Experts Meditation & Mindfulness Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss · 45 episodes · 794 sourced insights

What Tim Ferriss says about meditation & mindfulness

Everything Tim Ferriss and guests said about meditation & mindfulness across 45 episodes — each point linked to the exact second on YouTube. Sourced expert opinion, not medical advice.

Meditation & Mindfulness

In their own words

Glenn has been legally deaf since age 10 from scarlet fever; an audiologist later told him he had been reading lips for at least 40 years without realizing it.
00:38:53Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
After Urban Cowboy, Glenn essentially never had to audition again, and he turned down lead TV roles to stay in Idaho and focus purely on the craft of acting rather than show-business politics.
00:30:29Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
On The Leftovers, director Mimi Leader said his seven-page monologue take was 'a master's class in acting'; Glenn was so fully inside the role he couldn't even direct or watch himself.
01:05:35Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
Glenn's core acting breakthrough is complete spontaneity: being so present in the now that you have no future or plans in a scene, which he says gives film performances their electricity.
01:11:18Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
At 85, Glenn does breath-hold meditations three times a week, currently holding for 1:40 with a personal record of 4 minutes 15 seconds, aiming for a two-minute hold by age 86.
01:33:54Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
Glenn met his wife Carol in a New York movie theater roughly 55 years ago; they sat through the entire film twice without touching, and he knew immediately he had fallen in love.
01:47:31Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
Laurence Olivier told Glenn the single thing you need to make it in the business is pure tenacity: 'develop very strong jaw muscles, learn how to bite on and not let go.'
02:01:04Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
Francis Ford Coppola gave Glenn a role at the end of Apocalypse Now because he believed Glenn had saved his life in the Philippines by keeping him from drowning in a river.
00:16:13Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
Burt Lancaster commissioned a dinnerware set from Carol after learning the only other ceramic artist whose work he owned was Picasso.
00:21:29Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
Glenn's father, a Snap-on Tools executive who rose from poverty, hit him only once in his life, and advised him to never set deadlines on pursuing his dream.
00:50:19Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
Glenn converted to Judaism so his wife would not 'have a target on her back' that he didn't share; his Jewish name is Abraham Ephraim Ben Abraham.
00:51:22Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
Glenn was certified in scuba diving by Jim Stewart, the legendary Scripps Institution dive master who wrote the syllabus for the Navy SEAL teams.
01:39:10Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
Rudolf Nureyev told Glenn he was a more believable cowboy than John Travolta, and corrected Glenn that he was Tatar, not Russian.
01:54:16Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
Glenn's morning routine includes a strong ear massage learned in a Tai Chi seminar and humming eight times with back teeth together to stimulate the vagus nerve.
01:20:39Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
'Baby fit,' which Glenn does each morning, is a movement practice he says Russian special ops use, rolling over using legs then arms the way a baby would.
01:23:55Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
His workout includes five rounds totaling 100 kettlebell swings and 100 push-ups, using 16-24 kg bells after retiring his 52 lb bell due to a muscle injury.
01:25:31Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
While filming in Thailand, Glenn crossed illegally into Burma at Three Pagodas Pass in the Golden Triangle and trained Muay Thai with fighters there.
01:44:55Scott Glenn · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2024
Craig built a one-to-many SMS tool for his first 600km Nakasendo walk, publishing a photo and three sentences nightly; he couldn't see the thousands of anonymous responses until a print book of them was waiting at home, teaching him the value of distance from social media's tight feedback loops.
00:36:14Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
He reveals his core walk rules: no news, no social media, never teleport (no phone for friction), be radically present, cultivate extreme boredom, say hello to every person, and take a portrait before 10 a.m.
00:39:57Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
Kissa by Kissa, priced at $100 a copy, sold 1,000 copies in roughly 36 hours; offering members a discount drove a 30% conversion rate of buyers into paying members, his 'product-market fit' moment.
01:04:21Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
Craig's New York Times '52 Places' pick of Morioka landed at number two behind only London, triggering 40-50 Japanese TV and radio appearances in three months and making him an unexpected celebrity.
01:30:56Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
His filming day with 80-year-old TV legend Tamori was 'the craziest experience I've ever had in public'; he grabbed and hugged the never-touched star, terrifying the 30-person crew.
01:36:13Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
