YouSaid · the spoken record

Craig Mod

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174
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2025-03-25
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2025-03-25
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  1. “Silicon Valley as like an intern. I drove my Honda Civic. It was in 93 Honda Civic with no power, anything. It was like all, I basically had to like crank the thing to get going, drove across America and went out there and interned. And I just, I really loved it. And I loved the people in the culture and the opportunities. And it really just set my mind ablaze. I mean, it was really exciting. And I was kind of working on blogging software before Blogger launched. I mean, there's definitely when I talk about like opportunity and, you know, they say basically wealth is unevenly distributed. But really what you're talking about is opportunity being evenly distributed or not. When you like listen to the generous story of someone like Bill Gates, he's just surrounded by this like. abundance of opportunity, you know, like the fact that the university had these terminals he could use and like it was just people were all kind of cultivating his ability to take advantage of these opportunities.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “When I use mosaic for the first time, and it was just, oh, okay, great. I don't have to think about anything. This is like just what I do. And very quickly, I realized if I became good at web stuff, I would be making more money than anyone in my town. It was just like this weird, again, this arbitrage of kind of information and skill. And like, I just saw this very early on. The ability to kind of go out.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “So, you know, it's like you think about when you come from a place like I come from, like, what are your archetypes who establishes what's possible in the world? And it really is like pop culture. Like those are the things you kind of reach for. Anyway, so you have like lifestyles rich and famous. What other people do? They buy stocks. You know, they invest in stocks, blah, blah, stuff like that. So I was like, okay, I need to do that to get out. That's like step one. And then I just loved the potential of the internet. Like as soon as I saw the World Wide Web, I was like, yes, this is where I want to write. This is what I want to build on top of. Like it was just so obvious to me. I was like 14.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “These are my adopted, yeah, my adopted parents. Even though they adopted me, they got divorced when I was like two. I mean, which was good. My father wasn't a great guy. So it was good to kind of push him aside. But like, there was no archetypes for me of like, oh, this is how you generate wealth or create wealth or cultivate wealth or grow wealth. There was absolutely none of that. Or even just how to engage culturally with the world, you know, to think about literature or to think about art. So I was just kind of like scanning the horizon. It was like, what do we knew? lifestyles are the rich and famous you know think of like what is as an 80s kid”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “I was like, yes, okay, I need this. So very weird. I mean, because there's no one in my family that had ever bought a stock. I was raised by my mother and my grandparents. My father was sort of out of the picture, even though it was an adoption.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “The delta's pretty insane. So I did not come from money. And so I saw two ways to get out, essentially, from a very early age. I'm adopted. So there's a sense of disconnection from that. And then from a very early age, I realized the place that I was growing up in was very, very tiny. And I need to get far away for a number of reasons. But I knew I needed to get away. And I saw money as critical for that escape. And I saw two ways of making money. And one of them was the stock market. I joined the stock club as soon as I could at high school. Super geeking out. And as soon as I think when I was 18 or 19, I was 19 when I opened an e-trade account. I think I was like one of the first, probably like 10,000 people to have an e-trade account. I was just like.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “And they were all sort of getting into the internet. And so when I graduated high school, I had these weird connections that I had made on this text chat room when I was 13. And these guys were like, hey, we've started like a design agency. We're doing a startup, whatever. Come out for the summer, be an interns. That was my connection. And essentially, I didn't grow up with money and no one around us had money. There was no wealth. There was no real. Looking back now, I mean, there was absolutely no real wealth happening in our town. And if you look at the GDP statistics and stuff like that, I mean, it's sort of like 20% of the national GDP was the average sort of GDP per capita of our town. America's GDP is really high. Like per capita GDP is like $85,000. Way higher than Japan, for example. Japan's like.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “And I started doing ANSI art. I was really kind of captivated by design and by computer programming in the sense that what it could do for storytelling, that's kind of how I saw it. And that's what sort of really captured my attention And so I started doing artwork with these guys. I was like 12, 13. These guys were all five, six years older than me. They were mostly in California, a lot of more.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “But, like, we're going to talk about books and walking in Japan and stuff. That's all coming. But this kind of Genesis story is sort of interesting in that, you know, you have these text-based things. You could use IRC, which is like chat. It was like Discord, old school Discord not owned by anyone. It was totally open, you know, like hosted on university servers, stuff like that. And I got connected with the ANSI art scene in there.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “This is a pretty serious footnote. So I don't even remember what PPP stands for. Basically, you had shell accounts, right? So you had these text based shell accounts. These were like the first ISPs. I swear to God, this is going to get more literary if anyone's listening.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “It's so funny that we're starting here because this is like such a bizarre, almost like a footnote to like everything I'm doing now. Everything I'm doing now feels so removed.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “So that was going on, and then I started using at his place. I got onto IRC, I started using PPP emulators to be able to use mosaic. I was in the ANSI art scene.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Kindness, and he was really kind, he was just genuinely just a kind guy. I went to go about 10 years ago. I went to go find him and just say thank you for having me lent me his computer. I mean, it really changed my life, this computer thing. And he had passed away. He had a heart attack. So if you have someone in your life You really want to say go thank them while they're around. But you know how it is when you're a kid, you don't realize the luck that you've fallen into with something like that.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “There were computers, and I was really, really lucky. Like, we did not have much money. And our school districts were not well funded. And, you know, it was just, I looked back on it. And I was extremely, extremely lucky with these chance opportunities I had, which basically enabled me to do everything I'm doing now very, very, very sliver sliding doors style chances of opportunity. My family couldn't really afford a computer, but my neighbor bought one and my neighbor was divorced. And he lost his son in the divorce. So he was kind of like lonely. And I was like, really hungry to be using computers. I was like, you know, eight or nine years old, 10 years old. I started going over there so much to use his computer that he just gave me the key to his house and he bought me my own phone line. And like, this guy's...”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Stuff happening, yeah. You know, ever since I was really young, I mean, I loved books, I loved writing, I was sort of like drawn to that, but I was also really drawn to video games. And like, I did not grow up in a place where people were reading, like no one around me was reading Ulysses. It was pretty culturally a bit of a desert. But there were video games. And those came from Japan. And that was sort of intriguing to me. That was like my first contact, I'd say, with a culture outside of the town I came from.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “I mean, I grew up in this sort of lower middle class post-industrial town. I grew up in this town where an airplane engine factory was the heart of the town.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “So, yeah, I mean, it's funny to start with Silicon Valley because that was probably like that was the shortest period of anything I did in my life for the most part. It was very truncated.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “We And then I think it was just, yeah, I think it was the Japan walk. That was the first time we ever really. Talked And a half years ago now already, which is”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “So I said hi to you there. I said, Hey, oh, hey, blah, blah, blah. And you were like, oh, cool. Yeah, Flipboard's great. Then we exchanged words in the bathroom at.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “Isn't there another one kind of up where Ev lived up on the hill, like you kind of go up not Pacific Heights or anything like that, but?”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Well, there are two moments that we met. One in 2011, right in the beginning of 2011, I was at. What's the neighborhood you lived in in San Francisco”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “The emotional garden. So I think that. Being able to like kind of crack that nut well would be really nice. Yeah, and everything. I don't know. I'm just happy to chat.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “I think it aligns very much with what I think would be interesting for listeners to listen to. I mean, think the adoption stuff is so basically, I haven't talked about the adoption stuff in English anywhere. I haven't written about it. Like the first time me doing anything public about that”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “Yeah, so I think in terms of what will listeners get the most out of, I think that. Cities and the New York Times stuff, and what's come out of that because it encompasses a lot of like what does travel mean today? Why are we traveling? What is overtourism mean? How do you Handle these massive tourism surges that are happening? Is there a way? Mitigate them or to send them to different parts of the country. So I think that's really interesting. I think the adoption stuff is really interesting. I mean, everything ties into the walking.”

    2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT