Sam Harris — Psychedelics, Meditation, and The Bigger Picture | The Tim Ferriss Show

1. 0:00 – 8:18

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   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat-out for a half-mile before my hands start to shake.

   2. SHSam Harris0:06

      Can I ask you a personal question? Now would seem an appropriate time.

   3. TFTim Ferriss0:10

      What if I did the opposite?

   4. SHSam Harris0:12

      I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show.

   5. TFTim Ferriss0:19

      [upbeat music] This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Thousands of listeners and a lot of the contractors I use, and my readers, use FreshBooks. If you've been thinking about turning your part-time side business into a full-time small business, or big business for that matter, you may be feeling some extra uncertainty these days, and, uh, that's obviously completely natural. There are a lot of questions that can come up. How do you create a professional appearance and experience? Who can help you with support? How do you manage the billing and all of that, but still focus on the primary work of your business and on growing your business? FreshBooks is an all-in-one invoicing and accounting solution, does a lot more than that, that helps you take your business from part-time to full-time, and it only takes minutes to set up. They have one of the best sign-up flows in the business. I've seen very few better. 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Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time, because after all, the podcast, the books, they can be quite long, and that's why I created 5-Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free. It's always gonna be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog/friday. That's tim.blog/friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with, and little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to 5-Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. 5-Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with 5-Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog/friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot, and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy-peasy. Again, that's tim.blog/friday, and thanks for checking it out if the spirit moves you. [upbeat music] Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to perhaps the most impromptu tap dancing version of The Tim Ferriss Show that you will hear. I have with me my friend Sam Harris. I always enjoy speaking with Sam. We had originally planned to do a session at South by Southwest. That has been canceled, and we have been put into circumstances that may require or encourage different topics. The plan had been meditation, psychedelics, and dangerous ideas. I said to Sam before we hit record that I can probably use a fair dose of at least the first two in my life right now. But Sam, we were deliberating what to talk about, and I'll, I'll tell you an embarrassing fact, a, a secret of sorts. I have a deck of cards that I thought could be a lifeline if need be called Three Things, which has prompts of different questions that I could ask you that I've wanted to ask you anyway.

   6. SHSam Harris5:18

      Right.

   7. TFTim Ferriss5:18

      But how should we even frame this conversation?

   8. SHSam Harris5:22

      Well, first let me say that at this point I'm committed to producing the worst episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast-

   9. TFTim Ferriss5:26

      [laughs]

   10. SHSam Harris5:27

       ... e- ever aired. So let's, let's, let's start there. Um-

   11. TFTim Ferriss5:30

       I appreciate your har- your hardworking [laughs] Protestant ethic.

   12. SHSam Harris5:33

       [laughs] Um, well, I mean, what, what's amazing, I mean, a- a- as, as you know, I also have a podcast, and, um, uh, I'm finding... I'm, I'm obviously s- speaking a lot about, uh, the coronavirus and our, our inept response to it and all of the, uh, all the attendant concerns, but there's just this bewildering experience of having one's core interests sidelined and even just Seeming patently inappropriate to air. I mean, I've, I have podcasts on several topics that I, I just can't drop in the current environment. Actually, not because they're, they're too frivolous and, and tone deaf in that way, but because they're, they're on yet other emergencies, uh, or, or grim topics that, that I, I can't imagine anyone wants to pay attention to now. Like, you know, nuclear war or the prospect of, of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism. I mean, who the hell wants to think about that right now? And, uh, so yeah, it's... And to say nothing of things like, you know, psychedelics. I mean, who... [laughs] I don't know about you, but-

   13. TFTim Ferriss6:39

       [laughs]

   14. SHSam Harris6:39

       ... uh, this does not seem like a moment to, uh, do a whopping dose of mushrooms or anything else-

   15. TFTim Ferriss6:44

       [laughs]

   16. SHSam Harris6:44

       ... uh, with, uh, with, [laughs] with an invading virus, uh, looming i- in every corner of the world. Uh, I mean, it's, it's, talk about set and setting. It's, it's the wrong both.

   17. TFTim Ferriss6:55

       Yeah. Yep, I agree. So I feel like we should just have a conversation and, uh-

   18. SHSam Harris7:01

       Well, although I should remind you-

   19. TFTim Ferriss7:03

       I guess it will grill you. [laughs]

   20. SHSam Harris7:03

       I should r- I should r- remind you of your tweet about, um, who was it? So- some- I don't think you named the person, but someone in your circle said, you know, we should now t- we should drop, you know, uh, we should take ayahuasca or peyote-

   21. TFTim Ferriss7:14

       Oh, no, I know who it is

   22. SHSam Harris7:15

       ... and talk to the pangolin.

   23. TFTim Ferriss7:16

       He said, he said, "I think it's time to [laughs] take some peyote and talk to the pangolin." [laughs] Right?

   24. SHSam Harris7:20

       Right. So, so that, that elicited a trollish tweet from me. I don't know if you saw-

   25. TFTim Ferriss7:25

       [laughs]

   26. SHSam Harris7:25

       ... that come across your radar.

   27. TFTim Ferriss7:26

       [laughs] Wait, I th- I think it might have. What was your response?

   28. SHSam Harris7:30

       Uh, I said, uh, "Just spoke to the pangolin. Unfortunately, he's working for the bat, and the bat's an asshole."

   29. TFTim Ferriss7:36

       [laughs]

   30. SHSam Harris7:38

       And, and that, uh-
2. 8:18 – 11:37

   What Sam has learned about fear

   1. TFTim Ferriss8:19

      What are three things you have learned about fear? That is the question on the card.

   2. SHSam Harris8:27

      Um, in general or in, or, uh, based on recent events?

   3. TFTim Ferriss8:32

      In general, in your life. Yeah, or w- current events. Any way you want to take it.

   4. SHSam Harris8:37

      Yeah. Um, a, a couple things. One, one is that it is, it's certainly necessary. You wouldn't want to be without it. You wouldn't want to have your amygdala removed and, and simply be insensitive to kind of the fear-based initial response to stimuli or, or even ideas, right? So it's, it's a necessary part of the toolkit for obvious evolutionary reasons and, uh, as well as personal ones. Uh, and, and, and many people imagine that if you get deep into meditation or, you know, some other spiritual practice, the goal is to get rid of fear and, and other classically negative states of mind entirely, and that's really not the way I view it. So, uh, you, you, you wouldn't want to never feel it again, but you want to be able to stop feeling it whenever it's no longer useful, and it, it really is only useful for a very short period of time. I mean, it's, it, it's, it's a, a, a signal, uh, of, of salience more than anything else. I mean, it's, it's negatively valenced salience, but-

   5. TFTim Ferriss9:41

      What do you mean by that?

   6. SHSam Harris9:42

      Um, actually, I, I should say that the, it's, it's often thought that the amygdala really is just the, kind of the fear center and, and doesn't do much of anything else. It, it's not just that. It really is more the, the salience center. It's, it's, it's when you're, uh, noticing information that really needs to be emotionally and behaviorally relevant, uh, in, in the moment. So, um, your, your response to scary faces, you know, that, that would be a classic stimuli. You know, you, you turn the corner and you, and you see somebody staring at you, and they look terrifying. You know, that instantaneous, visceral, uh, perception of threat, y- you don't want to lose that, right? I can't imagine, you know, being a social primate, you know, however much I meditate, uh, wanting to completely lose that. But what you, you, you want to then be able to do is let go of it the moment, uh, you, you're no longer served by seeing the world through that lens. And for so much of our fear that, that, uh, you know, then grades into y- ordinary anxiety, it's just not useful. You know? It's just, it's, it's not useful to have stress of that sort become the, the mood music of your life and, and which is what happens to so many of us, and it's, it's happening to, you know, millions and millions of us in this moment around this pandemic. So, I mean, the first thing, I guess, I guess there are two things there. The, the first thing is that you, you, you still want this. This is not, this is a gift. This is not a curse. But it becomes a curse the moment you can't actually let go of it, you know, more or less on demand, and, and you want to be able to do that. I mean, so that's certainly two things. And, and the third thing, I guess the third thing I would add is that you actually can do that. I mean, it's, it's not, you know, mindfulness is the, the method by which you would do that. And, um, so, you know, there, there's a path to being able to do that more and more and, and more and more quickly.

3. 11:37 – 24:21

   Mindfulness as an intervention

   1. TFTim Ferriss11:37

      Can you think of a moment for you or a situation in which you were experiencing acute anxiety or fear and used mindfulness as an intervention? Could you describe it, if so?

   2. SHSam Harris11:51

      Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, no, it happens a lot. Uh, it's happening a lot in this circumstance. I guess, um, I mean, the one I remember very clearly was sort of the, the beginning of my taking The, uh, the COVID problem seriously. And I forget when this was. This was the end of February at some point, um, somewhere in like February 25th or so. And, um, I had ordered an iPad, uh, some, some weeks before when I was, when I was truly oblivious to what was going on. And, you know, it fi- it finally came, and I, uh, again, at this point I'm thinking thoughts like, "Wait a minute, how long does the virus live on a surface?" I see that this thing is, you know, freshly minted in Shanghai and sent to me, you know, after they've clamped down on the, the, uh, Wuhan problem. Um, you know, I don't, so I don't know what the, the likelihood is that I'm n- now, uh, opening a box of virus, but, you know, I, I've decided to open it, uh, after letting it sit for some days. So I'm opening this box, and I, I realize that I'm kind of double-minded about it, and i- in some ways just kind of in bad faith with the whole project. So like o- on the one hand, I'm taking precautions, right? I'm, I'm, a- I'm wearing, you know, I'm wearing gloves, but I'm not wearing a, a mask. I'm opening it carefully. I've got, you know, I've, I've decided to just wipe this iPad down with alcohol wipes. So on some level I'm treating it like medical waste. But on another level, I recognize, wait a minute, I'm not doing this even remotely the way I would do it if I knew there was coronavirus in this box, right? I'm, so on some level, I'm kind of going through the motions, and I'm assuming that this is fine and that I'm actually being crazy, and this is kind of a pantomime of preparedness as opposed to the real thing. And it is the experience of kind of almost being double-minded. Like, you know, like the person who's opening the box is not the whole person, and there's, there's a- another part of me looking on saying, "Uh, you're not really doing this correctly." And as witnessed by the fact that I'm standing in the middle of my living room and my kids are like, you know, 15 feet away, and there's just no... Like I just, I, in a flash, I, I recognized, okay, you, you, you're doing all of this. You've got the alcohol wipes. You've got the gloves on. You're acting like someone who thinks he's overreacting, right? You're kind of, you're just, again, in, in, in bad faith. You're not, you're not actually unified, uh, as just a behavioral system. And at that moment, I just got kind of flooded with anxiety over this whole, uh, kind of the, the s- the scope of the whole crisis, like how difficult it, it had been t- for me to convince myself that the problem was worth responding to, all the people I'm in dialogue with, you know, in my family personally and, and i- in my social circle, and then just in the public, you know, the kind of public conversation that was, was starting around it. And I just realized how difficult it was gonna be to change my own behavior and for everyone else around us to change our behavior in a way that was actually gonna be effective. And, but at that moment, it just, like it was a very punctate experience of it just like, you know, just cortisol, which was like, "Oh, fuck." You know? You were... You, you, you-