After matching on Ancestry.com, his birth mother sent a cryptic 'hi I think we're related do you live in Japan' message, eventually followed by two 5,000-word letters.
01:55:34Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
At their Chicago lunch his birth mother revealed she was 13 (the father 22 and alive), and had invented the murdered-father story in the adoption notes by picking a dead man out of the newspaper to avoid problems.
02:00:47Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
Craig discovered a half-sister who is 28 and lives in Alaska, plus aunts, uncles, and around 14 cousins, an entirely new family that emerged from the reunion.
02:04:56Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
A tatami mat is roughly 2 meters by half a meter (or 1 meter), and Craig lived in a six-mat tatami room from age 22 to 35.
00:00:32Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
The film Perfect Days, set in a room like Craig's, was reportedly written and shot by Wim Wenders in just three to four weeks; Wenders pitched making a film about a Tokyo toilet cleaner instead of a toilet ad campaign.
00:01:32Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
There are only two UNESCO World Heritage pilgrimage trails in the world: the Camino de Santiago and the Kumano Kodo; 2024 marked the 20th anniversary of Kumano Kodo's UNESCO designation.
00:12:55Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
The Kii Peninsula is one of the wettest places on the planet, receiving more rainfall than the Amazon.
00:16:00Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
The Nakahechi route became the foreigner-facing 'Kumano Kodo' largely due to a Canadian named Brad who came via the JET English-teaching program and created the English-language materials when Wakayama prefecture invested in tourism infrastructure.
00:14:27Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
Japan is described as roughly '60% Blade Runner and 40% DMV,' stuck around the year 2000 with fax machines and phone-only inn bookings persisting.
00:55:51Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
Kissaten cafes served minimum-viable post-war foods like pizza toast (toast with canned sauce and cheese singles) and napolitan spaghetti (spaghetti with ketchup), which fed much of Japan in the 1950s-70s.
01:00:45Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
Japan's fertility rate is around 1.2 children per woman; South Korea's is around 0.6-0.7, partly driven by Seoul's massive 6-12 month rental security deposits.
00:58:39Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
Across about six editions, Kissa by Kissa has sold roughly 6,000 copies at $100 each, around $600,000 in sales, extraordinary for a $100 art photo book where peers like MACK cap print runs at 500-1,000.
01:08:28Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
One study estimated Morioka saw roughly $100 million in economic impact over two years following Craig's 300-word New York Times recommendation.
01:41:52Craig Mod · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2025
Seinfeld says writing is '95% rewrite' and describes two phases: the free-play creative phase and the polish/construction phase where he perfects every word.
00:09:52Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
His core writing system: set a defined, time-bounded writing session with an end time and a reward, because open-ended sessions are 'a ridiculous torture' for the brain.
00:13:29Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Seinfeld claims audience feedback is the only feedback that means anything, and advises never talking to anyone about what you wrote for 24 hours to protect the good feeling.
00:18:14Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Seinfeld recounts his favorite failure: Comedy Store owner Mitzi Shore told him she'd give his spots to another comic, and his resentment pushed him from writing 3 days a week to 7.
00:28:46Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Popova reveals Brain Pickings started as an email newsletter to seven coworkers and now reaches about 7 million readers a month, yet she still writes for an audience of one—herself.
00:51:43Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Popova describes building her own 'alternate index' on the blank last page of every analog book, listing key ideas (not keywords) and page numbers to synthesize patterns later.
01:08:53Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Popova reveals that when she finally pulled her PayPal data for taxes, recurring small monthly donations outnumbered one-time donations two to one, surprising her.
01:55:31Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Seinfeld credits Bill Phillips's book 'Body for Life' as a 'work of genius' that got him in shape by scripting every minute of the workout.
00:16:36Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Seinfeld trains with weights three times a week for an hour plus interval cardio three times a week, and does Transcendental Meditation at least twice a day.
00:21:24Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Seinfeld's billboard message would be a flag with just two words: 'just work.'
00:36:36Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Popova reads 12-15 books per week and Brain Pickings reportedly takes 400+ hours of work per month.
00:42:23Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Popova meditates 15-25 minutes each morning using a single Tara Brach 'smile meditation' recording she's used since the summer of 2010 on an old 3G iPhone used as an iPod.
