If Books Could Kill

CROSSOVER EVENT: Tim Ferriss’s "The 4-Hour Body"

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0:00 | 1:08:18

[Maintenance Phase theme]


Michael: Should we have Peter, do it?


Aubrey: Whoa.


Michael: Peter has never listened to our show, so he doesn't know the format.


Peter: I do, I do. Sort of. It's like-- [laughter] Wait, what's your tagline format? I've heard it a hundred times and now I can't remember the format because I'm just confusing it with ours in my head.


Aubrey: We could do a little "Peter, what do you know about The 4-Hour Body?" [laughs]


Michael: Peter's head is unconvinced.


Aubrey: Decline.


[laughter] 


Peter: It's your podcast. If you want to degrade it by using our lazy format.


Michael: Well, do one then, Peter.


Peter: You're trying to figure out a way where it's my responsibility to come up with a tagline. [laughs] 


Michael: 100%.


Aubrey: Mike is eternally trying to weasel his way out of doing the tagline.


Peter: What if we made you a part of this, Peter? What if we--


[laughter]


Aubrey: Peter, I want you to feel like you have some [unintelligible 00:00:59] ownership here.


[laughter]


Michael: Okay? This probably doesn't work. "Welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that has 36 hours left every week for face because it's The 4-Hour Body but you have 36 hours left in the work week."


Peter: No (sic)


Michael: Thank you. Thank you.


[laughter]


Aubrey: I'm Aubrey Gordon.


Michael: I'm Michael Hobbes.


Peter:  I'm Peter Shamshiri.


Aubrey: If you would like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com/maintenancephase or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts. It's the same audio content. Michael.


Michael: Peter.


Peter: Aubrey. 


Aubrey: So, for those of you who are unfamiliar, Peter is Michael's co-host on If Books Could Kill.


Michael: Other podcast.


Aubrey: Peter is joining us today for a very delayed follow-up to your Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek episode.


Michael: Yes.


Peter Incredible cross promo. The only podcast I could appear on where there's absolutely no new fans being brought on. [laughs


Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 


Aubrey: So today we are talking about Tim Ferriss' follow-up to The 4-Hour Workweek. It's called The 4-Hour Body.


Michael: Body by Tim.


Aubrey: Peter, It has been a minute. Do you recall any of the high points from The 4-Hour Workweek?


Peter Broadly speaking, Tim had this idea where if you create passive streams of income and then automate all of your work, you can bring your work week down to four hours and basically do nothing.


Michael: This doesn't work as well with Body because you can't hire people in India to do sit-ups for you.


Peter: Right. Also, The 4-Hour Workweek is like, "Oh, great, I'm losing 36 hours of my work week." 4-Hour Body is like, "Yeah, that's a good amount of working out."


Michael: Yeah, that's like a normal amount of working out.


Peter: Yeah.


Aubrey: Well. It will comfort you both to learn that there is no mention of four hours anywhere in this. There's no justification for four hours.


Peter It's all branding.


Michael: It's pure clickbait. Yeah.


Aubrey: So, for folks who are unfamiliar, Tim Ferriss' primary claims to fame are his long-running podcast and this previous book, The 4-Hour Workweek. He's a life hack guy and an optimization guy. He's also by trade a tech guy and an investor. Like, many tech guys and investors, he is rich. And that has given him the brain disease of "I am rich, ergo, I must be right about everything."


Michael: And also, I must be a wellness influencer. I feel like all these guys want to be gurus.


Aubrey: Before The 4-Hour Workweek, he sold a supplement called BrainQUICKEN. [Michael laughs]


Peter: Yeah, the 4-Hour Brain.


Aubrey: I looked into the active ingredients and it feels very trademark Tim Ferriss that he is listing out a bunch of very scientific names for things. He's doing the thing of saying ascorbic acid instead of just saying vitamin C. He's saying niacinamide instead of vitamin B. So, it obscures that what this pill is--there's some adaptogenic mushrooms in it, there's some B vitamins, there's some amino acids, there's some ginkgo, there's some ginseng and there's a fuck ton of caffeine.


Michael: Oh.


Aubrey: So, it was largely a caffeine pill.


Michael: People are like, "I feel amazing on this." [Michael laughs]


Aubrey: Absolutely. That's all of the comments on all of the Reddits are like, "Does anybody know where to find this? Nothing worked this well." And it was like 200 mg of caffeine.


Michael: Starbucks. You can find it at Starbucks.


Aubrey: Yeah, you can find it in the Panera lemonade. Please enjoy. 


[laughter]


Since selling BrainQUICKEN, Tim Ferriss has mostly been an investor for tech companies like TaskRabbit and a bunch of others. He's a Forbes 40 under 40 guy, he's a Princeton graduate and he has quite an ego. On his own website he has two pull quotes that are blown up. One is from wired magazine calling him "the Superman of Silicon Valley." And another one is from The New York Times calling him, "A cross between Jack Welch and a Buddhist monk."


[laughter]


Peter What the fuck?


Aubrey: I just want everyone to think through what that would even be.


Peter: Also, he's never accomplished anything in business. He's just a scam artist. He just wrote a stupid book.


Michael: And the core message of the book, if I recall correctly, is how to scam other people. Like, how to start doing seminars and stuff.


Peter: Yeah, he was like, "The best way to create passive income is to do a scam like the one I'm doing on you right now by writing this book."


Aubrey: So, you all have provided me with the perfect segue. He did publish The 4-Hour Workweek in 2007. It is on its face a life hack manual to just work less. It's a rebrand of "work smarter, not harder." Among other things, he advises readers to hire people to outsource large parts of your job, as you mentioned, so that you can do less. But he also advises things like, "Hey, you could become an expert in something. Go buy the top two or three most popular books on the subject, schedule a free seminar, invite people to the free seminar and give them a talk about what you learned from the books, basically, and then book a bunch of paid speaking gigs off of that free seminar."


Michael: I'm almost nostalgic for this because now it would be like, "Well, just get ChatGPT to read the two most popular books,-


Peter: So true.


Michael: -and you wouldn't even have to absorb the information.


Aubrey: If you're like, “Hey, did his next book include or use any of those tips?” “Yes, it did.” Three years later, in 2010, Tim Ferriss follows up with The 4-Hour Body. The diet part of his book, which is a pretty commanding majority of it, is fully just reheating the nachos of the Zone and the South Beach diet.


Michael: [laughs] At least he's consistent. And he's like, "I told you what I was going to do, and then I did it."


Aubrey: They are two diets from the mid-90s that at this point had already achieved really major popularity. These were books that were being sold in airports, had massive uptake. I remember seeing them at the Costco book table.


Michael: It's basically low carb, but not as extreme as Atkins. Isn't that what the Zone and South Beach are?


Aubrey: It's not quite low carb. It's something that they call "slow carb."


Michael: Oh, it's like a glycemic index thing.


Aubrey: Yes, totally. And we'll get into the glycemic index of it all.


Michael: Yeah. Okay.


Peter: Just checking in. I understand all of this but --


[laughter]


Aubrey: So, the core idea behind The 4-Hour Body is that you can lose weight and get shredded with what he refers to as the "minimum effective dose." So that means he's big on high-intensity interval training where you do really intense workouts for short periods of time. He's big on creating little formulas for meals. And he has a whole section where he's like, "I love Diet Coke. And I've found that as long as I keep my consumption to under 16 ounces a day, it doesn't interrupt my fat loss."


Michael: Also, it just assumes that eating healthy and exercising are just chores that nobody would want to do deliberately. It's like, "What's the least amount of tennis that I can play to be shredded?" But surely the actual advice would be like, "Find something you like doing."


