The Tim Ferriss Show - #603: In Case You Missed It: May 2022 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

Starting point is 00:00:00 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed the perfect time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types

Starting point is 00:00:31 to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life. This is a special in-between-isode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month. Features a short clip from each conversation in one place, so you can jump around, get a feel for both the episode and the guest, and then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes. View this episode as a buffet to whet your appetite. It's a lot of fun. We had fun putting it together. And for the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode's description, probably right below wherever you press play in your podcast app. Or as usual, you can head to Tim.blog slash podcast and find all the details there. Please enjoy.

Starting point is 00:01:14 First up, Edward O. Thorpe. Edward was one of the world's best blackjack players and investors, and his hedge funds were profitable every year for 29 years. He is the author of Beat the Dealer, Beat the Market, and A Man for All Markets, From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market. I want to take a step back just for people who are listening and say that there are many reasons that I wanted to have this conversation with you. And it is not specifically related to gambling in the sense that there are many things that interest me about your life and your thinking. And my hope is that for people listening, they get a window into at least two

Starting point is 00:02:06 things. One would be your methods of thinking, frames and works for thinking, how you think about thinking, and then also your personal approach to health and fitness. Because as people may have picked up with some of the references, could you tell everyone listening what your age is as we speak today? I'm 89. And for those people who can't see video, you look like you're in your 60s. And I am just beyond excited to hop right into that. So we're going to jump around quite a bit. We want to do this exactly chronologically, but could you perhaps describe your approach to health and fitness? And you could tackle that starting wherever you like. Is it just that you were given the right parents and out of the box have tremendous genetics? Is there more to it? How would you begin to unpack this?

Starting point is 00:03:04 I kind of wandered into health and fitness by accident initially, just like I've wandered into blackjack and roulette. I'm curious and always looking for things to understand. I like the idea of self-improvement too. So I was walking behind the student co-op one night when I was about 20 and heard a bunch of clanking. And I looked down in the basement and there were some fairly burly guys down there pumping iron. And I walked in and I said, you know, this is a waste of time. This is ridiculous. So one of them said to me, I'll bet you a milkshake

Starting point is 00:03:34 that if you work out with us for a year, just one hour an evening, three evenings a week, you'll double your strength in a set of exercises that they describe. So I said, I don't believe it. Let's try it. So I went down and the four exercises were the squat with a barbell on a rack, the military overhead press, the bench press, and deadlift. It wasn't deadlift. It was something else. I forget the fourth one at the moment, it wasn't deadlift it was something else i forget the

Starting point is 00:04:07 fourth one at the moment but i'll think of it yeah clean and jerk maybe who knows or bent row it was something along those lines but a compound exercise like like the others yeah so there was a fourth exercise so anyhow what happened was i was a uh I wouldn't say 98-pound weakling, but maybe a 150-pound weakling. And at the end of the year, I could military press 185, which was at least double what I started with. I could bench press 375. I could do 15 at 325 and I could squat with 375 I could do sets

Starting point is 00:04:51 I forget what the other one was I wish I could remember it in any case I was astounded that all this came to pass so maybe pay attention to strength at least and some time went by and I did a little swimming because I got interested in scuba diving. And then one day in my 30s, I was jogging along the beach with my brother-in-law. And he said, let's go for a little jog. I went for about a quarter of a mile, and I was gasping.

Starting point is 00:05:22 I was 35 then, I remember. I said, this is awful. I'm in terrible shape. I have for about a quarter mile and I was gasping. I was 35 then, I remember. I said, this is awful. I'm in terrible shape. I have to do something about this. So they had a book on aerobics by somebody named Ken Cooper, who had a lab down in Texas and started, in large part, the aerobics revolution that swept the country. So I started keeping track of his points. He gave you points for various degrees of aerobic effort. I think if you did a mile in between 12 and 15 minutes, you got one point and you did between like 10 and a half and 12, you got two points and so forth. So I started trying to run a mile a day

Starting point is 00:05:58 and I did that. Well, I ran a mile every Saturday to start with. And then one Saturday, I decided to try a little further. So I ran two and then three. And then I said, I'll try a 10-mile race. So I got under a 10-mile race, which was kind of foolish. But I finished and I did reasonably well. So then I said, I'll try a marathon. So then I got into marathon running. And I really liked that. I did that for about 20 years until I hurt my back weightlifting. All my bad events have been from pushing myself athletically. So hurting my back was probably the worst thing. It herniated the discs. So I had to stop heavy pounding, heavy running. But 20 years of road running, well, more than that, maybe 25 years, and marathoning gave me, I think, a very good base for going forward. And so now I do things like I'll walk about three miles three or four times a week, and I spend about two days in the gym doing stretching

Starting point is 00:07:00 and strength exercising, core strengthening, and so on. A lot of emphasis on core because of my back, which is just fine now. I was just going to ask how your approach seems like it has evolved and changed over time, say after 50 years of age or in the last, say, 40 years or so. Are there any particular changes that you made in addition to the core strengthening to support the back that you think have contributed to your longevity? I've evolved. I try to listen to my body. So I do what I enjoy. And the rule I started to follow was some is better than none and more up to a point is better than less. So there's no excuse. I mean, if you tell yourself, gee, I'm not going to do this because I can't do the whole program, that's a big mistake.

Starting point is 00:07:49 Just start doing it. And I find that if you start doing it and you get used to it, you find more and more things that you kind of like that you could build on, and then you just keep getting better at it. I was probably in my best shape at around 55 to 65 because of all this. That is inspiring. I am just about to turn 45. And even amongst my, let's just say, age cohort, it's very common for me to see people giving up even in their 40s and blaming it on age. But with you sitting in front of me describing your trajectory and sort of adaptive habits, I feel like those excuses don't hold a whole lot of weight.

Starting point is 00:08:34 One thing that's pretty neat is race walking. I did that for a while. And that's something that is lower impact than running. But you can get the same kind of aerobic workout. So that's something I direct people towards. What does your strength training look like now or over the last few decades? Well, as I get older, it declines. I get weaker, and it gets a little harder to do things. And I feel a little tired where I can't do as many reps or sets of things. So I have a mix of things that I do now. I will do squats, usually now just body weight. And I'll do dumbbell squats or lunges with a lot of emphasis on one leg

Starting point is 00:09:23 and then shift and do a lot of weight on the other leg. Do pull-ups. I think the best I've done recently, which is not very much, is four underhand pull-ups and two overhand pull-ups. Ten years ago, I could do a dozen of each. Well, I do a lot of back exercises regularly on the mat, and that's very helpful for keeping my back in shape and keeping my core in pretty good condition. Next up, Morgan Fallon, a nine-time Emmy-nominated executive

Starting point is 00:09:57 producer, director, and cinematographer. Morgan shot, directed, and produced throughout the 103-episode run of the series Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown. So let's talk about different types of high standards. Could you elaborate on Tony's particular species of high standards. And if you have any funny stories, that's always great. But any stories that come to mind are also super helpful. And just so you know where this is going, I'm wondering how it contrasts with, say, a Michael Mann. Or I don't think you've had experience with James Cameron, but James Cameron, another person who's really famous

Starting point is 00:10:41 for having extremely high standards. And where the line is between being brutally direct and turning into something else. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I do. I'd love to explore that because this is something I struggle with also. So speaking at the very high end, you were speaking about the Michael Manns, the James Camerons, the level of expectation is never achievable. It's never good enough. They do not have a level where it's good enough. It can always be better. You have to be that way. Yes, they are assholes. I will say it straight up. Michael Mann is an

Starting point is 00:11:18 asshole and he's known that way in the industry, but he has to be. That is the only way that you get that caliber of project done. You want to get through a Titanic, you are going he has to be. That is the only way that you get that caliber of project done. You want to get through a Titanic, you are going to have to be an asshole, 100%. And the same is true in high caliber kitchens. You want to run a high caliber kitchen? There is only one way to do it. And you are not friends with your crew. You are in charge and it's your responsibility. And I think that Tony approached it from that perspective, at least initially. He had extremely high expectations that I think were based on his history of knowing how to run an effective kitchen. And at the same time, he had all kinds of his own neuroses and stuff that bled into that.

Starting point is 00:12:04 And you see it in roadrunner actually one of the parts i really liked was when he talks about hey i'm not going to stop for the cameras you guys learn how to get fast you get fast i do what i do and that was i love because i could do it i was fast and i loved working fast like that. So yeah, super high standards. With Tony, though, different than like Michael and James Cameron. And I have not worked with James Cameron. I know a number of people who have, though. I don't think you're ever going to get that moment with Michael or with someone like Michael Mann or someone like James Cameron, where you're like sitting down and drinking beers with them out in the desert and talking about life and things that really mean something. And with Tony, you did. And that was the difference. He was actually, he was a friend and a very, very important friend who I miss every single day. He was not those guys.

Starting point is 00:12:58 He wasn't an asshole. He could be an asshole. He could be an asshole all the time. He could be incredibly frustrating to work with. But there was something under it. There was something very loving there. There was something very caring. And once you were kind of in his sphere, he really did care about people.