   3. TFTim Ferriss15:20

      Sure

   4. SHSam Harris15:20

      ... you do not have your shit together at all, right? You're in the middle of your living room opening a box of virus. You s- you sort of think so. Um, and you've, but you haven't done, you know, it's like y- again, my kids are like 15 feet away from me at this point. And, uh, so I, I just felt like a complete fuck up. Uh, and, but it w- it was at that l- moment where I thought, "Okay, I am actually still pretty early." Uh, you know, the, I, I took, you know, a, a kind of, uh, you know, I don't know how to quantify the risk, but like, "Okay, wake up and actually get your game together here." And at, at that moment, you know, from that moment onward, the, the anxiety is no longer useful, right? Like, um, the, the, to, to be stressed out, I mean, once I've-

   5. TFTim Ferriss16:05

      Right. The message has been delivered

   6. SHSam Harris16:07

      ... yeah, it's com- it's, it's 100% delivered, and the o- the only time it's useful as any kind of holding pattern for me is when there's still significant uncertainty about what to do. So when you're at the border between what you know you're doing and what you, you know, don't understand a- and, and you're trying to figure out what you should do, you can't figure out what your policy is, then anxiety is the thing that's gonna get you to keep focusing a- and figure it out. But once you figure it out, once you realize, okay, and you open the boxes outside, you wear gloves, you, you know, let them sit for however many days you decide to let, let them sit. You wipe things down that can be wiped down. There, there's no reason to be adrenalized at all doing any of that stuff as long as you know what you're doing, right?

   7. TFTim Ferriss16:52

      Yeah.

   8. SHSam Harris16:52

      Um, and so that's... And, and again, mindfulness is really the method by which you can let go of it because you, you, you notice the thoughts, you notice this peripheral physiology of, of, you know, uh, just the, the, the felt sense of being anxious, and you notice the connection between those things. And once you l- once you just let the thoughts go and just become willing to just feel the raw sensations of anxiety, the sensations lose their, their psychological import. I mean, it's just, again, it just feels like, you know, indigestion or itching or a, you know, or a pain in the knee or anything else that has no real meaning. It's just, it's just sensation, and it degrades over a half-life of, of really seconds. I mean, it, it does not stay around long. So anyway, that's, I mean, that's the experience, uh, I remember, and, you know, obviously there've been many like that. But, um, uh, you know, it's useful for a few seconds and, and it's necessary for a few seconds, but then beyond that, you're just resurrecting it w- by what you're doing with your mind in the next moment.

   9. TFTim Ferriss17:58

      I find your app, and I've said this to you before, Waking Up app, very useful for training for this. And in a number of the meditations which are, at least in the introductory course, sequenced in a, a logical progression, a sort of building progression, much like you might hope to learn a language, starting with the basic building blocks and working your way up. There's a, there's a phrase that you use in a number of them with the snap of fingers, which is-

   10. SHSam Harris18:30

       Mm

   11. TFTim Ferriss18:30

       ... just drop it, right? And not, not viewing that as a hill to climb, not viewing that as something that requires a tremendous amount of conscious effort, but something that can happen in an instant. When you're opening this box, I'm glad you said iPad. I was wondering if it was just a box of bats or something.

   12. SHSam Harris18:46

       Right. [laughs]

   13. TFTim Ferriss18:47

       Uh. [laughs]

   14. SHSam Harris18:48

       Mi- might as well have been.

   15. TFTim Ferriss18:48

       [laughs] Gotta, gotta cook those at a minimum of 400 degrees.

   16. SHSam Harris18:52

       Right.

   17. TFTim Ferriss18:52

       And then is there something you say to yourself in that moment to try to defuse the no longer useful anxiety? Is there anything that you point your attention towards, or is it just a reflexive act of, of mindfulness, much like someone like Jocko can reassemble God knows how many weapons in the dark [laughs] with the-

   18. SHSam Harris19:17

       Right, right

   19. TFTim Ferriss19:17

       ... w- being woken up, uh, you know, a half hour early, so at 4:00 AM, uh-

   20. SHSam Harris19:23

       Yeah, how long does it take to clean and reassemble the gun of mindfulness? Uh-

   21. TFTim Ferriss19:27

       Right.

   22. SHSam Harris19:28

       Yeah. Well, you know, so, I mean, there's, there are reflections and, and concepts, you, you know, you know, pieces of language that can be useful. I, I don't, at this point, tend to carry many of those around. I mean, I might spontaneously think something that is useful. I mean, you, you know, a bit of self-talk. But generally speaking, it, it really is just watching the present thought kind of unravel. I mean, the moment I notice I'm thinking without noticing a thought itself as an appearance in consciousness, the moment I notice I'm i- identified with, in this case, an anxious thought, um, [clears throat] then I just... I can see the, the, the thought itself unwind in this larger condition, which is just, you know, open awareness. And so I... It is a kind of non-conceptual, you know, immediate pivot to that, or, or it's just a, you know, kind of recognizing the circumstance, you know, from that point of view that happens, you know, it, it happens whenever it happens. Um, you know, and there's, there's n- you know, on some level it's not even... When I say, you know, one can do this on demand, uh, on one level that's true, but th- the experience of actually doing it is, is not really the experience of control. It's really just the experience of, of spontaneously recognizing what's actually already true of, of your mind, and y- and you can't... You know, y- you remember when you remember. It's like when, when do you... On some level, there's no accounting for, for why that moment dawns then and not a moment before or a moment later. But it's just the moment I notice, oh, okay, I'm, you know, uh, that's a thought, uh, then the whole, the process starts without, you know, without me having to really get behind myself and push in some way. But you, y- it's, it's totally useful to think certain thoughts as a kind of antidote. I mean, there, there are people who have, um, developed whole methods around that. I mean, as a kind of a stylized reflection. I think you... Did you have, um, did you ever have Byron Katie on your podcast?

   23. TFTim Ferriss21:38

       I haven't.

   24. SHSam Harris21:38

       Did you?

   25. TFTim Ferriss21:38

       I should.

   26. SHSam Harris21:39

       Okay. Okay.

   27. TFTim Ferriss21:39

       I've, I've spent some time with her, but I haven't had her on the podcast. I, I do find a lot of value in her framework. Uh, I mean-

   28. SHSam Harris21:48

       Yeah

   29. TFTim Ferriss21:48

       ... the series of questions and prompts and so on that she uses.

   30. SHSam Harris21:52

       Yeah, I don't know why, I don't know why I thought I'd heard you speak with her at some point. But, um, yeah, I mean, she hasn't been on my podcast either. But, uh, uh, I've met her and, um, never spent much time with her work. But I know she, she does work this way, where she'll, she'll ask questions like, you know, "How do you know that's true?" Right?
4. 24:21 – 30:27

   Navigating the different psychedelics

   1. SHSam Harris24:21

      some point.

   2. TFTim Ferriss24:21

      Sam, I'm just curious to know, say in the last It's, it's arbitrary. Last few months, last year, what have you changed your mind on? What positions have you modified or reversed? What insights have you had that have sort of rendered past beliefs perhaps outdated? What have you changed your mind on in the last few months or year that come to mind that are really-- It could be anything, material or otherwise.

   3. SHSam Harris24:54

      Hmm. Um, well, I, I feel like u- under the, the pressure of this pandemic, many things are shifting for me. I, I think it's probably happening for, for most people, but I'm not actually consciously scoring all the changes, you know, as they're happening. But I, I'm noticing a, a kind of a shift in my orientation, and, you know, may- maybe I would shift back. But for instance, you know, as you know, I've, I've spent a lot of time criticizing what I perceive to be bad ideas and, and even criticizing the people who I perceive to be, you know, purveyors of bad ideas. And so i- in, in political space, I, you know, I can get into f- some fairly heated arguments with people. And with the possible exception of President Trump, I've pulled back from... I-- w- with the, the actual, you know, with the noted exception of President Trump, I've, I've pulled back from that a lot, uh, just because it strikes me as, as really counterproductive. You know, so there are people who are, who are saying some truly idiotic things about coronavirus, and insofar as I've engaged them in public, I've tried to be, you know, fairly, I mean, it's, it's a f- a fairly light touch. And then, you know, I've, I have done a lot of kind of private, uh, I've attempted, you know, several private exorcisms, um, you know, because I haven't wanted to go after these people in public and get them to just dig in, you know, f- based on their own, you know, egos or concerns about, you know, n- not being shown to be wrong or whatever it is. Um, and I, I must say the, the results are, are impressively mixed. I mean, I'm not... Y- I, I've become less and less hopeful that even fairly smart people are open to, to rational argument, even when it would, would serve their interests and everyone else's interests. I mean, it's-- uh, the, the communication failures around this are, are pretty spectacular. And I mean, one, so one thing I've changed my mind about, at least, uh, provisionally, I'm at-- I, I would love to be proven wrong here, but just as a matter of, of being able to achieve some kind of political consensus around large problems, I've become far less hopeful than I was. I mean, w- when I think about the prospect of convincing people about climate change and then the need to respond to it, uh, when I, when I map on our, our, our failure to respond to coronavirus, um, with the alacrity that, that was required, uh, when I, when I map that onto cl- the cl- problem of climate change, you know, something that is so abstract, you know, even in, you know, with one hot year following another, w- even with one super storm following the next, um, when you can't really attribute any one change in the weather to this, you know, concern about climate and, uh, it's j- in general just a slow moving catastrophe about which there's still some, some significant difference of opinion, you know, even among scientists. You know, n- not enough to, to discount the problem, but, you know, certainly more than around the epidemiology of coronavirus, right? And yet we can't even get on the same page around this. Uh, it just-- it makes me think that the solution for, for climate change has to be surreptitious at this point. Like this-- there is no political solution. We ne- we actually simply have to design, you know, products and, and sources of energy that people find more desirable. And, you know, we just, uh, like, you know, th- you know, Tesla cars being the perfect example. Like, at a certain point, people just, people just need to want electric cars more than they want gasoline cars for reasons that have nothing to do with climate, just because they're better cars. And we have to i- innovate on dozens of fronts in that way, uh, and just do whatever we need to do to mitigate the problem despite the fact that we can't persuade anyone that it's even a problem. Because I-- the, the persuasion problem now just strikes me as, as insuperable. So I mean, that's kind of a, a very pessimistic epiphany I feel like I've had, but I just cannot believe how hard it is to talk to even very smart people about what's happening with coronavirus.

   4. TFTim Ferriss29:27

      Yeah. Yeah. It's, it, it can be very disheartening, and not to say that I am right or accurate in all things related to coronavirus, but certainly was-- have faced a fair amount of flack for speaking publicly about it, which is totally fine. People have, have a right to disagree. And I, I suppose if I'm trying to look at the silver lining in our inability to communicate, that might be a strange way to put it, is that perhaps our inability to solve one problem like a pandemic will [chuckles] , uh, in some ways help us to address or at least slow down man's contribution to climate change because it'll just paralyze-

   5. SHSam Harris30:10

      You know, it is doing that, yeah

   6. TFTim Ferriss30:12

      ... transportation and factories and, uh, lot-- many different large scale forms of, uh, sort of carbon, carbon contribution to the atmosphere. So there, there is that.

   7. SHSam Harris30:24

      Yes. It is definitely improving our air quality for the moment.

5. 30:27 – 38:07

   Surprises from the past year

   1. TFTim Ferriss30:27

      Uh, anything else that comes to mind that, uh, that you've, uh- And, and perhaps another way to frame it would be anything that you've been particularly surprised to learn or excited to learn about in the last year?

   2. SHSam Harris30:46

      Well, this is something that we, you and I have talked about, I, I don't think in, in public. I mean, this actually would've been the thing we would've spoken about at South by Southwest. Uh, but it... Having psychedelics come back into my life after what it was, was definitely more than a 25-year hiatus. I mean, it's, it was at least 25 years, I think, you know, ap- approaching 30 since I took a, a whopping dose of, of anything. Uh, and I, I, we really... It w- it wasn't really on my radar to do again. I, I forget what the proximate cause. I mean, I mean, certainly your own recent adventures in that area were, were part of it. I mean, just it's, it's, uh, getting sort of in the air for... It's been in the air for, for many people i- in recent years. But, um, and I guess just the fact that it's, it's now a topic of, of, um, very promising research, uh, again, um, significantly inspired by, by your commitment to it. Um, yeah.

   3. TFTim Ferriss31:55

      And you did an ex- excellent, uh, you, you have an excellent podcast interview, uh, on your podcast with Roland Griffiths also.

   4. SHSam Harris32:03

      Yeah.

   5. TFTim Ferriss32:03

      Of, uh-

   6. SHSam Harris32:03

      Yeah, he was great

   7. TFTim Ferriss32:04

      ... of John, Johns Hopkins, where he talked about, um, crocodile rape, among other things.

   8. SHSam Harris32:09

      [laughs] Yes.

   9. TFTim Ferriss32:09

      Or rape by crocodile, I believe it was.

   10. SHSam Harris32:11

       Yes. The, the, uh, [sighs] the often unacknowledged threat of being raped by a crocodile.

   11. TFTim Ferriss32:16

       [laughs]

   12. SHSam Harris32:17

       Uh, but, um, [sighs] happily, I've escaped that, but I, I have not done DMT. That's one thing I haven't tried. Uh, but yeah, so I, I managed to convince myself to do mushrooms, you know, a, a large, a larger dose, a larger, a larger dose of mushrooms than I've ever done i, you know, uh, in the last year. And, and again, it had been, um, you know, over 25 years since I had done anything significant. I, I, I hadn't done a lot of mushrooms when I was, when, when I was doing psychedelics. I mean, I had done, you know, I'd, I'd done them several times, but never at a very significant dose and never, you know, blindfolded the way, um, or in the dark the way Terence McKenna always, uh, recommended it. And I would... I've... I was a distant, uh, fan of Terence's for, you know, while he was alive. I, I actually met him once very briefly, and, uh, uh, didn't actually know him. But, uh, so I kinda... I, I view that as a missed opportunity 'cause he really had a, a beautiful mind and, uh, and, you know, I've listened to, you know, a ton of his stuff and, and he's just perhaps the most entertaining speaker we've ever had on, on any topic. Uh, but I mean, I should say that probably half of what he said was fairly crazy. I mean, or, or at least-

   13. TFTim Ferriss33:37

       [laughs]

   14. SHSam Harris33:37

       ... at least half of what, half of what, you know, the views to which he was strongly committed, I consider to be fairly crazy, and some-

   15. TFTim Ferriss33:45

       Well-

   16. SHSam Harris33:45

       ... some disproven.

   17. TFTim Ferriss33:46

       Yeah.

   18. SHSam Harris33:47

       Yeah.

   19. TFTim Ferriss33:47

       Yeah.

   20. SHSam Harris33:48

       Uh, so-

   21. TFTim Ferriss33:48

       He's very, very entertaining. Yeah, absolutely. Continue.

   22. SHSam Harris33:51

       Yeah. I mean, he's a great... I mean, he's a great example of, you know, almost not even mattering whether someone's right because they're just, they're such a good speaker. But, um, and he, and he just, uh... Again, so I di- I didn't know him. I just met him once very briefly, um, in, uh, 1992, and he died in 2000. So I, I certainly could have hung out with him and just, just didn't. And, um, but that was a period where I was, I was getting really into meditation and also, uh, uh, was taking psychedelics, but u- usually LSD, and... But then I just stopped because, you know, meditation became the center of the bullseye for me. Um, a- and it still is, but after that many years, I, I just felt like, you know, there was something I wanted to experience in the psychedelic space, and I recognized I had never taken mushrooms, uh, in the way that, that Terence, uh, and others had always recommended, and so I j- I wanted to experience that. So it w- I was surprised to decide it was suddenly relevant to do that, and then s- kind of surprised to do it and, and also, you know, very happy to have had the experience I had and, and find it to be as useful as I, as I found it to be. So it was, there was kind of a, just a kinda reaming out of the pipes of my mind that seemed very useful, and I think I will certainly do that periodically. I mean, I, I think it's... You know, I d- I didn't come away from that experience feeling like, "Okay. Uh, I never need to do that again. That was, uh... I'm done." It, it really did seem like a... By no means the same thing as meditation. I mean, it was, it's s- can be easily h- harmonized with it, but it's just not, it's just a different project on, on some level. Because i- i- in terms of transcending yourself, getting rid of this, this illusion of being the subject, you know, or being the l- the, the, the vulnerable, you know, little man riding the, the horse of consciousness, you can do that without any of the pyrotechnics of the psychedelic experience. And, you know, conversely, I'm convinced you, you can have a, a, a fairly transcendent, you know, beautiful, transcendently beautiful or, or harrowing, depending, psychedelic experience without losing the sense of self, you know? Or at least, you know, it's not that the experience isn't characterized much by, by a, a true transcendence of self. It's just your, your, your perception is, is vastly altered, and your, your conceptual framework is vastly altered. But you're still a subject now either enjoying or suffering the consequences of having your Your nervous system, you know, driven from below by, by the pharmacology. Um, so it's, it, it is different, and I... And again, there's no, there's no contradiction between them. But anyway, I just f- I came away feeling like, yeah, it kind of, it just renewed my interest and commitment to it. But, uh, it's hard to imagine doing it in the current environment, I must say. It's like, uh, like [laughs] there's so much that is now being held in abeyance by the, um, this lack of, uh, normalcy. I mean, I, I, it's just, I find it very difficult to even articulate what seems to have happened here. I mean, on, on some level, my day-to-day experience is changed very little. You know, I, I, you know, I count myself very lucky as someone who, you know, could... I can basically do all the work I was doing precisely as I was doing it and be essentially quarantined, right? I mean, I, you know, I was working from home anyway. My team is completely distributed, so there was, there was nothing to change there. You know, all my work with them has, has always been in Slack and on the phone and by email, and so it's like nothing has changed, and all I have to do is release podcasts and, you know, finish a book, and, uh, it just, it's all... Nothing's changed, but yet on some level, everything has changed, and I, I feel like we're, you know, I feel like I'm in a, you know, a spaceship where at, at any moment, the breach in the wall can be catastrophic. Um, and it's, um, it's a, it's a, it's a very bizarre feeling, which I know e- everyone is, is sharing to one or another

6. 38:07 – 50:28

   Sam’s recent mushroom trip

   1. SHSam Harris38:07

      degree.

   2. TFTim Ferriss38:07

      Question about your psychedelic experience. Well, actually several. The first is related to a five-minute or so, maybe slightly longer, five to 10-minute afterward that you appended to the Roland Griffiths conversation on your podcast, which was a description of your five-gram dried mushroom experience, which I thought was absolutely beautiful. Is that available, or do you have any plans to make it available outside-

   3. SHSam Harris38:38

      Yeah

   4. TFTim Ferriss38:39

      ... of the app?

   5. SHSam Harris38:40

      Um, yeah, I think actually we're, we are just... It's either on YouTube now, or it's going to be released with, um, some video backing to it. I think like a, like a, you know, something like, you know, a great, you know, cloud photography or something. But there's, there's something, you know, it was just an audio track, but we're, we've illustrated it with some video, and then that, that should be released very soon if it's not already out.

   6. TFTim Ferriss39:05

      Great.

   7. SHSam Harris39:05

      Um, yeah.

   8. TFTim Ferriss39:06

      What would people search to find that?

   9. SHSam Harris39:09

      Um-

   10. TFTim Ferriss39:10

       Or what would, what might they search?

   11. SHSam Harris39:11

       I, I'm sure it'll be on my YouTube channel, and it'll be something around... I mean, I'm sure mushroom trip will be in the title. So-

   12. TFTim Ferriss39:19

       Sam's excellent journey.

   13. SHSam Harris39:20

       Yeah, yeah [laughs] ex- exactly. Yes, yes.

   14. TFTim Ferriss39:22

       [laughs]

   15. SHSam Harris39:23

       Not Sam not being raped by a crocodile.

