#663: In Case You Missed It: February 2023 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

Hey folks, Tim here. My best selling card game, Coyote, which I made with the amazing team at Exploding Kittens, just won the Pop Insider Best geeky game of 2025 and also best Stocking Filler in the Made for Moms Toy Awards 2025. It is on sale everywhere. It's cheap, it's fast to learn, has 4.8 stars out of five. People are loving it. CoyoteGame.com will take you to all the retailers, but you can find it everywhere. It is a game of thinking fast and laughing faster. Think char meets hot potato meets a bunch of brain fun. It's good for your head. It's perfect for families with kids age 10 plus or adults who are kids at heart or don't take themselves too seriously. A lot of adults love this game and as I said, it's available everywhere. Amazon, Walmart, Target 8,000 plus retail locations, you name it. So please check it out. I loved making it. People are really enjoying it. It has 300 or 400 million plus social views of gameplay online and try it. Enjoy it this holiday season. Check it out coyotegame.com one more time. That's coyotegame.com or anywhere you buy your games. Now back to the episode. This episode is brought to you by five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers. And it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday I send out five Bullet points. Super short of the coolest things I found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new SEL experiments, hacks, tricks and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers have asked me for something short and action packed for a very long time. Because after all the podcasts, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free. It's always going to be free and you can learn more at Tim Blog Friday. That's Tim Blog Friday Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with and little known fact I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. 5 Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with five Bullet Friday subscribers, so check it out. Tim Blog Friday if you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot. And you can of course easily subscribe anytime. So easy peasy. Again, that's Tim Blog Friday and thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you.

At this.

Altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question now?

It is in my perfect time.

Cybernetic organism Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.

Hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers of all different types to tease out the routines, habits and so on that you can apply to your own life. This is a special in between episode which serves as a recap of of the episodes from the last month. Features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can jump around, get a feel for both the episode and the guest, and then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes. View this episode as a buffet to whet your appetite. It's a lot of fun. We had fun putting it together. And for the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode's description probably right below. Wherever you press play in your podcast app or as usual, you can head to Tim Blog Podcast and find all the details there. Please enjoy. First up, John Vervaeke, professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto.

And then you move into philosophical fellowship. It's a thing I've derived from Rand Le Havre's philosophical Contemplative companionship, or I forget what he calls it. He and I have emailed, so what I'm doing is not the same, but it was inspired by so it goes something like this. You pick a philosophical text and you prime people into this. We're not going to be reading this text in order to get information from it. We're going to be reading this text in order to be transformed by it. We're going to use this text as a way of trying to presence a sage. It's almost like a secular seance, right? You're going to presence a sage, right? So that, remember we talked about earlier internalizing the sage, that you really can't do that unless the presence of the perspectival Knowing of the sage is available to you. So what happens is, first of all, you read the text very slowly, and then the speaker will pick out a phrase that he or she thinks conveys it. And then everybody chants it in sequence. And they chant it, and they're trying to convey as much and also resonate with what they're sensing other people are conveying. So it's like jazz.

And.

And you do this, and then you move into simple speech. Everybody is allowed to say no more than three sentences about what is being provoked, invoked, and evoked in their interaction with the text. And the task is, I want you to convey as much as you possibly can in as few words as possible. And so everybody does this, but you can't just do it atomically. You have to pick up on what other people have said when you do your simple speech. And you do that for several rounds. And people. And what happens is, people are also asked. Try to sense how all of these different perspectives converge back to Spinoza or Plato or Brueger or whoever it is. And then you're doing that, and then you move into extended speech. Everybody's now allowed to give three or four sentences or a bit more and open it up, and they can even relate it to some experience that they've had in their life. And then you move into free speech, where people just talk about it. And what happens is people get a sense of the text coming alive and Spinoza being present, or Buber being present. Obviously not literally, but in this sense of. There's something about the intersection in the we space that gives them a sense of what was the mind that generated or is the origin of all of this? And you resonate with it, and you pick it up, and it gives you an opportunity to internalize the sage.

I would love to try that. Have any of those experiences been so memorable that to this day, you remember a specific phrase from a text that helped to catalyze just an extraordinary experience? Are there any that you've seen really light things on fire? In an interesting way, I think one.

In Spinoza was, God is related to the world the way the mind is related to the body.

Ooh, can you say that one more time? I'll have to marinate with that one.

God is related to the world in the same way the mind is related to the body. I forget where that's from. I think it might have been from the inundation of the intellect. I'm not sure.

