YouSaid · the spoken record

Wade Davis

lines on the record: 148
first: 2023-01-27
most recent: 2023-01-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Anthropomorphic figures that from the ground you can never make out, but from ten thousand feet you see these perfectly etched forms of spiders and lights.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As Tim and I made ready to say goodbye to each other after over a year and a half traveling together, we took this extraordinary Terrance would call herog dose of this new species we had found, and we were up for forty eight hours. And at one point... We just left the ground and we were like flying over the surface of the earth. And I looked down and I saw the NASCA lines, you know, and I became convinced that that explained how these guys conceived those monumental structures. But at that same experience, I saw Tim fly up like Ichars to the sun and disappear. And I knew right then he was going to die and he would be dead in short order, in fact, for maids.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Almost challenging to believe in the wake of your experience. I never understood the glory of photosynthesis. I never appreciated the miracle of this verse of life, this idea that water can come together with carbon dioxide and create the air that we breathe and the food that we eat. I mean, that's a poetic verse every child should have to memorize, and no politician should ever be able to run for office if they can't recite the formula of photosynthesis. But the point is I remember I took Tim and I discovered a new species of San Pedro Cactus in nineteen seventy four in Bolivia, and we took a big walk of it on the eastern side of the Andes, and knowing that it was safe, and Schultz used to say Tim and I ate our way through South America. If anything, back then had a chance to get us high, we would take it. We were crazy. We were kids.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Been taking all of this common genius that I keep talking about we all share as human beings and applying it to that challenge. I mean just jumping away for a second, you know, when you go to Australia, you realize that the entire purpose of life is not to change the world, but to do the rituals to keep the world just as it was. Well, imagine how much would be learned if the people of New York City had spent all of their existence putting all of their energy and capacity into understanding the biological relationships of Central Park. I mean, it would be incredible, right? So when we say the plants teach us, I'm not sure what that means. I don't quite know how it become operative, but I do know, and I've had this experience myself taking any number of psychoactive substances that you have insights that become”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fine. How do you rationally explain that process of elaboration? And you mentioned trial and error. Well, I think statistically that is just exposes a meaningless euphemism. Now, I mentioned that story about Schultz saying the Siona Sequoia and the 17 varieties sing to you in a different key. Well, whatever that really means, when the people say the plants teach us, I'm quite prepared at this point in my life to take them at their word. And the reason I say that is that these men, largely men also women, but in terms of ayahuasca, these aren't sort of random characters. These are true natural philosophers who understand that flora in ways that few scientists could ever aspire to do. They have spent their lives in wisdom traditions, lineages that have”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ringo ayahuasca business around Aquitos is not traditional in that sense. Now as to how this knowledge was discovered, I mean, there are a couple possibilities. First of all, there is a species of malpigaceous vine, diploteris cabreta, which looks very much like Yaha and does have DMT in it. So maybe they saw that, then they saw the opposite leaves. They saw the psychotria coffee plant, opposite leaves. Clearly there's experimentation going on. But it's not just with ayahuasca. Take something like Kerrari. The remarkable thing about Karari, it's a muscle relaxant. But to muscles, it has to get into the blood. You can drink as much Karari as you want. And if you don't have some kind of wound in your stomach, you'll be...”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The people are there, but only men take Yah. They go through two different kinds of ritual paraphernalia, featherwork by day, by night, and they literally, by taking ayahuasca, don't become symbols of the ancestors, they become the ancestors, and they fly away to all the sacred sites to pay homage to the natural world, to maintain the harmonic balance. So the critical thing here is that the use of the plant preparation has nothing to do with any individual's well-being, but rather becomes a prayer ceremony for the collective well-being and survival of the culture. And it becomes a mediator to the divine. And so the kinds of things you see in the kind of”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kogi do this idea that human beings aren't the problem we're the solution because only through the human imagination can the wonder of the natural world become manifest that we are the ones who have to maintain the energetic flows of the universe we have this proactive role to play well in the northwest amazon it's very much that way i mean the the main origin myth that in one way or another is shared by multiple cultures speaks of a great journey from the east up the milk river in sacred canoes”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And on that road between Sibondoi and Moko and the Upper Putamile, when I was there in the 1970s, there were already individual healers sort of working with the Gringo trade, but also working with individual composinos. And of course, in all of these healing practices, the ideas that the imbalance of the individual is treated through the medicine and whether the imbalance is caused by bad health or finances, personal problems, whatever it's a balanced source that one gets to but I mentioned it only to stress that it is completely a different situation when you get into the heart of the Northwest Amazon where presumably these plants were originated, these preparations. So for example one of the powerful themes that is somewhat like what the”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, one thing you mentioned about ayahuasca or Yahay is that the idea we often have of it as we go down to Iquito Supukalpa, the healers of the Shapibo, as if it's sort of a quest for personal liberation, personal well-being, that's always been there in the traditional use of hallucinogens in South America. The traditional syncretic cult of the cactus of the four winds and the curonderos who use San Pedro cactus on the coast. And certainly the popularization of ayahuasca began with the Yahay letters between William Burroughs and Alan Ginsburg, and it was Burroughs who turned up in Bogota, goes to the herbarium, meets who he calls Doc Schindler, who is Schultes, and Schultes sends him off and eventually gets him ayahuasca in Mokola”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, they would see that as sure. I mean, nothing is accidental when it comes to that. You know, when you're with peoples like the Badhasana and the Makuna, their most profound cultural insight, one might say, is their conviction that plants and animals are just people in another dimension of reality. So if you even, you know, they're hunting myths become kind of a land management plan dictating how people can live in the forest. So the shaman is, he's not just a priest or a physician. He's kind of like a nuclear engineer who goes to the heart of the reactor to reprogram the world. So there's a constant dialogue between human beings and the natural world. So no event has a life of its own.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had two weeks to walk to get to rescue, but we found a way to the end of the road that day. And it was just like a miracle. And at the end of this extraordinary misadventure, I got off the plane in Panama City. I had flown out in this cramped Cessna. The girl beside me had puked on me. Her mother turned around to console the daughters she puked on me. I only had the rotten clothes on my back, three dollars to my name and one bottle of beer, this engineer, had given me. I arrived in Panama City with nothing more than that, and no plans whatsoever, but I had never felt more alive. I had been on my own hero's journey, and I had survived, and that would be etched into my character. You know, if I could do that, I could do anything.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That had no road. And he didn't care that I knew nothing about the area. That was great because he kind of cultivated misadventures as fodder for his books. And in the course of that journey, it was incredible during the rainy season, walking in swamps up to the neck for days at a time. At one point, we got lost in the jungle with three Kuna Indians for 12 days with no food. I was down to 146 pounds at one point, Sebastian was down to 120. We had to carry the other Indian lad. And at one point when we were at the wit's end, I just said, we got to go. And I took the gun and I walked up this trail and I ran right into a black jaguar. And, you know, if you ever run into a jaguar, they've got these yellow eyes. They don't look at you. They look through you. You feel like you've been x-rayed. I just looked at that incredibly beautiful creature and then it leapt off the road. And I thought,”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of my most memorable experiences when I was 20, I've just come back from the Sierra Nevada with the Mamos, and Tim was going back to Harvard to get his degree, and I had a month off until he was going to return. And I ran into this crazy Englishman who had walked from the tip of South America. He was walking to Alaska, and he was sending these dispatches to his newspaper, the London Sunday Observer. And I'm not sure what he wrote because in 18 months of walking, he hadn't learned a word of Spanish. But anyway, he hired me to guide him through the Darian Gap, the only stretch of this trip.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With every Canadian knowing that they belong and knowing that if their kid gets sick, they will get exactly, and I tell you it is exactly the same care as any other Canadian, including the Prime Minister. Yes, I sometimes have to wait for medical service in Canada, but everyone does. But no one is left behind. And that is one of the reasons that we have a less highly charged society. You know, why we seem to get along better.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As an institution of the nation that stands for the nation, you know, young people have to learn that there's something bigger than themselves that they need to Be loyal to and that's not necessarily a country, it's a concept. It's the idea of community. It's something we really noticed him in Canada, which is no perfect place. But one of the things that is so different in Canada is that there is really a sense of community. We really are a social democracy. And it creates for a different way of life. I mean, one thing I don't want to belabor this, but in America, universal healthcare is seen as socialist medicine. And healthcare in general is seen as a uniquely medical issue, right? And that is to miss the point completely. Universal health care, which we have in Canada, has nothing to do with medicine. It has everything to do with social solidarity. It has everything to do.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up plastic or caring for the elderly, whatever it is, again, giving young people a sense that they're not the center of the universe, that they live to help others, that we do exist as a community, that you have to be humble. And just because you believe it doesn't mean it's true and that the democratization of opinion doesn't mean that your opinion counts as much as an elder who has lived through life that you can't even imagine. You know, there are ways to make this possible, but physical activity is the key, I think, particularly for men, which is why say what you will about the military. You know, it has done more good for more young men in its history, not that obviously we would not criticize some of the engagements. But you know what I'm saying?”