#5: Jake - pseudonymous wealth, time allocation, and health protocols

Hey, welcome to Jason Levin's Brain Blast. In this episode, we've got Jake. That's it, just Jake. He's the semi-pseudonymous host of Pod of Jake, where he's interviewed people like Balaji Srinivasan, Vitalik Buterin, and Mark Cuban. Jake and I chat about pseudonyms, investing, why it's okay to say some things are a waste of time, our health, and more. Enjoy. Yeah, so I hit record, um, just to get the, you know, intros and everything and get that going. It's good to finally talk to you, man.

Yeah, sure. Uh, yeah, great to, great to come on and, uh, thanks for inviting me. It's good to connect on Twitter and finally put a face to the name.

For sure. I can't say I'll be doing the same.

Um, yeah, that's why I was laughing a little bit.

Yeah, for, for listeners who don't know, Jake is semi-pseudonymous. I assume Jake's your real name.

Yes.

Right. Okay. So I guess that leads perfect into the first question. Why semi-pseudonymous? Why not full pseudonymous? Why not doxxed?

Yeah, it's an interesting question. The easy answer, I guess, is that it's just really hard. So when I was first starting out, like, you know, most people don't really think to go pseudonymous or anonymous or anything like that. For me, it was a combination of reasons. I think first and foremost, I wanted like the freedom to be able to share whatever I wanted to share, whether it's at the time it was blog posts. And then shortly after I started my Twitter and then several months later I started the podcast and there's sort of an extra layer of freedom. I feel like when you're not, you know, putting your existing reputation on the line by doing whatever you're doing. You know, the counter of that is you don't get to bring your existing reputation to your advantage, but you sort of get a clean slate and you don't really have to worry about what you're doing. I was writing about whatever I wanted to write about. You can go find that on the blog. And I was writing every day for several months. So sort of a lot of content and you don't want to be like second-guessing and thinking like, oh, is this okay to share?

Blah, blah, blah.

So that was a part of it. Second thing is I think you can't really put the genie back in the bottle with something like pseudonymity. So, you know, no one starts with like hundreds of thousands of followers or whatever, but everyone who eventually has that many followers started with like nothing. Right. And so they probably didn't think about like, you know, the consequences of having their real ID become available to hundreds of thousands of people before they were anything, but You know, I don't really do anything with like an aim to not be successful, I guess. And, you know, by whatever my own definition of success is. And so figuring that maybe one day I'll have a somewhat decent-sized following. I think it's, you know, I put value in like, I think there's a lot of advantages to being like rich and famous, basically. You know, it's like a short way to say it, but basically that's what it is. And the only real disadvantage that I can see is like sort of a loss of privacy. Like you can't really walk around the streets anymore. And being pseudonymous to me sort of prevents that. So there are other reasons as well, but that was sort of the original thinking and why not completely pseudonymous, like Satoshi level or whatever. It's just really hard. I've certainly learned a lot now that I could do it better. I'm probably like 99 point something percent in terms of like people who have ever come across anything of mine versus the percentage of those that know like my full name or face or whatever, but still quite a lot of people, especially like in my personal life, like they know what I'm doing. You know, not like the random kid from high school or whatever, but like my good friends, family, whatever. So the next time if I were to do it again, I could probably do it quite a bit better. But yeah, it's, that's what it is.

Got you.

Yeah.

I find it fascinating the entire, I mean, it's almost like a project, but it's your life. Yeah. Are you still digital nomading or where are you based out of now?

I'm actually in Philly now. So I was running around for a while there with COVID I was in New York at the time and moved back home in my family home for a little bit and then did probably 5 or 6 month or 2 month or so Airbnbs over the course of, I don't know, a year and a half or whatever it was, and then finally settled down in Philly.

Okay. I'm in New Jersey, so I'm not too far.

Nice. Yeah. Love the great state of New Jersey. So good to be there.

It is a great state. People shit on it, but it's a decent place.

Yeah. People tend to shit on anything that's good. So that's what I found at least. Philly's a little bit similar. People call Philly like sort of a, I don't know, it has like New Jersey-like reviews for a city versus a state. And Everyone here seems to love it. So I'm getting used to it. I haven't really spent time here previously, but it's nice. And the equation for where to live has certainly changed a lot with COVID And for me personally, doing everything remotely, you know, I used to be able to tolerate like a closet of a studio in New York for an egregious price because like I was in New York and I was hardly spending any time at home anyway, or whatever. Now it's like I'm spending, you know, I don't know, something between like probably 75 and 90% of my overall waking hours in or around my house. And so it pays to have a bit more space than I could get in New York for the same budget. So I've got sort of enough space to not go stir crazy or whatever when I'm working from and living from home all the time.

Yeah, totally understood. I'm in a similar boat. New Brunswick is very cheap compared to the city, which is what I've been looking at for the next step, but I'm living in a great apartment and it's hard to leave that behind. Yeah, I guess something that people do shit on, investment banking. Why quit investment banking? And did you have a lot saved up when you quit or how'd you make that move?