Next up, Brene Brown, research professor at the University of Houston and author of Six number one New York Times best sellers, including Atlas of the Heart. This interview Originally aired in February 2020. What do you say to the people you meet who are on the third marriage? Their kids. Don't talk to them. And there are certain things that they have convinced themselves, subconsciously or otherwise, maybe through an abusive upbringing or trauma, whatever it might be, that it is unsafe to feel certain things. And you come in. They've asked for help, but they do not want to open Pandora's Box. They do not want someone to drag them into the deep waters of emotions that they've kept under lock and key for so long. How do you help someone like that? What do you suggest to them? Because it does get messy. It's going to get messy before it gets clean, at least in my experience. It's like, oh, you're going to do spring cleaning. Guess what? You got to take all the things that are up on the. Up on the shelves, all the things in the drawers, all the things that are hanging on coat hangers, and you're going to put them in the middle of the room and it's going to be a mess. It's going to be a fucking mess.

Yeah. And you're going to be pissed that you did it halfway through.

And that is. But you can't really get past go without that type of step. So for someone who's listening to this and says, you know what? I buy it, I get it, and yet what do I do? Because I've had on this armor for so long.

So I would say a couple of things. I mean, the first thing I always feel like is really important to say is that I'm a researcher, and so I'm not a therapist. That would be. Differentiate me when Esther. Like, I don't see clients. If I go in and I'm working with CEOs, and this question comes up all the time, what I would say to people is, pandora's Box is closed right now, but are you under the impression that you're living outside of the box or in the box?

Yeah, I like that.

Yeah. I mean, like, you don't want to open Pandora's Box, because that's strange to me. Because you're living inside Pandora's box. And what I feel like you've asked me to come here to open it up. Like, we're not going to do this process without walking through some deep shit. There's going to be deep, swift water. And if the water's super deep and swift, you need to go through that with a therapist. And get that settled before we work in the organizational way. But what I would say to people, what I always say is the same for me, and I'm sure the same for you, that we all grew up and experienced to varying degrees, trauma, disappointment, hard stuff. We armored up, and at some point, that armor no longer serves us. And so what I think I would say to that person is, how is not talking about this serving you? Like, I've been sober for 23 years, so someone in AA would be like, how's that shit working for you? You know, like. But I probably would put a softer spin on it than that over black coffee and a cigarette. But, you know, But I would say that it's not serving anymore. And now the weight of the armor is too heavy, and it's not protecting you. It's keeping you from being seen and known by others. And so this is. I mean, just tell you, quintessentially, this is the developmental milestone of midlife, from late 30s to, you know, through probably your 60s. This is the question, you know, this is when the universe comes down and puts her hands on your shoulders and pulls you close and whispers in your ear, I'm not fucking around. You're halfway to dead. The armor is keeping you from growing into the gifts I've given you. That is not without penalty. Time is up. So this is what you see happen to people in midlife. And it's not a crisis. It's a slow, brutal unraveling. And this is where everything that we thought protected us keeps us from being the partners, the parents, the professionals, the people that we want to be. And there are only. I've only seen. This is a fork in the road. I've only seen 2 responses to this visit from the universe. Well, there's a. I guess there was my response, which I was like, screw you. Bring it. Like you think you can best me. And then it was just one nightmare situation after another until you're not gonna win that fight. I think if you say, you know what? I'm not gonna do it, then you've got to double down. These are the people that walk through the world, double down on their own shit, in denial, you know, cheek squeezed as they walk and cause so much pain in the world.

Yeah. To themselves as well.

I mean. Yes. Because it is so much easier to offload pain than to feel pain.

Yeah.

And so you really have a choice in midlife whether you're going to be. You're gonna, you know, identify the first step of it. The whole process is what armor and I'm not saying like, I'm not saying just pull off all the armor and streak through Austin because I think you can replace the armor with something. I think it's curiosity is what you replace that. You just become very curious about yourself, about the world. Why did I react that way when Tim asked me that question, I wanted to like hit him over the head with a topo chica bottle. You know what was going on there? Do you know what I mean? What is my obsession about this? You just become very curious is curiosity is really the superpower for the second half of our lives because it keeps us learning, it keeps us asking questions and it increases our self awareness. But when you see. And I think it's really hard because I'll walk into a situation and there'll be. The person who invited me is usually the CEO. And then you'll have like the cross armed, pissed off, clenched cheek, like F you looking person, usually in operations or technology. And then they're like, what's the business case for you being here? Because here's our stock price, here's what's going on, here's our valuation, what do you need? And then the CEO usually say, fucking hate each other. And this can only last for so long. Like, you know, it's the end of every great band, right? Like this is gonna come to an end and it's gonna be terrible. And so, I don't know, I think you can't pull it all off at once. You have to. For a lot of people, for all of us, there's trauma.