01:04:08Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Ferriss admits he assumed Seneca was a Native American elder for a year or two before realizing he was a Roman writer.
01:13:02Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Popova carries a weighted jump rope when traveling as her plan B for cardio when she can't do sprints.
01:36:27Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Popova's Brain Pickings Facebook page grew from 250,000 to nearly 3 million followers in under a year starting October, for reasons she couldn't explain.
01:40:35Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Popova deliberately hides dates on her posts (keeping them only in the URL) to fight the culture's bias against older material.
01:38:01Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Running Brain Pickings costs Popova several times her rent, which is why she added donations rather than advertising.
01:57:35Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2024
Huberman recommends everyone view sunlight for two to ten minutes every morning upon waking to trigger a healthy cortisol pulse and set timers for both wakefulness and later melatonin/sleepiness.
00:16:35Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
His preferred sleep cocktail is 50mg apigenin, 300-400mg magnesium threonate or bisglycinate, and 200-400mg theanine taken about 30 minutes before bed, paired with morning light.
00:36:20Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
He avoids melatonin because it suppresses the reproductive/sex-steroid axis and most supplements contain 10 to 1,000 times natural physiological levels.
00:32:08Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
The physiological sigh - a double inhale followed by an extended exhale - offloads carbon dioxide and brings stress levels down very fast in real time, often after just one to three repetitions.
00:48:53Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
A 20-minute non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) protocol after intense learning accelerates neuroplasticity by about 50 percent, per two recent Cell Reports papers.
00:46:20Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
Huberman recounts a July 4, 1994 street fight at age 19 that became the turning point flipping him from a struggling, depressed dropout-track student toward neuroscience and academia.
01:08:26Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
He reveals he has done therapy with the same individual for 32 years, currently three sessions a week of psychoanalysis.
01:24:53Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
For testosterone, he uses 400mg/day Tongkat Ali and roughly 425mg Fadogia agrestis, which together raised his total testosterone by about 200 points without down-regulating LH.
02:00:35Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
The eyes are literally two pieces of brain squeezed out during early development - the only parts of the central nervous system outside the cranial vault.
00:06:41Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
Ideal morning light exposure is about 14 to 16 hours before you want to sleep, and your 'temperature minimum' (about two hours before natural waking) is the anchor point for shifting the circadian clock and beating jet lag.
00:24:20Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
Belladonna ('beautiful woman' in Italian) was historically made into a tincture women put in their eyes to hyper-dilate their pupils because it was considered attractive.
00:14:31Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
Inhales speed the heart up and exhales slow it down (respiratory sinus arrhythmia), which is the basis of heart rate variability - so emphasizing longer exhales calms the system.
00:50:55Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
The Spiegel eye-roll test predicts hypnotizability; Tim scored about a 4, very hypnotizable, with eyes rolling back as the lids slowly closed.
00:53:29Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
Clinical hypnosis shows roughly 60-80% success for smoking cessation, up to 90% improvement for anxiety, and 50-75% reduction in chronic pain in controlled studies.
00:57:05Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
Turmeric is a fairly potent DHT antagonist; people sensitive to creatine-induced hair loss tend to see their DHT plummet on turmeric.
01:50:41Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
In a Dominican Republic genetic condition (guevedoces), children appear female at birth then sprout a penis and descend testicles around age 12 due to a DHT surge, revealing 5-alpha reductase's role.
01:55:53Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
Most people benefit from delaying caffeine 90 minutes to two hours after waking so cortisol can clear residual adenosine and avoid an energy crash.
02:16:44Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
Gut neurons sensing fat, amino acids, and sugar signal via the vagus nerve and nodose ganglia to trigger dopamine release, making us seek those foods even when the mouth is numbed and regardless of taste.
02:26:34Andrew Huberman · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jul 2021
Kornfield cites Solzhenitsyn from the gulags: the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, so we cannot simply round up the evil people.
00:09:59Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Kornfield reveals his father was 'an angry, paranoid wife batterer, somewhat mentally ill,' yet also a brilliant scientist who helped develop some of the first artificial hearts and lungs.
00:10:30Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
