AI transcript
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0:02:10 Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show.
0:02:14 Where does my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types
0:02:18 to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life?
0:02:24 This is a special in-between episode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month.
0:02:29 Features a short clip from each conversation in one place, so you can jump around, get a feel for
0:02:34 both the episode and the guest. And then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes.
0:02:38 View this episode as a buffet to wait your appetite. It’s a lot of fun. We had fun putting
0:02:42 it together. And for the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode’s description,
0:02:48 probably right below wherever you press play in your podcast app. Or, as usual, you can head
0:02:57 to tim.blog/podcast and find all the details there. Please enjoy. First up, Elizabeth Gilbert,
0:03:04 number one New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, Big Magic, and City of Girls,
0:03:09 and the creative voice behind the Letters from Love with Elizabeth Gilbert newsletter.
0:03:19 You can find Elizabeth on Instagram at Elizabeth_Gilbert_Writer, and you can find her
0:03:28 sub-stack at Elizabeth Gilbert dot sub-stack dot com. And when I was in my going through my first
0:03:39 divorce was 30 and the well laid out planned life that I had created very obediently,
0:03:47 like I had done just what my culture had told me to do. I got married at 24 and worked hard and
0:03:52 bought a house and made a plan to have a family. And then instead of having a family, I had a
0:03:58 nervous breakdown, like quite literally, everybody was moving in this one direction and my entire
0:04:05 intellectual, spiritual, and physical system collapsed, which I now know, I now see that
0:04:10 as an act of God. I now see that there was sort of the dow, you know, that there was a force
0:04:16 that was trying to communicate to me, this is not your path. I will kill you before I let you
0:04:22 do this. I will kill you before I let you be a suburban housewife. I’m not allowing it. I will
0:04:26 make you put you in so much physical pain that you’re going to have to notice that this is not
0:04:34 the life for you. But I was also in so much shame of failure and letting people down and like,
0:04:39 we just bought this house. I just felt like the biggest asshole in the world. I don’t know why
0:04:44 I can’t just get in line and do this thing that everybody’s saying to do. Anyway, that marriage
0:04:50 ended, and then I threw myself into another relationship and that ended, and I was like,
0:04:55 I don’t know how to orchestrate my life at all. And nothing, here I am 30 years old and nothing
0:04:59 is what I had planned it to be five years ago. And I was in the deepest depression of my life,
0:05:05 and I didn’t have much of spiritual life at that point. But I remember waking up one night and
0:05:11 just shame and getting an instruction. I mean, that’s the only way I can explain it. And I
0:05:15 was comfortable with that language because I often have that happen in my creative life
0:05:20 where I’m told what to do. This is what you’re going to focus on. Here’s what you need to do
0:05:25 now. And I was given this instruction, and it came in as clearly as I’m talking to you, and it said,
0:05:31 get up, get a notebook, and write to yourself the words that you most wish that somebody would
0:05:35 say to you. Because there was a great loneliness that I was feeling too, as well as the shame.
0:05:44 And that letter began, what that letter said was, I’ve got you, I’m with you. I’m not going
0:05:51 anywhere. I love you exactly the way you are. You can’t fail at this. You can’t do this wrong.
0:05:58 I don’t need anything from you. This is a huge thing to hear. I don’t need anything. Talk about
0:06:04 no cherished outcome. I don’t need anything from you. You don’t have to improve. You don’t have to
0:06:09 do life better. You don’t have to win. You don’t have to get out of this depression. You don’t
0:06:17 have to ever uplift your spirits. You could end up living in a box under a bridge in a garbage bag,
0:06:23 spitting at people. And I would love you just as much as I do now. The love that I have for you
0:06:31 cannot be lost because it’s innate. It’s yours. I have no requirements for it. And if you need to
0:06:36 stay up all night crying, I’ll be here with you. And if tomorrow you have a garbage day again,
0:06:40 because you’ve been up all night crying, I’ll be there for that too. I’ll be here for every minute
0:06:45 of it. Just ask me to come and I’ll be here with you. And the astonishing thing was that it,
0:06:51 like even talking about it now, I can feel the impact that it has on my nervous system to hear
0:06:57 those words, even in my own voice. And it was the first experience I’d ever had with unconditional
0:07:03 love. I’d never heard anybody say like, “I don’t need you to be anything. You don’t have to do
0:07:09 better.” This is fine. This is great. You on the bathroom floor and a pile of tears, it’s not. It’s
0:07:15 great. It’s great. That’s fine. We love you just like that. And that’s so nourishing because it’s
0:07:21 so the opposite of every message that I’ve ever heard. And so I started doing that practice,
0:07:26 and it’s taken me through. I’ve had difficult times in the last 20 years, but I’ve never gone
0:07:34 as low again as I went at that time because this is the net that catches me routinely before I can
0:07:46 get that low. And that voice doesn’t change. Next up, another unpredictable and entertaining
0:07:53 edition of The Random Show with technologist and serial entrepreneur Kevin Rose. You can find
0:08:01 Kevin on Twitter and Instagram @KevinRose, and you can find his sub-stack at KevinRose.com.
0:08:07 Like the one thing that struck me about today, and I just like, let’s have a little real talk
0:08:12 for a second. Oh, wow. Oh, God. Coming to Jesus’ moment. There we go. But like, you went on this
0:08:18 sabbatical, and yet you had to write a book. I didn’t have to write a book. Hold on. Hold on.
0:08:25 Our mutual friend, who shall not be named, pointed this out as well, where it’s like,
0:08:34 “Can you sit and just be you, or would that be too hard?” Okay, let’s do it. All right. So,
0:08:44 yeah, this is good. Let’s get into the fucking chewy bits. So, I routinely every year spend
0:08:50 at least a month off the grid, right? Like last October, I was gone. I was in, I was off the
0:08:56 grid. Yeah, but you were doing shit. I was doing stuff, but here’s my question, right? And this
0:09:02 was in our shared text thread. I basically said, “Okay, look, so the accusation is that Tim doesn’t
0:09:07 know how to chill out.” I’m like, “Okay, fine. Let’s take that as true.” If Tim were to chill out,
0:09:13 what does that look like on a daily and weekly basis? And one of my challenges was humans are
0:09:18 built to be social. You have a family. Our mutual friend has a family. There’s an inbuilt
0:09:27 social network in that family. I don’t have that, right? So my… I mean, you’re a brother to me,
0:09:31 so you always have a family. Yeah, I appreciate that. And like on a day-to-day basis, when I wake
0:09:36 up in the morning, like, you know, my hotel room, my house is empty, right? Yeah. So, I need to go
0:09:41 externally. I need to travel outside of the confines of my house to find that human interaction.
0:09:49 So the question is, like, okay, well, if you could write the script, what would Tim Ferris
0:09:53 chilling out look like? I don’t know what that would look like. What would it look like? Oh,
0:09:59 it’s very simple. All right. I got the best answer for you ever. Oh, boy. No script. That sounds
0:10:02 like some fucking fortune cookie stuff that I can’t make sense of, though. What does that mean?
0:10:08 I know you can’t make sense of it, but that’s the point. It’s no script. When have you done that?
0:10:14 When I did my meditation retreats. No, but you had a schedule for each day.
0:10:17 Sure, but like, I think– That was like an intensive–
0:10:19 The silent retreat where you’re meditating in hours a day.
0:10:24 Okay, I suffer from the same thing you do. I suffer from the same thing you do,
0:10:27 and that is that we can’t– Like, there’s a reason we’re all friends, right?
0:10:32 We’re all fucking border collies chewing on the couch. We can’t turn it off,
0:10:37 you know? And it’s like, honestly, I think the healthiest thing, though, would be to wake up with
0:10:45 no agenda for a month, with no friends for a month, with the fact that you just wake up saying,
0:10:49 “What is today going to bring?” And that is damn fucking hard for people that are driven like you
0:10:52 and me are. So I did that for almost a month last October.
0:10:55 But do you do some psychedelics during that time and shit? Come on, you do some shit.
0:11:01 Towards the end, but in that particular case, I mean, I’ll just say that I don’t think humans are
0:11:09 built for isolation. And there is a fetishizing of self-sufficiency and independence in the U.S.
0:11:15 that I think is unhealthy. It exists in other places, for sure. But if you look at our evolutionary
0:11:20 biological– Like, our biological programming completely refutes that. To be exiled, to be
0:11:26 excluded from the group is effectively– 100%. And I’m not arguing that, but I’m arguing it’s like,
0:11:32 what if you couldn’t touch a pen or a computer for a month? They shoot arrows. Or bow.
0:11:39 I mean, I do think, and I can’t remember the particular attribution of this. Man,
0:11:46 I wish I could really remember it. Ron Jeremy? The hedgehog? No. It was someone else. But it was
0:11:53 basically like, man finds leisure through the switching from one activity to another,
0:11:59 like one compelling activity to another, something along those lines. And I wish I had the exact
0:12:03 quote and the attribution, but I don’t. And this applies, obviously, cross-gender. But the point
0:12:15 being that I’m not convinced that being idle is a fruitful goal to have. If you can’t sit with
0:12:21 yourself for five minutes, that’s a problem, right? But different people have different
0:12:26 constitutions. And for me, for instance, right, if you look at the four-hour work week, okay, so
0:12:31 I get rid of, not get rid of, but I automate my whole business, blah, blah, blah. What do I do?
0:12:37 I end up doing tangos, like six to eight hours a day. Right. But that was not done from a
0:12:48 position of obligation or fear. It was done from a place of like enthusiasm and excitement and love.
0:12:57 That’s different. And that, I think, is good medicine, right? So as long as I have the
0:13:04 self-awareness to distinguish between something that is done from a place of fear or guilt
0:13:11 or prestige, hunger or responsibility or some nebulous obligation versus the things that enliven
0:13:17 me, I think being active is fine as long as I land in the latter category. Right? Like, for
0:13:25 instance, like, I’m doing a lot of archery right now. And I fucking love it. Like, I am so fed by
0:13:31 it. And I’m not saying I’m the world’s best, I certainly am not, but I just find it so meditative.
0:13:38 And, but can I ask you one question? One of the things I’m really curious about is, like, Tim,
0:13:46 like, I respect you so much because of how I’ve watched you dissect and, you know, assimilate,
0:13:50 like, information like no other human I’ve ever seen on earth. And you are able to
0:13:57 learn and pick up and go deep on any topic within a matter of minutes or hours or weeks,
0:14:03 you know, like, you do that quite well. The one thing that is the rounding out of the holistic
0:14:13 picture of Tim that I’m curious if you could ever tap into is the Tim that says, I can just be
0:14:20 without having to go for those things or having to engage in that type of thinking, you know,
0:14:27 that type of like pursuit, that type of analyzing, you know, I, Daria, my wife is, she’s a PhD in
0:14:33 neuroscience. And, and I oftentimes get engaged in intense debates with her about this, where I’m
0:14:42 just like, chill the fuck out. No, I’m just, Daria, don’t listen this far. So, but I’m just like,
0:14:48 you know, I’m like, I’m like, I wish, I wish with all my friends balance. And I think that where
0:14:56 our mutual friend was trying to get to is like, might you find, might you find a little bit more
0:15:00 of that side of the house? Because you have the other in spades. Yeah, yeah. It’s a good question.
0:15:04 I mean, I’ll sit with it. I think that balance can come in a lot of different forms. Right. So,
0:15:10 the balance is time bound, right, in the sense that is it balanced on a daily basis? Is it on a
0:15:15 weekly basis? Is it analyzing at the moment? No, hold on. Hold on. No, it’s not. It’s, it’s finding
0:15:21 the right conceptual framework through us to think about it. And I don’t think that’s a mistake. I
0:15:26 think it’s actually very helpful. Depends on how your mind works, right? For me, though, it’s like,
0:15:31 if I’m super intense for a month, and I’m going 10 out of 10, and then I’m zero out of 10 for a
0:15:39 month, like that equates to kind of a five, five, right? That’s, for me, a certain degree of balance,
0:15:43 but it’s not, if you looked at it on the minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day,
0:15:48 it would look very lopsided. I know a fantastic app that I would love to build for you,
0:15:52 which would be like the Tim Tim random app. And like, you open it up every morning and it tells
0:15:56 you what to do for a month. And it’d be like, today, it’s like, what the fuck is this? And
0:16:01 you’d be like, oh, I have to buy a slip and slide and go down it 20 times. Like, just like,
0:16:05 something where it’s just like throwing you completely out of your life. And you’re like,
0:16:10 wow, I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t have to overanalyze it. It’s just a fucking thing
0:16:15 I’m going to do. Well, this is, this is part of the curse of the entrepreneur. But it’s also,
0:16:19 but it’s all saying, like, 100%, you know, exactly what I’m talking about. We’ve talked about this,
0:16:25 but also, but also at the same time, these are your mics. I know. But also at the same time,
0:16:30 I will say that like, when you introduce another partner, it’s the dance that’s fucking hard,
0:16:36 right? Because Daria is very much about like structure and shit where I’m just Daria and I
0:16:41 are very similar. Very similar. Super similar. Yeah. Love you Daria. She’s you with hair. You’re
0:16:49 the best. Yeah. But Kevin does nobody do it. She’s a better body. I mean, you look at my AI,
0:16:57 her ass is bad. I’m sorry. Okay, thank you everyone for tuning in to the show.
0:17:11 Good to see you, buddy. Next up, Jerry Colonna, co-founder and CEO of reboot.io,
0:17:17 an executive coaching and leadership development firm, and the author of Reboot,
0:17:23 Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, and Reunion, Leadership and the Longing to Belong.
0:17:32 You can find Jerry on Twitter @JerryColonna. You know, if we go back in time to my mid-30s,
0:17:40 when I was a Prince of New York and a former VC and totally fucked up as an individual,
0:17:46 I was knee deep in the first decade. I’m now my fourth decade of psychoanalysis.
0:17:59 And I had a very tough as nails, nice Jewish lady, psychoanalyst named Dr. Sayers. And what she taught
0:18:08 me repeatedly, endlessly boxing my ears when she’d say this is, “How have you been complicit
0:18:15 in creating these conditions you complain so much about?” And you have to picture it, right?
0:18:21 I’m lying on the couch. There’s this, you know, old Jewish lady who’s 30 years older than me,
0:18:29 who’s just basically had it with me complaining. And so the roots of the question are really
0:18:38 a kind of an exasperation, not just from my analyst to me, but eventually with me about me.
0:18:45 And it was really only by taking that question, “How have I been complicit in
0:18:54 creating the conditions I say I don’t want?” That there was a massive unlock for me. Now,
0:18:59 you asked about the misinterpretation. The first level of misinterpretation that people go through
0:19:08 is that they assume I’m saying, “How have I been responsible?” And I am very, very particular.
0:19:16 I get very, very angry when people misinterpret the word complicit for responsible. And it’s not
0:19:22 because I want to let people off the hook, but quite the opposite. I want people to understand
0:19:28 that they’ve been an accomplice. Here’s the thing, Tim, when we get into our mindset that says,
0:19:35 “I am responsible for all the shit in my life,” we’re actually walking away from doing the hard
0:19:41 work. Could you expand on that? Yeah, sure. Because guilt is a defense mechanism.
0:19:46 Right. Because some people might say, “Well, that’s extreme ownership,” as I say. I’m responsible
0:19:51 for all the shit. Exactly. That’s the beginning of the solution, but where do they take a wrong turn?
0:19:58 So I like the kind of ownership. I like the word ownership. I don’t like the word responsibility.
0:20:04 And the reason for that is because, and the reason I think it can be a defense mechanism,
0:20:10 is because it can be an old structure. So many people that I encounter, myself included,
0:20:18 spend our childhood pendulating between grandiosity and a sense of worthlessness.
0:20:24 I’m either shit or I am the best. You got rid of that in your childhood? Man, good for you.
0:20:33 Well, I got rid of it in my adulthood. This is the point. I got rid of it by actually
0:20:40 asking the right questions of myself. If the word complicit is replaced with the words
0:20:48 even extreme ownership, the danger is that I tip over into misunderstanding what actually has been
0:20:56 going on, and I end up in this zone of being responsible for everything. And the truth is,
0:21:02 it’s much more complex than that. I was just thinking that you’re referring to a pendulum,
0:21:10 and that not taking any responsibility for anything is one example, sort of absolving
0:21:16 yourself of the hard work. But I never thought of the opposite if you’re accepting that anything
0:21:24 and everything bad that happens is your responsibility/fault. It puts you in a similar position,
0:21:31 it seems. Exactly. The position it puts you in is unable to actually, with discernment,
0:21:39 diagnose what’s really going on. And you know what? You don’t get to transform stuff
0:21:46 if you don’t really know what’s going on. And so to understand what’s really happening for you,
0:21:50 you have to understand what your role is and what it isn’t.
0:21:57 So how do you walk, say, a client through answering that question well? How are you
0:22:02 complicit in creating the conditions that you say you don’t want or the conditions of your
0:22:08 lives in your lives that you say you don’t want? How do you walk them through their rough draft
0:22:14 of trying to answer that? Okay, so the unlock on the question is the second half of the question
0:22:21 which people skip. You say you don’t want. So give me an example from your own lifetime.
0:22:25 What do you say you don’t want? Oh, man, how much time do we have?
0:22:33 I have become better at this, so I’m not dodging the question, but I would say
0:22:41 probably some form of busyness. I’ve got this and I’m over-scheduled and I’ve got this and that
0:22:48 and the other thing that is imposing on what maybe I say I want, which is more locked out
0:22:55 space for writing or making. Right. So you say, “Mr. Four-Hour Workweek,
0:23:00 I don’t want to work more than four hours a week.” Nice turn. Nice turn. I think you said that to me.
0:23:10 Right. So you say you want to be so efficient and so productive that you get everything done,
0:23:18 that you want to get done, so that you have time to play, take care of yourself,
0:23:24 wear breathe-right strips as you talk to you. Right. This is kind of thinking. Right. Okay.
0:23:31 Just a quick sidebar. Breathe-right. This one’s on me. Next time, you’ve got to sponsor the podcast.
0:23:38 I could recognize them because I’m a breathe-right user. I use them to sleep at night, so.
0:23:41 Oh, my God.
0:23:49 We were both like a lifetime supply, so feel free. Okay. So you say you don’t want to be so busy.
0:23:55 Right. And you were asking, “How do I walk a client through to understand the role of
0:24:03 complicity?” Right, in this regard. So how does it feel when you’re not busy?
0:24:10 I would say, and I don’t want to steal your thunder here, but since I’m cheating with a cheat sheet,
0:24:15 right, this is. It’s your show. So it’s your thunder.
0:24:23 And action. So, segwaying to a compliment or maybe a necessary component of the first question,
0:24:26 “How are you complicit in creating conditions that you don’t want?” Which is,
0:24:31 “In what ways does that complicity serve you?” Okay. So to answer your question and that at the
0:24:39 same time, I would say probably, and this is almost a certainty, looking back at some of the
0:24:44 scariest depressive episodes in my life. It’s when I had a lot of empty space.
0:24:53 And there’s an underlying fear. Even though I haven’t experienced anything close to that magnitude
0:25:01 of desperation and darkness in a very long time, there is a fear that if I create a void,
0:25:07 that is the voice that is the narrative that is going to come to dominate my thoughts. I would say
0:25:16 that therefore, my complicity serves me by avoiding that. Right. And so, if you really want to
0:25:24 transform, when will you be comfortable with the void? That’s a good question. And in my defense,
0:25:31 Your Honor, I will say that I’m about to go off the grid for a week starting this Friday.
0:25:37 So in a few days, I’ll be going completely off the grid, no phone, no nothing for a period of time.
0:25:44 So I have injected these periods. But let’s get into the messy stuff for a second, since life is
0:25:51 rarely as much of a randomized control trial as you would like. I’ve had an ongoing number of chats
0:25:59 with friends and WhatsApp and different messaging platforms. And it’s been around taking breaks,
0:26:07 creating space, chilling out. So a lot of these friends of mine have passed every hurdle and
0:26:12 objective they could have had. And goalposts keep moving, right? They want to make a million and
0:26:19 then it was 10 and then it was 20. And then once it gets indefensible, then it’s like,
0:26:23 what’s your annual compounded growth rate? And this then turns into percentages because they
0:26:29 can’t even with a straight face defend the rest of it. But what they claim to want and what
0:26:38 they believe I need is to chill out, take a break, create all this space. My experience is as social
0:26:45 animals, or at least as a person who benefits from social interaction, I do best around other
0:26:53 people. I just do. And there are, it’s not 100%, but it’s not 0%. There’s a risk that I do return
0:27:00 to some of those dark places or dark narratives. It’s not 0. So I struggle to answer the question
0:27:05 of like, when can I allow space? Because I do it in small doses, sometimes larger doses. I took
0:27:12 almost all of October last year off the grid. So perhaps you can help me to find my way to
0:27:18 answering the question you posed. You know, look, Tim, I feel like Uncle Jerry and that we speak
0:27:25 every few years, and every few years, my hell you’ve grown. I know you don’t feel that way
0:27:31 because you’re in your body. But when we first started talking, which was years and years ago,
0:27:37 this was a big struggle for you. This was a tremendous struggle. And there was a sense that
0:27:43 you might miss out. There was a sense of like you being falling behind in some sort of weird little
0:27:51 race, a race to the top. And I think the speed with which you’re able to go right to the fear of
0:27:59 the void, what Blais Pascal identified when he said that all of man’s problems stem from their
0:28:06 inability to sit alone in a room. I think you’ve got, like a lot of us, you’ve got a component of
0:28:17 that. And I also want to say I’m watching you letting go of the need to turn that void time
0:28:23 into productivity time, right? When I first started promoting the notion of sabbatical,
0:28:27 which we’ve talked about in the past, I remember dealing with a client who would say, “Well,
0:28:32 I’m going to learn Portuguese.” It’s like, “No, you’re not. You’re not going to learn Portuguese
0:28:41 in four weeks. You’re going to learn to breathe without breathe-right strips. You’re just going
0:28:48 to learn to enjoy yourself.” Now, what I hear you doing is learning to enjoy yourself,
0:28:59 which is a really powerful skill. Yeah. Yeah, it’s going to be a lifelong project,
0:29:04 which is okay. A lot of things are lifelong projects. That’s right. We got here because
0:29:11 you were asking about that process, and this is the process, right? This is the process. So,
0:29:18 for you, when you’re off the grid starting Friday, what will that experience be like for you?
0:29:24 At what point might you be anxious, and at what point might you start to relax? Because
0:29:32 are you going to be with friends this trip too? This particular example may not fit the exercise,
0:29:38 but what I’ve done for the last handful of years is every year I do a past year review,
0:29:44 rather than setting, let’s just say, blind, semi-uninformed, overly optimistic New Year’s
0:29:48 resolutions. I look back at the past year and figure out what the highs and lows looked like
0:29:55 if I were to do an 80/20 analysis. Places, people, activities, the most life-giving and the most
0:30:03 life-draining, and then I schedule time as soon as possible in blocks of one week, two weeks,
0:30:09 depending on availability, to spend time with energy and people doing energy and things, right?
0:30:16 And this particular week off the grid is going to be Alpine Alcant, which I do once every two
0:30:23 years or so, with Bo at probably between 10 and 12,000 feet for the most of it. It’s going to get
0:30:29 cold. We’re going to be eating a lot of shitty freeze-dried fruit, hopefully a bunch of trout
0:30:38 on route to finding elk. And I have just found that particular experience and the time dilation
0:30:46 that it allows to feel like a month off or two months off, it is just so regenerative for me
0:30:53 that it’s become a core piece of my annual planning, not necessarily a hunt, but that type of
0:30:58 shared experience with a small, very small group of people. So that’s what that will look like.
0:31:06 And I, in a sense, I don’t want to say I’m disallowing myself from feeling discomfort,
0:31:11 because there’s going to be incredible discomfort physically. Sleep is probably not going to be
0:31:20 fantastic. And we will be very, very, very active, but it’s not the same as doing a silent retreat
0:31:29 and sitting there watching your monkey brain just contort itself for 16 hours a day.
0:31:36 It’s the kind of retreat where like layers of your skin are stripped away because you’re so raw
0:31:41 and rugged out in the world. And that’s just going to drop you into your body
0:31:49 and drop you more and more into the land. And that’s a place of nourishment for you, for sure.
0:32:00 Finally, a special podcast on what happens when Israelis and Palestinians drink ayahuasca
0:32:06 together, featuring an episode from the new psychedelics-focused podcast Altered States,
0:32:12 made possible in part by the theorist UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship.
0:32:19 You can find Altered States on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite
0:32:27 podcasts. Welcome to Altered States. I’m Ariel Zumaross. This week, we are traveling thousands
0:32:33 of miles away from where I am in Oregon to the Middle East to hear about another kind of psychedelic
0:32:39 experiment. This one involves ayahuasca. Producer Shayna Shealy brings us this story.
0:32:46 So, Shayna, welcome. First off, I know some folks might be familiar with ayahuasca,
0:32:51 but others have probably never heard of it. Tell me, what exactly is ayahuasca?
0:32:58 Yeah, so ayahuasca, people typically drink it as a sort of tea, and it’s made out of a vine from
0:33:04 South America, which is often brewed together with another plant. It’s a type of shrub. And that
0:33:10 shrub contains something called DMT, or dimethyltryptamine. So what do we know about what ayahuasca
0:33:16 does to the brain? So usually about 30 minutes after drinking it, some people start having these
0:33:23 hallucinations. Others have out-of-body experiences or euphoric feelings. There’s often vomiting
0:33:29 involved. For some people, there are visions. Researchers have found that ayahuasca can promote
0:33:35 what’s called neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to adapt and build new connections.
0:33:40 In this case, increased adaptability is thought to be able to help people heal from traumatic
0:33:49 experiences. A few years ago, you came across these peace activists who were using ayahuasca
0:33:55 to heal, and eventually you started reporting on that story. So can you tell me more?
0:34:00 So these activists are Israeli and Palestinian, and they gather to drink ayahuasca and attempt to
0:34:06 heal trauma, both personal trauma and collective trauma. And I knew a bunch of them from previous
0:34:12 reporting in the region, and I was really interested just in the links that these people went to to
0:34:24 build empathy. And then October 7th happened. Suddenly, the work of healing was interrupted by
0:34:31 this massive shockwave, and these activists sort of looked to the group and to one person in particular
0:34:37 to help them navigate it all. That person was Palestinian peace and justice activist, Sammy
0:34:44 Awad. And that’s why your story starts with Sammy in his home in late summer 2023.
0:35:02 In Sammy Awad’s kitchen near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem,
0:35:08 a small group of people are gathered around a table. A handful of Israelis, a woman from
0:35:14 Brazil, one guy from Ramallah. They’re all sitting there around plates of eggs and zatar,
0:35:20 watermelon, balls of cured labna and olive oil. They were laughing, eating breakfast.
0:35:27 Sammy describes his home as sort of an oasis for Israeli and Palestinian activists from all over,
0:35:32 it’s where they can be together and find refuge from the harsh reality of living under forced
0:35:39 separation. Sammy’s home office is filled with hundreds of books on meditation,
0:35:45 yoga, psychedelic medicine, healing. He’s in his 50s, and he’s been working in the world of
0:35:55 peace building for over 25 years. Sammy’s peace work started when he was 12 years old. He was
0:36:01 with his uncle, an influential nonviolent peace activist. They were planting trees on a Palestinian
0:36:06 farmer’s land that was under threat of confiscation by Jewish settlers. I remember Mark was saying,
0:36:11 no matter what happens, you’re here to plant trees. The group of activists was mixed,
0:36:17 Palestinian and Israeli. They were hours into planting when a group of Israeli soldiers approached
0:36:21 them. The soldier coming, pulling the tree out of the ground that I was planting and throwing it
0:36:28 on some rocks. And in that moment, there was this split decision, what do I do? Because as a 12-year-old,
0:36:35 you know, what options I could run away, I could hide, run to my uncle crying, you know, like a
0:36:40 12-year-old, you know, I was like, you’re here to plant the trees. And I decided I’m going to go back
0:36:47 and bring the tree and plant it. And I did that, that sense of feeling, wow, empowerment and losing the fear.
0:36:55 That action changed my life. It made me actually want to commit my life to this work.
0:36:59 The work of peace building through nonviolence.
0:37:05 Days after Sammy went with his uncle to plant trees, he learned that the land had been confiscated
0:37:12 by Israeli settlers, that all the trees they had planted were uprooted. Still, Sammy would go on
0:37:17 to plant even more trees. By the time he was in his 20s, he was organizing boycotts and peace
0:37:25 demonstrations, sometimes alongside Israeli peace activists. But his actions kept getting shut down.
0:37:33 He was beaten, imprisoned, put on lockdown. And then, in 1993, came the Oslo Accords,
0:37:37 a deal between Israeli and Palestinian leadership that was supposed to kick off a
0:37:43 peace process in the region, including limited Palestinian self-governance in parts of the
0:37:49 West Bank in Gaza Strip. Then President Bill Clinton served as a diplomatic broker.
0:37:56 Let us today pay tribute to the leaders who had the courage to lead their people toward peace,
0:38:03 away from the scars of battle, the wounds and the losses of the past toward a brighter tomorrow.
0:38:10 The world today thanks Prime Minister Rabin, Foreign Minister Perez and Chairman Arafat.
0:38:21 Sammy was optimistic. There was billions of dollars of funds coming to create and sustain
0:38:27 that peace that was being created. And all of a sudden, you started seeing NGOs begin to emerge,
0:38:33 begin to rise, money pumping in like crazy. He built his own organization, Holy Land Trust.
0:38:40 It became well known for nonviolent activism trainings. But even with this tireless dedication
0:38:45 to peace, the world around Sammy became more and more violent.
0:38:51 Both sides committed to negotiating an end to the conflict and charting a path to Palestinian
0:38:58 self-rule in the West Bank in Gaza. It triggered a violent backlash from religious extremists
0:39:04 among both Israelis and Palestinians, including Hamas. We’re beginning to see this continuous
0:39:10 loop of failures in the peace process. And in 1995, a right-wing Jewish extremist
0:39:18 assassinated Israeli Prime Minister, Itzhak Rabin. This big plan towards peace began to unravel
0:39:24 almost immediately. Over the next decade, there was the expansion of Israeli settlements in the
0:39:30 West Bank. Deadly attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories. During that time,
0:39:34 we began to understand the need to heal collective trauma as part of peacemaking,
0:39:37 as well, understanding how much the past influences us.
0:39:45 It was 2007. Sammy was in his mid-30s and had begun to take an interest in reading up on trauma
0:39:51 when he was invited to go on a pretty unconventional trip to the death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau.
0:39:57 He spent eight days there, sleeping at the camp, eating all his meals there.
0:40:02 So we were there every day, doing our own ceremony and prayer and visuals,
0:40:07 remembering the people that died. I had, like, lists of names of people that we were all given
0:40:12 to recite continuously. So, like, eight hour meditations we were doing. I began to really see
0:40:19 that, “Wow, this is something that is not an incident that just happened in the past. This is
0:40:29 something that continues until this day.” Pre-COVID, around 40,000 Israeli students visited concentration
0:40:35 camps as part of their school curriculum each year. The trips are sponsored by Israel’s Education
0:40:41 Ministry, typically right before mandatory military service. While Sammy was there,
0:40:47 he kept seeing school group after school group. “Israeli kids with Israeli flags wrapped around
0:40:54 them, big flags and they’re walking in and singing. I heard Israeli teachers tell these kids the
0:41:00 Holocaust is not over. As Jews, we are always threatened, we’re always attacked. Many people
0:41:04 want to destroy us. And, of course, then it’s followed by, this is why we have to be strong,
0:41:08 this is why we have to be resilient, this is why security above everything, and this is why we
0:41:14 never trust anybody. What the hell is happening here? Like, how can you be even talking about peace
0:41:22 with somebody when the foundation is we don’t trust them?” That night, Sammy slept in Birkenau
0:41:28 in the barracks where children were imprisoned. He was there with a Jewish person from Israel
0:41:36 and a Muslim person from Bosnia. “We just had candles and our very thick coats and sleeping bags
0:41:43 and just remembering. I like being in that place where these children were there and were dying.”
0:41:47 But also having these discussions about this issue of inherited trauma.
0:41:54 I began to realize that this whole peace process that we were in, that I was in,
0:42:02 that I was even supporting and advocating for, was embedded from a space of existential fear
0:42:08 and threat. The Palestinians, we have a similar narrative that our existence is on the line. We
0:42:12 need to do something about it. If we don’t do something about it, we will cease to be as a people.
0:42:19 What happened to us is too shameful, too painful. We don’t talk about it.
0:42:26 Sammy says a lot of Palestinians don’t really acknowledge the full scope of pain that their
0:42:33 families have endured. Like the 1948 Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven
0:42:40 from their homes, are really any other traumatic events. We have a generation growing up not knowing
0:42:45 what happened and listening to propaganda. And the propaganda is we are resilient, we are strong,
0:42:50 we will return, we will defeat them. Not acknowledging, like, there is grief that needs to happen.
0:42:54 There is pain that needs to be expressed to what happened to us as a people. There’s a healing.
0:42:58 But to not address these issues makes us unhealthy in how we’re dealing with things.
0:43:07 When he got back to Bethlehem, this is what Sammy wanted to focus on.
0:43:14 Healing. To address the trauma that gets passed down from generation to generation.
0:43:22 He read books on this intergenerational trauma. He studied the Rwandan genocide and the healing
0:43:28 journey that followed. He also met with Israeli-studying trauma, including faculty at Hebrew Union
0:43:34 College. They developed tools for Israelis and Palestinians to work through their pain together.
0:43:40 At the same time, foreign governments were pouring billions of dollars into the region to advance
0:43:47 these peaceful coexistence programs between Israelis and Palestinians. There were summer camps,
0:43:52 organizations that raised up the voices of parents who had lost children, theater troops,
0:44:00 art projects. And still, around two decades after Oslo, Sammy felt things were worse than ever.
0:44:05 You see the wars in Gaza, you see settler violence towards Palestinians, you see how
0:44:09 Palestinians are treating each other. What do all of this money, all of this investment,
0:44:16 where is it all? All of this peace process is 25 years of negotiating. The reality is as messed up
0:44:22 as it’s ever been. Things now are worse than any time before. All of the peace work, all of the money
0:44:27 that was spent. And so for me, I was in this place, we need something new. We need something new.
0:44:33 That’s when he got a phone call. It was from an Israeli couple around 2012.
0:44:38 When they say we have a peace project that we want to involve you with.
0:44:45 Sammy rolled his eyes. More Israelis who think they have the answers. He almost hung up.
0:44:49 And the woman like started yelling at me. No, we have to come and we have to meet you.
0:44:52 And it’s very important that don’t bring anybody and it’s just you.
0:44:59 His interest was peaked. He went to meet them. I said, three things came to my mind.
0:45:04 Other, this is some money laundering scheme, something to do with drugs or something to do
0:45:10 with weird sex. And she just started laughing, laughing. I said, it has to do with the second one.
0:45:13 And then the guy looked at me. He looked at me straight in the eyes and he said,
0:45:19 have you done medicine before? He was talking about the psychedelic brew Ayahuasca.
0:45:23 As a man explained his vision, all Sammy could think about were the dangers.
0:45:27 Sammy says drugs are kind of taboo in Palestinian society.
0:45:34 It’s not just illegal. It’s immoral. It’s legitimate. It goes against religion.
0:45:40 It goes against social values. People who drink Ayahuasca have described emotional breakthroughs,
0:45:47 conversations with anthropomorphic spirits, catharsis of traumatic events, and connections
0:45:53 with ancestors. So even though Sammy was terrified, he thought it might be worth trying.
0:45:59 He traveled through checkpoints into Israel to join the couple for an Ayahuasca ceremony.
0:46:05 He downed a cup full of the sludgy tea and soon he was vomiting.
0:46:12 And now here are the bios for all the guests.
0:46:18 My guest today, one of my favorites, Elizabeth Gilbert. She is the number one New York Times
0:46:24 bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love, as well as several other international bestsellers.
0:46:29 She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award,
0:46:34 and the Penn Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, City of Girls, was named an instant New York Times
0:46:40 bestseller, a rollicking, sexy tale of the New York City theater world during the 1940s.
0:46:45 You can go to elizabethgilbert.substack.com to subscribe to Letters from Love with Elizabeth
0:46:50 Gilbert. Her newsletter, which has more than 120,000 subscribers, you can find her
0:46:54 on Instagram @elizabeth_gilbert_writer.
0:47:05 This time we have a very special episode. This is always a listener favorite,
0:47:09 a recording with my close friend Kevin Rose. Kevin Rose, for those who don’t know,
0:47:15 at Kevin Rose, everywhere. He is indeed a world-class entrepreneur, serial founder,
0:47:22 investor in the smallest of seed rounds up to the largest of companies. He is a full spectrum,
0:47:29 full stack capitalist. I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. But we did this interview in person
0:47:34 at his house in the format of The Random Show. And what we always do, and we’ve done this for
0:47:41 10 years, I suppose now. We trade our latest discoveries, our latest findings, what our
0:47:47 friends have sent to us. And I think it is one of our best. There’s tons of actionable takeaways,
0:47:54 lots of laughing fits, and that might have something to do with the fact that Kevin invited
0:47:59 his friend and bartender to serve us cocktails. We cover dozens of topics, new projects, what I’ve
0:48:05 done on my recent sabbatical, Kevin’s latest findings and shenanigans, real vampire protocols.
0:48:10 Apparently, that’s a thing. And much, much more. It even includes some incredibly bizarre footage
0:48:18 of Kevin having his face assaulted by experimental technology. We videotaped that live together,
0:48:24 and video is not at all required to enjoy this episode whatsoever. Audio is great.
0:48:27 But for some extra hilarity, if you want to see that video I mentioned,
0:48:33 and more, simply go to youtube.com/timferis, F-E-R-R-I-S-S.
0:48:43 Sometimes I get not just a two for one, but a hundred for one when I interview someone
0:48:50 who also helps world-class performers, in addition to being such themselves, to get past
0:48:55 sticking points, to redefine themselves, to reinvent themselves, to chart new paths forward.
0:49:00 And my guest today, Jerry Kelowna, is such a person. He is the CEO and co-founder of Reboot.io,
0:49:05 an executive coaching and leadership development firm dedicated to the notion that better humans
0:49:10 make better leaders. But prior to that, he was an operator in many different ways.
0:49:14 Prior to being a coach, he was a partner with J.P. Morgan Partners, the private equity arm of J.P.
0:49:21 Morgan Chase. He also led New York City-based Flatiron Partners, which he founded in 1996
0:49:25 with partner Fred Wilson. Flatiron went on to become one of the nation’s most successful
0:49:30 early-stage investment programs. At age 25, he was editor-in-chief of Information Week Magazine.
0:49:35 He’s written a bunch of books. We’ll mention them at the end of the conversation. But one is Reboot.
0:49:41 The other is Reunion, both highly recommended. You can find his company, Reboot, at Reboot.io,
0:49:48 and Jerry on Twitter and Instagram @JerryKelowna, C-O-L-O-N-N-A. And he has been on the podcast
0:49:54 twice before. He is a fan favorite. People always take a ton away from our conversations.
0:50:00 And I recap some of my favorite aspects of those in this episode. And we cover a lot of ground.
0:50:04 There are a lot of stories I’ve never heard. We have a lot of laughs,
0:50:12 almost a few cries on my side. We dig into his toolkit. The questions that he uses with himself
0:50:19 and with clients that I have adopted is some of my favorites. There is a lot to learn. And it was a
0:50:25 hell of an enjoyable conversation. It was a walk and talk. And I have done this before where I am
0:50:31 out in nature today. It is a beautiful bluebird sky day in the mountains and to sit in a dark room,
0:50:38 staring at a screen seemed like an insult to nature, complete travesty, totally unnecessary. So I have
0:50:43 high fidelity recording equipment. That is what I’m using right now. It is a headset. I am sitting
0:50:51 10 feet from a beautiful river where I’m watching the eddies swirl around rocks. So why not? Get out
0:50:55 and move. If you can listen to this while you’re moving, I encourage you to do so. Audio is a
0:51:01 secondary activity. So if you can walk and talk or walk and listen while I’m walking and talking,
0:51:05 all the better for you, me, everybody involved.
0:51:14 For this episode, I am doing something very different. I’m actually featuring
0:51:20 a special episode from a brand new podcast called Altered States. And I listened to a lot of podcasts.
0:51:26 I test out a lot of podcasts. I found this one to be particularly impressive. It’s very well
0:51:31 reported, very well researched, very well produced. Here’s the teaser for the episode that you’re
0:51:37 about to hear. It’s not a long one, but it is a very nuanced one, a very powerful one. Quote,
0:51:42 “For the last couple of years, producer Shayna Shealy has been following Israeli and Palestinian
0:51:47 peace activists who have been coming together to drink the psychedelic brew ayahuasca in an effort
0:51:52 to heal their collective intergenerational trauma. It seemed to be helping them when suddenly the
0:51:58 region erupts into chaos and violence.” Shayna Shealy as background was a fellow from the Ferris
0:52:03 UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship. That’s how I actually heard about the podcast.
0:52:09 And the fellowship offers $10,000 reporting grants per year to journalists reporting in-depth
0:52:14 print and audio stories on the science, policy, business, and culture of this new era of psychedelics.
0:52:19 It’s been going for a few years now, and a lot of amazing pieces have come out of it. The fellowship
0:52:24 is supported by my foundation, the Saise Foundation. You can find that s-a-i-s-e-i,
0:52:28 foundation.org, if you want to see what types of projects and grants and so on we’ve made.
0:52:34 And it is made possible in collaboration with Michael Pollan, Mali Awalin, and others at UC
0:52:40 Berkeley. So thanks to the entire team over there. Altered States, the podcast, looks at how people
0:52:44 are taking psychedelics, who has access to them. They actually have an amazing episode where they
0:52:49 walk through in real time, someone’s first experience with psilocybin, how they’re regulated,
0:52:55 who stands to profit, and what these substances might offer us as individuals and as a society.
0:53:00 It’s hosted by journalist Aril Dumras, and you can find it wherever you find your podcasts.
0:53:05 Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take
0:53:10 off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday
0:53:15 that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people
0:53:20 subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
0:53:26 Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share
0:53:31 the coolest things I’ve found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It’s kind
0:53:36 of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums
0:53:42 perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends,
0:53:48 including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field.
0:53:55 And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short,
0:54:00 a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.
0:54:04 If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser,
0:54:15 tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.
0:00:09 It’s become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers,
0:00:13 and it’s super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday,
0:00:18 I send out five bullet points, super short of the coolest things I’ve found that week,
0:00:22 which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets,
0:00:28 new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around 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.
0:00:42 And that’s why I created Five Bullet Friday. It’s become one of my favorite things I do
0:00:49 every week. It’s free. It’s always going to be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog/friday.
0:00:55 That’s tim.blog/friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most
0:01:01 amazing people I’ve ever interacted with. And a little known fact, I’ve met probably 25% of them
0:01:06 because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday, so you’ll be in good company. It’s a lot
0:01:12 of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content
0:01:17 on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I’m doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to
0:01:22 startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that’s very limited, I share it first with
0:01:29 Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog/friday. If you listen to this podcast,
0:01:36 very likely that you’d dig it a lot, and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy.