Starting point is 00:13:16 So from that perspective, it was different. From the work perspective, though, he wasn't going to mince words in the same way that he wasn't going to mince words when a dish isn't right in the kitchen. You can't. It doesn't work that way. Unless you want 20 fucking risottos sent back, you better get the first one right. And if someone fucks it up, you better let them know that they fucked it up big time right now immediately and correct the problem. And that was a lot of the process with tony in post for sure in the field it was more like things that were cumbersome or inconvenience tony he didn't like messiness he didn't like sitting around and like you know that when shit goes south on a crew i

Starting point is 00:13:59 mean my god we just look like a bunch of chickens with our heads cut off running around trying to make shit happen or trying to make shit work. And there's a lot of reasons that that can happen. You know, he didn't like any of that. And you'd hear about unfucking yourself quite a bit in those moments. But when it came to posts, like, that's a much more calculated thing. And, like, I would send him rough cuts. And everyone has been through this.

Starting point is 00:14:23 I would send him rough cuts where from everyone has been through this. I would send him rough cuts where, from the very beginning, he's like, what possible reason do you have for presenting me with this piece of garbage? I didn't work so hard, dot, dot, dot, in full caps. You didn't work so hard to have your work flushed down the toilet by this asshole editor. And you're like, oh, okay. Are we going to go in a constructive direction? What do you... But he would. And that was the thing about him is that the good ones are right. Michael Mann is much of an asshole as he was to people. You'd have to be like, well, he's right, though. He's right. He knows. And he's right. He's not wrong. With Tony, also, 90% of the time, he was right. And it wasn't up to the standards. What was cool about Tony is that then he would go on and work the material. You would start reforming it. You'd start working with him. He'd give constructive notes. And that's something that I tell people or try to explain to people. And I think that

Starting point is 00:15:35 people should know about him. And something I do kind of wish they had said in Roadrunner too. Tony was, you go on his Wikipedia and it's like celebrity chef. And it's like, yeah, that's not how I think of him. And he wasn't that great of a chef. Also, just that label doesn't, and I didn't know him at all, but the label doesn't make any sense. Sounds so hollow to me, given the breadth of what he did. Yeah, totally. Right. A hundred percent. To me, what he was more than anything else within my sphere of working with him was he was an absolutely incredible television producer. And he understood story. He understood story structure.

Starting point is 00:16:15 He understood cinematography. He understood using the tools of film to make something that was cinematic. Even though we were making our little show on TV, it was like it always wanted to be a feature film. And so we were using our limited resources to get as close to that benchmark as possible. It should look beautiful. The framing should be great. The lighting should be great. The music needs to be great. The editing, the pace, the buildup, the way that you present subjects, all of that stuff needs to be at the highest level. And that's what people are seeing. I think when they respond to the show and the kind of response that the show has gotten, which is really incredible,

Starting point is 00:16:58 they're seeing a couple of things. Authenticity, because we never did shit twice. We never faked anything. That's all real. Everything you see is real. We didn't set up shots. We didn't call cut. We didn't call action. We got fast. We did what he told us to do. We got fast. You see authenticity and you see just a very, very high level of production value given our resources. And I think it's something that something that I constantly want to point out to people is look at the weight classes that we were punching in. We were way out of our group. We're going out on shows where we're shooting for seven days in the field.

Starting point is 00:17:36 We had a $3,000 external equipment rental budget and we're getting cinematography nominations. My last cinematography nomination was up against free solo it was up against free solo we're punching way out of our class and that was because of the very high standards and that can only come from the top we were down with it because over the time he was powerful enough and the the show was magnetic enough to pull in people who were very talented, who were gifted, who really wanted to do good work and push the genre as far as they could. But that comes from the top. And that was Tony. That's what you get from that impeccable nature of like, no, everything needs to be good. And also, Tony was so fucking cool that you like you you really wanted to please him on my

Starting point is 00:18:27 wall i have framed the best email i ever got from him it was when i sent him the first act of the nigeria show that we shot in legos and it just says out fucking standing with two exclamation points and then under it says couldn't be happier and i framed it and i put it on my wall so maybe that's a little bit i mean that's like the highest moment of my career so next up richard wiseman author of the luck factor the scientific study of the lucky mind and 59 seconds a little, change a lot. You mentioned dreams earlier. You're fascinated by dreaming. Why are you fascinated by dreaming? Because I can't believe how much goes on in my head when I... I mean, think about it.

Starting point is 00:19:23 All of our heads. We fall asleep and then you wake up eight hours later and you don't remember a thing. You think, oh, I've been out of action for that time. And what we know is that people are going through a very predictable sleep cycle. There's all sorts of repair going on to the brain and the body. And then about four or five times, you go into dream sleep. And you have these really weird dreams. And what's phenomenal is the research now showing us that these dreams are not random. They are our minds working through anxieties and our worries and trying to either knock the edge off of some of those anxieties or problem solve. And what I find incredible is the number of times I have woken up with a solution to an experiment

Starting point is 00:20:12 or an idea or a book fully formed in my head the first thing in the morning. It's happened to me again and again, and often with magic, actually. So a friend of mine was doing a television show here, and I wasn't really thinking about it. When I woke up in the morning, boom, I'd got the entire item in my head, even to down where all the camera angles were and everything. And I just find that incredible. There's so much going on offline, as it were. I share this interest. I'm reading a book right now by Matt Walker, Why We Sleep. And for those who are curious, Matt is a very credible scientist. He really knows his neuroscience.