Aubrey: No, because he specifically says about both the diet and the exercise, you should not enjoy it. He has a whole section where he's like, [Michael laughs] "Don't confuse recreation with exercise." 


Michael: Hell yeah. 


Aubrey: "You don't like exercise. You do like recreation." And the implication is that if you're enjoying it, then it's not exercise, which is pretty directly counter to all of the research that we have that is like, if people like it, then they do it regularly. And doing it regularly is the thing that matters the most.


Peter: I love the idea that he's innovating by just talking about high-intensity workouts for shorter periods of time where he's just like, "I have an idea. Can run faster.” [laughter] Just haul ass on that treadmill.


Michael: My understanding is that high-intensity interval training is fine, but also it was a fad at the time.


Aubrey: Yes.


Michael: A lot of these guys just fall for fads, basically, exercise fads and they repackage them as if they're some deep insight. Like, I can't get over, Bryan Johnson, this guy, the reverse-aging millionaire guy who just does intermittent fasting, which is again just a trend that everybody's hopped onto.


Peter: Well, doesn't he also transfer his child's blood into himself or something? 


Michael: That's less trendy. [Aubrey laughs] But that's because not everybody has a son.


Peter: Yeah. And your son has to be cool. Your son has to be like, "All right, yeah, sure, Dad."


Aubrey: One of the things that shows up in The 4-Hour Body is that Tim Ferriss is like, "We've got so much science to prove so many things." But overwhelmingly, the science that he refers to is either "Research" that he's just done on himself.


Michael: Oh, yeah.


Aubrey: Or firsthand accounts from people who read his blog, or rat studies.


Michael: Oh, yeah.


Aubrey: So, I am going to send a quote.


Michael: Make Peter do it. Make Peter do it?


Peter: Are you kidding me? 


Michael: Do it.


Peter:  I'm just a vent for you to--


Michael: To do less work. I'm outsourcing my work to Peter.


Aubrey: Mike is 4-Hour Workweeking, right?


[laughter]


Peter: Yeah, I know. He's playing video games and you ask him a question, he's like, "Peter, you--" [Michael laughs]


Aubrey: So, I am sending this to Michael to fucking read. [Peter laughs]


Michael: Okay, fine, I'll read it. I'll read it. [Aubrey laughs] "I've recorded almost every workout I've done since age 18. I've had more than 1,000 blood tests performed since 2004, sometimes as often as every two weeks, tracking everything from complete lipid panels, insulin and hemoglobin A1c to IGF-1 and free testosterone. I've had stem cell growth factors imported from Israel to reverse “Permanent' injuries.” And I've flown to rural tea farmers in China to discuss pu'er tea's effects on fat loss. All said and done, I've spent more than $250,000 on testing and tweaking over the last decade. I am a huge fucking sucker.


[laughter]


I just want to announce that right off the bat. Just as some people have avant-garde furniture or artwork to decorate their homes, I have pulse oximeters, ultrasound machines, and medical devices for measuring everything from galvanic skin response to REM sleep. The kitchen and bathroom look like an ER. If you think that's craziness, you're right. Fortunately, you don't need to be a guinea pig to benefit from one.


Peter: Let's get it out there off the bat. "I am mentally ill." 


Michael: Yeah. [laughs]


Peter:  Okay.


Aubrey: Also, there's just not really any compelling medical reason to have that many blood tests. He thinks he's finding out a ton of things.


Peter: Right.


Aubrey: I don't trust, having read this entire book, that he knows enough to know what is worth measuring here. And I think that there is a real core of confirmation bias happening in this book where the stuff that he prioritizes is the stuff that upends expectations. But also, a bunch of it really is just a wealth flex.


Peter: I feel like a lot of these guys get to a point where they're so rich that they're like, "It's bullshit that I have to die."


Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.


Peter It's like, "My life rules in all of these ways. My life is better than the average person. But there is this one great unifying element, and that's that I'm going to die. And I think that is nonsense. And I'm going to try to get out ahead of it."


Michael: $250,000 is so embarrassing. [laughs] It's really stunning because it feels like at the end of the day, it's going to be like, "Yeah, do exercise and try to eat a balanced diet of fruits and vegetables." But it's like, these guys want this sort of "One weird trick" kind of thing or some sort of shortcut. But it's not clear to me that all of this data about yourself really offers that much to your health.


Aubrey: Yeah, I will also say a bunch of these devices end up-- I recently had a family member who had lung cancer and was using a pulse oximeter all the time. That became a source of fixation and anxiety. And the healthcare providers that I talked to in the process of all of this were like, "That's actually really common, particularly for men to get especially hung up on what is this measurably doing?" Not as a way of discerning information about themselves, but as a way of discharging anxiety that they're having about their health.


Michael: He feels like he's in control because he's measuring something.


Peter: Yeah. Because like, yeah, why are you getting an ultrasound?


Aubrey: Not only why are you getting an ultrasound. Why do you own an ultrasound machine?


[laughter]


Aubrey: So, he has a little thesis for the book and a little bit of a rallying cry for what he thinks this is all about. I am sending another quote to the chat.


Michael: Peter.


Aubrey: Okay, you guys can trade off. How about that.”


Peter I just want to-- This is unpaid work I'm doing. [Aubrey laughs] "I view 4HB as a manifesto, a call to arms for a new mental model of living, the experimental lifestyle. It's up to you, not your doctor, not the newspaper, to learn what you best respond to. If you understand politics well enough to vote for a president, or if you have ever filed taxes, you can learn the few most important scientific rules for redesigning your body. These rules will become your friends. 100% reliable and trusted. This changes everything. There is no high priesthood. There is cause and effect. Welcome to the director's chair."


Michael: This annoys the shit out of me. Shut up.


Peter: Why are there so many metaphors going on here?


[laughter]


Michael: It's like, we're talking about diet and exercise. You're not redesigning your body, dude.


Aubrey: "If you can vote for president" has not aged well.


Peter: If your dumb ass has ever clicked "Next" 20 times on TurboTax, then you can do this.


Aubrey: Part of what I find interesting about this is that it's a prototype of what has become a real core ethos of the MAHA movement. Which is just like, "Fuck experts. Nobody gets to decide but you what's good for you."


Michael: It's not your doctor, it's not the newspaper, but it is an airport book. [Aubrey laughs] He's like, "Don't trust them." But you're also just some random person.


Aubrey: Trust the guy who sells BrainQUICKEN. [Michael laughs]


Peter: I feel like. But he's saying, "Trust yourself." And yourself is reading Tim Ferriss. [Michael laughs] I'm telling you that you are smart and then in return you just do what I tell you. But it's sort of listening to yourself in a way. "We're in this together, rejecting the experts."


Aubrey: Yeah, that's right. And I think specifically saying "It's not up to your doctor" is the part where I'm like, “That's a wild approach to take.” Right?


Michael: Yeah.


Peter: Who's your doctor to tell you what your blood pressure is?


[laughter]


Aubrey: So, on top of his N of 1 stuff, he says that he has "Tracked the progress of hundreds of readers of his blog" and touts that "Many of them lost 20 pounds in the first few weeks" and makes those claims. Most of his claims about weight loss throughout the book are about what happened in the first two to four weeks.


Michael: So, it's like, “Tell me you've never read a diet book before without telling me you've never read a diet book before."


Aubrey: Right. Every diet under the sun follows the same pattern, which is rapid weight loss for the first one to maybe six months, three to six months, and then a long plateau and then weight regain. That is how it goes. So, when folks are cherry-picking like, "We're just going to talk about the first month," like, yeah, dude, you're picking your best numbers. Absolutely. I'm only going to talk about my sales at Christmastime.


Michael: Yeah. You can go to almost any diet and lose weight in the first month.