Yeah.

And people are like, no, there's not trauma for all of us. There's trauma for, you know, people who have been abused physically, sexually, emotionally. There's trauma for people of color and people who have been on the margins. There's trauma for all. Just different levels of trauma.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, escape childhood with nothing is. I haven't met that person yet.

No, I haven't either.

Right. So the trauma stuff, literally the trauma message in our body is you take this armor off, we die. So you protect us at all costs and leave this on. A lot of that work has to be done with a therapist.

Next up, Elan Lee, co creator and chief executive officer of Exploding Kittens, a leading gaming and entertainment company. Let's chat, if you're open to it, about Kickstarter for a moment because I know a lot of people outside of games specifically will still be interested in Kickstarter or crowdfunding in general. So you, I believe at one point had a Fraud alert, email printed out and framed. And I think somewhere the limit was set, like 10,000, and maybe it got bumped to 50,000 for this new bank account for things. What was your initial target for the Kickstarter campaign and where did you end up?

The initial target was we were trying to raise $10,000 in 30 days. And we set that alert. The bank would let us deposit a check up to $50,000. They were being very generous. And the check that we tried to deposit at the end of those 30 days was almost 9 million DOL dollars.

Okay. I have specific questions around how you did things differently. And you had some very strong advantages going in. You had your background, you had Matt and the Oatmeal and all the followers of the Oatmeal. You had a deck that was loaded, in a sense, but still ended up being maybe still is the most backed in terms of number of backers. Kickstarter project, or at least at the time that was the case.

Still the case, by a lot, actually. Yeah. In order to talk about Kickstarter, we have to talk about two things. One is alternate reality games, and the other is the Oatmeal. So alternate reality games. My background being sort of trained at Microsoft and at the Xbox and learning about communities and the appeal of games and why we play games together. I then went off and started with some friends, this company, to build alternate reality games. And all you really need to know about alternate reality games, although I could talk about them for a long time, is the central premise is together you are stronger together as a community. You can become extraordinary versions of yourselves. And the games are set up to deliver a story out in the real world that is convoluted and you have to piece it back together. It's like my mentor, Jordan Weissman, likes to call it Internet archaeology. So archaeology is you find all the little bits and pieces of the vase, you put it together in order to figure out what it is about that society, how that society lived, how those people lived. Alternate reality games are the same thing. We write a beautiful story, start to finish with a very compelling narrative, and then we break it up into little pieces and we hide those pieces everywhere in the real world, on the Internet, on phone lines, fax lines, live actors everywhere, and you, the audience, working together because you're stronger together. Go and perform that feat of archaeology, find all the pieces, put them back together, look at your beautiful digital vase, and then learn the story based on what you found. So I built a lot of those, and I was really trained over and over Again, really beaten into my psyche. Community first. Community first. They're so much smarter than you are. Learn to entertain a crowd. That's what this is all about. We decided to launch this Kickstarter campaign. We had this really compelling hook. We knew the game was really good. We put up the page and the very first thing that happens is the oatmeal goes into full effect. Matt has spent at that point about a decade building an audience, earning their trust, convincing them he does just really high quality work.

And for those who don't know, could you just explain what the oatmeal at that point, what it looked like?

Yeah. So at that point, the oatmeal was and still is a webpage, the oatmeal.com and Matt has spent 10 years writing short form comedy. One panel, sometimes up to four panel comics, sometimes very few long form pieces where he tells stories about his childhood. It's a lot of social commentary. And they're hilarious, they're beautiful. Some of them have won Eisner Awards. They will make you cry. Matt is truly one of the most talented artists and comedians I've ever met. And, yeah, he's a guy who's just so much smarter than I am. It's an incredible collaboration and I got to meet him through a mutual friend. I pitched this game to him, we talked about it. He said he'd really like to help. And off we went. And when we launched the Kickstarter campaign, honestly, it was only like three weeks after I met him.

Wow, that's fast.

Yeah, really fast.

That it was that fast.

Yeah, we built it fast because we had nothing to lose. We didn't think it would be a huge success. We just thought, this feels really good. We don't have to overthink this.

