Experts Psychedelics Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss · 57 episodes · 999 sourced insights

What Tim Ferriss says about psychedelics

Everything Tim Ferriss and guests said about psychedelics across 57 episodes — each point linked to the exact second on YouTube. Sourced expert opinion, not medical advice.

In their own words

The MAPS 'Capstone' campaign raised $30 million to complete Phase 3 trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD, with more than 2,500 donors giving from $1 up to $5 million.
00:08:19Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
In MDMA Phase 2 trials, patients with treatment-resistant PTSD for an average of 17 years saw about 53% no longer meeting diagnostic criteria after just three doses plus 12 weeks of psychotherapy.
00:13:29Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
At five years out with no further treatment, 67% of MDMA patients no longer met PTSD diagnostic criteria, while placebo-group responders often relapsed.
00:13:59Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
Ferriss says that after a few follow-up questions, 90%+ of the time his answer to 'should I do a psychedelic?' is no, because preparation and post-care are essential.
00:25:54Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
Ferriss describes his funding strategy: provide seed capital to de-risk and destigmatize, paving the way for foundations and federal funding, which he hopes arrives within three to five years.
00:36:19Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
Ferriss argues you don't need to treat 100 million people to change the world; helping one person overcome paralyzing trauma can have an enormous ripple effect.
00:45:10Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
On patents, Ferriss warns the most critical ethical risk is broad patent land-grabs that could lock up the field, and urges watchdog opposition at the patent office.
01:15:36Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
Rick Doblin/MAPS took roughly 30 years to raise their first $30 million, an amount the Capstone campaign matched in just a few years.
00:08:51Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
Acetaminophen (Tylenol) sends far more people to emergency rooms and carries higher toxicity than psilocybin or MDMA.
00:11:56Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
Blinding psychedelic studies is hard because participants can quickly tell they received an active drug; researchers use 'active placebos' like niacin to mimic physiological effects.
00:19:38Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
Belief is powerful: placebo can make treatment work 30-50% more often, while nocebo (believing it won't work) can make it 30-50% less likely to succeed.
00:21:12Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
MDMA must hit a threshold dose (roughly 80-120 mg) to be effective, making it a poor candidate for microdosing; sub-threshold doses were used as the placebo.
00:23:19Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
About 25-27% of the sub-therapeutic placebo group also lost their PTSD diagnosis at two months, showing the 12-week therapy alone is potent.
00:23:50Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
Ferriss notes we operated on newborns and infants without anesthesia until 1987, illustrating how much of accepted medicine later proves wrong.
00:31:37Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
Ferriss observes the psychedelic world's biggest weakness is lack of focus: 'if everything is your priority, nothing is your priority.'
00:48:48Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
Licensed professionals can lose their license for a mental-illness diagnosis on record, creating a paradox of untreated burnout among front-line caregivers.
00:58:05Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
There is no indigenous culture that progresses sequentially through psychedelics; these are not 'psychedelic cultures' but cultures that use plants for specific purposes like warfare and hunting.
01:05:48Tim Ferriss (with hosts Dr. David Rabin and Dr. Molly Maloof) · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2020
At an ayahuasca retreat in Peru, shamans 'fired' Maté from his own retreat, saying his dark, dense energy was so heavy it interfered with their chants for everyone else.
00:11:53Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
The shamans intuited that Maté had experienced a 'big scare' when very small and assigned one healer to work with him alone over five private ceremonies.
00:12:25Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
Maté recounts going into a rage over a minor text from his wife at the airport, tracing it directly to being given away by his mother as a one-year-old infant.
00:24:50Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
Maté publicly acknowledges he was sexually abused as a child, explaining how suppressing the resulting rage became a survival mechanism.
00:30:30Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
Maté argues no one has ever discovered a gene or group of genes that causes any mental health condition; what is inherited is sensitivity, not disease.
00:44:30Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
Describing prison enneagram work with men who have killed, Maté says these 'killers' are among the loveliest people, deeply traumatized sensitive kids nobody ever paid attention to.
01:09:33Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
In a live exercise, Maté helps Tim surface his authentic calling, which Tim names as 'animal communication' and 'pure knowing.'
01:24:38Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
Maté's works have been published internationally in nearly 30 languages.
00:01:32Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
The Myth of Normal took about 10 years of research and a year longer to write than Maté expected.
00:02:34Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
At the Peru retreat there were 24 participants, all health professionals (doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists).
00:11:22Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp identified mammalian brain systems including CARE, GRIEF/PANIC, FEAR, LUST, SEEKING, PLAY, and RAGE.
00:28:27Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
Maté cites Buddhist teacher Tara Brach's RAIN method: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture.
00:33:38Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
Loneliness has doubled in the last 30 years; Britain appointed a Minister of Loneliness, and loneliness is reportedly as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
00:55:33Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
In Canada, Indigenous people are 5% of the population but 30% of the jail population, and Indigenous women are 50% of the female jail population.
01:03:46Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
Olympian Clara Hughes, the first to win medals at both Summer and Winter Olympics, walks roughly from northern Canada to Mexico for six months each year to reconnect with herself.
00:57:36Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
While writing the book, Maté experienced panic and saw a therapist weekly for several months mid-project.
01:20:31Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
A documentary about Maté's work, The Wisdom of Trauma, features Fritzi Horstman doing trauma work with high-level offenders in a prison yard.
00:58:07Dr. Gabor Maté · The Tim Ferriss Show · Sep 2022
A newly discovered set of 1987 lecture recordings by Sasha Shulgin is being published as a three-volume set called 'The Nature of Drugs' through Transform Press.
00:07:46Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
Ibogaine's anti-addictive effect was not an African tradition but was discovered in the 1960s by a New York heroin addict named Howard Lotsof, who realized he had no withdrawals or desire for heroin after taking it.
00:38:35Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
The Bwiti iboga ceremony includes a spiritual army wearing military outfits with iboga guns and knives to guard participants from bad spirits, and a ritual of burying people alive overnight to contemplate mortality.
00:43:48Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
5-MeO-DMT can be synthesized from melatonin, with 100 grams of melatonin yielding roughly 100 grams of 5-MeO-DMT, equivalent to milking thousands of toads.
00:52:46Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
There is essentially no evidence of historical indigenous use of the Sonoran Desert toad; the first human to smoke its venom was independent researcher Ken Nelson in the 1980s.
01:06:50Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
At a xenon clinic, a 'breatharian' patient who had not fasted vomited while unconscious under a quadruple-strapped mask, and the clinic proprietor (who later died) was found using xenon himself instead of supervising a sedated producer.
01:24:27Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
Morris says the iboga ceremony was the moment he realized ritual could be as powerful as the substance itself and could dramatically magnify therapeutic effects.
01:28:38Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
The federal Analog Act allows prosecutors to charge a substance that is an arbitrarily-defined analog of a Schedule I drug as if it were that drug.
00:09:50Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
Shulgin was responsible for the discovery of an estimated 200 novel psychedelic compounds and authored PIHKAL and TIHKAL.
00:13:59Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
Shulgin observed that every drug has 'no side effects for the first five years,' before its limitations become apparent.
00:29:01Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
Ibogaine binds to hERG potassium channels that regulate heart rhythm and has a mild topical anesthetic effect, so high doses can cause fatal arrhythmias.
00:44:52Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
An iboga tree must be about five years old before its roots can be harvested, and harvesters in Gabon typically kill the entire tree.
00:48:32Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
5-MeO-DMT is more pharmacologically distant from DMT than psilocybin is; it dissociates users entirely, resembles a near-death experience, and can cause violent physical reactions.
01:11:00Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
Xenon makes up only about 0.0000087 percent of Earth's atmosphere, requiring distillation of millions of liters of air, so a single breath costs roughly sixty dollars.
01:13:36Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
Anesthesiologists consider xenon nearly the perfect anesthetic: not metabolized, recyclable indefinitely, extremely potent, fast onset and recovery, and no known toxicity.
01:14:37Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
Xenon was reportedly used for endurance enhancement by athletes around the Sochi Olympics, and a company called Nobilis is developing a xenon inhaler for PTSD.
01:16:10Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
Florida Water and Agua de Cananga, cologne-like ingredients used in remote Amazonian ayahuasca ceremonies, were originally manufactured in the United States, showing such traditions have long incorporated outside elements.
01:37:26Hamilton Morris · The Tim Ferriss Show · May 2021
Tim discusses for the first time the consequences of his September episode disclosing childhood sexual abuse suffered from ages two to four at a babysitter's house.
00:09:14Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Seven or eight of Tim's roughly twenty close male friends reached out after the episode to confess they had been sexually abused and never told anyone.
00:13:24Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Schwartz describes the turning-point moment with a self-harming client when he said 'I give up' and the cutting 'part' replied it didn't want to beat him, shifting him from coercion to curiosity.
00:19:08Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Schwartz lays out the core IFS framework of exiles, manager protectors, and firefighters, with suicide often sitting at the top of the firefighter hierarchy.
00:35:18Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Schwartz begins a real, unscripted live IFS session with Tim, working with anxiety Tim locates in his throat and chest.
00:43:05Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
In the live demo Tim transports back in time to be with his abused child self, unburdens the boy by putting feelings into fire, and brings in confidence.
00:56:18Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Schwartz explains his approach to suicidal clients: seeing suicide as just one part trying to stop pain, and offering to stop the mental 'loop' another way.
01:12:31Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Schwartz explains the 'protector war' dynamic in couples, where each partner's protective parts trigger the other's wounded exiles.
01:28:35Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Tim compares IFS for emotions to David Allen's 'Getting Things Done' system for work tasks.
00:04:39Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
The Internal Family Systems model was born in the early 1980s and is now evidence-based, used for individuals, couples, families, corporations, and classrooms.
00:07:12Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Frank Anderson worked at Bessel van der Kolk's trauma center; van der Kolk authored 'The Body Keeps the Score.'
00:25:25Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Schwartz named the core 'Self' (capital S), describing eight C-word qualities: calm, curiosity, confidence, compassion, courage, clarity, creativity, and connectedness.
00:36:21Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
In Michael Mithoefer's MDMA phase-one trials with PTSD patients, over 70 percent spontaneously began doing IFS-style work without any coaching.
00:38:56Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Tim reveals he was severely bullied as a very small kid until about sixth grade, on top of the earlier sexual abuse.
00:51:29Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
After the live session, Tim reports the constriction in his throat dropped from a volume of eight to two or less.
01:05:17Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Schwartz uses the term 'trailheads' for symptoms that, when followed, lead to the part needing healing, and cites Gabor Mate's 'why the pain, not why the addiction.'
01:35:50Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Schwartz cites an Indian saying: 'When the water buffalo battle in the marsh, it is the frogs who suffer,' describing collateral damage in couples conflict.
01:30:06Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Schwartz's resources include the IFS Institute website, his books 'Introduction to IFS' and 'You Are the One You've Been Waiting For,' and his Sounds True audio course 'Greater Than the Sum of the Parts.'
01:36:52Richard Schwartz · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2021
Peterson argues the best people he's met are dangerous people who keep themselves in check, and that real morality requires the capacity to do anything yet control yourself.
00:09:53Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
He distinguishes resentment from anger, saying resentment is revelatory: it tells you either someone is treading on your territory or you need to grow up and stop complaining.
00:14:33Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
Peterson reveals he held Timothy Leary's old position at Harvard and that he is deeply involved with phase three trials for both psilocybin and MDMA-assisted psychotherapy.
00:35:30Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
He firmly states the world is not the way we perceive it, that it is deeply strange, and that hallucinogens reveal this.