Aubrey: Yes, absolutely. The interesting thing is he is presenting a series of these N of 1 “findings.” It is very far from any randomized controlled trial. It's very far from any scientific method. There is massive confirmation bias if he's hearing from fans of his blog who want to tell him why his shit works and why they like him. 


Michael: Because you're obviously not going to be hearing from people that it didn't work for because they would probably just not be on the blog anymore. They'd find something else.


Aubrey: Absolutely. He has a whole segment where he's like, "If you want to know how to lose 20 pounds in two weeks, just ask the founder of WordPress," who lost a bunch of weight from just chewing every mouthful of food 20 times, where you're like, "Come on, man."


Michael: That's literally like an 1800s diet. That's one of the first diets.


Peter: That's what happens when you make WordPress money. [Michael laughs] You're like, "What's next? 


[laughter]


Now to turn my thoughts inward, I will triple the amount of bites, that I'm taking of every sandwich."


Aubrey: The 4-Hour Body has a couple of good points. I do want to do a little bit of credit where credit is due.


Michael: Ooh.


Aubrey: So, he cautions readers against falling for marketing terms. So, he's like, “If someone's telling you about "Toning, cellulite, firming, shaping," these are all marketing words.


Michael: He just said "Redesigning your body," though, that's also a fucking marketing term.


Aubrey: That's not reshaping. That's not reshaping.


Peter: It is not reshaping.


[laughter] 4HB is different than a marketing term.


Aubrey: It's a "Protocol," is what he keeps saying. It's a protocol.


Peter: Protocol itself, not a marketing term. Don't get confused.


[laughter]


Aubrey: He also cautions readers. He's like, "Look, you're going to be doing a bunch of self-experimentation. That means that you're going to have to challenge your own ideas about correlation and causation." And he gives them some actually quite good questions to challenge. Like, "Is this causal relationship moving the way you think it is?" One is, "Is it possible that what he calls the 'arrow of causality' is reversed?" So, is it possible not that this person ran and therefore got a "Runner's build," but rather that they looked like someone who could do well at running? So, they did.


Michael: "I'm eating Brussels sprouts because I'm farting," 


[laughter] 


Actually, if you think about it.


Aubrey: He asks if you're mixing up absence and presence. So, for example, “Is a vegetarian diet healthier or perceived to be healthier because of the lack of meat or because of the increased presence of vegetables?” It's just basic, good, probing kinds of questions. At one point he does say, "Is it possible that you tested a specific demographic, that other variables are responsible for the difference?” For example, if the claim is that yoga improves cardiac health and the experimental group comprises upper-class folk, is it possible that they are therefore more than a control group to eat better food? You bet your downward-dog-posing ass."


Michael: Oh, got a little spice in the sentence.


Peter: Nice.


Aubrey: So, this is straightforwardly good advice that he then proceeds to ignore for the rest of the book. 


Michael: I am going to say like, you're reading a book by a rich guy who got blood tests a thousand times.


Aubrey: He's like, "Don't confuse what's happening with rich people with what's happening with you." Confuse what's happening with me.


Michael: With a single rich guy. 


Aubrey: The diet itself is pretty straightforward. There are five core rules. One is avoid "white carbohydrates." So that's bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, that kind of stuff. Two is, "Eat the same few meals over and over again, especially for breakfast and lunch. You already do this. You're just picking out new default meals." This is where he gets into "You should not enjoy it." And also, he does talk about-- He's like, "Here are some good meals to have on the diet. One of my favorites is canned tuna packed in water mixed with lentils and chopped onions." 


Michael: What just in a bowl?


Aubrey: Yep.


Michael: Dude, no mayo, no lemon juice?


Aubrey: Nothing.


Peter: You got to get that mercury up. 


[laughter]


You want to be able to see it through your skin like a thermometer.


Aubrey: Rule number three is “Don't drink calories. That's a pretty common one. Rule number four is “Don't eat fruit.”


Michael: What?


Aubrey: It's part of the slow-carb thing, right? Of just, there's not a ton of fiber. There is a lot of sugar.


Michael: That's not true, but whatever.


Aubrey: Whatever. Rule number five is take one day off per week and "Go nuts." "I recommend Saturday, often nicknamed 'Fatter Day' by followers."


Michael: But this is also, he's just telling you to do something you hate all the time, and then one day a week you get to do something you like.


Peter Like, surely you can find a happy medium, right? Throw a little bit of mustard in the tuna and maybe take it easy on Saturdays.


Michael: It's also funny because none of these guys have been steeped in fad diet world the way I think a lot of women have. Like, a lot of women by their 30s are like, "Oh, I've heard this advice a million times. It's not going to work for me." But these guys are basically discovering fad diet stuff.


Peter It's like, look, maxing stuff for men where we've gone a little too far and 19-year-olds are wearing shoulder pads and shit.


Michael: Right?


Peter: Microdosing meth.


Michael: Yeah.


Aubrey: I will say on the cheat day stuff, he comes up with a scientific rationale for the cheat day where he's like, "No, it's actually good and important."


Peter Like psychologically important?


Aubrey: No, like physically, metabolically important.


Peter Okay.


Aubrey: "Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate doesn't downshift from extended caloric restriction."


Peter: Yes.


Michael: That’s not true. That's not true.


Aubrey: That's totally not true.


Michael: I know. He's like, "Oh, don't trust your doctor, the science." But like, you should trust the science, bro. That's not true at all.


Peter: You want to get your body right on the verge of starvation mode and then, boom, an entire pizza.


Michael: Yeah.


[laughter]


Peter: Remember the P90X muscle confusion thing? You're doing that but for your metabolism. 


Michael: You can't let it get too comfortable.


Aubrey: The formula for meals for this is pretty straightforward, very standard diet advice. He says for every meal, you should pick one item from each of his prioritized food groups. That's lean protein, vegetables that are either low-carb and/or high-fiber. And the third group is legumes. It's a bean diet baby. Beans at every meal.


Michael: So, you're going to fully endorse this book now?


Aubrey: I love it. I'm blurbing it. 


[laughter]


It's going to be great.


Peter: The only diet that works. [Michael laughs]


Aubrey: Yeah, he's honing in here on this idea of whole grains and "slow carbs" that was popular at the time. The underlying idea here is that so-called "fast carbs," so things with white flour, white sugar, whatever else, are big drivers of people getting fat. And that so-called "slow carbs" like whole grains and fiber-rich vegetables would be less likely to lead to weight gain and would help with weight management. This is based on the glycemic index, which we've talked about before on the show. The glycemic index is presented as a way of measuring the impact of various foods on humans' blood sugar. But the way that they determined it is in groups of between 5 and 15 people. 


In the years since the development of the glycemic index, we have found that it is almost useless for individual guidance because different people's bodies have such wildly different responses to the same foods going in them. That for some folks, white rice might be a major issue for their blood sugar. And for other folks, it doesn't really do much. 


Michael: But what if a rich guy who wrote an airport book already did all the research and told me what works for him?


Aubrey: What if a wealthy man said it with confidence?


Michael: What if a guy wearing an Oura Ring told me that I should eat sweet potatoes?


[laughter]


Aubrey: A 2021 meta-analysis in the journal Advances in Nutrition looked at 43 studies with samples totaling just under 2 million adults. And they were looking at, when we're advising people to have a low-glycemic-index diet, what are the actual results of that? What they found was, "Results of 30 meta-analyses of RCTs from eight publications demonstrated that low-GI diets were generally no better than high-GI diets for reducing body weight or body fat. While carbohydrate quality, including glycemic index, impacts many health outcomes, GI as a measure of carbohydrate quality appears to be relatively unimportant as a determinant of BMI or diet-induced weight loss."


Michael: That makes sense.


Aubrey: So, have your slow carbs. They're good for you for a lot of reasons. They're not going to make you thin.