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Find ways for them to go away and do physical labor. You know, this is why I think there should be youth conservation corps in every state and national park. You know, there's nothing better than for a 15-year-old boy with all those hormonal spasms and all that pimply face to just be forced to cut firewood all day. And these kind of opportunities aren't trivial. They create the character of our young. There's no reason whatsoever that our government in the United States shouldn't be able to mobilize resources that would make available to every young American boy and girl the opportunity to travel within America, to know another face of America, another section of the country, Californians to Iowa, Kansas to Miami, and so on, and give them work to help make us a better country, you know, whether it's picking up”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, my children, I'm here They just looked up at him and they said, Hello, sir, how are you? You must be a friend of my father's. Can we get you some breakfast, please? I mean, utterly nonplussed, you know. So it's, you know, those are the kind of initiation rites. I think for boys in the American context and culture, it really is great to”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You never knew who was going to turn up. I just had a friend call me who reminded me of the day he woke up there and found four Mongolians drinking vodka at 6 a.m. in the kitchen. And one time we had Nilda Kalanapa, this great friend of mine, a weaver from really a national treasure from Cusco staying in one guest room. And I'd forgotten to tell my daughters that a friend of mine from Mali, Iso Mohammed, a Torg, massive guy, was there for the folk like festival. So they didn't know he was staying there. And he comes up from the basement guest room in full ritual regalia, like looking like Lawrence of Arabia. This guy, his massive guy, much bigger than me. He comes into the kitchen, spreads his arms across the kitchen. My girls were eating rice crispies at the table. And he just says, Maisonfant, just la. And they just look up at this incredible African guy.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You'd have to ask them, but I mean, I had that kind of relationship with them. I mean, what we've done obviously with our daughters, we've been able to take them all around the world. And also while they grew up, we own a fishing lodge, a very modest fishing lodge, but very remote seven hours from the nearest town, three days drive north of Vancouver in Taltan country. And so while they grew up, and I was traveling a great deal for the National Geographic, the two or three months we had spent there every summer became kind of the well the family drank from for the rest of the year. And for those months they hung out with Taltan kids all the time. And so they have this unbelievable kind of sense of the world. My daughter speaks Arabic, one of them. I remember our house in Washington in particular was kind of a grand central station. Everybody was free to crash there.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thanksgiving be polite, have good manners, self deprecating humor, a willingness to eat what's put in front of you, and sleep where you're asked to sleep. I mean, Tim, food is power. Crudely refuse a gift of food. You know, if you're being given food almost anywhere in the world, it means some child is probably not eating that day. And even if you know, and there's been many times when I've known because of the circumstances, that if I eat a plate offered to me without doubt, I'll contract Giardia or amoebic dysentery, I always eat the food because you can always treat the illness. You can never rekindle the trust that you've shattered, not just between you and the person, but between that person and the next outsider who will come.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the first one to drop their arms is loser. He put the cigarette on and I said, you know, this is stupid. It hurts. He didn't understand that that cigarette could have burned through my arm before I would drop my arm. And of course I didn't drop my arm and eventually he had to drop his arm. And that was kind of a gift for me to him because he was never the same again. After that, he was a different character. He didn't have to do that anymore. And to this day, I still have that huge scar on my forearm. But, you know, I don't ever regret having done that, you know. And what is wonderful about doing this kind of field work is a dance of culture. How do you find the rhythm? It's like dancing with a woman for the first time. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. You know, I always say to young students setting off to the field, you know, what you need to do is just act like you would if invited to someone's home at”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe it's a Canadian thing. You know, it's like, you know, there are these moments, and I don't mean in any way, because I keep saying it's empathy and love. It's not bravado. I remember when I was 14, you know, my mother was a modest but determined Canadian woman, and she worked all year as a secretary to raise enough money to let me join a group of kids. A language teacher was taken to Columbia. And I was really lucky because I was billeted in the mountains and I never saw the other Canadian lads. And many of them got what the Colombians call Mamitis or homesickness. And I felt like I just finally found home. I got drunk for the first time and kissed a girl. I was in heaven. But there was this real bully in the valley. I was 14 and he was 17 or 18. And he kind of terrorized, even the bad guy. He terrorized all the kids. And one day he challenged me to what they would do is they'd put a cigarette. You put your arm forearms together, put a lit cigarette in the middle.