#886: The Random Show — AI Super Assistants, Boner Pills, Dream Engineering, Wizards, Supplements, Books, and More

Tim and Kevin begin by arguing that AI has reached an inflection point: the important change is no longer asking a chatbot for information, but giving an assistant access to the systems that run your life. Kevin names Instinct, Meta’s Muse, Grok, and ChatGPT’s newer assistant features as competitors. Instinct is unusual because it works through an iMessage-style phone number rather than requiring another app. After Kevin authorized access to his Google account, it immediately texted him that a document was waiting for his signature and later reminded him to pick up a prescription before an international flight, planning around the flight schedule. Kevin says Instinct has changed flights, obtained a difficult OpenTable reservation, added it to his calendar, and coordinated with friends’ Instinct assistants to schedule a dinner. He acknowledges the privacy risk of handing a startup access to Gmail, Drive, calendars, and logins; Tim says users should think about the “blast radius” if their data is compromised. Kevin trusts Meta’s Muse somewhat more because Meta has greater regulatory scrutiny and described its security model, although he stresses that Meta is not always a good actor. They conclude that users may become attached to whichever AI stores their history, preferences, and authorizations, making it harder to switch models when a better one appears.

The conversation turns to agentic commerce. Tim asks why Amazon reportedly blocked Meta’s shopping agent while Shopify welcomed agents. Kevin’s explanation is that Amazon depends heavily on sponsored placement and on being the destination where shoppers begin; if a user asks ChatGPT for towels, the AI can compare Amazon, Walmart, or another store and make the purchase without sending the user to Amazon first. Shopify, by contrast, benefits if independent merchants remain available to AI agents. Kevin expects the AI interface to become the new top of funnel for commerce. The same pattern applies to software. Kevin describes connecting Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve to ChatGPT through an MCP server, dropping in three camera angles and two audio tracks, and telling the AI to make a podcast. The AI rearranged and edited the project directly. He says similar connections are emerging for Photoshop and CAD, potentially making applications “headless”: users could ask an AI to remove a stain or build a design without opening the underlying software. Kevin expects Apple Intelligence, Gemini on Android, ChatGPT, Anthropic, and other systems to compete as the main entry points to the internet. He recommends that nontechnical users start with Muse, try ChatGPT’s phone-based assistant if available, and wait on Grok because its models are less capable and more technical.

Tim explains that he resumed experimenting with beta-alanine while training seriously for rock climbing. His problem is endurance: climbers often overuse their arms, lock off their elbows, and exhaust their forearms before learning to rely on their feet. He avoided creatine for this purpose because of water retention and weight gain, which would make climbing harder at roughly 180 pounds and with finger strength already acting as a limiter. He cites a randomized, double-blind study of 15 elite climbers taking four grams of beta-alanine daily for four weeks. After saturation, the beta-alanine group lasted 57% longer before falling versus a 19% improvement with placebo, an additional 21 seconds beyond placebo. The improvement appeared in longer traverses but not necessarily short bouldering or campus-board work. Tim says he takes about 6.4 grams daily and noticed a noticeable shift after roughly two and a half weeks, although training, isometrics, collagen, and vitamin C were also changing. He describes paresthesia—a niacin-flush-like tingling—as a side effect and prefers sustained-release tablets. They discuss psyllium contamination, with Tim recommending that users investigate heavy metals and naming Yerba Prima and Organic India as brands he has checked. Kevin says creatine helps him lift but 10 grams caused severe hand and foot cramps, while five grams did not. Tim also describes delayed-release creatine beadlets that avoid his usual stomach problems. For convenient protein, Kevin recommends an A2-protein drink with 30 grams of protein, 160 calories, two grams of sugar, and few ingredients.

Kevin asks to discuss sperm quality after buying walnut butter and deciding that, as he approaches his 50s, he would like to keep his “twins” healthy. Tim describes a 2012 randomized controlled trial involving 117 healthy men aged 21 to 35. Participants either maintained their normal diets or added 75 grams of walnuts daily—about 0.6 cups chopped, or two and a half handfuls. The walnut group showed statistically significant improvements in sperm vitality, motility, and morphology. Tim then cites a 2024 meta-analysis suggesting that at least 60 grams of nuts per day improves those same three measures, though not sperm concentration. They caution that nuts are calorie-dense and can become counterproductive if someone eats thousands of calories of them. They revisit Brazil nuts and selenium. Tim says friends with testosterone problems reported dramatic subjective improvements after eating about three Brazil nuts daily, though he emphasizes that these anecdotes are not randomized evidence. Kevin points out that Brazil nuts obtain selenium from the soil and says consumers should check that the nuts are actually from Brazil; Tim generally looks for organic products. The broader conclusion is that “you are what you eat” is incomplete: you are also what your food ate and absorbed. They apply this to salmon, vegetables, and salad greens, noting that farmed salmon may be dyed pink and that labels such as “all natural” can be largely meaningless. Tim’s practical takeaway is that small, informed choices—such as adding walnuts—may be worthwhile without attempting to optimize every nutritional detail.