Michael: Also, this is just yet another diet basically being like, "You should eat brown rice and broccoli and chicken breast."


Aubrey: But those diets are marketed to ladies, not nerds who want to be wealthy.


Peter: Yeah, well, I wonder what he would have come up with if it wasn't for his research with the ultrasound machines. "I spent $250,000 and here's what I've come up with." [Michael laughs]


Michael: It's like, "Brown rice,”


Peter: Eat some beans.


Aubrey: I'm also now just imagining Tim Ferriss with a pulse oximeter clipped to every finger.


Michael: Yeah. 


Peter: Just eating tuna out of a bowl like a dog, just with his face.


Aubrey: So, his main chapter or section about weight loss is called "Subtracting Fat." He has "Subtracting Fat," he has "Adding Muscle," and he has "Improving Sex."


Peter: Don't listen to gimmicky little taglines, folks. People are going to tell you that you can "lose weight." You can subtract fat, however.


Aubrey: Also, don't listen to marketing language, but the first header in the first chapter about weight loss is, "How to Lose 20 Pounds in 30 Days Without Exercise."


Michael: Hey, no one's ever said this before. No one's ever promised that.


Peter: This is how tech guys talk, where they try to throw in what feels a little more like computer language into everyday shit [crosstalk] So, they talk about "optimizing" all the time. And it's just so tedious and annoying.


Michael: Here's how to pivot to being a skinny person. The other thing, did you guys see this article that they're now recommending, this whole thing of a "Stack"? You have a stack of the caffeine that you do. 


Aubrey: We're going to talk so much about stacks.


Michael: Tech bros are recommending that you add nicotine patches-


Aubrey: Yeah.


Michael: -to your stack. [laughs]


Peter: Oh, hell yeah, dude.


Aubrey: No, they're talking about nicotine and caffeine both as being "Nootropics," which is a wild way to rebrand those things.


Michael: Because that's also a made-up term. So, yeah, they're lucky charms are nootropics. Why not? Like, whatever.


Peter: It does feel like we're going to circle back to just, like, you can smoke.


Michael: And they're going to rebrand it as "Drag maxing," Like, burn smashing. And then you're all going to be smoking again.


Peter: You know the famous Mad Men ad campaign where they're like, "They're toasted," right?


[laughter]


They're going to start doing that shit.


Aubrey: So, he does use this header of "How to Lose 20 Pounds in 30 Days Without Exercise." And then his example for himself is that he lost 15 pounds in six weeks.


Michael: Oh, nice. Okay, so do more than I did.


Aubrey: He also has some before-and-after pictures that are fascinating. They are almost a complete recreation of a very popular style of 2010s body positivity Instagram post. 


Michael: Hell yeah. 


Aubrey: Where a thin woman would take a picture of herself slouching so that she would have some rolls and then would take another picture of herself standing up straight. And the caption would be like, "It's the same body." He has a "before" picture that is him leaning forward and weighing, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 pounds more. And then the next picture is him shirtless and ripped and standing off to the side.


Peter: It's the Alex Jones picture where he's just slightly more red in the after photo.


[laughter]


Aubrey: The initial diet that we talk through sounds pretty straightforward. Like, focus on protein and fiber, eat from certain food groups, get some exercise, that kind of thing. But then he gets to a section where he talks about common mistakes and now it's getting real complicated. Mistake number one, not eating within one hour of waking, preferably within 30 minutes.


Peter: It's all metabolism confusion at the end of the day.


Aubrey: His argument is that you should-- He's like, "I eat one tablespoon of almond butter and four Brazil nuts upon waking."


Peter Yeah, I keep it next to my bed. Just a spoon.


[laughter]


Michael: Right before my first cigarette in bed.


Peter: Absolutely.


Aubrey: He says that mistake number two is not getting enough protein per meal. Mistake number three is not drinking enough water. But he doesn't really define "enough." Mistake number four, he says, is believing that you'll cook, especially if you're a bachelor.


Michael: What the fuck is that? What's wrong? What?


Peter What?


Aubrey: Throughout this book, he is assuming that the reader is him and he's like, "I don't cook. So, they don't cook."


Michael: Yeah, I feel like "Learn to cook" would also be reasonable advice for a book like this. [laughs]


Aubrey: He has a whole mistake just about mistiming weigh-ins with your menstrual cycle. And then in parentheses he writes, "Not a problem for bachelors.”


Peter: Nice.


Michael: For married men however.


[laughter] 


Peter: Tell him.


Aubrey: He talks about how cheat day is a really important part of the diet, not just for adherence to the diet, but for its actual effectiveness. He says that the big issue that cheat day helps with is to minimize your release of insulin, which triggers your body to store fat


Michael: Metabolism spoofing. That’s what it is doing.


Aubrey: Absolutely.


Michael: Yes.


Aubrey: So, he has a whole thing where he's like, "You have to increase the speed of gastric emptying," or how quickly food exits the stomach.


Michael: Oh, he's doing a poop speed run. [Aubrey laughs] Like, you want to get from food to poop in like 35 minutes.


Peter: Your body should not be absorbing the nutrients from the food. It should be blasting through you at full speed.


Michael: [laughs] Actual food should be coming out of you at the end.


Peter: Just a full, a full slice of pizza coming out your ass.


Michael: But can people even do anything about that? Could you manipulate how fast you're pooping and processing food?


Peter: There are ways that you can line your pipes in your house. 


[laughter]


I imagine if you implement the same method so that you can create a slide where the food cannot actually enter your stomach in any meaningful way.


Michael: You're just drinking a bottle of lube. 


[laughter]


Slide through like a slip-and-slide. [laughs]


Peter: Almond butter and Astroglide. [Michael laughs]


Aubrey: We're going to read what Tim says you can do.


Michael: "I consume 100 to 200 mg of caffeine or 16 ounces of cooled Yerba Mate at the most crap-laden meals. My favorite green supplement, Athletic Greens mentioned in the schedule, doesn't contain caffeine, but will also help. Does this really work? Taking the goodies from taste buds to toilet without much storage in between? More than a few people have told me it's pure science fiction. Too much information warning. I disagree. And for good reason. Rather than debate meta-studies, I simply weighed my poo."


Peter: Yeah. Yeah.


[laughter] 


 Absolutely. Absolutely.


Michael: Hell yeah.


Peter: Fuck a meta-study, dude. Shit on the scale.


Michael: "Identical volumes of food on and off the protocol. On protocol equals much more poo mass, equals less absorption, equals fewer chocolate croissants that take up residence on my abs. Simple but effective, perhaps. Good to leave out of a first date conversation, definitely."


Peter: He's doing the work. You know, this is what, before we had meta-analyses. Before we had these studies to analyze, guys we were just shitting on scales, right? This is what Isaac Newton would have done.


Aubrey: I love that he's like, "I'm not going to get into these meta-studies. Instead, I weighed my shit."


Peter: What are you a fucking nerd? Weigh your poop. [Aubrey laughs]


Michael: I'm like squatting over a bathroom scale.


Aubrey: It's so absurd. And it really feels like he presents this in a way that is very much like, "Guys, I cracked the code."


Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.


Aubrey: In the meantime, you are, I guess, fishing poop out of your toilet bowl and weighing it. Like, what are we doing here?


Michael: Is there any basis to this at all?


Peter: Michael? I like how you're like, "So, Aubrey, did you look into this or--"


Aubery: Yeah, I would--


Peter: [crosstalk] This guy is shitting on a scale, Michael. All right. [Michael laughs]


Aubrey: No, I fact-checked a lot of things for this episode. I did not fact-check the poop weighing.


Peter: Also, it's like, "Good to leave out of a first date conversation," dude. Good to leave out of your book. No one wants to hear about this. 


