The Tim Ferriss Show - #772: In Case You Missed It: September 2024 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

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Starting point is 00:02:08 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 to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life. This is a special in between a soad, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can jump around get a feel for both the episode

Starting point is 00:02:30 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 a lot of fun with fun putting it together and for the full list of the guests featured today see the episodes description probably right below where we 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. First up, Elizabeth Gilbert,

Starting point is 00:02:57 number one New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, Big Magic, and City of Girls, and the creative voice behind the Letters from Love with Elizabeth Gilbert newsletter. You can find Elizabeth on Instagram at Elizabeth underscore Gilbert underscore writer, and you can find her sub stack at ElizabethGilbert.substack.com. at elizabethgilbert.substack.com.

Starting point is 00:03:31 And when I was going through my first divorce, I was 30, and the well-laid-out planned life that I had created very obediently, like I had done just what my culture had told me to do. I got married at 24 and worked hard and bought a house and made a plan to have a family. And then instead of having a family, I had a nervous breakdown, like quite literally. Everybody was moving in this one direction and my entire intellectual, spiritual, and physical system collapsed, which I now know, I now see that as an act of God. I now see that there is sort of the Tao, you know, that there is a

Starting point is 00:04:10 force that was trying to communicate to me, this is not your path. I will kill you before I let you do this. I will kill you before I let you be a suburban housewife. I'm not allowing it. Like, I will make you, put you in so much physical pain that you're going to have to notice that this is not the life for you. But I was also in so much shame of failure and letting people down and like, we just bought this house. I just felt like the biggest asshole in the world. I don't know why I can't just get in line and do this thing that everybody's saying to do. Anyway, that marriage ended, and then I threw myself into another relationship and that ended. And I was like, I don't know how

Starting point is 00:04:50 to orchestrate my life at all. And nothing, here I am 30 years old and nothing is what I had planned it to be five years ago. And I was in the deepest depression of my life and I didn't have much of spiritual life at that point. But I remember waking up one night in just shame and getting an instruction. I mean, that's the only way I can explain it. And I'm comfortable with that language because I often have that happen in my creative life where I'm told what to do.

Starting point is 00:05:18 This is what you're gonna focus on. Here's what you need to do now. And I was given this instruction and it came in as clearly as I'm talking to you and it said, get clearly as I'm talking to you and it said, get up, get a notebook and write to yourself the words that you most wish that somebody would say to you. Because there was a great loneliness that I was feeling too, as well as the shame. And that letter began, you know, what that letter said was, I've got you, I'm with you,

Starting point is 00:05:43 I'm not going anywhere. I love you exactly the way you are, you can't fail at this, like you can't do this wrong, I don't need anything from you, this is a huge thing to hear. I don't need anything, talk about no cherished outcome, I don't need anything from you, you don't have to improve, you don't have to do life better, you don't have to improve. You don't have to do life better. You don't have to win.

Starting point is 00:06:08 You don't have to get out of this depression. You don't have to ever uplift your spirits. You could end up living in a box under a bridge in a garbage bag, spitting at people. And I would love you just as much as I do now. The love that I have for you cannot be lost because it's innate, it's yours. I have no requirements for it.

Starting point is 00:06:30 And if you need to stay up all night crying, I'll be here with you. And if tomorrow you have a garbage day again because you've been up all night crying, I'll be there for that too. I'll be here for every minute of it. Just ask me to come and I'll be here with you. And the astonishing thing was that it,

Starting point is 00:06:46 like even talking about it now, I can feel the impact that it has on my nervous system to hear those words, even in my own voice. And it was the first experience I'd ever had with unconditional love. I'd never heard anybody say like, I don't need you to be anything. You don't have to do better.

Starting point is 00:07:04 Like this is fine. This is great. You on the bathroom floor and a pile of tears, it's not, it's great. It's great. That's fine. We love you just like that. And that's so nourishing because it's so the opposite of every message that I've ever heard. And so I started doing that practice and it's taken me through. I've never had difficult times in the last 20 years, but I've never gone as low again as I went at that time because this is the net that catches me routinely before I can get that low.

Starting point is 00:07:36 And that voice doesn't change. ["The Random Show"] Next up, another unpredictable and entertaining edition of The Random Show with technologist and serial entrepreneur, Kevin Rose. You can find Kevin on Twitter and Instagram at KevinRose and you can find his sub stack at KevinRose.com. The one thing that struck me about today, and I just like, let's have a little real talk for a second.

Starting point is 00:08:08 Oh wow, oh God, coming to Jesus' moment. Here we go. Like you went on this sabbatical, and yet you had to write a book. I didn't have to write a book. Hold on, hold on, our mutual friend. Oh boy. Who shall not be named, pointed this out as well. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:08:25 Where it's like, can you sit and just be you? Or would that be too hard? Okay, let's do it. All right. So, yeah, this is good. Let's get into the fucking chewy bits. So, I routinely every year spend at least a month off the grid.