Yeah, I had enough saved up to sort of, have some runway where I didn't need to get a job right away, or, you know, I was fortunate enough to be able to quit without my next job lined up. I had probably, I think I joked in a blog post at some point, like I probably had, I don't know, 6 or 7 months of runway for living in New York, but like 6 or 7 years worth of runway if I went to like Thailand or something. Yeah. And you can, you know, runway is It's obviously all based on your cost of living. And I think a lot of people underestimate, they sort of like see the way they grew up or the way their parents raised them and the way their friends grew up and the jobs their friends get after school and whatever it is. And they sort of like have a bunch of assumptions in their cost of living that are like baked in. But you go and live in New Brunswick in an apartment and like, you know, don't spend a lot of money. On food and drinks and Ubers and whatever, your cost of living is probably at least, at most rather, like half of New York, someone living in New York. And then you move out of New Brunswick and you go to Bali and you can cut it in another half, if not like 75% or whatever. And all of a sudden you have all this runway. And I think people are doing that more and more now that the strings to You know, the things that are holding people down and wherever they are mostly was work. And now you can work from anywhere. People are moving to Portugal, people are moving to, you know, Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico, whatever. In addition to places that are still expensive like Miami and Austin and whatever. But anyway, back to your question, quitting in banking. I think I went in with the idea that I was going to do like at least a couple years unless I found like a better opportunity. And then sort of putting that timeline, I guess, just in my head and keeping it in mind as the time approached, I sort of figured it was like sort of a natural time to leave. And it was, it was a good time for me to leave. My deals were like closed and I was sort of in an in-between area where I could leave without sort of screwing my coworkers and my team's bonuses that just been paid, which is always a good time to leave. You're not leaving accrued earnings on the table. What else? It's been a little while now, but basically there was a few things that lined up. My lease was up and I just knew, I looked at the people, I worked with good people. I like people I worked with, but I looked at the managing directors and the life that they were living wasn't the life that I wanted in a few different ways. And so I sort of took what I could out of the experience. My learning curve, I also felt was like much, much less steep the second year than the first year. And I figured the third year would be even less so. And of course, like you gain, you know, 30 years in the business, you gain a ton of expertise, but the first year or two or whatever is like the mo— you're going from zero to one and then you're going from one to N or whatever. So I just sort of thought like, I mean, there was a bunch of contributing factors, but one of the things I thought about was like the Bezos regret minimization thing, which is basically like, what am I more likely to regret? Like not doing a third year in banking or not quitting without a job and seeing what happens. And that made it pretty clear to me, like the third year in banking, like who cares? But taking a chance and taking a leap, I don't know that that was basically my second time doing it. The first was taking a gap year after my freshman year of college. And both times just, they worked out tremendously well, basically for me. And part of that's just me taking like a positive attitude to it in retrospect. But I think there's also some like objective things that if I had stayed on the trajectory in either case that I was already on, I think it would've been hard to even in other people's eyes, let alone my own, sort of get to where I'm going now.

Got you. I also took a gap year after freshman year. Where did you go? What'd you do?

So originally I went to school down, trying to preserve some pseudonymity here. Sometimes I like, I, you know, I'll say something cause I just generally speak, you know, Very transparently. Every once in a while, there's something that I realize like can be triangulated to figure it out. So I have to watch myself, but I went to school basically down south and, you know, a fine school, but like nothing special. And just really didn't like it. Had like a really bad year for a number of reasons. One of which like was just silly. I got like locked out of selecting classes for just a reason that was not my, like, I didn't do anything wrong. They just like, the system like messed up. So I had like literally, you know, freshmen already have the last choice of classes. So I was the last freshman to choose. And that left me taking like literally, and there's like certain classes, certain like areas of classes you have to take. And there was like one left in each case. So I was taking like Muslim Saints and Sinners. And like women's autobiographies. I was like the only guy in the class and like, just, just a tough semester, nothing against people who are interested in those things, but like I have higher things on my list. And so just a bad year. I was sick all year. There was like mold in my room. It was just bad.

Yeah.

And basically I applied to a bunch of schools to transfer, got into a couple, but none that I was like super excited about. And I was talking to my high school college advisor at the time, or college counselor, whatever. He had helped me, you know, get in in the first place. And he brought up the idea of taking a gap year. And I don't remember the exact ordering of things, but basically I'd been working on this thing on the side. I had this idea for a business or a game really that, you know, a business could be built around it. And I started sort of starting to gain some traction. And I realized that I could take this year and, you know, I could get like an internship or something and then work on this at nights. And then if it started to do something, sort of focus on that for, you know, maybe the second semester while my friends were in school or whatever. And then I could go back to school the next year if it didn't work out, or else, you know, it works out and I'm the next Zuckerberg or whatever. So seemed like a good risk to take. And I actually got my favorite of the schools that did accept me. I convinced them to basically defer my acceptance year. So it was like a truly no-loss situation. And yeah, went and did the gap year and then ended up basically getting into a better school and one that I was excited about. The company wasn't doing anything special. So ended up going to the new school and graduating, you know, 3 years later from there.

Got you. Got you. And when did you get into real estate investing?

Real estate investing. One of my good friends from school is going to make a lot of money. He's really motivated and loves real estate. And we'd always studied together in school, slightly different interests and things, but it was just a great guy to sort of like go to the library with or whatever. And, um, after we sort of always figured we were going to do something in business together. And so a couple years after graduation, he was looking to make his first real estate investment, called me up. Um, this was maybe not quite a couple years after graduation, but like a year, a year and a half into banking. We both saved a little money and, uh, he convinced me to go in on a duplex down in where he grew up down south also. And it's been interesting. It's not like my main forte or anything like that, but I think it's worthwhile. Like I said before with banking, I think it's worthwhile to get like the 0 to 1 in a bunch of different areas, especially while you're young so that you can sort of see what's interesting to you. And I did enjoy the process of evaluating the property, hiring a property manager, Things like that. And it's done well as has most real estate probably in the last 3 years or whatever it's been. So I don't know how far I'll go with that, but it's an investment and it's done well. And that's generally what I hope for investments. So nothing to complain about.

[Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] Yeah, fair enough. How much can you say about your current project? I have an inkling in my head of what it is, but I could be wrong and I'd rather not bring it up right now.

So Yeah. Uh, current project as in like what I'm spending most of my time on.

Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, so I'm actually like not really talking super publicly about it. Uh, if that's all right. I mean, totally cool. Sort of connect the dots, but, um, but yeah, I'm just sort of focused on like what I've been doing or what I started doing with, you know, my blog and the tweeting and the podcast and Hopefully I'll sort of, like right now I'm sort of just like maintaining, like I'm still doing the podcast, which is a fair amount of work. At least, I mean, you know, but I spend a lot of time like preparing for these guests. 'Cause I think they're, you know, I don't wanna waste anyone's time. And I have a pretty high threshold for like what a waste of time is, you know, anything below that is like a waste of time. And so I'm lucky that a lot of people have sort of agreed to come on and Spend some time getting properly prepared, but I love doing the podcast. I may get into writing again. I think it's a beneficial thing to be doing generally. I'm tweeting a little here and there. I go back and forth on like, you know, it's beneficial to build an audience, I think. And it's nice and it's, you know, it's generally good, but it's also just like a big time suck. And I'm like, you know, again, like the regret minimization thing. I come back to the Bezos framework a lot. I'm not sure if you're familiar, but like, If I'm 80 or 90 or hopefully 120 or whatever, and on my deathbed, I'm gonna look back and be like, you know, I sent like 25,000 tweets and like, you know, God forbid I'm able to like count up the hours that I spent on Twitter. And it's just like, what was I doing? I feel like, so I don't know. There's certainly value there. I've met, you know, we met on Twitter. I've met a lot of great people on Twitter and it's pretty awesome, especially with like, you know, internationally. I've learned a lot from people on Twitter and found some great people to follow. And then I go listen to podcasts with them or read their books or whatever. So there's a ton of value. It's just like diminishing returns at a certain point. So anyway.

Yeah, I definitely feel that with diminishing returns. Like if I'm on it too much, then it just, it actually gets worse. Like, or my brain just gets a little fuzzy. But it's definitely changed my life for the better, you know, talking to people like you and just, you know, like all over the place I've had amazing conversations and life-changing. So I was reading one of your essays earlier just about principles and how you wouldn't describe yourself as a principal person, but other people describe you that way. So what would other people say some of your principles are?

Jason Levin: Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know where exactly that's from, but I would describe myself as principled and I think other people would as well. I've had friends sort of say it. What do I think my principles are? Sorry, was that the question? What do I think they are?

I don't know.

I'm trying to think. There's a lot. It's almost It's not like I'm like a man of a few principles necessarily. Like, I think I'm like a principled person in a way. Like almost every— if I'm like sort of living the way that I want to live, almost everything I'm doing is sort of can be boiled down to like the principle. And there's a lot of talk about like first principles thinking, right? Two terms that sort of like I didn't even really know about until a couple years ago that I think I like depend on pretty heavily, but I never really interact or like engage with the actual terms or like the people writing about them or whatever very much. It's like first principles thinking and mental models. Like I think I think that way generally or try to think that way generally from like first principles, keeping things like super fundamental. And basic and sometimes overly simplified. And then, you know, and then going from there and then on the mental models, like I never really call them that, but like, I guess like, I think I use them. I don't really know. I haven't read enough, like explicitly on mental models or whatever, but anyway, I'll try to give an example of a principle. Well, one thing that I tweeted about somewhat recently that's like pretty important to me, like, you know, I don't think it's great to like spend your whole like life. I mean, people could do whatever they want, but I could get trapped like contemplating like the meaning of life or whatever for like way too much of my life basically. And I don't think that's like how I really Like, I think there's some questions that don't really have answers. And so like thinking about them, you know, I don't know, it's like sort of marginally useful, uh, or like, what's the point? I don't know. Maybe that's the question in and of itself. But, um, I think for me, like one thing that's just like top of mind all the time is like, I want to make good use of my time. Um, and that's why I respect others as well. Like I, like wasting time to me is just like the worst thing. I'm like sort of like allergic to it. Um, not to say, yeah, like I don't, like, I certainly waste, like if you observed like the way that I live, you would certainly identify like I'm wasting time and certain, like at certain times, like, and a lot, right? Like I'm like dilly-dallying on my phone. Like I'm not perfect, far from it, you know? But that's at least like sort of what I'm trying to do or aspiring to do. And I don't know where this comes from, from like the principles thing or what I was getting at, but basically like making good use of time for me is like the whole point of like life, like, right? Like I just wanna like sort of look back and like, I wanna enjoy the ride and like feel the things that I'm doing along the way are like worthwhile. But I also wanna like look back at the end and be like, You know, I'm really glad with like how that went and like what I did or whatever. And so that's like a super obvious point. Like, I don't think people would like confront me, be like, dude, like you're crazy. Like, what are you talking about? You wanna spend your life in like a good way? But I don't think a lot of people like bring it down to like everyday decisions. I think a lot of people will waste months and years and jobs that they know that they don't like. And situations and relationships that they know aren't really working out. And like, they just don't really like act with enough urgency on sort of achieving that objective. And for me, like, you know, I'll just sort of, I'm pretty blunt and like, I'll just tell people like, I don't, that's a waste of my time. Like, I don't want to do that, you know, like whatever. And so I make time for, you know, I make a lot of time for like work. I also make a lot of time for fun. Like I think there's a lot of, like, I love like getting a great meal with friends and like, you know, doesn't need to be like keto or whatever. Like, and I can like have some wine with it or whatever. Like there's different dimensions of, of like life and it's all about like, I think it's a lot about balance. And so I don't know if that answers the principal's question directly, but yeah, it's a little bit of just like how I think about things, I guess.

Yeah, it does. I was in my first recorded podcast with Liam Killingstad from Front Office Sports. We were discussing why investors are good writers, and I think it's, you know, their whole job is allocating capital. And a lot of like the, the principialistic writing is about allocating time. And so I think, I think there's definitely an overlap. And I mean, it's something that I think about every day is how am I spending my time? And, you know, I'm definitely not perfect, but it's also my goal is to use it as wisely as possible. And there will be times where I say no, No, that's a waste of time and somebody else doesn't understand it and they think I'm very rude and I just, you know, there's better shit to do. So I guess another question, do you still journal? I know, correct me if I'm wrong, but you were using a morning journal, correct?