Starting point is 00:20:51 Fantastic book. It goes more into the why and how and specifics of sleep without a specific focus on dreaming. But I read a book when I was in college. So the very beginning, undergrad, I was in neuroscience for a period of time, then couldn't do the animal testing necessary to work in the lab I wanted to be part of, which was with Barry Jacobs. Not saying I oppose it completely, I just couldn't be hands-on with it at the time. And I read a book named Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, which I found to be very practical. And I don't know if you have any thoughts on Lucid Dreaming, but it does seem like you can experimentally demonstrate that it exists just through IQing and tracking. And you can improve it as a trainable skill through

Starting point is 00:21:38 journaling and waking up at odd hours and doing various things. Like I think mnemonic-induced lucid dreaming, MILD is one acronym. Do you have any experience with or thoughts on lucid dreaming? Unfortunately, no. I mean, I did a book called Sleep School, Night School, sorry. It'd be good if I remembered the title of my own book,

Starting point is 00:21:57 Night School and Sleep Deprivation. I haven't slept well for years. No, Night School. And so I contacted Stephen in that, and he was very gracious talking about lucid dreaming. I really wish I could do it. It sounds phenomenal. I've only had one lucid dream in my life, which I woke up and I was in a shopping mall. I mean, in the lucid dream. And I was only partially in control. I mean, good lucid dreamers can do whatever they want, but I wasn't. I was only partially in control. I mean, good lucid dreamers can do whatever they want, but I wasn't.

Starting point is 00:22:25 I was only partially in control. And I saw myself, felt myself going to a shop to buy a shirt, and that was it. And I was so annoyed with my brain because I could have gone flying. I could have met a celebrity I've never met. I could have done all these amazing things, and instead, my brilliantly creative brain did a thing that I've done many times in real life and actually really isn't very interesting. That is my only experience with lucid dreaming.

Starting point is 00:22:57 I love dreaming and I find that very helpful. I just can't get the lucid thing. I used to, I know it's terrible. I used to have night terrors. I used to suffer from night terrors a lot, which if people don't know, it's where you sit up, you've got your eyes open. Normally it's about 90 minutes into the night and you scream out and you think there's a demonic entity there or something like that. And if you're sleeping next to somebody else, this wakes them up and they're properly awake at that point. You yourself are still in deep sleep and so you go straight back

Starting point is 00:23:28 to sleep and they're sitting up shaking going, oh my goodness, what's the problem? And they can't get back to sleep at all. So it's worse for them than it is for you. Yeah, I had a lot of those for a while and that's what got really me interested in sleep. I was thinking, what is going on in my little head that I should see these demonic entities. Well, that's what's quite good about having those, is that 90 minutes in, you can't sleep and you're a bit bored. And you think, well, you know, let's make life a bit more interesting from a partner. You can sit up and scream. They wake up and then you go back to sleep and pretend you had a night terror. The upside of night terrrors by Richard Wiseman.

Starting point is 00:24:08 Now that's a great book title. The Upside of Night Terrors is a great book title. So I do not frequently have nightmares, but I had a night terror a few nights ago. And I woke up screaming and scared the shit out of my girlfriend, who then stiff-armed me like a reverse clothesline to try to keep me down because she's afraid of me lashing out and kicking her or punching her. Because this happens every six months or so. Yeah. It was a very, very exciting evening. I will say on the lucid dreaming side, in my senior year of high school, I got to the point where I could actually practice my sport at the time, which was, let's call it Olympic-style wrestling. In the U.S., it would be collegiate-style wrestling with a coach I'd never met at the time. It was John Smith out of Oklahoma.

Starting point is 00:24:56 He was very, very famous. But I was actually able to consistently practice a skill that transferred, it seemed to have some transference to the real world, which I found almost unbelievable. I'm sorry that you were buying a shirt and it would be a bummer if I were to only end up doing my taxes when I induced lucidity. But hold a second, this means that you can lucid dream. I can, yeah, I can lucid dream, but I will say that it is a very perishable skill. So I got to the point, end of high school, and then transferring over to, say, sophomore year in college, where I could, if I were journaling on a daily basis, immediately upon waking. And if you don't have any dream recall, trying to induce lucidity is pointless, largely.