Starting point is 00:08:46 Right? Like last October I was gone. I was in, I was off the grid. Yeah, but you were doing shit. I was doing stuff, but here's my question, right? And this was in our shared text thread. I basically said, okay, look, so the accusation is that Tim doesn't know how to chill out. I'm like, okay, fine, let's take that as true. If Tim were to chill out,

Starting point is 00:09:08 what does that look like on a daily and weekly basis? And one of my challenges was humans are built to be social. You have a family, our mutual friend has a family. There's an inbuilt social network in that family. I don't have that, right? So my- I mean, you're a brother to me, so you always have that family. I don't have that, right? So my- I mean, you're a brother to me, so you always have a family.

Starting point is 00:09:28 Yeah, I appreciate that. And like on a day-to-day basis, when I wake up in the morning, like my hotel room, my house is empty, right? Yeah. So I need to go externally. I need to travel outside of the confines of my house to find that human interaction.

Starting point is 00:09:42 Sure. So the question is like, okay, well, if you could write the script, what would Tim Ferriss chilling out look like? I don't know what that would look like. What would it look like? Oh, it's very simple. I got the best answer for you ever.

Starting point is 00:09:56 Oh boy. No script. That sounds like some fucking fortune cookie stuff that I can't make sense of though. What does that mean? I know you can't make sense of it, but that's the point. It's no script.

Starting point is 00:10:07 When have you done that? When I did my meditation retreats, when I do, there's no script. No, but you had a schedule for each day. Sure, but like, I think, okay. That was like an intensive, the silent retreat where you're meditating in hours a day. You look at this back bitch.

Starting point is 00:10:20 Like, okay, I suffer from the same thing you do. I suffer from the same thing you do. And that is that we can't. There's a reason we're all friends, right? We're all fucking border collies chewing on the couch. We can't turn it off, you know? And it's like, honestly, I think the healthiest thing though would be to wake up with no agenda for a month,

Starting point is 00:10:40 with no friends for a month, with the fact that you just wake up saying, what is today going to bring? And that is damn fucking hard for people that are driven like you and me are. So I did that for almost a month last October. But you did some psychedelics during that time and shit. Come on, you did some shit. Towards the end. But in that particular case, I mean, I'll just say that I don't think humans are

Starting point is 00:11:00 built for isolation. Agreed. And there is a fetishizing of self-sufficiency and independence in the US that I think is unhealthy. It exists in other places for sure. But if you look at our evolutionary biological, like our biological programming, completely refutes that. To be exiled, to be excluded from the group

Starting point is 00:11:22 is effectively death. 100%, and I'm not arguing that, but what I'm arguing is like, what if you couldn't touch a pen or a computer for a month? They shoot arrows. Or a bow. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do think, and I can't remember the particular attribution of this.

Starting point is 00:11:39 Man, I wish I could really remember it. Ron Jeremy? The hedgehog? No, it was someone else, but it was basically like, man finds leisure through the switching from one activity to another, like one compelling activity to another, something along those lines.

Starting point is 00:11:56 And I wish I had the exact quote and the attribution, but I don't. And this applies obviously cross gender, but the point being that I'm not convinced that being idle is a fruitful goal to have. If you can't sit with yourself for five minutes, that's a problem. Right? But different people have different constitutions. And for me, for instance, right, if you look at the four hour work week, okay, so I get rid of, not get rid of,

Starting point is 00:12:28 but I automate my whole business, blah, blah, blah. What do I do? I end up doing tangos like six to eight hours a day. Right. But that was not done from a position of obligation or fear, it was done from a place of like enthusiasm and excitement and love. That's different. And that I think is good medicine, right? So as long as I have the self-awareness to distinguish between something that is

Starting point is 00:13:00 done from a place of fear or guilt or prestige hunger or responsibility or some nebulous obligation versus the things that enliven me, I think being active is fine as long as I land in the latter category. Right, like for instance, I'm doing a lot of archery right now and I fucking love it. I am so fed by it. And I'm not saying I'm the world's best,

Starting point is 00:13:27 I certainly am not, but I just find it so meditative. But can I ask you one question? One of the things I'm really curious about is Tim, I respect you so much because of how I've watched you dissect and assimilate information like no other human I've watched you dissect and, you know, assimilate like information like no other human I've ever seen on earth. And you are able to learn and pick up and go deep on any topic within a matter of minutes or hours or weeks.

Starting point is 00:13:57 You know, like you do that quite well. The one thing that is the rounding out of the holistic picture of Tim that I'm curious if you could ever tap into is the Tim that says, I can just be without having to go for those things or having to engage in that type of thinking, you know, that type of like pursuit, that type of analyzing, you know, I, I, Daria, my wife is, she's a PhD in neuroscience and, and I oftentimes get engaged in intense debates with her about this where I'm just like, chill the fuck out.

Starting point is 00:14:35 No, I'm just, Daria, don't listen this far. So, but I'm just like, you know, like, you know, I'm like, I wish, I wish with all my friends balance. And I think where our mutual friend was trying to get to is like, might you find- Voldemort. Might you find a little bit more of that side of the house?

Starting point is 00:14:57 Cause you have the other in spades. Yeah, yeah. It's a good question. I mean, I'll sit with it. I think that balance can come in a lot of different forms. Right? So the balance is time-bound, right? In the sense that, is it balanced on a daily basis? Is it on a weekly basis?

Starting point is 00:15:11 Is it on a monthly? No, hold on, hold on. No, it's not. It's finding the right conceptual framework through us to think about it. And I don't think that's a mistake. I think it's actually very helpful. Depends on how your mind works, right? For me though, it's like if I'm super intense for a month and I'm going 10 out of 10,

Starting point is 00:15:30 and then I'm zero out of 10 for a month, like that equates to kind of a five-five, right? That's for me a certain degree of balance, but it's not, if you looked at it on the minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, it would look very lopsided. I know a fantastic app that I would love to build for you, which would be like the TimTim Random app. And you open it up every morning and it tells you what to do for a month. And it'd be like today, it's like, what the fuck is this?

Starting point is 00:15:56 And you'd be like, oh, I have to buy a slip and slide and go down it 20 times. It's just like something where it's just like throwing you completely out of your life. And you're like, wow, I didn't have to think about it. I didn't have to overanalyze it. It's just a fucking thing I'm going to do. Well, this is, this is part of the curse of the entrepreneur, but it's also, but it's all saying, you know, exactly what I'm talking about. We've talked about this, but also, but also at the same time, these are your mics. I know these are my mics, but also at the same time, I will say that like, when you introduce another partner, it's the dance that's fucking hard, right?

Starting point is 00:16:31 Because Daria is very much about like structure and shit. Daria and I are very similar. Very similar. Super similar. Yeah. Love you Daria. She's you with hair. You're the best. Yeah, but she's a better body.

Starting point is 00:16:44 I mean, you look at my AI. Her ass is better than hers. I mean, I'm sorry. We've got to shut this up. You've got to catch my. OK, thank you, everyone, for tuning in to the show. Great to see you, buddy. Next up, Jerry Colonna, co-founder and CEO of Reboot.io, an executive coaching and leadership

Starting point is 00:17:13 development firm, and the author of Reboot, Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, and Reunion, Leadership and the Longing to Belong. You can find Jerry on Twitter, at Jerry Colonna. You know, if we go back in time to my mid thirties, when I was a Prince of New York and a former VC and totally fucked up as an individual, I was knee deep in the first decade, I'm now in my fourth decade of psychoanalysis and I had a very tough as nails nice Jewish lady psychoanalyst named doctor sears.

Starting point is 00:18:05 repeatedly, endlessly boxing my ears when she'd say this is, how have you been complicit in creating these conditions you complain so much about? And you have to picture it, right? I'm lying on the couch, there's this, you know, old Jewish lady who's 30 years older than me, who's just basically had it with me, complaining. And so the roots of that question are really a kind of an exasperation, not just from my analyst to me, but eventually with me, about me. And it was really only by taking that question, how have I been complicit in creating the conditions

Starting point is 00:18:48 I say I don't want, that there was a massive unlock for me. Now you asked about the misinterpretation. The first level of misinterpretation that people go through is that they assume I'm saying, how have I been responsible? And I am very, very particular. I get very, very angry when people misinterpret the word complicit for responsible.

Starting point is 00:19:15 And it's not because I want to let people off the hook, but quite the opposite. I want people to understand that they've been an accomplice. Here's the thing, Tim, when we get into our mindset that says I am responsible for all the shit in my life, we're actually walking away from doing the hard work. Could you expand on that?

Starting point is 00:19:37 Yeah, sure, because guilt is a defense mechanism. Right, because some people might say, well, that's extreme ownership. As I say, I'm responsible for all the shit. Exactly. That's the beginning of the solution, but where do they take a wrong turn? So I like the kind of ownership.

Starting point is 00:19:54 I like the word ownership. I don't like the word responsibility. And the reason for that is because, and the reason I think it can be a defense mechanism is because it can be an old structure. So many people that I encounter, myself included, spend our childhood pendulating between grandiosity and a sense of worthlessness. I'm either shit or I am the best. You got rid of that in your childhood? Man, good for you. Well, I got rid of it in my adulthood.

Starting point is 00:20:29 This is the point, I got rid of it by actually asking the right questions of myself. If the word complicit is replaced with the words, even extreme ownership, the danger is that I tip over into misunderstanding what actually has been going on and I end up in this zone of being responsible for everything. And the truth is, it's much more complex than that. I was just thinking that you're referring to a pendulum and that not taking any responsibility for anything is one example sort of absolving yourself of the hard work. But I never thought of the opposite if you're accepting that anything and everything bad that happens is your responsibility slash fault.

Starting point is 00:21:22 It puts you in a similar position. It seems exactly the position it puts you in is unable to actually with discernment diagnose what's really going on. And you know what? You don't get to transform stuff if you don't really know what's going on. And so to understand what's really happening for you, you have to understand what your role is and what it isn't. So how do you walk, say, a client through answering that question well? How are you complicit in creating the conditions that you say you don't want or the conditions of your

Starting point is 00:22:03 lives in your lives that you say you don't want or the conditions of your lives in your lives that you say you don't want How do you walk them through their rough draft of trying to answer that? Okay, so the unlock on the question is the second half of the question which people skip you say you don't want So give me an example from your own life Tim. What do you say you don't want? Oh Man, how much time do we have? I have become better at this. So I'm not dodging the question, but I would say probably some form of busyness, right? Right.

Starting point is 00:22:38 I've got this and I'm over scheduled and I've got this and that. And the other thing that is imposing on what maybe I say I want, which is more locked out space for writing or making. Right. So you say, Mr. Four hour work week, I don't want to work more than four hours a week. Nice turn. Nice turn.

Starting point is 00:23:00 I think you said that to me. Right. So you say you want to be so efficient and so productive that you get everything done that you want to get done so that you have time to play, take care of yourself, wear breathe, write strips as you talk to you, right? This kind of thing. Yeah. Right.

Starting point is 00:23:24 Okay. Just a quick sidebar. Breathe right. This one's on me. You got to sponsor the podcast. I could recognize them because I'm a breathe right user. I use them to sleep at night. So oh my God. We would both like a lifetime supply, so feel free.

Starting point is 00:23:46 Okay. So you say you don't want to be so busy, right? And you were asking, how do I walk a client through to understand the role of complicity, right? In this regard. So how does it feel when you're not busy? I would say, and I don't want to steal your thunder here, but since I'm cheating with a cheat sheet, right? This is your show.

Starting point is 00:24:14 And so segueing to a compliment or maybe a necessary component of the first question, how are you complicit in creating conditions that you say you don't want, which is in what ways does that complicity serve you? Okay, so to answer your question and that at the same time, I would say probably, and this is almost a certainty, looking back at some of the scariest,

Starting point is 00:24:40 depressive episodes in my life, it's when I had a lot of empty space and there is an underlying fear even though I haven't experienced anything close to that magnitude of desperation and darkness in a very long time there is a fear that if I create a void that is the voice that is the narrative that is going to come to dominate my thoughts. I would say that therefore my complicity serves me by avoiding that. Right. And so if you really want to transform, when will you be comfortable with the void? She has a good question. And in my defense, your honor, I will say that,

Starting point is 00:25:27 I'm about to go off the grid for a week, starting this Friday. So in a few days, I'll be going completely off the grid, no phone, no nothing, for a period of time. So I have injected these periods, but let's get into the messy stuff for a second, since life is rarely as much of a randomized control trial as you would like. I've had an ongoing number of chats with friends and WhatsApp and different

Starting point is 00:25:53 messaging platforms, and it's been around taking breaks, creating space, chilling out. Right. So a lot of these friends of mine have passed every hurdle and objective they could have had and the goalposts keep moving, right? They want to make a million and then it was 10 and then it was 20. And then once that gets indefend, then it's a trillion. Once it gets indefensible, then it's like, what's your annual compounded growth rate and this then turns into percentages because they can't even with a straight face defend the rest of it. But what they claim to want and what they believe I need is to chill out, take a break,

Starting point is 00:26:34 create all this space. My experiences as social animals or at least as a person who benefits from social interaction, I do best around other people. I just do. And there are, it's not 100%, but it's not 0%. There's a risk that I do return to some of those dark places or dark narratives. It's not zero.

Starting point is 00:26:57 So I struggle to answer the question of like, when can I allow space? Because I do it in small doses, sometimes larger doses. I took almost all of October last year off the grid. So perhaps you can help me to find my way to answering the question you post. You know, look, Tim, we, I feel like uncle Jerry and that we speak every few years and every few years my, how you've grown. I know you don't feel that way because you're in your body.

