Safi Bahcall (@SafiBahcall) is the author of Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries, which debuted #3 on Wall Street Journal’s bestseller list. Loonshots describes what an idea from physics tells us about the behavior of groups and how teams, companies, and nations can use that to innovate faster and better.

Safi received his PhD in physics from Stanford and his undergrad degree from Harvard. After working as a consultant for McKinsey, Safi co-founded a biotechnology company specializing in developing new drugs for cancer. He led its IPO and served as its CEO for 13 years. In 2008, Safi was named E&Y New England Biotechnology Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2011, he worked with President Obama’s council of science advisors on the future of national research.

In this episode, we talk about many things we haven’t covered before, including hypnosis, conquering insomnia, thoughts on depression, optimizing incentives, and much more. You can also listen to my first interview with Safi at tim.blog/safi.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher, Castbox, or on your favorite podcast platform.

This podcast is brought to you by Peloton, which has become a staple of my daily routine. I picked up this bike after seeing the success of my friend Kevin Rose, and I’ve been enjoying it more than I ever imagined. Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right to your home. No worrying about fitting classes into your busy schedule or making it to a studio with a crazy commute.

New classes are added every day, and this includes options led by elite NYC instructors in your own living room. You can even live stream studio classes taught by the world’s best instructors, or find your favorite class on demand.

Peloton is offering listeners to this show a special offer: Enter the code you heard during the Peloton ad of this episode at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. This is a great way to get in your workouts, or an incredible gift. That’s onepeloton.com and enter the code you heard during the Peloton ad of this episode to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Connect with Safi Bahcall:

Website | Twitter | Instagram

• Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries by Safi Bahcall
• Safi Bahcall — On Thinking Big, Curing Cancer, and Transforming Industries, The Tim Ferriss Show #364 (Safi’s first appearance on this show.)
• Trip of Compassion
• Department of Psychology, Stanford University
• Research Supports the Notion That Hypnosis Can Transform Perception, Stanford Report
• The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information, The Psychological Review
• Hypnotic Induction (3 Effective Techniques), British Hypnosis Research
• Introduction To Aikido, Aikido FAQ
• Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) Injection: How It Works, HSS
• Pandora
• The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus by Richard Preston
• 10 Things Not to Say to a Depressed Person, Thrive Global
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), The Mayo Clinic
• About Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), Healthline
• Stoicism Resources and Recommendations, tim.blog
• How New Ketamine Drug Helps with Depression, Yale Medicine
• Ketamine: NMDA Receptors and Beyond, The Journal of Neuroscience
• Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit
• Psychedelics — Microdosing, Mind-Enhancing Methods, and More, The Tim Ferriss Show #377
• Drug Scheduling, DEA
• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Irvine
• How To Stop Worrying And Start Living by Dale Carnegie
• Understanding the Default Mode Network, Verywell Health
• Dissolving the Default Mode Network with Michael Pollan, Simulation
• Waking Up with Sam Harris (Meditation App)
• Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
• How to Be Happy (According to the World’s Happiest Man), Esquire
• Internal Family Systems (IFS)
• The Truth About MDMA Therapy with Dr. Michael and Annie Mithoefer, AMP #131
• Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
• Tara Brach on Meditation and Overcoming FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), The Tim Ferriss Show #94
• Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality by Anthony de Mello
• Peter Mallouk — Exploring the Worlds of Investing, Assets, and Quality of Life, The Tim Ferriss Show #356
• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John R. Ratey and Eric Hagerman
• Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor and Its Clinical Implications, Archives of Medical Science
• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), The Mayo Clinic
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Film)
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), The Mayo Clinic
• Electroencephalogram (EEG), The Mayo Clinic
• Brain Treatment Center
• TMS Is Painful but Not as Painful as Depression, The Bloggess
• The Relationship between Individual Alpha Peak Frequency and Clinical Outcome with Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Brain Stimulation
• Working Memory Revived in Older Adults by Synchronizing Rhythmic Brain Circuits, Nature Neuroscience
• Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), Johns Hopkins Medicine
• Functional Magnetic Resonance imaging (fMRI), Scholarpedia
• Introduction to Phase Transitions, MIT
• Free Rider Problem, Investopedia
• Uber
• The Innovation Equation by Safi Bahcall, Harvard Business Review
• The Hunger Games