0:01:42 Again, that’s tim.blog/friday. And thanks for checking it out if the spirit moves you.
0:02:10 Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show.
0:02:14 Where does my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types
0:02:18 to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life?
0:02:24 This is a special in-between episode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month.
0:02:29 Features a short clip from each conversation in one place, so you can jump around, get a feel for
0:02:34 both the episode and the guest. And then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes.
0:02:38 View this episode as a buffet to wait your appetite. It’s a lot of fun. We had fun putting
0:02:42 it together. And for the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode’s description,
0:02:48 probably right below wherever you press play in your podcast app. Or, as usual, you can head
0:02:57 to tim.blog/podcast and find all the details there. Please enjoy. First up, Elizabeth Gilbert,
0:03:04 number one New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, Big Magic, and City of Girls,
0:03:09 and the creative voice behind the Letters from Love with Elizabeth Gilbert newsletter.
0:03:19 You can find Elizabeth on Instagram at Elizabeth_Gilbert_Writer, and you can find her
0:03:28 sub-stack at Elizabeth Gilbert dot sub-stack dot com. And when I was in my going through my first
0:03:39 divorce was 30 and the well laid out planned life that I had created very obediently,
0:03:47 like I had done just what my culture had told me to do. I got married at 24 and worked hard and
0:03:52 bought a house and made a plan to have a family. And then instead of having a family, I had a
0:03:58 nervous breakdown, like quite literally, everybody was moving in this one direction and my entire
0:04:05 intellectual, spiritual, and physical system collapsed, which I now know, I now see that
0:04:10 as an act of God. I now see that there was sort of the dow, you know, that there was a force
0:04:16 that was trying to communicate to me, this is not your path. I will kill you before I let you
0:04:22 do this. I will kill you before I let you be a suburban housewife. I’m not allowing it. I will
0:04:26 make you put you in so much physical pain that you’re going to have to notice that this is not
0:04:34 the life for you. But I was also in so much shame of failure and letting people down and like,
0:04:39 we just bought this house. I just felt like the biggest asshole in the world. I don’t know why
0:04:44 I can’t just get in line and do this thing that everybody’s saying to do. Anyway, that marriage
0:04:50 ended, and then I threw myself into another relationship and that ended, and I was like,
0:04:55 I don’t know how to orchestrate my life at all. And nothing, here I am 30 years old and nothing
0:04:59 is what I had planned it to be five years ago. And I was in the deepest depression of my life,
0:05:05 and I didn’t have much of spiritual life at that point. But I remember waking up one night and
0:05:11 just shame and getting an instruction. I mean, that’s the only way I can explain it. And I
0:05:15 was comfortable with that language because I often have that happen in my creative life
0:05:20 where I’m told what to do. This is what you’re going to focus on. Here’s what you need to do
0:05:25 now. And I was given this instruction, and it came in as clearly as I’m talking to you, and it said,
0:05:31 get up, get a notebook, and write to yourself the words that you most wish that somebody would
0:05:35 say to you. Because there was a great loneliness that I was feeling too, as well as the shame.
0:05:44 And that letter began, what that letter said was, I’ve got you, I’m with you. I’m not going
0:05:51 anywhere. I love you exactly the way you are. You can’t fail at this. You can’t do this wrong.
0:05:58 I don’t need anything from you. This is a huge thing to hear. I don’t need anything. Talk about
0:06:04 no cherished outcome. I don’t need anything from you. You don’t have to improve. You don’t have to
0:06:09 do life better. You don’t have to win. You don’t have to get out of this depression. You don’t
0:06:17 have to ever uplift your spirits. You could end up living in a box under a bridge in a garbage bag,
0:06:23 spitting at people. And I would love you just as much as I do now. The love that I have for you
0:06:31 cannot be lost because it’s innate. It’s yours. I have no requirements for it. And if you need to
0:06:36 stay up all night crying, I’ll be here with you. And if tomorrow you have a garbage day again,
0:06:40 because you’ve been up all night crying, I’ll be there for that too. I’ll be here for every minute
0:06:45 of it. Just ask me to come and I’ll be here with you. And the astonishing thing was that it,
0:06:51 like even talking about it now, I can feel the impact that it has on my nervous system to hear
0:06:57 those words, even in my own voice. And it was the first experience I’d ever had with unconditional
0:07:03 love. I’d never heard anybody say like, “I don’t need you to be anything. You don’t have to do
0:07:09 better.” This is fine. This is great. You on the bathroom floor and a pile of tears, it’s not. It’s
0:07:15 great. It’s great. That’s fine. We love you just like that. And that’s so nourishing because it’s
0:07:21 so the opposite of every message that I’ve ever heard. And so I started doing that practice,
0:07:26 and it’s taken me through. I’ve had difficult times in the last 20 years, but I’ve never gone
0:07:34 as low again as I went at that time because this is the net that catches me routinely before I can
0:07:46 get that low. And that voice doesn’t change. Next up, another unpredictable and entertaining
0:07:53 edition of The Random Show with technologist and serial entrepreneur Kevin Rose. You can find
0:08:01 Kevin on Twitter and Instagram @KevinRose, and you can find his sub-stack at KevinRose.com.
0:08:07 Like the one thing that struck me about today, and I just like, let’s have a little real talk
0:08:12 for a second. Oh, wow. Oh, God. Coming to Jesus’ moment. There we go. But like, you went on this
0:08:18 sabbatical, and yet you had to write a book. I didn’t have to write a book. Hold on. Hold on.
0:08:25 Our mutual friend, who shall not be named, pointed this out as well, where it’s like,
0:08:34 “Can you sit and just be you, or would that be too hard?” Okay, let’s do it. All right. So,
0:08:44 yeah, this is good. Let’s get into the fucking chewy bits. So, I routinely every year spend
0:08:50 at least a month off the grid, right? Like last October, I was gone. I was in, I was off the
0:08:56 grid. Yeah, but you were doing shit. I was doing stuff, but here’s my question, right? And this
0:09:02 was in our shared text thread. I basically said, “Okay, look, so the accusation is that Tim doesn’t
0:09:07 know how to chill out.” I’m like, “Okay, fine. Let’s take that as true.” If Tim were to chill out,
0:09:13 what does that look like on a daily and weekly basis? And one of my challenges was humans are
0:09:18 built to be social. You have a family. Our mutual friend has a family. There’s an inbuilt
0:09:27 social network in that family. I don’t have that, right? So my… I mean, you’re a brother to me,
0:09:31 so you always have a family. Yeah, I appreciate that. And like on a day-to-day basis, when I wake
0:09:36 up in the morning, like, you know, my hotel room, my house is empty, right? Yeah. So, I need to go
0:09:41 externally. I need to travel outside of the confines of my house to find that human interaction.
0:09:49 So the question is, like, okay, well, if you could write the script, what would Tim Ferris
0:09:53 chilling out look like? I don’t know what that would look like. What would it look like? Oh,
0:09:59 it’s very simple. All right. I got the best answer for you ever. Oh, boy. No script. That sounds
0:10:02 like some fucking fortune cookie stuff that I can’t make sense of, though. What does that mean?
0:10:08 I know you can’t make sense of it, but that’s the point. It’s no script. When have you done that?
0:10:14 When I did my meditation retreats. No, but you had a schedule for each day.
0:10:17 Sure, but like, I think– That was like an intensive–
0:10:19 The silent retreat where you’re meditating in hours a day.
0:10:24 Okay, I suffer from the same thing you do. I suffer from the same thing you do,
0:10:27 and that is that we can’t– Like, there’s a reason we’re all friends, right?
0:10:32 We’re all fucking border collies chewing on the couch. We can’t turn it off,
0:10:37 you know? And it’s like, honestly, I think the healthiest thing, though, would be to wake up with
0:10:45 no agenda for a month, with no friends for a month, with the fact that you just wake up saying,
0:10:49 “What is today going to bring?” And that is damn fucking hard for people that are driven like you
0:10:52 and me are. So I did that for almost a month last October.
0:10:55 But do you do some psychedelics during that time and shit? Come on, you do some shit.
0:11:01 Towards the end, but in that particular case, I mean, I’ll just say that I don’t think humans are
0:11:09 built for isolation. And there is a fetishizing of self-sufficiency and independence in the U.S.
0:11:15 that I think is unhealthy. It exists in other places, for sure. But if you look at our evolutionary
0:11:20 biological– Like, our biological programming completely refutes that. To be exiled, to be
0:11:26 excluded from the group is effectively– 100%. And I’m not arguing that, but I’m arguing it’s like,
0:11:32 what if you couldn’t touch a pen or a computer for a month? They shoot arrows. Or bow.
0:11:39 I mean, I do think, and I can’t remember the particular attribution of this. Man,
0:11:46 I wish I could really remember it. Ron Jeremy? The hedgehog? No. It was someone else. But it was
0:11:53 basically like, man finds leisure through the switching from one activity to another,
0:11:59 like one compelling activity to another, something along those lines. And I wish I had the exact
0:12:03 quote and the attribution, but I don’t. And this applies, obviously, cross-gender. But the point
0:12:15 being that I’m not convinced that being idle is a fruitful goal to have. If you can’t sit with
0:12:21 yourself for five minutes, that’s a problem, right? But different people have different
0:12:26 constitutions. And for me, for instance, right, if you look at the four-hour work week, okay, so
0:12:31 I get rid of, not get rid of, but I automate my whole business, blah, blah, blah. What do I do?
0:12:37 I end up doing tangos, like six to eight hours a day. Right. But that was not done from a
0:12:48 position of obligation or fear. It was done from a place of like enthusiasm and excitement and love.
0:12:57 That’s different. And that, I think, is good medicine, right? So as long as I have the
0:13:04 self-awareness to distinguish between something that is done from a place of fear or guilt
0:13:11 or prestige, hunger or responsibility or some nebulous obligation versus the things that enliven
0:13:17 me, I think being active is fine as long as I land in the latter category. Right? Like, for
0:13:25 instance, like, I’m doing a lot of archery right now. And I fucking love it. Like, I am so fed by
0:13:31 it. And I’m not saying I’m the world’s best, I certainly am not, but I just find it so meditative.
0:13:38 And, but can I ask you one question? One of the things I’m really curious about is, like, Tim,
0:13:46 like, I respect you so much because of how I’ve watched you dissect and, you know, assimilate,
0:13:50 like, information like no other human I’ve ever seen on earth. And you are able to
0:13:57 learn and pick up and go deep on any topic within a matter of minutes or hours or weeks,
0:14:03 you know, like, you do that quite well. The one thing that is the rounding out of the holistic
0:14:13 picture of Tim that I’m curious if you could ever tap into is the Tim that says, I can just be
0:14:20 without having to go for those things or having to engage in that type of thinking, you know,
0:14:27 that type of like pursuit, that type of analyzing, you know, I, Daria, my wife is, she’s a PhD in
0:14:33 neuroscience. And, and I oftentimes get engaged in intense debates with her about this, where I’m
0:14:42 just like, chill the fuck out. No, I’m just, Daria, don’t listen this far. So, but I’m just like,
0:14:48 you know, I’m like, I’m like, I wish, I wish with all my friends balance. And I think that where
0:14:56 our mutual friend was trying to get to is like, might you find, might you find a little bit more
0:15:00 of that side of the house? Because you have the other in spades. Yeah, yeah. It’s a good question.
