AI transcript
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0:02:09 Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss.
0:02:12 Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct
0:02:16 world-class performers of all different types to tease out the routines, habits, and so
0:02:18 on that you can apply to your own life.
0:02:23 This is a special in-between episode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the
0:02:24 last month.
0:02:28 Features a short clip from each conversation in one place, so you can jump around, get
0:02:33 a feel for both the episode and the guest, and then you can always dig deeper by going
0:02:34 to one of those episodes.
0:02:36 View this episode as a buffet to wait your appetite.
0:02:37 It’s a lot of fun.
0:02:42 We had fun putting it together, and for the full list of the guests featured today, see
0:02:46 the episode’s description, probably right below, wherever you press play in your podcast
0:02:53 app, or as usual, you can head to tim.blog/podcast and find all the details there.
0:02:54 Please enjoy.
0:03:01 First up, John Batiste, an Academy Award-winning and five-time Grammy Award-winning singer,
0:03:03 songwriter, and composer.
0:03:09 His new album, Beethoven Blues, which showcases Batiste’s interpretations of Beethoven’s
0:03:12 iconic works, is out now.
0:03:38 You can find John on Instagram and Twitter at John Batiste.
0:04:01 The
0:04:02 drumming too.
0:04:06 It doesn’t have to be instrumental.
0:04:13 There are so many different ways that you can enter unusual, uncommon states using repetition,
0:04:16 so I’m very, very interested in this, which is why I’m asking.
0:04:17 Yes, for sure.
0:04:23 So, two of the ones that I, not for stage, but just more for crisis, that I go to is
0:04:28 Be Still and Know, which is from the Bible, Be Still and Know that I’m God.
0:04:37 It is this idea that I’ll give you a practice, so Be Still and Know that I am God.
0:04:40 Be Still and Know that I am.
0:04:42 Be Still and Know that I.
0:04:44 Be Still and Know that.
0:04:46 Be Still and Know.
0:04:47 Be Still.
0:04:48 Be.
0:04:54 Just this idea, I’ve sat with that, and each phrase has a different meaning.
0:05:04 Even Be Still and then Breath or Room Tone, there’s messages in that space, there’s messages
0:05:12 in the crevice, so I’ve done that and sat in that, and it’s changed my entire perspective
0:05:20 on a crisis or something that I felt perhaps I was wrong, or perhaps there’s so many opportunities
0:05:29 for us in this life to transmute darkness into light, or even darkness into perspective.
0:05:33 Another one is, “Thy will be done,” which is one of surrender.
0:05:36 Now, we believe there’s a divine power.
0:05:41 There’s, however you name it, whatever your relationship to it is, we’ve, for the most
0:05:48 part, had an experience that something beyond explanation, the universe is carrying us in
0:05:49 some way.
0:05:55 “Thy will be done” is trusting that there’s a divine logic to it all.
0:05:59 When there’s nothing that you can do, “Thy will be done,” “Thy will be done,” “Thy will
0:06:07 be done,” because the belief of this divine logic allows for you to understand that there’s
0:06:12 a path and you are accounted for in that path.
0:06:13 You are accounted for.
0:06:19 There’s so much that is allowed for you to be at the culmination of so many things as
0:06:23 led to you, and there will never be another you, you the only one.
0:06:29 That specificity alone is something that comes to me when I’m in that “Thy will be done.”
0:06:35 It’s a revelation of so many other things, which is also allowing for the right thing
0:06:41 to occur and for me to be accepting of it, versus for me to control it without knowledge
0:06:44 of what the true right thing is.
0:06:50 So there’s so much that you have to cleanse yourself of from believing or from holding
0:06:55 on to that’s not actually connected to the best outcome, but you can’t always know that,
0:06:56 especially in crisis.
0:06:58 It’s very hard to know.
0:07:01 Many parables are always like, “This, this happened.
0:07:02 Such good news.
0:07:03 Maybe.”
0:07:04 Right.
0:07:05 “Such and such happened.
0:07:06 This is terrible.
0:07:07 Maybe.”
0:07:11 It just depends on so many things outside of our sphere of knowledge that on so many levels
0:07:12 can’t be known.
0:07:17 When would you be inclined to say to yourself that last mantra?
0:07:19 When would you apply that in your life?
0:07:24 There’s so many things that happen to us with our health.
0:07:26 I talk about Sulayka a lot.
0:07:28 I love her as you know.
0:07:29 She’s great.
0:07:30 Yeah.
0:07:31 Had her on the show.
0:07:32 Yes.
0:07:34 And I also borrow a lot of phrases from her.
0:07:41 In particular, this idea of being between two kingdoms, this idea of the kingdom of the
0:07:43 well, the kingdom of the sick.
0:07:47 And we all exist in this in-between space.
0:07:53 And we have a passport for both, which is something that she created this understanding
0:07:58 of that through the way she lives through it, the way she gracefully moves through this
0:08:05 time with such grace, with such power, with such clarity.
0:08:13 I think about that. I think about how there’s a certain surrender that’s required of all
0:08:17 of us in times when we deal with health challenges, whether it’s us or a loved one.
0:08:22 And you find yourself in moments where there’s literally nothing that you can do to take
0:08:28 away pain or to take away the unknown and the anxiety of waiting.
0:08:35 So that’s an opportunity for a great amount of growth. That’s an opportunity for a lesson
0:08:43 to be instilled in a way that almost nothing else that I can think of affords you the chance
0:08:45 for. That will be done.
0:08:46 That will be done.
0:08:51 Yeah, this is a coach I worked with for a while. He used to say, “This is your pop quiz
0:08:55 from the universe.” When something unexpected would pop up, he’d be like, “All right, all
0:08:57 that meditation you’ve been doing?”
0:09:02 Let’s see it. Let’s see it. Let’s see it. Let’s see, bro. Come on, bro.
0:09:08 You’ve been rehearsing. This is game time. Let’s see how it goes. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Tim,
0:09:12 you know what I’m saying when you’re in that moment. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of sympathy
0:09:16 for watching you both go through that journey. And I can only imagine what it’s like. I mean,
0:09:21 I have been, of course, and most people listening have been in a position where they feel powerless
0:09:27 to help or they don’t know how to help a loved one, but had a lot of sympathy for a challenging
0:09:39 road and also really been in awe of how much growth both of you have exhibited through
0:09:42 the challenges and pain and so on. In any case, I just wanted to say that.
0:09:50 Oh, man, it means a lot to hear that. And it feels so much of the time as odd as it
0:09:58 may sound, it feels like a privilege to go through it together in the way that we have
0:10:08 seen it. It’s shifted into almost the orientation of blessing. And that’s not to say that the
0:10:14 difficulties are any easier, right? It doesn’t change the nature of hard things. They’re
0:10:22 hard. But there’s something about life. There’s a truth. There’s something about going through
0:10:31 the fire that is so required and something about suffering that is so essential. This
0:10:41 idea that we’re meant to run from pain or run from difficult things and find the most
0:10:51 leisurely and completely frictionless existence possible. It’s such a lie. It’s not just
0:10:57 a lie because it’s not possible. But if it were possible, that would kill you the most.
0:11:01 It would rob you in so many ways, which is, of course, easy for me to say, sitting in
0:11:06 this comfortable chair right now in the midst of it. It’s sometimes hard to see it. At the
0:11:11 same time, there was an astrophysicist, Jan 11, who was on the podcast some time ago.
0:11:15 And I’m going to butcher this quote, but it’s more the concept for me that has really
0:11:19 stuck. She said, “Something along the lines of I used to look for the underlying path
0:11:23 that would help me navigate around obstacles. And then I realized there is no underlying
0:11:32 path. The obstacles are the path through which you discover yourself, through which you learn,
0:11:40 through which you grow.” That is the path. Take those away. And then you’re just a free-floating
0:11:45 essence of comfort. That’s just not the human experience. And also, you’re talking about
0:11:52 blessings. So I could imagine even an earlier version of me would say, “Oh, come on now.”
0:11:56 I suppose it’s helpful, but maybe it’s delusional and it’s overly optimistic. But it’s deeper
0:12:03 than that. And I think that misses the mark because given a longer timeframe, given all
0:12:09 the unknowns, it could be a blessing. It could be a curse, but you can’t know which it is
0:12:13 over time. And it depends a lot on your perspective. So you might as well choose blessing. That
0:12:19 is the more enabling perspective. And since you can’t know, it’s a coin flip. Choose the
0:12:25 side of the coin that is most enabling, it seems to me at least, in the abstract. It’s
0:12:30 easy to say. Taxi runs over my foot. We’ll see how I do later today.
0:12:36 It’s that. And it’s also, you only will know when you are there. You have to go there to
0:12:43 know there. You only know what it can be for you when you’re in the fire. Everybody can
0:12:51 talk about what they would do when they are there. We can all say, “Man, if that would
0:13:00 have happened to me, I would slay the dragon.” I would, whatever you think you would do,
0:13:06 most often is not what you would do. And that’s not because you’re not who you think you are.
0:13:10 It’s because there’s so many other factors you can’t know.
0:13:14 And for many things in my life that I think about, the things I’ve learned the most from
0:13:20 are when I’ve embraced the discomfort and realized what I was made of through it.
0:13:23 Let me just sit with that for a second.
0:13:34 Next up, Dr. Bruce Grayson, a leading expert in near-death experiences and the author
0:13:42 of After, a doctor explores what near-death experiences reveal about life and beyond.
0:13:45 You can learn more about Dr. Grayson at brucegrayson.com.
0:13:56 So I want to zoom in and out from the clinical, skeptical side to the hopefully, and I think
0:14:02 we’ll get to quite a few of these, but examples that could be corroborated in some fashion.
