launch, and then you want to find a place to settle, where you kind of just, I think, come into your own at a certain point. And I think I probably did that in my forties. I'm 51 now. So I think in my forties, I probably came into my own actually, settled into my own. Had some psychedelic experiences, which helped as well. — Did you? — Yeah. — John Mackey... I don't know if it was in the episode, I can't remember. — Yeah. — But this guy keeps trying to get me to do psychedelics. I think we talked about it at the end. — Yeah. — I was like, "I'm not doing psychedelics." What did you do? — Why not? — I... — Let's turn this interview around. — Let's go. It's a conversation.

`1:22:19`

You can do whatever you want. — Yeah. — I think me and you both bond over... Like, there are some positive things. Obviously, the tech industry and the Bay Area and San Francisco have created great companies and great products and stuff, but there's also a lot of just wacko shit, and a lot of them are... — Sure. — There's just too much drug use, in my opinion. I don't do drugs. — Yeah. — And I like the way my mind is, and I don't want it to change. — Yep. — And yeah, and I'm very resistant to doing drugs, because I've also had, like.. My cousin died of a heroin overdose. My dad did drugs his whole life. He went to jail for selling drugs. — Yeah. — I've never seen somebody high on cocaine make a great decision. — Yeah, yeah. — So it's like, we carry all the stuff that we experienced earlier,

`1:23:05`

and I'm like, "Well, what's the opposite of that?" — Yeah. — The opposite of that is not doing drugs. So, I'll just not do drugs. — Yeah. I'm not here to convince you to do drugs. — No, no, go for it. — For me, the experience was very... Okay, as I think I mentioned earlier, my favorite thing in life is to have an insight, and so psychedelics for me were an avalanche of insights, and that was fascinating to know, that my mind could see things and understand things in ways I didn't know were possible. I could see, like... This will not make any sense, but maybe people who've done this will understand. You think of an idea, and I never thought an idea was like a three-dimensional object that I could turn around and see from the other side. Not like a different perspective on an idea, but literally, I could

`1:23:52`

turn it around and see what was behind it. Things like that, like, that fascinated me. Having insights about the nature of existence and all this other stuff was fascinating, too, but just having... I remember... I've done this a few times, and the experiences are always like, "Wow!" Like, while I'm doing it, like, "Wow, I never thought about it that way," or, "I've never seen it..." So for me, it's candy, and this sounds like maybe candy and drugs, I don't want to mix them, but there's a sweetness to having an insight that you've never had before about something that you think you knew, that psychedelics have shown me.

`1:24:37`

But I don't do "drugs." — But it's an insight of... — I've done this three times. — How does it help you know yourself better? — Well, that's not why I did it. — Okay. — I don't think I know myself better, but I feel more expansive now that there's more than I thought I knew. Here's how I kind of thought about it afterwards. You have to picture an old car radio from maybe the '50s or something. An old pickup truck had a car radio with a needle, and you could move the dial, and the needle moves, right? Get the little glass window with all the channels, and you're in one of the channels. That's where you are all the time. You're in this channel, 95.7 is you. And psychedelics let me turn the knob a little bit and tune into something else

`1:25:26`

that's always been there, but I couldn't hear that frequency. Like, it's amazing. And then if you look at a radio and you turn the knob, you're picking up things that are there that you can't hear until you turn the knob. That's what it was like for me. And how does it make me a better whatever or know myself better? I think all experiences help you know yourself better. So it's just a mirror and a reflection and a detail and a crumb that creates the pile of you. I don't really know. It's not like that was a huge breakthrough for me, but it was fascinating enough to do it a few more times and learn a few more things that were just fascinating. One thing I'll just share, it's a little bit of an aside, but again, it comes back to this object thing, and maybe this is me seeing how my mind works that way, because

`1:26:14`

we talked about objects before. But I remember having this experience where I was just puzzling through this three-dimensional puzzle and being stumped by it, but enjoying the problem-solving. And then I finally, just... Again, this is conceptual and metaphorical and not so literal, but I turned it around and saw it from the back, and it was dead simple. And what it basically told me was, turn everything around. This is inverted. Everything's a lot simpler from behind. Everything's real. The back of things are real. The front of things are fronts. The back of things are real. So, what does that mean? How do I apply that?

`1:27:00`

I don't try to apply that. This is not trying. It's just an insight and a revelation of, like, get behind something to really know what it is. Again, I don't constantly refer to this, but it's something that now I have that I didn't have before, and I'm very glad I have it. So that's part of that. It's just seeing through a different lens, and I'd rather have a few more lenses available to me, if I can, that are harmless. This is not heroin, cocaine, and that kind of stuff. But again, I'm not here to sell any of these things, and I'm not a doctor, and all the disclaimers, right? — I know. Yeah. — But I would say it was a very worthwhile experience for me. — Did you read Rick Rubin's book, "The Creative Act?" — Yes. — Do you think about things similarly to him? — Yeah. When I read that book,