In the monastery his anger boiled up unexpectedly, and Ajahn Chah told him to sit in his hut in full robes during hot season and 'feel the fire of it' to expand his window of tolerance.
00:11:30Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
The key reframe on anger: underneath it is hurt, fear, or humiliation, so dropping to 'I really feel hurt when you say that' turns 'I'm right and you're wrong' into a genuine conversation.
00:18:24Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
For hypervigilance, Kornfield teaches a compassion practice of thanking the frightened, protective part of yourself ('Thank you for trying to protect me') while affirming present safety.
00:31:31Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Kornfield describes sitting with his dying, terrified scientist father and challenging him to treat death as an experiment, sharing his own out-of-body and past-life experiences.
01:08:18Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Out-of-body experiences are 'more common than you think,' often occurring during accidents or distress, with thousands of detailed accounts of people accurately reporting things they could not have seen.
01:13:49Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Kornfield leads Ferriss through a live guided meditation; Ferriss receives an imagined silver pendant with a bluish-green stone symbolizing 'unending connection' and the words 'Take it easy.'
01:29:33Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
The ancient Greeks called anger a 'noble emotion' because there is something of value in it.
00:08:16Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Benjamin Franklin's line: 'What begins in anger ends in suffering.'
00:21:32Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
A Wall Street Journal front page from about a dozen years ago reported 45 million American children on antidepressants, ADHD, antipsychotic, or similar medications.
00:40:28Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Anthropologist Wade Davis's line, quoted by Kornfield: 'Despair is a failure of the imagination.'
00:46:27Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Joanna Macy and John Seed created the 'Council for All Beings,' a despair-and-empowerment practice where participants speak for parts of the natural world like salmon or monarch butterflies.
00:54:34Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Kornfield did the math himself: using Avogadro's number, there is roughly a 99 percent chance your next breath contains a molecule from Julius Caesar's dying breath.
01:06:38Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Thich Nhat Hanh's image of the Vietnamese refugee boats: if even one person stays calm and steady, it shows the way for everyone to survive.
01:01:11Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
The Dalai Lama on the Chinese taking Tibet: 'They've taken so much from me. Why should I let them take my happiness?'
01:24:22Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Ram Dass, after 20 years half-paralyzed in a wheelchair, said he came to love everything, including the wheelchair that carried him.
01:18:50Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Kornfield reads the thousand-year-old advice of Tibetan master Atisha, ending with 'rely on a joyful mind' and 'don't expect a standing ovation.'
01:46:22Jack Kornfield · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2022
Nsima's competition lifts: a 622 lb squat, 396 lb bench, and 755 lb deadlift for a 1758 total; in the gym he later hit a 645 squat and 775 deadlift, and notably pulled the 755 without a belt to prove his structure could handle the load unassisted.
00:01:32Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
The video that hooked Tim referenced Serge Gracovetsky's book 'The Spinal Engine,' showing a man with no arms or legs moving through space via spinal rotation alone, illustrating that the spine, not the limbs, drives locomotion.
00:04:13Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
The core breathing principle: most back issues trace to unconscious breath-holding; Nsima teaches inhaling on the way down and exhaling on the concentric (coming out of the hole) at lighter loads so the body feels safe and sheds excess global tension.
00:38:35Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
His low-back prescription for Tim: prioritize unilateral work (ATG split squats, lunges) over axial-loaded back squats, use sandbags and box squats above parallel at 40-60% of one-rep max, maintaining tension while breathing.
00:43:45Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
Regression got Nsima out of chronic knee pain: after a partial meniscectomy and Osgood-Schlatter he thought he'd never sprint again, but starting with ATG split-squat pulses on a box, he progressed over ~4 months to pain-free deep knee flexion, running, and sprinting.
01:33:25Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
His top non-negotiable lift is the sled, because grandma and an NFL linebacker can both do it with no spinal compression risk; he progresses it from neutral-spine pushing/pulling all the way to producing force in deep spinal flexion, extension, and lateral flexion.
02:04:29Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
Nsima beat NFL star Tyreek Hill's Nordic curl count, working from regressions (higher bench, partial range) over months to do roughly 15-18 reps versus Tyreek's 10.
02:49:15Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
He cites a quote (attributed to a Russian sport scientist via Kelly Starrett): 'Once you stop jumping, you start dying,' and recommends a rebounder as a regression for people who've lost the ability to jump and land safely.