Starting point is 00:25:46 So those two seem to be closely correlated, or the development of one seems to be closely correlated to the other. Or I could induce lucidity pretty consistently, at least once a night. It becomes easier during longer extended REM periods. So let's just say, or very early morning, which is why some of the techniques have you wake up around 4am and then do a few things and go back to bed. But if I don't do the journaling, forget about it, then it's effectively non-existent. So my non-creative mind sent me shirt shopping. I suspect you do far more interesting things in

Starting point is 00:26:20 your lucid dreams. Other than practicing sport, what do you do? Oh, you can fly around and have sex with everybody. Those are kind of the two most common if people are developing this. Those are where they usually self-indulge the most in the beginning. And my experience was, in the very early stages, it was very similar to your shirt-buying experience, right? You would have a glimpse of lucidity doing something really mundane, and then you would wake up or you would slip back into non-lucid sleep. So it does seem to accrue, and there are, hopefully this doesn't make me sound like a lunatic, I think it's a very, for me at least through direct experience, a very developable skill. You can begin to extend

Starting point is 00:26:59 your periods of lucidity using different techniques that seem to have some reliable effect. It is a skill that is of great interest to me, but it takes so much work on the journaling training side that it's just generally not a super high priority. Also waking up at like four in the morning to increase the frequency is not very appealing given that I already have insomnia. What else have you learned about sleep and improving sleep? And why did you stop having night terrors if you stopped? Yeah, I did. They are related a little bit to anxiety and also related to being in a warm room. So actually, if you sleep in an icebox, essentially, they pretty much go away. In terms of night terrors because you mentioned your girlfriend they're worried about you lashing out i think receive wisdom is not to touch the person who's having the night terror because often they can interpret that as being the demonic entity

Starting point is 00:27:53 attacking them and they will lash out uh so keep your distance uh but often just saying the person's name gently uh will will be sort of enough to bring them kind of back. I'll buy my girlfriend some head gear and a mouthpiece. She'll be fine. So it's that. In terms of the sleep stuff, there's all sorts of things you can do to improve your quality of sleep. One of the biggest ones that came out of night school, which I didn't know about, was if you've got kids who have recurrent nightmares, and this goes for adults as well, but particularly with kids, where it's the same nightmare every night. During the day, you get them to visualize the nightmare,

Starting point is 00:28:32 but with a more positive ending. So if they're being chased by a dragon, they visualize that, and then you go, well, maybe it's a lonely dragon. It's a friendly dragon. He just wants to be your friend. And actually, that's got about a 90% hit rate within a very short period of time for reducing those recurring nightmares. So there's all this kind of simple stuff that's out there.

Starting point is 00:28:53 I think all the stuff about this night of two halves and actually taking a break in the middle is what we used to do before electric light and so on. The paradoxical, if you're trying to fall asleep, the paradoxical approach, which is you try and keep yourself awake. So you're allowed to blink, but otherwise you have to keep your eyes open and you have to actively not fall asleep. It's quite exhausting and you end up falling asleep quicker. Again, based on all sorts of research. So yeah, Night School is a fun book to do. So then speaking to onset insomnia, which is something that I've suffered from for decades, and I go through periods of not having it be as acute an issue, but the initial falling asleep

Starting point is 00:29:35 portion for people who don't understand the terminology. So there's the paradoxical approach of never tried the keeping my eyes open part. i haven't tried yes i may try that yeah icebox i feel like i've got that pretty well dialed yeah use various devices to keep the bed cool any other suggestions busying the mind if it's based on anxiety so so just writing down those anxieties and worries often clears it before you you go to bed uh counting backwards from 103s feels working memory basically, and it means those anxieties can't get in. Engaging in fantasy world so that when the dreams and sleep comes along, it's a little bit more pleasant. And if you are laying there for more than, this is particularly

Starting point is 00:30:18 waking up during the night, more than, say, 10 minutes, laying awake for more than 10 minutes, get out of bed and do something non-stimulating but physical, like one of those kind of adult coloring in books, something like that. Do that for about 10 minutes, go back to bed. If you're still laying there awake 10 minutes later, get out and do it again. And after a couple of those, you start to fall asleep because what happens is what you're not doing is associating the bed with the anxiety of being awake. Otherwise, that becomes a stimulus response. The bed is a place where I'm anxious. So moving yourself out and occupying the mind and going back, again, is another very effective technique.