0:14:05 And those may overlap with those that are described as out-of-body experiences.
0:14:10 They might not, and we’ll probably come back to that term as well.
0:14:18 But could you tell the story of the, tell me if this is enough of a cue, the red MGB?
0:14:24 Many people in the near-death experience say that they encountered deceased loved ones
0:14:30 in the experience. And that can easily be explained as wishful thinking, expectation.
0:14:34 You think you’re dying, and you would love to see your grandmother once more, so she
0:14:37 comes to you, and there’s no way to prove or disprove that.
0:14:43 However, in some cases, the person having the near-death experience encounters someone
0:14:46 who had died, but nobody yet knew they had died.
0:14:50 So that can’t be dismissed as expectation and wishful thinking.
0:14:52 This is not a new phenomenon.
0:14:55 Plenty of the elder wrote about a case like this in the first century, G.D.
0:14:57 But we’re hearing about a lot of them now.
0:15:02 About 12 years ago, I wrote a paper that had 30 different cases from recent years.
0:15:03 Jack was one of those.
0:15:08 He had an experience, actually he was in South Africa back in the ’70s.
0:15:13 And he was a young technician at that time and had very serious pneumonia, and he would
0:15:16 easily stop breathing and have to be resuscitated.
0:15:19 So he was admitted to the hospital with a severe pneumonia.
0:15:24 And he had one nurse who was constantly working with him as his primary nurse, a young pretty
0:15:26 girl about his age.
0:15:28 He flirted a lot with her where he could.
0:15:31 And one day she told him she’s going to be taking a long weekend off and there’d be other
0:15:34 nurses substituting for her.
0:15:38 So he wished her well and she went off.
0:15:43 And over the weekend while she was gone, he had another respiratory arrest where he couldn’t
0:15:44 breathe.
0:15:46 He had to be resuscitated.
0:15:48 And during that time, he had a near-death experience.
0:15:54 And he told me that he was in this beautiful pastoral scene, and there out of the woods
0:15:57 came his nurse, Anita, walking towards him.
0:16:01 And he was stunned because he was in this different world of what’s she doing there.
0:16:04 So he said, “What are you doing here?”
0:16:07 And she said, “Jack, you can’t stay here with me.
0:16:11 I want you to go back and I want you to find my parents and tell them that I love them
0:16:14 very much and I’m sorry I wrecked the red MGB.”
0:16:18 He didn’t know what to make of that, but she turned around and went back into the woods
0:16:21 and then he woke up later in his hospital bed.
0:16:27 Now he tells me that back in the ’70s, there were very few MGBs in South Africa and he
0:16:29 had never seen one.
0:16:32 When the first nurse came into his room, he started to tell her about his experience and
0:16:35 seeing his nurse, Anita.
0:16:38 She got very upset and ran out of the room.
0:16:43 It turned out that she had taken the weekend off to celebrate her 21st birthday and her
0:16:47 parents had surprised her with a gift of a red MGB.
0:16:52 She got very excited, hopped in the car and took off for a test drive and crashed into
0:16:57 a telephone pole and died instantly, just a few hours before his near-death experience.
0:17:03 I don’t see any way he could have known or wanted or expected her to have an accident
0:17:04 and die.
0:17:08 There’s certainly no way he could have known how she died and yet he did.
0:17:13 And we’ve got lots of other cases like this that called Piki and Darian cases based on
0:17:19 a book that was published in the 1800s with cases like these, where people encounter deceased
0:17:21 individuals who were not known to be dead.
0:17:23 I don’t know how to explain those.
0:17:30 Now, just to put my skeptics hat on, I could say, “Well, if I were Jack,” it was a Jack,
0:17:34 let’s just say it’s Jack, “that would make one hell of a story if there wasn’t a third
0:17:38 party to independently verify it with.”
0:17:43 But there are other cases and for people listening, we’re going to come back to some of the common
0:17:44 questions.
0:17:49 I would say forms of discussion around these related to possible biological mechanisms
0:17:50 or lack thereof.
0:17:52 We’re going to come back to that in a second.
0:17:59 But there are then cases that are seemingly characteristically quite different and perhaps
0:18:03 can be, I’m going to be curious to know if this has been done or not, but verified with
0:18:04 third parties.
0:18:12 And one that comes to mind that I’ve heard you discuss is related to the surgeon flapping
0:18:20 like a bird and I was hoping that you could give a description of that particular case
0:18:21 study.
0:18:27 Before we get to that, how many near-death experiences have you documented, studied,
0:18:32 or otherwise read about, put into the archives yourself?
0:18:36 How many instances would you say you have encountered in one way or another?
0:18:40 I’ve got slightly more than a thousand in my database at the University of Virginia where
0:18:45 we have validated as much as we can that they were in fact close to death and this is what
0:18:46 happened to them.
0:18:49 I’ve talked to many more people about their near-death experience that I haven’t included
0:18:54 because I wasn’t confident that they really fit the criteria for being in the study.
0:18:57 But it’s really much more common than you might think it was because people don’t talk
0:18:59 about these things.
0:19:01 You mentioned people wanting the publicity of this.
0:19:06 That is actually maybe more true now, but back in the 70s and 80s, nobody wanted to talk
0:19:09 about these things.
0:19:14 If you talk about things you got ridiculed, you got referred to a psychiatrist, you were
0:19:19 called crazy, you were shunned by people you knew, both materialists and religious folks.
0:19:21 They didn’t want to hear about these things.
0:19:24 People did not talk about these events.
0:19:28 What of this surgeon flapping like a bird?
0:19:34 This was a fellow owl in his mid-50s who was a van driver and he was out on his rounds
0:19:42 one day and he had chest pain and he knew enough to stop his rounds and drive to the emergency
0:19:46 room and they did some evaluations and found that he had four arteries to his heart that
0:19:55 were blocked and they rushed him to the emergency room for urgent quadruple bypass surgery.
0:20:00 So he’s lying on the table, fully unconscious, the drapes over and so forth, and he tells
0:20:05 me that in the middle of the operation, he rose up out of his body and looked down and
0:20:12 saw the surgeons operating on and he saw the chief surgeon who he hadn’t met before, flapping
0:20:16 his arms like he was trying to fly and he demonstrated for me.
0:20:21 At that point I laughed, so I thought, “This is obviously hallucination, doctors don’t
0:20:22 do that.”
0:20:27 But he insisted that I check with the doctor, he said, “This really happened, ask him.”
0:20:30 So he told me lots of other things about his near-death experience, but that’s the one
0:20:31 that I was able to verify.
0:20:38 So I talked to a surgeon who actually had been trained in Japan and he said, “Well yes,
0:20:40 I did do that.
0:20:46 I have a habit of letting my assistants start the procedure while I put on my sterile gown
0:20:48 and gloves and wash my hands and so forth.”
0:20:53 Then I go into the operating room and watch them for a while because I don’t want to risk
0:20:55 touching anything with my sterile hands now.
0:21:01 I pointed things out to them with my elbows and pointed things out just the way Al was
0:21:03 saying he was trying to fly.
0:21:05 I don’t know any other doctor that’s done that.
0:21:08 I’ve been a doctor for more than 50 years and I’ve never seen anyone do that.
0:21:12 So it’s kind of an idiosyncratic thing.
0:21:14 Is there any way Al could have seen that?
0:21:17 Well, he was totally anesthetized, he had his heart was open.
0:21:20 I don’t think there’s any way he could have seen that and yet he did.
0:21:33 Next up, Andrew Roberts, historian and New York Times bestselling author of 20 books,
0:21:40 including Napoleon Alive, Churchill Walking With Destiny, and most recently, Conflict,
0:21:47 The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza, co-authored with General David Petraeus.
0:21:55 You can find Andrew on Twitter @aroberts_andrew.
0:22:01 Would you mind speaking to the importance of steady nerves or self-control in crisis?
0:22:07 It seems that that’s something that recurs.
0:22:12 The reason I’m asking about it is, this is a sub-question, how much of it do you think
0:22:14 is nature versus nurture also?
0:22:18 Feel free to take that in any direction you like.
0:22:25 Both Napoleon and Churchill were educated in war, they both went to military colleges.
0:22:30 So as their level of command grew, as they grew older, the sense of responsibility they
0:22:37 had, the number of men essentially that they were controlling increased exponentially.
0:22:44 So they had the intellectual background, they had the training as well, and as young
0:22:49 men in both cases, they thought a lot about war, about Julius Caesar and Alexander the
0:22:51 Great and so on.
0:22:56 They had a egotism to look at it in a negative way, but a self-confidence to look at it in
0:23:03 a positive way that gave them the ability to take these shatteringly important decisions.
0:23:07 So I think it’s much more nurture than nature.
0:23:14 And in both cases, as far as they were concerned, there was a sort of holy fire that they both
0:23:15 had.
0:23:18 There was a, not only in a religious sense, obviously, because neither of them were at
0:23:24 all religious, but in a sort of deeper spiritual sense, a belief that what they were doing
0:23:30 was so good and right and proper and had to be done that they were not kept up at awake
0:23:38 at night over even the death of friends, death of friends that they were responsible for.
0:23:39 They were responsible for.
0:23:43 In the cases of Churchill and Napoleon, we could bring up other names or in Gospels when
0:23:47 you’re using the royal wheel here, you could bring up other names.
0:23:52 Were there particular philosophers or writers that they found particularly instructive,
0:23:57 who they leaned on in some sense, that they found solace in, were there particular minds?
0:24:02 Well certainly Churchill did because he was a huge reader.
0:24:04 He was a massive autodidact.
