#834: David Baszucki, Co-Founder of Roblox - The Path to 150M+ Daily Users, Critical Business Decisions, Ketogenic Therapy for Brain Health, Daily Routines, The Roblox Economy, and More
Tim Ferriss interviews Roblox founder and CEO David Bazuki about his family's multi‑year struggle with his son Matthew's severe bipolar disorder and how a medically supervised ketogenic diet produced dramatic improvements after many medications and hospitalizations. They discuss metabolic psychiatry, ketosis, continuous glucose and ketone monitoring, and how physiology can underpin mental health. The conversation then shifts to the origin and growth of Roblox, its user‑generated economy, safety and civility at scale, the role of AI in the platform's future, and David's own health routines and long‑term decision‑making as a public company CEO.
TED Talks Daily Book Club: You are not alone in your loneliness | Jonny Sun (re-release)
Host Elise introduces a re-release of Johnny Sun's 2019 TED talk, framing it within a current TED Talks Daily virtual read-along of Oliver Berkman's book about embracing limitations and the feelings of loneliness that can surface when we sit with ourselves. In his illustrated talk, writer and artist Johnny Sun uses the story of an alien named Jomny and his own experiences of feeling alienated to explore how vulnerability, online sharing, and small moments of connection can make us feel less alone in our loneliness. He reflects on both the harms and the redemptive potential of social media, emphasizing the power of micro-communities and brief human connections as tiny slivers of light in a chaotic world.
TikTok's Trojan Horse Strategy
Planet Money teams up with sound design podcast 20,000 Hertz to explain how TikTok created and deployed one of the most effective sonic logos of the last decade. Sound designers Afrik Lennon and Roscoe Williamson describe TikTok's brief, the months-long creative process, and how they arrived at the distinctive boom-bling sound built around an 808 kick, an E major 7 chord, and even an accidental dog bark. The episode also details TikTok's covert "sonic sticker" rollout and how automatically attaching the logo to downloaded videos turned it into a Trojan horse that spreads across rival platforms.
5 AI Tools I'd Use to Make $1M (w/o employees, capital, or time)
Sam and Greg walk through a series of AI-powered tools and workflows that they personally use to boost productivity, create content, and make better business and financial decisions. They demonstrate concrete use cases for deepfake-style video generation, AI-first web browsing, voice dictation, AI spreadsheets, TikTok automation, and automated job applications, while also touching on the risks and ethical concerns around scams, spam, and brain-rotting content. The conversation balances excitement about arbitrage opportunities for people going from zero to one with unease about how pervasive and manipulative AI-generated content could become.
The App That'll Be Bigger Than TikTok
The hosts discuss OpenAI's new Sora app for AI-generated video, exploring its onboarding flow, social mechanics, and why it may be more powerful than TikTok as a multiplayer AI experience. They broaden the conversation to AI as a super app (including ChatGPT's Pulse), concerns about OpenAI's growing power, and how AI will reshape content creation, education, therapy, and addiction support. The episode also covers the rise of micro sports betting and prediction markets, new businesses tackling gambling addiction with AI, and the extreme personal data logging practices of Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke alongside their own approaches to life-logging and memory capture with tools like Meta smart glasses.
Craigslist: Craig Newmark - The Forrest Gump of the Internet
Guy Raz interviews Craigslist founder Craig Newmark about how a simple email list for San Francisco tech and arts events in 1995 evolved into one of the world's most-used online classified sites. Newmark describes his socially awkward childhood, early work in computer science and the internet, the organic growth and minimalist philosophy behind Craigslist, his decision to hand over leadership to CEO Jim Buckmaster, and his later-life focus on philanthropy in journalism, veterans' support, and animal rescue. They also discuss the disputed impact of Craigslist on newspaper classified revenue and Newmark's belief that he was largely lucky and in the right place at the right time.
This Shocking Truth About Other People Will Change Your Life
Mel Robbins interviews researcher and author Dr. Todd Rose about how our hardwired need to belong drives conformity and how this, combined with social media dynamics, creates "collective illusions"-situations where most people go along with things they privately don't agree with because they wrongly assume everyone else does. Rose explains data showing that people overwhelmingly value relationships, character, meaningful work, and contribution, not fame and status, and that self-silencing to fit in damages both physical and mental health. They explore how authenticity and the simple practices of "let them" and "let me" can dismantle illusions, rebuild social trust, and dramatically improve individual life satisfaction and societal cohesion.