Starting point is 00:27:27 But when we first started talking, which was years and years ago, this was a big struggle for you. This was a tremendous struggle. And there was a sense that you might miss out. There was a sense of like you being falling behind in some sort of weird little race, a race to the top. And I think the speed with which you're able to go right to the fear of the void, what Blaise Pascal identified when he said

Starting point is 00:27:56 that all of man's problems stem from their inability to sit alone in a room. I think you've got, like a lot of us, you've got a component of that. And I also want to say I'm watching you letting go of the need to turn that void time into productivity time. When I first started promoting the notion of sabbatical, which we've talked about in the past, I remember dealing with a client who would say, well, I'm going to learn Portuguese. It's like, no, you're not. You're not going to learn Portuguese in four weeks.

Starting point is 00:28:35 You're going to learn to breathe without breathe right straps. You're going to, you know, you're just going to learn to enjoy yourself now what I hear you doing is learning to enjoy yourself Mm-hmm, which is a really powerful skill Yeah Yeah, it's gonna be a Lifelong project, which is okay. A lot of things are lifelong projects. That's right We got here because you were asking about that process. And this is the process, right? This is the process.

Starting point is 00:29:10 So for you, when you're off the grid starting Friday, you know, what will that experience be like for you? At what point might you be anxious and at what point might you start to relax? Cause are you going to be with friends this trip too? This particular example may not fit the exercise, but what I've done for the last handful of years is every year I do a past year review rather than setting, let's just say blind, semi-uninformed, overly optimistic New Year's resolutions.

Starting point is 00:29:44 I look back at the past year and figure out what the highs and lows looked like if I were to do kind of an 80-20 analysis. Places, people, activities, the most life-giving and the most life-draining. And then I schedule time as soon as possible in blocks of one week, two weeks, depending on availability to spend time with energy and people doing energy and things. Right. And this particular week off the grid is going to be a Alpine elk hunt, which I do once every two years or so with Bo at probably between 10 and 12,000 feet for the most of it. It's going to get cold. We're going to be eating a lot of shitty, free dried fruit, hopefully a bunch of trout en route to finding elk.

Starting point is 00:30:33 And I have just found that particular experience and the time dilation that it allows to feel like a month off or two months off. It is just so regenerative for me that it's, it's become a core piece of my annual planning, not necessarily a hunt, but that type of shared experience with a small, very small group of people. So that's what that will look like.

Starting point is 00:30:58 And I, in a sense, I don't want to say I'm disallowing myself from feeling discomfort because there's going to be incredible discomfort physically. Sleep is probably not going to be fantastic. And we will be very, very, very active, but it's not the same as doing a silent retreat and sitting there watching your monkey brain. Right. It's just contorted itself for 16 hours a day.

Starting point is 00:31:29 It's the kind of retreat where like layers of your skin are stripped away because you're so raw and rugged out in the world. And that's just going to drop you into your body and drop you more and more into the land. And that's a place of nourishment for you, for sure. Finally, a special podcast on what happens when Israelis and Palestinians drink ayahuasca together, featuring an episode from the new psychedelics-focused podcast, Altered States, made possible in part by the Ferris UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship. You can find Altered States on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen

Starting point is 00:32:18 to your favorite podcasts. Welcome to Altered States. I'm Ariel Zumross. This week, we are traveling thousands of miles away from where I am in Oregon to the Middle East to hear about another kind of psychedelic experiment. This one involves ayahuasca. Producer Shayna Shealy brings us this story. So, Shayna, welcome. First off, I know some folks might be familiar with ayahuasca, but

Starting point is 00:32:46 others have probably never heard of it. Tell me, what exactly is ayahuasca? Yeah, so ayahuasca, people typically drink it as a sort of tea, and it's made out of a vine from South America, which is often brewed together with another plant. It's a type of shrub. And that shrub contains something called DMT, or dimethyltryptamine. So what do we know about what ayahuasca does to the brain? So usually about 30 minutes after drinking it, some people start having these hallucinations. Others have out-of-body experiences or euphoric feelings. There's often vomiting involved. For some people there

Starting point is 00:33:26 are visions. Researchers have found that ayahuasca can promote what's called neural plasticity, which is the brain's ability to adapt and build new connections. In this case, increased adaptability is thought to be able to help people heal from traumatic experiences. A few years ago you came across these peace activists who were using ayahuasca traumatic experiences. A few years ago, you came across these peace activists who were using ayahuasca to heal. And eventually you started reporting on that story. So can you tell me more?

Starting point is 00:33:55 So these activists are Israeli and Palestinian, and they gathered to drink ayahuasca and attempt to heal trauma, both personal trauma and collective trauma. And I knew a bunch of them from previous reporting in the region, and I was really interested just in the links that these people went to, to build empathy. And then October 7th happened. Suddenly the work of healing was interrupted by this massive shockwave. And these activists sort of looked to the group and to one person in particular to help them navigate it all.