00:43:44Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
He describes a drawing his six-year-old son made depicting order, chaos, a river, and a tree of life reaching to heaven, which he found shockingly shamanic despite no religious upbringing.
00:47:52Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
Peterson confirms that writing Beyond Order was a life raft that anchored him while he was severely ill, echoing Viktor Frankl's account of meaning sustaining him.
01:01:55Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
He frames the deepest values as inherently religious, an argument he tried to impress upon Sam Harris despite Harris disliking the terminology.
00:55:09Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
Peterson grew up near a college in northern Alberta that once had 30 days in a row where temperatures never rose above minus 40.
00:02:36Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
His junior high librarian Sandy Notley introduced him to Ayn Rand, Huxley, Orwell, and Solzhenitsyn; her daughter Rachel Notley later became premier of Alberta.
00:03:37Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
Peterson started working for the NDP at age 14 and ran for vice president of the party that same year.
00:03:37Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
Peterson says his recommended-books list sells hundreds of books a month and is unbelievably popular with readers.
00:07:18Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
His PhD research focused for eight or nine years on drug and alcohol abuse, concentrating on alcohol because it bathes every cell like water.
00:32:58Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
He cites research showing one dose of psilocybin can move a person from the 50th to the 85th percentile in openness, calling it a major neurological rewiring.
00:40:37Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
Peterson references Terence McKenna's stoned ape hypothesis that psilocybin mushrooms and humans co-evolved, and notes even flies seek psychoactive states (hence amanita muscaria the 'fly agaric').
00:49:27Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
Peterson worked on Maps of Meaning from 1985 to 1999, roughly three hours a day, and thought about it up to 13 hours a day in his twenties.
00:59:52Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
Peterson learned the term 'ontological shock' from Roland Griffiths and links it to PTSD and disruption of fundamental axioms.
00:51:01Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
A friend told Peterson that to find meaning you must either find God or have kids, and that having kids is easier.
01:03:30Jordan B. Peterson · The Tim Ferriss Show · Mar 2021
Williams describes treating Deirdre Lehman, one of the most severe patients they had ever seen (catatonic, suicidal bipolar depression), and having her go from that state to completely normal in roughly 24 hours with accelerated TMS.
00:04:29Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
A paper in PNAS identified a depression biomarker: in healthy people the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex fires slightly before the cingulate, but in about 70 percent of depressed patients this signal is flipped, and only patients with the flipped biomarker responded to SAINT.
00:08:15Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
SAINT compresses a full six-week (about 30-session) FDA-cleared TMS course into a single day by giving 10 triple-dose sessions of 1,800 pulses, delivering roughly seven and a half months of TMS in five days, with average remission at 2.6 days.
00:29:33Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
In treatment-resistant patients where conventional TMS yields about 16 percent remission, SAINT achieved 90 percent remission in the open-label pilot and 79 percent transiting through remission in the randomized controlled trial (13 percent for sham).
00:52:30Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
Williams' Stanford ibogaine trial in 30 veterans with traumatic brain injury produced results so striking he ordered the postdocs to delete the code and redo the analysis, suspecting an error; the second run reproduced the same dramatic improvements, now holding out to a year.
01:06:38Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
To address ibogaine's roughly one-in-300 risk of fatal Torsade de pointes arrhythmia, every patient received IV magnesium upfront; about a thousand operators have gone to Mexico with this protocol and no torsades cases, versus a death in a 10-person New Zealand study.
01:28:52Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
An anecdotal deep-brain-stimulation case: a man treated for OCD became obsessed with Johnny Cash and sold all his other albums, reverted to old tastes when his battery died, and regained the obsession after a battery replacement, illustrating how little is understood about content-level brain effects.
02:13:06Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
Williams frames psychiatry in three eras: 1.0 (Freud/content), 2.0 (the serendipitous chemical era beginning with Thorazine), and 3.0 (the current circuit/neuromodulation era).
00:16:11Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) was originally developed by Tony Barker in the UK as a motor probe based on Faraday's law, inducing current in electrically conducting brain tissue while bypassing skin, scalp, and skull.
00:22:10Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
SAINT uses 90 percent of resting motor threshold, depth-corrected for prefrontal atrophy in older patients; there has never been a TMS-related seizure at sub-motor-threshold intensity, so risk tracks intensity rather than pulse count.
00:34:07Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
TMS produces an anti-pain (antinociceptive) effect by releasing endogenous opioids, which can be blocked with opioid-blocking drugs as shown in studies by Joe Taylor.
00:37:21Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
RCT patients averaged about nine years in their current depressive episode, five (plus or minus two) medication failures, and a lifetime depression load of roughly 25 years.
00:39:33Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
On average it takes about seven years to diagnose bipolar disorder from a patient's first depressive episode.
00:49:50Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
Comparative remission benchmarks cited: electroconvulsive therapy about 48 percent, a single ketamine infusion about 30 percent, with later-stage pharmaceutical interventions under 10 percent.
00:53:36Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
Williams first learned about ibogaine after randomly picking up Daniel Pinchbeck's 'Breaking Open the Head' while stranded in the San Salvador airport on the way to kite surf in Peru.
01:04:29Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
Ibogaine is described as a 'neurogen' acting across many receptor systems (kappa, mu, NMDA, SERT, some 5-HT2A) and upregulating BDNF and GDNF, unlike classic psychedelics that work mainly through 5-HT2A.
01:20:45Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
Williams and Raag Airan are packaging ketamine into nanoparticles delivered by IV and opened with focused ultrasound to drop the drug only into the cingulate, aiming to test 'tripless' therapeutic effects by targeting specific brain regions.
02:16:51Dr. Nolan Williams · The Tim Ferriss Show · Jan 2024
Shao realized a core childhood imprint was that his value came solely from his performance, specifically being number one, leaving him feeling worthless otherwise.
00:14:28Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
EachNet became the largest e-commerce company in China and was sold to eBay in 2003 for a price he couldn't refuse, after which he retired at 29.
01:11:51Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
He admits he once looked down on people who went to retreats or meditated, finding it almost disgusting, before life nudged him toward inner work.
01:18:24Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
Shao confesses he was a terrible father who didn't enjoy parenting and repeated his own father's harmful patterns, including threatening to throw his son out.
01:24:35Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
He frames psychedelics as a helicopter tour of the terrain that shows you the destination but lands you back where you started, requiring hard integration work afterward.
01:36:25Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
His turning point was committing to make inner work a top priority for just three months, after which his progress changed dramatically.
01:44:16Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
He deliberately quit Weibo about ten years ago after noticing he was posting to please others and feeding his ego by tracking replies and applause.
01:45:47Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
His father trained him on mental math using a deck of cards, and Shao eventually could add all 52 cards in about 12 seconds, roughly the biological limit of human image processing.
00:11:24Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
In 1980s China, being newly rich meant having 10,000 RMB; his family couldn't even afford the $35-50 college application fees and needed waivers.
00:17:37Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
He overcame his English by listening to 'New Concept English' tapes thousands of times one summer until he memorized even the copyright notice spoken on the recording.
00:19:08Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
On arriving in the US in 1991, he used a payphone for the first time; a cleaning lady scooped his lost quarters from the malfunctioning phone before he understood what happened.
00:30:09Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
EachNet raised about $6.5 million in October 1999, and Shao spent it all in five months, largely on being one of China's first internet companies to run TV advertising.
01:00:50Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
When the 2000 market crash caused a lead investor to renege, Shao strategically asked for $5 million instead of the promised $20 million and used it to raise the full round.
01:04:57Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
Because the SAT wasn't offered in China, Shao took the GRE instead, scoring around 2260, reportedly the third highest in the country at the time.
01:07:35Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
After eBay acquired EachNet, its China market share collapsed from over 80% to about 5% within a few years, while Alibaba's Taobao rose to dominate.
01:12:42Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
Shao notes a boy's prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed until his 20s, so expecting disciplined behavior from a 12-year-old is developmentally unrealistic.
01:28:40Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
Shao started a parenting company called Parent Lab after three years of R&D collecting child-psychology research into an accessible, customized framework for parents.
01:46:18Bo Shao · The Tim Ferriss Show · Apr 2022
Tim shares his stock 'triage' gating questions for pitched ideas, including asking what assumptions someone is making and whether something is a 'no-brainer' (whole-body yes) rather than merely a good idea.
00:11:27Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
Tim's borrowed pre-mortem question: 'Flash forward 3 years, the company has failed. What went wrong?' and which assumption is most likely to be wrong, used to surface blind spots and red flags.
00:18:47Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
The central theme that hyperfunction and dysfunction sit side by side, and that 'your superpower is very often right next to your wound.'
00:28:30Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
Tim discusses control, hypervigilance, and how an obsession with security breeds insecurity, connecting it to his psychedelic work as practice in letting go of control ('out-surrender' rather than out-suffer).
00:44:10Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
Tim says his shift away from efficiency and control toward surrender is 'multiplying my edge,' not removing it, citing Bezos-style long time horizons.
00:49:51Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
Josh explains his 'cave process': sitting in empty space to escape inertia and reactivity, with both large (months away) and micro (morning journaling) forms.
01:00:14Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
The 'advice from your future self' exercise; Tim's future self would tell him to focus on enjoyment, fun, and pleasure, and to become the parent he wants to be now rather than after having kids.
01:01:16Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
For an age of accelerating change, Tim argues you must focus on meta-learning and meta-skills, embrace your humanness, and learn probabilistic thinking or 'you're just going to be toast.'
01:10:39Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
A recent study of Usain Bolt's stride found it is uneven, and that asymmetry (leg length or spinal construction) may actually be part of why he is so fast.
00:20:49Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
Josh describes Marcelo Garcia as repeating mistakes less than anyone he's ever known; catch Marcelo with something once and you won't catch him with it again.
00:22:21Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
Tim was a preemie whose left lung collapsed around birth, leaving him with thermoregulation issues; he overheats easily and has been hospitalized for heat stroke several times.
00:34:18Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
In his senior year of high school Tim cut weight from 178 to 152 pounds twice a week, which he calls insane and dangerous, leading to chronic shoulder issues and reconstructive surgery.
00:37:26Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
A recurring martial-arts principle: superb fighters can move much slower and still always get there first because of impeccable timing and perception, citing K-1 fighter Peter Aerts, the 'Dutch Lumberjack.'
00:52:58Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
Tim has battled chronic fatigue since his teens, which led to abusing ephedrine, caffeine, and aspirin in high school, and he later tested positive for severe Lyme disease.
01:05:57Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
Tim mentions almost committing suicide in college and feeling like he has been 'operating on borrowed time,' driving a deep sense of obligation and responsibility.
01:06:29Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
Josh is currently taking on his fourth and fifth disciplines: paddle surfing and foiling.
00:01:34Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
On choosing friends, Tim's number-one criterion is gut feeling, whether 'the animal in me' moves toward a person, and he says every time he overruled his intuition about someone it bit him.
01:14:44Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
Tim says dogs are an incredible 'tabula rasa' mirror; raising Molly taught him how much we project our wounds and fears, and how to love unconditionally.
01:16:50Josh Waitzkin · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 2021
Matt shares that not meeting your mentors is fine - you can grow up with a book, speech, or essay; he credits Tyler Cowen's blog and a single piece of advice ('write every day') for setting his trajectory.
00:30:01Matt Mullenweg · The Tim Ferriss Show · Dec 2023
Matt reveals he changed his mind on having kids - after deciding ~6-7 years ago not to, he's now rethinking it at 40, influenced by AI optimism and the book Empty Planet (humanity won't have enough people, not too many).
01:04:21Matt Mullenweg · The Tim Ferriss Show · Dec 2023

What Tim Ferriss recommends for psychedelics

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