0:24:08 He never went to university and so therefore, when he was a young sublton in India in his
0:24:18 early twenties, he sat down and read the great philosophers as well as writers and he was
0:24:24 particularly influenced by Gibbon and Macaulay, the two great 19th century historians, English
0:24:25 historians.
0:24:31 And that affected his writing style and of course later his oratorical style, but also
0:24:36 his outlook on life, philosophical outlook on life.
0:24:40 With regard to Napoleon, he was even more literary really because he also wrote short
0:24:43 stories and books and so on.
0:24:50 And so he was very much affected by what he read again as a young man.
0:24:56 And in both cases, it’s slightly, they were reading so much that it’s slightly cut them
0:24:59 off from their contemporaries.
0:25:04 And Napoleon didn’t have many friends when he was in his early twenties.
0:25:11 And Churchill, when the other people were off sleeping in the midday heat of India,
0:25:16 his colleagues and comrades, he’d be sitting there reading Chopin and Gibbon and Macaulay
0:25:17 and so on.
0:25:21 How did Gibbon and Macaulay inform his philosophical leanings?
0:25:26 They made him into what was called at the time a wig.
0:25:33 We don’t have them today obviously, but they were in modern sense, I suppose, liberal conservatives
0:25:36 who believed in noblesse oblige in the importance of…
0:25:37 What is that?
0:25:38 I’m sorry.
0:25:39 Noblesse oblige.
0:25:46 It’s almost a medieval concept where your duty, if you have privilege, is to work for
0:25:51 the greater good of the community, to protect widows and orphans, to it’s sort of like the
0:25:57 nightly chivalric concept that you get from the middle ages.
0:25:59 And they very much believed in that and so did Churchill.
0:26:02 Let me ask about Napoleon.
0:26:04 So I know shockingly little about Napoleon.
0:26:08 I’m embarrassed to admit, and I do want to ask more about Churchill as well, but you’ve
0:26:11 described him as the prime exemplar of war leadership.
0:26:13 Why do you say that?
0:26:18 There were lots of military leaders who can do a lot of things, but he was the only one
0:26:20 that I can think of who could do all of them.
0:26:23 Of course, it helps if you’re winning.
0:26:27 In the last three years of his military career, he’s losing.
0:26:34 But even then, even when he had far fewer troops, when he was retreating, when he was
0:26:39 defending Paris in the 1814 campaign, for example, he was still able to win five victories
0:26:42 in seven days in the 1814 campaign.
0:26:45 That’s two years after the retreat from Moscow.
0:26:51 It’s quite extraordinary capacity, and he was able to win whether he was advancing or
0:26:55 retreating, whether he was defending a town or attacking it, whether he was attacking
0:27:01 on the right or left flank or sometimes straight through the center, as at Austerlitz.
0:27:07 He had that capacity, that mind for military conquest, but also, of course, the greatness
0:27:12 that was required completely to revolutionize French society.
0:27:18 People think that the French Revolution revolutionized society, the clues in the name as it were,
0:27:24 but in fact, the long-lasting things that actually dragged France into the 19th century
0:27:30 were things like the Code of Napoleon, which were not a revolutionary concept.
0:27:32 They were a Napoleonic concept.
0:27:37 This may seem like a lazy question, but since I’m operating from a deficit here with respect
0:27:43 to knowledge of Napoleon, what do you think it was that allowed him to be a decathlete
0:27:47 of war, as it were, being good at all of these different facets?
0:27:53 And I think of how we might analyze different athletes and what allows them to exercise
0:27:57 the capabilities we see, sort of breaking it down into its component parts.
0:28:02 But how would you describe what enabled him to do that, where others were unable?
0:28:04 It was inspiration, but also perspiration.
0:28:12 He really did put in the time thinking about it and reading about it by it, I mean warfare.
0:28:15 And of course, he’d been educated in it.
0:28:24 He read the key books as a guy called the Compte de Giver, who in 1772 wrote a book about strategy
0:28:25 and tactics.
0:28:30 And he, 30 years later, put these into operation.
0:28:36 And so he was able to spot the sort of best of the best when it came to a modern thinking
0:28:40 and to, or in this case, 30-year-old thinking, in fact.
0:28:45 That didn’t matter because the weapons of war hadn’t changed in the intervening period.
0:28:52 And he was able to put those thoughts and ideas into practical use, the classic example
0:28:54 being the core system.
0:28:55 And when he…
0:28:56 What was it called?
0:28:57 It’s called the core system.
0:28:58 It’s basically…
0:28:59 How do you call it?
0:29:00 A C-O-R-E.
0:29:01 A C-O-R-P-S.
0:29:09 And what he did with them was to create mini armies, essentially, which were able to march
0:29:13 separately, but converge and concentrate for the battle.
0:29:16 And so one of your core would engage the enemy.
0:29:23 And then he would use the other cores to outmaneuver and envelop the enemy, sometimes double envelop
0:29:24 the enemy.
0:29:25 It was a brilliant concept.
0:29:31 And actually, the allies didn’t start beating Napoleon until they had also adopted the core
0:29:32 system.
0:29:36 He was always at the cutting edge of thinking of the new concepts.
0:29:44 And at the same time, he had very old fashioned views about how to excite the men.
0:29:45 And he…
0:29:49 I mean, victory, obviously, is the best thing when it comes to excite the men.
0:29:50 Exactly.
0:29:52 Nothing much works better than that.
0:29:55 But as I say, he was still winning at the end of his career.
0:30:03 But he had this belief that to appeal to the soul was the way to electrify the men.
0:30:05 And so he was able to do that.
0:30:08 And some people who he was against, Duke of Wellington, the British general, being the
0:30:13 classic example, who won the Battle of Waterloo against him, it wasn’t interesting electrifying
0:30:15 the soul of the men at all.
0:30:19 He despised his ordinary soldiers, but nonetheless…
0:30:20 You’re talking about Wellington?
0:30:27 The Duke of Wellington, he had some sort of choice negative remarks about his own soldiers.
0:30:33 And he was a rather sort of stuffy aristocrat, but they loved him because he cared about
0:30:36 how many of them died in battle.
0:30:41 And he never lost the battle as well, which is a very useful thing in a commander needless
0:30:42 to say.
0:30:43 But he didn’t try.
0:30:44 He didn’t go out.
0:30:48 He would think it beneath him to go out and try to inspire the men.
0:30:55 Whereas Napoleon, his choice of hats and his great coats and his way of taking off medals,
0:31:00 his own medals and giving them to soldiers on the battlefield and his orders of the day,
0:31:06 his proclamations before the Battle of the Pyramids in 1799, he said, “40 centuries look
0:31:07 down upon you.”
0:31:11 And this is an extraordinary thing for a soldier in Egypt far away from home, he looks up at
0:31:18 the pyramids and thinks, “Yeah, he’s placing the events of that day in the long historical
0:31:20 parabola.”
0:31:23 And Churchill did that too, by the way, of course, to a great degree.
0:31:29 In about 10% of all of the speeches that Churchill gave in 1940, there’s some reference
0:31:31 to history all the past.
0:31:37 He too would summon up the idea that, yes, Britain is on its own, Britain and the British
0:31:41 Commonwealth are on their own, and this, of course, was in the period before America
0:31:45 and Russia were in the war, but we’ve been in terrible straits before.
0:31:49 Look at Sir Francis Drake, look at Admiral Nelson and so on.
0:31:51 And we came through those and won.
0:31:54 He also brought up the First World War a lot.
0:31:59 So yes, he too drew on history, and people knew that because he’d written history books
0:32:05 and written biographies, including the biography of his great ancestor, the first Duke of Moorbrough,
0:32:09 he was with Wellington, the best soldier that Britain ever produced.
0:32:16 People trusted his view of history.
0:32:22 And now, an excerpt from Tim’s solo podcast episode, Productivity Tactics, two approaches
0:32:28 I personally use to reset, get unstuck, and focus on the right things.
0:32:33 A few years ago, a creature died in the walls of my home.
0:32:34 It was disgusting.
0:32:38 Now, to be precise, it gave up the ghost in the heating system, so the death fumes were
0:32:42 conveniently pushed directly into my bedroom.
0:32:47 My ex-girlfriend and I discovered this around 11pm as we tucked into bed hoping for a good
0:32:48 night’s sleep.
0:32:52 We could turn off the heat and freeze, that was one option, or we could bathe in the stench
0:32:55 of what I assumed was a raccoon carcass.
0:32:57 And the whole thing made my eyes itch.
0:32:58 It was horrible.
0:33:04 I imagined it downing its last meal, pig entrails, moldy socks, fermented beans, who knows,
0:33:07 before defiantly jamming its bloated body into my HVAC.
0:33:11 Don’t worry, we are getting to some kind of lesson here.
0:33:14 But the kamikaze raccoon was just the first surprise guest.
0:33:20 The opening act in short order, my dog then got horribly sick unrelated to raccoon.
0:33:24 Overdue paperwork started piling up, popping out of nowhere, and onboarding a bunch of
0:33:27 new contractors ran into trouble.
0:33:31 Then I pulled out of a parking spot and scraped the entire side of my car and the car next
0:33:32 to me.
0:33:37 Later that same afternoon, all these Christmas presents I had ordered somehow had run out
0:33:40 of stock and were auto-cancelled, so I was sent scrambling.
0:33:46 And on and on it went more and more clowns piling into the clown car for a shit show
0:33:48 that lasted three to four weeks.
0:33:52 It was just a 15 car pileup of nonsense.
0:33:56 There are the rare times when I feel like I’m in the zone.
0:33:57 Those are great.
0:33:58 Those are fantastic.
0:34:02 Then there are times when I ask myself, “How in holy hell have I become the janitor of
0:34:04 a mountain of bullshit?”