[Speaker:JASON_LEVIN] Yeah, that's right. First of all, I totally agree with what you said, like, you know, on investors, I think people limit their People think of investors, they think of money for obvious reasons. That's the job title or whatever. But I think you're investing in everything that you do, the way that you spend your time, investing in relationships, investing in your fitness. Everything is sort of investing in a sense, unless it's just spending or saving, I guess. But investing is just a life— that is a principle of life, I guess, thinking about things from an investor's perspective and I certainly do that. In terms of the journal, it's actually probably, you know, I'm sure there's a bunch of habits that I have that are just like subconscious or whatever, but in terms of like conscious habits that I sort of like thought would be good for me and started to do, writing in a morning journal is probably the longest lasting one, sort of the one that I started the earliest that is still maintained through. Basically, I think, I don't know, 4 or 5 years ago, just started writing a page in a journal every morning, every weekday morning. And I don't do it necessarily every weekday morning anymore, but there's sort of enough entries. Like I do it quite a bit and it's just a page and it's not super complicated. The first sentence is almost always like something positive, just like today's gonna be a good day. And I just try to be very positive and grateful and appreciative. And even at the expense of truth, like I tend to be a very honest person, but if I'm just lying to myself, like I'm okay with that. And in the journal, like, you know, I say I wake up and like, I'm not feeling so well. I might write like, I'm feeling great today. And I just think there's like sort of benefit to just sort of forcing that positive mind first thing in the morning, like you're waking up and right away. You're in like a positive mindset just by basically choosing it. And positivity and negativity in terms of the way that you think is very much a choice, I think. That's why you see people in terrible situations who somehow, you know, like what's his name? I'm blanking on the guy's name, but the famous book from the guy from the Holocaust who like—

Viktor Frankl.

Yeah, exactly. Frankl, who had just a pretty remarkable mindset throughout, versus, you know, you get like some wealthy kid who like is like, you know, miserable and like upset and angry all the time and like has nothing to worry about or complain about or whatever. It's all relative, of course, but like, anyway, I think mindset is very much a choice. And so if you can choose to, at least for 2 minutes or 3 minutes, start your day in a positive place, I think it's probably worthwhile. And people use journals for a lot of reasons. A lot of people use it for like sort of cataloging things or like reflecting on their day. For me personally, it's been more of like a positivity and gratitude type of thing. Just like sort of like a self-hack or whatever. And you know, I don't know if it's doing anything good, but life's been pretty good since I started. So, you know, gonna keep going.

I journal every night, and it's not anything crazy. It's just about my day and the good things, the bad things.

More like a reflective thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Honestly, like when I die, I want my journals burned. Maybe before I die too. Like, this is just— it's, it's my convos with myself. Like the deep shit that I can't talk about the rest of the time.

Yeah. I mean, there's no, there's no consequences.

I'm going to put my dog in his crate because he's jumping all over.

Yeah, go ahead.

You there?

Yeah. I don't have the video up, so if the dog was jumping around or whatever, I couldn't see. I'm so used to doing my podcast on audio only that like watching you at the beginning was like throwing me off. So I just dragged it off to the side.

But that's too funny.

Yeah, but I don't know, there's something to that. Like, I definitely prefer the, the audio only for a few reasons. Not saying you shouldn't keep doing what you're doing, but I like it. I, for some reason, it's like, I think there's more, um, I don't know. I, I get like more self-conscious with the video and I'm like, even if I'm not like totally self-conscious, whatever, like even subconsciously, like I'll see the person sort of like react in a certain way and like it interrupts my, whatever I was thinking to be like, oh, like they like that. Or like, oh, they didn't like that or whatever. And it's like, And of course I'm not like actively thinking these things, but it's just like, I always noticed that my best conversations prior to the podcast or anything were on the phone, usually better than like in person, like sort of deeper. And so that was, you know, I'm pseudonymous or whatever. So like, I didn't, you know, partly wasn't a choice and it's nice to not have to like, you know, make my hair nice or whatever before recording a podcast, but Separately, I do think it's actually— I enjoy having like the audio only. So anyway, that's what we're doing here on my end.

Yeah, actually, I'm going to turn off video. So because I agree, I tend— I've switched most of my calls, everything I can that doesn't require sharing screen. I made like a special Calendly event that is just phone call. And, you know, it also— there's something familiar about it, like talking to somebody on the phone. Versus staring at a screen that's really just you and some pixels. And I don't know, I find it to be a more familiar, nice format. Like my best calls I think are on walks with my dog and just talking to a friend.