[laughter]


I would rather you fraudulently create a peer-reviewed study than tell me about this.


Aubrey: He says that there is a third principle which is engaging in brief muscular contractions throughout your binge.


Michael: Kegels. [Aubrey laughs] Like butt Kegels.


Peter: Like intestinal Kegels?


Aubrey: No, he's doing wall squats. He does a wall sit. He says wall triceps extensions and 60 to 120 seconds of total air squats immediately prior to eating main courses on his binge day.


Peter: Oh, my God, dude.


Aubrey: So, he's going to Pizza Hut ordering it.


[laughter]


Michael: Just like squatting down next to the booth.


Aubrey: Yeah. And then getting up to do fucking calisthenics for two minutes before he eats a whole pizza. It's extremely odd.


Peter: So, not only is the food miserable to eat six days a week because he refuses to allow for seasoning or whatever, but you have to do wall squats.


Aubrey: Yeah. In public, on your binge day.


Peter: Because you might enjoy it. Right?


Aubrey: Don't get caught enjoying your food.


Peter: I'm at Buffalo Wild Wings holding a wall squat for three minutes.


Aubrey: So, he has a whole argument here about how doing these brief exercises and muscle contractions brings glucose transporters to the surface of muscle cells, opening more gates for the calories to flow into.


Michael: Where is he getting this shit? He's using big words to make it sound real. But, like, what is he talking about?


Aubrey: Michael, he's not making it up. It's based on one Japanese rat study.


Michael: Oh, great. Okay, come on. [laughs]


Peter: Aubrey. Just because someone reads his blog does not make them a Japanese rat. [Michael laughs]


Aubrey: So, earlier, Mike, you mentioned stacks.


Michael: Oh, yeah.


Aubrey: Tim Ferriss experiments on himself on which ones he thinks are most effective for weight loss. He talks about one of his most effective stacks being the "Classic ECA stack." And I was like, "What the fuck is an ECA stack?" Ephedrine, caffeine, and aspirin.


Peter: Yeah.


Micheal: Ah, what? [laughs]


Aubrey: He talks about having done this ECA stack, ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin. Ephedrine now banned because so many people died from using it and also because you can use it to make meth.


Peter: My stack of chlorine and bleach. [Michael laughs]


Aubrey: So, his current preferred stack is now the PAGG stack. It consists of- [crosstalk] 


Michael: PCP.


Aubrey: -garlic extract,- [crosstalk] 


Michael: Bath salts.


Aubrey: [laughs] -green tea, and an antioxidant that naturally exists in meat and some vegetables. I googled it, it's alpha-lipoic acid. And I was like, "What the fuck is this?" And they're like, "It's in broccoli and steak." And I was like, "Oh, well, have some broccoli and a steak."


Peter: Sounds less cool when you're like, "I eat some broccoli and drink tea."


Michael: These guys are constantly bragging about how easy they are to dupe, right? Because they're like, "Ooh, this supplement changes everything." But they're just falling for marketing claims, ultimately.


Peter: Take a fuck one-a-day. Like, yes.


[laughter]


Aubrey: Part of what makes it complicated is the supplements themselves. Part of it is the schedule. I am sending the schedule. This one has a bunch of sciencey names, so apologies in advance to whoever.


Michael: Yeah, Peter.


Peter: All right, I'll do it. "How did I do it? I followed a simple supplement regimen. Morning: N.O.-XPLODE 1.1, two scoops."


Michael: That's like anti-diarrhea medication.


Peter Yeah. No explode.


Michael: No explode.


Peter: If you mix that with the diarrheal’s that he takes-- [crosstalk] 


Michael: And just let him fight it out inside of you.


Peter: That's intestinal confusion.


[laughter] 


May the best man win. "All right, N.O.-XPLODE 1.1, two scoops. Slo-Niacin or timed-release niacinamide 500 mg each meal. Chromate, pre-workout, body quick, post-workout, [unintelligible [00:37:50] prior to bed. Policosanol. Policosanol, sure. Chromate again, alpha-lipoic acid and Slo-Niacin."


Aubrey: This is a lot of steps to take each day. And he's using these names like N.O.-XPLODE and Slo-Niacin and Chromate and that stuff. Most of these are pretty common things. N.O.-Xplode 1.1 is just a pre-workout.


Peter: So, he's taking a pre-workout fresh out of bed.


Aubrey: That's right.


Peter: Yeah. My workout is the entire day. So, I take a pre-workout right when I wake up.


Aubrey: It's just caffeine and creatine. This man is caffeinated to the fucking max.


Michael: Yeah, dude.


Aubrey: By the way, Slo-Niacin is niacinamide. It's just a B vitamin.


Peter: Timed-release B vitamin. [laughs]


Aubrey: Right. And all of this is just, you could get all of these as Nature Made supplements at Target or whatever. These are not hard things to find. But when he lists the like “Yes, I'm using 23 mg of policosanol," it gives the whole thing a mystique of being much more STEM-oriented than it is. He's giving his readers this veneer of science for things that are totally just like, "Take your vitamins."


Michael: Also, I'm trying to count up how many pills he's taking.


Aubrey: It's a lot, right?


Michael: If he's doing this in the morning, at each meal, before workout, after workout, and prior to bed, you're just pumping your body with these weird powders when you don't need-- even the pre-workout, post-workout stuff is fake. You don't need this shit. Like, have a banana.


Aubrey: He also is careful to note that you only follow the schedule six days a week and you take one day off each week from your stacks.


Michael: Wait, what?


Aubrey: And then you also take one week off every two months, and "This week off is critical."


Michael: Yes.


Peter: Yeah, yeah.


Michael: You got to keep your metabolism guessing. Don't let your metabolism rest on its laurels.


Peter: Yeah, you want to be constantly switching between constipation and diarrhea at a rate that baffles the intestines.


Aubrey: Unsurprisingly, he's also a cold plunge guy.


Michael: Oh, yeah.


Aubrey: Unsurprisingly, he's also a health gadget guy. So, he indicates using a glucometer, which is a monitor that you install on your body to continually monitor your blood sugar levels.


Michael: Does he have the poop camera?


Aubrey: Not to my knowledge, but this book was written before the existence of Poop-Cam.


Michael: Peter, this is an actual thing that exists. You can get something that attaches to the side of your toilet.


Aubrey: The Kohler Dekoda.


Michael: That films your toilet bowl. And like, there's an app that gives you "Insights," but the insights are like, "How many times did you poop yesterday?"


Aubrey: And like, "Was your poop well hydrated or not well hydrated?"


Peter: No, I like that. Why should I have to look? I want an app to every time I take a shit, I don't look. I mean, I just stand right up. And then it sends me a notification that says, "Gross." [Michael laughs]


Aubrey: He uses a continuous glucose monitor, a thing that is straightforwardly unnecessary for people who are not diabetic. I looked up the glucose monitor that he recommends. It's the Dexcom G7. It lasts for two weeks on your body and it costs $120 per monitor.


Michael: And it's more just him being a rube. It's like, this is not meaningful data that you really need.


Aubrey: Yeah. He has this belief that if you keep your blood sugar under 100, that you will sustain fat loss for longer. He also writes, "Don't want to become diabetic? Want to curb things like eating sweets which can lead to adult-onset diabetes? Try using a glucometer for 24 hours."


Michael: Oh, he recommends this?


Aubrey: Yes.


Michael: Oh, my God.


Aubrey: Essentially, the argument that he's making is, "Do you not want to become diabetic? Start living like you have diabetes."


Michael: Yeah. Yeah.