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Laughing. And after that, I couldn't go by that crossroads without getting flagged down. Wads, wads, ciswa, cisois, you know, and I became very friendly with that temple, actually.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it was all too much and too little at the same time, and it was a very awkward moment, and I had to do something. I was there by myself, and there's always a human skull with a candle burning with a bottle of raw sugarcane alcohol at the base of the Potomiton, which is used as a libation not to drink. So I just thought I better do something. So I very deliberately went over, took the bottle, and poured the alcohol overall over my body, my back, my hair, everything, and then very deliberately went to the candle and lit myself on fire. And as I flamed like a torch, remember this isn't kerosene or diesel. It's just like doing the same thing with lighter fluid. There wasn't any danger except I'd lose my eyebrows. I went over and offered the Secret Society handshake again to each of the men. They loved it.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For the first time, unescorted by a powerful voodoo priest, and the ceremony begins like any ceremony with the invocation of leg by the spirit of communication and the dances or just voodoo dances. But then at midnight you hear the fetcache, the whip crack, and the conch trumpet, the symbol of the revolution blow, and then the order goes out. Soldiers of the night saying skins so da de Nui Pau. And everybody goes, the hundreds of people go into this temple and emerge in these anonymous black and red robes. And at that moment six men came and grabbed me and flung me into a chamber, and I rolled around in the dust, and I looked up and I was looking at a table of emperors of the secret societies who wanted to know how I knew what I knew. And I shared with them the iconography, passwords, handshakes.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, tap tap says a local bus in Haiti. And I went in my little jeep and I didn't have my wallet or any money. And I got a flat tire after I dropped him off. And I said to this guy at the side of the road who fixed tires manually, I said, can you fix my tire? He starts fixing my tire. Then I say, Creole, Mizami Pagan Cobe, I've got no money. And then he said, and he started hassling me. And I just wasn't in the mood. I should have not done this, but I took his hand and I gave him the secret society handshake. And then he blanched back and then he said again, what kind of white are you? And then we had a big laugh. And he said, oh, I got a guy. We got a big thing happening. And I had broken down by chance right by a Bisan Gauchampuel secret society temple. So I went back that night.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, remember I said I became very close friends with Marcel Pierre, and we were like brothers by the end of the many years I was there. And his wife was dinovarin cancer, and he was so sad he came to me and I bought all his blood for and she still was dying. And I took him back to get a tap tap. And for once I was dressed like an American tourist.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even in Haiti, you know, you have to understand that during the course of that research, it turns out I never knew who was paying for it all. And I'll tell you, if you'd like, a story of the night I had to light myself on fire.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the truth is, young men I've never known a young lad who didn't want that challenge. It's that idea of I best learn something about it, so I lied about my credentials and managed to hire on as a logging forestry engineer in one of the toughest logging camps in the west coast of British Columbia where I stayed a year and I learned everything about the business including the corruption. And it was a fantastic experience because I also learned that the men and women fighting off hunger were the chainsaw were not my enemy. I learned that in all of these conflicts, particularly around resources, there never any enemies, only solutions, but I kind of escaped that camp taking a job as the first park ranger in what had just been created, Canada's biggest roadless wilderness park. And my job description was deliciously vague wilderness assessment and public relations and in two four month seasons I saw 12 people. There was no one to relate publicly to. And these travels to South America or, you know.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that they would forget what it was to become boys, to learn what it was to be a men. But the reason all these ordeals that you know so much about vision quests, et cetera, have pain is because the message has to be clear. This is the end. It's not about the twiddling of thumbs. We are passing on to you the obligation of adulthood. You now hold the destiny of our people in your hands. This is not trivial. You best be prepared. And I think whether it's with women who go through their own rituals, which are always sort of timed to the first minces or the first period, fertility transforming a girl into a woman, a potential mother. Or it's a boy proving his manhood. Now this has become rather frowned upon in our kind of politically correct.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before I jump into my story, rites of passage exist all around the world for a very specific reason. It's not a coincidence or an accident that they involve pain, whether it's scarification, whether it's the severing of the foreskin, whether it's the pain of ordeal, the ingestion. I mean, for example, the algonquin speaking of that dura, their initiation right was to put the young lads in the longhouse, seal it shut, and make them eat that tura for two weeks.