Yeah, same with me. And I've actually thought like, I've looked into it and there's ways I could do it, but if I was doing like less consequential podcasts where I was just like talking with a friend or whatever. And I, I didn't like care quite as much or whatever, then I would probably consider, and I was doing more volume than I would consider doing some of them on the move. Like there is a way that you could do, you could have a podcast set up with actual, you know, not just like AirPod quality, but like pretty good quality while walking. And I also, I totally agree. My best conversations are walking and talking. There's something about like moving that, I don't know, it's, there's probably research on this or something, but moving just sort of helps get the blood going to the brain or, or whatever. There's like some sort of rhythm involved or whatever it is. It's, it's useful. And I've been walking. One of the, the benefits of COVID has been sort of, you know, you're not in an office anymore. Even when I was in an office, I would sort of walk an unusual amount versus my peers and Sometimes people will be like, where the hell, like my VP be like, where were you? I'll be like, oh, you know, just went for a walk. Like the good thing, if you do like sort of good enough work, then you can like sort of pick a couple quirks to like be weird about. And so, you know, if I'm still delivering whatever he asks, he can't really ride me for like going for a 30-minute walk in the middle of the day. Middle of the day. One of the not so good things though, coming back to the Zoom point is like, In my opinion, at least there's like this weird, you know, when we went remote, I'm not like working for a, you know, a corporate company or whatever, but like, there was just this default to, you know, oh, we can't do in-person anymore. Like everything's gonna be a Zoom. And I just think that's so ridiculous. Like there's a time and place for Zoom. Like I'll grant that, but it's certainly beneficial to a phone call in like some situations. I don't even know what they are on the top of my head, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that that's the case. And you can start, you know, getting to see people once in a while, probably builds a bit of like trust and things like that. But the default for every single meeting to be a Zoom is like so crazy to me. It's like, you know, for example, when I was in banking, we like, I can't even think of really ever doing Zooms or, you know, at the time it was like WebEx or whatever. All of our conference calls were calls, you know, audio only. And I wouldn't be surprised if now the same people in my group are doing all Zooms. Like they're actually doing more FaceTime for no reason, just like, because everyone's doing all Zooms now. So I don't know. It just doesn't make sense to me. And it's like, people talk about Zoom fatigue. I fortunately haven't really had to deal with it, but it's just like, I don't know. I think the whole, nature of how we do meetings in a remote world is gonna, you know, has a long ways to go. And like, I think there will be virtual reality elements, not necessarily putting on a headset, but like, even if it's just on your desktop, there's some virtual reality environment that you can join. Hopefully audio only has some sort of comeback. I think audio in general is extremely underrated. Like the fact that I can go and excuse me, it's like a little bit of a rant here, but like The fact that I can like go for a run or a walk and listen to like Marc Andreessen or like Peter Thiel or Paul Graham, like give a, you know, the other day I forget who it was. I guess it was like Ben Horowitz giving a talk to maybe it was like YC or something. And it's like you had to be a part of that YC batch to listen to it live, but I can listen to it while I'm exercising and like you fools are sitting there. It's like pretty nice, right? Yeah. And it's just like, you couldn't do that like literally 10 years ago. Like it's extremely new. So I don't know. I'm excited about audio. Another thing, like there's probably like a hundred startups that could be super successful, like sort of betting on audio in a different way. Another thing I thought of was like an audio-based, you know, Hinge or Bumble or Tinder or whatever the latest Hot One is where like, it's not so physical in terms of just like looking at a face or a body and like swiping. Like you actually just, you don't see the person right away necessarily. And you see like some of the descriptors, you know, where they went to school or whatever they wanna share. You could get like pretty creative with it. And then there's some sort of matching system and you match and you actually just have like an audio only conversation first. And then, you know, from there you can decide if you wanna like reveal pictures or just meet in person or whatever it is. I'm sure there's like a bunch of stuff that could go wrong with that. But I think it could be interesting, especially with a lot more people now meeting. Like, I think those types of apps used to be like more so for hookups. I don't know, like the numbers or whatever, but I think they're more so now for relationships, at least more than they used to be because you can't really meet you know, your next significant other, like in your office as easily anymore, at bars or restaurants as easily anymore. Like there's just not as much in person. So I think those apps are sort of becoming the, at least among people I know, like you just have to go for the apps now. And so, you know, a different, an audio-based kind of one where it maybe starts with like a deeper intro could be kind of interesting.

Definitely. I actually met a girl when I was doing my newsletter who was trying to build something like that. I'm not sure how it's going or anything, but jumping back to going on walks, getting the blood going, all that kind of stuff. I know you've interviewed a lot of health-based people and you're sponsored or your podcast is sponsored by things like Oran Levels and So it seems like it's important to you. I've never seen you, so you could be 400 pounds. I have no fucking clue. But what's kind of your health practice? What do you, what do you like to do to work out and everything?

Yeah. I mean, I'm like 380. No, I'm like in, I'm not in like great shape. I'm in like fine shape. I'm in better shape than I was in like high school and college, but I'm not a natural. It took me a while to sort of convince myself that it was worthwhile to be healthy. I know it sounds like sort of silly, but I just, you know, you want it, like basically what I ended up realizing is like, you know, you may, cuz, cuz like my, my first thing was like, well, you know, there's all these different ways you can die. And like, what if you're like health, you're like a health nut and then you get like hit by a bus when you're like 40 or something. Like, obviously it's terrible, but like, you know, there's less extreme examples of like people getting these, you know, you get like cancer when you're like 55 or a heart attack when you're 55 for like no apparent reason or whatever. And like, so my thinking was like, you know, maybe if like being healthy all the way isn't really guaranteeing or even close to guaranteeing me like a sort of a longer, life, then like, what's really the point? And then I sort of ended up realizing like, you know, it's not just about longevity. It's also about how you feel going, like, you know, like during the journey or whatever, right? Like how you feel during that life. And I realized that being a bit healthier made me feel a bit better. Although sometimes I still question, like, if I don't exercise, you know, some people get like super depressed or whatever. I'm like kind of fine. I don't know. Like it's, I did. I became like a runner over the last 2 years. That's like my primary form of exercise that I've really built a habit around. Was fortunate when I quit my job in banking, I traveled for a little bit and met up with a buddy who was training for an Ironman. And he sort of like gave me a few principles for running that really helped me to take up the habit in a way that stuck. First was, you know, the most important one was like not to care about my speed. And the other thing was to never run less than 3 miles. So I basically took his advice and like, haven't run less than 3 miles, maybe like 2 or 3 times in unusual circumstances, but like hundreds of runs and like all 3 or more miles since then. Um, and you know, not by coincidence, I've basically settled into running just 3 miles. Um, like I was stretching it further for a while, but now it's mostly like 3-mile runs and it's just a nice distance where like, you can't just like sprint it out. You have to like sort of settle into it a little bit, at least for me. And it just— running became an exercise in patience and discipline as much as it did sort of strenuous exercise. Um, so I'm not really like gunning it and like breathing super hard usually. Um, I just sort of like settle into a podcast, get into running. And then when I was stretching the long ones, you just sort of like get into this state where if you can sort of like convince yourself that like running is like your natural state, like not standing or sitting or walking. Cuz like when you walk, it's easy. Like you just, I don't know about you, but like I could just like walk forever.

Mm-hmm.