Starting point is 00:34:33 That person was Palestinian peace and justice activist, Sami Awad. And that's why your story starts with Sami in his home in late summer 2023. In Sammy Awad's kitchen near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, a small group of people are gathered around a table. A handful of Israelis, a woman from Brazil, one guy from Ramallah. They're all sitting there, around plates of eggs and za'atar, watermelon, balls of cured labneh and olive oil. They were laughing, eating breakfast.

Starting point is 00:35:23 Sami describes his home as sort of an oasis for Israeli and Palestinian activists from all over. It's where they can be together and find refuge from the harsh reality of living under forced separation. Sammy's home office is filled with hundreds of books on meditation, yoga, psychedelic medicine, healing. He's in his 50s, and he's been working in the world of peace building for over 25 years. Sami's peace work started when he was 12 years old.

Starting point is 00:35:55 He was with his uncle, an influential nonviolent peace activist. They were planting trees on a Palestinian farmer's land that was under threat of confiscation by Jewish settlers. I remember my uncle saying, no matter what happens, you're here to plant trees. trees on a Palestinian farmer's land that was under threat of confiscation by Jewish settlers. I remember Michael saying, no matter what happens, you're here to plant trees. The group of activists was mixed, Palestinian and Israeli. They were hours into planting when a group of Israeli soldiers approached them. A soldier coming, pulling the tree out of the ground that I was planting and throwing it on some rocks.

Starting point is 00:36:23 And in that moment, there was this split decision, what do I do? Because as a 12 year old, you know, what options? I could run away, I could hide, run to my uncle crying, like a 12 year old. And I was like, you know, here to plant the trees. And I decided I'm going to go back and bring the tree and plant it. And I did that. That sense of feeling, wow, empowerment and then losing the fear.

Starting point is 00:36:52 That action changed my life. It made me actually want to commit my life to this work. The work of peace building through nonviolence. Days after Sami went with his uncle to plant trees, he learned that the land had been confiscated by Israeli settlers, that all the trees they had planted were uprooted. Still, Sammy would go on to plant even more trees. By the time he was in his 20s, he was organizing boycotts and peace demonstrations, sometimes alongside Israeli peace activists.

Starting point is 00:37:22 But his actions kept getting shut down. He was beaten, imprisoned, put on lockdown. And then in 1993 came the Oslo Accords, a deal between Israeli and Palestinian leadership that was supposed to kick off a peace process in the region, including limited Palestinian self-governance in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Then President Bill Clinton served as a diplomatic broker. Let us today pay tribute to the leaders who had the courage to lead their people toward peace, away from the scars of battle, the wounds and the losses of the past toward a brighter tomorrow. The world today thanks Prime Minister Rabin,

Starting point is 00:38:08 Foreign Minister Perez, and Chairman Arafat. Sammy was optimistic. There was billions of dollars of funds coming to create and sustain that peace that was being created. And all of a sudden you started seeing NGOs begin to emerge, begin to rise, money pumping in like crazy. He built his own organization, Holy Land Trust. It became well known for nonviolent activism trainings.

Starting point is 00:38:38 But even with this tireless dedication to peace, the world around Sammy became more and more violent. Both sides committed to negotiating an end to the conflict and charting a path to Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza. It triggered a violent backlash from religious extremists among both Israelis and Palestinians, including Hamas. We're beginning to see this continuous loop of failures in the peace process. And in 1995, a right-wing Jewish extremist assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Itzhak

Starting point is 00:39:13 Rabin. This big plan towards peace began to unravel almost immediately. Over the next decade, there was the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, deadly attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories. During that time, we began to understand the need to heal collective trauma as part of peacemaking as well, understanding how much the past influences us. It was 2007. Sami was in his mid-30s and had begun to take an interest in reading up on trauma when he was invited to go on a pretty unconventional trip to the

Starting point is 00:39:49 death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. He spent eight days there, sleeping at the camp, eating all his meals there. So we were there every day, doing our own ceremony and prayer and visuals, remembering the people that died. I had like lists of names of people that we were all given to recite continuously. So like eight hour meditations we were doing. I began to really see that, wow,

Starting point is 00:40:14 this is something that is not an incident that just happened in the past. This is something that continues until this day. Pre-COVID, around 40,000 Israeli students visited concentration camps as part of their school curriculum each year. The trips are sponsored by Israel's education ministry, typically right before mandatory military service. While Sammy was there, he kept seeing school group after school group.

Starting point is 00:40:45 Israeli kids with Israeli flags wrapped around them, big flags, and they're walking and then singing. I heard Israeli teachers tell these kids, the Holocaust is not over. As Jews, we are always threatened, we're always attacked. Many people want to destroy us. And of course, then it's followed by, this is why we have to be strong, this is why we have to be resilient, this is why security's followed by, this is why we have to be strong, this is why we have to be resilient, this is why security above everything, and this is why we never trust anybody. What the hell is happening here?