SHOW NOTES

• Where, how, and why did Safi learn about hypnosis? [06:30]
• How Safi has used self-hypnosis and trance induction to calm down and sleep when his racing brain has other ideas. [12:29]
• A few common relaxation trance induction techniques. [18:08]
• Some of the most effective applications of hypnosis, how it compares to meditation for self-control, and Safi’s chairman of the board routine to try when other tactics aren’t getting through. [21:01]
• What does it say about the ego and the mind that splitting it up into these different characters has such tremendous power? Why is it so effective? [30:57]
• Understanding anger as a gift and using it as fuel. [35:15]
• How Safi makes sure he doesn’t overfill himself with this kind of fuel to the point where it burns him from the inside — thanks to a useful phrase from The Hot Zone author Richard Preston. [38:36]
• What is Safi’s relationship with depression, and what does he see as effective and non-effective ways of helping someone cope with it? [43:18]
• My own relationship with depression and what I’ve found useful for — and promising for the future of — its treatment. [51:39]
• While I’ve suffered from severe depression my entire life, I’ve not had a major episode in the past five years or so. Why do I think this is? [1:00:08]
• A mental trick Safi uses when he finds himself wallowing in “a deep brown stew” of thoughts, and a book that’s helped him befriend rather than fight with these thoughts to achieve inner peace. [1:06:55]
• Books and tools I’ve found for helping me achieve my own inner peace. [1:14:50]
• How my default calibration for joy has changed over time, and the roles place and time have played in this calibration. [1:20:35]
• Even when you inherit faulty genetics or programming, it’s empowering to know there are ways you can take control, edit your script, and change how these factors affect you. [1:24:20]
• Where is your calendar for the day? [1:28:26]
• What is your default question? What might be a better question? [1:31:09]
• Two different kinds of anger, and what we can learn by identifying and dissecting them as they appear in our lives. [1:33:39]
• Happiness equals reality minus expectations. [1:39:07]
• MDMA and rTMS as loonshots for depression. [1:41:04]
• We already know that biochemistry can influence thought patterns, but can thought patterns influence biochemistry? [1:55:50]
• Safi riffs on position space versus frequency space, new ways of looking at old problems, common paradoxes, and how incentives really drive progress in science as well as business. [2:01:47]
• When good ideas really die. [2:12:13]
• What would a Chief Incentives Officer bring to the table? [2:14:21]
• What are some common default compensation structures or offers that Safi considers problematic, and how is empowering a Chief Incentives Officer like bringing a gun to a knife fight? [2:22:13]
• “Culture” is a word that gets thrown around a lot in the business world, but what does it really mean in this context, and how does it relate to a company’s structure? [2:30:51]
• Will changing a company’s culture or its structure drive more meaningful, quantifiable progress? “It’s the incentives, stupid.” [2:34:18]
• Safi shares two very different examples of how a company might handle a coveted promotion — one promotes politics, and one promotes innovation. Which is preferable? [2:37:06]
• Parting thoughts. [2:43:42]

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Posted on: August 16, 2019.

Please check out Tribe of Mentors, my newest book, which shares short, tactical life advice from 100+ world-class performers. Many of the world's most famous entrepreneurs, athletes, investors, poker players, and artists are part of the book. The tips and strategies in Tribe of Mentors have already changed my life, and I hope the same for you. Click here for a sample chapter and full details. Roughly 90% of the guests have never appeared on my podcast.

Who was interviewed? Here's a very partial list: tech icons (founders of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Craigslist, Pinterest, Spotify, Salesforce, Dropbox, and more), Jimmy Fallon, Arianna Huffington, Brandon Stanton (Humans of New York), Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ben Stiller, Maurice Ashley (first African-American Grandmaster of chess), Brené Brown (researcher and bestselling author), Rick Rubin (legendary music producer), Temple Grandin (animal behavior expert and autism activist), Franklin Leonard (The Black List), Dara Torres (12-time Olympic medalist in swimming), David Lynch (director), Kelly Slater (surfing legend), Bozoma Saint John (Beats/Apple/Uber), Lewis Cantley (famed cancer researcher), Maria Sharapova, Chris Anderson (curator of TED), Terry Crews, Greg Norman (golf icon), Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum), and nearly 100 more. Check it all out by clicking here.