Um, especially if I'm on a call and like I'll get bored if I'm not doing anything. But if I'm on a call, like I'll literally walk like 7 miles and just where, like where the hell have I been? Cuz I was just like in the call. And you could do the same with running where like, if you're running slow enough that it's not super strenuous, you could just be like, well, this is like my new normal. And like, I don't need to stop like ever. And then you just sort of, at some point you decide to stop or whatever, but running has been good for me. Other health-oriented things, fasting has been good for me. I lost some weight basically fasting and it's super easy. People think it's like, I don't know, for me at least, some people get dizzy if they don't eat in the morning. So everyone's, you know, unique and that's sort of a big aspect of health I think. But for me it's pretty easy to stop eating after like 7 or 8:00 PM whenever I'm sort of done with dinner, if, if I'm having dessert, whatever. But no, like late night eating, which in and of itself, if even if you're not gonna fast, stop, like not late night eating is I think super beneficial. And then just not eating in the morning until like, you know, noon. If you go from 8:00 PM to noon the next day without eating, it's a 16-hour fast, which is sort of like the traditional recommended time for intermittent fasting, 16+. So I've been doing that for— that's, I mentioned journal is like one of my longer habits. Fasting like 4 to 5 days a week is probably, probably been doing that for like 3 or 4 years now. And I, I don't do it, at least not intentionally, like on weekends. Weekends I just sort of do whatever. And so yeah, fasting, running. I've been trying to lift more for the last few months. One of my resolutions for, sort of my main resolution for 2022 was to lift 3 days a week, 45 weeks out of the year. So I can miss like 7 weeks. And the tough thing about a resolution is like, if you change your mind, then about like what your priorities are, then it's really hard to convince yourself like, oh, I should do what my January 1st self set out to do, even though I don't really believe in that anymore. Like for me, at least it's like, you know, sort of changed my mind. And anyway, I've been doing a decent job. I think I've missed 2 weeks so far this year. So. That's ahead of pace on misses, but nonetheless still doing pretty well. But lifting doesn't really— I maybe I just haven't found like my, my hack or whatever, but lifting doesn't give me the same, like I go for a run, it's pretty enjoyable. And it's, and like when I'm done, like I feel, I feel good. After a lift, I feel like fine. It doesn't really. Do a whole lot. I think part of it is with running, I get like a full body sweat no matter what I do. With lifting, it doesn't, it's not necessarily always that strenuous. Probably maybe I'm doing something wrong or whatever. And then I guess other elements of health, maybe I, I should just sort of like, I know it's sort of a long answer already, but I do have sort of like a way that I think about things and it's basically like 7 prongs, I think it is. So it's fasting, which I talked about. Nutrition, which I'm not gonna really recommend anything. I tried like a gluten-free vegan diet was the most extreme thing I did for a few months. I tried that again, only weekdays, like basically any diet that I'm gonna do, it's gonna be like weekdays only or something like that. 6 days a week only, sort of like the Tim Ferriss Fatter Day type of thing. I actually, I started it before I had heard of that, but, and I give myself, I guess, Fatter Day and Fun Day or whatever. Instead of just Saturday, but I think it's, it's a nice thing to have like a foreseeable break from whatever you're doing in terms of like discipline and at least it just makes it easier. So anyway, fasting, nutrition, exercise, breathing, I consider in there, hydration, I consider in there and limiting. I think that's 7 that I named.

Limiting?

Yeah, limiting is, it's like limiting alcohol.

Gotcha, gotcha.

Limiting caffeine and limiting nicotine. And then limiting like other drugs as well. If, if you're doing other drugs, obviously. But those are sort of 3 mainstream drugs or whatever. Yeah. And then hydration I think is pretty underrated. I, I could be totally wrong, but I just see like super jacked in-shape people The, and like, it's pretty common to hear that they lift, that they drink just like a ton of water. So I'm pretty big on like 6'3", um, and you know, 200 pounds or so, not 380. Uh, and, uh, so I try to drink like 128 ounces. Uh, a lot of times I fail, but there's this good water bottle called Hydrate, H-I-D-R-A-T-E. And it sort of passively tracks your water intake. So I found that to be useful, sort of like what gets measured gets managed. If you measure your water intake, you might be able to manage it a little bit better. And then I think the only one I haven't really talked about is breathing. You know, it's like sort of meditation or even more specifically like breathing exercises, maybe questionably a part of health, but there is this book by a guy like James Nestor or something that I read. And there's just some decent arguments for, from my perspective, which, you know, no expert or whatever, but like, it seems that you may be able to improve your breathing and improve your health as a result. So I sort of added that to the list. I'm not very good at it. I don't meditate regularly. I downloaded this app and had the founder of this app called Othership, which is about breathing exercises on the podcast. But I haven't been actively using it. I want to get better about that. But that's sort of like my overall perspective on health, I guess, and what I'm doing. And if I was older, I would also be taking some things, but I'm in my late 20s, so I'm sort of— it's like if I was taking something, it would be so that I could have like a biological age of in my 20s, ideally, or 30s. But if I'm in my 20s, like, I don't need to do anything. So Yeah, sort of waiting for the tech and the medicines and treatments and whatever to get better. But I'd probably take metformin almost definitely, maybe rapamycin or some of those others that are thrown out. And obviously don't just go start like popping pills based on what I'm saying here, but you can look into it like David Sinclair and those guys. There's some resveratrol I think is another one. What's the other one? Elysium. I had the founder on the podcast. They have their original product, product basis is about like NAD+. These are basically just like the first frontier of supplements or whatever you wanna call them, drugs that seem to have a positive impact on longevity. And I'm very hopeful that there'll be many more that are much more significant in terms of their effect to come over the course of my lifetime. But for now there's a few that seem Somewhat promising.

Yeah. Got you. Um, did you get to run through Israel when you were there for Birthright?

Uh, I did not. I was, uh, I was really busy when I visited Israel and I'm trying to think. Yeah, I don't think I went for a run at all. I played basketball, which was fun. And, uh, Israel is definitely a cool country. Tel Aviv. I spent New Year's in Tel Aviv. That was nice. Um, and the food is really good. Trying to think, I don't have like too much to say on Israel, but, um, worth going if, if you can. And yeah, I know it was good. Go ahead.

No, yeah, I spent 3 months in Jerusalem. I turned 20 there and longboarded a lot. And yeah, it's a, it's a great place.