Let's just go now. Is it fair to say that also at that point you had the game mechanics refined and Matt was bringing in a lot of the sort of artistic comedic flair in terms of the back hair cards and the artwork. So you're effectively adding art to game mechanics that were ready to go but kind of lacked an artistic vehicle. Is that fair to say?

Totally fair. There are 56 cards in the game, and so Matt's task was not to design the game, although we both worked hard to refine it. Matt's task was write 56 one panel jokes. And he did. You flip through that deck and the first thing you're going to do is just laugh. I mean, it's such beautiful art. Okay, so back to our story. We launched the Kickstarter campaign. And Matt posts about it, and he says, for the first time ever, I've done a game. I hope you like it. And millions of people showed up, literally millions of views to that Kickstarter page. And our first, we got funded. We were trying to raise $10,000. We got funded in like seven minutes. I mean, it was out of control. And our first day we made a million dollars. And our second day we had 2 million. And our third day we had 3 million. And it was just like, this is a runaway train. We have certainly caught lightning in a bottle. We've unleashed the full potential of the oatmeal. Here's finally a way to productize that incredible brand. Welcome exploding kittens to the world. But then after the first week, after the first week, it fell off a cliff. And the reason is just because everyone who Matt could reach who was interested in this thing had taken a look, either made a purchase decision or not, and that was it. The tank was empty. So I sat down with him and we're like, well, we got two choices. We can either just sort of ride off into the sunset and say, we made like 4 million bucks. That's incredible. We're trying to ra 10,000. Let's just take a bow and we're done. Or we could try to push this thing a little bit and just see what else is possible on Kickstarter. And at the time, the way that Kickstarter worked, the kind of only lever you had were these things called stretch goals. And the way a stretch goal works is you say, look, I got this product, I'm going to charge you 20 bucks for it. And we're going to try to raise $10,000. But if we raise $20,000 for free, everybody gets three more bonus cards. And if we raise $50,000, you get a carrying case. And if we raise 100,000 dol. Gold plated cards, whatever it is, that was the tool you had. Give us more money, we'll give you more shit. We decided that's going to be the.

Name of this podcast episode.

No. When we looked at that ecosystem with that one lever, give us more money, we'll give you more shit. We kind of thought, there's got to be something else we can do. There's got to be something else. And I suddenly, my eyes went wide and I realized, holy crap, I've been training for this moment my whole damn life. We need to activate the community. Instead of thinking, this is crowdfunding, let's think of this as crowdfunding. And we did stretch Goals just like everybody else. But instead of tying it to money, we tied it to just insane shit that we could ask the backers to do. We basically said, look, we're going to throw a party and everybody's invited. Instead of giving us more money, we're done with money. Instead, hey, we got this character in our game called Tacocat. Half cat, half taco. Show us a picture of a real taco cat. And if you do, if like 10 people do that, we'll throw in 10 extra cards. That's a stretch goal. And we have, you know, it would be funny. What about give us a picture of 10 Batmans in a hot tub, whatever the hell that means. We want to see it. Somebody does that, we'll give you a fancy carrying case. And we just went nuts. We wrote these challenges that were insane and funny and basically said, we just want to have fun. Please have fun with us. We're only here for another 20 days, so why don't we just celebrate the whole way through? And the audience jumped on it. They did everything we asked. They took those pictures, they wrote poems, they filmed videos, they went out on the streets, they met each other, they had parties together, they ordered pizza, like all the fun stuff, because we basically said, money doesn't matter anymore. Let's just have fun. And it was a great invitation.

Last but not least, Dr. Matthew Walker, bestselling author of why We Sleep Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.

A sleep divorce is where you will sleep either in separate locations or at least in separate beds. The diluted version of the sleep divorce, rather than sleeping in separate rooms and separate beds, is called the Scandinavian method, which you think sounds so much more salacious than it actually is, which is essentially, you've just got two separate beds that you put side by side, and that's the diet version of a sleep divorce. But I do think that sleep divorce idea is important because it is a taboo and it also can markedly improve things for people. So when we've looked at survey data both in the US and also in the UK with the National Sleep Counselor, what you find is that about one out of every four couples who are surveyed will tell you that they have had a sleep divorce, that they will sleep in separate beds. And we think that that may be in part an underestimate because of the stigma associated with it. And if you survey people anonymously, you get to a number of almost one out of every three people will admit to waking up, at least in different locations. And there is pretty good evidence from the science as to why that number may make sense, why 25% of all couples suggest that when we study couples who are sleeping together objectively, on almost every measure that we can quantify about sleep. Sleep is worse when you're sleeping as a couple relative to when you're sleeping separately. The twist in the tale there, though, is that when you ask people about their satisfaction of sleep, there is definitely some group of individuals that say, look, I feel more satisfied with my sleep when I'm sleeping with my partner than when I'm sleeping separately, despite the fact that objectively their sleep is worse. So I'm not suggesting it's a one size fits all, but I think the taboo comes from the idea that, well, if you're not sleeping together, then you're not sleeping together and the exact opposite is true.