Aubrey: Watch everything you eat, exercise in really specific ways, wear a glucometer and maybe take some diabetes meds as a bunch of biohackers suggest taking metformin and stuff like that. So, it is this really odd thing where I'm like, I just try mapping that onto other illnesses. Like, it would be really weird if someone was like, "I don't want to get cancer, so I'm going to do preemptive chemo."


Michael: Or like, "If you want to avoid chlamydia, just wear a condom at all times, no matter what you're doing."


Peter: Wake up. Almond butter, Z-Pak.


Aubrey: Before we dig in on the last chapter that we're really going to focus in on, we have a little interval that I have just titled in my notes, "Tim Ferriss Is Weird About Women." There's one section that he calls "The Math of Beauty."


Michael: Oh, no.


Peter: Are we doing symmetry stuff?


Aubrey: We're not leaning away from phrenology. I will say that. Michael, [Michael laughs] you are up.


Michael: "What do Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Elle Macpherson have in common? The number 0.7 and the letters WHR. If you measured the waist and hip circumference of these three women, you'd find that their waists are 7/10th the size of their hips. That makes their waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) 0.7. And this ratio in females appears to be hardwired into the male brain as a sign of fertility and therefore attractiveness. The wider your waist is, the higher this ratio goes toward the apple-shaped 1.0, which correlates in scientific studies with decreased estrogen levels, increased disease risk, increased birth complications, and lower fertility rates. Working toward a more-slender waist has been shown to have a greater effect on attractiveness than reducing hip size.


Michael: "If your waist-to-hip ratio is high, dropping it even a little bit will increase your power, health and hotness to attract a male partner."


Peter: Nice.


Michael: Wait, Peter, go ahead. I know you think about this all the time. This is how you talk to your boys when you're like, "You're not a misogynist."


Peter: Look, I don't get bogged down by the numbers. I know it when I see it. 


[laughter]


No, if you think about this often enough, you won't need to do the measurements. You'll be able to just shout them out as a woman passes.


Michael: The advice here seems to be you should work toward a more-slender waist rather than working toward smaller hips. But people cannot do this.


Aubrey: You can't really control the build of your body. And also, he's doing this bizarre scientific laundering of, "Yes, this is hardwired into the male brain."


Peter: Right.


Aubrey: He's reverse engineering, like, "This is what I am attracted to. And this is a contemporary beauty standard. Ergo, it's a biological imperative."


Michael: "The women that I'm attracted to are super healthy and super fertile."


Aubrey: It's big "no fatties" energy, for sure.


Michael: It's not for me, like, the need to make these things quantifiable is so bizarre.


Peter: Yeah, why can't you just be like, "They're hot"?


Michael: It's so weird.


Peter: "What do Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Elle Macpherson have in common? They're fucking hot dude. [Michael laughs] Just hot babes."


Aubrey: And there's also no point that involves asking women what they like.


Michael: Because I want to know what ratio they like in men.


Peter: What's the healthiest? Like, dick-to-chin ratio?


Michael: Yeah, exactly.


Aubrey: Okay, so the ratio is shoulder-to-waist. How dare you?


Michael: Oh, wait, is it actually in there?


Aubrey: He does include that.


Michael: Wait, what is it?


Aubrey: I think it's 0.8 waist-to-shoulder ratio. So, your waist should be-- [crosstalk]


Peter: I saw that on masculinemen.tumblr.com. [Aubrey laughs]


Michael: Damn, you made the same fucking joke. I recently heard of a podcaster who was included on a Tumblr that has exactly that ratio. It's interesting to me.


Aubrey: Notably, those ratios both come from studies of men. They're asking men what they think is the right ratio for men to have. They're not asking women.


Michael: Yeah, because if you ask men, they'll talk about how big his shoulders should be. But if you ask women, they'll talk about how big his heart should be. What's the dick-to-heart ratio? That's what they want to know.


[laughter]


Aubrey: So that was the beginnings of him getting weird about women. He does have a whole chapter called "Improving Sex."


Michael: I'm going to let Peter take it from here. Peter.


Aubrey: And that is where shit gets the weirdest. If you are listening to this podcast, as some people do with your kids, and you would rather not have a more explicit discussion of sex and genitals:


Peter: You're an hour into the podcast episode about shit, and you're like, "You know what? No, this isn't okay. You're about to hear about intercourse."


Aubrey: The chapter title is "The 15-Minute Female Orgasm." 


Peter: It's how long it lasts.


Aubrey: How long it takes.


Peter: What happened to four?


Aubrey: He gets very granular in his advice here. And as a certified gay lady, his advice in this chapter is fucking nuts.


Peter: Okay?


Aubrey: At one point, he just tosses out that he's like, "I talked to a number of experts about this."


Peter: Yeah, it's my buddy Jimmy.


[laughter]


Aubrey: To his credit, the "Experts" that he cites are all women.


Peter: Okay, okay.


Aubrey: So, at one point, he just tosses out that he had this conversation with a "Specialist [laughs] in female ejaculation."


Peter: Yeah.


Michael: You got to weigh it. You got to weigh it. 


Aubrey: You got to weigh it. He doesn't say anything about, like, what does that mean? Right? He just says, "Yes, my friend Tallulah, a specialist in female ejaculation." What Tallulah tells him is that for most women, there is a most sensitive part of the clitoris. And she's like, "If you're imagining a clock face, and you are facing a woman's vagina and her clitoris, it would be at about 1 o'clock."


Peter: What? It's off-center.


Michael: Aubrey, I'm a gay man and Peter's never given a woman an orgasm. You're going to have to slowly-- You're going to explain this very slowly.


Peter: I just do the alphabet. Like a gentleman. [Michael laughs]


Aubrey: I called a bunch of other gay lady friends, being like, "Hey, am I fucking high or is this nothing?"


Peter: 1 o'clock in a vagina is crazy.


Aubrey: That's nuts.


Peter: It's just off the clitoris.


[laughter]


Michael: It's like he's next to it.


Peter: You're just slightly missing the clitoris.


[laughter]


Michael: That's how you know it works.


Peter: If you use the 1 o'clock trick, it will take a full 15 minutes.


Aubrey: In addition to his fat-loss stacks that he takes, he also has a pre-sex protocol.


Peter: What?


Michael: Vitamins. He's like, "Stop, honey." He's scooping powder into a cup frantically. And she's naked in the bedroom.


Peter: Slapping on my nicotine patch.


Aubrey: "24 to 48 hours before you want to have incredible sex," as he puts it.


Peter: 48 hours. 


Michael: When you get the Gmail calendar invite for sex.


Aubrey: You should "Eat at least 800 mg of cholesterol within three hours of bedtime the night before you want to have incredible sex."


Michael: Oh, my God. It's bottoming advice.


Aubrey: "Why before bed? Testosterone is derived from cholesterol, which is primarily produced at night during sleep."


Peter: What? Ladies, if a guy ever goes nuts at the 1 o'clock on your vagina the night before, he was loading up on cholesterol. [laughs]


Michael: His defense, he's had seven eggs in the last 15 minutes.


[laughter]


He's scarfing hard-boiled eggs.


Peter: Just eating half a pound of shrimp, being like, "1 o'clock, 1 o'clock, 1 o'clock."


Aubrey: So that's 24 hours before. He also has a protocol for four hours prior to sex.


Michael: Sex should not be a spontaneous thing.


Peter: Sex is all about protocols.


Aubrey: This part of it does feel very Bryan Johnson in that I'm like, “Oh, you're not comfortable with human relationships and feeling shit out with people.” So, you got to come up with a whole song and dance to make it okay and to assuage your nervousness about having sex with someone.


Peter: What if you're going to hook up the next day and then she texts you? She's like, "I'm so horny. Let's just do it tonight." And you're like, "five eggs deep."


Aubrey: Well, if you have four hours of notice, then you eat four Brazil nuts, 20 raw almonds, and two capsules of fermented cod liver oil and butter.