02:59:09Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
Nsima's full Foundations rope flow course is free, with 50+ videos at skool.com/thestrongerhuman.
00:28:42Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
A Magma XL rope costs about $80, the RMT rope ~$40-45, but a cut Home Depot or boating-store rope works fine for getting started.
00:30:44Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
The ATG split squat (popularized by Ben Patrick) involves deep front-knee flexion with the back leg in hip extension to build strength through long ranges; ATG stands for Athletic Truth Group.
00:43:45Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
Colton Engelbrecht holds the highest powerlifting total ever (~470 kg deadlift, 260 kg bench, ~2650 lb total) at age 22 after only three years of training.
01:07:31Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
Ed Coan, considered the greatest powerlifter of all time, has an enormous ape index; Nsima notes Coan's hands were the same size as a roughly 6-10 NBA player despite being about 5-foot-5.
01:15:19Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
Tim was introduced to 'micro-dosing movement' by Cory Slesinger, a performance director who had NBA athletes sprinkle small movement bouts through the day instead of needing extensive warm-ups.
01:44:16Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
Tim describes pike pulses, a calisthenics core exercise done seated on the floor with straight legs, as a brutal, no-space-needed movement.
01:55:42Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
Tim's go-to soft tissue tool for back spasms is an acupressure mat (Naoya / 'bed of nails' style); he travels with just the neck attachment for low-back relief and says it resolves ~50% of his sleep-disrupting back issues.
02:37:50Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
The 'Back Buddy' (an S-shaped/cane-style back hook) was recommended to Tim by Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Asana.
02:42:29Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
Tim's DEXA scan showed below-average bone density in specific body segments despite a fine average, prompting his focus on compression, impact, jumping, and rotation to stimulate bone adaptation.
02:51:51Nsima Inyang · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jun 2025
George says his first encounter with Michael Jordan was not on the court but in the locker room after Jordan had retired, where he could feel Jordan's intense yet calm energy 'even before I even got to meet him.'
00:07:58George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George denies the widely-reported claim that he thought Jordan looked manic or bipolar; instead he says Jordan practiced 'like a person trying to make the team' because he never wanted to get cut again after being cut in 10th grade.
00:09:30George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George confirms the Boston Globe quote that he had 'a security clearance on my badge and track marks on my forearm' while working at GTE Sylvania as a functional heroin addict, wearing long sleeves year-round.
00:13:11George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George describes hitting bottom in March 1984 with a strep infection and 104-degree fever, then attending his first AA meeting on April Fool's Day, April 1st.
00:17:50George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George explains he entered elite sports when Phil Jackson and John Kabat-Zinn met at the Omega Institute; he joined the Bulls at 1993 training camp just as Jordan's father was murdered and Jordan retired.
00:32:54George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George reveals he told Kobe Bryant 'the best way to score is not to try to score,' and Kobe later told him he remembered everything George had taught him.
00:47:30George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George recounts that Jordan described his game-winning Georgetown NCAA shot as the moment he went 'from Mike Jordan to Michael Jordan,' framing it as a paradigm shift in self-image.
00:53:40George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George lays out his 'four A's' framework for performance and meditation: awareness, acceptance (the hardest part), compassionate action, and assessment.
01:00:22George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George Mumford roomed with future Hall of Famer Julius Erving (Dr. J) at the University of Massachusetts.
00:05:51George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George got clean in 1984 and at the time of recording is 36 years and 6 months clean and sober.
00:14:12George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George's mind-body recovery began in an experimental stress management program at Beth Israel run by Dr. Joan Borysenko, then one of only three psychoneuroimmunologists in the world.
00:23:32George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George says he has averaged over a book a week for his 36-plus years of sobriety, starting with a 20-to-25-book syllabus he read entirely.
00:24:03George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George lived at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center for six years and worked five years at the Center for Mindfulness running a prison project and inner-city project.
00:25:36George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George attributes the concept of the 'dizziness of freedom' to Søren Kierkegaard (1846), framing freedom and anxiety as two sides of the same coin.