0:34:06 That happens more than you might think.
0:34:10 Put it another way, sometimes you’re the boxer and sometimes you are the punching bag.
0:34:12 We all get our turn as the punching bag.
0:34:13 It doesn’t matter who you are.
0:34:17 As far as I can tell, it doesn’t matter how successful you become.
0:34:22 You’ve always grabbed a number at the deli counter of just wait, eventually you’re going
0:34:24 to get your ass kicked by the universe.
0:34:28 Now, during these periods of firefighting, let’s just call it when stuff is popping up,
0:34:31 this whack-a-mole, I get fidgety and frustrated.
0:34:36 I feel like I’m treading water and patience wears very thin has never been my strong suit
0:34:39 that’s true, especially with myself.
0:34:43 My instinct is to try to fix things as quickly as possible.
0:34:48 That’s all well and good, but I’ve realized that from a place of what the fuck, I often
0:34:50 rush and create more problems.
0:34:56 This is particularly bad, catastrophic sometimes when I try to sprint immediately upon waking
0:34:57 up.
0:35:02 The mantra that has saved me and saved me during that three to four week period I mentioned
0:35:07 was very simple and it’s this, “Make before you manage.”
0:35:09 Make before you manage, that’s it.
0:35:14 What this means is each morning, before plugging holes, fixing things, calling vets, answering
0:35:20 text messages, delegating or yanking out dead raccoons, answering a million text messages,
0:35:23 this mantra was a reminder to make something.
0:35:28 You should read Paul Graham’s essays and listen to Neil Gaiman’s Make Good Art commencement
0:35:34 speech for more on all of this, but back to any given day and make before you manage.
0:35:40 Even the most time sensitive items can usually wait 60 minutes and by make something, I mean
0:35:41 anything.
0:35:43 It could be anything at all.
0:35:48 You just need to feel like you’ve pushed a millimeter ahead in some creative direction.
0:35:52 For me personally, even a 90 second video of calligraphy could set a better emotional
0:35:58 tone for the entire day, helping me to be more calm as I handle problems, as I execute
0:36:00 all the rest of the stuff later.
0:36:04 Or maybe I attempt to jumpstart my writing with an Instagram caption, or an email to
0:36:06 a friend to take the pressure off.
0:36:09 It’s practically nothing, but it’s enough.
0:36:15 Even token efforts allow me to reassure myself with, “Hey, pal, don’t worry, you did produce
0:36:17 something today.”
0:36:21 And the psychological difference between zero acts of creation and one act of creation,
0:36:25 no matter how small, is really impossible to overstate.
0:36:26 It’s binary.
0:36:29 Zero to a little bit, those are two different worlds.
0:36:34 If you’re lucky, sometimes that one idea, that one sentence or one shitty first draft
0:36:37 can turn into something bigger, and that happens when you catch the wave.
0:36:43 But the point is to be able to say to yourself, even for five minutes, “Hark, I am a creator,
0:36:45 not just a janitor of bullshit.
0:36:50 Here’s proof that I can and will do more than just manage the minutiae of life.”
0:36:54 And I think, at least personally, I do need that reinforcement.
0:36:57 We all spend time on the struggle bus, happens to everybody.
0:37:02 At the very least, this mantra has helped me to find a window seat when it’s my turn.
0:37:12 So, as a reminder, when in doubt, try it out, make before you manage.
0:37:15 And now here are the bios for all the guests.
0:37:22 This isn’t just any episode, this one turned out really, really special.
0:37:29 And I really encourage everybody to listen to this once, as audio only, if you are listening
0:37:37 to this without any video, but also go to youtube.com/timfarris to see the video.
0:37:44 We recorded this episode in the recording studio designed by Jimi Hendrix, where he
0:37:45 slept.
0:37:50 The acoustics, the surroundings, everything is gorgeous.
0:37:52 And my guest was in the flow.
0:37:56 We happen to mesh really well together.
0:37:59 And it’s one of those episodes that I will remember for many years.
0:38:05 My guest, John Batiste, is a five-time Grammy Award-winning and Academy Award-winning singer,
0:38:07 songwriter, and composer.
0:38:13 I met him ages and ages ago, back when he was a mere incredible, incredible musician,
0:38:15 composer, etc.
0:38:18 But I’ve been able to watch him become the Markey Lights John Batiste, and it has been
0:38:20 a thrill to watch.
0:38:22 We talk about it all.
0:38:27 His eighth studio album, Beethoven Blues, is set for a November 15 release.
0:38:33 When we are sitting in Jimi Hendrix’s studio, there are pianos, guitars, you name it, and
0:38:38 we don’t just talk, we walk around and he uses music to answer some of my questions.
0:38:41 It’s phenomenal.
0:38:45 Beethoven Blues marks the first installment in his solo piano series showcasing Batiste’s
0:38:51 interpretation of Beethoven’s iconic works, Reimagined, and that is an understatement.
0:38:57 You’re going to hear a lot of it in this episode towards the last 25 percent, so buckle up and
0:38:58 stick around.
0:39:02 Beethoven Blues follows Batiste’s studio album, World Music Radio, which received five Grammy
0:39:06 nominations, including album of the year.
0:39:10 As a composer, he scored Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night now in theaters.
0:39:15 The film depicts the chaotic 90 minutes before Saturday Night Live’s very first broadcast
0:39:21 in 1975, underscored by Batiste’s blending of jazz, classical, and contemporary elements.
0:39:26 He composed and produced the music live on set, capturing the intensity of the show’s
0:39:27 debut.
0:39:32 He also appears in the film as Billy Preston, the show’s first musical guest, and certainly
0:39:34 he has lived that out himself.
0:39:38 Additionally, Batiste composed and performed music for the Disney Pixar film Soul, for
0:39:44 which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Score alongside Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
0:39:51 You can find him at johnbatiste.com, that’s J-O-N-B-A-T-I-S-T-E dot com on Instagram and
0:39:57 socials @JohnBatiste, and boy oh boy, I love this.
0:39:59 I really think you guys are in for a treat.
0:40:10 Stick around, listen to the whole thing, watch it a second time on video at youtube.com/timferris.
0:40:15 My guest today is Bruce Grayson M.D. He is the Chester F. Carlson Professor Emeritus
0:40:20 of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, and Director Emeritus of the Division of Perceptual
0:40:24 Studies at the University of Virginia, where he has practiced and taught psychiatry and
0:40:27 carried out research since 1995.
0:40:31 He’s also a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and his
0:40:36 most recent book is After a Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About
0:40:37 Life and Beyond.
0:40:43 He has studied, documented more than a thousand near-death experiences, and what made him
0:40:49 appealing to me as a guest with this incredibly unusual terrain is that he was raised with
0:40:59 a secular, what we could call rational, materialist worldview.
0:41:01 Today’s guest, Andrew Roberts.
0:41:06 Andrew Roberts has written 20 books, which have been translated into 28 languages and
0:41:09 have won 13 literary prizes.
0:41:13 These include Masters and Commanders, The Storm of War, A New History of the Second
0:41:20 World War, Napoleon, A Life, Churchill, Walking with Destiny, George III, The Life and Reign
0:41:24 of Britain’s Most Misunderstood Monarch, and most recently Conflict, The Evolution
0:41:30 of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza, which he co-authored with General David Petraeus.
0:41:36 The Roberts is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society,
0:41:41 the Bonnie and Tom McCloskey Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford,
0:41:46 and a visiting professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.
0:41:48 He is also a member of the House of Lords.
0:41:55 You can find all things Andrew at andrew-roberts.net online, and he is also on X, the artist formerly
0:42:00 known as twitter@x.com/aroberts_andrew.
0:42:06 Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five
0:42:07 Bullet Friday.
0:42:12 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun
0:42:13 before the weekend?
0:42:17 Between one and a half and two million people subscribed to my free newsletter, my super
0:42:20 short newsletter, called Five Bullet Friday.
0:42:22 Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
0:42:27 It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve
0:42:30 found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week.
0:42:32 It’s kind of like my diary of cool things.
0:42:38 It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos,
0:42:43 all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of
0:42:49 podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test
0:42:52 them, and then I share them with you.
0:42:56 So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you
0:42:59 head off for the weekend, something to think about.
0:43:02 If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday.
0:43:08 Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email, and you’ll get the very
0:43:09 next one.
0:43:09 Thanks for listening.
0:43:14 [MUSIC]
0:00:09 It’s become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers,
0:00:11 and it’s super, super simple.
0:00:13 It does not clog up your inbox.
0:00:17 Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I’ve found
0:00:22 that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets,
0:00:27 new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around
0:00:28 the world.
0:00:32 You guys, podcast listeners, and book readers have asked me for something short and action-packed
0:00:37 for a very long time, because after all, the podcast, the books, they can be quite long.
0:00:40 That’s why I created Five Bullet Friday.
0:00:43 It’s become one of my favorite things I do every week.
0:00:44 It’s free.
0:00:49 It’s always going to be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog/friday.
0:00:51 That’s tim.blog/friday.
0:00:56 I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I’ve
0:01:02 ever interacted with, and little known fact, I’ve met probably 25% of them because they
0:01:06 first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday, so you’ll be in good company.
0:01:07 It’s a lot of fun.
0:01:10 Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email.
0:01:13 I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else.
0:01:18 Also if I’m doing small, in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing,
0:01:22 special deals, or anything else that’s very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet
0:01:24 Friday subscribers.
0:01:25 So check it out.
0:01:26 Tim.blog/friday.
0:01:32 If you listen to this podcast, it’s very likely that you’d dig it a lot, and you can
0:01:35 of course easily subscribe anytime.