Michael: This is an avoidance strategy when you're so afraid of women. You're like, "I can't. I haven't had my Brazil nuts."


Aubrey: He really seems like a dude who is uncomfortable with women, telling a bunch of stories with a bunch of bravado.


Peter: Yeah.


Aubrey: Tim uses this "information" to set himself on a quest to "Facilitate female orgasms with as many partners as he could."


Michael: Again, why is this in your diet and exercise book? [laughs]


Aubrey: Because he wants to tell the boys how good he is with the ladies.


Peter: Because he had 120 pages and they were like, "We need 60 more."


Aubrey: He tells little stories about several of the women that he includes in this quest. The first one he describes as "A 25-year-old female yoga instructor fresh from the Midwest," where you're just like, "Fresh." [laughs] And in his telling of the story, she unprompted volunteers to him that she has never had an orgasm. And he's like, "Well, I'm the guy."


Michael: "All right, just had my Brazil nuts. We got 15 minutes before they wear off."


Peter "Give me a dozen eggs in 24 hours, honey."


[laughter]


Aubrey: He writes, "My quest for the elusive female O had begun. The outcome four weeks later was better than I ever could have imagined."


Peter: The four-week orgasm.


Aubrey: "I was able to facilitate orgasm, the word “facilitate” will be explained later, in every woman who acted as a test subject."


Peter: Oh, God. What the fuck is going on?


Aubrey: "The results: Those who'd never experienced manual-only orgasm were able to do so and those who'd never experienced penetration-only orgasm were also able to do so. The success rate was 100%."


Michael: Dude, whenever I write a self-help book, any nonfiction book, I'm including a chapter about how good at sex I am.


Aubrey: That one woman then introduces him to an organization. You two may or may not have heard of it, called OneTaste. Have either of you heard of OneTaste?


Peter: No.


Aubrey: It's a Bay Area organization that has been accused of being a cult. It has paid a lot of former employee settlements for labor law violations, sexual abuse. They have a Netflix documentary about how fucking dark OneTaste is. And that is where he goes to learn this "15-minute orgasm" business. Right?


Peter That's the kind of shit that a cult leader would tell you. "There's a secret clit.” 


[laughter]


“It's just to the right of the regular one."


Michael: What is this organization, though? Like, officially?


Aubrey: They essentially are having people come in to get coached on their sex technique. So, they come in with a partner. There is a coach who watches you, sometimes a group of people who watches you, and then you get notes and direction.


Michael: It's like a sex Kumon learning center.


Aubrey: They do have this framework that they use where they talk about "orgasmic meditation." They have this construction built in that is whether you have an orgasm or not is immaterial because you are participating in orgasmic meditation.


Peter: Yeah, I've been telling women that for years. 


[laughter]


We're sort of spiritually participating in a cosmic orgasm. So, whether or not you are coming in the real world is irrelevant.


Michael: And I am coming, just so we're all clear-- [crosstalk] like a spiritual thing.


[laughter] 


Aubrey: He also consults another expert named Nina Hartley. Are either of you familiar with Nina Hartley?


Peter: Is it porn?


Aubrey: Yep. So, Nina Hartley is in the Ron Jeremy, Jenna Jameson fame of a porn actor who crossed over into more pop culture notoriety. In the book, Tim Ferriss writes that other porn actors have said that Nina Hartley was "The best sex of their life." And he says, "So does my friend Sylvester."


Michael: Oh, would that be Stallone?


Aubrey: No, he just says he has a friend named Sylvester.


Michael: Oh, what? Okay.


Aubrey: Who had sex with Nina Hartley?


Michael: Cool.


Peter: “You know Nina Hartley? My friend hooked up with me."


Aubrey: [laughs] This is the most for the fucking boys anecdote that we will read in this entire-- [crosstalk] 


Michael: All right, Peter's doing it. Peter's doing it.


Peter: All right. "Sylvester's mom attended a group dinner in Berkeley, California, that Nina also happened to be attending. And the two ended up seated next to each other. Mrs. Norwood came home and said to then 22-year-old Sylvester, “Guess who I was at dinner with? A famous porn star, Nina Hartley. Have you ever heard of her?” Sylvester nearly choked. In his secret double life, he had a huge collection of videos featuring Nina, his personal snow leopard.


Michael: What?


Aubrey: 'I don't know.


Peter: “Mom, I have to meet her. If I never do anything again in this life, I must meet Nina Hartley.” Three days of insistent begging and nagging later, Sylvester's mom raised a hand and picked up the phone. “Hi, Nina, it's Mrs. Norwood. I had such a wonderful time meeting you at the party. Listen, I have a question for you. Do you ever make love to younger men?”


Michael: What?


Aubrey: Yep.


Peter: Oh God. "Nina's answer, “Why, yes, I love breaking in younger men, but only once. And so, it happened.” Summary, coolest mom ever."


Michael: Dude. There is progressive parents and then there's when progressive parents go too far. This is too much sex positivity in the family.


Peter: Thankfully, this is fake.


Aubrey: The best-case scenario here is that Sylvester made this up to impress his friend Tim.


Peter: Imagine you make up this crazy bullshit story about fucking a porn star and then your friend puts it in a bestselling book. I didn't realize the stakes were so high when I was lying to you about having sex with Nina Hartley.


Aubrey: Do you guys remember there was an ad for Coors or something in the '90s. It was like, "I like beer with my friends. Watching football with my friends and twins."


Peter: Yeah. Of course.


Michael: Do you guys remember that? 


Peter: Of course. 


Michael: I do remember that.


Peter: And twins.


Aubrey: That "coolest mom ever" feels like it comes straight out of the "And twins" era of just being so fucking horny in public all the time.


Peter: This is very presumptuous.


Aubrey: It's nuts.


Peter:  To be like, "Hey, you have professional sex. Doesn't this make you a slut? Will you just fuck my son?"


Michael: "You have no standards. So, do you want to fuck my son?"


Peter: She's not even like, "Yeah, is he cute? Is he nice?"


[laughter] 


Michael: When I was in high school, all my friends were straight dudes. And so, as people turned 18 on their 18th birthday, we would all go to the local strip club, which was right next to my high school. And so, I went to strip clubs a decent amount my final year of high school because I turned 18 first. And one of the things you saw fairly regularly at strip clubs was a dad and a son would go there together. And I remember very vividly a man and a son getting lap dances next to each other. And then the dad just goes up for a high five and high-fives his son.


Peter: What on earth?


Michael: And I think all of us were like, "Oh, what are we doing?"


Peter: Upsetting stuff. Also, this is not a cool story.


Aubrey: No, it's really not.


Peter: If my friend told me this story about themselves, I'd be weirded out. But the fact that he's telling it to us about his friend, thinking that it's cool, it's so weird. Like, nothing about it is cool. The mom doesn't seem cool.


Michael: No.


Peter: And now you're telling me the story as if it's cool. It's weird. The whole thing's bizarre.


Aubrey: This all exists in this how-to section on the 15-minute orgasm. He does have some steps to follow. Step one "Explain to your partner that it is a goalless practice. This is 100% critical. There is no objective. Just focus on a single point of contact. The phrasing should emphasize this and remove all expectations and pressure. “I'm going to touch you for 15 minutes. You don't need to do anything and you don't have to do anything afterward. There's nowhere to get to. Nothing to make happen. Just focus on the single point of contact. It's an exercise."


Michael: This is you just poking the 1 o'clock mark.


Aubrey: But also, this strikes me as, he's not saying this to her, he's saying this to himself.


Michael: Yeah, yeah.


Aubrey: "This is a goalless practice, guys. We didn't say we're going to get anywhere. We didn't say anything was going to get accomplished."