   16. TFTim Ferriss39:25

       Sam and not Sa-

   17. SHSam Harris39:26

       [laughs]

   18. TFTim Ferriss39:26

       Sa- Sam and Sam's excellent journey.

   19. SHSam Harris39:28

       Yeah.

   20. TFTim Ferriss39:29

       Uh, [laughs] if you guys want the crocodile rape details, you're gonna have to listen to the Roland Griffiths conversation.

   21. SHSam Harris39:35

       Yeah.

   22. TFTim Ferriss39:36

       Uh, the, the, the, um, the second question was related to carryover effects, if any, that you have observed, uh, after recording that description of your experience. Did you see any persistent changes to your perception, behavior, or anything else, not necessarily permanent, but persistent for a period of time, whether days or, or weeks? Did you observe anything like that?

   23. SHSam Harris40:08

       Yeah. It's, um, a- and this has always been true of my experience with psychedelics, and, you know, unfortunately, it w- it has gone in both directions. I mean, so, so when I had, you know, back in the day when I had some very unpleasant acid trips, which, you know, finally convinced me that, you know, taking acid was essentially just like a, a r- a spin of the psychological roulette wheel that, you know, you, it's just, you just don't know what number's gonna come up. And at that point, the negative side was coming up enough that I just thought, "Okay, this really just isn't worth it." And it was especially not worth it because I felt that the, the knock-on effects of having that experience for 10 or 12 hours lasted for weeks and even months. Like, I just felt like... So when I would have a g- a good trip, which is to say a, you know, a truly expansive, uh, beautiful trip, uh, you know, the, the after effects of that were, uh, i- in the same register. You know, the, I, I felt more expanded and, and, and with a, a greater purchase on, you know, a heightened sense of beauty, um, and that would last for, for quite some time. But, you know, conversely, the, the kind of contracted, neurotic, kind of shame, uh, encumbered space would, uh, either that, that I would experience in a bad trip would also leave some residue for some period of time. So I, you know, I felt like a worse person for, for weeks or even months after some of those trips. Um, and so that's why I kind of got out of the game. But, you know, th- this trip, um, was, you know, almost entirely positive. Uh, so yeah, a- as a, a kind of emotional and, and perceptual reference point, um, yeah, I felt a, a, you know, I felt better in, in many ways afterwards, and, um, I think I probably still do. I mean, again, it's not, it's not permanent in the sense that it's, it's not that it has blocked every other state of consciousness from arising thereafter. I mean, so, you know, after that trip, which now is ... several months old, um, I've experienced anxiety, I've experienced fear, I've experienced anger, I've experienced, you know, every- everything is still on the menu. But as a reference point, it has stayed pretty vivid. So it's just, it's easier to convince yourself that like when, when you've had an experience like that, and this is, this really is the, the, the reason to take psychedelics even if you are convinced that they're unnecessary and that, that they're neither necessary nor sufficient, right? So that they're, they're, um... I mean, even if you're convinced that meditation is the only way to really transform your mind in the way that you want to, the thing about psychedelics is that it can give you, I mean, and, and as you know, you know, each in, in different ways, they can give you an experience of states of consciousness which, for which there, there is no possibility of skepticism. As a meditator for the longest time, I mean, for really for forever, I mean, so that you, you, it can, it can just torpedo the whole project. You can remain fundamentally uncertain as to whether or not there's a there there. You know, it's like, like, "Is this really gonna work? Is there really something to notice here? Is there... I mean, does life ever really get any better than it's been in the last five minutes? You know, is, is there anything to realize, or maybe I'm just fooling myself, right?" Like, all of it, you can c- you can cycle in that space of doubt, uh, for, for years and years and, and, and get absolutely nowhere. But, you know, f- five grams of mushrooms, if nothing else, prove to you that it is possible to have just an unrecognizably different experience of consciousness. And, you know, that, that's available given the requisite stimulus, right? And the, and, you know, your... The drug doesn't get your brain to do something that your brain isn't capable of doing, right? It's not like, it's not like you've been given a different brain. The, the same serotonergic system that is being, uh, leveraged by psychedelics is, you know, always there working for you, and it gets leveraged in, in every moment or, or not based on how you use your attention and based on the kinds of, you know, your, the collisions you have i- in the world and, you know, every, just everything else you're doing neurophysiologically. And it is, uh, it's just absolutely possible to have a very different moment-to-moment experience of the world. And, and most of us, I, I consider myself among the, the untalented people who really pr- probably just would not have seen the merits of meditation but for the fact that I'd had a psychedelic experience in, in, in that, in that case with MDMA, which just proved to me that there had to be a there there. That, you know, that, that people, you know, in, in the various contemplative traditions who were talking about things like unconditional love, they weren't, they weren't making this up. They weren't just epileptics or frauds. Um, you know, these, this, there is a, this is a real continuum of human consciousness that is there to be explored, and you just have to figure out how to make your mind adequate to that project. Um, and, and psychedelics definitely reveal that.

   24. TFTim Ferriss46:05

       It, it is just incredible how different the experiences can be on different compounds, even though they may fall or be thought of as falling into the same category of, say, psychedelics. To take two, which are often thought of as, as close cousins, and o- on some level they are similar, but, uh, you take, say, LSD, which is, from a receptor standpoint, quite promiscuous with the duration of effect that you, that you mentioned, which can be really long, right?

   25. SHSam Harris46:43

       Yeah.

   26. TFTim Ferriss46:43

       Eight to 12 hours, which o- on one hand, it, it's tempting to say, "Well, that's Earth time. It doesn't really matter." Uh, [chuckles] just like f- when people say, "Oh, I'm going to do DMT because it lasts five to 15 minutes." I, I don't think that's the proper way to frame the decision or think about it [chuckles] because that, that could feel like 1,000 lifetimes strung together in terms of your, your subjective experience of those 15 minutes. But nonetheless, uh, say LSD, just in terms of duration of effect, and then you look at, say, mushrooms, four to six hours generally. There are different species, of course, and all sorts of variables. What, what I find and what many people find difficult about LSD, there are, there are a few things. Number one, it is so potent on a microgram level that it is easy to misdose. And the difference between 100 micrograms and 200 micrograms [chuckles] is, uh, hard to overstate-

   27. SHSam Harris47:49

       Yeah. Mm-hmm

   28. TFTim Ferriss47:50

       ... how, how different those two experiences can be. And, uh, that is a drop [chuckles] less than a drop. I mean, depending on how it's being administered.

   29. SHSam Harris47:59

       Right.

   30. TFTim Ferriss48:00

       Uh, and then the... I think what makes for many people, and I'd be curious to hear your perspective on this, but mushrooms somewhat easier to navigate is that the on-ramp and the off-ramp, the on-ramp is a little longer, uh, generally than, than LSD, so the, the full onset and peak of effects if you're looking at the pharmacokinetics. But the off-ramp is generally, for most people, going to be a lot faster than, uh, LSD in the sense that with LSD You might have, and many people do have the experience of being fully journeying in some transcendent psychedelic experience, dissolution of the self, et cetera, for four to five hours. And then there is this tail of an additional two to four hours, and there are a fair number of people who will have 24 hour plus experiences. Uh, I don't know... Who knows what the exact, uh, percentage of the population is, but, uh, having volunteered at Zendo, which is a psychedelic harm reduction volunteer outfit at places like Burning Man and so on, you... Let's call it one in 30 people would be my estimate, have a 24 hour plus response. But let's just go with the majority. You have this tail end of two to six hours where you are not sober. You are absolutely not sober. You're still very malleable, and everything's, is intensified, but you are not journeying.
7. 50:28 – 55:57

   Can psychedelics kill you?

   1. TFTim Ferriss50:28

      Uh...

   2. SHSam Harris50:28

      Uh, yeah, well, you know, this, this gets to an issue of, of, um, on some level, m- a, a dose that's too small runs a, a liability that, that is, uh, you know, on some level even greater than a dose that's too large. Or at least, I mean, this is, this is the way I've, I've begun to think about it based on my experience. It, it's just the, um... I mean, first we should say that the, for, for psychedelics like psilocybin, uh, mushrooms, and, um, LSD, you, you're, you're nowhere near a, a lethal dose of the compound at, at any dose you're, you're liable to, to take. You know, even the most, um, aggressive, uh, and, um, you know, psychologically destabilizing dose, you know, phy- physiologically is not likely to be toxic for you.

   3. TFTim Ferriss51:24

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SHSam Harris51:24

      So that, that's not an argument for taking as much as you can get your hands on. It's just that these are, you know, physically very safe drugs. Um, and I, I would definitely not say that of MDMA. I mean, MDMA you can clearly overdose on, but it's just-

   5. TFTim Ferriss51:38

      You can, yeah, you can-

   6. SHSam Harris51:39

      Yeah

   7. TFTim Ferriss51:39

      ... clearly die. Hyperthermia.

   8. SHSam Harris51:41

      Yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss51:41

      I've seen people in the same volunteer capacity at different events, 104, 105 degree temperatures, which is how you melt-

   10. SHSam Harris51:49

       Right

   11. TFTim Ferriss51:49

       ... you melt your brain, uh, and can die certainly. Uh, ibogaine or iboga also can have some severe cardiac complications, and people do die of cardiac arrests using ibogaine and iboga. So you really have to know your compound.

   12. SHSam Harris52:07

       Yeah.

   13. TFTim Ferriss52:07

       But psilocybin and LSD have effectively no known LD50, meaning a dose that would be expected to kill, say, 500 of 1,000 people in a room if they were given that dose, which can be established for lots of things, including some common drugs like acetaminophen, which can be very dangerous, so.

   14. SHSam Harris52:30

       Right. Right. So yeah, so it, it's not... And, and again, I'm sure people have had heart attacks and, and strokes and other, uh, you know, e- even f- fatal events on LSD or psilocybin and, and maybe as a consequence of, of what's happening for them psychologically, it b- being part of that. But, um, it's just that the, we, we just know that the, the drugs themselves are, are physically very well tolerated, and so it's, you know, that, so that's not the, the concern. Um, but now I've forgotten how, why I got into that. Um, the, um-

   15. TFTim Ferriss53:06

       Let's see. I was talking about the duration of these two compounds.

   16. SHSam Harris53:09

       Oh, right. Okay. Yeah, so sorry.

   17. TFTim Ferriss53:11

       And then we're talking about Triscuits, eating it with 10 fingers.

   18. SHSam Harris53:14

       Right, right. Yeah, so-

   19. TFTim Ferriss53:15

       Indicative of not being sober. Yeah.