Tim describes his long interest in lucid dreaming, beginning with Stephen LaBerge’s Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming in high school. He used lucid dreams to rehearse wrestling and believes the practice improved his performance. He is now following Adam Horowitz, who moved research from MIT and Harvard toward a startup called Dust that aims to help people modify dream content, including for PTSD. Tim says dreamers can learn to become lucid and alter their dreams, and researchers have even established two-way communication during REM sleep by having dreamers signal with prearranged eye movements. The discussion expands to neuromodulation. Tim remains bullish on Ampa Health, whose compact stimulation device can be used outside the large clinical setups traditionally associated with brain stimulation. He says the company is testing one-day protocols involving a small dose of d-cycloserine to induce plasticity, followed by stimulation. For his own anxiety and OCD symptoms, he reports a reduction from roughly eight or nine out of ten to zero or one after a one-day treatment, while acknowledging that this is his personal experience. He also describes using repeated brief stimulations during travel to improve sleep. Kevin is uneasy about magnets and electrical stimulation, but Tim argues that the risk-benefit profile may be more attractive for the general population than psychedelic therapy, which is unsuitable for some people because of medical or psychiatric contraindications.

Tim explains a Stanford research direction involving “anesthesia dreams” and trauma. The protocol does not alter the main surgery; instead, clinicians use propofol as the patient emerges, monitor brain activity with EEG, allow at least ten minutes of quiet recovery, and then ask about dream content. Before anesthesia, patients rehearse a different ending to a traumatic memory. Tim says preliminary reports describe people with severe, complex PTSD who experienced a dream with resolution and still had no symptoms ten months later. He sees this as evidence that the subjective experience—the “trip” or dream—may matter, challenging the pharmaceutical goal of preserving receptor effects while eliminating unusual conscious experience. They also discuss dual orexin receptor antagonist, or DORA, sleep medications such as Quviviq and lemborexant-like drugs. Tim takes a DORA during travel because he is ApoE3/4 and has seen relatives decline from Alzheimer’s disease. He references research on beta-amyloid clearance and says these drugs appear, so far, safer than some older sleep medications, while stressing that they have not been proven to prevent Alzheimer’s. The pair then considers brain-stimulating contact lenses: a mouse study reportedly found that mild electrical stimulation through the retina reduced behavioral, neural, and physiological signs of depression about as effectively as fluoxetine. Tim connects this to bioelectric medicine and says many anesthetics remain mechanistically mysterious, raising the possibility that physics and electrical fields may matter as much as conventional receptor chemistry.

Tim and Kevin joke about erectile-dysfunction drugs before discussing their side effects. Kevin takes a small amount of tadalafil and says it works, while Tim avoids it because even a small dose produces intense lower-back pain that makes the benefit difficult to enjoy. Tim says similar pain occurs with Viagra and attributes the drugs broadly to phosphodiesterase inhibition, while acknowledging that he needs to fact-check the details. They note that tadalafil may have plausible cardiovascular or cognitive benefits, but neither presents it as established medical advice. Tim uses the example to make a broader point: enhancement can be psychologically difficult to give up when the results are obvious, just as people may become dependent on AI assistance. Kevin then describes Plum Flower Curing Pills, a traditional Chinese medicine product he uses when his stomach feels as though food poisoning is beginning. He says a friend introduced him to it and that, despite the long ingredient list, he believes it reliably helps bloating and stomach discomfort. He also demonstrates an Airofit respiratory-muscle trainer, which adjusts inhalation and exhalation resistance; both men cite claims or data suggesting about a 30% improvement in lung capacity after eight weeks, and Tim uses his while rucking on a treadmill at a six-percent incline. Kevin recommends Dr. Jart’s Cicapair color-correcting cream with SPF for rosacea, explaining that its green tint neutralizes facial redness. He also reports using twice-yearly PRP “vampire facials” and OneSkin peptides, while the disclaimer makes clear that these are personal experiments, not medical recommendations.

Tim recommends the four-part series The Dark Wizard about climber Dean Potter, who pioneered demanding climbing and highlining techniques and later combined free soloing with BASE jumping. Tim was captivated by Potter’s athletic brilliance and troubled inner life, and says he binged the series overnight because it combines archival footage, drawings, and journal material. He also recommends Studs Terkel’s Hard Times, an illustrated oral history of the Great Depression, which Ed Cook introduced to him. Tim values its short, first-person profiles of people ranging from the destitute to wealthy people who lost everything, and says it makes the Depression complex rather than reducing it to a single familiar image. They discuss romantasy, including Fourth Wing and A Court of Thorns and Roses, after Kevin deliberately tried a genre he would normally ignore. Tim connects the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey—reportedly originating as fan fiction—to a lesson about simple, visceral premises. He applies that lesson to his forthcoming book about saying no and focusing in a world of noise. He has cut the manuscript from about 870 pages to 350 and is testing whether the title and positioning communicate the promise quickly enough. He is considering Authors Equity, possibly a limited print run, and says a finished traditional book can take roughly a year to reach shelves. Finally, they recommend Sean Smucker’s “Please Use AI” and quote Kurt Vonnegut’s story about going out to buy one envelope simply to encounter the world. Kevin argues AI may reduce administrative friction, but Tim warns that freed time usually gets filled with more work. They close by betting $500 to charity that Kevin can perform Jean-Claude Van Damme-style splits between two chairs within six months.