0:01:41 So easy peasy, again, that’s tim.blog/friday, and thanks for checking it out if the spirit
0:01:42 moves you.
0:02:09 Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss.
0:02:12 Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct
0:02:16 world-class performers of all different types to tease out the routines, habits, and so
0:02:18 on that you can apply to your own life.
0:02:23 This is a special in-between episode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the
0:02:24 last month.
0:02:28 Features a short clip from each conversation in one place, so you can jump around, get
0:02:33 a feel for both the episode and the guest, and then you can always dig deeper by going
0:02:34 to one of those episodes.
0:02:36 View this episode as a buffet to wait your appetite.
0:02:37 It’s a lot of fun.
0:02:42 We had fun putting it together, and for the full list of the guests featured today, see
0:02:46 the episode’s description, probably right below, wherever you press play in your podcast
0:02:53 app, or as usual, you can head to tim.blog/podcast and find all the details there.
0:02:54 Please enjoy.
0:03:01 First up, John Batiste, an Academy Award-winning and five-time Grammy Award-winning singer,
0:03:03 songwriter, and composer.
0:03:09 His new album, Beethoven Blues, which showcases Batiste’s interpretations of Beethoven’s
0:03:12 iconic works, is out now.
0:03:38 You can find John on Instagram and Twitter at John Batiste.
0:04:01 The
0:04:02 drumming too.
0:04:06 It doesn’t have to be instrumental.
0:04:13 There are so many different ways that you can enter unusual, uncommon states using repetition,
0:04:16 so I’m very, very interested in this, which is why I’m asking.
0:04:17 Yes, for sure.
0:04:23 So, two of the ones that I, not for stage, but just more for crisis, that I go to is
0:04:28 Be Still and Know, which is from the Bible, Be Still and Know that I’m God.
0:04:37 It is this idea that I’ll give you a practice, so Be Still and Know that I am God.
0:04:40 Be Still and Know that I am.
0:04:42 Be Still and Know that I.
0:04:44 Be Still and Know that.
0:04:46 Be Still and Know.
0:04:47 Be Still.
0:04:48 Be.
0:04:54 Just this idea, I’ve sat with that, and each phrase has a different meaning.
0:05:04 Even Be Still and then Breath or Room Tone, there’s messages in that space, there’s messages
0:05:12 in the crevice, so I’ve done that and sat in that, and it’s changed my entire perspective
0:05:20 on a crisis or something that I felt perhaps I was wrong, or perhaps there’s so many opportunities
0:05:29 for us in this life to transmute darkness into light, or even darkness into perspective.
0:05:33 Another one is, “Thy will be done,” which is one of surrender.
0:05:36 Now, we believe there’s a divine power.
0:05:41 There’s, however you name it, whatever your relationship to it is, we’ve, for the most
0:05:48 part, had an experience that something beyond explanation, the universe is carrying us in
0:05:49 some way.
0:05:55 “Thy will be done” is trusting that there’s a divine logic to it all.
0:05:59 When there’s nothing that you can do, “Thy will be done,” “Thy will be done,” “Thy will
0:06:07 be done,” because the belief of this divine logic allows for you to understand that there’s
0:06:12 a path and you are accounted for in that path.
0:06:13 You are accounted for.
0:06:19 There’s so much that is allowed for you to be at the culmination of so many things as
0:06:23 led to you, and there will never be another you, you the only one.
0:06:29 That specificity alone is something that comes to me when I’m in that “Thy will be done.”
0:06:35 It’s a revelation of so many other things, which is also allowing for the right thing
0:06:41 to occur and for me to be accepting of it, versus for me to control it without knowledge
0:06:44 of what the true right thing is.
0:06:50 So there’s so much that you have to cleanse yourself of from believing or from holding
0:06:55 on to that’s not actually connected to the best outcome, but you can’t always know that,
0:06:56 especially in crisis.
0:06:58 It’s very hard to know.
0:07:01 Many parables are always like, “This, this happened.
0:07:02 Such good news.
0:07:03 Maybe.”
0:07:04 Right.
0:07:05 “Such and such happened.
0:07:06 This is terrible.
0:07:07 Maybe.”
0:07:11 It just depends on so many things outside of our sphere of knowledge that on so many levels
0:07:12 can’t be known.
0:07:17 When would you be inclined to say to yourself that last mantra?
0:07:19 When would you apply that in your life?
0:07:24 There’s so many things that happen to us with our health.
0:07:26 I talk about Sulayka a lot.
0:07:28 I love her as you know.
0:07:29 She’s great.
0:07:30 Yeah.
0:07:31 Had her on the show.
0:07:32 Yes.
0:07:34 And I also borrow a lot of phrases from her.
0:07:41 In particular, this idea of being between two kingdoms, this idea of the kingdom of the
0:07:43 well, the kingdom of the sick.
0:07:47 And we all exist in this in-between space.
0:07:53 And we have a passport for both, which is something that she created this understanding
0:07:58 of that through the way she lives through it, the way she gracefully moves through this
0:08:05 time with such grace, with such power, with such clarity.
0:08:13 I think about that. I think about how there’s a certain surrender that’s required of all
0:08:17 of us in times when we deal with health challenges, whether it’s us or a loved one.
0:08:22 And you find yourself in moments where there’s literally nothing that you can do to take
0:08:28 away pain or to take away the unknown and the anxiety of waiting.
0:08:35 So that’s an opportunity for a great amount of growth. That’s an opportunity for a lesson
0:08:43 to be instilled in a way that almost nothing else that I can think of affords you the chance
0:08:45 for. That will be done.
0:08:46 That will be done.
0:08:51 Yeah, this is a coach I worked with for a while. He used to say, “This is your pop quiz
0:08:55 from the universe.” When something unexpected would pop up, he’d be like, “All right, all
0:08:57 that meditation you’ve been doing?”
0:09:02 Let’s see it. Let’s see it. Let’s see it. Let’s see, bro. Come on, bro.
0:09:08 You’ve been rehearsing. This is game time. Let’s see how it goes. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Tim,
0:09:12 you know what I’m saying when you’re in that moment. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of sympathy
0:09:16 for watching you both go through that journey. And I can only imagine what it’s like. I mean,
0:09:21 I have been, of course, and most people listening have been in a position where they feel powerless
0:09:27 to help or they don’t know how to help a loved one, but had a lot of sympathy for a challenging
0:09:39 road and also really been in awe of how much growth both of you have exhibited through
0:09:42 the challenges and pain and so on. In any case, I just wanted to say that.
0:09:50 Oh, man, it means a lot to hear that. And it feels so much of the time as odd as it
0:09:58 may sound, it feels like a privilege to go through it together in the way that we have
0:10:08 seen it. It’s shifted into almost the orientation of blessing. And that’s not to say that the
0:10:14 difficulties are any easier, right? It doesn’t change the nature of hard things. They’re
0:10:22 hard. But there’s something about life. There’s a truth. There’s something about going through
0:10:31 the fire that is so required and something about suffering that is so essential. This
0:10:41 idea that we’re meant to run from pain or run from difficult things and find the most
0:10:51 leisurely and completely frictionless existence possible. It’s such a lie. It’s not just
0:10:57 a lie because it’s not possible. But if it were possible, that would kill you the most.
0:11:01 It would rob you in so many ways, which is, of course, easy for me to say, sitting in
0:11:06 this comfortable chair right now in the midst of it. It’s sometimes hard to see it. At the
0:11:11 same time, there was an astrophysicist, Jan 11, who was on the podcast some time ago.
0:11:15 And I’m going to butcher this quote, but it’s more the concept for me that has really
0:11:19 stuck. She said, “Something along the lines of I used to look for the underlying path
0:11:23 that would help me navigate around obstacles. And then I realized there is no underlying
0:11:32 path. The obstacles are the path through which you discover yourself, through which you learn,
0:11:40 through which you grow.” That is the path. Take those away. And then you’re just a free-floating
0:11:45 essence of comfort. That’s just not the human experience. And also, you’re talking about
0:11:52 blessings. So I could imagine even an earlier version of me would say, “Oh, come on now.”
0:11:56 I suppose it’s helpful, but maybe it’s delusional and it’s overly optimistic. But it’s deeper
0:12:03 than that. And I think that misses the mark because given a longer timeframe, given all
0:12:09 the unknowns, it could be a blessing. It could be a curse, but you can’t know which it is
0:12:13 over time. And it depends a lot on your perspective. So you might as well choose blessing. That
0:12:19 is the more enabling perspective. And since you can’t know, it’s a coin flip. Choose the
0:12:25 side of the coin that is most enabling, it seems to me at least, in the abstract. It’s
0:12:30 easy to say. Taxi runs over my foot. We’ll see how I do later today.
0:12:36 It’s that. And it’s also, you only will know when you are there. You have to go there to
0:12:43 know there. You only know what it can be for you when you’re in the fire. Everybody can
0:12:51 talk about what they would do when they are there. We can all say, “Man, if that would
0:13:00 have happened to me, I would slay the dragon.” I would, whatever you think you would do,
0:13:06 most often is not what you would do. And that’s not because you’re not who you think you are.
0:13:10 It’s because there’s so many other factors you can’t know.
0:13:14 And for many things in my life that I think about, the things I’ve learned the most from
0:13:20 are when I’ve embraced the discomfort and realized what I was made of through it.
0:13:23 Let me just sit with that for a second.
0:13:34 Next up, Dr. Bruce Grayson, a leading expert in near-death experiences and the author
0:13:42 of After, a doctor explores what near-death experiences reveal about life and beyond.
0:13:45 You can learn more about Dr. Grayson at brucegrayson.com.
0:13:56 So I want to zoom in and out from the clinical, skeptical side to the hopefully, and I think
0:14:02 we’ll get to quite a few of these, but examples that could be corroborated in some fashion.
0:14:05 And those may overlap with those that are described as out-of-body experiences.
0:14:10 They might not, and we’ll probably come back to that term as well.
0:14:18 But could you tell the story of the, tell me if this is enough of a cue, the red MGB?
0:14:24 Many people in the near-death experience say that they encountered deceased loved ones
0:14:30 in the experience. And that can easily be explained as wishful thinking, expectation.
0:14:34 You think you’re dying, and you would love to see your grandmother once more, so she
0:14:37 comes to you, and there’s no way to prove or disprove that.
0:14:43 However, in some cases, the person having the near-death experience encounters someone
0:14:46 who had died, but nobody yet knew they had died.
0:14:50 So that can’t be dismissed as expectation and wishful thinking.
0:14:52 This is not a new phenomenon.
0:14:55 Plenty of the elder wrote about a case like this in the first century, G.D.
0:14:57 But we’re hearing about a lot of them now.
0:15:02 About 12 years ago, I wrote a paper that had 30 different cases from recent years.
0:15:03 Jack was one of those.
0:15:08 He had an experience, actually he was in South Africa back in the ’70s.
0:15:13 And he was a young technician at that time and had very serious pneumonia, and he would
0:15:16 easily stop breathing and have to be resuscitated.
0:15:19 So he was admitted to the hospital with a severe pneumonia.
0:15:24 And he had one nurse who was constantly working with him as his primary nurse, a young pretty
0:15:26 girl about his age.
0:15:28 He flirted a lot with her where he could.
0:15:31 And one day she told him she’s going to be taking a long weekend off and there’d be other
0:15:34 nurses substituting for her.
0:15:38 So he wished her well and she went off.
0:15:43 And over the weekend while she was gone, he had another respiratory arrest where he couldn’t
0:15:44 breathe.
0:15:46 He had to be resuscitated.
0:15:48 And during that time, he had a near-death experience.
0:15:54 And he told me that he was in this beautiful pastoral scene, and there out of the woods
0:15:57 came his nurse, Anita, walking towards him.
0:16:01 And he was stunned because he was in this different world of what’s she doing there.
0:16:04 So he said, “What are you doing here?”
0:16:07 And she said, “Jack, you can’t stay here with me.
0:16:11 I want you to go back and I want you to find my parents and tell them that I love them
0:16:14 very much and I’m sorry I wrecked the red MGB.”
0:16:18 He didn’t know what to make of that, but she turned around and went back into the woods
0:16:21 and then he woke up later in his hospital bed.
0:16:27 Now he tells me that back in the ’70s, there were very few MGBs in South Africa and he
0:16:29 had never seen one.
0:16:32 When the first nurse came into his room, he started to tell her about his experience and
0:16:35 seeing his nurse, Anita.
0:16:38 She got very upset and ran out of the room.
0:16:43 It turned out that she had taken the weekend off to celebrate her 21st birthday and her
0:16:47 parents had surprised her with a gift of a red MGB.
0:16:52 She got very excited, hopped in the car and took off for a test drive and crashed into
0:16:57 a telephone pole and died instantly, just a few hours before his near-death experience.
0:17:03 I don’t see any way he could have known or wanted or expected her to have an accident
0:17:04 and die.
0:17:08 There’s certainly no way he could have known how she died and yet he did.
0:17:13 And we’ve got lots of other cases like this that called Piki and Darian cases based on
0:17:19 a book that was published in the 1800s with cases like these, where people encounter deceased
0:17:21 individuals who were not known to be dead.
0:17:23 I don’t know how to explain those.
0:17:30 Now, just to put my skeptics hat on, I could say, “Well, if I were Jack,” it was a Jack,
0:17:34 let’s just say it’s Jack, “that would make one hell of a story if there wasn’t a third
0:17:38 party to independently verify it with.”
0:17:43 But there are other cases and for people listening, we’re going to come back to some of the common
0:17:44 questions.
0:17:49 I would say forms of discussion around these related to possible biological mechanisms
0:17:50 or lack thereof.
0:17:52 We’re going to come back to that in a second.
0:17:59 But there are then cases that are seemingly characteristically quite different and perhaps
0:18:03 can be, I’m going to be curious to know if this has been done or not, but verified with
0:18:04 third parties.
0:18:12 And one that comes to mind that I’ve heard you discuss is related to the surgeon flapping
0:18:20 like a bird and I was hoping that you could give a description of that particular case
0:18:21 study.
0:18:27 Before we get to that, how many near-death experiences have you documented, studied,
0:18:32 or otherwise read about, put into the archives yourself?
0:18:36 How many instances would you say you have encountered in one way or another?
0:18:40 I’ve got slightly more than a thousand in my database at the University of Virginia where
0:18:45 we have validated as much as we can that they were in fact close to death and this is what
0:18:46 happened to them.
0:18:49 I’ve talked to many more people about their near-death experience that I haven’t included
0:18:54 because I wasn’t confident that they really fit the criteria for being in the study.
0:18:57 But it’s really much more common than you might think it was because people don’t talk
0:18:59 about these things.
0:19:01 You mentioned people wanting the publicity of this.
0:19:06 That is actually maybe more true now, but back in the 70s and 80s, nobody wanted to talk
0:19:09 about these things.
0:19:14 If you talk about things you got ridiculed, you got referred to a psychiatrist, you were
0:19:19 called crazy, you were shunned by people you knew, both materialists and religious folks.
0:19:21 They didn’t want to hear about these things.
0:19:24 People did not talk about these events.
0:19:28 What of this surgeon flapping like a bird?
0:19:34 This was a fellow owl in his mid-50s who was a van driver and he was out on his rounds
0:19:42 one day and he had chest pain and he knew enough to stop his rounds and drive to the emergency
0:19:46 room and they did some evaluations and found that he had four arteries to his heart that
0:19:55 were blocked and they rushed him to the emergency room for urgent quadruple bypass surgery.
0:20:00 So he’s lying on the table, fully unconscious, the drapes over and so forth, and he tells
0:20:05 me that in the middle of the operation, he rose up out of his body and looked down and
0:20:12 saw the surgeons operating on and he saw the chief surgeon who he hadn’t met before, flapping
0:20:16 his arms like he was trying to fly and he demonstrated for me.
0:20:21 At that point I laughed, so I thought, “This is obviously hallucination, doctors don’t
0:20:22 do that.”
0:20:27 But he insisted that I check with the doctor, he said, “This really happened, ask him.”
0:20:30 So he told me lots of other things about his near-death experience, but that’s the one
0:20:31 that I was able to verify.
0:20:38 So I talked to a surgeon who actually had been trained in Japan and he said, “Well yes,
0:20:40 I did do that.
0:20:46 I have a habit of letting my assistants start the procedure while I put on my sterile gown
0:20:48 and gloves and wash my hands and so forth.”
0:20:53 Then I go into the operating room and watch them for a while because I don’t want to risk
0:20:55 touching anything with my sterile hands now.
0:21:01 I pointed things out to them with my elbows and pointed things out just the way Al was
0:21:03 saying he was trying to fly.
0:21:05 I don’t know any other doctor that’s done that.
0:21:08 I’ve been a doctor for more than 50 years and I’ve never seen anyone do that.
0:21:12 So it’s kind of an idiosyncratic thing.
0:21:14 Is there any way Al could have seen that?
0:21:17 Well, he was totally anesthetized, he had his heart was open.
0:21:20 I don’t think there’s any way he could have seen that and yet he did.
0:21:33 Next up, Andrew Roberts, historian and New York Times bestselling author of 20 books,
0:21:40 including Napoleon Alive, Churchill Walking With Destiny, and most recently, Conflict,
0:21:47 The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza, co-authored with General David Petraeus.
0:21:55 You can find Andrew on Twitter @aroberts_andrew.
0:22:01 Would you mind speaking to the importance of steady nerves or self-control in crisis?
0:22:07 It seems that that’s something that recurs.
0:22:12 The reason I’m asking about it is, this is a sub-question, how much of it do you think
0:22:14 is nature versus nurture also?
0:22:18 Feel free to take that in any direction you like.
0:22:25 Both Napoleon and Churchill were educated in war, they both went to military colleges.
0:22:30 So as their level of command grew, as they grew older, the sense of responsibility they
0:22:37 had, the number of men essentially that they were controlling increased exponentially.
0:22:44 So they had the intellectual background, they had the training as well, and as young
0:22:49 men in both cases, they thought a lot about war, about Julius Caesar and Alexander the
0:22:51 Great and so on.
0:22:56 They had a egotism to look at it in a negative way, but a self-confidence to look at it in
0:23:03 a positive way that gave them the ability to take these shatteringly important decisions.
0:23:07 So I think it’s much more nurture than nature.
0:23:14 And in both cases, as far as they were concerned, there was a sort of holy fire that they both
0:23:15 had.
0:23:18 There was a, not only in a religious sense, obviously, because neither of them were at
0:23:24 all religious, but in a sort of deeper spiritual sense, a belief that what they were doing
0:23:30 was so good and right and proper and had to be done that they were not kept up at awake
0:23:38 at night over even the death of friends, death of friends that they were responsible for.
0:23:39 They were responsible for.
0:23:43 In the cases of Churchill and Napoleon, we could bring up other names or in Gospels when
0:23:47 you’re using the royal wheel here, you could bring up other names.
0:23:52 Were there particular philosophers or writers that they found particularly instructive,
0:23:57 who they leaned on in some sense, that they found solace in, were there particular minds?
0:24:02 Well certainly Churchill did because he was a huge reader.
0:24:04 He was a massive autodidact.
0:24:08 He never went to university and so therefore, when he was a young sublton in India in his
0:24:18 early twenties, he sat down and read the great philosophers as well as writers and he was
0:24:24 particularly influenced by Gibbon and Macaulay, the two great 19th century historians, English
0:24:25 historians.
0:24:31 And that affected his writing style and of course later his oratorical style, but also
0:24:36 his outlook on life, philosophical outlook on life.
0:24:40 With regard to Napoleon, he was even more literary really because he also wrote short
0:24:43 stories and books and so on.
0:24:50 And so he was very much affected by what he read again as a young man.
0:24:56 And in both cases, it’s slightly, they were reading so much that it’s slightly cut them
0:24:59 off from their contemporaries.
0:25:04 And Napoleon didn’t have many friends when he was in his early twenties.
0:25:11 And Churchill, when the other people were off sleeping in the midday heat of India,
0:25:16 his colleagues and comrades, he’d be sitting there reading Chopin and Gibbon and Macaulay
0:25:17 and so on.
0:25:21 How did Gibbon and Macaulay inform his philosophical leanings?
0:25:26 They made him into what was called at the time a wig.
0:25:33 We don’t have them today obviously, but they were in modern sense, I suppose, liberal conservatives
0:25:36 who believed in noblesse oblige in the importance of…
0:25:37 What is that?
0:25:38 I’m sorry.
0:25:39 Noblesse oblige.
0:25:46 It’s almost a medieval concept where your duty, if you have privilege, is to work for
0:25:51 the greater good of the community, to protect widows and orphans, to it’s sort of like the
0:25:57 nightly chivalric concept that you get from the middle ages.
0:25:59 And they very much believed in that and so did Churchill.
0:26:02 Let me ask about Napoleon.
0:26:04 So I know shockingly little about Napoleon.
0:26:08 I’m embarrassed to admit, and I do want to ask more about Churchill as well, but you’ve
0:26:11 described him as the prime exemplar of war leadership.
0:26:13 Why do you say that?
0:26:18 There were lots of military leaders who can do a lot of things, but he was the only one
0:26:20 that I can think of who could do all of them.
0:26:23 Of course, it helps if you’re winning.
0:26:27 In the last three years of his military career, he’s losing.
0:26:34 But even then, even when he had far fewer troops, when he was retreating, when he was
0:26:39 defending Paris in the 1814 campaign, for example, he was still able to win five victories
0:26:42 in seven days in the 1814 campaign.
0:26:45 That’s two years after the retreat from Moscow.
0:26:51 It’s quite extraordinary capacity, and he was able to win whether he was advancing or
0:26:55 retreating, whether he was defending a town or attacking it, whether he was attacking
0:27:01 on the right or left flank or sometimes straight through the center, as at Austerlitz.
0:27:07 He had that capacity, that mind for military conquest, but also, of course, the greatness
0:27:12 that was required completely to revolutionize French society.
0:27:18 People think that the French Revolution revolutionized society, the clues in the name as it were,
0:27:24 but in fact, the long-lasting things that actually dragged France into the 19th century
0:27:30 were things like the Code of Napoleon, which were not a revolutionary concept.
0:27:32 They were a Napoleonic concept.
0:27:37 This may seem like a lazy question, but since I’m operating from a deficit here with respect
0:27:43 to knowledge of Napoleon, what do you think it was that allowed him to be a decathlete
0:27:47 of war, as it were, being good at all of these different facets?
0:27:53 And I think of how we might analyze different athletes and what allows them to exercise
0:27:57 the capabilities we see, sort of breaking it down into its component parts.
0:28:02 But how would you describe what enabled him to do that, where others were unable?
0:28:04 It was inspiration, but also perspiration.
0:28:12 He really did put in the time thinking about it and reading about it by it, I mean warfare.
0:28:15 And of course, he’d been educated in it.
0:28:24 He read the key books as a guy called the Compte de Giver, who in 1772 wrote a book about strategy
0:28:25 and tactics.
0:28:30 And he, 30 years later, put these into operation.
0:28:36 And so he was able to spot the sort of best of the best when it came to a modern thinking
0:28:40 and to, or in this case, 30-year-old thinking, in fact.
0:28:45 That didn’t matter because the weapons of war hadn’t changed in the intervening period.
0:28:52 And he was able to put those thoughts and ideas into practical use, the classic example
0:28:54 being the core system.
0:28:55 And when he…
0:28:56 What was it called?
0:28:57 It’s called the core system.
0:28:58 It’s basically…
0:28:59 How do you call it?
0:29:00 A C-O-R-E.
0:29:01 A C-O-R-P-S.
0:29:09 And what he did with them was to create mini armies, essentially, which were able to march
0:29:13 separately, but converge and concentrate for the battle.
0:29:16 And so one of your core would engage the enemy.
0:29:23 And then he would use the other cores to outmaneuver and envelop the enemy, sometimes double envelop
0:29:24 the enemy.
0:29:25 It was a brilliant concept.
0:29:31 And actually, the allies didn’t start beating Napoleon until they had also adopted the core
0:29:32 system.
0:29:36 He was always at the cutting edge of thinking of the new concepts.
0:29:44 And at the same time, he had very old fashioned views about how to excite the men.
0:29:45 And he…
0:29:49 I mean, victory, obviously, is the best thing when it comes to excite the men.
0:29:50 Exactly.
0:29:52 Nothing much works better than that.
0:29:55 But as I say, he was still winning at the end of his career.
0:30:03 But he had this belief that to appeal to the soul was the way to electrify the men.
0:30:05 And so he was able to do that.
0:30:08 And some people who he was against, Duke of Wellington, the British general, being the
0:30:13 classic example, who won the Battle of Waterloo against him, it wasn’t interesting electrifying
0:30:15 the soul of the men at all.
0:30:19 He despised his ordinary soldiers, but nonetheless…
0:30:20 You’re talking about Wellington?
0:30:27 The Duke of Wellington, he had some sort of choice negative remarks about his own soldiers.
0:30:33 And he was a rather sort of stuffy aristocrat, but they loved him because he cared about
0:30:36 how many of them died in battle.
0:30:41 And he never lost the battle as well, which is a very useful thing in a commander needless
0:30:42 to say.
0:30:43 But he didn’t try.
0:30:44 He didn’t go out.
0:30:48 He would think it beneath him to go out and try to inspire the men.
0:30:55 Whereas Napoleon, his choice of hats and his great coats and his way of taking off medals,
0:31:00 his own medals and giving them to soldiers on the battlefield and his orders of the day,
0:31:06 his proclamations before the Battle of the Pyramids in 1799, he said, “40 centuries look
0:31:07 down upon you.”
0:31:11 And this is an extraordinary thing for a soldier in Egypt far away from home, he looks up at
0:31:18 the pyramids and thinks, “Yeah, he’s placing the events of that day in the long historical
0:31:20 parabola.”
0:31:23 And Churchill did that too, by the way, of course, to a great degree.
0:31:29 In about 10% of all of the speeches that Churchill gave in 1940, there’s some reference
0:31:31 to history all the past.
0:31:37 He too would summon up the idea that, yes, Britain is on its own, Britain and the British
0:31:41 Commonwealth are on their own, and this, of course, was in the period before America
0:31:45 and Russia were in the war, but we’ve been in terrible straits before.
0:31:49 Look at Sir Francis Drake, look at Admiral Nelson and so on.
0:31:51 And we came through those and won.
0:31:54 He also brought up the First World War a lot.
0:31:59 So yes, he too drew on history, and people knew that because he’d written history books
0:32:05 and written biographies, including the biography of his great ancestor, the first Duke of Moorbrough,
0:32:09 he was with Wellington, the best soldier that Britain ever produced.
0:32:16 People trusted his view of history.
0:32:22 And now, an excerpt from Tim’s solo podcast episode, Productivity Tactics, two approaches
0:32:28 I personally use to reset, get unstuck, and focus on the right things.
0:32:33 A few years ago, a creature died in the walls of my home.
0:32:34 It was disgusting.
0:32:38 Now, to be precise, it gave up the ghost in the heating system, so the death fumes were
0:32:42 conveniently pushed directly into my bedroom.
0:32:47 My ex-girlfriend and I discovered this around 11pm as we tucked into bed hoping for a good
0:32:48 night’s sleep.
0:32:52 We could turn off the heat and freeze, that was one option, or we could bathe in the stench
0:32:55 of what I assumed was a raccoon carcass.
0:32:57 And the whole thing made my eyes itch.
0:32:58 It was horrible.
0:33:04 I imagined it downing its last meal, pig entrails, moldy socks, fermented beans, who knows,
0:33:07 before defiantly jamming its bloated body into my HVAC.
0:33:11 Don’t worry, we are getting to some kind of lesson here.
0:33:14 But the kamikaze raccoon was just the first surprise guest.
0:33:20 The opening act in short order, my dog then got horribly sick unrelated to raccoon.
0:33:24 Overdue paperwork started piling up, popping out of nowhere, and onboarding a bunch of
0:33:27 new contractors ran into trouble.
0:33:31 Then I pulled out of a parking spot and scraped the entire side of my car and the car next
0:33:32 to me.
0:33:37 Later that same afternoon, all these Christmas presents I had ordered somehow had run out
0:33:40 of stock and were auto-cancelled, so I was sent scrambling.
0:33:46 And on and on it went more and more clowns piling into the clown car for a shit show
0:33:48 that lasted three to four weeks.
0:33:52 It was just a 15 car pileup of nonsense.
0:33:56 There are the rare times when I feel like I’m in the zone.
0:33:57 Those are great.
0:33:58 Those are fantastic.
0:34:02 Then there are times when I ask myself, “How in holy hell have I become the janitor of
0:34:04 a mountain of bullshit?”
0:34:06 That happens more than you might think.
0:34:10 Put it another way, sometimes you’re the boxer and sometimes you are the punching bag.
0:34:12 We all get our turn as the punching bag.
0:34:13 It doesn’t matter who you are.
0:34:17 As far as I can tell, it doesn’t matter how successful you become.
0:34:22 You’ve always grabbed a number at the deli counter of just wait, eventually you’re going
0:34:24 to get your ass kicked by the universe.
0:34:28 Now, during these periods of firefighting, let’s just call it when stuff is popping up,
0:34:31 this whack-a-mole, I get fidgety and frustrated.
0:34:36 I feel like I’m treading water and patience wears very thin has never been my strong suit
0:34:39 that’s true, especially with myself.
0:34:43 My instinct is to try to fix things as quickly as possible.
0:34:48 That’s all well and good, but I’ve realized that from a place of what the fuck, I often
0:34:50 rush and create more problems.
0:34:56 This is particularly bad, catastrophic sometimes when I try to sprint immediately upon waking
0:34:57 up.
0:35:02 The mantra that has saved me and saved me during that three to four week period I mentioned
0:35:07 was very simple and it’s this, “Make before you manage.”
0:35:09 Make before you manage, that’s it.
0:35:14 What this means is each morning, before plugging holes, fixing things, calling vets, answering
0:35:20 text messages, delegating or yanking out dead raccoons, answering a million text messages,
0:35:23 this mantra was a reminder to make something.
0:35:28 You should read Paul Graham’s essays and listen to Neil Gaiman’s Make Good Art commencement
0:35:34 speech for more on all of this, but back to any given day and make before you manage.
0:35:40 Even the most time sensitive items can usually wait 60 minutes and by make something, I mean
0:35:41 anything.
0:35:43 It could be anything at all.
0:35:48 You just need to feel like you’ve pushed a millimeter ahead in some creative direction.
0:35:52 For me personally, even a 90 second video of calligraphy could set a better emotional
0:35:58 tone for the entire day, helping me to be more calm as I handle problems, as I execute
0:36:00 all the rest of the stuff later.
0:36:04 Or maybe I attempt to jumpstart my writing with an Instagram caption, or an email to
0:36:06 a friend to take the pressure off.
0:36:09 It’s practically nothing, but it’s enough.
0:36:15 Even token efforts allow me to reassure myself with, “Hey, pal, don’t worry, you did produce
0:36:17 something today.”
0:36:21 And the psychological difference between zero acts of creation and one act of creation,
0:36:25 no matter how small, is really impossible to overstate.
0:36:26 It’s binary.
0:36:29 Zero to a little bit, those are two different worlds.
0:36:34 If you’re lucky, sometimes that one idea, that one sentence or one shitty first draft
0:36:37 can turn into something bigger, and that happens when you catch the wave.
0:36:43 But the point is to be able to say to yourself, even for five minutes, “Hark, I am a creator,
0:36:45 not just a janitor of bullshit.
0:36:50 Here’s proof that I can and will do more than just manage the minutiae of life.”
0:36:54 And I think, at least personally, I do need that reinforcement.
0:36:57 We all spend time on the struggle bus, happens to everybody.
0:37:02 At the very least, this mantra has helped me to find a window seat when it’s my turn.
0:37:12 So, as a reminder, when in doubt, try it out, make before you manage.
0:37:15 And now here are the bios for all the guests.
0:37:22 This isn’t just any episode, this one turned out really, really special.
0:37:29 And I really encourage everybody to listen to this once, as audio only, if you are listening
0:37:37 to this without any video, but also go to youtube.com/timfarris to see the video.
0:37:44 We recorded this episode in the recording studio designed by Jimi Hendrix, where he
0:37:45 slept.
0:37:50 The acoustics, the surroundings, everything is gorgeous.
0:37:52 And my guest was in the flow.
0:37:56 We happen to mesh really well together.
0:37:59 And it’s one of those episodes that I will remember for many years.
0:38:05 My guest, John Batiste, is a five-time Grammy Award-winning and Academy Award-winning singer,
0:38:07 songwriter, and composer.
0:38:13 I met him ages and ages ago, back when he was a mere incredible, incredible musician,
0:38:15 composer, etc.
0:38:18 But I’ve been able to watch him become the Markey Lights John Batiste, and it has been
0:38:20 a thrill to watch.
0:38:22 We talk about it all.
0:38:27 His eighth studio album, Beethoven Blues, is set for a November 15 release.
0:38:33 When we are sitting in Jimi Hendrix’s studio, there are pianos, guitars, you name it, and
0:38:38 we don’t just talk, we walk around and he uses music to answer some of my questions.
0:38:41 It’s phenomenal.
0:38:45 Beethoven Blues marks the first installment in his solo piano series showcasing Batiste’s
0:38:51 interpretation of Beethoven’s iconic works, Reimagined, and that is an understatement.
0:38:57 You’re going to hear a lot of it in this episode towards the last 25 percent, so buckle up and
0:38:58 stick around.
0:39:02 Beethoven Blues follows Batiste’s studio album, World Music Radio, which received five Grammy
0:39:06 nominations, including album of the year.
0:39:10 As a composer, he scored Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night now in theaters.
0:39:15 The film depicts the chaotic 90 minutes before Saturday Night Live’s very first broadcast
0:39:21 in 1975, underscored by Batiste’s blending of jazz, classical, and contemporary elements.
0:39:26 He composed and produced the music live on set, capturing the intensity of the show’s
0:39:27 debut.
0:39:32 He also appears in the film as Billy Preston, the show’s first musical guest, and certainly
0:39:34 he has lived that out himself.
0:39:38 Additionally, Batiste composed and performed music for the Disney Pixar film Soul, for
0:39:44 which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Score alongside Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
0:39:51 You can find him at johnbatiste.com, that’s J-O-N-B-A-T-I-S-T-E dot com on Instagram and
0:39:57 socials @JohnBatiste, and boy oh boy, I love this.
0:39:59 I really think you guys are in for a treat.
0:40:10 Stick around, listen to the whole thing, watch it a second time on video at youtube.com/timferris.
0:40:15 My guest today is Bruce Grayson M.D. He is the Chester F. Carlson Professor Emeritus
0:40:20 of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, and Director Emeritus of the Division of Perceptual
0:40:24 Studies at the University of Virginia, where he has practiced and taught psychiatry and
0:40:27 carried out research since 1995.
0:40:31 He’s also a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and his
0:40:36 most recent book is After a Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About
0:40:37 Life and Beyond.
0:40:43 He has studied, documented more than a thousand near-death experiences, and what made him
0:40:49 appealing to me as a guest with this incredibly unusual terrain is that he was raised with
0:40:59 a secular, what we could call rational, materialist worldview.
0:41:01 Today’s guest, Andrew Roberts.
0:41:06 Andrew Roberts has written 20 books, which have been translated into 28 languages and
0:41:09 have won 13 literary prizes.
0:41:13 These include Masters and Commanders, The Storm of War, A New History of the Second
0:41:20 World War, Napoleon, A Life, Churchill, Walking with Destiny, George III, The Life and Reign
0:41:24 of Britain’s Most Misunderstood Monarch, and most recently Conflict, The Evolution
0:41:30 of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza, which he co-authored with General David Petraeus.
0:41:36 The Roberts is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society,
0:41:41 the Bonnie and Tom McCloskey Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford,
0:41:46 and a visiting professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.
0:41:48 He is also a member of the House of Lords.
0:41:55 You can find all things Andrew at andrew-roberts.net online, and he is also on X, the artist formerly
0:42:00 known as twitter@x.com/aroberts_andrew.
0:42:06 Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five
0:42:07 Bullet Friday.
0:42:12 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun
0:42:13 before the weekend?
0:42:17 Between one and a half and two million people subscribed to my free newsletter, my super
0:42:20 short newsletter, called Five Bullet Friday.
0:42:22 Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
0:42:27 It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve
0:42:30 found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week.
0:42:32 It’s kind of like my diary of cool things.
0:42:38 It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos,
0:42:43 all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of
0:42:49 podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test
0:42:52 them, and then I share them with you.
0:42:56 So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you
0:42:59 head off for the weekend, something to think about.
0:43:02 If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday.
0:43:08 Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email, and you’ll get the very
0:43:09 next one.
0:43:09 Thanks for listening.
0:43:14 [MUSIC]
This episode is brought to you by 5-Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter.
Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the routines, habits, et cetera that you can apply to your own life.
This is a special inbetweenisode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can easily jump around to get a feel for the episode and guest.
Based on your feedback, this format has been tweaked and improved since the first recap episode. For instance, @hypersundays on Twitter suggested that the bios for each guest can slow the momentum, so we moved all the bios to the end.
See it as a teaser. Something to whet your appetite. If you like what you hear, you can of course find the full episodes at tim.blog/podcast.
Please enjoy!
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This episode is brought to you by 5-Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter that every Friday features five bullet points highlighting cool things I’ve found that week, including apps, books, documentaries, gadgets, albums, articles, TV shows, new hacks or tricks, and—of course—all sorts of weird stuff I’ve dug up from around the world.
It’s free, it’s always going to be free, and you can subscribe now at tim.blog/friday.
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Timestamps:
Arnold Schwarzenegger: 03:14
Morgan Housel: 10:18
Apollo Robbins: 14:03
Guy Laliberté: 17:38
Rich Paul: 25:21
Dr. Mark Plotkin: 31:36
Full episode titles:
Dr. Mark Plotkin on Coffee, the World’s Favorite Stimulant — Chemistry, History, and More (#698)
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