00:49:01George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George cites the military term VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) to describe embracing life's uncertainty.
00:50:35George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George worked with Boston College point guard Troy Bell, who won Big East Player of the Year and holds the BC record for most points scored.
00:56:15George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George recounts a Boston College team improving from 11-19 to 27-5, and an AAU-style summer squad going 17-0 winning by an average of 22.5 points after declaring a shared vision.
00:58:19George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
George tells of teaching a meditation class at Norfolk County House of Correction, the prison where Malcolm X served time, and discovering 28 of 32 students spoke only Spanish, forcing him to abandon his notes.
01:05:32George Mumford · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2021
West literally Googled 'wisest person in the history of the world' as a 16/17-year-old, found Plato's dialogue Gorgias and the character of Socrates, and got hooked on philosophy.
00:00:00Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
At nine he was taken off the streets by Child Protective Services after his family hadn't had an apartment for months, then bounced through group homes and foster placements.
00:02:01Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
At 16 his long-term foster family told him that in Washington you don't have to report a missing person over 16, so they offered to let him run away without reporting him — 'the best offer I'd ever got at that point.'
00:03:02Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
The 4-Hour Workweek functioned as a work of philosophy for West, letting him question assumptions about wealth and retirement and making it feel possible to even start a podcast.
00:11:55Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
A friend named Jimmy Weisenhunt (an esports shoutcaster) telling him 'it would be a shame if you didn't at least try something in media,' combined with Emerson's idea that you only need courage not genius, pushed him to take the leap.
00:20:20Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
His launch strategy was months of researching podcasting, then getting everyone he knew to leave honest reviews on day one — landing him in iTunes' New and Noteworthy in the first week.
00:25:29Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
Simone Weil's concept of attention hit him 'like a ton of bricks' and exposed his own narcissistic tendency to filter every person through what they could do for him.
00:51:00Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
West views the podcast as his 'laboratory or workshop,' warning that over-relying on audience signal can make you 'a caricature of your greatest clips on YouTube.'
01:09:11Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
West worked two jobs simultaneously: winding yellow yarn at Joann Fabrics from 4:30am, then a Safeway helper-clerk shift until 9pm.
00:04:35Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
He transferred to warehouse work at about 17.5 because it paid $14/hour — more than the $7-ish at Safeway — precisely because it was brutal, back-breaking labor.
00:05:09Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
Watching older warehouse workers walk to their cars with spines 'fused together' from multiple surgeries is what made him want to start a podcast.
00:05:41Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
He started the podcast around 2012-2013, predating Tim Ferriss's own podcast which began in 2014.
00:22:22Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
His biggest inspiration was Dan Carlin of Hardcore History, whom he listened to constantly at the warehouse.
00:23:26Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
Early episodes were about 4,000 words / ~30 minutes; he's now done 225 episodes releasing roughly every two weeks.
00:28:40Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
He didn't add advertising until around episode 180, motivated by wanting to leave something for his kids when his son was born.
00:30:43Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025
West meditates twice a day using an app called The Way, taught by Henry Shookman, a Sanbo Zen-focused practice he learned about via Kevin Rose.
00:37:00Stephen West · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2025

What Tim Ferriss recommends for meditation & mindfulness

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Creatine Monohydrate

various

recommended in 20 eps · 3 experts Book

Why We Sleep

Matthew Walker

recommended in 13 eps · 3 experts Book

Radical Acceptance

Tara Brach

recommended in 12 eps · 1 expert Book

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius

recommended in 12 eps · 4 experts Book

Awareness

Anthony de Mello

recommended in 11 eps · 1 expert Book

The Molecule of More

Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long

recommended in 9 eps · 2 experts Book

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor Frankl

recommended in 8 eps · 3 experts Product

Tongkat Ali (Solaray)

Solaray

recommended in 7 eps · 2 experts Book

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

recommended in 6 eps · 2 experts Book

Exhalation

Ted Chiang

recommended in 6 eps · 2 experts Product

Magnesium L-Threonate

recommended in 6 eps · 2 experts Book

Don't Shoot the Dog

Karen Pryor

recommended in 5 eps · 1 expert