Yeah, Jerusalem especially, obviously with all the history, it's, uh I don't know. It's just like a pretty unique place. When I was there, there was like this— I forget what exactly was going on, but there was some trouble in the Middle East and they were threatening like Jerusalem pretty specifically. And I'm like, so I'm like, I got to go home. Like, what's going on? Like, this is ridiculous. And the Israelis are just like, no, this is just like a Wednesday. Like, you know, this is like what it is over here. So hopefully all stays reasonably well there for a while, you know, forever or whatever. They've got an interesting thing going on and it's interesting, like they sort of, you adapt however you need to adapt, right? Humans are like extremely adaptable when they need to, but you know, it's sort of hard to adapt voluntarily in a lot of cases. That's why, you know, I don't have six-pack abs or whatever yet, but But if I needed to, like, you know, I, I would. Uh, and in Israel, like, they've needed to advance technologically basically and develop ways of defending themselves. And people have had to join the military because they don't have that many people overall. So they all need to sort of have a hand in protecting the country. And as a result, I think you've got like a pretty interesting demographic of like mature, disciplined, smart, forward-thinking people, basically. And as the world like continues to globalize and, you know, entrepreneurs everywhere can make a, you know, the next unicorn or whatever, I think Israel is probably near the top of my list in terms on like a per capita basis. You know, the state's like, I mean, the country's like about as big As like New Jersey, I think, but I don't know about population, but literally size-wise. So obviously it's not going to compete with like the US or India, but I could see a lot of really successful people coming out of there. I know there's already been a bunch. I had Daniel Gross on the podcast. He was YC, sold the company to Apple. Now he's doing Pioneer, like super smart guy. I learned a lot He was one of my— sometimes I enjoy preparing for podcasts more than others, just based on like, I basically just immerse myself in the person's mind space by listening and reading everything that they do. And that was a fun one. I'd encourage people to look into him. Really smart guy.

Got you. Got you. I guess I got two more topics. Crypto, you've written a little bit about it. I know you've invested in it, correct? And I'm Were you at ETH Denver by any chance? I could have walked by you without knowing it.

No. Yeah, I wasn't at ETH Denver. I have been into crypto for a while. I sort of was like, I had a few introductions where it never really resonated with me. That was probably going back to like 2016 or so. And then 2017, I put a little bit of money in, but still didn't really get it. I was basically Like I said, I sort of oversimplify things. And to me it was as simple as like, all right, there's this thing that, you know, you remember the— even if you weren't involved in crypto at the time, you probably heard about Bitcoin in like 2017 at the peak of the hype cycle. And I'd sort of— it had come on my radar like a bit before that, maybe like 4 or 5, 6 months before the probably peak in December of 2017. And I was like, you know, I'm hearing hearing a little bit more and more murmurs about this thing. It's claiming to be internet money or whatever. Really didn't know anything about it at the time, but I was like, seems to be enough steam there to go up a lot, so maybe I should put a little bit of money into it. So I put a very small amount of money into it, went up a lot, put a little bit more money in as it was going up, and then it came down. I basically ended up break even on it and just let it sit there for years. And then when I quit my job in banking, I had a lot more time to like, just look into things basically. And like learn, like when I'm working, I'm not really, for better or worse, like I might learn as a result of whatever I'm doing for work, but I don't like set aside time to like learn about things. Like I just sort of immerse myself in whatever the work is. And so I'd done that for a couple years and when I got out I was like, all right, what's interesting? And I sort of like stumbled upon longevity through Laura Deming while I was working. And so was able to dig deeper into that and, you know, crypto I'd had in the back of my head as something that I should look more into. And so I started looking into that and basically it was Andreas Antonopoulos, or maybe I'm pronouncing his name wrong, but Jason Levin. He has a video called Introduction to Bitcoin that made it click for me. I think I'm— I learned better from videos sometimes than reading and whatever. I don't remember exactly what it was. It's a great video though. And it was actually one of the things that made it click for me on Bitcoin was China was freezing the bank accounts or generally like the assets of people who were at the Hong Kong protests. And based on like tracking, you know, they would track who bought a subway ticket or a train ticket or whatever to the location where the protests were, because they had, they paid with credit card for the train ticket and then they would block the account. And 'cause, you know, they're China, they can do that. And it turns out Canada can do that too. So like it became very relevant very recently. But that was one of the very first things where I was like, "Okay, I get this." Another thing was the fact that it's just— he said something like, "It's very difficult to explain." At the time, he said, "It's very difficult to explain Bitcoin to an American, but I don't have to explain Bitcoin to a Venezuelan." It's just like, in Venezuela, if you tell them it's volatile, it's like, "Okay, well, Our money, Venezuelan currency or whatever, is volatile, goes up and down and it goes like this. And he puts his finger from going down into the right. And then he's like, Bitcoin is super volatile and it goes like this. And it's up into the right. And I was like, yeah, it makes sense. So it's not really for me necessarily yet. The dollar's good for now at least. And at the time, for sure, there was no We had printed a bunch of money in '08, but nothing like we have more recently where people have all these justifiable inflation concerns. But a combination of those two things and then some other aspects of his talk just really made it click for me. And then I went on to read some other things that really helped develop sort of my thinking around it. Trying to think, like John Pfeiffer had like a nice long post of some sort. I forget what it was called. Vijay Boyapati had a really good one as well, Bullish Case for Bitcoin, I think it might have been. There's several. If you go to bitcoin.blogofjake.com, I wrote a little bit about Bitcoin. And then if you go to the additional reading or references or whatever I called it, there's my top 10 posts on Bitcoin. And basically, I developed a pretty good understanding, I felt conceptually, of Bitcoin. And put a fair bit of my money into it. You know, my overall money wasn't very much, but like put a decent percentage into it. And you know, that grew and became a larger percentage. And at some point I diversified out or, you know, maybe just bought fresh some Ethereum. And you know, now I've got a bunch of the coins, but it's really a long tail where it's majority Bitcoin and Ethereum, roughly market cap weighted. And then Solana as well is probably like an order of magnitude above the other stuff, but sort of behind Bitcoin and Ethereum, just because it's a lot lower market cap. So like if Solana becomes the next Ethereum or whatever, I'll have, you know, about as maybe even more money in Solana than Ethereum. But for now, while it's smaller, I sort of think the market cap weighted approach is reasonable. So That's how I'm invested. I could talk more about other aspects of crypto if you want, but that's sort of like the history and how I got into things and Bitcoin specifically, and then how I think about investing.