That's British for having intercourse.

Thank you very much. Yeah, can we just get over this? It's my desperately unfortunate Hugh Grant genes that has me sort of trying to navigate around the topic rather than just like saying it straight to. Thank you, Tim. Yes. If you're not sleeping together, then you're not having sex. You're not having intercourse.

Yes.

Oh, come on, Matthew, hold it together. But it turns out that the opposite is true. When you get a couple who are sleeping well, their sex life actually improves. And it's probably for three reasons that we've uncovered. The first is hormones, the second is sensitivity, and the third is libido. And I'll try to park my Hugh Grant and get right into it. In terms of the hormones, take off.

The gloves, take off the blood.

It's time. I'm wondering what you mean by saying take off the glove in terms of this conversation, but let me just.

Just skip it.

You see, you open the door, Tim and I walked right through.

Here we go. Or put on the gloves, if you prefer.

I think probably best, but we know each other quite well now, so maybe anyway, I think so. In terms of the hormones, firstly, we know that testosterone, gosh, it takes a pretty sharp nosedive in males and in females when you're not sleeping well. Males who, if we put them on a diet of maybe four or five hours of sleep, they drop their levels of testosterone somewhere by about 10 years of aging. So a lack of sleep will age a man by a decade in terms of virility. It's also true of estrogen in women. And so when those two sex hormones are not in play, you get a reduction in the quality of the sex life. The second component, and this is data that we've only really got in females, less so in males. But the sensitivity of female genitalia is increases when sleep is in high volume versus when people are not getting sufficient sleep. And we think that's due to the estrogen that when estrogen is in normative amounts because you're sleeping well, there is greater vaginal lubrication which therefore leads to greater sensitivity and greater pleasure by way of sex. And then the final aspect is libido. We've also found that when a woman obtains an extra one hour of sleep, there is a 14% increase in her desirability to be intimate to have sex with her partner. And I find that interesting because if you put it in context, the FDA approved drugs for increased libido in women. Things like, I think it's called Vi Lisi is one of them. I know that will increase libido in women by about 24%. But here is the simple addition of one hour of extra sleep, you can get more than 50% of that benefit drug free.

Question for you, Matt. How are these drug companies measuring increases in libido? Is it a self reported 1 to 10 scale or something like that which can be very fungible?

It's self reported. So many of those scales are subject. It's very much like pain that it's. When it comes to libido, it's somewhat difficult to quantify. And of course it's not just about innate biological libido. The conditions have to be right. You have to have the relationship with your partner. Which actually also reminds me, by the way, when couples are not sleeping well, and this is a study from UC Berkeley, not from my lab. But what they found is that they have more fights. They don't resolve conflict nearly as well between them when they're having a fight. And the reason is because you lose empathy when you're not sleeping well. Your ability to empathize with other individuals. And we now have demonstrated why in terms of the brain networks, you decrease that capacity for understanding the other. And no wonder. You're fighting and you're fighting in a pretty poor way.

What's the playbook? What's the best practices?

I'm not suggesting that a sleep divorce is for everyone by any means whatsoever. There are some people for whom they adore sleeping with their partner for lots of reasons. Safety, security, intimacy. But I think if you are interested in it, take a graded approach. And I would suggest firstly, just having an open, gentle conversation and don't be defensive about it. The second is don't suggest that it's permanent offer the idea that, look, could we do this, darling? Could we do this for the next week or the next two weeks? And I'm not suggesting it's forever. Let's just see and let's just try it on for size then. I think what people misunderstand about sleeping together in the same bed is what they miss. They don't really miss the majority of time because for the majority of time you're asleep and you're non conscious. What you really miss are the bookends of sleep. That sort of getting into bed, having a cuddle, saying a good night, and in the morning waking up and doing the same thing. So if you have a sleep divorce, what you can also do is build that in. So whoever goes to bed first, the other person comes in, you have your time, you sort of cuddle, do whatever you need to do and then you leave and then you repeat the same process in the morning. You don't have to do that every day. Of course it's not going to be practical, but in that way you sort of get the benefits of sleeping together whilst still having a sleep divorce, if that makes some sense. So I would just say, you know, be honest with yourself.