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when you realize that that is the end point. you then never expect to win and if you never expect to win you're not disappointed when you lose and because of that you can keep fighting with the same idealism the same energy when you're 69 years old as I am today that I had when I was 20 years old and marching against the war in Vietnam”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take your pick and get on with it. And it was incredibly wise because we have this sort of thing in the Christian tradition particularly that if we just wait long enough, good's going to triumph over evil and we'll somehow be dissolved in the rapture. Well, ain't going to happen. And famously in the medieval times, if you ask the obvious question, if God's all powerful, why does he allow evil to exist? You were burned at the stake for heresy, right? But in the Indian tradition, the Vedic tradition, by contrast, when Lord Krishna was asked that very question, if God's all powerful, why does he allow evil to exist in the universe? Lord Krishna said to the disciple to thicken the plot. In other words, good and evil walk hand in hand. You're never going to lose one. You've got to take your side. And the purpose of life is not to triumph over evil, but keep pushing the wheel of justice forward.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think again about the natural world in the same way we did before that vision. And even today, as I mentioned earlier, I think, you know, the revelations of genetics showing us indisputably that race is a total fiction. Well, that hasn't really gotten into the zeitgeist yet as the moonshot has, but it will. And I think that we're living through extraordinarily exciting times and extraordinarily challenging times. But as I say to all young people, what generation has ever come of age in a world at peace, a world without troubles? You know, it's very interesting. One of the ways I, Tim, keep my optimism, you know, my dad wasn't a religious man. His spirit was broken in the war. I never saw the inside of a church in his presence. But he did believe in good and evil. He used to say to me, there's good and evil in the world.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nobody spoke about the biosphere, biodiversity. Now these are terms familiar to school children. So what's not to love about a world capable of such social transformations, such scientific genius? You know, just think about that moment on Christmas Eve 1968 when Apollo went around the dark side of the moon and emerged to see for the first time in human history not a sunrise or a moonrise, but an earthrise. And in that incredible moment, we suddenly saw the earth as it is, not this infinite horizon, but a fragile blue planet, as the astronaut's famously reported floating in the velvet void of space. And I think everything has changed with that, you know, like a flash of illumination. It swept over the world. We never will.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was actually my line, not Jim's. You know, people are always asking, we're always asking each other, are you optimistic? And I kind of feel like, how can you not be optimistic? I mean, that's the purpose of life itself. And if you're a father, you absolutely have an obligation to remain hopeful. And given how many gifts we have, surely pessimism does become something of an indulgence. You know, we're also caught in the present these days, you know, so little sense of history. And we forget how much we've achieved. But when you think about it, Tim, in my lifetime, women have gone from the kitchen to the boardroom. People of color from the woodshed to the White House. Gay people, men and women from the closet to the altar. When we think of the environment, when I was a young kid just getting people to stop throwing garbage out of a car window was a great environmental victory.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And in class riddled Columbia at that time, for a Harvard professor to do that, and it made that young man's life pulled him out of misery, gave him a career and a great gift to Columbia.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Formal thing. But you never are said to put an indigenous helper on the label as if he's an equal to you, but Schultes did, and he met Isidoro when Isidoro's farm had been burned in the war. His parents had been murdered, he had no food, he was absolutely nothing. And he ended his life full professor of botany with multiple honoree degrees. And before he died, when I was writing the book One River, I went to see Isidoro in Kali, and I said, Professor, I want you to think really carefully. I want you to remember the first moment you met Professor Schulte's in the forest, in the Makarena. What was it like? What did he say? And he looked at me very pensively, and then he suddenly, there was a twinkle in his... And he said, He looked at me like I was somebody. Isn't that beautiful, Tim”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The most famous botanical collections of Schultes and Mark would certainly confirm this were between nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty three when free of the rubber emergency he was free to collect medicinal plants. He described the use of 2,000 medicinal plants previously unknown to science. And with them on all those collections was a man called Isidoro Cabarera. Now when you do botany and you collect plants, the senior botanist name goes first. So Tim Ploughman and Wade Davis, ploughman and Davis, and that's how you do it on the specimens. It's kind of a...”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Live a life of authenticity. How can I live a life where I'm not strapped to a laptop at a desk in a cubicle? How can I find a way to monetize the creativity of my own life? How can I make myself and the act of being alive my vocation, recognizing that any job one has is just a passing thing, a kind of a filter through which to see the world and only for a time and the real challenge is to make the art of life itself your vocation. And I always answer those because if you don't answer, it's not a neutral gesture. It's a slap in the wrist. They're reaching out to you and all you have to say is wonderful idea, Charlie. Go for it, your friend. And that takes about as much time as deleting the message. And I learned that from Shultes. You know, I'll tell you one wonderful story.