0:15:04 I mean, I’ll sit with it. I think that balance can come in a lot of different forms. Right. So,
0:15:10 the balance is time bound, right, in the sense that is it balanced on a daily basis? Is it on a
0:15:15 weekly basis? Is it analyzing at the moment? No, hold on. Hold on. No, it’s not. It’s, it’s finding
0:15:21 the right conceptual framework through us to think about it. And I don’t think that’s a mistake. I
0:15:26 think it’s actually very helpful. Depends on how your mind works, right? For me, though, it’s like,
0:15:31 if I’m super intense for a month, and I’m going 10 out of 10, and then I’m zero out of 10 for a
0:15:39 month, like that equates to kind of a five, five, right? That’s, for me, a certain degree of balance,
0:15:43 but it’s not, if you looked at it on the minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day,
0:15:48 it would look very lopsided. I know a fantastic app that I would love to build for you,
0:15:52 which would be like the Tim Tim random app. And like, you open it up every morning and it tells
0:15:56 you what to do for a month. And it’d be like, today, it’s like, what the fuck is this? And
0:16:01 you’d be like, oh, I have to buy a slip and slide and go down it 20 times. Like, just like,
0:16:05 something where it’s just like throwing you completely out of your life. And you’re like,
0:16:10 wow, I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t have to overanalyze it. It’s just a fucking thing
0:16:15 I’m going to do. Well, this is, this is part of the curse of the entrepreneur. But it’s also,
0:16:19 but it’s all saying, like, 100%, you know, exactly what I’m talking about. We’ve talked about this,
0:16:25 but also, but also at the same time, these are your mics. I know. But also at the same time,
0:16:30 I will say that like, when you introduce another partner, it’s the dance that’s fucking hard,
0:16:36 right? Because Daria is very much about like structure and shit where I’m just Daria and I
0:16:41 are very similar. Very similar. Super similar. Yeah. Love you Daria. She’s you with hair. You’re
0:16:49 the best. Yeah. But Kevin does nobody do it. She’s a better body. I mean, you look at my AI,
0:16:57 her ass is bad. I’m sorry. Okay, thank you everyone for tuning in to the show.
0:17:11 Good to see you, buddy. Next up, Jerry Colonna, co-founder and CEO of reboot.io,
0:17:17 an executive coaching and leadership development firm, and the author of Reboot,
0:17:23 Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, and Reunion, Leadership and the Longing to Belong.
0:17:32 You can find Jerry on Twitter @JerryColonna. You know, if we go back in time to my mid-30s,
0:17:40 when I was a Prince of New York and a former VC and totally fucked up as an individual,
0:17:46 I was knee deep in the first decade. I’m now my fourth decade of psychoanalysis.
0:17:59 And I had a very tough as nails, nice Jewish lady, psychoanalyst named Dr. Sayers. And what she taught
0:18:08 me repeatedly, endlessly boxing my ears when she’d say this is, “How have you been complicit
0:18:15 in creating these conditions you complain so much about?” And you have to picture it, right?
0:18:21 I’m lying on the couch. There’s this, you know, old Jewish lady who’s 30 years older than me,
0:18:29 who’s just basically had it with me complaining. And so the roots of the question are really
0:18:38 a kind of an exasperation, not just from my analyst to me, but eventually with me about me.
0:18:45 And it was really only by taking that question, “How have I been complicit in
0:18:54 creating the conditions I say I don’t want?” That there was a massive unlock for me. Now,
0:18:59 you asked about the misinterpretation. The first level of misinterpretation that people go through
0:19:08 is that they assume I’m saying, “How have I been responsible?” And I am very, very particular.
0:19:16 I get very, very angry when people misinterpret the word complicit for responsible. And it’s not
0:19:22 because I want to let people off the hook, but quite the opposite. I want people to understand
0:19:28 that they’ve been an accomplice. Here’s the thing, Tim, when we get into our mindset that says,
0:19:35 “I am responsible for all the shit in my life,” we’re actually walking away from doing the hard
0:19:41 work. Could you expand on that? Yeah, sure. Because guilt is a defense mechanism.
0:19:46 Right. Because some people might say, “Well, that’s extreme ownership,” as I say. I’m responsible
0:19:51 for all the shit. Exactly. That’s the beginning of the solution, but where do they take a wrong turn?
0:19:58 So I like the kind of ownership. I like the word ownership. I don’t like the word responsibility.
0:20:04 And the reason for that is because, and the reason I think it can be a defense mechanism,
0:20:10 is because it can be an old structure. So many people that I encounter, myself included,
0:20:18 spend our childhood pendulating between grandiosity and a sense of worthlessness.
0:20:24 I’m either shit or I am the best. You got rid of that in your childhood? Man, good for you.
0:20:33 Well, I got rid of it in my adulthood. This is the point. I got rid of it by actually
0:20:40 asking the right questions of myself. If the word complicit is replaced with the words
0:20:48 even extreme ownership, the danger is that I tip over into misunderstanding what actually has been
0:20:56 going on, and I end up in this zone of being responsible for everything. And the truth is,
0:21:02 it’s much more complex than that. I was just thinking that you’re referring to a pendulum,
0:21:10 and that not taking any responsibility for anything is one example, sort of absolving
0:21:16 yourself of the hard work. But I never thought of the opposite if you’re accepting that anything
0:21:24 and everything bad that happens is your responsibility/fault. It puts you in a similar position,
0:21:31 it seems. Exactly. The position it puts you in is unable to actually, with discernment,
0:21:39 diagnose what’s really going on. And you know what? You don’t get to transform stuff
0:21:46 if you don’t really know what’s going on. And so to understand what’s really happening for you,
0:21:50 you have to understand what your role is and what it isn’t.
0:21:57 So how do you walk, say, a client through answering that question well? How are you
0:22:02 complicit in creating the conditions that you say you don’t want or the conditions of your
0:22:08 lives in your lives that you say you don’t want? How do you walk them through their rough draft
0:22:14 of trying to answer that? Okay, so the unlock on the question is the second half of the question
0:22:21 which people skip. You say you don’t want. So give me an example from your own lifetime.
0:22:25 What do you say you don’t want? Oh, man, how much time do we have?
0:22:33 I have become better at this, so I’m not dodging the question, but I would say
0:22:41 probably some form of busyness. I’ve got this and I’m over-scheduled and I’ve got this and that
0:22:48 and the other thing that is imposing on what maybe I say I want, which is more locked out
0:22:55 space for writing or making. Right. So you say, “Mr. Four-Hour Workweek,
0:23:00 I don’t want to work more than four hours a week.” Nice turn. Nice turn. I think you said that to me.
0:23:10 Right. So you say you want to be so efficient and so productive that you get everything done,
0:23:18 that you want to get done, so that you have time to play, take care of yourself,
0:23:24 wear breathe-right strips as you talk to you. Right. This is kind of thinking. Right. Okay.
0:23:31 Just a quick sidebar. Breathe-right. This one’s on me. Next time, you’ve got to sponsor the podcast.
0:23:38 I could recognize them because I’m a breathe-right user. I use them to sleep at night, so.
0:23:41 Oh, my God.
0:23:49 We were both like a lifetime supply, so feel free. Okay. So you say you don’t want to be so busy.
0:23:55 Right. And you were asking, “How do I walk a client through to understand the role of
0:24:03 complicity?” Right, in this regard. So how does it feel when you’re not busy?
0:24:10 I would say, and I don’t want to steal your thunder here, but since I’m cheating with a cheat sheet,
0:24:15 right, this is. It’s your show. So it’s your thunder.
0:24:23 And action. So, segwaying to a compliment or maybe a necessary component of the first question,
0:24:26 “How are you complicit in creating conditions that you don’t want?” Which is,
0:24:31 “In what ways does that complicity serve you?” Okay. So to answer your question and that at the
0:24:39 same time, I would say probably, and this is almost a certainty, looking back at some of the
0:24:44 scariest depressive episodes in my life. It’s when I had a lot of empty space.
0:24:53 And there’s an underlying fear. Even though I haven’t experienced anything close to that magnitude
0:25:01 of desperation and darkness in a very long time, there is a fear that if I create a void,
0:25:07 that is the voice that is the narrative that is going to come to dominate my thoughts. I would say
0:25:16 that therefore, my complicity serves me by avoiding that. Right. And so, if you really want to
0:25:24 transform, when will you be comfortable with the void? That’s a good question. And in my defense,
0:25:31 Your Honor, I will say that I’m about to go off the grid for a week starting this Friday.
0:25:37 So in a few days, I’ll be going completely off the grid, no phone, no nothing for a period of time.
0:25:44 So I have injected these periods. But let’s get into the messy stuff for a second, since life is
0:25:51 rarely as much of a randomized control trial as you would like. I’ve had an ongoing number of chats
0:25:59 with friends and WhatsApp and different messaging platforms. And it’s been around taking breaks,
0:26:07 creating space, chilling out. So a lot of these friends of mine have passed every hurdle and
0:26:12 objective they could have had. And goalposts keep moving, right? They want to make a million and
0:26:19 then it was 10 and then it was 20. And then once it gets indefensible, then it’s like,
0:26:23 what’s your annual compounded growth rate? And this then turns into percentages because they
0:26:29 can’t even with a straight face defend the rest of it. But what they claim to want and what
0:26:38 they believe I need is to chill out, take a break, create all this space. My experience is as social
0:26:45 animals, or at least as a person who benefits from social interaction, I do best around other
0:26:53 people. I just do. And there are, it’s not 100%, but it’s not 0%. There’s a risk that I do return
0:27:00 to some of those dark places or dark narratives. It’s not 0. So I struggle to answer the question
0:27:05 of like, when can I allow space? Because I do it in small doses, sometimes larger doses. I took
0:27:12 almost all of October last year off the grid. So perhaps you can help me to find my way to
0:27:18 answering the question you posed. You know, look, Tim, I feel like Uncle Jerry and that we speak
0:27:25 every few years, and every few years, my hell you’ve grown. I know you don’t feel that way
0:27:31 because you’re in your body. But when we first started talking, which was years and years ago,
0:27:37 this was a big struggle for you. This was a tremendous struggle. And there was a sense that
0:27:43 you might miss out. There was a sense of like you being falling behind in some sort of weird little
0:27:51 race, a race to the top. And I think the speed with which you’re able to go right to the fear of
0:27:59 the void, what Blais Pascal identified when he said that all of man’s problems stem from their
0:28:06 inability to sit alone in a room. I think you’ve got, like a lot of us, you’ve got a component of
0:28:17 that. And I also want to say I’m watching you letting go of the need to turn that void time
0:28:23 into productivity time, right? When I first started promoting the notion of sabbatical,
0:28:27 which we’ve talked about in the past, I remember dealing with a client who would say, “Well,
0:28:32 I’m going to learn Portuguese.” It’s like, “No, you’re not. You’re not going to learn Portuguese
0:28:41 in four weeks. You’re going to learn to breathe without breathe-right strips. You’re just going
0:28:48 to learn to enjoy yourself.” Now, what I hear you doing is learning to enjoy yourself,
0:28:59 which is a really powerful skill. Yeah. Yeah, it’s going to be a lifelong project,
0:29:04 which is okay. A lot of things are lifelong projects. That’s right. We got here because
0:29:11 you were asking about that process, and this is the process, right? This is the process. So,
0:29:18 for you, when you’re off the grid starting Friday, what will that experience be like for you?
