Dr. Gabor Mate and Dr. BJ Miller — Two featured guests: Dr. Gabor Mate, addiction and trauma expert and bestselling author (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, When the Body Says No, The Myth of Normal); and Dr. BJ Miller, hospice and palliative care physician, triple amputee, and speaker whose TED Talk on end-of-life has 17M+ views.
The gist
This is a 10-year/1-billion-download anniversary compilation episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, curated from over 700 episodes, pairing two of Tim's favorite guests. Dr. Gabor Mate reframes trauma as the disconnection that happens inside you rather than the events themselves, explains 'compassionate inquiry,' and details healing modalities from somatic work and EMDR to yoga and psychedelics including his ayahuasca awakening. Dr. BJ Miller, who lost three limbs to an electrical accident as a Princeton sophomore, describes the Zen Hospice Project, palliative care versus hospice, and how attending to death teaches you to live by prizing simple sensory moments. Both guests converge on themes of purposelessness, presence, the therapeutic power of small things, and the promise of psychedelics for existential distress.
Big reveals
- Gabor Mate redefines trauma: 'the trauma is not what happens to you, the trauma is of what happens inside you' resulting in disconnection from emotions and body.
- Mate introduces 'trauma of omission' where good things that should have happened didn't, causing disconnection even when parents loved you.
- Mate recounts his first ayahuasca ceremony in a Vancouver tent with 50 people where tears of love flowed and he saw how he'd closed his heart against love.
- Mate runs Tim through a live 'compassionate inquiry' exercise, exposing how Tim defaulted to the worst interpretation that a contractor 'didn't care or respect' him.
- BJ Miller tells the full story of losing three limbs to 'the Dinky' commuter train at Princeton when electricity arced to his metal watch in November 1990.
- Miller's snowball story: a nurse smuggled a snowball into his sterile burn unit, making him realize humans are 'feeling machines' and everything changes.
- Miller explains 'existential suffering' as palliative care's 'diagnosis of exclusion' and why psychedelics like psilocybin and MDMA may finally address it.
- Miller shares his daily exercise of projecting assumed success and well-wishing onto strangers, including homeless people, inverting how society judges them.
Things worth remembering
- Mate explains yoga originally meant 'Unity' and was not merely physical, intended to regain unity with self and creation.
- Mate says a psychedelic session can feel 'like 10 years of psychotherapy in one day' when done with adept practitioners.
- As an infant in WWII Budapest, Mate's mother gave him to a stranger in the street to save his life and didn't see him for a month.
- Miller clarifies all hospice is palliative care but not all palliative care is hospice; palliative care pursues quality of life with no time limit.
- At Zen Hospice the staff perform a flower-petal ceremony, sprinkling the body and singing as it leaves, versus the cold rush of a typical hospital death.
- Miller estimates he has witnessed approaching a thousand deaths in his career.
- Miller was flown to St. Barnabas Hospital, New Jersey's only burn unit, after surgeons performed a fasciotomy to release heat from burning tissue.
- Miller's motorcycle was modified with an Aprilia Mana clutchless transmission, spliced front/rear brakes into one lever, and all controls moved to his right hand.
- The man who converted Miller's motorcycle, Randy, later became his patient and a resident at Zen Hospice Project.
- Miller's favorite bumper sticker, which he'd put on a billboard: 'Don't believe everything you think.'
Recommended in this episode
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The 4-Hour Workweek
Tim Ferriss
“in the early 2000s when I was running my own e-commerce business I tell that story in the 4-Hour Work week but the tools then were absolutely atrocious” — Tim Ferriss 00:03:40Find it on Amazon
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
Gabor Maté
“Gabor is an addiction and Trauma expert and bestselling author of in the realm of hungry ghosts when the body says no and the myth of normal” — Tim Ferriss 00:06:55Find it on Amazon
When the Body Says No
Gabor Maté
“bestselling author of in the realm of hungry ghosts when the body says no and the myth of normal trauma illness and healing in a toxic culture” — Tim Ferriss 00:06:55Find it on Amazon
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture
Gabor Maté
“author of in the realm of hungry ghosts when the body says no and the myth of normal trauma illness and healing in a toxic culture” — Tim Ferriss 00:06:55Find it on Amazon
Inner Engineering
Sadhguru (Isha Foundation)
“the one I learned is called inner engineering and it's taught by either sguru or his followers when I recommend it to France and others everybody has been only being grateful so I can highly recommend it” — Gabor Maté 00:15:43Find it on Amazon
Radical Acceptance
Tara Brach
“there's a book with a very Bland title called radical acceptance by Tara Brock that I found very very particularly helpful to me in this in this instance” — BJ Miller 00:53:14Find it on Amazon
Grizzly Man
Werner Herzog (inferred)
“the movie Grizzly man oh man oh man yeah I think it's a be like an amazing piece of film making and I also particularly like its pency” — BJ Miller 01:41:40Find it on Amazon
Waiting for Guffman
Christopher Guest (inferred)
“I have a real soft spot for waiting for guffman not that it has this great meaning per se but by speaking of absurdity I just think it's hilarious” — BJ Miller 01:40:07Find it on Amazon
Joseph Swan Pinot Noir
Joseph Swan Vineyards
“I would probably point us to a beautiful Pino Noir from Joseph Swan up in somoma County I've gotten a lot of miles out of a beautiful bottle of wine” — BJ Miller 01:55:13Find it on Amazon