   20. SHSam Harris53:17

       So the reason, so the reason to take more rather than less for me, um, or, or, or the reason why, um, you know, just kind of imagining you're just gonna get your toe in the water. I mean, I'm, leave aside microdosing as its own thing. I'm, I'm not talking about that. But, like, the, the reason why maybe, uh, five grams of mushrooms could be better than two grams of mushrooms, uh, for somebody is that, uh, and, you know, you can, you can do the arithmetic for LSD there, is that taking enough reliably launches you past all of your personal psychological content, right? And the place I don't like to be, and, and the place I don't recommend people spending much time, is in the domain of one's personal concerns, life concerns. You know, the kinds of thoughts that besiege you when you're, when you sit down to meditate. To get, to stay on that strata of your mind with, you know, with this turbocharged experience of psilocybin or LSD, you know, driving you there, um, you know, that for the most part, I mean, um, you, you obviously can have personal insights, and you can, you can have kind of breakthroughs with respect to your relationship, uh, to other people. Uh, you know, I, I know that's the case. But generally speaking, it, it is a A recipe for a lot of, you know, seemingly, you know, very personal anguish, which you can, you can actually bypass if you, if you go far enough out and then you, y- and, and, and have a, have a, a truly, you know, transcendent experience, at least transcendent in the sense that you're, what you're in contact with doesn't have a reference point in your, in your life, right? You're not thinking about your mom or your wife or your, you know, be, like for y- y- on the, on the way out you might be, and on the way back you might be. But where you land when, you know, you're actually at the peak is a place that doesn't have those kinds of reference points. And again, it c- that it can be very, very beautiful or it can be very, very painful. I mean, it's not, it's not, doesn't guarantee a, a, a quote good trip. Um, but it's, um, uh, I mean, that for me, that's the real opportunity of, of true psychedelics. Unlike something like MDMA where, you know, to be working on your relationships and to be thinking about specific people in your life or even relating directly to them, um, you know, that, that is a, seems like a much, a, a totally appropriate use of that tool.

8. 55:57 – 59:42

   MDMA

   1. TFTim Ferriss55:57

      I, I, I agree. I th- I think MDMA is, is, um, better described as an empathogen, uh-

   2. SHSam Harris56:05

      Yeah

   3. TFTim Ferriss56:05

      ... than a psychedelic. I don't think of it as a psychedelic at all. Uh, there's, there's some dispute over how to apply that term to different things, but I would, um, I would add to what you said that, uh, that, uh, the, the, the analogy I use, I guess metaphor quite a lot when discussing this with people is that of airplane taxi and takeoff, and the experience of popping through the clouds. So you have this taxiing period, you're waiting, you're waiting, you have this acceleration takeoff, uh, a slight amount of turbulence, and then very often as you go through cloud cover, you have even more turbulence, and then you pop through the clouds and you have hopefully a smooth ride or at least a ride from a very, very, very different vantage point. And to your point about dosage, if we're talking about, say, mushrooms, one of the psychological risks of underdosing and, uh, which is quite common because people are understandably nervous, and, uh, very often this is done in settings where people do not have a sitter, which I always recommend-

   4. SHSam Harris57:18

      Hmm

   5. TFTim Ferriss57:19

      ... against. Uh, meaning if someone doesn't have a sitter, they're likely to want to dose more conservatively, and in doing so, often take something, let's just say in the one to two gram range and end up stuck in the clouds-

   6. SHSam Harris57:36

      Right

   7. TFTim Ferriss57:36

      ... in turb- in turbulence, and they never quite pop above the clouds into a transpersonal, or even if they still have the identification of I, the, what constitutes I changes quite a lot. [chuckles]

   8. SHSam Harris57:53

      Yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss57:53

      Right? In the psychedelic experience, you can have complete ego dissolution. You can have complete, what I would perhaps call disassembly [laughs] at higher doses where y- your experience does not resemble your ordinary waking reality in any sense whatsoever.

   10. SHSam Harris58:12

       Yeah.

   11. TFTim Ferriss58:13

       Time, dimension, language all disappear, I disappears, et cetera. But ratcheting that down, you can have the experience of I, Tim, am experiencing these various things, but what constitutes I and the boundaries that normally exist in your waking life that separate you cleanly from the external world are very permeable, very different. And, uh, the related point with, say, LSD is that on the descent, instead of just going straight through the clouds, you sort of hang out in the clouds or can-

   12. SHSam Harris58:50

       Yeah

   13. TFTim Ferriss58:50

       ... for a pretty extended period of time, and, and that is where you can come out of a beautiful transcendent experience. And this is not, by the way, a knock on LSD. I think it's a tremendously interesting tool for the right people with the right supervision. But, uh, there is a tail end where many people perceive their journey to be over, where very messy personal material can come up with strong emotional charge, and they're simply not... They've taken their seatbelt off and they're going to get their luggage [chuckles] out of the overhead compartment.

   14. SHSam Harris59:27

       Right. Right.

   15. TFTim Ferriss59:27

       And they're still, and they're still in the clouds. They just don't realize it, [chuckles] you know?

   16. SHSam Harris59:31

       Yeah.

   17. TFTim Ferriss59:31

       Uh, so-

   18. SHSam Harris59:32

       Yeah

   19. TFTim Ferriss59:32

       ... it's, uh, you know, these things are very, very strong. They're very, they can be very powerful, so I, I always, you know, advise caution with these things. Um,

9. 59:42 – 1:02:32

   On bad trips

   1. TFTim Ferriss59:42

      and-

   2. SHSam Harris59:42

      Well, well even in, even in the best case, uh, when you're talking about the, the come down, uh, from l- l- let's say LSD, let's say you've had a, a perfectly expansive, you know, beautiful, uh, transcendent trip, and then you're coming down. Uh, you know, what I remember from those experiences, and, and probably the first 10 acid trips I took were, uh, literally had, uh, not a single moment where I, I could even understand what was meant by the concept of a bad trip. I, I, I remember being the guy who was thinking, "What are people talking about?" You know, a bad tr- like it just, there was no-

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:00:25

      [laughs]

   4. SHSam Harris1:00:25

      I couldn't figure out where would you point your finger to, to, you know, uh, in which direction could you possibly go in that experience to wind up someplace bad? I mean, it just made no sense to me. And then, then, uh, on some subsequent trip, it made all too much sense.

   5. TFTim Ferriss1:00:41

      [laughs] Famous last words.

   6. SHSam Harris1:00:42

      Yeah, exactly.

   7. TFTim Ferriss1:00:43

      [laughs]

   8. SHSam Harris1:00:43

      Talk about hubris. Um, but, uh, anyway, so but even from these trips, g- I, I remember coming down The experience was one of feeling my mind encumbered by the, the very, you know, artifices and structures and kind of diversions of attention, you know, conc- um, concerns, psychological concerns on some level that block the, the expansive experience I had just had, right? So, you know, you, you come down, you, you... Like, one moment you feel like Jesus, and the next moment-

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:01:20

      [laughs]

   10. SHSam Harris1:01:20

       ... you begin to notice the reasons, the, the kind of rapidly accruing reasons why you're not quite qualified to be Jesus, right?

   11. TFTim Ferriss1:01:29

       [laughs]

   12. SHSam Harris1:01:30

       And, and, and then, and you b- And if you're in relationship to people, I mean, if you're actually having a conversation with someone who you were just tripping with, say, um, you know, that, that begins, all of that begins to, to fall into place in dialogue with others. I mean, and, and you notice your neurosis, or at least your potential for neurosis c- to kind of get r- reconstructed i- in front of you, um, and, you know, as you moment by moment. And that, I, I remember that being painful. I mean, just to witness kind of the capture of my attention in something that, you know, moments before would've been unthinkable, right? A- and, uh-

   13. TFTim Ferriss1:02:12

       Yeah, you go from Jesus to Woody Allen in your head-

   14. SHSam Harris1:02:14

       Yes [laughs]

   15. TFTim Ferriss1:02:14

       ... in about 60 seconds.

   16. SHSam Harris1:02:16

       Right. Right.

   17. TFTim Ferriss1:02:16

       [laughs]

   18. SHSam Harris1:02:18

       Right. And you've, you've got bad hair in either case.

   19. TFTim Ferriss1:02:20

       [laughs] You know, I just, I just envy anyone with hair, so that's where I am these days.

   20. SHSam Harris1:02:28

       That's right. That's right. There, there is no, there is no bad hair. [laughs]

   21. TFTim Ferriss1:02:30

       [laughs]

10. 1:02:32 – 1:05:32

    Hopes for the future

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:02:33

       Yeah. I, I, I hope at some point, I mean, this, this would be quite a distance in the future I would imagine, that we will actually have scientific studies looking at the combination of these compounds. For instance, using MDMA or other empathogens, there are quite a few that could be used, as an on-ramp for, say, LSD therapy or psilocybin, uh, and combination therapy that, that I think could be very, very interesting. Uh, we don't, we don't yet have the data we need and want for these compounds in isolation, so I think that's a fair distance in the future. But I, I look forward to the day when more of that can be done.

    2. SHSam Harris1:03:21

       Right.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:03:21

       Uh-

    4. SHSam Harris1:03:21

       Right. Yeah. The one thing I'm looking forward to, which I mentioned at the end of this, this addendum that, uh, uh, at the end of the podcast with, with Roland, um, there's, there was that one study done combining a meditation retreat with a high dose psilocybin experience, and that, for me, seems like a great marriage. I mean, just to prepare people over the course of a couple of days with mindfulness practice and, you know, I'm sure there's, there's some way to, to optimize this protocol. It wouldn't just be straight silence. I mean, there, there might be some, uh, you know, reflection about, you know, what, what's coming and then some integration period. But just to actually kind of systematize a, a retreat-like approach to doing a, a high dose psychedelic experience, that, that seems, um, very promising.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:04:11

       [laughs]

    6. SHSam Harris1:04:11

       The, the, the people who are doing it, what do you, what do, what do you guess is-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:04:14

       Oh, no, I'm laughing because I'm just imagining, I did a silent retreat at Spirit Rock, and there were, you know, 200 people sitting in this meditation hall, and I was just thinking-

    8. SHSam Harris1:04:21

       [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:04:22

       ... if you had 200 people doing a high dose psychedelic [laughs] journey in one room, it would be anything but a silent retreat. [laughs]

    10. SHSam Harris1:04:32

        Right. Yeah. It's a very crowded retreat.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:04:35

        [laughs]

    12. SHSam Harris1:04:35

        Um-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:04:36

        It might not have been 200. It m- but, uh, I would say at least, I mean, at least 80. Somewhere between 80 and 100.

    14. SHSam Harris1:04:41

        Yeah. Yeah, I think it's about 100 up there. Yeah. Um, yeah.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:04:45

        Just-

    16. SHSam Harris1:04:45

        I see. So how you physically, I mean, how you arrange the environment and, and how you keep people in their own space and give them adequate guidance and all of that, I don't know how that's brought off. I know there, there are places that are doing it. There's one in Jamaica. There was one in Holland. I mean, a bunch of these places. There's one in Mexico. A bunch got in touch with me after this podcast. As far as I can tell, none are really as, as, um, uh, locked down in their, their protocols as I w- I, I mean, they, they didn't seem like places I could, I could recommend based on what I could see of what they were doing. Um-

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:05:20

        No, no Facebook ads with your face for [laughs] psychedelic retreats anytime soon.

    18. SHSam Harris1:05:24

        [laughs] Yeah. They, they may, someone may have produced some, but they're-

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:05:28

        [laughs]

    20. SHSam Harris1:05:28

        ... they're not, uh, they're not authorized, so-

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:05:30

        [laughs]

    22. SHSam Harris1:05:31

        ... if you see any, let me

11. 1:05:32 – 1:11:21

    Psychedelics and the messiah complex

    1. SHSam Harris1:05:32

       know.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:05:32

       Yeah. One, one, one, uh, comment I want to add, uh, as it relates to difficult psychedelic experiences or psychedelic experience overall is [sighs] there is a common pattern among first time or relatively novice users of psychedelics to develop somewhat of a messiah complex after-

    3. SHSam Harris1:06:01

       Hmm

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:06:01

       ... they've seen the promised land.

    5. SHSam Harris1:06:03

       Yeah.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:06:04

       And they have one experience or two experiences. Very often it's after one. They have this profound transformative experience, and they become a proselytizer for psychedelic use. And, "Grandma, you need to do ayahuasca," you know? "Little, little Johnny, [laughs] Nephew, Nephew Johnny, you need to do ayahuasca," et cetera, which is, uh, at best irresponsible, uh, and, and also very, very dangerous. And so my recommendation to people who are experimenting with psychedelics or considering it, number one, the legal side effects can be, uh, just as great as any other side effects, so I'm not advising nor saying that you break the law. Uh, secondly, if nonetheless you are going to experiment I would ask that you put enough mileage, uh, under your belt to at least once be, uh, as I sometimes say to my friends, uh, tumbled and humbled before you are given your card-carrying capabilities of proselytizing psychedelics.

    7. SHSam Harris1:07:17

       Hmm.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:07:17

       It's, it's my strong feeling that you need to have, uh, not what I would consider a bad trip, because I, I only distinguish between safe and unsafe trips, not good and bad. I think some of the most valuable experiences you can have are exceptionally difficult psychedelic experiences in exceptionally safe circumstances.

    9. SHSam Harris1:07:35

       Right.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:07:36

        But if, if you're simply getting the sort of unicorns pissing rainbows version of the psychedelic [laughs] experience, and those are your first three or four innings, keep going, possibly, safely obviously, until you have a harrowing, holy fucking shit experience that takes you a while to digest and process before you run around like the town crier telling everyone they should do psychedelics.

    11. SHSam Harris1:08:04

        Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that's good advice because you, there's no way to appreciate how difficult a, quote, "bad trip" can be u- un- unless you've had one, right? And if you ... And in, in fact, if you've only had good trips, you're really, you're almost the worst judge of what is possible for somebody else-

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:08:29

        Yeah

    13. SHSam Harris1:08:29

        ... and even for, for yourself at some future time point. So, um, yeah. I mean, that was, uh ... I, I w- I was actually one of those people, you know, back in the day when I first, uh ... 'Cause I was taking psychedelics the first time around before, um ... I was kind of in this, in this weird cohort because I was ... You know, in my peer group, I was kind of the only person doing what I was doing. I mean, I, you know, when I would, when I would go on a meditation retreat when I was, you know, 20 or 21, there were, there were no other 20 and 21-year-olds on these retreats. I mean, everyone was, everyone had kind of been through the '60s and, and, you know, so I was, I was surrounded by, you know, 40 and 50-year-olds who were, who had been doing this stuff for 20 years or so. And, um, and so it was with psychedelics. So, so when I got my hands on MDMA, it w- it had, it had come out of, you know, ecstasy. It had come out of the therapeutic community right after it, it, it was a couple years after it was made Schedule 1. And, but I, I didn't know anyone. I mean, perhaps there were many people my age taking it, but I, I just wasn't aware of it. I didn't know anyone who had taken it. So when I got my hands on psychedelics and meditation and the, just the, you know, the combination of all of these esoteric things and kind of rebooted the '60s for myself, I was-

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:09:53

        [laughs] Your pri- your private re- revival [laughs] of the '60s.

    15. SHSam Harris1:09:57

        Yeah. [laughs] Exactly. You know, I was a one-man d- I was a one-man Grateful Dead tour-

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:10:01

        [laughs]

    17. SHSam Harris1:10:03

        ... um, uh, without ever getting into the Dead. Uh, but I wa- just was not meeting, I, it just, there was no one i- in my world who, who knew anything about any of this stuff. So yeah, I was kind of proselytizing and, you know, I, I guided, you know, many people on, on, uh, psychedelic trips, you know. But I just, just d- branded myself somebody who was qualified to do this after, I don't know, half a dozen acid trips. And, you know-

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:10:33

        [laughs]

    19. SHSam Harris1:10:33

        ... nothing, nothing especially bad happened. Um, but, you know, obviously I was, I didn't have the, the experience that one would want to have to actually be doing that. And, uh, yeah, it's, um, it's a little bit like what happened to me when I, when I got into Brazilian jujitsu. I mean, the moment I got into that, it was like e- every, every conversation had to be about Brazilian jujitsu.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:10:56

        [laughs]

    21. SHSam Harris1:11:00

        Uh, and that lasted until I got, you know, uh, injured. And, uh-

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:11:03

        [laughs]

    23. SHSam Harris1:11:05

        ... uh, yeah, so now I, now I have a slightly different conversation about Brazilian jujitsu.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:11:08

        [laughs] You should really, you should really try it. Oh, wait.

    25. SHSam Harris1:11:13

        [laughs]

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:11:14

        Oh, I didn't tell you.

    27. SHSam Harris1:11:15

        Wait.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:11:15

        Yeah, last week I had-

    29. SHSam Harris1:11:15

        I- I'm walking with a cane now

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:11:16

        ... both of my Achilles tendons torn. [laughs]
12. 1:11:21 – 1:23:22

    Self-quarantine + psychedelics?

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:11:21

       Uh, the [laughs] yeah. It's, um, psychedelics are still endlessly fascinating to me. Uh, they, they do not, they have not in any way, uh, lost their fascination for me. So-

    2. SHSam Harris1:11:35

       But, but what about in the current environment? I mean, can you imagine tripping now? Or is ju- does it just seem like-

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:11:42

       [sighs] Well, at the, at the risk of-

    4. SHSam Harris1:11:45

       ... the, the wrong set and setting?

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:11:45

       Well, at the, at the risk of being really negligent, uh, or ir- ir- irresponsible, I w- I will say that I, I cannot say with, I'm gonna word this like a lawyer would. Uh, I c- I cannot be 100% confident that there would be no value [laughs] in, in, uh, safe and responsible use of psychedelics during these times. I- in part because these times are not going to be sh- this is not a-

    6. SHSam Harris1:12:15

       It's not two weeks

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:12:16

       ... this is not a 90-minute movie that we're watching.

    8. SHSam Harris1:12:18

       Yeah.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:12:18

       This is, this is going to be-

    10. SHSam Harris1:12:20

        Yeah

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:12:20

        ... an extended period of time. And I think there could be applications for people who have a lot of experience. I don't think this is necessarily the time to decide you're going to, uh, find some home brew instructions for a- ayahuasca plus ingredients on the dark web and do a solo [laughs] journey into the dark night of the soul. I don't think that's a good idea by any stretch of the imagination. Uh, but for people with a lot of experience, I, I, I do think there There could be applications. There are probably more applications for something like MDMA, which allows you to process a lot while not deactivating, but downregulating fear response-

    12. SHSam Harris1:13:13

        Hmm

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:13:13

        ... if that makes sense. Uh, part of the reason, and I'm, I'm not giving a neurochemical or, uh, pharmacological explanation here, but MDMA can be incredibly effective for treating post-traumatic stress disorder. I mean, some of the results are unbelievable. I mean, if, if you look at the studies MAPS has been, uh, designing and funding and implementing in some cases, you have patients with 17 years, median 17 years or 17 and a half years, I think this is from their phase two trials, persistent PTSD, severe symptoms, who after one or two sessions with MDMA, granted plus lots of integration and prep and post work, uh, with-

    14. SHSam Harris1:14:05

        Yeah

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:14:05

        ... a very highly trained, generally highly trained therapists, who go from severe to asymptomatic after one or two sessions. Now, that raises many questions, and one is, how the hell can that possibly work? And, uh, I'm going to, I'm sure, bastardize this, and, uh, should probably have Rick Doblin on the podcast at some point to actually fact-check and correct me on things, but I feel like I know what they're doing pretty well. And, uh, subjectively, I would say also from my experience that MDMA and certain compounds like it allow you to revisit trauma or examine trauma, whether lowercase T or capital T, from a somewhat detached observer perspective as an adult so you can recontextualize and process that trauma without re-traumatizing yourself.

    16. SHSam Harris1:15:00

        Hmm.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:15:00

        And, uh, that's not always the case. Uh, and, and I should also say that, uh, MDMA, perhaps more so than psychedelics, is thought to be a love drug where it's always running through fields and handing each other flowers, and that is not the case. People can have tremendously difficult experiences that require a lot of triage afterwards, and I've seen, uh, a lot of video footage of actual sessions within the context of training, and people can have a very tough time. This can, this can also-

    18. SHSam Harris1:15:36

        Hmm

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:15:36

        ... open up Pandora's box where afterwards people have said things, for instance, they feel tremendous shame about, et cetera. So it's not without risk. There are risks. But for people who have experience, I, I think that MDMA could possibly be a tool that helps them to downregulate fear and anxiety response and process some of what is happening to them in a way that allows them to be more sort of proactive instead of reactive afterwards. That doesn't mean I'm recommending-

    20. SHSam Harris1:16:10

        Hmm

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:16:10

        ... people do MDMA right now, but I, I do think that if I had to choose between MDMA and psychedelics, I would probably choose MDMA.