Starting point is 00:30:59 Next up, Dennis McKenna, an ethnopharmacologist who has spent more than 40 years researching the interdisciplinary study of Amazonian ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinogens. So let me ask you a question about a comment that you made in the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss about LSD as a potential treatment for dyslexia. Now, I don't have all the context, but I pulled this out, and it's going to lead to a broader question about perhaps unusual or unexpected applications

Starting point is 00:31:34 or indications for psychedelics. But this section here reads, it did lead me to speculate about the use of LSD as a potential treatment for dyslexia. We have a limited understanding of neuroplasticity to say nothing of how psychedelics might affect it. That man's anecdote, so of course I've omitted an anecdote, hints at the curious link between psychedelics and language, as do the more prevalent accounts of synesthesia I've discussed earlier. And then I'll actually read one more sentence. Psychedelics have some fundamental relationship

Starting point is 00:32:01 to the way our brains create meaning and understanding out of sounds and images. I'm convinced that further investigations into this phenomenon would yield new insights. Could you expand on that? Because I would agree, certainly, with the assertion of this fundamental relationship. Any thoughts on LSD specifically as perhaps a tool for addressing dyslexia or psychedelics for any other indications that people might not guess? The connection to LSD and language, and I think even more so with mushrooms, because you're probably familiar with an essay, I think by Henry Munn, that was published in a book called, I think it was by Peter First, called Hallucinogens and Culture. This was around 1970.

Starting point is 00:32:48 There's a wonderful chapter in there called The Mushrooms of Language. It's by Henry Munn. And it makes the point, and again, like I talk about this in The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, it makes the point that in this be-mushroom state, the poetry, the language becomes much more fluid. It just sort of flows out of you. And that's why these people can chant for hours, and they're actually instantiating the mushroom as speaking through them. You know, this gnosis, literally, the logos is the word. The pure logos actually flows through them. You know, this gnosis, literally this, the logos is the word, the true,

Starting point is 00:33:26 the pure logos actually flows through them. And then there's the phenomenon of synesthesia, which psychedelics, especially mushrooms, can reliably do. And you know, I've the association with meaningful images with sound. Some people are naturally, genetically synesthetic. It's very interesting how their synesthetic experiences often have to do with words and numbers and things like that. And they'll say things like, well, the number 13 is chrome-shaped and spiky, shiny and spiky. What? But for them, that's a reality. And I think, you know, I've argued that mushrooms, well, I have, Terrence have, lots of people have, that mushrooms were important in the origin of consciousness. And I think that it is this connection to language that you know consciousness what we

Starting point is 00:34:26 understand as true consciousness depends on this construction of this worldview essentially and that's built on language this artificial reality that we construct for us for ourselves that's a combination of sensory input that is filtered and processed in a certain way and linked to associations, memories, all of that kind of thing. So we build this, what the neuroscientists now call the default mode network, which is kind of ordinary consciousness, our ordinary state of consciousness. Long before I heard of the default mode network, I was calling it the reality hallucination. Effectively, we live in a hallucination. We live in an artificial world reality that our brains construct. And it must reflect whatever is out there because we're not

Starting point is 00:35:20 wandering around stepping in front of buses and things like that. So it does map to reality in some ways, but it's actually an impoverished version of reality. A lot of what the brain does is filter things out. And Huxley had this insight. He talked about the reducing valve, that to make the world comprehensible, you have to selectively filter what gets in. You inhabit this filtered, you could almost use the word curated version of reality. Otherwise, it would just be a blooming, buzzing confusion. You wouldn't be able to navigate. And then you can take a psychedelic, you can disable those mechanisms, you can disable this default mode mechanism, open the gates of the reducing valve, and

Starting point is 00:36:14 that can be very beneficial in terms of helping you get outside of your reference frame. And that's very useful. I think that that's what psychedelics, I think that's where the therapeutic effect really, for many of the things it's indicated for, it's this ability to step outside your reference frame temporarily and look at your situation from a different perspective. But you wouldn't want to be there all the time, right? Because you wouldn't be functional. That's again why you have to be very selective about your set and setting. It's a complex topic because I think it does relate to the way that we link images, essentially internal images, to sounds and meaning. Because I'm here rapping to you and I'm making effectively small mouth noises

Starting point is 00:37:08 which are inherently meaningless except that we happen to share a language. And so when I make these small mouth noises, chances are your brain is reflecting it in terms of images. I say chair, you see a chair. I say star, you see a star. I mean, it's more complex than that, but I think that's the basis of cognition, really. And if you look at culture, if you look at consciousness, it's all based on this relationship between sound, image, and meaning, or what they sometimes call portentousness. Yeah, and ascribed meaning, right? It's a learned association that is not automatic, right? I think about this a lot with, say, infants and language, and I'm sure there's someone

Starting point is 00:38:03 who can comment on this much more intelligently than i can but when an infant let's say before they develop full depth perception and so on if they were to look at what's in front of me they wouldn't see laptop webcam microphone wood table etc pile of papers as discrete objects until they have likely, at least not to that level of fidelity, until they have labels for those things. It might just be a flattened sort of two-dimensional sheet of colors and shapes and shadows.

Starting point is 00:38:39 I think about that quite a bit also, as you mentioned in the last episode that you've done who knows how many sessions with ayahuasca, you know, 500 plus. And it does seem that people develop, or some people develop an ability to discern and see in those spaces in the same way that an infinite sort of develops the ability to discern between these discrete things that we have labels for as adults. Last but not least, Cal Newport, bestselling author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and A World Without Email, revisits the four-hour workweek. Why in the interim?

Starting point is 00:39:31 It's a mystery that I'm curious about. In the interim, between when it first hits, work is unsustainable, you should try radical new things. In the interim, over time, the book and pop culture beyond people who are directly engaged with the book got associated with something different. And I mentioned this to you via email, but I think about 2011, The Office brings up the book. Daryl brings up the book, the character Dale in The Office. And by that point in 2011, when he's bringing up this book, it has nothing to do with work being unsustainable and radically rethinking work. It is all just, how do I be more hyperproductive? Which is almost the opposite of what the book is about. And I bet that for a lot of people who the book was on their radar, but they didn't engage with the book, that's for a lot of people became associated with like

Starting point is 00:40:16 being hyperproductive by using you sort of radically inventive in the systems you use for the purpose of getting more done, which is not what the book was about. And so this is sort of this mystery to me is that this big warning shot was happening. We feel it today, huge. Yeah, work's not sustainable. We need to rechange it. But in between somehow that warning shot for a lot of people got changed to how can we use tech and innovative systems to get even more done? Yeah, that's a damn fine question. You know, the four-hour workweek became, and I didn't mind, I thought it was kind of funny,

Starting point is 00:40:48 this sort of pop culture productivity novelty. That word again. Novelty, novelty, yeah, in a way, right? So it shows up on The Office or the cast from, well, supposedly the cast, I mean, it's probably a bunch of ghostwriters, but from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, wrote a book called The Seven Secrets of Awakening, the highly effective four-hour giant today. So you can see what that is.

Starting point is 00:41:14 And I would love to hear your theory for why this is, but I think it's deeply, deeply uncomfortable. And it can be deeply, deeply challenging to really question the assumptions and plans that are the underpinning for much of your existence your waking existence i think it's very uncomfortable and it's not as cleanly measurable, as installing a new Chrome plugin that helps you do A, B, and C. I cleared 17% more email in the last hour. That type of trackability and that type of countability is really alluring. The productivity porn, like real porn, is highly addictive and highly distracting. And as new technical doodads and applications and approaches surfaced, even if they're old approaches that are being reinvented, right, using note cards or index cards for various things. It's a very graspable, appealing novelty that I think almost everyone gravitates towards.

Starting point is 00:42:32 It's not surprising to me that the four-hour workweek became a representation of a collection of productivity tricks or techniques or technologies because it did include that in fairness but i think that what is unfortunate but not surprising is that the four-hour work we sort of treated like a tool kit and a bunch of construction materials but used without the blueprint and the approach and the guiding design principles that are explored in the first, say, two sections especially. Those two things are divorced, where in my mind, the blueprints and the design principles, those are the most valuable and most important piece. And then the tools, those are all going to change over time. And I expect them to change over time. That's what I've observed.

Starting point is 00:43:30 Did you observe people doing that? Just looking at the hacks and not, or was it the perception of the people who weren't reading the book, but just, this is what I think it is? Because of course, you're around this crowd a lot more. Yeah, I think it's more the latter. The book is written in a way, if you start at page one, you cannot get around the sort of philosophical resets and questioning of assumptions and design principles. You can't get around that. 100% true. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:43:57 But if you are reading a blog post that is supposedly a summary of the four-hour workweek, or you are reading any number of books that followed the four-hour workweek, which were intended to capitalize on that wave of popularity, they focused almost without exception on the tools and the tricks and the latest websites and the best virtual assistant services and so on. Again, not to say those don't have value. They do have value. But without the underlying frameworks and principles, I don't think you end up solving many problems.