Got you. Have you gotten into any DAOs or NFTs?

Not really. I'm a little bit skeptical of DAOs still. I know it's sort of silly. It's actually easy to be skeptical. Everyone was skeptical of Bitcoin at the beginning and then, whoops, that was wrong. So it's like, I don't take pleasure in being skeptical of DAOs. I think it's really hard to coordinate without some hierarchy or like, you know, it doesn't need to be like the military or whatever, but like it's sometimes helpful to have like a boss and like someone at the top. And DAOs, I think a lot of them are taking— I understand like being decentralized or whatever, but like, I don't know, I just, I don't completely like get it yet. Uh, and maybe it'll just take me some time or whatever, or maybe they'll develop in sort of a direction that makes it easier for me to understand. And NFTs are similar. I mean, from early on, I saw like this functionally is super powerful, but paying millions of dollars for like, you know, JPEG or whatever is in the near term, that doesn't really make a ton of sense to me. Some of them do. And the PFPs do make sense. I think it's, those are more comparable to like, you know, sports cards to me. Cause there's actually like sort of, it's a collection. If it's a notable collection, then you have a community behind it. And, you know, if there's more demand to be a part of that community than there is supply generated by people who are willing to leave it, then the value of, you know, joining that community should go up over time. So I got, I really get that. And I think that's why like, and there's, there's other elements there too. But I think that's— I don't know the stats, but I believe PFPs are a large percentage of the overall NFT market cap to date. I'm not sure exactly what it is. The only one that I've really engaged with was, besides ENS names, which I guess is technically one of the OG NFTs in a way, but What was it? CityDAO. So basically they're doing something pretty interesting and it's just like, you know, crypto plus city building, two things that I'm like really interested in. And city building is like sort of one term for it, but like experimental governance is another term for it. Things that like Patri Friedman and Mark Lotter And even like Cul-de-Sac down in Arizona. And there's a bunch of projects that are like Honduras Prospera. Um, there's a bunch of projects that are sort of rethinking, like, can we find a new way to build a city or, you know, even a country? And, uh, or, you know, maybe starting with a town, uh, and you know, what, what could we do differently? Uh, and I think that's really interesting and I think things are inevitably gonna change. Like one interesting thing is like, as I'm like preparing my taxes or whatever, it's like, this is so dumb. And like, when will a country just do a subscription model? Like, that seems pretty obvious. Yeah. And so I would be very surprised if that's not, if there's not at least some jurisdiction that's on a subscription model in the next 20 years, I'd be very surprised. Maybe the next 10, I don't really know how far, how fast like things like that can move. But anyway, I really liked CityDAO. I had the founder on the podcast and I sort of like winced at like spending $1,000 on an NFT. I just, it just felt like, it felt like spending more than investing to me, but that was something where I was willing to spend. I think it was like $800 or something at the time I bought the citizenship NFT. I just really liked what they were doing and wanted to be supportive and involved. I said, "If I don't see this money again, that's fine." More importantly, I really like— I've just had this weird affinity for Wyoming for a long time, and it was an opportunity to buy a piece of this thing that would then give me an opportunity to buy a slice of land as a part of the DAO in Wyoming. And that's sort of like where they're acquiring the land and things. So definitely supportive of that project. And that's really the only NFT that I've personally engaged with today.

[Speaker:JASON_LEVIN] Yeah, you're preaching to the choir. I also bought a CityDAO NFT. I later sold it once I got involved with KabinDAO, which is trying to build a decentralized city across the country. They have a node outside of Austin and were able to host creator retreats and now are hosting other DAOs and whatnot. So I was writing for them for a while. And their placemaker, Phil Levin, no relation to me, Jason Levin, despite having my dad's name, he's actually one of the co-founders of Cul-de-sac. So him and I have talked a lot about that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's really— I'm excited about the idea of a decentralized city and having nodes multiple places where I could just check in and and kind of see people with a similar vibe in what we're building. I guess one more question kind of before we wrap things up. My dog is going a little nutso, so I gotta take him out soon, but what are you currently reading? I'm sure I could find some of your past reading on your blog, but what's currently going through your head?

Yeah, currently I'm reading The Gray Lady Winked, which is a book by Ashley Rinsberg, who I'm having on the podcast next week. So I'm reading that sort of as prep and, you know, out of interest, I want to read it anyway. And that's a book about the New York Times. Does not shine a good light on them. And I think is worth reading for people who, you know, I don't know if you're interested, if you read the New York Times, you might want to reconsider. And If you don't and you have a reason for it, this might give you some support for convincing others that it's not really quote unquote the truth. So it's just interesting. And then the other is Ryan Holiday. I think it's called Conspiracy. It's about— it's funny enough, I didn't really even think about how these were related, but it's about how Peter Thiel took down Gawker basically. And I had started The Gray Lady a while ago and picked it back up for, because I had the podcast coming up and I was reading Conspiracy prior, but now I'm sort of reading about two, I guess one media, you know, organization that was taken down and another that maybe should be. And that's it right now.

Nice, man. Nice. It's been awesome having you on the show and, uh, getting to know you a little better. And I definitely, uh, want to keep in touch via Twitter. So thank you again, um, and I hope we talk soon.

Yeah, man, awesome. And, uh, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It was great talking with you. Look forward to keeping in touch. And, uh, we'll let you get to your dog. He sounds like he or she could use some attention.

Yeah, for real.

All right, thanks, man. Uh, have a good one.

All right, thank you.