5-Bullet Friday — Powerful Wisdom from Jerry Seinfeld, Ingenious Orangutans Discover How to Heal, Psychedelics for Traumatic Brain Injuries, and The Panacea for Obsessive Leaf-Blowing Disorder

Hi All!

Here is your weekly dose of 5-Bullet Friday, a list of what I’m pondering and exploring. Feel free to forward along if the spirit moves you.

This edition is brought to you by Waking Up, one of my favorite life tools. Be sure to see their offer in the P.S.

What I’m hoping is a blockbuster

“Hearing is be-leafing: Students invent quieter leaf blower.” These brilliant undergrad engineers at Johns Hopkins might just save my sanity. Their invention could be on the market within two years, and in Austin, where nearly every citizen has OLD (obsessive leaf-blowing disorder), I’ll consider it a godsend. Fingers crossed.

What I’m watching

​Jerry Seinfeld’s Recent Duke Commencement Speech. There is some really powerful stuff hidden between the jokes. There are 3–4 concepts (e.g., fascination over passion) that made me pause and rewind, which I suspect will be very helpful as I navigate my next chapters. If you want to skip some of the local references in the beginning, I suggest starting here, which will take you to 2:50. Also… how good does Jerry look at 70?!? I want whatever he’s taking.

What I’m excited about

“Wounded orangutan seen using plant as medicine.” (BBC) This isn’t a trivial observation. For more, see “Active self-treatment of a facial wound with a biologically active plant by a male Sumatran orangutan.” Hat tip to Dr. Mark Plotkin of Amazon Conservation Team (ACT).​

Article I’m reading

“Can psychedelics treat people with a severe brain injury?” by Jonathan Moens for National Geographic. (Alternate link.) This is a deeply researched and deeply moving piece. It underscores some of the hopes and gaps related to treating “disorders of consciousness.” Coverage of psychedelics tends to overstate how much we understand, and this is a good counterbalance with open questions. Here is an excerpt:
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​At the heart of this scientific initiative is the notion of brain “complexity.” In neuroscience, complexity is a measure of how diverse and unpredictable brain activity is. Brain activity that is uniform and fixed is described as having low complexity. Activity that is scattered, unpredictable, and rapidly changing from one state to the next is considered to be highly complex.
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Over the past two decades, a series of experiments have shown that brains of people who are awake and healthy tend to be higher in this complexity measure than those of people who are in dreamless sleep, sedated, or have a disorder of consciousness.
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The findings have led scientists to hypothesize that complexity acts as a reliable indicator for how conscious someone is, making it a particularly powerful tool for assessing the conscious level of individuals who can’t communicate but who might still be aware, as with patients with disorders of consciousness.
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For a deep dive on the potential application of psychedelic compounds to traumatic brain injury (TBI), I suggest my conversation with Stanford’s Dr. Nolan Williams that covers new science related to ibogaine and GDNF as well as applications of direct brain stimulation.

Quote I’m pondering

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on—have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear—what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons—the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.”
​— Walt Whitman
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You can complement this edition of 5-Bullet Friday with this week’s super-combo episodes (Naval Ravikant and Nick Kokonas; Dr. Gabor Maté and Dr. BJ Miller); my interview with Jerry Seinfeld, and this clip from the most recent Random Show episode on my experience with two sessions of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
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And, as always, please give me feedback on Twitter. Which bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know. Just send a tweet to @tferriss and put #5BulletFriday at the end so I can find it.
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Have a wonderful weekend, all.
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Much love to you and yours,
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Tim

P.S. Deal of the Week — Waking Up meditation app.

The Waking Up app, created by my good friend, renowned neuroscientist and author Sam Harris, is an absolutely world-class program for mind training. I was a beta tester back in 2018 and have recommended it to nearly all of my friends. Whether you want to sharpen your mind or experience more peace of mind, the Waking Up app can help, and it’s helped me. I have used it for more than five years, and it’s like adding a buffer of calm between me and our fast-paced, often high-stress, world.
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I love Waking Up for its guided meditation *progression* that builds multiple skills as you move from one class to the next. I suggest starting with Sam’s 30-day introductory class, which I revisit myself at least once a year. It’s a logical sequence instead of a collection of ad hoc readings. Subscribers to 5-Bullet Friday can get 30 days free when you sign up at WakingUp.com/Tim. Sign up today and experience a new operating system for your mind.