Starting point is 00:41:12 Like, how can you be even talking about peace with somebody when the foundation is we don't trust them? That night, Sammy slept in Birkenau, in the barracks where children were imprisoned. He was there with a Jewish person from Israel and a Muslim person from Bosnia. We just had candles and our very thick coats and sleeping bags. And just remembering, like being in that place where these children were there and were dying, but also having these discussions about this issue of inherited trauma. I began to realize that

Starting point is 00:41:50 this whole peace process that we were in, that I was in, that I was even supporting and advocating for, was embedded from a space of existential fear and threat. The Palestinians, we have a similar narrative that our existence is on the line. We need to do something about it. If we don't do something about it, we will cease to be as a people. What happened to us is too shameful, too painful.

Starting point is 00:42:18 We don't talk about it. — Sami says a lot of Palestinians don't really acknowledge the full scope of pain that their families have endured. Like the 1948 Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven from their homes, or really any other traumatic events. We have a generation growing up not knowing what happened and listening to propaganda. And the propaganda is we are resilient, we are strong, we will return, we will defeat them. Not acknowledging, like, there is grief

Starting point is 00:42:50 that needs to happen. There is pain that needs to be expressed of what happened to us as a people. There's a healing. But to not address these issues makes us unhealthy in how we're dealing with things. When he got back to Bethlehem, this is what Sami wanted to focus on, healing, to address the trauma that gets passed down from generation to generation. He read books on this intergenerational trauma. He studied the Rwandan genocide and the healing journey that followed. He also met with Israelis studying trauma, including faculty at Hebrew Union College. They developed tools for Israelis and Palestinians to work through their pain together. At the same time, foreign governments were pouring

Starting point is 00:43:38 billions of dollars into the region to advance these peaceful coexistence programs between Israelis and Palestinians. There were summer camps, organizations that raised up the voices of parents who had lost children, theater troops, art projects. And still, around two decades after Oslo, Sami felt things were worse than ever. You see the wars in Gaza,

Starting point is 00:44:03 you see settler violence towards Palestinians, you see how Palestinians are treating each other. What do all of this money, all of this investment, worse than ever. for all of the peace work, all of the money that was spent. And so for me, I was in this place, we need something new. We need something new. That's when he got a phone call. It was from an Israeli couple around 2012. And they say, we have a peace project that we want to involve you with. Sami rolled his eyes. More Israelis who think they have the answers. He almost hung up. And the woman started yelling at me, no we have to come and we have to meet you and it's very

Starting point is 00:44:50 important and don't bring anybody and it's just you. His interest was piqued. He went to meet them. I said three things came to my mind. Either this is some money laundering scheme, something to do with drugs or something to do with weird sex. And she just started laughing, laughing. I said, it has to do with the second one. And then the guy looked at me. He looked at me straight in the eyes and he said, have you done medicine before? He was talking about the psychedelic brew ayahuasca.

Starting point is 00:45:20 As the man explained his vision, all Sami could think about were the dangers. Sami says drugs are kind of taboo in Palestinian society. It's not just illegal, it's immoral, it's illegitimate, it goes against religion, it goes against social values. People who drink ayahuasca have described emotional breakthroughs, conversations with anthropomorphic spirits, catharsis of traumatic events, and connections with ancestors. So even though Sammy was terrified, he thought it might be worth trying.

Starting point is 00:45:54 He traveled through checkpoints into Israel to join the couple for an ayahuasca ceremony. He downed a cupful of the sludgy tea, and soon he was vomiting. And now here are the bios for all the guests. My guest today, one of my favorites, Elizabeth Gilbert. She is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love, as well as several other international bestsellers. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Penn Hemingway Award. Her latest novel City of Girls was named an instant New York Times bestseller, a rollicking

Starting point is 00:46:36 sexy tale of the New York City theater world during the 1940s. You can go to elizabethgilbert.substack.com to subscribe to Letters from Love with Elizabeth Gilbert, her newsletter, which has more than 120,000 subscribers. You can find her on Instagram at elizabethgilbert.subs.com. This time we have a very special episode. This is always a listener favorite, a recording with my close friend, Kevin Rose. Kevin Rose, for those who don't know, at Kevin Rose everywhere. He is indeed a world class entrepreneur, serial founder, investor in the smallest of seed rounds up to the largest of companies. He is a full spectrum, full stack capitalist. I don't know what the hell I'm saying.

Starting point is 00:47:28 But we did this interview in person at his house in the format of The Random Show. And what we always do, and we've done this for 10 years, I suppose now, we trade our latest discoveries, our latest findings, what our friends have sent to us. And I think it is one of our best there's tons of actionable takeaways lots of laughing fits and that might have something to do with the fact that Kevin invited his friend and bartender to service cocktails we cover dozens of topics new projects what I've done on my recent sabbatical Kevin's latest findings and shenanigans real vampire

Starting point is 00:48:04 protocols apparently that's a thing and and much much more. It even includes some incredibly bizarre footage of Kevin having his face assaulted by experimental technology. We videotaped that live together and video is not at all required to enjoy this episode whatsoever. Audio is great. But for some extra hilarity, if you want to see that video I mentioned and more, simply go to youtube.com slash timferes, F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Sometimes I get not just a two for one, but a hundred for one, when I interview someone who also helps world-class performers, in addition to being such themselves, to get past sticking points, to redefine themselves, to reinvent themselves, to chart new paths forward. And my guest today,

Starting point is 00:48:56 Jerry Colonna, is such a person. He is the CEO and co-founder of Reboot.io, an executive coaching and leadership development firm dedicated to the notion that better humans make better leaders. But prior to that, he was an operator in many different ways. Prior to being a coach, he was a partner with JPMorgan Partners, the private equity arm of JPMorgan Chase. He also led New York City-based Flatiron Partners, which he founded in 1996 with partner Fred Wilson. Flatiron went on to become one of the nation's most successful early stage investment programs at age 25. He was editor in chief of information week magazine. He's written a bunch of books. We'll mention them at the end of the conversation.

Starting point is 00:49:34 But one is reboot. The other is reunion, both highly recommended. You can find his company reboot at reboot.io and Jerry on Twitter and Instagram at Jerry Colonna, C-O-L-O-N-N-A. And he has been on the podcast twice before. He is a fan favorite. People always take a ton away from our conversations. And I recap some of my favorite aspects of those in this episode. And we cover a lot of ground. There are a lot of stories I've never heard.

Starting point is 00:50:02 We have a lot of laughs, almost a few cries on my side. And we dig into his toolkit. The questions that he uses with himself and with clients that I have adopted as some of my favorites. There is a lot to learn and it was a hell of an enjoyable conversation. It was a walk and talk. And I have done this before where I am out in nature

Starting point is 00:50:25 today. It is a beautiful bluebird sky day in the mountains and to sit in a dark room staring at a screen seemed like an insult to nature, complete travesty, totally unnecessary. So I have high fidelity recording equipment. That is what I'm using right now. It is a headset. I am sitting 10 feet from a beautiful river where I'm watching the eddies swirl around rocks. So why not get out and move? If you can listen to this while you're moving, I encourage you to do so. Audio is a secondary activity. So if you can walk and talk or walk and listen while I'm walking and talking, all the better

Starting point is 00:51:02 for you, me, everybody involved. For this episode, I am doing something very different. I'm actually featuring a special episode from a brand new podcast called Altered States. And I listened to a lot of podcasts, I test out a lot of podcasts. I found this one to be particularly impressive. It's very well reported, very well researched, very well produced. Here's the teaser for the episode that you're about to hear. It's not a long one, but it is a very nuanced one, a very powerful one. Quote, for the last couple of years, producer Shana Shealy has been following Israeli and

Starting point is 00:51:41 Palestinian peace activists who have been coming together to drink the psychedelic brew ayahuasca in an effort to heal their collective intergenerational trauma. It seemed to be helping them when suddenly the region erupts into chaos and violence. Shana Shealy as background was a fellow from the Ferris UC Berkeley psychedelic journalism fellowship. That's how I actually heard about the podcast. And the fellowship offers 10 thousand dollar reporting grants per year to journalists reporting in-depth print and audio stories on the science, policy, business and culture of this new era of psychedelics. It's been going

Starting point is 00:52:15 for a few years now and a lot of amazing pieces have come out of it. The fellowship is supported by my foundation, the Sai Sai Foundation. You can find that S-A-I-S-E-I foundation.org if you wanna see what types of projects and grants and so on we've made. And it is made possible in collaboration with Michael Pollan, Molly O'Walland and others at UC Berkeley. So thanks to the entire team over there.

Starting point is 00:52:37 Altered States, the podcast looks at how people are taking psychedelics, who has access to them. They actually have an amazing episode where they walk through in real time someone's first experience with psilocybin, how they're regulated, who stands to profit and what these substances might offer us as individuals and as a society. It's hosted by journalist Arle Duam Ross, and you can find it wherever you find your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:53:00 Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off and that is Five Bullet Friday. podcasts. 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. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends,

Starting point is 00:53:42 including a lot of podcasts. Guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, 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.blogslashfriday, type that into your browser, tim.blogslashfriday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

The Tim Ferriss Show - #772: In Case You Missed It: September 2024 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

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