Peter: Eat an egg, take a deep breath and get in there.


Aubrey: He goes really hard on how much focus this will take from the dude. He writes, "This technique requires 15 minutes of 100% concentration on approximately 3 square millimeters of contact. Nothing more."


Michael: Oh, poke, poke, poke.


Peter: That's too slow, Michael. It should be like a hummingbird. You shouldn't even-- you know,--


Michael: Woodpecker.


Peter: Yeah, I love that. He's like, "This will be incredibly difficult. There is no goal." Like, he's doing the kung fu master montage from Kill Bill.


Aubrey: He does tell you to get a kitchen timer and set it for 15 minutes to take the pressure of.


Peter: Yeah, no, that'll take the pressure. That ticking sound.


Michael: Yeah.


Peter: Where in this calculus is, like, what is this woman thinking?


Aubrey: It's really strange to me the kinds of gymnastics that he goes through to avoid just being vulnerable with a partner.


Peter Right, right.


Aubrey: And being like, "Here's what I want. What do you want?" Right. And actually, just fucking negotiating it on some level or talking it through. He talks us through this whole how-to. And then he gives us an example of like, "Guys, here's how fucking well this shit works." Get ready. The next chapter is called "Sex Machine 1: Adventures in Tripling Testosterone."


Michael: Oh, no.


Aubrey: And he opens with an anecdote about a CEO that he sometimes hooks up with named Vesper.


Michael: Oh. What? Okay.


Aubrey: It's really amazing to me how many anecdotes he includes of people that he knows. And includes their first and last name. Sylvester Norwood.


Michael: Right.


Aubrey: Nina Hartley at his mom's arranging.


Peter: Oh, yeah. I didn't realize that you could just piece together Sylvester's full name from this.


Aubrey: Oh, yeah.


Peter: Also, it's hilarious that his mom, according to this transcript, said, "Hi, Nina, it's Mrs. Norwood." Also, how many CEOs named Vesper are there? [laughs]


Michael: I will read the passage, Peter, you Google "Vesper CEO."


[laughter]


Aubrey: All right, Mike, I believe you're up.


Michael: Okay. "The last time we met, I had just taken my total testosterone from 244.8 to 653.3 ng/dL while cutting my estrogen in half. I just returned from Nicaragua where I ate grass-fed beef three times a day for 21 days. I had protein-loaded for the last three days, eating two to three pounds of fatty organic grass-fed beef per day, including at least 400 grams just before bed. Dude, this guy smells like fucking barn. The result: 15 minutes after we sat down, Vesper was in a sexually aggressive stupor. The bread hadn't arrived and she was already climbing on top of me. This is not a boast. This is not Penthouse Forum. It's a statement of pure confusion. She's a CEO, and this is not typical public CEO behavior."


Peter: Oh, so it's a public company too? He's just giving us breadcrumbs here.


[laughter]


Michael: "The whole spectacle was surreal. She was literally intoxicated on pheromones." Oh, he's saying the beef made her smell him and then she went bananas.


Peter: This is like if Jordan Peterson was horny.


Aubrey: Yeah, no, he's saying that he has been cholesterol-maxing to allow him to increase testosterone production. Right. This is his previous sort of thinking about this. Like, eat a bunch of cholesterol so your body can convert it into testosterone. And he's saying not only did it work, it worked so much that it was like Invasion of the Body Snatchers for this lady.


Peter: Right?


Michael: "When she saw the beef tallow coming out of my pores, she couldn't resist."


Peter: She can smell a clogged artery.


Aubrey: Absolutely. I was like, “Man, he has been eating beef three times a day for 21 days. And he's also saying, yes, I have all this medical equipment at my house and I get blood work done all the time.” And three weeks of beef for every meal is going to show up in your blood work in ways other than testosterone.


Michael: This is why is every rich guy the same kind of weird.


Peter:  At some point, they all start beef-maxing.


Michael: Yeah. It's crazy.


Peter: Although this was also, 2010 is early to beef-maxing. But it's also closer to the generation of men who did literally just only eat beef, just as a matter of practice and principle.


Aubrey: The whole thing is kind of fucking nuts. I think it also makes more sense when you consider how close in time this is to the premiere of VH1's The Pickup Artist and The Rules and that kind of stuff, right? That you're like, he's trying to do a sciencey version of a shitty misogynist dating book.


Peter: Right. You're doing card tricks. I'm eating beef.


Aubrey: Yeah, eating more beef and doing things from a third-party instructor rather than asking your partner what she likes. 


Peter: Hummingbird speed, karate chops on the 1 o'clock.


[laughter] 


Aubrey: One of the last things that I find really fascinating about this diet book is how it is received in different corners of media. Book reviews are straightforwardly like, "This is bullshit." The New York Times Book Review writes, "The 4-Hour Body reads as if the New England Journal of Medicine had been hijacked by the editors of the SkyMall catalog."


Michael: Ooh, nice.


Aubrey: "Some of this junk might actually work, but you're going to be embarrassed doing it or admitting to your friends that you're trying it. This is a man who, after all, weighs his own feces, likes bloodletting as a life-extension strategy, and aims a Phillips goLITE at his body in place of ingesting caffeine."


Michael: I love that you skipped the bloodletting. 


Aubrey: I did.


Michael: There's too much in the episode.


[laughter]


Aubrey: I did. Another one is medical reviews, like actual doctors reviewing the book.


Peter: And what did they say about the bloodletting?


Aubrey: One of them comes from Psychology Today. The title of the review is, "How to Not Become Superhuman."


Peter: Psychology Today- [crosstalk]


Aubrey: Yeah, it's not great.


Peter: -sort of on the outskirts of what I would consider reputable. But even they are like mm-hmm. 


Aubrey: Psychology Today in their review from this MD. "So why does this good guy, industry insider and potent scientific self-experimenter write immediately after the title page, 'Please don't be stupid and kill yourself. It would make both of us quite unhappy.” And then says, you should "consult a doctor before doing anything in this book.” Why is the publisher writing that they and the author “expressly disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects that may result from the user application of the information contained in this book?"


Peter: [laughs] There's a full legal liability release at the end of the book.


Michael: To buy it, you have to sign a waiver.


Aubrey: So, book reviews? No. Ostensibly scientific sources? No. TechCrunch? likes it.


Peter: Yes.


Aubrey: They wrote a review in 2011 called "The 4-Hour Body: The real app you are working on is the app called “Yourself.”"


[laughter]


Peter: Yeah, yeah.


Michael:  I'm in. I'm listening.


Peter: And that's just a clean, succinct headline.


Aubrey: So, I just sent a little quote from the TechCrunch review for whoever.


Peter: "When I boarded the four-hour train, our fancy-schmancy scale reported that I weighed 197.6 pounds. Ten days later, after morning coffee and protein, 187. For calibration, I'm 6'1". I assume most of the difference is water weight, but still, that part actually seems to work as advertised."


Michael: But still-- [crosstalk]


Peter: He says, "I expected no less, given the data that drove it. I know, I know. Why are you writing about your lunch on TechCrunch? Because my lunch is a data-driven iteration from the previous state of the art. In other words, a technical innovation. Look beyond the valley and you'll find that approach can and will pay dividends almost anywhere."


Michael: He's like, "You may think this is silly, but it's a science-based approach." You're literally just listening to some guy.


Peter: "Why are you writing about your lunch in a technology website? Because there's data involved, dude."


Aubrey: And the data, such as it is, is Tim Ferriss tried some stuff on Tim Ferriss and then some people read his blog and emailed him about the stuff that they tried.


Peter: The scale that you weigh your poop on is technology, smart guy.


[laughter]


[muisc]


[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]

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Michael Hobbes

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Peter Shamshiri

Host