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Life, and this is what I say to young people, you know, be patient, never compromise, give your destiny time to find you. Bitterness always comes to those who look back on a life of choices imposed upon them from the outside, and you may not make all the right decisions, but if you own those decisions, they all become the right ones, because together they become the path of your own creation, and you become the architect of your own life. And that is something so very important. And in that spirit, Tim, I try to do everything I can to help young people. I answer every email and I get, as you do, thousands of emails from young people. And very often what they're saying, they may have a specific question, but what they're really saying is not just how can I be you. They know they can't be me, but what they really want to know is how can I live?”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what I found myself having to do, Tim, was fling myself into the arms of mentors. And those mentors could be an old Gitzan elder who I recorded mythology with and hunted with forty years. It could be an engineer who taught me how to understand the complexities of industrial logging when I spent a year in the bush. I've always believed that nothing is beneath you, nothing is a waste of time unless you make it so. You know, a cab driver is much to teach you as a professor at university if you're open to the possibility. And I always found that if I just gave myself fully to these mentors, like Shultes, like David Mayberry-Lewis, like Dr. Klein, and many that I've had the privilege to engage since then, you know, I was able to become the most important thing, which is the architect of my own.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything traces back to David. And on the subject of mentors, I think this is so important for young people listening to this broadcast. You know, I grew up in the simplest of middle class homes. My father's spirit in many ways has been broken in the war, as had my mother in a different set of circumstances. There was a lot of love but not a lot of activity, creativity. And it was very clear to me that I had to get out. And I began a very young age jumping off cliffs. And as Terrence McKenna always said, the great lesson of life is that when you do that, you don't land on rock, you land on a feather bed. The world exists to lift you up, not beat you down. You know, Jim Whitaker, the great climber, a good friend of mine, said that if you're not living on the edge when young, you're taking up too much space.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“that river would involve experiences guaranteed to assure you that if you emerge out of the forest of that confluence alive you'd be a wiser and a more complete human being but Schultes was not a man of ideas he was a botanist that's what he was a plant explorer and I loved”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Integral part of the anthropological endeavor. You know, when you have languages disappearing, when you have indigenous people suffering, the predations of the rubber era, there's a moral obligation to both tell their stories and to work with them, I think, as liaison conduit to the world facilitating or amplifying their voices, bringing their concerns to the world. And that was something that I had in the fiber of my DNA because of my association with David. I was also very fortunate, as you mentioned, to fall into the orbit of Professor Schulte's. But Professor Shulte's was a man of action and deed. In 18 years of studying with him, I don't think I ever had an intellectual conversation. He would say things to you like, there's one river I'd like you to know, knowing full well the process of getting to the right.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was so incredibly fortunate looking back, you know, I was an undergraduate at Harvard. I got my PhD at Harvard, but I began as an anthropologist. And David Mayberry Lewis was my undergraduate tutor. He was one of the great Americanists. He had traveled into the heart of Brazil in the 1950s to live amongst the Chavante. And before that, the Charente, who at the time were said to be the most feared indigenous groups in Brazil. And he was a great humanist. And while I was with him, he created cultural survival with his wife Pia. And he absolutely lived in a way, although he wasn't really a Boazian because he was from the British tradition of social anthropology, but he absolutely believed that activism was an”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Remembered and he came to four days later in a kind of a psychic horror having lost everything that he owned and had his entire kind of psychological state shattered. So these are very powerful. Drugs indeed”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was once in San Austin with a Colombian, this Australian kind of hippie guy. This is back in the early 70s. He spoke about how he ate a bunch of Tridatura in his hotel on the coast and ended up walking around the naked, the Barranquilla, a public market for five days before he was finally arrested. And at our table, Tim, there was a wonderful Colombian hippie girl who looked up at me and said, I know that market. I wouldn't even buy a mango there. But I'll tell you, in my book, Magdalena, about the Great River of Colombia, there's a story of my good friend William Vardigus, who was on his way to university. And these stories, like you recounted, are part of Traveler's lore in Columbia, but I had never met anyone who had actually endured this. And someone on a bus offered him a cake or cookie, which he ate, and that was the last thing he remembered.”
2023-01-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #652: Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT