Illustration via 99designs “It is an insult to the potency of this inner work to not take the time to integrate what has been revealed.” — Françoise Bourzat Françoise Bourzat (@Francoise_Bourzat) has been bridging the divide between Western psychology and indigenous wisdom in collaboration with healers in Mexico for the past 30 years. She is a co-founder of the Center for Consciousness Medicine, which trains people to become guides in a holistic method of psychedelic-assisted therapy. She is also the coauthor of Consciousness Medicine, published by North Atlantic Books. Françoise served on th ..read more

Illustration via 99designs “It’s a very widespread idea that if you have personal experience with a psychoactive drug, this biases you in such a way that the research that you do is not trustworthy. But this is something that we don’t evenly apply to other disciplines. No one would ever say that an ethnomusicologist is biased because they’ve listened to music, or because they enjoy music themselves. Or that a sports commentator is biased if they have a past as an athlete. Instead, we would say that this is something that makes him an expert who is qualified to discuss the subject.” — Hamilton ..read more

Credit: Lewis Minor This week has been a fascinating firestorm for me.  Part of the excitement came after a series of tweets I published about some of the concerns I have as psychedelic medicine makes the leap from research to for-profit startups and companies. Here is what I wrote: “I am very concerned by the patent land grab warming up in the for-profit psychedelic world. Is anyone working on an IP Defense Fund—or coalition of pro-bono lawyers—of some type to file USPTO objections/comments, etc. when companies attempt to secure broad patents that could hinder scientific research, reaso ..read more

Photo by Todd White Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is normally my job to deconstruct world-class performers of various types, of all ilks. In this special episode, the tables are turned. Instead of interviewing someone else, I am interviewed by two experts on several topics I’ve both studied and supported, including psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and what it can do to heal trauma and—broadly speaking—possible futures for mental health. This audio was recorded on a new show, The Psychedelic News Hour, soon to be a podcast, and I’m in conversation with two peopl ..read more

Illustration via 99designs A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. — L. P. Jacks Blake Mycoskie (@BlakeMycoskie) is a serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, and best-selling author, most known for founding TOMS Shoes. He is also the person behind the ..read more

Photo courtesy of MAPS Rick Doblin, PhD, (@rickdoblin) is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He received his doctorate in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he wrote his dissertation on the regulation of the medical uses of psychedelics and marijuana and his master’s thesis on a survey of oncologists about smoked marijuana vs. the oral THC pill in nausea control for cancer patients. Rick was also one of the early students under the legendary Dr. Stanislav Grof. Please listen to this entire episod ..read more

This is something I’ve been working on for ~1.5 years and something diligent scientists have been working toward for 20+ years. This episode features a recording of the press conference announcing the launch of the world’s largest psychedelic research center and the U.S.’s first psychedelic research center, The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Among other things, researchers there will be investigating the effectiveness of psychedelics as a new therapy for opioid addiction, Alzheimer’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), post-treatm ..read more

This episode features a panel that I moderated in front of a standing-room-only crowd at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference 2019. It includes a great overview of psychedelic science, investing opportunities, anecdotal personal benefits, legal challenges, and much more. I think it’s one of the more comprehensive panels ever done on the subject. Here are the participants: Matthew Johnson — Principal Investigator, Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit Ayelet Waldman — Author, A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage ..read more

“Unhappiness is at the root of more pain, I would suspect, than any ailment that falls in the ‘physical’ body. And to think that we have compounds that could play such an important role that are really facing challenges in getting approved, I just find that really frustrating.” — Dr. Peter Attia This is a special episode and features one of my dear friends. A number of guests have started incredible podcasts after being on this show as their first-ever podcast interview, including legendary Navy SEAL commander Jocko Willink. What people don’t know is that Jocko was introduced to me by a fella ..read more

Stan Grof (right) with the legendary Albert Hofmann (left), the first person to synthesize LSD. “I realized people were not having LSD experiences; they were having experiences of themselves. But they were coming from depths that psychoanalysis didn’t know anything about.” — Stanislav Grof Stanislav Grof, M.D., (stanislavgrof.com) is a psychiatrist with more than 60 years of experience in research of “holotropic” states of consciousness, a large and important subgroup of non-ordinary states that have healing, transformative, and evolutionary potential. Previously, he was Principal Investigator ..read more