    22. SHSam Harris1:16:21

        Right. Well, I recommend that you, um, wipe down the box that the MDMA comes in with a-

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:16:25

        [laughs] Yeah, difficult-

    24. SHSam Harris1:16:26

        ... Clorox wipe

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:16:27

        ... the, the question of procurement is a whole separate, uh, a whole separate, uh, topic that is probably best not discussed on a podcast. [laughs]

    26. SHSam Harris1:16:37

        Right. Stay, stay six feet away from your MDMA dealer.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:16:40

        [laughs]

    28. SHSam Harris1:16:41

        Just, just lob the MDMA over the fence.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:16:45

        [laughs] Yeah. Right. Right. So-

    30. SHSam Harris1:16:49

        Yeah
13. 1:23:22 – 1:31:15

    Finding relief during the pandemic

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:23:22

       And I guess the, you know, the question that, that comes to mind for me to you and, um, is, you know, what would you recommend to people who are scared or suffering right now? Uh, recognizing there are real external factors to consider, but also recognizing that we often suffer twice or suffer when we need not suffer, at least in our minds, by imagining the worst case scenarios and perseverating on worst case scenarios and being consumed by fear. Are, are there, are there any recommendations that you would make to people who are fearful or confused in these times? I know that's very broad and maybe asking a lot, but how would you respond to that?

    2. SHSam Harris1:24:15

       Well, I gu- I guess the, the place from which I'm, you know, uh, I, I can be fairly prescriptive is toward all the people who are in situations similar to our own, I mean, in the sense that, I mean, there, there are people who are, are, are in totally non-analogous situations to our own who, for whom, you know, the choice to stay home is, is not, uh, possible, right?

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:24:39

       Right.

    4. SHSam Harris1:24:39

       In fact, it would be a, a, an abdication of their own ethical responsibilities if they were to stay home. I mean, there are people who, you know, need to work in our ICUs, and there are people who need to deliver food and, you know, they keep the supply chain running. It's like all these people are heroes for just doing their jobs, and so I, I view the ethical imperative to get out of circulation, uh, and not increase the, the, you know, disease burden and, and the, the burden on our healthcare system, uh, you know, that, that falls to everyone else who, who can do their work from home, who, who ... for whom, you know, being out in the world is not actually helpful to anyone. Um, and so those are two very different sets of people, and so, you know, the people who are out there doing the nec- the necessary work of, of keeping everything running, you know, all of, uh ... consider all of them, you know, heroes wh- whose way I want to get out of, right? I want us all to get out of their way and not make it any more likely that they are g- are going to get sick or that they are gonna be unable to, to, if, if they're in healthcare, you know, care for the people who are already sick or, you know, soon to be sick or sick now and don't know it. Um, and but for the people who can reinvent themselves or, you know, step away from, from their, their careers and jobs and, uh, um, and, and especially for the people who are in f- in fortunate enough positions to not actually have to sweat the financial implications of this in the near term, um, I just think there's, there's a, there's a different set of ethical considerations that come online. I mean, just, I, I think we, we sh- we, we should just be looking for opportunities to help the people who are more vulnerable than we are. I mean, so, you know, if y- I mean, there ... So, like, y- uh, all of us have people in our lives who we employ, however peripherally, you know. I mean, just, like, take the person who cuts your hair, if you have hair. I'll, I'll leave you out of this, Tim.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:26:44

       [laughs] Yeah.

    6. SHSam Harris1:26:45

       But, uh-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:26:45

       [laughs]

    8. SHSam Harris1:26:47

       But I still have some of my hair, and, um, you know, so it's just like, y- you know, I know how often I get a haircut. Well, I know I'm not getting a haircut, uh, for I don't, I don't know when the next haircut's going to g- going to happen, but, you know, why not b- you know, buy some imaginary haircuts here and k- and keep, help keep the person who cuts my hair afloat during this period? Um, so anything like that that you can think of doing, right, to support people who you know are taking, you know, i- in many cases a, a 100% hit to their, their economic wellbeing, uh, it just seems if y- if you're in a position to be able to do that, y- you should, right? And, and that's, um, uh ... And so, you know, I would just advocate that we, we recognize that we are, we're all part of a system here. We're all connected and i- in a, in, in the most basic material ways, and, you know, we're all reliant on, on, uh, everyone else not breaking down and failing here. And, and, uh, and so our effort to keep our world together can't be solitary. I mean, it can't be solitary at the national level, and it can't be solitary at the, the individual family level. I mean, it's just it, it can't be merely about making sure you have enough food in your house, uh, because you can't possibly have enough food in your house so that you are no longer reliant on the supply chain and on the service worker who would, you know, deliver the food from the, the market that you're now scared to go to. Um, that person still has to have a viable, you know, source of, of funds. And, um, so it ... A- anyway, it's just t- to, to view our connections, to, to keep, to keep our connectedness to the people we know certainly and, and even the people we don't, um, more in mind here as we, as we hunker down, as we should. I mean, w- again, I, I really do think it is an imperative for us to, to understand collectively, I mean, and not speaking a- as, you know, for the, with the country in mind. I mean, th- this can't even be a state-by-state effort. We can't ... You know, it's all of us who are, who are out of circulation now are more or less just waiting for everyone else to get the message because if this is gonna go on for a very, very long time if we can't extinguish it, uh, and slow the contagion, you know, e- over the next couple of months, and, um ... And it's on- it's only by doing that and then all the subsequent, you know, testing and contact tracing that we're actually gonna return the world and, and the economy to something like normal. I mean, there, there is j- there is no rebooting of this economy with a contagion like this raging and people falling sick in the numbers that they will. I mean, we're just ... What, what we're, what we're gonna do is just pendulum swing back and forth from, y- you know, trying to restart the economy and then realizing, "Oh my God, this is just too scary," then, uh, you know, "I just saw a crazy documentary about what i- what's really happening in the hospitals, and okay, and now I'm going back into hiding." And, you know, we're gonna have that, that experience o- on a collective level over the course of months, and it's, uh, it's just gonna be needlessly costly in terms of lives and our economic wellbeing, uh, whereas the truth is we could resolve this in something like a month if we had our act together. I mean, literally we could lock down for a month, and this would burn itself out. Uh-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:30:28

       If, if s- if they did it correctly. Yeah.

    10. SHSam Harris1:30:30

        Yeah.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:30:30

        If they did it cor- That would require isolating in fever clinics or elsewhere family members who are positive from their families-

    12. SHSam Harris1:30:37

        Yep

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:30:38

        ... sadly, but yes. You're-

    14. SHSam Harris1:30:40

        Or, or, or a family me- uh, b- so even in, in a worse case than that, just, you know, everyone isolating in their homes, and then maybe the rest of the family would get it, and then, you know, uh, then w- whoever would have to go to the hospital would go to the hospital. But as long as we're six feet away from e- everyone other than our family members- Um, and out of circulation, we could, th-this, this thing could self-extinguish. It's just w-we're not showing any kind of aptitude for doing that because of the, just the nature of our political conversation

14. 1:31:15 – 1:34:20

    A valuable four-word sentence

    1. SHSam Harris1:31:15

       mainly.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:31:15

       Yeah. Uh, but, and, and to echo what you said a little bit earlier, my impression looking at the confusion and s- hopelessness and frustration among many of my friends, and this is not limited to people who are as, as fortunate as we are. Uh, this is even lots of folks I know who, say, uh, are gardeners or house cleaners who also want to help in some fashion. The question that I get very often from top to bottom is, "Which nonprofit should I give money to?" And, uh, I think that will become clearer as things progress, but right now there are 1,000 chickens with their heads cut off running around trying to help and really confusing things. There are a few signals in the noise. I think Flexport, flexport.org-

    3. SHSam Harris1:32:12

       Yeah

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:32:13

       ... /donate is doing excellent work. Uh, operationmasks-

    5. SHSam Harris1:32:17

       Yeah

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:32:17

       ... .org I find interesting, although, uh, I don't understand all of it. But there's a lot of confusion, and in the meantime, there are things, as you said, that you can do to help just by focusing on the people you know. If you look back at your, just say, a, a, a typical week from six months ago, what did it look like Monday to Sunday? And you can identify the coffee shop, you can identify the restaurants, you can identify, uh, people you may have paid for God knows what on a weekly basis, a monthly basis. Doesn't mean you have to s- feel obligated by yourself to subsidize all of those folks. But what you could do is ask the question that, that I was, [chuckles] I was, uh, was told was the most important at the beginning, actually, of a rafting trip, my first-ever rafting trip. And Kelly Starrett, who's an incredible guy, uh, the Ready State, in-incredible PT, incredible athletic performance coach, all around good guy, and he used to be an Olympic-level kayaker. And he said to everybody who was on the trip, because he was co-organizing it, he said, "The most important four words that you can utter are 'How can I help?' How can I help? If you're, if, if people are doing stuff and your hands are empty, how can I help?" And what I've noticed, at least in having conversations with people I've offered to help, that oftentimes it's just asking, "How can I help? Can I help you?" that is in and of itself helpful. Does that make sense?

    7. SHSam Harris1:33:54

       Yeah.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:33:54

       It doesn't ha- it doesn't have to translate to them accepting your help or asking for help, uh, but just reaching out and making the offer and indicating that it's a standing offer, even if they don't accept it now, I, I think is, is tremendously psychologically helpful. Uh, so you don't have to wait for the perfect nonprofit to present itself. You can talk to those people who you

15. 1:34:20 – 1:38:34

    Your stress is not a character flaw.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:34:20

       already know.