Starting point is 00:44:43 And in fact, I think you can end up creating a lot of new problems. And now here are the bios for all the guests. My guest today is Edward O. Thorpe. He is the author of the bestseller, Beat the Dealer, which transformed the game of Blackjack. His subsequent book, Beat the Market, co-authored with Sheen T. Kasuf, influenced securities markets around the globe. He's also the author of A Man for All Markets, subtitle from Las Vegas to Wall Morgan Fallon on Twitter at Diamond Mo Fallon is a nine-time Emmy-nominated executive producer, director, and cinematographer. He was born and raised in New England and studied film at Emerson College in Boston. First question is probably going to be what you learned and did not learn in your film courses at Emerson. After graduating, he spent three years working for his mentor, director Michael Mann. And in 2007, he began a long-term working relationship with producers

Starting point is 00:45:47 Chris Collins and Lydia Tenaglia and their New York-based production company, 0.0 Productions. Through his tenure at ZPZ, Fallon focused primarily on work with ZPZ creative partner Anthony Bourdain on several episodic series and documentaries produced by Bourdain, including the Emmy-winning Mind of a Chef, the theatrically distributed documentary The Last Magnificent, and the Emmy Peabody PGA, TCA, and ACE award-winning series Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown, which Fallon shot, directed, and produced throughout the series' 103-episode run. Currently, he is a director and executive producer for the Emmy-winning series United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell. He lives in California with his wife and production partner, Jillian Brown, and his two children.

Starting point is 00:46:31 You can find him, like I mentioned, on Twitter at DiamondMoFallon, Instagram at Fallon.Morgan, and I'll include the Facebook and everything else in the show notes. And the website for 0.0 is 0.0.com. My guest today, I've been looking forward to for some time, although he may not know that. This is Richard Wiseman, who holds Britain's only professorship in the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Maybe getting that right. He has published more than 100 peer reviewed articles examining the psychology of magic and illusion, the paranormal, luck, and self-help. His books on psychology, which include The Luck Factor, The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind, and 59 Seconds, Think a Little, Change a Lot, have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide.

Starting point is 00:47:20 And his psychology-based YouTube videos, which I highly recommend, have garnered more than 500 million views. Elizabeth Loftus, I hope I'm getting that right, we'll find out which corrections I need to make, former president of the Association of Psychological Science, described Richard as, quote, one of the world's most creative psychologists, end quote, and the Independent on Sunday chose him as one of the top 100 people who make Britain a better place to live. In addition to his work in the field of psychology, Richard served as director of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for eight years. You can find him on Twitter at Richard Wiseman, W-I-S-E-M-A-N. My guest today is a fan favorite, Dennis McKenna. You can find him on Twitter at Dennis McKenna. For Dennis has spent

Starting point is 00:48:05 more than 40 years researching the interdisciplinary study of Amazonian ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinogens. He has conducted extensive ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon. His doctoral research at the University of British Columbia focused on the ethnopharmacology of ayahuasca and ukuhe, two tryptamine-based hallucinogens used by indigenous peoples in the Northwest Amazon. He is a founding board member of the Hefter Research Institute, which has helped fund and directly funded a lot of very good science, and was a key organizer and participant in the Huasca Project, the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca used by the UDV, a Brazilian religious group.

Starting point is 00:48:46 He is the younger brother of Terence McKenna. From 2000 to 2017, he taught courses on ethnopharmacology as well as plants and human affairs at the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. In 2019, in collaboration with colleagues, he incorporated a nonprofit, the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy. Currently, the academy has several projects underway, with the most immediate being preparations for an upcoming conference in the UK May 23rd to 26th, that's 2022, ESPD 55, we're going to talk a lot about this, which will cover a wide range of topics related to psychoethnopharmacology. Dennis emigrated to Canada in the spring of 2019 with his wife, Sheila, and now resides in Abbotsford, British Columbia. The website

Starting point is 00:49:30 for the event that I just mentioned is ESPD55.com. In this episode, past podcast guest and excellent writer Cal Newport interviews me for an article he ended up writing for The New Yorker titled, Revisiting the 4-Hour Workweek, How Tim Ferriss' 2007 Manifesto Anticipated Our Current Moment of Professional Upheaval. So the call itself was for material. We were having a conversation for this print piece that ended up coming out, and I really enjoyed the conversation and thought you might as well. So who is Cal? Cal Newport. You can find him at calnewport.com, C-A-L-N-E-W-P-O-R-T.com, is an associate professor of computer science at

Starting point is 00:50:17 Georgetown University, who previously earned his PhD from MIT. His scholarship focuses on the theory of distributed systems, while his general audience writing explores intersections of culture and technology. Cal is the author of seven books, including most recently Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and A World Without Email. He is also a contributing writer for The New Yorker and the host of the Deep Questions podcast. You can find my interview with Cal, me interviewing him, that is, at tim.blog.com. And you can find the 2007 talk at South by Southwest that launched everything. So my talk at that festival, my first ever keynote on the content and the concepts

Starting point is 00:50:58 in the four-hour workweek at tim.blog slash SXSW. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. perhaps gadgets gizmos all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends

Starting point is 00:51:46 including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then i test them and then i share them with you so if that sounds fun again it's very short a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend something to think about if you'd like to try it out just go to tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.

Starting point is 00:52:12 Thanks for listening.

The Tim Ferriss Show - #603: In Case You Missed It: May 2022 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

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