I feel like sleep divorce needs a rebrand. Maybe furniture polyamory, since you'd be on separate pieces of furniture. Sounds really risque, taboo, kind of sexy.

I am so stealing that because, yeah, when you bring that up at a dinner conversation and you finally admit it to your friends, they all think, oh, no, they're on the rocks. But furniture polyamory, all sorts of swings from the ceiling.

Oh, it sounds very exciting. Very exciting.

Yeah. Candleworks on the nipples. Let's go.

They're killing it.

Yeah, exactly.

And now here are the bios for all the guests. My guest today is John Vervaeke. On Twitter you can find him. Vervaeke underscore John. He is a Professor of psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Toronto. He currently teaches courses on thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on cognitive development, intelligence, rationality, mindfulness and the psychology of wisdom. Vervaeke is the director of uToronto's Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory and its Cognitive Science program, where he teaches introduction to Cognitive Science and the Cognitive Science of consciousness, emphasizing the 4e model, which I'm sure we will get into, which contends that cognition and consciousness are embodied, embedded, enacted and extended beyond the brain. Virvaeke has taught courses on Buddhism and cognitive science in the Buddhism Psychology and Mental health program for 15 years. He is the author and presenter of the Outstanding. That's what I'm adding. YouTube series I highly recommend Awakening from the Meaning Crisis and his brand new series After Socrates. You can find john vervake@johnvervaeke.com that is spelled V E R V A e k e johnvervake.com My guest today is Dr. Brene Brown. Dr. Brene Brown is a Research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation, Brene Brown and Dowd Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy and is the author of five, count them, five number one New York Times bestsellers the Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness and her latest book Dare to Lead, which is the culmination of a seven year study on courage and leadership. Her TED Talk, the Power of Vulnerability is one of the top five most viewed TED Talks in the world with more than 35 million views. Let that sink in. 35 million views. My goodness. She is also the first researcher to have a film talk on Netflix. The Call to Courage Special debuted on the streaming service in April of 2019. She lives in Houston, Texas with her husband Steve. They have two children, Ellen and Charlie. She also has a brand new podcast just in should be launching right about now called Unlocking us coming out March 2020. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. My guest today is Elan Lee. You can find him on Twitter Lanlee E L A N L E E Elan is the co creator and Chief Executive Officer of Exploding Kittens. Maybe you've heard of it? A leading gaming and entertainment company. Under his leadership, Exploding Kittens has expanded its portfolio to nearly 30 different games with more than 20 million games sold in more than 50 countries since its founding in 2015. Before founding Exploding Kittens, Lee was the Chief Design Officer at Xbox Entertainment Studios where he led the interactive entertainment portfolio. Prior to that, he was the Founder and Chief creative officer of 4th Wall Studios and co founder of 42 Entertainment. He began his career at Microsoft Game Studios as a Lead designer on the original Xbox. Lee has won a Primetime Emmy for the series Dirty Work, Game, Innovator of the Year for Exploding Kittens, a Peabody Award for the world's first alternate reality game, the Beast, and an Indiecade trailblazer Award for a distinguished career in interactive entertainment, among others. My guest today is a fan Favorite, Matthew Walker, Ph.D. Dr. Walker is professor of Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley and founder and Director of the school's center for human sleep Science. Walker is the author of the New York Times and international bestseller why We Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, which I highly recommend. This is a book that has greatly impacted me. It was recently listed by Bill Gates as one of his top five books of the year. His TED talk, Sleep Is yous Superpower has garnered more than 17 million views. He has received numerous funding awards from the National Science foundation and the National Institutes of Health, and is a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2020, he was awarded the Carl Sagan Prize for Science Achievements. His research examines the impact of sleep on human health and disease. Walker has been featured on numerous television and radio outlets including CBS, 60 Minutes, National Geographic Channel, Noah Science, NPR, the BBC, and the Tim Ferriss Show. He is also the host of the five star rated podcast the Matt Walker Podcast, which is all about sleep, the brain and the body. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off and that is five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1 and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. Kind of like my diary of of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun. Again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. Something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim Blog Friday. Type that into your browser. Tim Blog Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.