    2. SHSam Harris1:34:21

       Yeah. Yeah, and it's also just worth remembering how disruptive this emergency is and how, how unique it is. I mean, this is a, uh, by its very nature, this is dividing us from, uh, ourselves. I mean, this is, this is separating people. I mean, just think of what it's like to have someone die now and, you know, the decision about whether to have a funeral or not. I mean, in, in most cases, th- it's a, a straightforward decision of just not to do that, you know? And, and, and just think of the implications of that. Um, I mean, l- the rest of life is going on, you know? A- and, you know, and all the bad parts of life are still going on. People are, are getting sick and dying from causes that have nothing to do with coronavirus, and, you know, all of that's be- being made more difficult. And just, you know, f- deciding whether you have to see a doctor for some other reason now is, is incredibly stressful. Um, and so there's just so much going on now that it, that it's, um, people are under a, a ton of stress. Uh, and again, it's, um, it's, it's almost perfectly designed to, uh, be hard to solve. You know, it's, it's not like, uh, y- I mean, i- i- initially, the, the analogy to September 11th came to everyone's mind. It's like, this, okay, this is yet another intrusion of history. You know, this is another moment where we need to wake up and realize, okay, the, um, the society destabilizing events are, are still, you know, are still on the menu, right? This is the, y- we, this y- this is the kind of thing you're living through now that, that people will be talking about long after you're gone. Um, but on s- on another level, this is, this is totally unanalogous to September 11th. I mean, it just, it is, it's much, it's a much bigger deal, uh, and it's much harder to respond to intelligently. Um, and it's not to say we responded to September 11th with, with much intelligence, but, um, it's, uh, this is big and, and, and no one alive has really gone through something quite like this. I mean, it's been, it's, this is outside of everyone's lived experience, you know, how to, how to deal with this.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:36:46

       Yeah. And y- what, what I would add to that is that, [sighs] I don't, uh, don't know if this will be helpful, but, uh, uh, speaking from a personal perspective, you know, I've been beating myself up for not having clear frameworks for making decisions, not feeling clarity around many things, not knowing how to help optimally or being able to figure it out. And the fact of the matter is it makes very little sense for me to beat myself up about that because it is not, at least not always reflective of a personal flaw. It's a collective experience that millions of people are having right now. This is very different from anything anyone living has ever faced. And that's not to say that the world as we know it is going to hell in a handbasket. I'm not saying that. But the circumstances and the problems and the challenges that have been created are very different from 9/11 or anything else that we associate with national or global crisis. Very, very different. So it's, I think, helpful to try to remember that, and I'm saying this as much for my own benefit as anyone else, to be gentle with oneself and compassionate if you can be because the difficulties that most people are facing are not reflective of any individual flaw. They are reflective of a terrifying and unique situation and the response of millions of people collectively.

16. 1:38:34 – 1:50:21

    Stray bullets and silver linings

    1. SHSam Harris1:38:34

       Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's so many cases where it's not reflective of a flaw at all. It's just you're in a sector of the economy where, you know, obviously you're getting zeroed out, right? Just because of the nature of the problem. It's like just imagine, you know, owning the best restaurant in New York City, right? You know, you may not survive this interruption in your activity through no fault of your own. You know, it's just, it's a, this really is like a stray bullet on that level that just hits you. So that's why we need, I mean, there are silver linings here. I mean, we need to notice all the ways in which our assumptions and our ideologies and our cherished notions about how the world should be are not serving us well here. I mean, to take the fashionable ideas in the tech community. I mean, a lot of people in tech who are either avowed libertarians or quasi-libertarians or just fans of Ayn Rand, but they have this basic idea that the government is useless and the less we have of it, the better. We are really suffering under a lack of effective governance now. And there are certain lessons here that should be indelible. And one is you can't rely on a piecemeal private response to pandemic, right? And it's not to say that we're learning a lot about what's wrong with the government and the bureaucracy and the level of red tape to cut through to actually do something as simple as order masks and other protective equipment. Some of the things that we're witnessing now are absolutely bewildering. The fact that there's still a role to be played by private parties in acquiring PPE, protective equipment for hospitals and first responders. I mean, it's crazy. It's like, why on earth does Elon Musk need to buy ventilators and deliver them to the state of California? Why isn't the state of California in a position to buy those Chinese ventilators or individual hospitals? It makes no sense. And yet, and it's actually, in this case, it's not for lack of money. It's just, there's just a lack of agility on the part of government here. But whatever systems we need to put in place for the next pandemic, we really need to figure this out. I mean, this is as bad as this will be. And again, I think you and I agree here that we're still at the beginning of this thing. This is still a dress rehearsal for something that could be much, much worse that on some level is guaranteed to eventually happen, whether it's in our lifetime or not. I mean, it's just sheer good luck that we're facing a pandemic that has the lethality of this one and not one that's 10 or 30X this one. So we have to keep an inventory of all of the lessons being learned here and do better next time. And so, I mean, there are several silver linings here. There's a lot we are learning or at least potentially learning and collectively in response to just the need to have institutions that actually work rather than just populist demagoguery that appeals to half of a society and the need to have systems in place and supply chains and not to be utterly reliant on other countries to produce necessary equipment and medicine and to stockpile things that we know we will eventually need or could need in massive quantities. I mean, to speak of America in particular, I mean, we're the richest society that's ever existed and we're scrambling to produce the most basic tools at the moment. It makes absolutely no sense. I mean, we should absorb You know, on some level, the, the, the humiliation of this. I mean, you've got doctors in the finest hospitals in the country, you know, covering themselves with bandanas. It's madness. And, um, so we, we can, we can learn these lessons. I mean, on some level, these are very simple lessons. And personally, many of us are having our, our priorities jiggered around by this, such that, you know, we're, we're connecting with, with deeper values, you know, i- in this experience. And, you know, and e- experiencing a silver lining to it in just, you know, the way in which we're prioritizing our, our time with our family, and just kind of resetting our, our, um, you know, career, uh, priorities. And I mean, there's, there's a l- there are many good things happening for people, uh, which are, are not going unrecognized. I mean, it's just a question of figuring out how to, how to maintain these, these epiphanies once life starts back up again.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:44:11

       Yeah. Well, Sam, I, uh, I love our conversations. It's always nice to hear your voice. And-

    3. SHSam Harris1:44:19

       Likewise

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:44:21

       ... uh, this, this, we will have many, many, many, many, many, many conversations [laughs] over the forthcoming days, and weeks, and months, no doubt. And, uh, I appreciate you, and I appreciate your thinking. So thanks for taking time in your day.

    5. SHSam Harris1:44:37

       Yeah. Well, back at you, brother. Keep, keep it up. You're, you've been, uh, uh... You know, I think you single-handedly got So- South by Southwest canceled, and it was the right thing to do. Uh, and you were... I mean, we sort of pulled the rip cord together. I mean, maybe you, you had pulled it earlier in your life, but, like, when you and I made the decision, you know, when we were checking back and forth with each other about, uh, you know, what was gonna happen with South by Southwest, you know, that was the moment where I was understanding the situation we're in. And, and, uh, you know, you were, um, you know, uh, you were definitely, uh, the first person in my life who was echoing back to me the, the, the wisdom of, of, of that, um, change in outlook. And so as, as, you know, thank you for being early on this, and, uh, and thank you for all that you're, you're doing, because you, you have been a, a great source of information for a very large audience. And, uh, well, you just need to keep it up.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:45:33

       Thanks so much, Sam. I, uh, I'll do my best. And, uh, it seems so weird to end this way [laughs] , but I will.

    7. SHSam Harris1:45:40

       [laughs]

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:45:41

       How can people find you? Where can people find you? What would you like to share before we close up?

    9. SHSam Harris1:45:48

       Um, well, there, there are really only two places where I'm consistently making noise. I used to blog a lot.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:45:54

        [laughs]

    11. SHSam Harris1:45:54

        And, and I, I don't do that anymore. I m- I mean, it's been, it's been years since I, since I've, I was writing regularly on my blog. But, um, it was just my-

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:46:02

        You do have an excellent blog post on psychedelic, or related to psychedelics, though-

    13. SHSam Harris1:46:06

        Right

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:46:07

        ... also.

    15. SHSam Harris1:46:07

        Yeah, yeah. Um-

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:46:08

        Oldie but goodie

    17. SHSam Harris1:46:09

        ... dr- yeah, Drugs and the Meaning of Life, which is in audio form on, on both of our podcasts, I think.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:46:15

        It is.

    19. SHSam Harris1:46:16

        Um, but it's, yeah, it's on my blog. But it's, so my podcast is Making Sense, and the, the app where I talk about all things related to meditation, and the nature of consciousness, and to some degree, psychedelics, um, uh, is Waking Up, and that's wakingup.com.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:46:33

        Highly recommended. I use it myself. And, uh, Sam, to be continued. Uh-

    21. SHSam Harris1:46:40

        Yeah

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:46:40

        ... thanks again for taking the time. And I'm not sure what we mentioned that might end up in show notes, but if we have show notes, dear listeners, they will be at tim.blog/podcast. And just search Sam Harris, or Harris, or Sam, and they will probably pop right up. And thanks for tuning in. Sam, always, uh, always a pleasure, and I'll talk to you soon.

    23. SHSam Harris1:47:03

        Yeah. Take care, brother.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:47:04

        All right. You too. Take care. [upbeat music] Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is 5-Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And 5-Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets, and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up [laughs] in the, uh, the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance, and it's very short. It's just a little, tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email, and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Thousands of listeners, and a lot of the contractors I use, and my readers use FreshBooks. If you've been thinking about turning your part-time side business into a full-time small business, or big business for that matter, you may be feeling some extra uncertainty these days, and that's obviously completely natural. There are a lot of questions that can come up. How do you create a professional appearance and experience? Who can help you with support? How do you manage the billing and all of that, but still focus on the primary work of your business and on growing your business? FreshBooks is an all-in-one invoicing and accounting solution, it does a lot more than that, that helps you take your business from part-time to full-time, and it only takes minutes to set up. They have one of the best sign-up flows in the business. I've seen very few better. They have been helping people turn their passions into small businesses for 15 years, and they can help you, too. I've met the founders. I've looked at this product very closely. With automated invoicing, billable time, and expense tracking, and an intuitive dashboard that ties it all together, it's like having a full-time financial assistant with you every step of the way. You can create, customize, and send branded and professional-looking invoices in about 30 seconds. You get paid up to twice as fast, with fees as low as 1% using ACH payments on FreshBooks. It's a fast, easy, and secure way for clients to pay you for your work and pay you more quickly. One of the many things that sets FreshBooks apart is their award-winning, Toronto-based customer service. A real person picks up fast and will help you until you are completely satisfied and have your questions answered. There's a lot of uncertainty in the world right now, but your ability to build a business that you're passionate about, that you're proud of, doesn't have to be one of those things. Business owners all over the world rate FreshBooks as the easiest accounting software to use. Try it out. Check it out for free for 30 days at freshbooks.com/tim. Just enter Tim Ferriss in the how did you hear about us section. Again, that's freshbooks.com/tim to check it out and try it for free for 30 days. One more time, freshbooks.com/tim. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 1:50:21