0:29:24 At what point might you be anxious, and at what point might you start to relax? Because
0:29:32 are you going to be with friends this trip too? This particular example may not fit the exercise,
0:29:38 but what I’ve done for the last handful of years is every year I do a past year review,
0:29:44 rather than setting, let’s just say, blind, semi-uninformed, overly optimistic New Year’s
0:29:48 resolutions. I look back at the past year and figure out what the highs and lows looked like
0:29:55 if I were to do an 80/20 analysis. Places, people, activities, the most life-giving and the most
0:30:03 life-draining, and then I schedule time as soon as possible in blocks of one week, two weeks,
0:30:09 depending on availability, to spend time with energy and people doing energy and things, right?
0:30:16 And this particular week off the grid is going to be Alpine Alcant, which I do once every two
0:30:23 years or so, with Bo at probably between 10 and 12,000 feet for the most of it. It’s going to get
0:30:29 cold. We’re going to be eating a lot of shitty freeze-dried fruit, hopefully a bunch of trout
0:30:38 on route to finding elk. And I have just found that particular experience and the time dilation
0:30:46 that it allows to feel like a month off or two months off, it is just so regenerative for me
0:30:53 that it’s become a core piece of my annual planning, not necessarily a hunt, but that type of
0:30:58 shared experience with a small, very small group of people. So that’s what that will look like.
0:31:06 And I, in a sense, I don’t want to say I’m disallowing myself from feeling discomfort,
0:31:11 because there’s going to be incredible discomfort physically. Sleep is probably not going to be
0:31:20 fantastic. And we will be very, very, very active, but it’s not the same as doing a silent retreat
0:31:29 and sitting there watching your monkey brain just contort itself for 16 hours a day.
0:31:36 It’s the kind of retreat where like layers of your skin are stripped away because you’re so raw
0:31:41 and rugged out in the world. And that’s just going to drop you into your body
0:31:49 and drop you more and more into the land. And that’s a place of nourishment for you, for sure.
0:32:00 Finally, a special podcast on what happens when Israelis and Palestinians drink ayahuasca
0:32:06 together, featuring an episode from the new psychedelics-focused podcast Altered States,
0:32:12 made possible in part by the theorist UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship.
0:32:19 You can find Altered States on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite
0:32:27 podcasts. Welcome to Altered States. I’m Ariel Zumaross. This week, we are traveling thousands
0:32:33 of miles away from where I am in Oregon to the Middle East to hear about another kind of psychedelic
0:32:39 experiment. This one involves ayahuasca. Producer Shayna Shealy brings us this story.
0:32:46 So, Shayna, welcome. First off, I know some folks might be familiar with ayahuasca,
0:32:51 but others have probably never heard of it. Tell me, what exactly is ayahuasca?
0:32:58 Yeah, so ayahuasca, people typically drink it as a sort of tea, and it’s made out of a vine from
0:33:04 South America, which is often brewed together with another plant. It’s a type of shrub. And that
0:33:10 shrub contains something called DMT, or dimethyltryptamine. So what do we know about what ayahuasca
0:33:16 does to the brain? So usually about 30 minutes after drinking it, some people start having these
0:33:23 hallucinations. Others have out-of-body experiences or euphoric feelings. There’s often vomiting
0:33:29 involved. For some people, there are visions. Researchers have found that ayahuasca can promote
0:33:35 what’s called neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to adapt and build new connections.
0:33:40 In this case, increased adaptability is thought to be able to help people heal from traumatic
0:33:49 experiences. A few years ago, you came across these peace activists who were using ayahuasca
0:33:55 to heal, and eventually you started reporting on that story. So can you tell me more?
0:34:00 So these activists are Israeli and Palestinian, and they gather to drink ayahuasca and attempt to
0:34:06 heal trauma, both personal trauma and collective trauma. And I knew a bunch of them from previous
0:34:12 reporting in the region, and I was really interested just in the links that these people went to to
0:34:24 build empathy. And then October 7th happened. Suddenly, the work of healing was interrupted by
0:34:31 this massive shockwave, and these activists sort of looked to the group and to one person in particular
0:34:37 to help them navigate it all. That person was Palestinian peace and justice activist, Sammy
0:34:44 Awad. And that’s why your story starts with Sammy in his home in late summer 2023.
0:35:02 In Sammy Awad’s kitchen near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem,
0:35:08 a small group of people are gathered around a table. A handful of Israelis, a woman from
0:35:14 Brazil, one guy from Ramallah. They’re all sitting there around plates of eggs and zatar,
0:35:20 watermelon, balls of cured labna and olive oil. They were laughing, eating breakfast.
0:35:27 Sammy describes his home as sort of an oasis for Israeli and Palestinian activists from all over,
0:35:32 it’s where they can be together and find refuge from the harsh reality of living under forced
0:35:39 separation. Sammy’s home office is filled with hundreds of books on meditation,
0:35:45 yoga, psychedelic medicine, healing. He’s in his 50s, and he’s been working in the world of
0:35:55 peace building for over 25 years. Sammy’s peace work started when he was 12 years old. He was
0:36:01 with his uncle, an influential nonviolent peace activist. They were planting trees on a Palestinian
0:36:06 farmer’s land that was under threat of confiscation by Jewish settlers. I remember Mark was saying,
0:36:11 no matter what happens, you’re here to plant trees. The group of activists was mixed,
0:36:17 Palestinian and Israeli. They were hours into planting when a group of Israeli soldiers approached
0:36:21 them. The soldier coming, pulling the tree out of the ground that I was planting and throwing it
0:36:28 on some rocks. And in that moment, there was this split decision, what do I do? Because as a 12-year-old,
0:36:35 you know, what options I could run away, I could hide, run to my uncle crying, you know, like a
0:36:40 12-year-old, you know, I was like, you’re here to plant the trees. And I decided I’m going to go back
0:36:47 and bring the tree and plant it. And I did that, that sense of feeling, wow, empowerment and losing the fear.
0:36:55 That action changed my life. It made me actually want to commit my life to this work.
0:36:59 The work of peace building through nonviolence.
0:37:05 Days after Sammy went with his uncle to plant trees, he learned that the land had been confiscated
0:37:12 by Israeli settlers, that all the trees they had planted were uprooted. Still, Sammy would go on
0:37:17 to plant even more trees. By the time he was in his 20s, he was organizing boycotts and peace
0:37:25 demonstrations, sometimes alongside Israeli peace activists. But his actions kept getting shut down.
0:37:33 He was beaten, imprisoned, put on lockdown. And then, in 1993, came the Oslo Accords,
0:37:37 a deal between Israeli and Palestinian leadership that was supposed to kick off a
0:37:43 peace process in the region, including limited Palestinian self-governance in parts of the
0:37:49 West Bank in Gaza Strip. Then President Bill Clinton served as a diplomatic broker.
0:37:56 Let us today pay tribute to the leaders who had the courage to lead their people toward peace,
0:38:03 away from the scars of battle, the wounds and the losses of the past toward a brighter tomorrow.
0:38:10 The world today thanks Prime Minister Rabin, Foreign Minister Perez and Chairman Arafat.
0:38:21 Sammy was optimistic. There was billions of dollars of funds coming to create and sustain
0:38:27 that peace that was being created. And all of a sudden, you started seeing NGOs begin to emerge,
0:38:33 begin to rise, money pumping in like crazy. He built his own organization, Holy Land Trust.
0:38:40 It became well known for nonviolent activism trainings. But even with this tireless dedication
0:38:45 to peace, the world around Sammy became more and more violent.
0:38:51 Both sides committed to negotiating an end to the conflict and charting a path to Palestinian
0:38:58 self-rule in the West Bank in Gaza. It triggered a violent backlash from religious extremists
0:39:04 among both Israelis and Palestinians, including Hamas. We’re beginning to see this continuous
0:39:10 loop of failures in the peace process. And in 1995, a right-wing Jewish extremist
0:39:18 assassinated Israeli Prime Minister, Itzhak Rabin. This big plan towards peace began to unravel
0:39:24 almost immediately. Over the next decade, there was the expansion of Israeli settlements in the
0:39:30 West Bank. Deadly attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories. During that time,
0:39:34 we began to understand the need to heal collective trauma as part of peacemaking,
0:39:37 as well, understanding how much the past influences us.
0:39:45 It was 2007. Sammy was in his mid-30s and had begun to take an interest in reading up on trauma
0:39:51 when he was invited to go on a pretty unconventional trip to the death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau.
0:39:57 He spent eight days there, sleeping at the camp, eating all his meals there.
0:40:02 So we were there every day, doing our own ceremony and prayer and visuals,
0:40:07 remembering the people that died. I had, like, lists of names of people that we were all given
0:40:12 to recite continuously. So, like, eight hour meditations we were doing. I began to really see
0:40:19 that, “Wow, this is something that is not an incident that just happened in the past. This is
0:40:29 something that continues until this day.” Pre-COVID, around 40,000 Israeli students visited concentration
0:40:35 camps as part of their school curriculum each year. The trips are sponsored by Israel’s Education
0:40:41 Ministry, typically right before mandatory military service. While Sammy was there,
0:40:47 he kept seeing school group after school group. “Israeli kids with Israeli flags wrapped around
0:40:54 them, big flags and they’re walking in and singing. I heard Israeli teachers tell these kids the
0:41:00 Holocaust is not over. As Jews, we are always threatened, we’re always attacked. Many people
0:41:04 want to destroy us. And, of course, then it’s followed by, this is why we have to be strong,
0:41:08 this is why we have to be resilient, this is why security above everything, and this is why we
0:41:14 never trust anybody. What the hell is happening here? Like, how can you be even talking about peace
0:41:22 with somebody when the foundation is we don’t trust them?” That night, Sammy slept in Birkenau
0:41:28 in the barracks where children were imprisoned. He was there with a Jewish person from Israel
0:41:36 and a Muslim person from Bosnia. “We just had candles and our very thick coats and sleeping bags
0:41:43 and just remembering. I like being in that place where these children were there and were dying.”
0:41:47 But also having these discussions about this issue of inherited trauma.
0:41:54 I began to realize that this whole peace process that we were in, that I was in,
0:42:02 that I was even supporting and advocating for, was embedded from a space of existential fear
0:42:08 and threat. The Palestinians, we have a similar narrative that our existence is on the line. We
0:42:12 need to do something about it. If we don’t do something about it, we will cease to be as a people.
0:42:19 What happened to us is too shameful, too painful. We don’t talk about it.
0:42:26 Sammy says a lot of Palestinians don’t really acknowledge the full scope of pain that their
0:42:33 families have endured. Like the 1948 Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven
0:42:40 from their homes, are really any other traumatic events. We have a generation growing up not knowing
0:42:45 what happened and listening to propaganda. And the propaganda is we are resilient, we are strong,
0:42:50 we will return, we will defeat them. Not acknowledging, like, there is grief that needs to happen.
0:42:54 There is pain that needs to be expressed to what happened to us as a people. There’s a healing.
0:42:58 But to not address these issues makes us unhealthy in how we’re dealing with things.
0:43:07 When he got back to Bethlehem, this is what Sammy wanted to focus on.
0:43:14 Healing. To address the trauma that gets passed down from generation to generation.
0:43:22 He read books on this intergenerational trauma. He studied the Rwandan genocide and the healing
0:43:28 journey that followed. He also met with Israeli-studying trauma, including faculty at Hebrew Union
0:43:34 College. They developed tools for Israelis and Palestinians to work through their pain together.
0:43:40 At the same time, foreign governments were pouring billions of dollars into the region to advance
0:43:47 these peaceful coexistence programs between Israelis and Palestinians. There were summer camps,
0:43:52 organizations that raised up the voices of parents who had lost children, theater troops,
0:44:00 art projects. And still, around two decades after Oslo, Sammy felt things were worse than ever.
0:44:05 You see the wars in Gaza, you see settler violence towards Palestinians, you see how
0:44:09 Palestinians are treating each other. What do all of this money, all of this investment,
0:44:16 where is it all? All of this peace process is 25 years of negotiating. The reality is as messed up
0:44:22 as it’s ever been. Things now are worse than any time before. All of the peace work, all of the money
0:44:27 that was spent. And so for me, I was in this place, we need something new. We need something new.
0:44:33 That’s when he got a phone call. It was from an Israeli couple around 2012.
0:44:38 When they say we have a peace project that we want to involve you with.
0:44:45 Sammy rolled his eyes. More Israelis who think they have the answers. He almost hung up.
0:44:49 And the woman like started yelling at me. No, we have to come and we have to meet you.
0:44:52 And it’s very important that don’t bring anybody and it’s just you.
0:44:59 His interest was peaked. He went to meet them. I said, three things came to my mind.
0:45:04 Other, this is some money laundering scheme, something to do with drugs or something to do
0:45:10 with weird sex. And she just started laughing, laughing. I said, it has to do with the second one.
0:45:13 And then the guy looked at me. He looked at me straight in the eyes and he said,
0:45:19 have you done medicine before? He was talking about the psychedelic brew Ayahuasca.
0:45:23 As a man explained his vision, all Sammy could think about were the dangers.
0:45:27 Sammy says drugs are kind of taboo in Palestinian society.
0:45:34 It’s not just illegal. It’s immoral. It’s legitimate. It goes against religion.
0:45:40 It goes against social values. People who drink Ayahuasca have described emotional breakthroughs,
0:45:47 conversations with anthropomorphic spirits, catharsis of traumatic events, and connections
0:45:53 with ancestors. So even though Sammy was terrified, he thought it might be worth trying.
0:45:59 He traveled through checkpoints into Israel to join the couple for an Ayahuasca ceremony.
0:46:05 He downed a cup full of the sludgy tea and soon he was vomiting.
0:46:12 And now here are the bios for all the guests.
0:46:18 My guest today, one of my favorites, Elizabeth Gilbert. She is the number one New York Times
0:46:24 bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love, as well as several other international bestsellers.
0:46:29 She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award,
0:46:34 and the Penn Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, City of Girls, was named an instant New York Times
0:46:40 bestseller, a rollicking, sexy tale of the New York City theater world during the 1940s.
0:46:45 You can go to elizabethgilbert.substack.com to subscribe to Letters from Love with Elizabeth
0:46:50 Gilbert. Her newsletter, which has more than 120,000 subscribers, you can find her
0:46:54 on Instagram @elizabeth_gilbert_writer.
0:47:05 This time we have a very special episode. This is always a listener favorite,
0:47:09 a recording with my close friend Kevin Rose. Kevin Rose, for those who don’t know,
0:47:15 at Kevin Rose, everywhere. He is indeed a world-class entrepreneur, serial founder,
0:47:22 investor in the smallest of seed rounds up to the largest of companies. He is a full spectrum,
0:47:29 full stack capitalist. I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. But we did this interview in person
0:47:34 at his house in the format of The Random Show. And what we always do, and we’ve done this for
0:47:41 10 years, I suppose now. We trade our latest discoveries, our latest findings, what our
0:47:47 friends have sent to us. And I think it is one of our best. There’s tons of actionable takeaways,
0:47:54 lots of laughing fits, and that might have something to do with the fact that Kevin invited
0:47:59 his friend and bartender to serve us cocktails. We cover dozens of topics, new projects, what I’ve
0:48:05 done on my recent sabbatical, Kevin’s latest findings and shenanigans, real vampire protocols.
0:48:10 Apparently, that’s a thing. And much, much more. It even includes some incredibly bizarre footage
0:48:18 of Kevin having his face assaulted by experimental technology. We videotaped that live together,
0:48:24 and video is not at all required to enjoy this episode whatsoever. Audio is great.
0:48:27 But for some extra hilarity, if you want to see that video I mentioned,
0:48:33 and more, simply go to youtube.com/timferis, F-E-R-R-I-S-S.
0:48:43 Sometimes I get not just a two for one, but a hundred for one when I interview someone
0:48:50 who also helps world-class performers, in addition to being such themselves, to get past
0:48:55 sticking points, to redefine themselves, to reinvent themselves, to chart new paths forward.
0:49:00 And my guest today, Jerry Kelowna, is such a person. He is the CEO and co-founder of Reboot.io,
0:49:05 an executive coaching and leadership development firm dedicated to the notion that better humans
0:49:10 make better leaders. But prior to that, he was an operator in many different ways.
0:49:14 Prior to being a coach, he was a partner with J.P. Morgan Partners, the private equity arm of J.P.
0:49:21 Morgan Chase. He also led New York City-based Flatiron Partners, which he founded in 1996
0:49:25 with partner Fred Wilson. Flatiron went on to become one of the nation’s most successful
0:49:30 early-stage investment programs. At age 25, he was editor-in-chief of Information Week Magazine.
0:49:35 He’s written a bunch of books. We’ll mention them at the end of the conversation. But one is Reboot.
0:49:41 The other is Reunion, both highly recommended. You can find his company, Reboot, at Reboot.io,
0:49:48 and Jerry on Twitter and Instagram @JerryKelowna, C-O-L-O-N-N-A. And he has been on the podcast
0:49:54 twice before. He is a fan favorite. People always take a ton away from our conversations.
0:50:00 And I recap some of my favorite aspects of those in this episode. And we cover a lot of ground.
0:50:04 There are a lot of stories I’ve never heard. We have a lot of laughs,
0:50:12 almost a few cries on my side. We dig into his toolkit. The questions that he uses with himself
0:50:19 and with clients that I have adopted is some of my favorites. There is a lot to learn. And it was a
0:50:25 hell of an enjoyable conversation. It was a walk and talk. And I have done this before where I am
0:50:31 out in nature today. It is a beautiful bluebird sky day in the mountains and to sit in a dark room,
0:50:38 staring at a screen seemed like an insult to nature, complete travesty, totally unnecessary. So I have
0:50:43 high fidelity recording equipment. That is what I’m using right now. It is a headset. I am sitting
0:50:51 10 feet from a beautiful river where I’m watching the eddies swirl around rocks. So why not? Get out
0:50:55 and move. If you can listen to this while you’re moving, I encourage you to do so. Audio is a
0:51:01 secondary activity. So if you can walk and talk or walk and listen while I’m walking and talking,
0:51:05 all the better for you, me, everybody involved.
0:51:14 For this episode, I am doing something very different. I’m actually featuring
0:51:20 a special episode from a brand new podcast called Altered States. And I listened to a lot of podcasts.
0:51:26 I test out a lot of podcasts. I found this one to be particularly impressive. It’s very well
0:51:31 reported, very well researched, very well produced. Here’s the teaser for the episode that you’re
0:51:37 about to hear. It’s not a long one, but it is a very nuanced one, a very powerful one. Quote,
0:51:42 “For the last couple of years, producer Shayna Shealy has been following Israeli and Palestinian
0:51:47 peace activists who have been coming together to drink the psychedelic brew ayahuasca in an effort
0:51:52 to heal their collective intergenerational trauma. It seemed to be helping them when suddenly the
0:51:58 region erupts into chaos and violence.” Shayna Shealy as background was a fellow from the Ferris
0:52:03 UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship. That’s how I actually heard about the podcast.
0:52:09 And the fellowship offers $10,000 reporting grants per year to journalists reporting in-depth
0:52:14 print and audio stories on the science, policy, business, and culture of this new era of psychedelics.
0:52:19 It’s been going for a few years now, and a lot of amazing pieces have come out of it. The fellowship
0:52:24 is supported by my foundation, the Saise Foundation. You can find that s-a-i-s-e-i,
0:52:28 foundation.org, if you want to see what types of projects and grants and so on we’ve made.
0:52:34 And it is made possible in collaboration with Michael Pollan, Mali Awalin, and others at UC
0:52:40 Berkeley. So thanks to the entire team over there. Altered States, the podcast, looks at how people
0:52:44 are taking psychedelics, who has access to them. They actually have an amazing episode where they
0:52:49 walk through in real time, someone’s first experience with psilocybin, how they’re regulated,
0:52:55 who stands to profit, and what these substances might offer us as individuals and as a society.
0:53:00 It’s hosted by journalist Aril Dumras, and you can find it wherever you find your podcasts.
0:53:05 Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take
0:53:10 off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday
0:53:15 that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people
0:53:20 subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
0:53:26 Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share
0:53:31 the coolest things I’ve found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It’s kind
0:53:36 of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums
0:53:42 perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends,
0:53:48 including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field.
0:53:55 And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short,
0:54:00 a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.
0:54:04 If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser,
0:54:15 tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.
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, listeners 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.
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It’s free, it’s always going to be free, and you can subscribe now at tim.blog/friday.
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Timestamps:
Start [00:00]
Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:03:26]
The Random Show with Kevin Rose: [00:08:03]
Jerry Colonna: [00:17:29]
Altered States: [00:32:21]
Full episode titles:
Tim and Uncle Jerry Tackle Life, Big Questions, Business, Parenting, and Disco Duck (#767)
What Happens When Israelis and Palestinians Drink Ayahuasca Together? (#768)
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